Two More Lessons from Denmark’s Wind Story

The Denmark Challenge - Lessons From an Emerging Wind Power - The people of Denmark have a story to tell in their own Nordic unassuming way. You hear it from quietly proud Per Volund, an engineer, as he takes a group of Americans out on a small boat to tour the Middlegrunden wind farm in Copenhagen harbor.

By reading carefully the story, two further lessons can be extracted by applying the EWPC market architecture and design paradigm to the article:

Lesson #1: Transmission (and distribution) investment should be done at least costs.

Under the EWPC article Financing and Developing Wind Projects, I wrote “Optimal transportation should be the result of expansion planning where all potential wind projects (see also Wind Integration: An Emerging Paradigm) are taken into consideration at the same time for a give planning horizon. Such expansion planning is to be done in the environment suggested in the article Free Market and Central Planning, Under R1E2.”

This is what Martin Rosenberg wrote relative to the lesson:

"Denmark has invested heavily in its power grid, viewing its as a necessary resource, according to Lise Nielson, program coordinator for Energinet, which develops and owns Denmark's electricity and natural gas transmission lines. "Utilities and grids in Denmark have always worked on a nonprofit basis," she said. The grid operators are dedicated to spurring development of all viable generation resources. "We will build grid out to any generation." Furthermore, Energinet has long sought the highest levels of reliability, building its power grid in a robust circular design similar to fiber-optic telecommunications networks in the United States. Costly, perhaps, "but what is the cost of a blackout?" Nielson asked."

"As for those Americans who say the design of the current power grid is an impediment to widespread wind generation, Danes say America must make needed investments in the grid to make it more reliable."

According to Joseph T. Kelliher, chairman of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “Today, there are more than 500 transmission owners…,” which is interpreted by Martin as a “balkanized grid.”

"Peter Wenzel Kruse, Vestas vice president, forthrightly declared, "The U.S. grid is worn down. You're just walking a thin line of collapsing the economy." Investing in the grid would allow wind generation to go forward. "There is tons of cheap wind power in the Midwest," he said."

Lesson #2: Distribution needs to be integrated with transmission.

Under the EWPC article Innovation and Risk Taking in the Power Industry, I wrote: “When demand is inactive, distribution is also inactive, and the interface between transmission and distribution can be assumed to be simple and dependent. When demand is active, in time and space, distribution is very active, and the interface between transmission and distribution becomes highly interdependent and complex, under power system planning, operation and control. Transmission and distribution integration is a must to reap the value creation of the smart grid transportation (T&D) utility.”

In relation to this lesson, Marty wrote:

While the Danes feel they have a superior grid – the power network's nervous system – they are intent on developing its intelligence as well. Power systems have for ages relied on a handful of large central generating stations. With the advent of wind and other renewable energy forms, more small sites will go on and off line depending on a variety of factors. These resources must be integrated and used in the most efficient ways. To meet these complex requirements, Danish scientists have launched Syslab, a research facility for distributed power systems in Roskilde, located on a fjord west of Copenhagen. The development of a futuristic intelligent power system is a daunting task, said Henrik Bindner, at the Riso National Laboratory, where Syslab is located. "The challenge is to have millions of inputs," he said. "It's up in the air how to control such a system."