I live in Pennsylvania and the grid is managed by PJM, which stands for Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland. The demand is the need for or use of electricity. To the left the blue line I plotted from data found here. Click these charts to enlarge for better viewing. I used the monthly estimates for 2009 and then calculated the % of yearly electricity used per month. The three highest months are June, July and August when our electricity needs are the greatest because of our need for air conditioning. Those three months each average 10% of the yearly demand, whereas the other months each average about 8%. We use about 20% more electricity in the summer months. The green line is a plot of the wind 2008 MWh output for one of the regions of PJM found here. As you can see the doesn't blow in the Northeast in the summer. The three lowest months are July, August and September. The turbines only supply about 12% of their total output in those months, whereas they should supply about 25% if averaged equally throughout the entire year.
The problem is that when our electricity needs are greatest the wind is not there to supply. I calculated the MWhours supplied per day for July-Sept 2008 from that excel sheet and to the right is a daily plot of those three months. The amount plotted on the vertical or Y-axis represents MWhours per day. The average for that PJM region in July-August is 4,000 MWhours per day, or 167 MW per hour) which is a pitiful small amount of electricity for a society compared to a what a medium sized 1,000 MW plant generates, which is 1,000 MW's per hour or 24,000 MWhours per day. From these simple graphs I hope we can all agree on this - the Obama/Green plan to construct many thousands of turbines will surely create jobs. It will create jobs because we can be absolutely sure that NOT ONE job from our traditional electrical generation will be lost. Not one job. But when you plug in your TV or use your air conditioner or electric heat, it will be the same old heat as always. The product will not be better to any degree by the end use consumer. It will have to be more expensive simply because we will have two systems constructed to supply the same exact product of power. What if Obama said I am going to create jobs by employing more people to supply your tap water or process your social security benefits? Of course, it is claimed, there is a reason for this more expensive electricity and the reason is to save mankind from the perils of global warming. We will leave the question of man-made global warming open for now, but even if man is creating global warming by generating electricity with fossil fuel, I can absolutely assure you it is nonsense that we, our society in the USA, is going to affect global warming by building thousands or even hundreds of thousands of wind turbines. But I guess there are many that will say, we can try anyway!Hats Off to PJM for posting their wind output data online for the public to find. We pay for electricity and these companies are highly regulated semi-public companies. PJM is more honest than Basin Electric in North Dakota who were posting their weekly wind data, until a little over a month ago they stopped. It might be just a coincidence, but after I created a youtube video and analzed their data, they stopped updating their weekly wind output charts. Better to stay hidden so the public can continue to remain ignorant!
Here is a very interesting news article discussing what it is like in the heat of the summer when our electricity needs are the greatest. PJM which supplies me electricity here in Pennsylvania is our WORLD's fourth largest power grid. The journalist is inside the nerve center of electricity supply and captures the tension as the grid managers try to supply our needs so that a brownout or blackout does not occur. You can be sure that on this hot, summer day that the wind was not blowing and the wind turbines were sitting idle and useless!
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