Reliable Power, Wind Variability, and Offshore Grids in Europe Brian Hurley, and Paul Hughes, Airtricity Dr. Gregor Giebel, Risø National Laboratory

Company Overview Founded in Employees 45,000+ Customers ~200MW’s Generation capacity – 10 Windfarms by December 2004 Under development and in pipeline 4000GW Operations in Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, U.K., USA, North Sea, and Irish Sea.

Wind patterns over Europe

CONTEXT 1.Different mix of conventional plant as new conventional plant is added. 2. Older conventional plant can be refurbished with a view to be used as a cheap form of "storage”. 3. Additional interconnection will be coming available inter country and inter regional. 4. Specific interconnection of regions to capture of the geographical dispersion effect for wind. 5. ”Intelligent " grid

Geographical Dispersion Effect

Wind has Capacity Credit Source: G. Giebel, On the Benefits of Distributed Generation in Europe, VDI- Verlag 2001

European average wind power generation between 1965 and 1998, as an average over 60 well-distributed sites Ref: G.Giebel

Scenarios 1Thames Est. 2Thames Est. + Baltic Sea 3Thames Est. + Baltic Sea + Orkney 4Thames Est. + Baltic Sea + Orkney + Celtic Sea 5Thames Est. + Baltic Sea + Orkney + Celtic Sea + Trafalgar 6Thames Est. + Baltic Sea + Orkney + Celtic Sea + Trafalgar + Mediterranean 7 Thames Est. + Baltic Sea + Orkney + Celtic Sea + Trafalgar + Mediterranean + Irish Sea

Change in Power

Typical 24Hour Forecast

Total capital costs at load centres per MWh

10GW Investigation

10GW Investigation Conclusion The addition of the North Sea 10GW power to both the UK and Netherlands could almost eliminate the variability entirely. The proportion of the counts in the 0-100MW bin where there was no change in power over the 6-hour interval: UK 77% NL 69%