Serving northwest loads with Columbia basin wind turbine generation

Much of the public discussion and recent laws on renewable generation has focused on very broad issues of resources. But for smaller utilities and local regulators, determining regional resources ability to serve load may be difficult to resolve with such government mandates as renewable portfolio standards, particularly for wind generation. Wind is sporadic by nature and imposes a high level of uncertainty into utility operations. Moreover, wind has great seasonal and geographic dependencies that require intensive planning studies. This paper presents a simplified analysis for a utility in the Northwest United States to plan the amount of wind generation capacity that will be needed to meet state mandated renewable requirements reliably. Assumptions are proposed for converting existing wind speed data into a combined wind farm megawatt output. The model allows for analysis of wind turbine output from sites with relative geographic dispersion. Based on this model, system load is compared to the combined wind farm output using appropriate statistical computations. The objective is to determine with acceptable certainty the wind generation a typical modest size utility will require to meet both theoretical goals and Washington State´s renewable portfolio standards.