" Progressive" at Think Progress Claim: Next Generation Wind Turbines With Storage Are A ‘Gamechanger’

So Sorry Climate Progress did  you forgot something  like adding  to this blog post? 
lives science Reports May 14, 2013

Wind energy is frequently touted as a clean, green source of energy that can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

But like all sources of energy, wind power comes at a cost — one that's too often borne by eagles, hawks, falcons, owls and other birds.

Wind turbines kill more than 573,000 birds each year in the United States, according to The Associated Press, including federally protected species like bald eagles and golden eagles. [In Photos: Birds of Prey]

Even bats are falling victim to wind-turbine blades: The Pennsylvania Game Commission estimates that more than 10,000 bats are killed in the state each year by wind turbines, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Of course, birds die from other causes, too: Structures like glass-walled office buildings and utility towers, vehicular collisions and carnivorous animals (including domestic cats) kill far more birds each year than wind turbines do.



And when hawks, falcons and eagles are flying, they're usually looking down at the ground for prey, not glancing up to watch for a knifelike blade whipping down on them from above.
"There is nothing in the evolution of eagles that would come near to describing a wind turbine," Grainger Hunt, a raptor specialist with the Peregrine Fund, told the AP. "There has never been an opportunity to adapt to that sort of threat."

Compounding the problem is the design of some wind turbines: The lattice work found on older models makes an ideal perch for larger birds of prey, so they're attracted to the same spires that are also a death trap.

Wind-farm siting is another factor. Many wind farms, like the Altamont Pass Wind Farm in northern California, were constructed in the middle of important migratory routes and are surrounded by prime raptor habitat.

Altamont Pass has come under fire for being one of the deadliest wind farms in the world. One study found almost 10,000 birds die each year beneath the wind-turbine blades at Altamont, and most of them are federally protected raptors or are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Journal reports.

As the number of maimed and dead birds grows, several solutions have been proposed to stem the grisly mutilations of birds and bats occurring at wind farms. Siting wind turbines in areas with lower bird populations is one option.

And newer turbine designs, such as those without lattice frames and with vertical-axis rotors, can reduce the deadly impact that wind turbines have on bird populations worldwide.
It's working at Altamont: Modernizing older turbines and placing them away from certain corridors has reduced the death rate for some bird species by 50 percent, according to KCET.


Climate Progress touts:: 
What makes a new wind turbine exciting?
Wind companies are always trying to making their next turbine spin more efficiently and generate more power than the last, just as car companies are looking for better fuel efficiency and engine power. Advances usually come in small jumps in both cases, with a single percentage improvement cause for celebration.
GE announced a new line of wind turbines in May that generate between 20 and 24 percent more power than the previous best turbine in its class. It does this through traditional improvements in turbine design, but also through innovations that address one of the main issues that critics of wind power raise: intermittency.
The wind does not blow all the time, and the electric grid needs a regular supply of electricity. Wind has been a critical and climate-friendly addition to the grid portfolio, but as the industry continues to expand, people have started to think about what happens when more and more of our electricity is generated from intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar. Fossil fuel advocates try to make the case that coal and gas (and oil) can be burned constantly, but this is becoming less and less tenable. Rising carbon emissions are triggering extreme weather and sea level rise that endanger the very reliability of the electric grid.
Can advances in technology allow renewable energy sources to be reliable for second-to-second grid use? It’s already happening. In 2011, a concentrated solar plant produced power for 24 hours straight. A huge array of mirrors heated up a huge molten-salt battery system that permitted the solar plant to supply power when the sun was down. Reliable, steady wind energy is also becoming a real thing.
GE’s Brilliant 1.6-100 and 1.7-100 wind turbines are different from previous efforts because they use a short-term, grid-scale battery storage system paired with an “industrial internet” — a sophisticated system that is able to predict when power will be needed and when the wind will be blowing. It’s also bigger. All of this increases efficiency and capacity factor, or how much energy a turbine actually can produce.
This is a big deal, for grid operators and wind energy producers. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has a rule that requires the people that run the grid to pay more for power that is more reliable and can reach the grid immediately — when demand spikes. Energy providers that take an hour or a few minutes to come online are worth less to those that work to ensure that when you turn on your lights, there is energy ready at hand. Historically, natural gas plants have been more valuable than, say, coal plants because it is easier to get spark a flow of methane to turn a turbine quickly than it is to get a coal furnace hot.
CleanTechnica has an excellent three-part series stemming from their visit to GE’s Research site near Tehachapi, California, with a guided tour into and on top of the GE Brilliant 1.6-100 turbine.
When the wind blows near one of GE’s Brilliant turbines, the “industrial internet” has already done a lot of work to let the power producers and the grid operators know when that energy can be expected. It is able to micromanage the most efficient way to position the turbines for optimal rotation. Still, turbines will produce energy at times that the grid is unable to use it. The battery system attached to the turbine allows it to feed excess electricity into the batteries, converting it to electrochemical energy that the grid can use upon request, with nearly immediate turnaround time.
This also allows the wind turbine operator to get into the frequency regulation business. Frequency regulation is the complex part of grid operation, where second-to-second peaks and valleys in demand obliterate any smoothness in the demand curve. This is ordinarily very difficult and expensive, because entire coal and gas power plants have to be operating full bore on “reserve” capacity to cover for this. But using battery-powered sources to smooth frequency regulation demand is much more efficient — it also allows the grid to dump extra electricity into the battery systems. This is worth more to the grid, and so such systems command nearly twice the price for frequency regulation as thermal (fossil fuel) systems. The U.S. military is already looking into using their growing fleet of electric vehicles on domestic bases to get into the frequency regulation business.
So where are these cutting-edge turbines headed? Sixty-seven of them will be built for installation in the mountains of New South Wales in Australia in the fall of 2013, with power expected to be flowing into the grid by the end of 2014. Fifty-nine of them are headed to the “thumb” region of Michigan as part of a wind farm planned by NextEra Energy Resources. And Invenergy Wind is building a farm in Mills County, Texas that will feature three 2.5 MW GE Brilliant turbines.
As more of these turbines hit the grid, the reliability of renewable energy increases, making it a feasible backbone to the electric grid. And with the cost of the energy produced by these turbines right now level with thermal coal, this seems like a game-changer.

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