There is a new Canadian technology could make wind power a much more reliable source of energy with their new wind power battery storage system. VRB Power Systems Inc. (www.vrbpower.com) is a company in Vancouver that has developed a large-scale storage unit which allows it to a hold significant amount of power.
These batteries could be the solution to the main problem that we have with wind, the fact that it is unpredictable. Five percent of the electricity produced in Saskatchewan comes from wind. Wind power would be a great alternative to using coal if they could only predict the amount of wind they would be receiving.
Hydro offers a dependable power supply to meet basic industrial and residential needs. Wind adds to the mix of hydro and gas however it does not do it consistently. Wind can decide to blow at night when there is no demand for it at all, or it may decide to be unavailable when people actually need it.
Although coal is a much more dependable resource, it has a huge downside and that is the amount of pollution that it sends off into the atmosphere. To use clean coal technology would be very expensive. The new power plant that might be built in Saskatchewan will cost roughly $1.5 billion to produce 300 MW of power that we could actually use.
If they decided to spend the same amount of money on wind the plant would be able to give off 1,000 MW of power. However unfortunately for the reasons that have been already stated they can not rely on wind power to satisfy the people’s basic needs. It would be wonderful if we could store large amounts of wind power and then use it when it is necessary. Although storing wind power in batteries is not feasible, the VRB wind power battery storage system technology just may allow it to be possible of us to do so.
