ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 2009) — Some countries already get a substantial share of their electricity consumption from wind power: Denmark 20%, Spain and Portugal 11%, Ireland 9%, and Germany 7%. Power systems have to cope with variable electricity consumption. Variable wind power will increase variations that the power system has to manage. According to a recent IEA WIND report, wind energy is rather smoothly integrated as system operators get on-line production levels and forecasted production estimates in their control rooms.

Production from larger areas helps integration

It is easier to balance load and wind production from larger areas. This is because both wind variability and uncertainty will be reduced when geographically diverse power plants are aggregated. Additionally, larger balancing areas also can pool balancing resources. Large open electricity markets combined with intra-day and real-time trading lead to lower electricity costs. This market design also facilitates wind integration, because forecast errors of wind power production are much lower some hours ahead than day-ahead, and forecast errors also decrease when combining distributed wind power plants.