In the following keynote address to Professional Engineers of Ontario, Annual General Meeting, May 9, 2009, Tom Adams outlines the challenges ahead for integrating renewable energy into the Ontario power grid. Data is presented showing how wind power production and electricity usage are out of sync, how winter wind power output is concentrated on the warmer winter days when load tends to be low, how distance between wind farms provides limited smoothing benefit, why it is inaccurate to claim that the wind is “always blowing somewhere”, and how wind output from distant farms can be strongly correlated even sometimes when measured on a 5 minute time scale. Knowledge gaps on wind integration current as of the date of presentation are identified.

PDF link: keynote-for-peo-may-2009-transforming-ontario_s-power-system