That's actually the biggest problem with wind power; when you have excess power, you can't do anything with it except curtail your production and lock your turbines so they can't spin.
To be able to put that power to a good use, while also still realizing revenue (even at a lower per kwh rate) is win-win.
Wind power, without subsidies, is already as low as 3-4 cents/kwh. If the rate of install continues, price will continue to decline, and we'll have even more cheap wind available in the US for large-scale projects such as this.
"That's actually the biggest problem with wind power; when you have excess power, you can't do anything with it except curtail your production and lock your turbines so they can't spin."
There seems like countless ways a society could use "excess energy". What this article talks about is more like time-shifting the energy it's captured. But if excess energy were a problem, wouldn't you be able to store it in batteries, or apply it towards desalinization or other net positive activities rather than just locking the turbines?
That plant is a battery, it just uses potential and kinetic energy instead of chemical processes to store it. However, your comment, and Ufo's comment, got me thinking and exploring, and realizing that some of the biggest users of electricity in california, like the Edmonston Pumping Plant [1], don't have forebays or the like to store water to balance out power consumption throughout the day. Power consumption really needs time-of-day based metering on it so that power consumed during peak hours is more expensive than off-peak hours, to give incentives to better even out the load.
"Power consumption really needs time-of-day based metering on it so that power consumed during peak hours is more expensive than off-peak hours, to give incentives to better even out the load."
I was under the impression that something like this was already in-place.
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