Britain’s biggest wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing.
Published: 9:00PM BST 19 Jun 2010
Energy firms will receive thousands of pounds a day per wind farm to turn off their turbines because the National Grid cannot use the power they are producing.
Critics of wind farms have seized on the revelation as evidence of the unsuitability of turbines to meet the UK’s energy needs in the future. They claim that the ‘intermittent’ nature of wind makes such farms unreliable providers of electricity.
The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.
The electricity cannot be stored, so one solution – known as the ‘balancing mechanism’ – is to switch off or reduce the power supplied.
The system is already used to reduce supply from coal and gas-fired power stations when there is low demand. But shutting down wind farms is likely to cost the National grid – and ultimately consumers – far more. When wind turbines are turned off, owners are being deprived not only of money for the electricity they would have generated but also lucrative ‘green’ subsidies for that electricity.
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place three weeks ago. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Whereas coal and gas power stations often pay the National Grid £15 to £20 per megawatt hour they do not supply, Scottish Power was paid £180 per megawatt hour during the test to switch off its turbines.
It raises the prospect of hugely profitable electricity suppliers receiving large sums of money from the National Grid just for switching off wind turbines.
Dr Lee Moroney, planning director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank opposed to the widespread introduction of wind farms, said: “As more and more wind farms come on stream this will become more and more of an issue. Wind power is not controllable and does not provide a solid supply to keep the national grid manageable. Paying multinational companies large sums of money not to supply electricity seems wrong.”
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Let’s put the politics aside. I was merely trying to establish that big government and high taxes does not lead to Stalin or Mao style societies, but can lead to societies as the ones in Scandinavia and Germany and Japan and others. If you read what I have written carefully, you’ll notice that I have not written if big government and high taxes are ultimately good or bad. They are neither, as it seems it does not have an impact on how rich the society are nor on the peoples happiness. Free liberal democracies that belongs to the worlds richest countries and with a high degree of happiness. The world is not black and white. Oh and we do travel here ind Denmark. Quite a lot. If someone claim different, I would like to see some facts. But we’re only five million people compared to Germanys 88 or the UKs 70, so that might be why you don’t often meet a Dane out there.
—
Politics aside. I’ll be happy to help clearing questions from people who want to know, who want to have facts about wind power.
The report from CEPOS has been mentioned. It is a right wing (by Danish standards) think tank. The report has spurred a lot of debate on the website for the Danish Engineering Association http://www.ing.dk (in Danish), because you can do the numbers in very different way, because of the complexity of our energy system. Some can do them in such a way that no wind power is exported and others so a lot of it is exported. The issue is that if the coal plants run when there is a lot of wind and high exports (due to low price at the time) who is supplying the export? The wind turbines or the coal plants? The truth is probably somewhere in between. As I have stated above we have begun shutting down wind turbines when the price becomes to low, as that is the cheapest way to remove capacity. A wind turbine usually run idle when not in use, but when coupled into the grid it produces power within a minutes. So we have begun seeing wind power used as spinning reserve.
Wind turbines comes with full converters today. That mean that the power produced is made from AC to DC and then back to AC by power electronics. This means that the generator is decoupled from the grid frequency. It also means that we can control the power factor and the voltage of the output. This is being used actively to stabilize the grid. Today there is also requirements for fault-ride-through which means that in the case of a grid error, the turbine must actively help combat the error. In the UK which have a weak grid (the frequency is unstable) modern turbines has a stabilizing effect on the grid. Even when a turbine is not running, it can still provide about 2/5 of it’s nominal effect in reactive power. The power output from an individual turbine can be regulated as needed. In practice it is done by changing the angle of attack of the blades, to capture more or less wind.
So the claim that turbines destabilize the grid and consumes reactive power and so on is based on old turbines. It is not the reality of today.
Power from a turbine is measured AFTER it’s own consumption.
The wind is a fluctuating force. Especially when standing on the ground. But in 90 meters it is less to. When we pool a hundred turbines, the fluctuations of the individual turbine is averaged out. When we pool turbines from a area as Texas, the power from turbines becomes pretty stable and very close to the average windspeed over the area.
Power can be sold on futures and on the spot market e.g. here and now. Power sold on futures is much more profitable and hence the power companies running turbines do this. Weather forecasts are not always precise, but wind forecasts has proven to be better, as you only need to forecast that parameter and today they can be done for individual wind parks. When the turbine operator combines the wind forecast with the his wind parks properties, he can calculate a power forecast for the individual turbine according to its siting and type, and the for the whole park. This can be done a day or two in advance and hence the operator can use this to sell the future production and the grid operator to make sure that the right mix of productions units are online. The forecasts are maybe 80% right, so smart operators sell about 80% of the predicted power in advance, and then sell eventual surplus on the spot market.
Storage. Storage of wind generated electricity is the wind powers Achilles heel. Pumped storage is currently the only large scale viable option, but in reality you need difference in elevation for it to work. That we don’t have here in DK and in many other places like the Netherlands. The idea with compresses air in caverns is not economically feasible. I have seen many ideas to store wind energy, but so far none that are economically viable.
Stating the bleeding obvious says:
June 20, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Build a reservior with two levels. The lower level is full of water, the upper is empty. Surplus energy is used to drive pumps that move the water from the lower level to the upper level. At peak demands open up the sluice gates and generate electricity.
Did IQ’s drop while I was away?
…hi STBO
Speaking as a resident of the lincolnshire Fens, currently threatened by many oversized industrial wind turbines being built too close to peoples houses (NETA figures today for GB 0.0% again)….and that clearly don’t work anyway. Could you explain to us how your scheme, should be built, we seem to be a bit short of ‘up’ here on the Fens?
..’.none taken’, by the way
I think myself, the problem is, the inderect subsidy scheme (ROC’s) Which just encourages developers to build wind turbines in the wrong place….(Britain) for example.
….possibly, a better place would be Denmark?
Stating the bleeding obvious says:
June 20, 2010 at 10:31 pm
A half thought through plan yet again.
The answer?????
Build a reservior with two levels. The lower level is full of water, the upper is empty. Surplus energy is used to drive pumps that move the water from the lower level to the upper level. At peak demands open up the sluice gates and generate electricity.
The Ffestiniog Pumped Storage Scheme in Wales does exactly what you describe and has done so since 1963, giving a “capacitor” function to the UK national grid.
http://www.fhc.co.uk/ffestiniog.htm
The madness continues and is unlikely to end soon in the UK as the Prime Minister’s father-in-law and the deputy Prime Minister’s wife are being paid millions of pounds from the wind farm racket.
This is from today’s Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1288066/Wind-turbines-blades-bigger-London-Eye-future-green-energy.html
____________________________________________________________
Wind turbines with blades bigger than the London Eye could be the future of green energy
21st June 2010
Monster wind turbines with blade spans that dwarf the London Eye could be the shape of future green power, it has been revealed. An offshore turbine more than 500ft tall with a diameter of 475ft is due to make an appearance in British waters within the next two years.
The Britannia turbine is still being developed, but Clipper says even bigger blades are the future of green power. The 10 megawatt machine, dubbed Britannia, may only mark the start of a growing trend, according to the project”s leader Bill Grainger. He sees no reason why offshore turbines should not get even larger, since greater size and power make economic sense. Mr Grainger, who heads the Britannia design team, told The Engineer magazine: “There isn’t a technical issue that screams out size limit. You have to make changes as you get bigger. Blades get floppier, for example, so you have to put more carbon in, but we aren’t anywhere near 100% carbon yet.”
Mr Grainger is engineering manager at Clipper Windpower Marine, the UK arm of the US company developing the 10 megawatt turbine.
The Britannia, being built at Blyth, Northumberland, will have three enormous blades, each weighing more than 30 tonnes. They will sweep a circle more than 100ft wider than the 400ft diameter of the London Eye. Standing on a solid foundation on the sea bed, the wind turbine will rise 574ft above the waves. It is expected to generate enough electricity to power 10,000 homes, and over its lifetime could displace the use of two million barrels of oil. The most likely location for Britannia is Dogger Bank, off the north-east coast.
Clipper Windpower Marine is sinking £44 million into the turbine”s building facilities, including a blade factory in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The project is also receiving £5 million from the local regional development agency, One North East.
Metal fatigue caused by the stress imposed by turning blades is one of the biggest engineering issues to be overcome by the Britannia team. But Mr Grainger does not believe the size of wind turbines will be restricted by technical hurdles. He told The Engineer: “There might be a limit to the size that people want to put into the field – if a 20 megawatt turbine failed, that’s a big chunk of electricity to lose. But then, if a power station goes off-line you’ve lost 300 megawatts, so I don’t think that’s a limit either. They’ll get bigger than 10 megawatts, is my feeling. How much bigger? I don’t know.”
____________________________________________________________
Letters can be emailed to the Daily Mail:
letters@dailymail.co.uk
If wind power was that great, wouldn’t you see lots of it in China? That’s a big country, should always be usable wind blowing somewhere, and with a national grid wouldn’t the places with usable wind “average out” the areas without, yielding a certain amount of dependable continuous supply? Plus China wants to be competitive, free energy would give them an edge. Also as the government basically can do anything it wants, NIMBY issues and expected profits aren’t an issue, they can basically just mandate the long-term investment and at a far lower installed cost than we here in the “Western” world could ever get.
Lo and behold, a Wikipedia article! Wind power in China:
Wow, China is second in capacity only to the US. Impressive. Maybe. Who has the numbers on per capita electricity consumption, and what percentage is from wind? Ah who cares, it clearly says China could meet ALL of their electricity demands through 2030 with only wind!
It was at third place in 2009, at the end of 2009 with installed capacity reaching 20 GW, and at the end of 2009 it accounted for 25.1 GW of electricity generating capacity with China (currently?) in second place. Wow, they must really understate those nameplate capacity ratings if they can get a full 1/4 more wattage out on average. Which is completely the opposite case experienced by those of us who’ve dealt with imported machinery, where a 1 HP rated Chinese-made motor actually has an output more comparable to an American-made and UL-rated 3/4 HP motor.
Oh well, it’s free energy. And the government is requiring all that renewable energy gets bought, so it saves the producers the hassles of having to worry about competitive pricing and matching demands etc, the people running the grids can figure out the small details.
So China just needs to commit itself to making a Great Leap Forward to get all this free energy and possess an unbeatable competitive edge. All their electricity demands can be taken care of through 2030 by wind alone, they can scrap all those dirty coal plants. Right?
Wait, mighty China with its dominating government and vast resources is having problems with wind power? “Problems” that are little niggling things that can easily be engineered away, if they even exist at all, as has been repeatedly claimed by others on this site, in this thread?
But, just look at the impressive figures! ALL of their electricity demands through 2030!
Just look at what those researchers found, Ref 5 (see below):
There it is, only 6 to 8 cents a kWh generation cost. Cheap electricity and SAVING THE WORLD from Lethal Runaway Climate Change, what could possibly be wrong with that?!
—–
Here are the numbered references from what’s copied above, just in case certain “inconvenient truths” will soon be “disappeared” from the article, especially those from the “controversy” section:
1. Lars Kroldrup. Gains in Global Wind Capacity Reported Green Inc., February 15, 2010.
2. Gow, David (2009-02-03). “Wind power becomes Europe’s fastest growing energy source”. London: Guardian. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
3. “China was world’s second-largest producer of wind power last year”. star-telegram. Retrieved 2010-04-12.
4. Oceans of Opportunity: Harnessing Europe’s largest domestic energy resource (pdf) pp. 18-19.
5. “China Could Replace Coal with Wind”. Ecogeek.org. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
9. “CN : China ranks third in worldwide wind energy – Alternative energy news”. Instalbiz.com. 2010-01-04. Retrieved 2010-01-31.
17. Xina Xie; Michael Economides (July 30, 2009). “Great Leap Forward for China’s Wind Energy”. Energy Tribune. Retrieved 2009-08-01.
18. Jing Yang (September 28, 2009). “China’s Wind Farms Come With a Catch: Coal Plants”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2009-09-28.
19. Lu Zhenhua (July 31, 2009). “Wind power growth in China’s deserts ignored financial risks”. 21st Century Business Herald. Retrieved 2010-05-22. (Reprinted in The Guardian, May 14, 2010.)
tallbloke says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Tony says:
June 20, 2010 at 2:41 pm
“Wind machines could be engineered to store their energy by compressing air and then releasing it when the power is required. The V4 law would not be so much of a problem.
And how is this compressed air going to be used to generate electricity? Blow the wind turbine dynamos round with it? Any idea what the efficiency would look like?”
Nuclear energy and burning coal are used to generate steam which drives the turbines, doesn’t it? Therefore those turbines are in essence steam engines, are they not? Steam engines can work on compressed air, so no problem there, Tall bloke.
Real- world problems would be, Tony: added cost of an extra compressor coupled to the windmills (how would they/it be coupled to the windmill? Will you need a separate compressor for each windmill or could you couple them? – how?); then there’s the storage capacity for the compressed air, hence how long supplies of stored air would last.
One more question: “turn off their electricity supply” mentioned in the article presumably amounts to spinning standby. Why should windfarms be paid subsidies for going on spinning standby?
Bruce says:
June 20, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Dear Ralph,
I read the article you posted on the Danish wind industry. Its main point seems to be that Denmark, with major grid connections to Germany as well as Norway and Sweden, which can accept the fluctuations as ‘partners’ in the grid, will have less of a problem with power surges from wind than an ‘island’ system like the UK. It is implicit that if (theortically) all of Denmarks grid-shaers were to go wind-power to the same extent as Denmark, the same problems as in the UK would arise here too, but has some usefulness as a secondary element. Pan-European drives for wind power do not make sense inthis light. I can stand the sight of them, but that is a matter of taste I suppose.
Yes, the title of the report – Why Wind Power Works for Denmark – is somewhat ironic. Quite obviously, wind power does NOT WORK for Denmark, because they have never used any of their wind power.
http://incoteco.com/upload/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
Not only is this a story of exporting Denmark’s wind problem to neighbours, it is also a story of having quick start-up power sources. Wind power works for Scandinavia Storre (the greater) because hydro power has instant start-up capability, and Scandinavia has lots of hydro. Wind power will not work in the UK (or most of Europe) because we have no instant power as a backup.
And anyway, even if you do have instant backup supplies, you are doubling the power
infrastructure for no good reason. Why not simply delete the windelecs (wind turbines), and just use the backup?
The entire wind programme is merely a balm to salve the conscience of the Urban Green (like P.M. Cameron and his absurd micro-generator, that has so far supplied a constant 2.5 watts of power). In reality windelecs will do nothing but bankrupt nations.
A WUWT article that makes this point:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/25/renewable-energy-–-our-downfall/
.
Roger Sowell:
I think you are being very foolish when you write at June 20, 2010 at 10:36 pm saying:
“So many, many misconceptions and downright un-truths on this thread.
First, wind-turbines DO work. The earlier thread on WUWT Climate Craziness of the Week: Lighting Up Your Windmill has some comments (including mine) on this subject. Despite claims to the contrary, the evidence shows that wind-turbines work and work quite well.”
Why would anyone except a fool draw attention to a discussion where he was completely demolished?
The thread is at
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/18/climate-craziness-of-the-week-lighting-up-your-windmill/
At June 19, 2010 at 2:43 am in that thread I wrote to you saying;
”
I responded to that at June 18, 2010 at 4:06 am by saying;
“If it were their purpose then they would not be built because no wind turbine provides any useful electricity to a grid at any time.”
And I explained that this results from the grid having to cope with the fact that wind turbines do not provide continuous power. I said a more full version of my explanation can be read at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
But at June 18, 2010 at 1:09 pm you have responded to my comment in the typical manner of a wind power PR Consultant by saying:
“Actually, wind-turbines work quite well where the wind blows. The technology works.
http://www.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf”
That completely ignores the facts that
(a) nobody disputes “the technology works” (it has been used to generate electricity for over a century),
and, importantly,
(B) “no wind turbine provides any useful electricity to a grid at any time” BECAUSE “ the wind does NOT blow all the time.”
And in that thread I repeatedly asked you to address the simple issue that;
“Intermittent supply of electricity that merely displaces supply from continuously operating power stations is NOT “useful”: it is an expensive bloody nuisance.”
You have still not addressed that simple issue (which does not surprise me).
Wind farms are not only “an expensive bloody nuisance” that produce no useful electricity: they are also environmentally damaging bird swatters that increase – yes, INCREASE – emissions from power generation. I explained this briefly in the thread you cite and there referenced my more full explanation which is at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
>>Nuclear energy and burning coal are used to generate steam
>>which drives the turbines? Therefore those turbines are in essence
>>steam engines, are they not? Steam engines can work on compressed
>>air, so no problem there, Tall bloke.
Duhhhhhh !!!
You know these Greens are out to kill us all with their ignorance.
You cannot run a turbine generator on compressed air. The current set of ‘compressed air’ turbines are actually jet engines burning gas, that use the compressed air as a turbo-booster. A very different concept, my ignorant friend.
.
>>Germany, has called off further development because of grid instability.
Spain has had grid instability for years. Wind power has nearly taken the entire grid down on many occasions.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article384768.ece?token=null&offset=12
.
Kadaka:
“Researchers from Harvard and Tsinghua University have found that China could meet all of their electricity demands from wind power through 2030.[5]”
I think you’ll find that the word “could” and “researchers” are very important words in this sentence. It does not imply if they should or not. Just that there theoretically is enough wind in China to power China.
The Chinese has a system where the subsidies are given when the turbines is erected. That is why many of the installed turbines in China is not connected to the grid. Why should they? The same has happened in India some years back. When the owners had got their taxcredit, they did not care if the turbine actually produced anything. It’s okay to blame wind turbines for their wrongs, but hardly precise to blame poor regulation on them.
And yes, you’ll find that the quality of the Chinese turbines til be somewhat lacking compared to western turbines and that is also why they sell 95% or more of their production in China, where western products are not allowed into 80% of the purely government controlled marked. But the Chinese government has termed the wind power industry as a strategic industry and hence does everything to promote it, including throwing loads of money at it.
Excerpted from: Kate on June 21, 2010 at 2:00 am
The bloody hell with what he believes!
Basic engineering reality will be conflicting with designers’ dreams. You can only hang so much weight off the end of a shaft. What basically supports all that weight of the prop will be the front bearing unit(s), with the front acting as a pivot point for all that weight to try to pry up the rear of the shaft in the generator from its mountings. This amounts to a lot of side pressure in the bearings, leading to premature failure. Plus the effects of scale would come into play. In the testing lab, a sample small diameter piece of the shafting material may appear incredibly tough, more than adequate for the job. With that much weight, on that scale, forces come into play that want to flex that shaft end at the bearing so much, back at the lab the equivalent motions would be seen with a plastic rod. Metal fatigue indeed.
Best solution for the shaft is a two-point support, as in you still have the front bearing unit(s) on the generator but there is also a bearing system in front of the prop, the shaft goes through the prop and is mounted into the other bearing. This is time-tested, durable, and will likely greatly extend the life of the bearings and shaft.
Except then you need another tower in front of the prop to mount the bearing system on. You need blade clearance. You could mount the other tower on an offset from the main tower, or use another tower coming from the ground, which can be considerably smaller. Then you run into the fun problems of keeping both points the same distance from each other, with distances involved where the effects of scale take over and the tower tips will flex relatively easily. Still, that can be overcome with the correct usage of bearings and methods to mount said bearings on a shaft.
Which leaves the dang floppiness of the blades. At that length they will flex, and there will be a fixed amount of space between the towers. One strong wind gust hitting just one blade, flexing it too far, and a tower is going to get smashed.
Reality with practical experience says it can’t be done, not without a radical redesign of the blade system and better materials. Even if they do get it up, it’s a totally safe bet there will be an “unforeseen failure” due to an “unanticipated flaw” long before the computer models said a failure should occur. This is not simply scaling up proven(?) designs, effects of scale make this new territory. And do they really want to spend the money for what in reality will be an untested prototype?
This coalition government announce severe cuts in the budget deficit. These windfarms are the most wasteful yet the most potentially saving target for such measures. It seems to be a double whammy saving.
The subsidy to build. The subsidy to stop them.
Bring it on Mr Osbourne
Compressed air …
Compressed Air Energy Systems (CAES) do exist at small scale. For example there has been some discussion in the press about a compressed air car.
There are CAESs being developed for power storage at relatively small scale.
More generally, energy storage (of whatever type) involves capital expenditure plus “turnaround loss” (operating costs). The most efficient systems will lose anything from 10% to 25% of energy input, depending on a variety of factors.
From: Troels Halken on June 21, 2010 at 3:38 am
I think the originally-linked Ecogeek piece is sourced from an article in MIT’s Technology Review, within you will find Michael McElroy was project leader.
This, to me, sounds very much like a “should.” Besides whatever limitations may be considered imposed upon such academic personages as to what they may say without straying into advocacy, outright saying the Chinese government SHOULD do something may seriously limit his future research opportunities within China. For Chinese nationals on Chinese soil, it also leads to a statistically significant shortening of lifespan.
Good, you agree in principle that installing turbines just to have installed turbines is a waste of money.
Actually since the government has mandated that all electricity from the turbines is to be bought, that is in effect another subsidy. Since there is forced buying, then selling is an easy way to make profit. Provided you actually have something to sell, of course.
This is China we’re talking about. If all that is needed to make wind power work is sufficient regulation, then wind power will work very well in China. It can be made to do so in a day.
Take note of the second page of the article, where it is mentioned as a benefit how China’s government can make short work of the local opposition.
Most of the article, by the way, is about how all China really needs for 100% wind power is a smart grid with upgraded capacity. It has been repeatedly noted in the US that “smart grids” with “smart meters” will work wonderfully, when they have the ability to prevent the use of certain appliances at the discretion of the electricity provider. The temperature is soaring outside, no wind and a brownout is imminent due to low system capacity, with smart meters they can just start turning off air conditioners to keep the grid stable. And isn’t this what you’ve been preaching, how much better things are when the authorities are given more control over the individual? Why, give them all the control they say they need and you’ll have a utopia!
The Chinese government has determined it may be in their best interest to deflect criticism of their coal plants (and many other Crimes Against The Environment) by having some Green Credentials to wave about. Shiny twirly windmills are great for distracting the eco-mentalists.
here’s a film all about wind…
http://www.conwiththewind.com/
Here is a verbatim comment from World Nuclear News. It notes that some windfarms in Scandinavia are providing electricity at a loss.
……………………………………
Scandinavian power price surprises. Finland has announced its intention to put a tax
on nuclear and hydro power sources built before 1997 because in the operation of a carbon trading market they will make good profits. The tax will apply to 2182 MWe of nuclear capacity and about 3000 MWe of hydro at a rate of up to EUR one cent per kWh. It will thus counter the incentive to maximise the utilisation of non carbon-emitting base-load plant.
Denmark trades power in the same Nord Pool, which has announced that from October the spot floor price for surplus power will drop from zero to minus EUR 20 cents/kWh. In other words, wind generators producing power in periods of low demand will have to pay the network to take it. Nord Pool said that “A negative price floor has been in demand for some time – especially from participants trading Elspot in the Danish bidding areas. … Curtailment of sales may give an imbalance cost for the affected seller and thus creates a willingness to pay in order to deliver power in the market.” This is likely to have a negative effect on the economics of wind power in the region, since a significant amount of Denmark’s wind power
production is affected. WNN 1/4/09, Nord Pool 4/2/09.
World Nuclear News, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org – UK ISSN 1326-4907
Alexej Buergin says:
June 20, 2010 at 11:35 pm
“I do not trust suicide statistics (are people really honest about that?), but the Scandinavians have a problem with alcohol, too. It may be caused by the long, dark, cold winters.
Taxes are so high, Scandinavians have no money to travel the world (contrary to the Germans and the British who are everywhere). So when their governement tells them their system is the best, they actually believe it.”
The extent of honesty in compiling suicide statistics is perhaps no worse than that involved in compiling temperature data. I am not sure that statistics on problems with alcohol involve more honesty than suicide or temperature statistics. As to suicide rates being higher in countries located at high latitudes, Ukraine and Sri Lanka have suicide rates that are substantially higher than those in Denmark. On the other hand, there appears to be a positive correlation between high suicide rates and the extent of progress made by socialism in a given country.
“Everywhere” is a big place, but in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, the road signs are in English and Japanese. I have never yet seen a sign in German there.
Our government tells Canadians that that Canada is the best place to be in the world, and the government of the USSR told the whole world that that the USSR was the best place for people. I would believe neither any more than I believe the assertion that the Danes are the happiest. The standards for measuring that vary and depend on the opinions of the beholder. However, if we go by the extent of the development of Wind Power, then Denmark is without a doubt the best place to be, although that works only if we ignore the net losses and taxes involved to pay for it.
Here in Canada, the cost of wind power is in the order of 20 cents per kWh, five times the cost per kWh for coal-fired generation and equal to the cost per kWh produced through natural-gas-fired generation. The reason why the cost of generation of wind-power and natural-gas power are the same is because for every MW of wind-powered generating capacity an equal capacity of natural-gas-fired generating capacity must be available as standby for when the wind does not blow or blows too hard.
If the U.K. scheme for increasing the cost of wind power by paying wind farms for not producing wind power when it can not be used catches on in Canada (which it quite likely will, because that will create more tax revenue), then the cost of wind power will increase to more than 20 cents per kWh. It stands to reason that the level of happiness of the citizens in a given country where such a scheme is used will not be outstanding and be a far cry from being the best in the world.
I’m in the wrong business man!!! This sound like it could become something akin to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy where farmers have been paid not to grow food because of food mountains and wine lakes. Only after years of this insanity did the EU decide that something had to be done.
Imagine where the UK had say 30% of its energy from wind and solar and suddenly you had a NON-breezy winters day!!! Where would the energy come from? Surely not nuclear! I’m sorry to say this but unless they get their act together winter deaths in the UK will skyrocket.
Re:Jordan says: June 20, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Relatively high price is also a feature of the UK balancing mechanism: it is intended to hurt operators who cause imbalance, and to reward those who help to resolve imbalance. These extra incentives should help to drive investments (build more reliable plant or to make it more flexible, or suffer the consequences).
—
This is not a non-story in the UK because we have to pay for this nonsense, whether we want it or not. In the UK, energy suppliers have to buy 11.1% of their electricity from ‘renewables’ at a fixed price, currently £36.99/MWh under our ROC scheme. If they don’t, or can’t buy that quota, they pay the difference into a ‘buy out’ fund that is then shared amongst the windmill operators as a windfall.
So it incentivises opeators that cause the imbalance due to the vagueries of wind. If they need to shut down windmills and get paid for doing so, no problem because they’ll get paid again anyway for their ROCs. That profit may go into building bigger, more efficient subsidy extractors but still does not solve the fundamental problem of no wind, no electricity or wind at the wrong time creating balance problems. It also means there’s no incentive to upgrade any of our existing conventional generating plant because they’re forced to buy wind anyway.
Peter H,
You have tried to put up a good defence and correctly point out that winpower is only a tiny proportion of the UK’s energy use. The real problems begin when that proportion of winpower increases say 10 or 20 fold. Compensation would rocket for not producing electricity on breezy summer ights. As for:
““The National Grid fears that on breezy summer nights, wind farms could actually cause a surge in the electricity supply which is not met by demand from businesses and households.” – so it’s not happened yet.”
This statement is foolish to put it mildly. Breezy summer nights in the UK WILL HAPPEN. Combine this with a large increase in windpower (which I suppose you want) and it spells economic (waste) and political trouble down the line. Don’t defend the indefensible.
The UKs manufacturing base has shrunk to a tiny fraction of what it was before we closed our coal mines, and switched our fossil fuel energy reliance to North sea natural gas/oil and imports.
If the article is to be believed, with all this expected excess production of electricity, we could easily produce Hydrogen, simply by electrolysis of seawater. Then we could burn the hydrogen, instead of natural gas to make electricity on calm days. The electrolysis by-products are mainly chlorine and sodium hydroxide, both of which have ready markets. We could even use the latter to scrub our atmosphere clean of carbon dioxide, if anyone ever produced any evidence that carbon dioxide was harmful.