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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Maxbert says:
June 21, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I dont know if its been tried. You would need a tunnel, and a sort of valve, to avoid water flowing the wrong way….Maybe better to let nature do the pumping?
Via evapouration?
@899, & co.
My conjecture is that if windmills on a windfarm were fitted with air compressors rather than electrical generators, then their output could be stored as compressed air in a reservoir. This air will be at a high pressure, and also a higher temperature due to adiabatic heating. ( An analog is the compression stroke of an internal combustion engine)
This compressed air can then be released when needed, to generate electricity. As this ‘pumped storage’ medium is air, certain interesting characteristics could be exploited. Whilst a simple air-motor driven generator could be used, alternatively the compressed air could be fed into a gas turbogenerator, which would not then need to use energy on it’s compressor stages. But, at this point we have a system that is in the same class as hydroelectric pumped storage, albeit with certain clear advantages.
But it has a unique feature in that the compressed air in a reservoir offers a way of storing heat energy itself, and converting it to a recoverable form. Adding heat to compressed air raises the pressure and temperature, and is the basic principle behind all internal combustion engines including turbines.
So we could fit the reservoirs with simple resistive heating elements, and dump excess power from a grid into these elements to boost up the tremerature, and so pressure, of the compressed air pressure. The analogy is the combustion phase of the internal combustion engine cycle. This heat energy will be recovered when the air is released through the generator process.
So what is different about this kind of storage is that it allows raw heat itself to be stored and recovered. For example the reservoirs could be used to recover the some of the waste heat in the flue-gas from coal or gas-fired power stations, and turn it back into useful power. Or, the intermittent power form solar concentrators could be used to add energy to a reservoir. Even electricity from tidal power schemes could be stored as heat in reservoirs of air compressed by the windfarms .
In a nutshell, the whole thing could become a giant internal combustion system. Air is compressed by the windmills into a reservoir, is then heated by waste heat, then expanded through a mechanism to produce useful work in the form of electricity. The whole point is, that the expansion phase can be stored, i.e. held back until the electricity is needed.
This series of concepts raises the prospect of ‘renewables’ such as windfarms, tidal barrages, wave generators, solar concentrators, & co., actually becoming useful.
I suspect that all of the technologies to build a prototype wind/heat storage farm already exists on an off-the shelf basis.
Daniel M
“And as for Troels and the other naysayers who claim this blog or this particular entry stray too far into politics, I would just say that this blog is a necessary animal in the search for climate truth. Unfortunately, the current nature of climate “science” is politically charged at its core. So the only way I can see to let the truth triumph is to counter the politics point for point.”
Naysayers? I’m not quite sure what you mean, nor which group you put in here. However I agree with the rest of your statement.
Things is, this article is populism. As Jordan stated further up, there is nothing special about paying for not buying something. We do it every day, when when we cancel a purchase we have already agreed to. That this also happens for wind power is by no means extraordinary. Obviously what I would like to see is that the same rigor and scrutiny as applied to the climate science is also applied to the other side, e.g. wind power in this case.
We’re long past peak discovery for oil. Eventual see Matthew Simmons Twilight in the Desert, or any chart over oil discoveries. Even EIA has stated that peak oil is looming in the future. And with the economic growth in China and India, demand for energy will soar. Both things means that prices on energy will rise. So we have to start look at alternatives.
LearDog
And that is exactly what happens. The gas are replaced by wind power when the wind blows. But as gas only constitutes so much of the total capacity, that turning all of it off is not always enough, when you have a high penetration of wind power.
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
“That’s your grand rebuttal?”
I don’t really care who wrote it.
“concerned environmentalists”
I’m hardly a concerned environmentalist.
“Currently identified as its #1 Most Popular Article” “http://solaraero.org/”
Working in the energy industry for most of my career, I have seen many claims to new and more efficient designs of wind turbines. Search the net and you’ll find a load of them. The problem with this type of funnel design, is that a funnel covering the same area as a rotor has proven til be more expensive than the rotor solution. And that is why industrial scale turbines are designed with a rotor and not a funnel.
Many have made the same claims as the company above. But none have delivered so far.
Gail Combs:
“Unfortunately the Socialist…”
I don’t hope that socialists are referring to me.
DirkH:
“Technically possible; but the efficiency of the hydrogen fuel cycle that you describe is about 10% with todays technology.”
Wikipedia states that the efficiency of electrolysis of water is between 50-80%. Let’s go with the lower number of 50%. Hydrogen and gas turbines or piston engines does not go well together because hydrogen burns rather hot compared to hydrocarbons. There where some in the sixties that did some research on the topic, and made a hydrogen burning gas turbine. But nothing commercial. So we need a fuel cell and it has an electrical efficiency around 50%. So electricity to electricity efficiency is around 25%. To store the hydrogen in between will lower this at bit further depending on the solution chosen. Compressing the hydrogen also requires energy. The efficiency of the powerplant producing the electricity in the first place can be taken into account, thus further lowering the number. Of cause this is interesting, but what is more interesting is that the price of such a system with the current state of the technology is prohibitive.
Maxbert:
“Has anyone ever used wind-powered water pumps to return water from below a hydroelectric dam back to the reservior above it?”
They have done so for centuries in Holland. I know of no modern application of wind power for this. Here in DK we sell some of the wind power to the Norwegians, who stop their hydro plants and/or pump water back into the reservoir, thus having the same effect.
899:
Actually —and it might amaze you to discover— that turbine driven aircraft engines can indeed be lighter than their reciprocating cousins, whilst delivering greater torque and horsepower.
And using more than 10 times as much fuel to do so.
Look, 899, governments may be taken in by Green Pipe Dreams, because they can afford to waste (our) money – but private investment and science dictates that propellers are better than turbines at slow speeds. That is why small aircraft have props. End of story. Stop demonstrating your lack of understanding.
Yes, modelers are experimenting with micro-jets, because they are fast. But the following version burns as much fuel as a 4-seat aircraft, and produces just 10 kg of thrust !!! And the darn thing has to spin at 175,000 rpm to do so, which is why it is suited to fast applications, not atmospheric wind.
http://machinedesign.com/article/tom-thumb-turbines-power-radio-controlled-jets-1104
As I said, the Greens are out to kill us all with their ignorance.
.
Troels Halken says:
Wikipedia states that the efficiency of electrolysis of water is between 50-80%. Let’s go with the lower number of 50%.
Troels – the hydrogen cycle is NOT just the electrolysis of water. It includes the efficiency of the power station to create the electricity, the electrolysis, the cooling or compression (depending on storage type), the transport, and the efficiency of the engine or fuel cell.
Add that lot all together and hydrogen is the most inefficient ‘battery’ known to man. And please remember that hydrogen is a ‘battery’, not a fuel.
The Greens will kill us all with their ignorance.
.
Justa Joe says:
“You’re showing your leftist inclinations.”
Well, after American standards, I guess I am. Something wrong with that? Are you also gonna compare me with Stalin and Mao? But actually I am neither. I am a liberalist, and I belive in individual freedom, but I also believe that we have a responsibility to provide freedom and equality for those who cannot fend for themselves. Ge the book The Furture of Liberalism. It kind of encompasses a lot of my beliefs.
“Perhaps you regard wind “power” as a device to redistribute wealth from the productive entities to yourself.”
Not really. The average Jens does not get anything from wind power. The large utilities and wind turbine companies like Siemens and Vestas are the ones earning money on this. But then again, the industry provides jobs for the average Jens and pays taxes to the benefit of our society.
“Despite all of Denmark’s “green” postureing their wealth comes from the exportation of North Sea oil and natural gas.”
Sweden and Finland is roughly the same as Denmark and they do not have any oil. So where does their wealth come from I wonder?
“The the goal of every business is sales without which no business can exist.”
That is correct. But you haven’t seen me claim that we can power the whole world with wind even thou it would further the agenda for the industry I work in.
I really must ask Troels if he would care to comment on the Shale Gas phenomenon, and as a Businness Development Specialist, give us his view on what it will do for the development of the windfarm business?
Anthony,
You are making a great point about the need for some form of energy storage from wind turbines. It would be a very valid point but the fact as others have alluded to that wind generation in the UK is a subsidy farming scam.
A deal has been done between the generators and the UK government in regards to ROCs and the rets of us are just expected to shut up and put up.
What’s the point therefore in even trying to get these currently useless devices to become more efficient and actual make some contrubution to reducing our dependency on fossil fules when the whole point of the exercise is to take money from your and my pocket (through increased fuel bills) and to put it in the pockets of those who paid the advocates to lobby for the ROCs in the first place.
” Jordan says:
June 21, 2010 at 4:24 pm
DirkH says: “(Assuming CCGT means CO2; i’m of the opinion that our emissions don’t harm the climate. YMMV.)”
sorry for the jargon Dirk – CCGT means combined cycle gas turbine genertator
”
Darn. I’m feeling dumb now – somehow i immediately replaced CC with Climate Change …
“If we leave the matter solely to the Market, the only new generating stations that compete will be CCGT and there will be loss of diversity.”
True. A winner-takes-all market.
“For example, how much does Germany want to be dependent on supplies of gas from the east if all the new generators are CCGT?”
I see your point.
“So if no other generating tecnology is competitive, the only remaining question (assuming we don’t want to be wholly dependent on gas supplies) is how much subsidy to dole out to other generating tecnologies to secure diversity of supply.
Now that is a worthy question. Meantime all the hand waving about a test of a wind generator in the balancing mechanism is a wasteful distraction.
And in case you missed it – I am agnostic towards wind.”
I share that agnosticism. I’m only against subsidies. But i see your point about a possible gas monopoly. This would in the longer term lead to a breakdown of market mechanisms and some regulation -or redistribution of profits- is necessary beforehand to maintain competition between different forms of energy generation.
Thanks for your input. BTW, ATM our electricity bills are artificially inflated by 10% in Germany due to the renewables subsidies so it’s not that dramatic. I guess it’s all a matter of political balance.
Troels Halken says:
June 22, 2010 at 1:51 am
……. ‘But you haven’t seen me claim that we can power the whole world with wind’
….well no mr Halken, that would be because they can’t
…….’even thou it would further the agenda for the industry I work in.’
…..Wha?…. you mean your just holding back? please……tell it like you think it is.
Ralph:
“Troels – the hydrogen cycle is NOT just the electrolysis of water. It includes the efficiency of the power station to create the electricity, the electrolysis, the cooling or compression (depending on storage type), the transport, and the efficiency of the engine or fuel cell.
Add that lot all together and hydrogen is the most inefficient ‘battery’ known to man. And please remember that hydrogen is a ‘battery’, not a fuel.”
Plueeeazzze! Did you read past the first sentence of what I wrote? I does not seem so. And did you see that I stated anywhere that hydrogen is a fuel?
Anthony, what do you want to hear? It seems to be like natural gas, just extracted differently and from different formations. I don’t know much about it. I haven’t seen any estimates of recoverable reserves, so I have no idea if there is enough of it to make a significant difference. Does IEA have in on their World Energy Outlook? The price of it will be like natural gas I’d assume.
Natural gas and gas from shales are effective and rather clean fuels, that can be converted into electricity with high efficiency in combined cycle power plants or used as transportation fuel, all thou its lower energy density means that range will be slightly lower than a car running on diesel or gas.
feanbeagle:
“….well no mr Halken, that would be because they can’t”
And that is why I don’t claim it. And?
“…..Wha?…. you mean your just holding back? please……tell it like you think it is.”
I’m not sure what you mean.
Jordan:
“For example, how much does Germany want to be dependent on supplies of gas from the east if all the new generators are CCGT?”
Yes, and that is part of the point. To have a diverse and independent energy supplies. Except Norway and Russia, Europe is running out of oil an natural gas. That makes us dependent imports (and goodwill) from Russia and the Middle East. Russia has again and again shown that they don’t mind using the gas supplies political. And Americans (and formerly Europeans as well) are dying in Iraq a we write this, to secure the cheap flow of oil and gas, not to account for the problems in Saudi Arabia with their aging fields (about 13% of the worlds oil production). Not to speak of the bilions of dollars the US taxpayers has sunk into the oil-wars in the Middle East. At the same time we have to compete with growing demand in China and India. Higher oil price also means higher prices on natural gas and coal. The coal industry in some countries is also heavily subsidized because of the local jobs.
Nuclear is different, as the uranium constitutes a very very small part of the price of generated electricity (the large part is the payments on the initial investment). Wind and hydro power has the same pricing structure, where the fuel is free but building the turbine or dam is what cost most money.
Another thing is that for wind, nuclear and hydro, most of the money stays in Europe or the US, whereas for oil and gas the money goes to the Middle East or Russia or that guy in Venezuela.
So obviously there is a bit more to creating the right mix of energy sources than just the price of the energy generated.
Troels,
It will pay you to do a bit of googling on the impact of developments in shale-gas technology. It could save your career ( ….. if you are smart, and quick enough)
Anthony:
“It could save your career”
Thanks for your concern.
Troels Halken says:June 20, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Being for or against big government and taxes is a matter of opinion. It is not a fact we can measure or in other way determine the truth of. If I was interested in opinions I would visit blogs discussing peoples opinions.
So big government in Denmark is good.
Please rate big government in Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain, and umm…the the USA since about 2005, when government debt began doing the hockey stick hokey-pokey. A good numerical quantifier would be: personal income / rate of inflation multiplied by productivity. Compare this figure to the calculation identified as big government.. Government budget / Gross Domestic Product and see how the the trend in standard of living in these countries compare to countries with lower debt. The robust answer may be worse than you thought.
From: Troels Halken on June 22, 2010 at 5:31 am
For wind, the “fuel” is free and the major money is in the initial investment, right?
Wikipedia, List of wind turbine manufacturers:
Oh well, at least there’s one US manufacturer on the list, right?
From GE Energy:
Certainly not an alphabetical list, it looks like their smallest operations are in the US.
Offhand for wind turbines in the US, looks like most of the money is not staying in the US, since the main components are likely not made in the US. Unless, of course, if the bulk of the money is spent on the installation, using “local” installers and supplies. Which would indicate installation costs that are very very high.
Tony says:
June 21, 2010 at 11:40 pm
@899, & co.
My conjecture is that if windmills on a windfarm were fitted with air compressors rather than electrical generators, then their output could be stored as compressed air in a reservoir. This air will be at a high pressure, and also a higher temperature due to adiabatic heating. ( An analog is the compression stroke of an internal combustion engine)
What you’re up against there is the conversion of energy from one form to another and back again. And again: Does your return on investment (ROI) make sense enough to undertake the venture?
As I see it, in order to accomplish your goal, you’d have to have a large enough compressor and very many tanks (a tank farm) to achieve the end result. Compressed air is notoriously easily expended, because it takes a lot of it to make things move and the pressure soon drops below the point of usability.
Think of it this way: A good sized dam has lots of head pressure, and it’s that ‘head’ which affords the necessary pressure to effectively generate power. But as soon as that head is lost, i.e., the water falls to below the critical low level, then there’s not enough energy to much of anything with. The potential energy is largely diminished.
With a compressed air tank, once the air pressure drops to that point, you’re left with a lot compressed air which won’t accomplish much but take up space.
It’s not the it couldn’t be done, but the associated up-front costs and the attendant after-installation costs (upkeep, etc.), might end up costing more than the benefit.
Perhaps if electrical power were expensive enough you’d realize a ROI that would make it all worth it.
For my money —if I had enough to undertake such a venture— I’d instead purchase a large tract of valley, dam the upper end of it, fill it with water, and dam the lower end using it as a catchment basin.
Next, I’d install the windmills at the best possible locations, and use the electrical power generated by them to retrieve the water in the catchment basin to fill the upper reservoir.
Then, when the power was needed, you’d have a far greater capability for generating power from the spill of the upper reservoir.
There are several schemes like that which are operating, only they use the nighttime generated power from the grid to operate the retrieval pumps.
But again: With compressed air, you’d need one hellacious sized tank capable of containing several ~thousand~ psi in order to sustain a long-term bit of power generation. That in itself bespeaks a large compressor.
You’re a real piece of work, Trolls.
“…I am a liberalist, and I belive in individual freedom, but I also believe that we have a responsibility to provide freedom and equality for those who cannot fend for themselves. Ge the book The Furture of Liberalism. It kind of encompasses a lot of my beliefs.” – TH
How does your commitment to “individual freedom” co-exist with your desire to ram your self enriching “renewable” energy” schemes down public’s throat at the public’s expensez? Like most self styled leftist “individual freedom” only applies when the subjects coincide with what you want.
“Not really. The average Jens does not get anything from wind power. The large utilities and wind turbine companies like Siemens and Vestas are the ones earning money on this. But then again, the industry provides jobs for the average Jens and pays taxes to the benefit of our society.” – TH
Wind energy exists through heavy tax burdens on these so-called “average Jens”. It’s a net loss for the average Jens. Poltically connected by corporations make out like bandits.
“Sweden and Finland is roughly the same as Denmark and they do not have any oil. So where does their wealth come from I wonder?” -TH
Their wealth doesn’t come from tax payer subsidized “green energy” schemes. That’s for sure. From what I’ve read these 2 small countries’ relative wealth appears to come from good ol’ fashioned capitalism and industrialization.