The price of a stabilized green power grid is very steep, one could say it is like a “hockey stick”
Story submitted by Eric Worrall (h/t John Droz)
Coal and gas electricity companies are being paid up to 400x times the wholesale price of power, in return for helping to stabilize the German electricity grid.
According to Bloomberg, “Germany’s push toward renewable energy is causing so many drops and surges from wind and solar power that the government is paying more utilities than ever to help stabilize the country’s electricity grid.”
“At the beginning, this market counted for only a small portion of our earnings,” said Hartmuth Fenn, the head of intraday, market access and dispatch at Vattenfall AB, Sweden’s biggest utility. “Today, we earn 10 percent of our plant profits in the balancing market”.
Given that lignite coal plants are also playing this game, according to Bloomberg, and lignite plants are famously inflexible, you have to wonder exactly how fossil fuel plants are providing the required flexibility.
One interesting possibility is that the CO2 belching fossil fuel utility companies are spinning their generators up to full power, and are simply discarding vast amounts of excess energy, until solar or wind output drops – so they can be ready to dump extra capacity onto the grid at a moment’s notice.
At 400x wholesale rate, they could afford to burn away gigawatts of power as waste heat, and still make a handsome profit from the “balancing” fee for whatever energy they actually supply to the grid.
The graph above is from this article at No Tricks Zone, which is reporting on the effects on consumers in Germany.
Curt:
re your post at July 28, 2014 at 1:53 pm.
The issue was and is fuel usage. You have introduced the ‘red herring’ of efficiency.
Richard
Or, perhaps Germany is selling the back-up power to the neighboring European countries, who are following European Union legislation from Brussels to reduce emissions, by installing countless worthless wind turbines on the lovely countryside and sea coasts.
Jordan:
Your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm is disingenuous and misleading. The subject of this thread is the effect of Germany’s adoption of intermittent renewables. Your post makes no mention of the adoption.
Intermittent renewables cannot provide baseload.
Richard
Neither the problems of balancing the grid, nor the costs of doing so are ever properly addressed by Politicians, and the public is on the dark on these issues.
Sometime ago, Christopher Booker wrote a number of articles on STOR (a scheme of diesel generators used for backup/grid balancing), See, for example, http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/stor-scandal-the-establishment-conspiracy-to-fleece-energy-customers-by-design/
he notes that the current wholesal market rate for coventionally generated electricty in the UK is £50 per Mega Watt hour, Onshore wind is £100, and off-shore wind is £150.
However, energy provided under the emergency diesel generating scheme require for balancing the grid due to the unreliable and variable nature of wind (and solar) is on average some £225 per Mega Watt hour, and in some cases up to £400 per Mega Watt hour. But the cost is even worse than that since we pay the owners of the generator £22,000 per Mega Watt hour of capacity. So say the owners of the generators build a 100 Mega Watt hour generator pack, they get a one off payment of £2.2 million, and then they get the feed in tarrif which on average is £225 per Mega Watt hour. We have already paid the owners of these generators £75 million to cover their investment costs, and now we are paying them a further £25 per Mega Watt hour of emergency power provided to the grid when the grid calls for rebalancing!
Of course, the irony is that diesel from small generators produces more CO2 then either gas or coal so this does nothing to reduce CO2 emissions.
When assessing the emissions form windfarms, one should take account of the CO2 produced by conventionally powered backup generation (which is required on average 755 of the time and because of the ramp up/shut down mode of operation, it runs less efficiently than would be the case if it was used to produce 100% base load) PLUS the CO2 from the diesel generators used for grid balancing. When proper account is taken, there is no CO2 reduction at all!
richardscourtney: “But the net effect of spinning reserve is to INCREASE the fuel used and, thus, the CO2 emissions.”
Yes.
And there are different reasons why system operators maintain operating reserve. One is referred to as “Single In-feed Loss” in the terminology of the GB market. It is like an insurance policy against the risk of a single generating unit tripping-off unexpectedly – the reserve plant has to “catch” the frequency before the excursion drops below a specified value when load would be shed.
Single In-feed Loss is determined by the largest single generating unit on the system. In GB, this is the Sizewell PWR power station, and means a holding circa 1300MW in reserve.
If newer nuclear designs are commissioned in GB, the Single In-feed Loss reserve could rise to as much as 1,800MW. Consider the extra CO2 emissions for a fleet of part-loaded fossil-fired generating stations which can find 1,800MW within a matter of minutes.
One in the eye for those who suggest nuclear generation is CO2-free generation.
Jordan:
Having failed to side-track this thread with irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm, you attempt to side-track the thread with another irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:28 pm.
Technically, Single In-feed Loss applies not only to possible outage of a power station but also to possible loss of grid connection to the power station.
But such points don’t matter. The subject of this thread is effect of adding intermittent renewables to the German grid supply and what lessons that provides. The subject is not the fact that nuclear power provides baseload in the UK.
Richard
richardscourtney says: “Your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm is disingenuous and misleading. The subject of this thread is the effect of Germany’s adoption of intermittent renewables. Your post makes no mention of the adoption.”
Cough, splutter! Richard – please calm yourself.
I only addressed a quotation taken directly from the story at the top of the thread and a couple of response in the comments.
The purpose of my explanation was to help people to understand the natural progression of operation of a power station. I remember when Rugeley B power station was the most efficient coal fired power station in the CEGB merit order. Its managers insisted that it was a “base loader” and it could not flex. However, the reality of modern CCGT investments in the 1990;s dash-for-gas pretty much changed Rugely B as I described above.
richardscourtney says: “Having failed to side-track this thread with irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:05 pm, you attempt to side-track the thread with another irrelevance in your post at July 28, 2014 at 2:28 pm.
Technically, Single In-feed Loss applies not only to possible outage of a power station but also to possible loss of grid connection to the power station.”
Cough, splutter! Richard, why so angry? Why so intolerant?
The point you raise is moot: a 1300MW power station could be lost because of the shutdown of the power station or its grid connection. They both have the same effect, and they both result from the fact that there is 1300MW single point of failure.
I only want to help people understand that these are complex issues and some of them are subtle. If people go all guns blazing into the attack on an issue, the subtleties might come back to bite their backsides.
Forewarned is….
Jordan:
At July 28, 2014 at 2:45 pm you ask me
I answer, because I despise anonymous trolls whose clear intent is to inhibit discussion of a subject by side-tracking a thread onto irrelevance.
And such trolls ALWAYS turn up when windpower is discussed.
Are you being employed to troll this thread?
Richard
Richard
With regard to the quality of the discussion, it is not helped by angry Richard lashing out at people.
So just try to calm yourself down and you might find yourself engaging in reasoned dialogue with people who’d like to help increase the sum total of knowledge.
richardscourtney – Cool it a little.
Everyone on this thread has agreed (or not opposed) that:
☻Wind is not base load
☻Spinning reserve increases emissions by at least 20% to cover wind (and other renewables)
☻Germany is not supported in its wisdom.
My advice is that you take time out – reread -and keep your powder dry for the big battles.
And, yes, it is my place to give you advice.
M Courtney:
re your post at July 28, 2014 at 3:06 pm, no it is not true that
“Everyone on this thread has agreed (or not opposed) that:
…
☻Spinning reserve increases emissions by at least 20% to cover wind (and other renewables)”
On the contrary. Janus claimed that spinning reserve reduces fuel usage – so reduces emissions – by 80% and he/she/they was supported by Richard and Curt.
When I refuted that falsehood with a reference and a link then Jordan started his campaign of side-tracking the thread with a series of irrelevancies, and when I refuted his side-tracks he claimed to be a victim seeking rational discussion.
Richard
There is an easy way to make a nuclear plant (or any power plant for that matter) load following. Use any power not needed by the electric grid to power a desalination plant. Construct the desalination plant so that you can switch the power to the boilers in small steps. You make most of the fresh water at night when you can use most, or all, of the power produced, but water is easily stored.
RichardSCourtney I think you got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I dont think Janus or anyone else in this thread is suggesting that intermittent renewables such as windpower reduce CO2 emissions by any significant factor. What Janus was pointing out is that unpredictable system imbalances caused by intermittent operation of renewables require the provision of unloaded or partially loaded operating reserves. Reserve generators do not consume fuel at the same level as a fully loaded plant ( the 20% versus 100%). He is not claiming that the renewable resource has “saved” 80% at all. Policy makers who insist that renewables can replace fossil fuels (and nuclear) clearly do not understand how an electric system actually works – such as the requirement for reserves to cover contingencies, and the “ramping” that must balance changes in variable load and output. The net effect is that renewables can displace some fossil fueled generation in the dispatch of the entire system BUT also rely on system reserves to continually back them up (likely 30% capacity factor for wind and 15% for solar). As partially loaded plants have a much lower efficiency ( higher “heat rate” in industry terms) and burn more fuel per MWh when paretially loaded the net effect is that intermittent renewables have little effect on overall CO2 emissions and may even increase them under some circumstances. (Think town mileage vs highway mileage for a car). In other words the claimed CO2 reductions of renewables are illusory – or at least highly exaggerated. If the politicians are as daft as the current crop of German ones and try to replace base-load nuclear with renewables, then the only possible outcome is an increase in CO2 emissions.
The placis Richard ( ex-CEGB)
placid
So what we are saying here is that businesses will suck up the easiest profit no matter where it comes from. So governing bodies across the world handed out a subsidy carrot quickly identified as easy profit, and business bit the carrot. Problem is, in reality that bite came out of the common rank and file’s ass. I was wondering how I got that bite on my back side.
The more serious matter is this: It is yet another manifestation of a bubble. And it will eventually burst, leaving us to the task of rebuilding the mothballed fossil fuel industry. Do we even need governing bodies? They seem more trouble then they are worth.
Perhaps, but, probably not. Most likely they’re being utilized to simply provide base load. One can only dump so much energy.
Re: Caleb’s logical comment about Germans at 9:51am today…
Yes, Germans are generally strong-minded and tend to rationally pick the most cost-effective solutions…
HOWEVER,
Germans (as a group, individuals vary, of course) also have a weakness: they have a genetic tendency (not all, not all, but, a historically demonstrated tendency among them as a group) to obey authority figures. “One shall rule” is still in their psyche. Thus, many of them will follow their Green Leaders (largely controlled by their “silent partners,” the Enviroprofiteers) — to the death.
Also, being largely a non-religious culture now…
many Germans have eagerly signed onto the Cult of Environmentalism.
Humans need a religion. If they do not find it in Judeo-Christianity or Buddhism or other moral traditions, they will scoop it up out of the manure heap of ideas and proudly wave their befouled hands at everyone they pass in the street.
Of COURSE, us truth-in-science people can smell the Envirocultists from a kilometer away….
but, they’ve become inured.
(Dirk (my German ally for truth) — I would be interested in hearing your perspective on this…)
*************************************************
JUST IN CASE YOU COME BACK…
Pamela Gray! #(:))
Any “news”?…… (you know….. — smile).
28 July: The Hill: Timothy Cama: Power outage forces EPA to move climate hearing
Opponents of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rules to reduce power plant carbon emissions are mocking the agency after power outages caused a hearing on the rules to be moved.
The EPA announced late Friday that its two-day hearing scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday at Atlanta’s major federal office building would be moved to a hotel due to “a large scale power outage” at the building…
“This significant power outage is either cruel irony or a glimpse of a coming cruel reality if the Obama administration and the EPA are successful in their quest to end the use of affordable, reliable coal,” Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said in a statement.
The coal group accused the Obama administration of “regulating American coal-based electricity out of existence,” and said officials should instead work to encourage technology that makes coal use cleaner.
In a blog post about the power outages, the Chamber of Commerce warned that the news wasn’t satire: “This is not a story from The Onion…
The EPA said it was moving the hearing as a precaution and the outages at the federal building had nothing to do with the electrical grid…
An electrical problem caused power outages in the Atlanta federal building, which spurred officials to close the structure for most of last week, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It reopened Monday morning…
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/213485-climate-rule-opponents-mock-epa-after-atlanta-hearing-moved
27 July: ;Tribune Review: David Conti: Observers mixed on grid backup amid carbon rules, natural gas uncertainty
If the electrical grid that powers the United States encounters a supply problem, the easiest solution takes five years.
That’s the minimum time it takes to build a large, natural gas-fired generation station, from siting to lining up investors, permitting and constructing…
Some leaders and observers worry that a spike in demand, accelerated retirements of coal-fired plants pinched by new carbon rules, and the shuttering of more nuclear reactors could lead to grid failures and expensive utility bills in the next five to 10 years.
“There is a coming storm as demand keeps going up,” said David Holt, president of the Houston-based Consumer Energy Alliance, which advocates for energy users.
Some of the disagreement about what should power the grid comes from economic and regulatory uncertainties. Experts assume more coal plants will close — and almost none will be built — because of Environmental Protection Agency emissions rules such as those opening to public comment this week in Pittsburgh…
“A lot of challenges” await the grid, including the integration of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, Moniz said. The Energy Information Administration predicts a big increase in that sector, but its low efficiency means it can’t be a baseload provider.
“Wind and solar aren’t there yet,” Holt said…
Protecting the grid
That leaves coal as the most reliable source, Murphy and others say. He said the United States should invest more money in finding ways to burn it more efficiently to meet emissions standards.
The Energy Information Administration predicts reliance on coal to produce electricity will decrease about 16 percent by 2020, but it will remain the dominant fuel until at least 2034…
http://triblive.com/state/pennsylvania/6486014-74/grid-energy-gas#axzz38rPpiYId
28 July: JournalReview: AP: Not in my backyard: US sending dirty coal abroad
By 2020, coal will no longer be burned at the 38-year-old power plant (Boardman Coal Plant, Oregon), replaced by cleaner-burning natural gas…
But 12 miles north, a port on the Columbia River could represent the region’s coal future.
If all goes according to plan for global energy conglomerate Ambre Energy Ltd., coal mined from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming will still arrive in Boardman by train car. But instead of feeding the coal plant, it would be shipped to Asia, where an energy-hungry populace is reliant on coal as a cheap power source…
This town in the Columbia Gorge is a real-life example of the gulf between Obama’s grand strategy to reduce coal emissions and the reality behind that policy: As the U.S. reduces its own carbon pollution, it is exporting more of it abroad.
Built in 1976, the Boardman Coal Plant burns about 3 million tons of coal each year. The Port of Morrow terminal would ship three times more — nearly 9 million tons — out of the country.
Those extra 6 million tons of thermal coal will generate energy somewhere, its carbon emissions joining the same atmosphere…
Over the last five years, as the U.S. has cut coal consumption by 195 million tons, about 20 percent of that coal has been shipped overseas, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of Energy Department data. That proportion is expected to get larger as the U.S. continues to clean up its power plants, boost energy efficiency and move to more pollution-free sources of energy such as wind and solar.
For the Northwest, proposed coal terminals would export more than 100 million tons of coal to Asia per year, far exceeding the total consumption for all plants that feed coal-fired power to the region, including Oregon, and doubling U.S. exports.
“If we’re trying to address carbon and we’re creating a whole new export industry, I think that is problematic,” said Citizens Utility Board of Oregon executive director Bob Jenks. “There’s a fundamental disconnect between trying to reduce carbon emissions and creating new industries around coal.”…
Despite requests from Oregon’s Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber to evaluate the full environmental consequences of the export terminal proposed here, including the emissions released in Asia from U.S. coal, the Obama administration has decided to analyze only the carbon released in the U.S…
Meanwhile, the coal exported will result in nearly 51 million tons of emissions…
http://www.journalreview.com/news/article_13a40e40-c2e1-5a8f-896d-6c5035f347a0.html
“Power plant can be loaded from spinning reserve to full load in the matter of minutes. Basically what is needed to increase of the coal flow.”
Although I am not intimately involved in coal fired power plants I am quite aware of large refining and chemical process units, hydrogen generating furnaces, etc; and no unit goes from 20% to even 70 % production in “minutes”
When you say minutes are you talking about 5 minutes or 50?
Normally when someone say “ready in a matter of minutes” one thinks several which I suspect is impossible to achieve with a moderately large coal fired plant. I suspect that feed of coal via blowers and increased steam production cannot be achieved in minutes and load distributed to te grid without burning out the “tubes”
When I studied Mechanical Engineering in university we ran rather large steam turbines from which we took data to measure efficiency, etc. We dumped the generated electricity via a large bank of resistors (heat). I suspect that something is used like that to start up plants and increase and control production in advance of a predicted load. Check this URL
http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/history/dynamic-resistive-frequency-control
Surely someone on this site more familiar with the grid and power plants than I could clarify and explain how we increase output from idle in “minutes”.
Sam Hall offered the interesting suggestion that nukes could be used for load balancing if the excess power was used to run a desalination plant in the off peak.
That works, but the economics are interesting. Desalination is inherently a very energy intensive process. Thus, large scale fresh water production by desalination will NEVER be practical unless a very cheap source of energy is introduced. Nuclear might be it, if we could restrain the silliness of the enviros, but what are the odds of that happening.
One can illustrate the fundamentally energy intensive nature of desalination by noting that the osmotic difference between salt and freshwater can be run the other direction to PRODUCE electricity. The gadget is an osmotic engine and it operates by the same thermodynamic logic as heat engines. I know because I’ve built one! In theory, one could supply all the electricity needs of the U.S. by redirecting the major rivers through osmotic engine plants where they meet the oceans. The technical challenges are huge, but theoretically it is simple.
400 X instead of 400% is not a minor error, it’s a factor of 100 (or 80 depending on how you calculate it). If that was in a warmist post you’d be all over it for outrageous innumeracy.
Sigh, its nothing to do with efficiency or base load design. They have realised that the market is rigged and open to exploitation. For the cost of a small modification, they run their base load plant at full power but generate/supply no electricity to the grid. The cost of this is U.S.D. 40 per MWHr.
Now they have all the market data, weather data etc and know when the demand ramps up, as well as knowing when the wind and solar ramps down. Using this simple good management and simple maths, they kick in supplies when the price is right. at usd 400 per mwHr, they soon make a profit for the day.
End result, no fuel saved, no co2 emissions saved but the plant owner makes a profit.
How they do it? Does it matter
All they need to do is set up a supercomputer array. When the grid needs power, shunt it to the grid. When the grid doesn’t need power, shunt it to the supercomputer array and mine bitcoins…