Guest “Just a bit outside!” by David Middleton
Bjorn Lomborg posted this on LinkedIn this morning…
The Grauniad article is a hoot!
Wind energy to power UK by 2020, government says
Louise Radnofsky and agencies
Mon 10 Dec 2007 11.20 EST
Thousands of new offshore wind turbines could power every home in Britain by 2020, the government announced today, as it set out new wind-energy plans.
John Hutton, the business secretary, proposed the creation of up to 33 gigawatts of offshore wind energy at a European energy industry conference in Berlin.
He called for companies to invest in large-scale farm development to generate enough power for up to 25m homes in the next 12 years.
That would require around 7,000 turbines, or one every half-mile, Hutton told the BBC’s Politics Show yesterday.
[…]
The Grauniad
According to BP’s 2020 Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2019 the UK generated about 20% of its electricity from wind power.
35% from “renewables”
| 2019 | UK (TWh) | |
| Oil | 1 | 0.3% |
| Natural Gas | 132 | 40.9% |
| Coal | 7 | 2.1% |
| Nuclear energy | 56 | 17.4% |
| Hydroelectric | 6 | 1.8% |
| Renewables | 113 | 35.0% |
| Other | 8 | 2.4% |
| Total | 324 | 100% |
57% of renewables from wind
| 2019 | UK (TWh) | |
| Wind | 64 | 56.6% |
| Solar | 13 | 11.2% |
| Other renewables | 37 | 32.2% |
| Total | 113 | 100% |
35.0% * 56.6% = 19.8%
Wind energy to power UK by 2020, government says…
Bob Uecker says, “Just a bit outside!”
Would it matter if the UK had achieved 100% wind?
That’s a big fat noooo!
Well, the UK did achieve this
Great, David, you have illustrated two great failed predictions: Great Britain will be Renewable by 2020 and (my personal one) Bob Uecker will never get into the Baseball Hall of Fame!
At the moment the UK generation in the absolute and percentage terms can be seen here
https://gridwatch.co.uk
https://gridwatch.org.uk. Please don’t advertise the trademark breaking ‘me too’ commercial site
Nothing to do with me, I occasionally look at it since web pages from the .co are more user friendly than the .org
Thanks for the link to grid watch…
I am surprised by how much wind energy we are getting TBH….
Better visual impact / understanding here:-
http://grid.iamkate.com/
Better yet:
http://www.electricitymap.org
Gets you all the world. And you get to see brown (CO2-high) UK sitting there, right across the channel, from perennially green (CO2-low) France and all its nuclear power.
There are basically 6 countries always green: France (nuclear), Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Costa Rica, and New Zealand (all hydro). Anyone looking to do wind or solar to “go green” – just look at the map (including California) and find a place that is “green” that is not predominantly nuclear or hydro.
“False Alarm” Climate Hysteria, Lomborg interview recorded on 27 July 2020
best watched in chunks of 10-15 min at the time
link https://youtu.be/VxWYglbtqnQ
If Phil Rizzuto is in the Hall of Fame, there’s no reason that Bob Uecker shouldn’t be… Well, maybe there is a reason…
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/u/ueckebo01.shtml
David and Ron Long, Bob Uecker WAS inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame:
And thanks for including “Just a bit outside!” in your post, David. It reminded me of my time in Milwaukee during the Brewers’ Bob Uecker years, when we’d watch the games on TV but listen to Uecker on the radio.
Regards,
Bob
His beer commercials were the best.
“I must be in the front row.”
mkelly, Uecker had THE best radio play-by-plays. Never again will there be another “Mr. Baseball”…as Johnny Carson called him.
Regards,
Bob
Thanks I laughed so hard I cried.
I love your cultural references. We must be pretty much the same age, since I get all of them. Uecker’s appearances on Carson were classics.
Carson was a treasure trove of memories. Perhaps you would recognize this one (I was a senior at Purdue when I saw it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOKwTYOfrDU
The UK grid in pie charts –
http://grid.iamkate.com/
Shows wind in the last yr = 23%
solar is a massive 4%
& in less than 10yr the whole of our economy & transport will be powered by ‘renewables’….right !
We’ve got our own CHP system, will be getting some log burners & have started planting trees for future fuel. Pity the poor bastards in a 14th floor flat in town.
Wind and solar combined contributed 3.47% of total energy use in Britain in 2019 so there is a little bit to go.
And now the eejits in government and backers from across the political spectrum are speaking about all new cars from 2030 being electric. I cannot see into the future but looking back at the past fifty years I predict this will be another spectacular failure – and neither politicians nor activists, neither the mainstream media nor the pompous experts with offer profuse apologies. However, a select few will profit greatly but the ordinary citizen have a greater tax burden.
erratum “will offer profuse apologies”
You’ll just have to get yourself a small, QUIET, diesel home generator to voltify your fossil-fueled electric vehicle.
Find yourself a nice quiet calm horse than can pull a carriage or a wagon. Costs less to keep and smells better, too, and provides fertilizer for your garden.
I absolutely can see the UK and maybe all of Europe returning to the horse and buggy days of yore. A mere two-day trip to get mail delivered to you by the local post office, too.
Uecker made the HOF in 2003 as an announcer.
https://baseballhall.org/discover-more/awards/frick/bob-uecker
OK, I’m taking the challenge on the per KWH charge, with my current electric bill in hand. Here goes:
272 KWhours x $0.05847 = $15.90 – that’s just the generating charge
Transmission services charge @ $0.01220 equals $3.32
That’s for the 10/4/20 to 11/5/20 time period, just the generating and delivery charges. Can the UK beat that? I don’t think so. Three are other charges, but the bulk of them for one month come to $1.00 or far less per hour and per month. So why is the UK’s vaunted power sourcing so expensive and mine isn’t? I frequently run my computer all day long, working on stuff, and I also have the lights on if the day is a gloomy one, in addition to running a (new and very nice gas) furnace 24 hours a day in cold weather.
So someone please tell me why the UK is so much more expensive than my electric company here in the upper Midwest??? Is it because mine is a better deal, perhaps? Or is it maybe just government interference plus incompetence?
Someone let me know. I have books to read.
Where is China an all this?
Don’t tell me – free electricity?
Over there in the don’t care pile. They *sigh* don’t care?! How dear they *trembling bottom lip*!
Thought the same, but perhaps Hong Kong is a good proxy.
China is the only country building baseloard power generation capacity. They are adding a coal fired power station every 2 weeks or so and were permitted by the Paris Accord to continue at that rate until 2030 (there is a coincidence of a date).
UK and other countries with unreliable renewables will have insufficient reliable baseload power to create new renewables as steel and concrete manufacture and other metal smelting requires continuous reliable power.
So in 15 years time replacement of the life expired wind generators will require UK to ask China: “please would you make some new wind generation and pylons and cables for us?”
They may say no or have an exorbitant price
It is interesting that the more wind a country has the higher the price to consumers. Now that is really showing the value of renewables, clearly, it is negative!
In Texas, we get about 20% of our electricity from wind power, with reasonable electricity rates. Of course, it’s onshore wind… And the physical geography of the Llano Estacado makes a 40% capacity factor a reasonable expectation.
David Middleton: “In Texas, we get about 20% of our electricity from wind power, with reasonable electricity rates. Of course, it’s onshore wind… And the physical geography of the Llano Estacado makes a 40% capacity factor a reasonable expectation.”
David, the state of Texas has a lot of wind potential. Theoretically, at least. To your knowledge, have engineering-level studies been done to determine if Texas could achieve perhaps as much as 70% wind and solar, on a megawatt-hour consumption basis, using facilities located entirely within the state’s own borders?
Where I’m coming from with this question is PG&E CEO Anthony Early’s claim made at the time of the Diablo Canyon shutdown announcement that California could easily achieve 70% renewables by 2030 with little or no impact on the price of electricity.
However, he didn’t offer a detailed plan has to how California could go about achieving that very ambitious goal. Nor, as you might expect, did anyone in the press or in a position of authority over the state’s energy policies ever ask him to explain how specifically this might be done.
Theoretically, Texas could probably exceed 100% at times. I don’t know how that would affect prices… But it would destabilize the grid. 20% is probably a safe level.
So, you yourself are not personally aware that any detailed engineering feasibility studies have been performed for Texas which assess what the specific costs and the specific risks are for reaching 70% renewables either by 2030 or by some other date further out in the future.
An engineering level feasibility study of this kind would identify the specific megawatt-hours of electrical energy to be produced; where and how specifically that energy would be consumed; the specific technologies to be used in producing those megawatt-hours; the specific numbers, locations, and types of wind, solar, and grid-scale storage facilities to be used; the numbers and locations of roof-top solar installations; and the times and costs of project review and approval processes at the local, state, and federal level.
Just like in California, we can guess that some number of high level studies have been done for Texas which are based upon some number of assumptions covering a wide variety of technology assessment and project planning topics. We can also guess that just like California, no studies have been done for Texas which have any real credibility as reasonably accurate predictions for what a 70% renewable electric power infrastructure would cost in that state.
Cheap power in South Korea and USA..(coal) Mega expensive in Germany. So much for the cheap renewables promise
The rates seem to include taxes – according to my latest (Danish) electricity bill the tax amounts to 66 percent of the kWh price!
Same with oil. Crude oil costs approximately the same regardless of which country or oil company is buying it. The price varies by delivery cost and grade but we all pay about the same for a barrel of the same grade of oil. At the pump we pay the cost plus taxes, which in some countries are higher than the cost of the product. The same with cigarettes.
France?
Under Macron the French are moving to renewable and closing nuclear, well that’s the plan, but several are due to go offline for delayed maintenance, possibly 7. A cold long winter when they are might be the wake up call. UK Interconnector switched off?
Leo Smith’s Gridwatch shows that we are sending power to France on a regular basis. Close a couple more reactors and they’ll be dependent on German lignite.
JF
The French have already been importing power from Germany at a high cost and even fired up a coal plant during the recent lull in wind that saw the UK struggling to keep the grid up
“and even fired up a coal plant during the recent lull in wind” – fired up FOUR coal plants, in fact:
https://www.thegwpf.com/france-restarts-coal-power-plants-to-keep-the-lights-on/
John Furst- “France?”
According to the same source it’s $0.21
France is Europe’s biggest net electricity exporter, totalling 39.4 TWh in 2019.
The UK has become a net electricity importer since 2004. 19.7 TWh in 2019.
As Ben Vorlich suggests, if France’s nuclear power is reduced, either by misguided politicians or maintenance work, so will those exports.
Show Ukraine, Poland, Baltic states?. …others with imported hydro, nuclear.
More importantly , show all necessary interconnected MW and MWHrs of stability/reliability sources during night, system peaks, …for any country .
Those other UK govt. ‘air promises’ of no ICE cars and no gas boilers for home heating will go the same way I think.
Griff says that wind provided 37% of UK electricity last year. I’m not taking BP’s fossil fuel biased view when Griff purveyor of truth with integrity saps otherwise.
That Guardian photo always upsets me. The Braes of Doune windfarm ruining a view I’ve loved for over 60 years, it meant I was nearly home for a long time.
Griff says solar still works when it is cloudy and the coal market is over.
Of course Griff tries to escape from his verbal responsibility by saying that the coal market is over, it just doesn’t know it yet, which is the same as saying Griff died peacefully in his sleep… or will… eventually.
Griff needs to accept that only spiders can tell the future and go back to dealing with observable facts.
solar does not shut down when a cloud comes over and gives some power even when it is cloudy. Watts readers seem to think a single cloud shuts it off.
The coal market IS over. It is certainly over in the UK where there are just 4 hardly used coal plants left, which provided just 2% of UK power in 2019
Yep, there will be plenty of the stuff still in the ground for future generations to make use of when they’ve figured out how dumb the current generation as been.
Giff, I live off grid with solar.
When the clouds come over, my charging stops. In my little off grid town, out come the petrol generators.
When it gets too hot, the panels lose efficiency and charge drops.
I recommend you buy some solar panels, a good quality charger, a battery, and test your theory. Few Renewables advocates have tried it.
Peter don’t interrupt Griff while he is busy feeding the unicorns in his alternate reality, where solar panels provide ample power on cloudy days and wind turbines spin magical energy on windless days. They spin gold when power isn’t needed plus they feed the poor and house the homeless.
So the major power blackout in Alice Springs in Australia a few months ago, initiated when clouds suddenly blocked the sun over a solar farm and alternative power sources couldn’t be started in time, didn’t really happen?
That’s 37.1% from ALL renewables. Please be accurate. And that’s an official govt figure you can check for yourself.
Renewables including trees, hydro and nuclear of course. What percentage is contributed by Solar and then what percentage is contributed by wind Griff?
Nothing except wood is renewable. How delusional do you have to be to think that wind power is renewable? You have to build the turbines folks and they are not renewable, except by building another wind turbine. The foolishness never ends.
And then they will have to replace all those windmills every 15 years or so.
Offshore wind turbines will fare even worse.
The world’s first offshore wind farm has now been successfully dismantled after operating for its 25 year planned life.
I’m not a fan of wind facilities, but I think in many cases your “15 years or so” is not accurate. Others use this number, also.
There is a project near us (about 15 miles) that has now been operating since 2006. It is owned, operated, and maintained by a Washington State energy company.
PSE | Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility
15 years may have been an early average, but advances keep coming.
My reading suggests modern equipment will have a lifespan of between 25-35 years.
Longer is much better, because as yet there seems nothing to be done with the blades if removed.
I think David’s remark (8:43 am) is worth repeating:
“But it would destabilize the grid. 20% is probably a safe level.”
Seems Louise got out of the mental gymnastics and figure skating and into the real stuff-
https://www.wsj.com/news/author/louise-radnofsky
Griffinator, where are you? Haven’t gotten out of your mom’s basement cot yet?
I’m in a different time zone, old chap…
Quite, old bean.
Where is Australia on the list or is it so high it ruins the layout of the graph? The other interesting chart would be for industrial costs where I think Germany will drop down due to subsidies and the UK rise up.
And today it was shown that all the money to be spent – not invested as that suggests sensible use of money – on new windmills will go out the UK as so much of our manufacturing has closed over the last 20 years due to rising costs.
Between Cayman Islands and Denmark (34 cents) would be my estimate.
South Australia is the worst, at A$0.46 a unit, or around US$0.33, one of the highest in the world. Other Australian states are down to A$0.26, still higher than most of America. South Australia is very high due to their high usage of renewables which is almost 50%.
The main problem is the UK would need some 3,500 gwh of energy backup, to ensure continuity of supply, and we only have 10 gwh at present (Dinorwig).
Trouble is, the backup would probably be pumped storage, and this is hugely expensive and land intensive. And you can be sure that the Greens would oppose every construction application, because they would be in areas of natural beauty (that is why they built Dinorwig inside a mountain, at vast expense).
And then we would need sufficient wind power to recharge those 3,500 gwh of storage within, say, a week. So between the storage plants and the extra generation plants, expect your energy bills to increase by a factor of 10. Then expect the company you work for to go bust due to excessive energy costs; for your mortgage payments to fail; for your house to be repossessed; and your you and your family to be living and starving on the streets.
Welcome to Greta the GremIin’s Green Paradise….
R
P.S. In 2019 Greta said she wanted to destroy commercial aviation, and in 2020 that came true. Funny that, eh?
.
Ralfellis,
Dinorwic is not ‘back up’ as such, it and the few other pumped storage power stations we have is for dealing with sudden demand spikes as it can start and be up to full power in a very short time. It is not a solution to intermittency, or intended as such.
You haven’t noticed the new pumped storage under construction? e.g at Loch Ness?
Plus we have 4 new grid scale batteries approved in the last year, which perform well for grid stability/frequency response.
Ian:
Yes, I know what Dinorwig is for – done the tour of ‘Electric Mountain’ three times. But it IS a storage system, and we will need 3,500 gwh, not 10 gwh.
Griff:
Yeah, brilliant. A storage system proposal, which will be opposed by every Greeney in the country. And even if built it will only provide 2.4 gwh, while we need a total of 3,500 gwh.
None of this will keep the lights on (or the food being delivered to your supermarket).
R
How sad that a nation with vast coal resources has decided to buy energy from others.
Oh, stop being so negative. Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day!
Technically it was. It only took a day for it to burn to the ground (while Nero fiddled, as the legends tell us).
Well not exactly a prediction or anything remotely like that. He merely said ‘could’. He ‘called for’. He ‘proposed’. Whether he was right about his figures I know not but he certainly wasn’t saying that it was going to happen.
So ‘Wind energy to power UK by 2020, government says’ is not correct.
There are plenty of actual failed predictions without inventing one.
Take that up with The Grauniad…
Most days wind is weaker than sunshine.
Wind is beast to get electricity from. You would, for promotional reasons, prefer wind turbines to produce electricity as effectively as possible up to hard wind. Let’s say 16m/s, cut off at around 27m/s and engage production at 4m/s or lower.
That is an insane dynamic range where the energy in the wind is approx 140W/m2 @5m/s and more like 1120W/m2 @10m/s. Subtract the approx 25% efficiency converting wind energy to electric energy with the standard 3 winged turbines and you end up with 35W electric energy for every square meter the propeller describes @5m/s.
My 45 year old camping solar panel is doing way better than that and is easier to put in the trunk/boot of the car.
At night, when the wind is blowing, how well does that camping solar panel do?
I wonder if “Net Zero by 2030” will have the same success of Price Charley Boys “96 months to save the world”.
I really don’t see Boris and Princess Nut Nut lasting long when the left get wind of the cost of all this. They’ll happily shelve their green beliefs and go after the Tories tooth and nail to destroy the concept of EV’s and turbines when they realise how unpopular the policies are. They need something big to repair the damage done by Corbyn.
I mean, any excuse will do, and it’s not like they aren’t congenital hypocrites.
I think the two nuts was supposed to be a plural.
ie: Princess Nuts….
R
Just one problem here: the prediction was by a Labour politician in a Labour govt…
for the last 11 years we’ve had a Conservative govt who substantially cut back on onshore wind and only now are coming round to serious backing of offshore wind.
Only in Griff Land would that be considered a good thing.
but it was still a promise by a govt not in power for the last 11 years, wasn’t it?
Maybe it is the population not excited over their beautiful landscapes being turned into industrial power plants. Therefore the more expensive and resource demanding offshore tends to be pursued.
“Just one problem here”?
But it wouldn’t, would it? It isn’t just wind turbines the UK is looking at, the newer large offshore turbines deliver more…
Just look at the 40GW of offshore by 2030: entirely doable.
Australia is missing fom the list and has expensive power right up there with Denmak and Germany, despite having massive gas and coal resources.
Among its States , South Australia the “renewables leader”, has the most expensive power (probably in the world) and the most fragile grid which requires gas/diesel geneators to run for stability even when there is enough wind generation. Now they plan to spend billions on an interconnector to be able to dump power interstate, whether its needed or not, and so the cancer spreads.
That’s because of past overbuilding of conventional power, not renewables. You are paying the return on investment on that…
I’d rather pay for over-built reliable conventional power (which buffers against outages/emergencies) than weather-dependent unreliables like pin-wheels & sun-squares.
Absolute rubbish griff. South Australia’s power costs are high because they demolished their most reliable energy source and instead now use around 50% renewables, backed up by expensive imported gas. They don’t even attempt to frak their own abundant gas supplies.
“for the last 11 years we’ve had a Conservative govt who substantially cut back on onshore wind and only now are coming round to serious backing of offshore wind.”
fixed
“for the last 11 years we’ve had a Conservative govt who substantially cut subsidies for onshore wind because it’s now commercially viable, and only now, (because Boris is shagging an eco-warrior), are they coming round to seriously giving away tax payer money in subsidies to now prop up the offshore wind industry, (or he won’t get any nookie).
“onshore wind because it’s now commercially viable”
Where?
I should have said “because they now believe it’s commercially viable”.
I did not see it in the article.
They also went from being self sufficient in energy (coal, oil, natural gas) to being dependent on gas imports and imports of electricity.
Really, it can’t get much better than that.
But, heck, they emit 1% of the worlds fossil fuel sourced CO2, so, I mean, that great, huh?
Why isn’t Australia on that electricity price chart? Oh that’s right it’s so high it;s off the chart
Not all of Australia. The states that are mainly using their own coal or gas have much lower energy prices. And Tasmania has adequate hydro power sources. But the high usage of home solar in the sunny states, around 30% of homes, is now causing grid stability issues.
Since we can switch suppliers…the cheapest uk rate is £0.12/kwh…..and due to the payment regime to providers, some green-energy users actually got paid to consume this summer..still using coal as well..1.2gw atm