From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
If this is the standard of research into the reliability of wind power, then heaven help us all:
Nobody is seriously saying that the wind will stop blowing completely around the UK, as they imply. This is just a red herring.
The real issue is that there are long periods, days and even weeks, when wind power is generating at extremely low levels.
It can also be extremely variable on an hour to hour basis, as the summary of the last 48 hours shows below:
https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=eds/main
Using the data from GB National Grid Status, so far this year, wind power has been producing at less than 2 GW for 22% of the time. 2 GW works out at about a capacity factor of 10%, which I am sure most normal people would regard as pretty worthless.
It has even been running at below 1 GW for 9% of the year. Average output is over 5 GW.
It is true that low winds tend to be more common in summer, when demand is low. But they can still occur in winter. Between 27th Feb and 4th March, wind power never reached 2.5 GW for 112 hours straight. During this period it was below 2 GW for 99 hours, and averaged just 1.1 GW overall.
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
It does not matter how much wind capacity you have. Nought percent of anything is still nothing.
We in Texas discovered what happens with still air and freezing rain.
“We in Texas discovered what happens with still air and freezing rain.”
You discovered that, in these parts per ten thousand events, you didn’t gird up your natural gas to electric infrastructure. I.e., the common sense, lowest cost solution. Not after your 2010 wake up call. Not after $130B, and well over 100 lives lost this year. Instead, you’ve been deputizing fetal heart flutter bounty hunters. Heckuva job, brownie….
No, what we found was that if you install a lot of unreliable wind, you are forced to install essentially the same amount of gas generation that can be spun up fast. So the real cost of your wind electricity is almost double due to back up costs.
Then if you are reliant on gas generation because of your installation of wind generation, you better be sure your gas pipelines can work.
But if you follow federal government rules and stop powering the gas pipelines with gas and switch over to powering them with electric, then when your windpower fails and your grid starts to collapse and you cut power to gas pipelines as a result, then you lose the gas generation that was backing up your failed wind power.
And you wish you had put all that windpower money into coal plants and nukes.
“So the real cost of your wind electricity is almost double due to back up costs.”
About the usual lack of back up for this butt yanked parameter. The natural gas to electric deliverability is already there. You just need to take a few steps to insure that it works when you need it. Oh, and maybe follow Governor Gavin in California, and modernize your natural gas storage facilities. They are a festering abomination everywhere, with only California improving them.
“Then if you are reliant on gas generation because of your installation of wind generation, you better be sure your gas pipelines can work.”
Yes. They are part of that infrastructure. Have you given any thought to the fact that, under your burn baby burn scenario, you would want the pipelines to work even more?
“But if you follow federal government rules and stop powering the gas pipelines with gas and switch over to powering them with electric, then when your windpower fails and your grid starts to collapse and you cut power to gas pipelines as a result, then you lose the gas generation that was backing up your failed wind power.”
Gas pipelines are “powered” by the most appropriate form of energy for that situation. Near the wells, dehydrators and gas production units are mostly gas heated. Instrumentation is (thankfully) now mostly electrified. Wellsite compression could be either. Down the line, chemical pumps and other instrumentation is now (again, thankfully), mostly electrified. Compression down the line, again, either. But to keep much more of it on, simple. Prioritize the natural gas to electric infrastructure. They do it in other states.
“And you wish you had put all that windpower money into coal plants and nukes.”
Nope. Add up all of the external costs for these sources, that are now communized onto us, and they are the highest $ forms of gen. I’m totally cool with dropping renewable mandates, and the relatively tiny start up helps that they have received in the past, if these forms of gen would do the same.
Crickets and/or goal post moving to follow, folks…
One hopes that you will be first to volunteer to be cutoff to save the grid Bob.
Otherwise your just a mouth.
Lovely content-free rant here, blob.
One thing I’ve noticed with socialists, the further they fall behind, the more irrational they get.
“Otherwise your [sic] just a mouth.”
Oh the irony.
Yes it is already there, but it is not cost free. It must be maintained, and maintaining an idled plant costs almost as much as maintaining a running plant. To be able to fire up at a moments notice, the entire staff has to be on hand, all the time.
Not just that.
The anti’s (like oily bob) are pushing policies/regs that cost the natural gas suppliers more and more.
Bob and others like him are too stupid (or deceitful) to recognize that, even if the ‘renewables’ can be harnessed for replacement of other energy sources by 2045 (or whenever), that the far future expansion of ‘renewable’ energy sources will require an equal expansion of back up facilities. And that expansion has been banned.
So, what they are doing is requiring that we stop right here, right now, with our current level of energy supply.
To make matters worse, Oregon’s Governor Commie Witch Queen just instituted a carbon tax by Executive Decree that will double the price of gasoline, diesel, propane, and natural gas. The voters be damned. Also the economy.
“About the usual lack of back up for this butt yanked parameter. The natural gas to electric deliverability is already there. You just need to take a few steps to insure that it works when you need it. Oh, and maybe follow Governor Gavin in California, and modernize your natural gas storage facilities. They are a festering abomination everywhere, with only California improving them.”
Huh? California has shut down over 5,000 MW of nat gas generating plants since 2013. CA’s plan is to totally phase out nat gas by 2045.
Doesn’t do much good to modernize nat gas storage if you don’t have the plants available to use it!
“Huh? California has shut down over 5,000 MW of nat gas generating plants since 2013.”
Baseload. Emergency deliverability will be maintained. That’s why Gavin has been girding up nat gas storage.
“CA’s plan is to totally phase out nat gas by 2045.”
AGAIN, base load only.
The renewable shift must happen. Why don’t you want it to happen smoothly, without lazily hogging the best bridge fuel available?
Texans, pray to the Imaginary Guy In The Sky, twice on Sunday and Wednesday nights, for no more AGW amplified polar vortex blasts. Maybe a bigger love offering to Joel Osteen, or another tennis court for his McManse..
The only thing “Gavin” has been gearing up… is the Jerry Brown “Bullet train”. How much of California’s additional Gas Tax is being siphoned off and added to the 1.1 billion dollars, the CA state Libtards have been taking for years from the truck fees and gas taxes for Browns failed vision?
God, what a BIGOT you are BOOB.
There is NO need for ANY unreliable sources of generation on the grid. NO NEED. They can NEVER be BASE LOAD, because they are UNRELIABLE.
BigOil is not that bright…don’t be rational. Tell them how stupid their ideas are over and over. They are truly evil people.
“AGW amplified polar vortex blasts”
How does that work? The amplification of the polar vortex by AGW, I mean.
“The amplification of the polar vortex by AGW, I mean.”
Please note that the next worst winter calamity in Texas took place a decade ago.
https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/climate/definitions/what-is-the-polar-vortex
Mr. bob: Please note, as further proof of AGW, that before these two polar vortex events, low levels of CO2 stopped winter weather at the Oklahoma panhandle.
Once you focus, you can find proof of AGW right outside your window.
I’m going out on a limb and guess that you actually believe your response had anything to do with the question Tom asked.
Polar vortex gets larger when it gets colder. Global warming should decrease it.
Once again, when models disagree with the real world, the trolls hype the models.
I’m supposed to draw a conclusion from that?
Bob has been assured by his local deacons that CO2 makes everything worse. That’s all the data he needs.
As usual, Bob makes no sense, and indicates an extreme hatred towards anyone who doesn’t worship as he does.
… there it is ….
Hate and jealousy of others. The driver of your life (whether you admit or not).
Idiot. There is no climate crisis. CO2 is NOT the cause of the slight warming we’ve experienced. Just ‘splane to me, Lucy, why was the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period warmer than it is now?????? It certainly wasn’t because of man-made CO2.
You can’t fix stupid.
>>> The renewable shift must happen <<<
Why?
“Texans, pray to the Imaginary Guy In The Sky, twice on Sunday and Wednesday nights, for no more AGW amplified polar vortex blasts. Maybe a bigger love offering to Joel Osteen, or another tennis court for his McManse..”
Ah, you’re a bigot…
Oooo scary religious people, oooo!
“Baseload. Emergency deliverability will be maintained.”
If emergency deliverability can’t meet base load then of what use is it?
If you get rid of all existing base load nat gas generation then exactly how are you going to handle emergencies?
We’ve already seen that the *existing* nat gas baseload generation can’t keep rotating blackouts from occurring in CA. Whack out that “base load” capacity and CA is *still* going to be in trouble, modern nat gas storage or not.
“If emergency deliverability can’t meet base load then of what use is it?”
In Texas, it can. Easily. All it takes is some common sense winterization of existing facilities. As with virtually every future such event, the Feb ’21 event was followed for over a week, pre striking. Plenty of time to deploy.
“We’ve already seen that the *existing* nat gas baseload generation can’t keep rotating blackouts from occurring in CA. ”
It can now. Unlike comatose Texas, which has only made faith based improvements, post 2/21, Calilfornia realized their mistake and rectified it. Yes, they moved too fast. But it’s still a tale of 2 states. One is in denial. One is acting.
https://www.power-grid.com/td/is-california-ready-for-the-summers-of-2022-and-2023/#gref
Mr. Gorman: Elsewhere, bob has told us that NG is dead, fracking is over, blah blah. Why upgrade NG storage, indeed, unless bob is wrong? He has that prog feature, the capacity to forget his last comment.
Like most alarmists/socialists, bob says and believes whatever he needs to say/believe to win the argument in front of him. Whether it makes sense, or even if it contradicts what he has said before isn’t relevant. What matters is defeating those who don’t worship as he does.
“Elsewhere, bob has told us that NG is dead, fracking is over, blah blah.”
You read what you wanted to read. Not all. Most of my fracking comments included comparisons to OPEC+ oil production. That is what will be on life support until the lower CAPEX and OPEX/boe OPEC+ oil is produced off. I.e., most of what we call “fraccing” activity. Natural gas is not “dead” at all. It s a vital bridge fuel. Gas fraccing is hanging on in W. Va and Pennsylvania, thanks to Ben Dover regulation. But note that the biggest operator, EQT, has lost half of it’s market cap since the mid teens.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/eqt-corporation/marketcap/
Why is this link extremely vague and obtuse about who they are?
https://8marketcap.com/ runs that site. Still no information available.
Who runs that site?
Blind faith I take NOT.
They are a festering abomination but only because we had a Festering Obama-nation for 8 years from 2008 -2016
And now we have a Kowtowing O’Bai-den nation
The cart before the horse, (i.e. wind generation and solar without an adequate storage and distribution systems) seems like Mother Superior jumping the gun. Whose dollars caused that to happen. We are all still waiting for THE BATTERY. What gets propped up crumbles.
Christ on a bike, a night in the pub with you would be torture.
Then stay in your subterranean comfort zone, winding up fellow dead enders.
Folks, LOVE how their is a sizable cadre willing to post facts in this fora. But the mutual aid society members here don’t go on above ground blogs like andthentheresphysics, because they are technically outed right away, and thereby get their tender tissues irritated. Let alone peer reviewed pubs…..
Mr. bob: So we learn you are a fan of Gavin and ATTP in one string. And I thought you were worth mockery.
Humans learned not to leave the dead above ground too long, such as Mr. Appel. A stench in the nostrils. Meanwhile, Gavin wants you tried for your (fossil-fuel extraction) crimes against the planet. Why don’t you spend your time and expertise showing Dave Middleton how to recap the carbon you loosed on us?
I’ve had a spar with andthentheresphysics. It was most amusing: he’s a CAGW zealot who gets all his, um, physics out of whack.
As for the pubs I frequent, providing they’ve got a good beer on tap, locals who like to chew the fat, and a landlord who’s not afraid of a lock-in, it’ll pass my review.
You, however, wouldn’t last a minute in such a pub if you started mouthing the nonsense you’ve been spewing here; you’d be slung out and barred for life, providing you haven’t already been glassed by one of the locals (and no, that’s not a threat)
“I’ve had a spar with andthentheresphysics.”
Interesting. I can google search posters on either this site or ATTP and get their posts. You, nada. Maybe you posted on your nextdoor site by mistake….
Mr. bob: Ask your friend Dave what happens to your end of the google search if ATTP deleted the exchange Mr. Appel lost.
If you can’t discern Appel’s BS, you’re further gone than I imagined.
“if ATTP deleted the exchange Mr. Appel lost.”
Ah, the inevitable Dr. Evil “they erased the exchange” conspiracy theory. But feel free to dredge up ANY recent instances of WUWT posters venturing out of their comfy bubble bath, and offering a cogent argument in ATTP.
I was using a different name.
Nice try sweetcheeks, but you’ve failed.
“I was using a different name.”
“Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
Moving ahead:
What name?
“I can’t tell you. You’re one of them.
I won’t be telling you the name. I started using a different name on alarmist blogs to stay incognito: When I used my real name I once had a wing-nut CAGW zealot on an alarmist blog try to dox me by tracking down where I worked and then try and get me fired for daring to question his zealotry. Hence I started posting comments under a different name.
You trawling attp’s site to find my comments proves how obsessed you CAGW nutters are with anyone who dares to question the orthodoxy. What were you going to do once you’d found my comments?
As for your little YouTube vid, I think you labour under the misapprehension that you’re witty. Believe me, you’re not.
Anyway, we’ll leave it there as you’re boring me now.
I find it funny that the guy who doesn’t post under his own name, ridicules someone else for not posting under their own name.
Then again, Bug Oil Boob was never the brightest candle on the shelf.
“I find it funny that the guy who doesn’t post under his own name, ridicules someone else for not posting under their own name.”
I use my nomdeWUWT for everything. Unlike Yeah, That’s The Ticket….
He uses his real name here, and a fake name at sites that are known to be hostile towards those who don’t worship as they do.
Nothing wrong with that. As usual, since you can’t actually refute the points made, you dive into an irrelevancy and use it to change the subject.
“…and a fake name at sites that are known to be hostile towards those who don’t worship as they do.”
Yah, one that he conveniently forgot, so we can’t check on this Big Foot argumentative victory.
It’s ok. I already had my feet up from his earlier posts….
Once again, bob demonstrates that his hatred towards those who don’t worship as he does knows no bounds.
Bob, you say,
“Gas pipelines are “powered” by the most appropriate form of energy for that situation.”
And claim you’re “big oil? Small oil maybe and for sure not NG Bob.
Not using natural gas for compression on a cross country interstate natural gas transmission pipeline is so stupid that no one that ever worked in oil and gas could ever “honestly” say that IMHO.
Mr. Sandberg: Above, bob pretends he isn’t talking NG. In a post last week, he posited that WV NG fraccing was an environmental disaster across that state. But I learned something from him yesterday- his only connection to NG is his propensity to gaslight this site. Like here. I learned he’s not worth mockery.
As always, bob says whatever he needs to say to win the argument. The fact that he completely ignores the various EPA regulations on this subject is just more proof of that.
Boiled bob has all of earmarks of a total zealot.
That effort it is trying to dox people commenting here, coupled with nonsensical blustering and insults betray the hater of all things modern.
Kinda like McKibben or
kook, er Cook. All zealous crackpot and no reality.BigOilBob, r u suggesting TX create near big cities storage facilities like CA’s infamous Aliso Canyon (aka Porter Ranch) facility?
To all, Aliso Canyon leaked vast amounts of natural gas from Oct 2015 into Feb 2016.
“To all, Aliso Canyon leaked vast amounts of natural gas from Oct 2015 into Feb 2016.”
Aliso Canyon’s inherent problems were all too typical. What was atypical was Guv Gavin’s response. He radically reorganized CalGEM, girding up their gas storage staff in both numbers and skill level. A leading authority on downhole safety systems and well integrity is running the show.
Nat gas storage fields are vintage production fields with nominal well integrity, into which they’ve thrown some sundry, often vintage, downhole safety systems. Accidents waiting to happen, but we need them badly. Hence Gavin’s uncommon sense response…
Pretty much every statement you made there is a lie, Bob.
As for your lie about a “butt yanked parameter”, there are a number of studies that show not just a doubling, but a little more than doubling due to the fact generators have scheduled maintenance.
Then its also important to note that to be able to provide leveling with the fickle tax subsidized wind/solar installations, they can’t use efficient CCGT gas plants, but 40% less efficient GT. So the windmills actually force thermal generators to be less efficient and thus use more energy and put more plant food in the air.
FERC has also made Winter Resiliency a problem by strongly discouraging a practice called “Name That Fuel”. We all know that coal and oil can be stored and provide a level of resiliency, but FERC won’t let the RTOs actually plan for that – it has to be fuel neutral, which is plane stupidity.
We could blame either the Obama or the Trump administration for that, but FERC is an independent federal regulator and operates outside any practical political oversight.
The only way that wind/solar could make any sense is to drive operations that don’t require dispatchable energy, like crypto mining, water desalinization and maybe reverse pumping water uphill to a hydro reservoir (aka battery).
The problem with that is the owners of the unreliables (e.g. Walmart, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook) they desperately need the tax write-offs and the carbon credits so whatever crap they generate wins the supply auctions and makes reliable energy uncompetitive.
Sure, that would be modernization after the 2015 Aliso Canyon natural gas leak? Pretty easy to modernize stuff after it completely fails and you have no choice?
California modernizing natural gas storage after the storage failed and poisonous gas leaked into a residential neighborhood is the example bob gives us to follow?
Exactly — Wind and solar are unreliable and intermittent. Foolishly choosing to use these as primary energy sources forces some hard choices.
Do you build enough natural gas powered generation capacity to replace wind and solar when they don’t work? Do you build a lot of storage capacity? Do you just do without?
It’s not complicated.
2010 was not a major freeze in Texas, the last were the ones (2) at each end of the year in 1989. I saw it reported during the 2021 freeze that they did not go back that far for the reference freeze, link around somewhere. On the central coast where I live the wind died during the freeze. Without denying other problems, the two major times wind dies in Texas is the middle of both winter and summer. As of last Tuesday the port offloading the parts had oil supply boats and the land stock of blades and turbine parts was the lowest that I have seen in years. Windmill lack of reliance has been known for centuries, in Texas a long known problem because of using them for water supply over much of the western part of the state for well over a century.
“2010 was not a major freeze in Texas, the last were the ones (2) at each end of the year in 1989.”
Forgive me please. Early 2011
https://www.weather.gov/crp/feb2011_icestorm
“Windmill lack of reliance has been known for centuries, in Texas a long known problem because of using them for water supply over much of the western part of the state for well over a century.”
And yet, they are the cheapest form of Texas power. Especially if you include the external costs of fossil fuel energy that are put onto mostly low income, low net worth folks. Those fossil fuel cost communizations are orders of magnitude higher than those incurred by renewables. And even paying for their intermittence, with extra grid capacity and surge capacity, the costs are still much lower.
The head scratcher is why ERCOT thought there wouldn’t be a wind shortfall in this extreme event. Especially because they were told what to do in 2011 – and again this year. I.e., the solution I ripped off from the 2011 report. Even in wind energy states that properly freeze resist the innards of the turbines, they know they will have to feather them in freezing sleet, and plan for it.
First off, there are no external costs to fossil fuels.
Secondly, wind is only cheap if you fail to account for the costs of backup.
“First off, there are no external costs to fossil fuels.”
You child. A partial list, assemblable in 2 minutes.
https://legacy-assets.eenews.net/open_files/assets/2020/06/22/document_ew_03.pdf
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/overview-greenhouse-gases
https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/new-research-air-pollution-from-fossil-fuels-costs-the-world-8-billion-every-day/#:~:text=Researchers%20also%20estimate%20global%20economic,billion%20in%20economic%20losses%20annually.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-08/documents/cadmus-norm-report.pdf
Haha, you’re rich…EPA, Greenpeace…give me a break.
Messenger murder. Got any actual rebuts?
I am not sure the green peace one in particular actually needs any rebuttal … it is comedy gold just read what it says. Start with the 230,000 deaths per year ….what retard would buy that (hint doesn’t appear in official deaths records). That trash it attribution statistics and it is total and utter crap which would require a brain injury to believe.
Climate science seems to be the only field that accepts attribution statistics most fields just roll there eyes as they know it’s marketing junk used to make your claim look good.
Genetic fallacy does not apply as a defense to your citations that are indisputably documented being biased and routinely false. You would be better off sourcing 8kun or reddit…
Would reality be sufficient for you?
Neither is a credible source. Period!
I wet myself laughing at the GreenPeace $8 billion every day lose … that is a classic. If you counted the profit per day it would run to trillions especially of you used their version of “special greentard accounting”.
Thanks for that one … got a good giggle.
Every single one completely refuted.
Both hurricanes and tornadoes have not increased in number or size.
Droughts, well within historical norms.
Floods, well within historical norms.
Wildfires, only a problem in areas where government does not permit proper forest management.
The fact that you believe anything that supports what you want to believe is one of the reasons why we love you so much.
There is no question that we COULD have wind power work reasonably well. The correct question is: Why would we bother with unreliable and intermittent electricity?
Bingo
Who stole yer coffee this fine AM, blob?
Is there anyone out there who is able to interpret that?
Outside blind hatred towards all things conservative?
I don’t even read anything that big old boob writes. Just scroll on by. Life’s too short.
I don’t have access to a blob—>English translator.
BigOil shows up with a Simonesqe clown show. Good one.
Texas discovered how your fossil fuel plant fails if you don’t winterise it and the folly of not connecting your grid outside your state.
of course Texas is a huge state and shouldn’t have to hook up to an outside grid and wouldn’t have to if it had reliable power- as for winterizing- we’ve been told that there wouldn’t be any more winters due to climate change- at least not like winters used to be
Of course the neighboring States were also freezing and had no surplus to send to Texas either so interties would have proven fruitless
You’re confusing climate change with global warming – the previous time the “science was settled” when winters were to be a thing of the past. Now the “science has been settled” again climate change will cause the worst of of everything blizzards, heatwaves, tornadoes, pandemics, plagues of locusts and earthquakes. Keep up.
yep and today we had one of those “extreme” nice days caused by climate change – not a cloud in the sky – must be the first time in history not a cloud in the sky! unprecedented!
Around here, they are predicting that we break the record warmth for Christmas day by a degree or two.
However this number will still be 3 or 4 degrees below the record for the month, which was set almost 50 years ago.
So, is this new record high due to “climate change” or is it due to the fact that records for this city only started about 150 years ago?
Can’t you at least try Griff. Texas wind went to functional zero while gas ramped 450%.
Not in dispute.
Wind is crap.
Same thing you are seeing in GB
As I reported above in checking around a few Texas places the maximum wind speed was 3mph in Corpus Christi where a large number are in the area. San Antonio, among others, was zero.
Here’s the picture to go with the words.
Those were surface winds, at 11AM saw the edge of the Corpus field, they were not moving. These winds look more to the east where I didn;t check E of San Antonio, not sure of any whirleys over there..
You don’t understand, had gas increased by 500%, there wouldn’t have been a problem. Therefor gas is at fault. /sarc
Thanks to the nutters in GB, Britain is no longer “Great”.
I can’t wait to see a repeat of 9th august 2019, but in mid January or February 2022, preferably with an outdoor temp of below -10C.
Uh, griffter, the states surrounding Texas had very little excess electricity to sell to Texas because they were cold too.
This is so simple that even you should be able to understand it. Texas spent too much money on unreliable renewables and too little on reliable, dispatchable power with energy storage (coal, nuclear, and even natural gas that doesn’t rely on the grid). There’s no way that any thinking person can come to a different conclusion.
You mention “thinking person” in a reply to griff?
Stupid people can’t think
meab: griff was thinking of tying TX to Mexico’s grid. (I’m sorry, had to get done laughing). Okay, back on.
The Mexican gov’t heard TX needed dispatchable power, so they dispatched folks from Guatemala and Ecuador.
1) The biggest problems was changing gas compressors from being powered by gas to be powered by the grid. Texas had no choice in that, it was an EPA mandate.
2) Texas is connected to grids outside the state.
Actually, Texas is an isolated power grid so that it isn’t subject to FERC regulation.
“changing gas compressors from being powered by gas to be powered by the grid. Texas had no choice in that, it was an EPA mandate”
Thank you, I am so tired of having to repeat points like this to the uninformed.
ERCOT also had power turned off to natural gas producers and distributors – they had never audited their lists.
Winterizing wind turbines in Texas is a useless proposition. It makes them cost even more and they use some of the very electricity you need to stay warm. Meanwhile, they are useful about once every 10 years, assuming the wind is actually blowing (it wasn’t by Day 2 of the freeze). Investors will not invest in an economical fail situation without government subsidies, which is the only reason why we have wind turbines in Texas.
Winterizing the cool water intake at the nuclear facility is straight forward and easy. Winterizing natural gas distribution – not so much. The best approach is to require more onsite storage just like we used to do with coal.
Our wonderful TEXAS government watchdog called ERCOT is incompetent or we would not be building more wind turbines. You fix the TEXAS base load for peak demand, and then use the intermittent power for sales across state borders. You also pay for more power grid restart facilities – something intermittent power can’t do as it requires stability.
Do you need to winterise a coal power plant?
If you get a rain followed by a freeze, you might need a bigger skip loader to break free the coal.
That coal-fired powerplant located about 20 miles from my house never missed a beat during the Feb. 2021 arctic freeze, and we had no blackouts in this area, although other parts of the State did have a few, minor blackouts.
“nd the folly of not connecting your grid outside your state.”
If Texas were connected to other grids, it wouldn’t have made a difference, since the other grids were having their own problems keeping electricity flowing during that cold spell.
Here in Arkansas we were being asked to conserve electricity so that rotating blackouts could be avoided.
So it’s the fossil fuel plants to blame for wind failing? The fossil fuel plants wouldn’t have come into play if wind generation hadn’t failed, griff.
You have been told numerous times, that Texas has grid connects to power pools outside Texas’ borders.
When you know one thing and habitually claim another, you shouldn’t wonder at the instant skepticism and contempt which greet any and every thing you say here.
There are two DC ties to the eastern interconnect and one to Mexico, the total power transfer capacity is just 1.1 GW. Apparently it was not adequate to prevent the issues.
There was a private $1.6B project planned for a 5 GW 3-way DC tie between Texas, East and West that fell through.
Tres Amigas SuperStation – Wikipedia
I assume they would recover some costs by taking a cut off the power they transfer but I suspect they also hoped the power companies or gov’t to throw a lot of money their way as well. Maybe they realized there were too many palms to grease to get it done and gave up.
Paul’s nought percent of nothing made me think of the old Billy Preston song Billy Preston – Nothing From Nothing – YouTube
What is, Germany, going to do without coal- https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
Germany can fall back on all their solar – because it works so well at high latitudes.
Especially when covered with snow.
At night
And at night. /wink
Hey, night sky is black, coal is also black. So what’s the difference? /s
Richard says: “What is, Germany, going to do without coal – https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE“
The Germans will quietly hope that France and Poland build enough new nuclear capacity quickly enough to cover their needs.
The oncoming SMR’s will be capable of doing a much better job of load-following than legacy third generation nuclear plants can now do.
However, load-following capability is a double edge sword in managing the financial risk of a new-build nuclear plant.
If you aren’t selling as much electricity during periods of reduced output, then you aren’t getting as much revenue for amortizing your capital and operating costs.
The solution for the French and the Poles in dealing with this problem is very obvious and very simple — charge the Germans significantly higher prices for peak output electricity.
As with any marketing strategy, the assumptions being made upfront will largely determine the success or failure of the strategy.
For the French and the Poles, the assumption would be that the Germans will not wake up to reality soon enough to handle their power shortfalls on their own.
Here we see another major benefit of the oncoming SMR technology. More units can be added to a plant site over time as demand grows. If demand isn’t growing as expected, then adding another SMR unit can be postponed until market conditions improve.
Like a heroin dealer on his buyer-users, Putin first has to get Germany deeply addicted to his product. Then when the addiction hooks are set, Germany will fall inline and become his bitch whore..
Of course, because it’s the big bad Putin who sets Germany’s energy policy???
Putin was just a pretty poor KGB hack from DDR until he latched on to the idea with his best mate Seichin, using energy as a weapon was the best way to get a poverty stricken country noticed when it has nukes but an economy no bigger than that of Italy.
Kleptocrats are worse than useless biz managers, so since stealing Yukos, all they could do was make the country poorer aand take everyone’s human rights, while clapping successful business managers in prisons full of torturers, raping and wounding the hapless new style Gulag victims.
If Sakharov were still alive, he would be a new “enemy of the people”.
SMRs are high cost per kW-hr. – quite a bit higher than Gen III nuclear. Their construction and licensing costs are very high now, and since they produce far less power than Gen III (a factor of ~30 less), their operating costs are much higher per kW-hr too. One way to get the cost down would be to manufacture them by the many dozens to hundreds in factories but that won’t happen until licensing costs are significantly reduced. That isn’t likely to happen until the public sees that unreliable renewables can’t get the job done. At that point it will take much additional time to get SMR factories built and cranking out SMRs. I’m a big proponent of nuclear power (PhD nuclear engineer) but we need to stay realistic, SMRs aren’t going to take over anytime soon – it’s several decades off.
The absolute resistance from the Left to building new nuclear reactors is the clearest evidence that the climate scam has nothing to do with climate or CO2 emissions.
Except France has declared they are phasing out nuclear because greens don’ t
like it Fessenheim 1 & 2 are the first to go, having been shut down in 2020.
the greenies were campaigning not to have Fessenheim at all, then when it was keeping the lights on in nearby Colmar, then campaigned to have it turned off. By the time it was a little old, but had contributed mountains of energy to Alsace, the greenies had another pop at it under that cretin Hollande.
guess what party Hollande came from?
Socialists.
Just wait a week!
The Grohnde Nuclear Power Plant will be decommissioned on 31 December 2021 as part of Germany’s transition to a renewable energy future.
In 2021 the plant passed the mark of 400 TWh total low-carbon electricity output since it was connected to the grid. Over the period the plant has prevented 400 million tons of CO2 emissions
Units operational: 1 x 1,430 MW
Nameplate capacity: 1,430 MW
Capacity factor: 87.8%
Annual net output: 10,996 GW·h
All that juice sitting on the acreage of a hobby farm.
Poof . . gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grohnde_Nuclear_Power_Plant
400 million tons of
CO2 emissionsplant foodcorrected it!
Haha, yes . . my mistake . . it’s deprived the world of plant food.
Below is another view of the plant.
And these dumbasses will gleefully blow up those cooling towers and dot that beautiful countryside with windmills.
And to think, my father (British Army, Royal Engineers) was posted to Germany (where I was christened) after the war to help with their long process of rebuilding & reconstruction.
Just tragic.
Good thing they shut it down …. it is a prime location for Pacific tsunamis 😉
Construction started 1975, operational September 1984.
This is a large reactor; in 6 different years it produced the most net electricity of any reactor in the world.
That capacity factor of 87.8% is over 37 years of operation. It’s being retired probably 20 years earlier than technically necessary. Presumably the construction loans have all been paid back by now, so any remaining years of operation have the lowest possible operational costs. For people worried about nuclear safety, low OpEx means a plant can afford expensive safety upgrades while remaining profitable.
Vogtle (Georgia) units 1 and 2 were re-licensed in 2009 to 2047 and 2049 respectively, which will be 60 years after each first went into operation.
The oldest US reactors I could find still operating are:
I don’t see any US reactor licensed for more than 60 years. I don’t know if this is NRC policy or just that the technology of the early reactors became obsolete. In any case, there are plenty of US reactors contemporary with Grohnde that will be producing power for decades to come.
Mr. Watt: When U.S. enviros went to war on nukes in the 70’s, they were very effective. Some nuke plants were all built, but the operators switched to coal before the nuclear fuel could be brought in (over enviros having die-ins- think ER invented that?).
That is an easy one to answer Richard. They will freeze. The next few days and weeks will be an indication of how difficult it will get for Germany without a reliable supply of Gas. Russia are turning the valves off currently, so stand by.
Import nuclear and coal power from Poland and boast how they manage wiithout – er – nuclear and coal?
There hasn’t been any wind here for some time – several days. There might be some wind on Friday
“Further south, it will turn drier with sunny spells. Friday will be a wet and windy day for most as outbreaks of heavy rain move in from the west. “
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather
In the meantime…
In the meantime sponge off your neighbours and hope they have extra and aren’t upset with you over fishing rights or the like. When really in the deep end burn coal.
or better still – import clear felled trees thousands of miles from North America and burn them in power plants in Drax in Yorkshire ( which sits on top of 600 year coal seam).
Whatever it takes. Drax is running flat out – 3GW of wood and 1GW of coal.
It burns wood because it was told it wouldnt be allowed to burn coal any more and would get renewable subsidy for wood.
Then after a billion had been spent installing wood handling plant, it was told it wouldn’t.
The coal under Drax would cost about three times what importing US or Australian or even Polish coal would, There may be 600 years of it, but its not worth digging up.
Not when there ten thousand years of uranium in the seas round Britain, that is.
There is nothing coal plant can do that nuclear plant cant do better. at one percent of the fuel cost.
I’m sticking with coal in my fireplace
Heating if needed yes.
Health long term no.
Leo Smith,
What you say about importing coal to the UK is true because of political actions in the 1980s and 90s. The UK coal industry was then closed for purely political reasons (I was the Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management).
Prior to the closure of Britain’s coal industry, British coal was the cheapest fuel available to the power stations. This was mainly because the power stations were built near the mines so British coal had small transport costs from the ports. Also, infrastucture investment had been made for the mines.
Re-opening deep mines is not practical because closure of the mines has allowed settlement which has fractured coal seams. And few surface mines are practical in the UK which has been mined for centuries.
The UK’s coal industry discovered North Sea oil and gas. The oil and gas are running out but an additional – and plentiful – supply of gas would be available if fracking were allowed, but it is not.
So, the UK has a disaster of an energy policy which was initiated for political reasons and is being maintained for political reasons.
The situation was predictable. Indeed, it was predicted, see
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/courtney_2006_lecture.pdf
Richard
There is still a lot of oil in British offshore waters, what is running out, or indeed has already run out, is the common sense to allow the oil to be developed.
But no matter, we can just import what we need and never mind the extra expence.
By the way, a great sadness to see Longannet’s lum fall last week.
Oldseadog,
One chooses how much detail to put in a blog post. I thought I said sufficient to make my point which was that the UK has a disaster of an energy policy which was initiated for political reasons and is being maintained for political reasons. As you say, it is not only UK gas production which is inhibited by political idiocy and perhaps I should have said that.
I, too, regret the end of Longannet where coal was conveyed out of the mine by a drift that had its surface-end within the power station. I proudly display on my mantlepiece a silver hip flask and a cut glass tumbler each engraved with the Longannet coat of arms: the pit presented them to me.
Richard
It’s a political decision to shut a mine that is losing money?
In the meantine burn coal and wood and uranium and send it to France who is in far bigger trouble than you are
It is difficult getting people to understand that the capital cost of reliable backup, like natural gas combined cycle or nuclear, is the same regardless of how often it is used. Those costs have to be recovered over whatever period of time the backup is used, even if it’s just a few hours per week. That need to recover the cost of backup power is obvious to those who are interested, like those reading WUWT, but it’s less clear to those who have never thought about it.
The mainstream media doesn’t accurately inform their readers and listeners, the ratepayers, about this fact. At some point, people facing higher rates and sketchy service will start to wonder why, and investigate. Hope they come here to learn more.
If you only have minutes to get the plant up and running, you can’t wait for your staff to drive in once the call has gone out.
They have to be on site, 24/7. Equipment has to be fired up an run on a regular basis, to make sure it’s all lubricated and that it is ready to go to full power when the call comes.
The difference in cost between running a plant at 0% vs 100% is quite small.
There is one difference between 0% and 100% that makes a big difference. At 100% they are producing a product that can be sold to cover the costs of running the plant.
If you reduce the average output of a plant from 90% to 80%, while not reducing the cost of operating the plant, then the cost of the product has to go up. This is one of the reason’s why renewables make all other forms of power more expensive.
I know griff and his fellow anti-science types, like to claim that the increase in energy costs is the fault of fossil fuel, but that has never been true.
In the 2000s, the financial sector attempted to cobble together large numbers of bad loans to create a “fund” that would yield reliable returns. We discovered in 2008 that that strategy merely built up bigger failures, and we were introduced to the unforgettable phrase, “too big to fail.”
Now the power sector is being compelled to make the same mistake with electricity — cobbling together large numbers of unreliable generators in the attempt to build a reliable grid. Texas, California, the United Kingdom, and Germany are showing us it won’t work. The harder we push into this, the bigger the failures will become. Please, can we stop this before it’s really serious?
A very appropriate analogy.
The bad loans, like the unreliable power generators were both done at the insistence of regulators. Companies were forced to either find a way to adapt, or die.
Please, can we stop this before it’s really serious?
Probably not. Those pushing it are completely disconnected from reality.
In the UK, at this exact moment, wind is ‘providing’, if you can call it that, 1.8% of demand.
If we had ten times more wind resource, something that will never happen, we would be way way short of being able to manage the grid and that is before we start lumping vastly more demand on the system, with electric cars and the abolition of gas boilers.
Just from that number you would need more than 50 times as many turbines to keep the lights on.
The reality is that you would actually way more than 50 times for two very basic reasons.
1) Most of the best sites have already been taken. Future sites will not provide as much power per turbine as existing sites.
2) The bigger your fields get, the more the turbines start interfering with each other. The upwind turbines are stealing power from the downwind turbines.
There really is a very simple solution for the UK, I can’t think why it has not already been enacted. I understand it is now feasible to construct “floating” windmills. A couple of thousand of those, roped together in batches, could be towed around our shores by nuclear powered tugs to points where the weather forecasters (never wrong) indicate there should be the strongest breezes.
A few hundred waterproof exterior connectors (available in good hardware stores) strategically placed permanently around our shores would enable the power to be fed via extension leads directly into the national grid network. I’m wondering if I can patent this scheme before someone at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (yes, the word strategy is in their title) steals my idea.
Thanks! I need a good laugh!
I sure hope that was sarcasm, because it really sounds like something griff would say.
Why bother finding the wind? The nuclear powered tugs would privide enough wind to make the blades go around.
I’m sure you could live the high life on the subsidies you could get for such an innovative proposal. Failed renewable projects are a big earner world wide.
Why bother with nuclear tugs, Peter?
Just reverse half the windmills to power the raft of turbines to wherever the wind is blowing the strongest. Simple physics.
(For MarkW, who needs to take his Model 3 SarcDetector in for a tuneup… 😜)
Why not just tow the windmills behind the tugs permanently so that there is always wind to produce electricity?
Each tug could also tow a barge with batteries on it so you could just hook up the barge when back in port.
The answers are just so simple.
Not with wind, or solar, fairy dust, and unicorn farts either.
Oh really? I thought Unicorn farts were the most reliable source of renewable energy available to mankind!!!
Alan the Brit,
Yes, you are right at present, but I am told unicorn farts will soon become redundant because electricity storage is nearly perfected. s/
Richard
CUFT, Alan. CUFT.***
Compressed Unicorn Fart Technology. It’s the future!
–
–
–
***Just when you thought there were one too many acronyms…
Here in central Florida there is seldom enough wind to supply any reasonable amount of electricity. Having lived here for several years, sun isn’t that reliable either. Lots of showers in the summer along with miscellaneous clouds all year. Right now we are going through a period of practically constant cloudiness.
How well do wind turbines survive at cat 4 or 5 hurricane?
I was surprised to see that all of Disney’s solar panels survived Hurricane Irma. I had expected to see carnage.
Any numbers on how quickly those panels were able to return to full power?
A lot of damage isn’t readily apparent.
I am confident that eventually they are going to understand that heavy reliance on wind and solar is going to require either large scale storage capacity or dispatchable power of the kind that people have grown accustomed to. Time and Mother Nature are on our side on this.
There is 36GW of offshore and floating wind already scheduled to arrive in the UK before 2027… which will be widely distributed and situated in high capacity areas not now exploited. The Irish republic will also see well in excess of 5GW of offshore wind. It is very likely that by 2030 the UK has 50GW of wind capacity.
That massively expands the minimum figures given here and of course there will be still further expansion across the connected and about to be more connected nearby parts of Europe.
There is no suggestion of reducing gas capacity in that timescale (there are at least 2 gas plants sitting unused) and a plethora of non wind renewable projects including tidal, pumped storage, largest yet grid scale battery etc etc.
I’ve been reading now for over a decade about how this can’t work and yet it still is.
How much is 0% of 36GW?
Holey gobsmackers fatman, 5GW…that’ll power 4 Delorean time machines
Do the brits say “jigga-watts’?
Now, now, be fair and ask the grfftard how much is 5% of 50GW.
Then you can ask him how to deal with a swing from 2.5GW when you need 40GW and your neighbors don’t have any surplus to 50GW when you need 20GW and your neighbors also have a surplus.
Of course we know his answer. You just need £100 trillion for batteries. Easy peasy.
Another easy solution is just to turn off everybody’s smart meter except for Politburo members.
And £3/kWh seems like an appropriate rate dontchathink?
I wonder, what do all the gas and coal power plant workers do on the days when the wind blows good and their plants have to shut down to preclude excess generation?
Do they get to stay home with full pay and benefits for like 1/3 of the days in a year? Where do I get in line to apply?
Or do they multitask and go on the road to do maintenance on the wind generators and stuff? (yeah right…)
They have to stay at the gas and coal plants, ready to fire up the burners just in case the wind stops blowing or a cloud passes over the solar arrays.
50GW?
Wow
That means it would be producing 5GW right now instead of the current 2?
Amazing.
All for the low low cost of hundreds of Billions.
Because GB is running massive surpluses and doesn’t know where to spend it all right?
Wind is currently ‘supplying’ the UK with less than 1GW not 2.
Are you really unable to utilise the most basic logic in that brain of yours?
Wind is currently supplying less than 1GW to the UK. If we had 50GW of capacity it would be supplying less than 2GW. i.e less than coal is supplying, which is surprising, given we have actually closed most of the coal plants and removed coal the rest from day to day supply of the grid.
It costs a fortune to pay for them to be restarted to supply the grid, something UK citizens are forking out for at the moment.
It works in the UK because it is backed up by our gas supplies. The UK has fallen from 100% home produced gas to half now. The rest is imported from week to week and we have hardly any usable storage and are utterly reliant on other countries maintaining a day to day supply.
The UK has been disinvesting from exploiting new gas fields, meaning that home produced supplies will fall to only one third in this decade, increasing the need to import more and becoming ever more reliant on the goodwill of other countries. If some of these countries pulled the plug, the UK economy would collapse and you would see deaths on an unprecedented scale.
Go forward to a week like this in the future, with your magnificent wind capacity of 50GW producing less than 2GW in actuality. What would be holding the grid up, especially since we will have switched to electric vehicles and banned gas boilers?
Don’t be dishonest griffter, grid scale batteries won’t work.
The Hornsdale power reserve in Australia was the world’s biggest back-up battery when it was built in 2017. There are larger batteries now, but only marginally larger. Hornsdale was originally built with 129 MWh of storage yet it could not store enough energy to buffer solar or wind without fossil fuel backup. Why? It could provide a total of 70 MW for just 10 minutes or 30 MW for 3 hours. That’s TINY. What it can do is buffer a small wind farm so that when the wind dies off it gives the utility enough time to bring a Natural Gas fired turbine on line.
To store enough energy from a solar or wind farm the size of one nuclear power plant (1000 MWe) to last through one single night would require a battery about 90 times bigger than Hornsdale (more in the winter when daylight hours are few) but Hornsdale cost over $70 million US dollars. Even a battery 90 times larger than Hornsdale costing $6.0 billion wouldn’t be anywhere near big enough to buffer the unreliable renewable farm through a single day of cloudy or calm weather, let alone a week. And that’s just for a farm the size of a single nuclear plant. Do the math(s). That’s why batteries won’t turn solar or wind into a reliable source. No matter how many wind turbines you build in the UK there will be many hours when the entirety of the UK is calm, so a connected grid isn’t the answer either, unless the connected grid has the capacity of all the wind turbines. Think!
They are crowing in the UK about building Europes biggest battery. 360 MW. However they don’t say whether that will last for 5 minutes, 5 hours, 5 days or whatever. In any case MW when GW is what’s required is no use.
https://www.nepic.co.uk/blog/memberposts/europes-largest-battery-storage-plant-could-be-built-on-teesside/
I think 4 hours is the industry standard.
It’s very difficult to take any reports of batteries seriously when the describe them in terms of MW. Not understanding basic scientific units is very telling, because it means that they don’t understand the basic scientific concepts behind it.
In any case, using any of these revolutionary grid scale batteries have be a pathetic effect on the actual grid. At best they will keep a few places powered until reliables can be ramped up to replace unreliables that stop providing power.
If they were actually employed to replace the lost unreliable power, the massive draw would cause the batteries to explode.
It doesn’t matter how many turbines you have, when the wind isn’t blowing.
Then let’s double capacity! No, wait…
Grid scale batteries? Laughable.
The worlds largest storage battery, cost way over a billion and can output 300mw for four hours. Four hours! What do you do then?
Oh and these batteries have to be replaced very regularly if they haven’t already exploded by then. A report on this ‘worlds largest battery’ said that………….. “The project began construction in December 2019 and Phase 1 began operating at the end of 2020. It is made of LG JH4 cells in TR1300 racks in two storeys in the old turbine hall. In September 2021, Phase 1 was shut down after a high temperature event, while Phase 2 kept operating.”
Got good value for that billion or so, nine months of back up!
Like socialism & communism, the batteries will work properly NEXT TIME.
griff keeps using that word, but it’s obvious he really doesn’t know what it means.
Just a minor nit, you mean 300MW, mW is for milliwatts.
Nah it probably really is milliwatts
I’ve been reading now for over a decade about how this can work and yet it still isn’t.
.
“I’ve been reading now for over a decade about how this can’t work “
Then you are determined to ignore the patently obvious. When there is no wind and it’s dark, wind and solar do not work. How can they?
What you are advocating, griff, is future abandoned engineering that will have to cleared away after it has failed. Along with all the toxic nasties that turbines contain
How much has that been costed at?
If it has to be done by big oil then big green should do the same.
griff is pretty firmly of the mindset of “if it hasn’t happened yet then it can never happen”, and will probably still believe in his rainbow unicorns even while freezing in the dark because they’re taking a nap. I doubt even a hard smack of reality will change his mind.
“…non wind renewable projects including tidal, pumped storage, largest yet grid scale battery etc etc.”
Tidal in the UK is finite, you run out of places to put it. Never going to exceed 10% of the mix even in best case scenario.
Pumped storage, again, very small gains, tiny even.
Rampant production of more and more, larger and larger grid batteries is an ecological disaster, and then everybody is going to be doing it, great.
“Tidal in the UK is finite”
And in places like the Severn estuary it would be an ecological disaster. It’s funny how green solutions always end up punishing the wildlife far more than any fossil fuel or nuclear power station ever could.
Two problems with tidal.
First putting the generators in place disturbs the resonances you need to get big tidal differences.
Second, tidal is available when it’s available, it isn’t always available when you need it.
At least the intermittency is regular and foreseeable with tides, easier to manage and integrate.
England basically has one main tidal estuary that it could be worth exploiting plus a few tidal lagoon projects that cost a fortune but have potential longevity.
Of the three “sources” mentioned, only one is a source: tidal. The other two are storage systems for energy. Pumped storage requires suitable geography and “permission” from the environmentalist whackos (never forthcoming, and generally for pretty good reasons), and grid scale batteries are impossible in principle. It is exasperating to me, as an engineer, to hear people say that “the technology isn’t quite here, but will be.” No, it won’t, because it can’t. We will never be able to stuff enough mass of fuel and oxidizer (which is what a battery consists of) into a battery to produce the same energy output as a plant that produces energy by taking oxygen from the air and reacting it with fuel.
And how will this solve the problem of CO 2 in the atmosphere? Compared to China everything the UK does is insignificant.
Griff,Manufacturers specification, as with cars and EVs usually optimistic
Siemens SWT-2.3-108
Cut-in wind speed:
3.0 m/s =6.7mph
Rated wind speed:
11.5 m/s = 25.7mph
Cut-out wind speed:
25.0 m/s = 55.9 mph
Survival wind speed:
59.5 m/s = 133.1 mph
Even at sea the wind speed can frequently be less than 7mph and even more frequently less 25.7 mph.
You can also expect to get 133 mph at least once during the wind farms expected lifetime.
Ah, you’ve just ‘blown it’.
Griff mate
Do you seriously believe this stuff or are you just here for a laugh?
I was going to admonish everyone for letting griff’s inane comments dominate the discussion but I found myself replying to him as well. At least he’s entertaining in his delutions.
But has it occurred to everyone it’s a put-on? He posts silly things just to get attention?
Many times
If Griff really believed what he’s saying or understood the issue, he would have real data links to back up his inane mutterings
If he understood the issue, perhaps. But real data is not necessary for him to really believe it.
Although I admit that I sometimes think he’s really a plant, playing a TrueBeliever(tm) to make them look bad.
Or, maybe he’s a “reverse troll”…writing provocative, but transparently false, screeds in order to evoke responses containing genuine information for the enlightenment of all.
I just thought of that one. “Reverse troll” Copyright 2021 Michael S. Kelly.
I thought the whole idea of going offshore was that it was all a ‘high capacity area’, unlike onshore. Now you imply that this is not the case as your explanation of why the present wind fleet isn’t producing very much at all, for weeks on end. Across the whole of Europe . . .?
I suppose, in your world, eventually we will find this ‘high capacity area’, tow all our floating windmills into this area, connect them up, and ‘all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well’. I do hope it’s not too far away. in both time and distance. And what could possibly go wrong??
Incidentally, an expansion to 36 GW of offshore will raise the nameplate capacity of offshore wind by a factor of ~3.5. You may think that’s ‘massive’, and indeed it would be if it was reliable, but 36 GW times a capacity factor of <2.5 % is less than 1 GW and if the nukes were doing that I think you’d be somewhat dismayed.
You’re not related to Milborrow (see top of article) are you?
Aren’t a number of UK offshore windfarms currently having problems with their undersea connectors?
It’s just junk wind, it just doesn’t have the quality it once did.
On a more serious note, the required wind speed is between 35 – 40 mph, and it needs to be a steady wind. Too slow, the blades don’t spin, too fast, the blades are stopped to prevent damage. This seems to be a terribly narrow window of speeds.
To put this in sailor context, this is the over lap of near gale to gale, terribly difficult to walk in. But great for struggling news reporters.
mph or kph?
No. turbines begin to work in relatively light winds – I think 10-12mph will get them turning
Of course the power goes up as I think the cube of wind speed, so they are just ticking over till the sorts of speeds you mention. That’s when they develop full power, then a bit over 50mph, you need to shut them down 🙂
A couple of charts on that. This one is monthly average cacapity factors from refactored weather data as provided by Staffell & Pfenniger, which shows that months – and even several months – of rather lower output are hardly unusual.
I don’t really care that it is unreliable. My criticism is that wind turbines are extremely ugly and dystopian, a blight on the landscape. I much prefer nuclear.
I’m with you on them being hideous blights, but I also care that it’s unreliable, and that it may cause infrasound health effects, and hurt property values, and raise electric rates.
Other than that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
This one shows the same data at daily total resolution, correlated with temperature. With natural gas prices having shot up today in Europe – over €180/MWh for TTF, and electricity for baseload in France trading as high as €780/MWh for February it is clear that energy insecurity is not solved by wind.
At €780/MWh, that brings some wallet insecurity, though . . . phew.
To be meaningful, you need to plot the hours where wind is generating at 100% of capacity, not 0%.
Whenever wind is at less than 100%, something else needs to be picking up the slack.
See plot from It doesn’t add up… (7:42 am).
Wind never generates at 100% of capacity. That would require 30 to 50 mi/hr winds to blow everywhere (and no more and no less). Never happens. It doesn’t even reach 50% capacity for 10% of the time. The highest it had ever reached was 75% in 1989.
Winds will pick up in the UK, with the arrival of a Greenland Sea low that will bring snowstorms and frost to the British Isles.
Possibly. As with Heffalumpi, semper dubitandum est…
You’d think that the proponents of wind would consult meteorologists regarding wind and when and why it happens. They don’t. When atmospheric high-pressure zones settle over an area, there is very little wind, sometimes none at all. And when that high pressure comes, you get clear skies. In summer that means sunlight and lots of heat. In winter it means cold, as the daytime heat radiates off freely into space overnight. So when you need the most electricity, you get the least. No airconditioning, no light and heat.
Solar? During a nice sunny day, not much any other time. None at night. Good for industry on those sunny days, maybe. Not so good for the citizens’ homes.
Why would they bother when incomes are guranteed by the European Union.
If it’s winter, even during a “nice sunny day”, you won’t get a lot of power from solar. The sun is too low on the horizon.
I believe that it is more so that the day is only 9 hours long in winter and so really only 7 hrs of useful solar output versus >12 hours in summer. But also that most cells are fixed installations so the cos of incidence angle is also at play.
It’s low angle of incidence plus the fact that the sun has to shine through much more of the atmosphere weakening it even further.
We have been banging the drum of intermittency issues for as long as the wind energy industry grew to the inconvenient state it is now at.
The Green energy advocates simply ignore this huge negative that is a fundamental part of so called renewable energy.
The pat answer offered up by the Green advocates is, the wind is always blowing somewhere we just need to have interconnectors. That is of course a complete cop out as high pressure can sit across the whole of Europe which is the only realistic interconnector option.
The practical answer to all of these green energy demands is to limit the maximum grid level the intermittent producers can occupy. My rule of thumb is 20% of grid. Anything above that brings increasing complications to maintain supply which no one needs.
The other problem with interconnectors is that the further you have to transmit the power, the more of it you are going to lose.
Is this news to ANYONE? Best way to protect a scam is to repeat well-known facts like they’re news and selectively ignore others, like Climategate. And above all, to avoid asking the most enlightening question of the carbon scam: ‘Cui Bono?’ – a rabbit hole studiously avoided in favor of mental masturbation. So the monster of big lies lives on as we sleepwalk into the tyrants’ dream of an eco-totalitarian ‘new world order’. Good work, WUWT.
There’s always some scheme to work around the problems. And another scheme to work around the problem the first work around causes. It’s a never-ending cycle. To mix metaphors, it’s a house of cards built by Rube Goldberg.
Germany suddenly getting very sparse wind generated power; see graph below showing recent months. The customers there are right now being charged over 400€ euro for a single mega-watt hour of power.
If confused by mega-watt figure that means 1 kilo-watt hour of power is over 0.4€ euro. Which is equivalent to paying over 0.45$ U.S. when comparing by any reader in the USA to their own bill.
Yes, and thats ex power station onto the grid. Now in UK I pay around 20p a unit for electricity that used to be on the grid at 4-6p for coal gas hydro and nuclear, and around 14-16p for wind. I think solar is up around 25p or more.
So green levies, distribution and grid costs and a slender margin for the retail companies added (let’s say around) 14p to the cost of delivering it to me.
So in fact they are selling at 20p but it’s costing them around 40-50p to supply me. Well its EDF so perhaps its all nuclear power.
Perfect storm. Tight gas market, unreliable renewables, and cold weather.
More. Those price figures are almost certainly for wholesale, i.e., what grid operators would pay. Add in distribution costs for consumer retail prices.
Yeah, I don’t think the end users pay the spot prices. The utilities absorb them and hope the markup on the end user prices cover it when you average it all out. Maybe once a year they reassess the markup and increase end user charges if necessary to compensate for increased spot prices in the previous years. In the US, most states have utility commissions and the utilities have to prove need to increase end user price schedules so as to operate at a modest profit margin.
Of course intermittent green power makes spot prices much more volatile and so end user costs end up going higher even though “green power” is supposedly lower cost to produce it is more than offset by the skyrocketing spot prices when it doesn’t produce (not to mention all the cost incurred to keep other power generation at hand, manned, and ready to ramp up or come online to produce more power in order to come to the rescue to make up for the intermittent green power shortfalls).
Right now, over NW Europe we have a massive blocking high, bringing cold temperatures, overcast with no sun, and very low wind speeds.
Gridwatch (thanks for mentioning me) is showing more wood burning than I can ever remember, EDF has all its reactors bar 2 working and I haven’t seen so much coal on the grid for years.
its dark, cold and wind is producing only a GigaWatt. Solar is producing nothing at all. France has become a net importer of electricity, and the continent wide forward pricing for electricity has become an nightmare of acutely inflated costs.
And it is, obviously, since the interconnectors are arbitraging out price differences, similar in Britain
And a national news agency wants to talk to me about Gridwatch.
Perhaps the Christmas turkey in my fridge, is after all, merely a renewable chicken, come home to roost.
NW Europe has not only had a very low wind year, but it is looking like winter is going to be – courtesy international gas prices – very expensive on electricity, and, courtesy (lack of) renewable energy and blocking highs, right on a knife edge of grid collapse.
Although the NW Europe electricity is well interconnected, it is potentially still able to be split into national sized units, or smaller. And Britain and Ireland are fairly disconnected from it, and certainly not phase locked.
It is somewhat analagous to the USA in that areas could black out and be disconnected from the rest.
Who will be the first to go is a matter of pure chance.
Sampling wind data from METARS have a look at this plot of daily average wind speeds across northern Europe in spring this year:
Not to worry…Sanford says it will all work out with ZERO blackouts when it is all solar and wind. https://woods.stanford.edu/news/stanford-researchers-point-way-avoiding-blackouts-clean-renewable-energy
in 2017 the uk experienced 7 consecutive months of wind free days. Today when demand was 42.50gw wind was generating 0.76gw. That means to meet demand with wind we would have needed 504,000 3mw turbines or 1344gw’s of turbine capacity. Joke.
Given the inefficiencies associated with adding more turbines, you would probably need twice that. If not more.
The wind can be blowing at a constant 5mph and a wind turbine will produce nothing.
Siemens SWT-2.3-108Cut-in wind speed: 3.0 m/s
Rated wind speed: 11.5 m/s
3.0 m/s = 10.8kph= 6.7mph
11.5 m/s = 42.12kph = 26.17 mph
Most Uk citizens would consider a wind over 25mph as being a strong wing. It is Force 6 on the Beaufort Scale
Whenever you hear a wind power advocate talking about average wind speeds. Remember that a large percentage of the time the wind is either too low to provide power, or too high and the turbines have to be feathered in order to prevent them from being torn apart.
Quoting averages is one of the ways scoundrels hide their shortcomings.
Laughable that these clowns think unreliables are the answer to a non-question
As characteristics of wind are broadly similar.
So why put them in the North Sea with double the infrastructure costs. And why cannot I have the roaring forties in my backyard. If the world was flat and moved in one direction … but then it us that are called flat earthers. Wonder what is the entry qualification for the Oxford University Climate Change Institute. Probable a social science degree like PPE like CCC propagandist Ed Miliband.
double the infrastructure costs, and shorter lifetime expectancy.
Will we have the winter of the century in Europe? I think it will start in January.
As incompetent as that summary may be, – it actually points to an inescapable conclusion.
Let’s start with a basic summary. Given a variable source of power, how much backup capacity you have to have? The simple answer, assuming you don’t want to live with blackouts or brownouts, is the complement of the minimum deliverable capacity from the variable source. The fact in that summary (as opposed to the conclusion), is that the minimum deliverable capacity during the year is zero. Therefore, the necessary backup capacity is 100% of the mean variable capacity.
Curiously, they emphasize that the minimum is rare, but that’s not the relevant conclusion. The minimum is zero therefore required backup capacity is 100%. That makes an expensive source of energy.
In other words, run the back up 100%, and get rid of the renewables. The renewables are superfluous.
But what about CO2 Emissions? China, India, Japan are building new coal fired power stations at a rate that will swamp any CO2 reductions made by the rest of the world. The Earth will be warmer anyway. Adapt!
The polar vortex in the lower stratosphere (which directs the jet stream in winter) has clearly taken aim at Europe.
The jet stream over Europe confuses me… why is it so discontinuous
Jetstream is now above the north pole because the polar vortex in the lower stratosphere is breaking apart.
Strong planetary waves disrupt the polar vortex in the upper stratosphere.
When we try to talk to people about the AGW scam or the renewables scam, a common reaction is to scoff and claim it would mean many thousands of scientist conspirators – for which a valid answer is, “it doesn’t take thousands, just the few controlling the data!”
But there IS a question about the so-called ‘scientists’ regarding their ongoing manipulations of the narrative. What kind of person could pride themselves in their work if they have to make up a statistic of ‘hours where there is no wind across the nation’ to try to get published?
Surely even a true believer from the church of AGW would be self-reflective enough to know that’s a bullshit stat to use? So it HAS TO BE deliberate.
The things that matter are the ability to meet load requirements WHEN the load is applied and neither solar nor wind can promise that. In Australia we have lots of solar but the sun goes down right about the time everyone gets home and start switching stuff on. So we push batteries in the homes, nice little ticking bombs in your garage that are supposed to be money earners when you personally don’t need the power – except the feed-in tariffs are dropping, year-by-year.
Our virtue-signalling pollies do crazy shit like, rather than spend a few $million to modernise a coal plant or convert it to gas (which we export at criminally low rates while charging Aussies a fortune for it)they do a big publicity thing by blowing the plant up, making sure it can never again provide us with cheap and constant electricity.
This was in South Australia, a state that seems to be striving to provide the highest cost power in the world to the residents. We spent more than $100 million on a battery for the state – which in ideal conditions would keep the state running for a few minutes – and then brought in diesel generators to act as backups!
The world is insane and I think next time around I’ll be saying, “Anywhere but Earth please!”
Why do we say gas is a backup to wind
Should it not be the other way around
At best a supplement to gas
A supplement has to be controlled by on/off ability.
The wind may be predictable but there is almost no way to decrease the output of gas based on the expected wind.
If I missed the sarcasm font please let me know, I’m married.
We don’t need wind to backup gas as long as we keep up fracking and drilling
Complaining about minimum output from wind is missing half the story. The really interesting part is at the other end of the scale – when weather dependent renewables are actually producing near rated capacity.
Lets say that you want sufficient installed capacity for 80% of peak demand at an average capacity factor of around 40%. The rest of demand you will manage through short term storage and voluntary load curtailment. Then at those times when either load is well below maximum – Spring, Autumn or 4:00 am on most mornings or your capacity factor is above average then you will have:
This plays havoc with budgets due to lack of production (less MWh’s to spread capital costs over) and lack of value of each MWh produced.
To me these are the true limiting factor of weather dependent renewables – the lack of relationship with the underlying load and the lack of diversity in production levels
Hmm, I get it but this is how a liberal might see it:
Build Back Better gubment spend $trillions to overbuild wind and solar – it will drive electricity prices to zero – free energy to everyone! Whats not to like?
Don’t these NIMBYs understand they have to change the climate or they’re doomed too?
High Voltage: Serbian lithium business looms as another community relations headache for Rio Tinto (msn.com)
Clearly this critical decision-making has to be taken out of the hands of these ignorant trogs and Luddites and into the expert hands of the IPCC where it rightly belongs. You know it makes sense climate changers.
You mean ‘strawman’.
The utilities just need better storage-
Analysis – Weak winds worsened Europe’s power crunch; utilities need better storage (msn.com)
“If we had high winds or just reasonable winds over that period, we wouldn’t have seen these price spikes,”
They actually pay people for this stuff!!
I spent sorry wasted quite a bit of time trying to explain to a proponent of windmills that if we get a blocking high/low over the UK and nearby Europe just building more windmills won’t make a blind bit of difference to how much power they make as none of them would be turning. They just could not get it into their mind that such a thing could happen even when shown the graphs from Gridwatch for a couple of weeks ago and back in August. I suppose it does confirm the old saying “there are none so blind as those who won’t see”.
James Bull