Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to British government ministers, the best way to shield Britons from gas price volatility is to embrace renewable energy. My question – what is the plan when the wind stops blowing, like it did last September?
Renewables auctions to be held annually in green energy push
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analystThe government has re-stated its faith in green technologies with a decision that it says will create a steady stream of renewable energy projects.
Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says renewable power is the best way to shield the UK from volatile gas prices.
He announced that auctions to supply low-carbon electricity will now happen every year, instead of every two.
He says this will bring more certainty to firms planning to invest in wind turbines and solar panels.
The renewables industry is delighted – especially after a week that’s seen the government’s energy policy under fire from some MPs and commentators who believe the costs of the drive to eliminate carbon emissions by 2050 are too high.
Mr Kwarteng said: “We are hitting the accelerator on domestic electricity production to boost energy security, attract private investment and create jobs in our industrial heartlands.
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60325908
in September 2021, Bloomberg reported that wind power in Britain failed, because the wind stopped blowing.
U.K. Power Surges to Record 400 Pounds as Wind Fails to Blow
“We are not receiving enough renewable production”: Accenture
U.K. can’t count on nuclear as five EDF units are offline
By
Rachel Morison and Anna Shiryaevskaya
13 September 2021, 21:18 GMT+10 Updated onElectricity prices soared to a record in Britain as a period of still weather is curbing wind power, exposing the U.K.’s reliance on intermittent renewables.
U.K. power for next day exceed 400 pounds ($553) a megawatt-hour at an auction on Monday, an all-time high. Wind generation is currently below normal, accounting for about 11% of all the electricity entering the grid. That’s leaving the market exposed to swings at a time five nuclear units are offline.
The U.K.’s ability to meet peak demand was already set to shrink this winter as coal and nuclear power stations close early. The outlook has worsened as low wind speeds have forced Britain to rely more on fossil fuels to produce power at a time Europe is facing a shortage of gas and coal prices are surging.
…
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-13/u-k-power-prices-hit-record-as-outages-low-winds-cut-supply
How can anyone believe that wind and solar can fulfil Britain’s energy needs? How can anyone believe that more renewables can stabilise energy supply?
Britain has had multiple demonstrations the last few years, including last September, that renewables are too unreliable to be useful. If Kwasi Kwarteng gets his way, the energy price pain will grow.
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re: “what is the plan when the wind stops blowing, like it did last September?”
Buy power from across the channel from the French?
Nice theory, but one of the reasons the price went sky high in September was because French imports were sharply reduced, due to the fire at Sellindge at the HVDC converter stations for IFA 1 – but also due to lots of nuclear outages on the Continent and reduced wind generation so that import availabilities fell.
Good point. Large supply and price swings are usually not the product of a single factor, but are the result of a sort of “perfect storm” of multiple factors occuring at the same time … whether by coincidence, as you describe in France … or sometimes due to a common root cause.
For instance, the big brownout in Texas a year ago was blamed on renewables by the anti-renewable crowd, and was blamed on poor gas system infrastructure and resultant failures of gas compressors by the anti-gas crowd. The truth is that failures occurred due to poor cold proofing in both the wind generators and the natural gas compressors supplying gas lines. They both failed at the same time for the same underlying cause – lack of proper cold proofing for both types of equipment.
One cannot design a grid system that never gets stressed – such a fool proof system would be unaffordable, with tremendous amounts of unused capacity that somebody has to pay for in their electric rates. So it is a matter of careful risk assessment and risk management to determine an affordable amount of excess capacity.
True Believers on both sides of the renewables argument always over simplify and attempt to make it an all or nothing proposition. Nothing in real life is ever all that simple and life is a matter of shades of gray, not black and white.
The Texas grid collapse was in my view due to
a) Insufficient dispatchable capacity – they were never going to be able to meet peak forecast demand, having allowed too much to be off the system for maintenance, and not devised a capacity market or other mechanism to ensure that there was sufficient capacity in the first place, while placing too much trust in wind to generate – the only safe assumption is that it will be windless just when demand peaks, however much weatherising you do, and that would have been the right assumption to make, because the wind died.
b) Poor grid management by ERCOT – they should have started with rolling blackouts while they still had some reserve margin to handle the almost inevitable trips, but instead they tried to fly through without, so when the first big trip came it produced a cascade of others until the automated frequency control disconnections happened.
c) Poor design of the automated and manual disconnections, resulting in gas grid compressors being blacked out causing supply problems: until that point, despite the problems with production, power stations had been kept supplied out of cavern storage with dry gas. That made recovery from the big trip impossible for days afterwards.
Weatherising might have helped save the odd power station, including the nuclear trip caused by a pressure gauge pipe freezing up and giving a false reading, but frankly would never pass an investment case on the wind turbines, which were disabled by the still winds anyway, and given the storage buffer, would also be hard to justify in the production gathering system.
I have since read from two sources, one an individual blogger and one an ERCOT official that the wind died after the February 8th storm and that accounted for the lack of wind power in Texas. It was a big still cold front that moved over Texas after the storm went through.
Correct.
Map of winds during the blackouts
People think about wind energy wrongly. Choose a windy pass and build a bunch of windmills. But then what happens? In simple terms, wind blows from a high pressure area to an an area of low pressure.
There is an insistence to this action on the part of the low pressure area.That is, the newly built wind farm causes a partial damming effect on the passage of the wind at the pass and since the low pressure area won’t be denied, it draws air requirement from other directions as well.
It would be interesting to see the planned output of power from the new farm and what power was finally produced. I think the overall statistics are suggesting a big overestimation of windpower production in plans
As reporting revealed, it was considerably more involved than any failure of “cold proofing”. First, up front emergency orders to prioritize gas for home heating required some gas powered electricity generation to shut down.
A significant part of the failure of cold proofing for gas supplies was the regulatory requirement that electrical heating be used for gas infrastructure. When the electricity for said heating was not available, existing gas supplies could not be accessed.
Some significant amount of home heating also failed because, as with the electricity deficient gas supply “cold proofing”, the electricity was not available to use the gas for home heating.
Gas supplies were further constrained by policies that penalized having greater backup gas storage.
Gas fired electricity generation was increased to several times the 25%+ loss of total that wind and solar were supposed to be supplying, but conditions required considerably more electricity than had ever been anticipated.
I think that gas storage would have just about coped if the compressors to pump from it and to power stations had stayed working.
Duane, you once again demonstrate your lack of knowledge of electric supply systems. Wind generation failed mainly because of a lack of wind during a commonly occurring extended cold snap. Politically motivated “planners” failed to consider the past history of weather. I’ll give you that what happened after that wind lull is complicated.
Rubbish Duane, are you grif in disguise?
It is black and white: cold-proofing can ensure that the gas works in a big freeze but no amount of cold-proofing will help to generate RE on a windless night.
What don’t you understand about that?
Duane,
“One cannot design a grid system that never gets stressed”
We expect aeronautical engineers to design aircraft that seldom fail when stressed.
Why do we allow excess exposure to danger and death from failed electricity supplies when, with less woke engineering, we can reduce risk? The overall story has more explanations than cost. We can see world-wide that the push for renewables is unwise, so power engineers must either be under-educated now, or abandoning known safely principles or being marginalized by non-engineers such as untrained politicians.
The cure seems simple.
Empower competent engineers. as used to be the case. Forbid decisions that are unsupported by competent engineering.
Make it more like medical systems where you lose your license to work when you work below standard. Geoff S
…who will be selling their excess power to Germany as they can’t get gas from Russia….
Only they aren’t selling because they are struggling themselves or have little fishing disputes on with the Brits 🙂
I see Macron has announced 14 new nuclear facilities capable of producing 24GW in total. He also announced offshore windfarms allegedly capable of similar output (but not all the time).
Only dependant on his being re-elected
British Government: “renewable power is the best way to shield the UK from volatile gas prices.”
No! Stupid! Won’t Work! [Insert strong expletive for emphasis here]
Regards, Allan MacRae (he, him, pureblood, satire, gotcha)
– Energy Expert with a Strong Track Record of Actually Being Correct.
Proof – this paper – updated again yesterday 11Feb2022:
SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE – THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT
https://correctpredictions.ca/
“The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.”
I nailed the correct Climate-and-Energy story two decades ago in 2002:
Natural Global Cooling circa 2020; Green Energy Fail via intermittency & diffusivity.
To summarize, and cut through all the warmist nonsense propaganda:
“MacRae’s Maxim” (published circa 2020):
“VIRTUALLY EVERY SCARY PREDICTION BY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS IS FALSE.”
2022 Update – eliminate the word “VIRTUALLY” – leads to rounding errors. 🙂
Proof – this paper – updated again yesterday 11Feb2022:
SCIENTIFIC COMPETENCE – THE ABILITY TO CORRECTLY PREDICT
https://correctpredictions.ca/
“The ability to correctly predict is the best objective measure of scientific and technical competence.”
I nailed the correct Climate-and-Energy story two decades ago in 2002:
Natural Global Cooling circa 2020; Green Energy Fail via intermittency & diffusivity.
To summarize, and cut through all the warmist nonsense propaganda:
“MacRae’s Maxim”:
“VIRTUALLY EVERY SCARY PREDICTION BY GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS IS FALSE.”
2022 Update – eliminate the word “VIRTUALLY” – leads to rounding errors. 🙂
“On rounding errors”
By the end of 2020, the climate doomsters were proved wrong in their scary climate predictions 48 times. At 50:50 odds for each prediction, that is like flipping a coin 48 times and losing every time! The probability of that being mere random stupidity is 1 in 281 trillion! It’s not just global warming scientists being stupid.
But no sensible person makes a 50:50 prediction – at 60:40 the odds against being this wrong are 1 in 13 quintillion; at 70:30 the odds against being this wrong are 1 in 13 septillion. 🙂
These climate doomsters have not been telling the truth – they displayed a dishonest bias in their analyses that caused these extremely improbable falsehoods, these frauds.
Build a bunch of 1970’s French design nuclear reactors, given the record of those designs. Wind and solar are weather dependent, and no amount of hot air from politicians can make it otherwise.
Doubling down on unreliable wind and solar power is not a viable survival strategy.
These guys don’t care about YOUR survival.
I also noticed that. Seems everybody wins but the consumer.
Looks like they plan to order out….
France to build 6 nuclear reactors as part of climate goals (yahoo.com)
So that fixes the problems 30 years’ hence….
more like 14
“France to build up to 14 new nuclear reactors by 2050, says Macron”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-build-up-to-14-new-nuclear-reactors-by-2050-says-macron
Not sure that EPRs fix anything. It would be nice to see some working examples: the Taishan plants in China are shut down with techinal problems with the fuel rods, and all the others have had serious construction delays (Flamanville, Olkiluoto, Finland, Hinkley Point UK). The problem for France is that, having invested in the 1970s and 80s, much of their nuclear fleet is now nearing end of life. So it needs to be replaced, which is more than 60GW, not just 24GW. Then they’ll need to add some if they intend to electrify more of the economy.
We talking price here, not survival.
Tell that to those people that froze to death.
Oh, do they count?
Not to the warmunists and crony capitalists. Socialist manipulation of economies causes poverty and poverty kills.
“Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says renewable power is the best way to shield the UK from volatile gas prices.”
So he thinks volatility in energy prices can be solved by increasing the amount of even more volatile supply? What a plonker.
I assume “plonker” is the same as moron.
Seems to be a lot of those around these days in the upper echelons of governments everywhere. This moron has no understanding of what is gonna happen by relying on bogus wind and solar for energy, or, maybe he does and its all part of the plan to take the UK back to medieval sources for heating homes, etc. Control of the folks big time? Gallows, anyone?
Rev Jay4, my first reply seems to have put me in moderation which is a shame on this site.
“Plonker” is a term often used on BBC TV.
It refers to the word that begins with p- and ends in -enis.
It was also part of a catchphrase in the TV series Only Fools and Horses, where every episode David Jason would expostulate “Rodney, you pl…..r!” when the said Rodney had committed yet another folly. A selection here:
Mainly used by Del Boy to refer to Rodney as I recall
That and the word “muppet”
Rodney was an equal insult when I grew up. The Stranglers used the term in their track “Duchess”.
There was a joke about one particular Rodney. It was that he worked at British Leyland, putting big ends in princesses.
It’s a UK thing, for US readers.
Script Monty Python – “He will fart in their general direction”.
You can’t fix stupid. They will follow this line of stupidity until they do enough damage that it blows up in there face. At some point people will revolt and I hope it doesn’t get out of hand.
What will fix stupid is a massive winter grid blackout during a cold winter high with no wind, where thousands die of cold. Given this idiots statement, that sadly now seems inevitable somewhen soon.
I wish I had that much faith in government ministers’ ability to join the dots. Or even add 2+2!
In the meantime, the beatings will continue.
An individual’s solution to 2+2 is a social construct.
Math is r-a-a-a-a-a-cist!
Even if this occurs there will be no accountability nor punishment on the people responsible for the deaths.
Negligence is often used to charge people in other areas (driving, industry, etc) but politicians get away with creating disasters with no-one looking to put them in front of a jury.
The Canadian truckers are very seriously trying right now, but the government is threatening to use military forces to supress them, so what happens next is anyone’s guess. Hungary in 1959, or Tianmen Square?
Much will depend on if there is violence and who initiates it, and how hard the first blows are.
My question – what is the plan when the wind stops blowing, like it did last September?
Plan? They don’t got no plan, they don’t need no plan. They don’t have to show you no stinking plan!
Same song in New York:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/04/more-focus-on-the-impossible-costs-of-a-fully-wind-solar-battery-energy-system/
At low wind speeds it does not matter how many giant windmills you have. There is just no juice. Like solar at night, right?
This is the main problem. There never is a plan. It’s always throwing some money at the subsidy miners and then making an announcement that they are fixing the problem.
Nothing changes, nothing gets fixed, subsidy miners get rich, taxpayers get poor. Rinse and repeat.
It is difficult not to deploy foul mouthed invective when it comes to the UK’s “energy” policy ….
His UK ministers really are as stupid as BoJo himself.
The reason gas prices are high is renewables are unreliable so need gas backup. Germany greenlighted Nord 2 despite Energiewende in order to become more Russian gas dependent—great NATO move, that. And EU didn’t stock up for winter this year. And when you refuse to frack for UK gas, it grows scarcer every year. The Groningen field is so depleted it will cease regular production this year and will be shut completely by 2026.
It’s all over for fracking in UK as last firm operating is told to plug its shale gas wells
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10500639/Last-UK-based-fracking-firm-Cuadrilla-told-seal-shale-wells.html
As I understand it the largest ‘earthquake’ measured 2.3 on the scale and was felt as a gentle rumble at the surface.
Fracking for shale gas has been carried out safely in the US for years but some ‘expert’ on the BBC said it had not been proven!
UK is going to regret this decision.
Thinking wind can replace reliable coal, gas, or nuclear power at the grid level — one simply can’t fix that level of stupid. When you’re dealing with morons at that level of ignorance, we can only keep them far, far away from political power as a matter of national security.
But we can’t keep them far from power. They’re already in power.
The BBC s Roger Harrabin a man so out of touch with energy reality it is a joke every time he presents anything to do with climate or energy. Add to that a minister who thinks renewable energy is reliable and you have the perfect double act of idiocy. The minister is not affectionately known as Krazy Kwarteng for nothing…..
Krazy has to up his game. On the other side of the Atlantic the USA department of energy has an Office of Nuclear Energy.
S. Brinton was just appointed Deputy Assistant of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposal of that office. His pronouns are possibly still fluid since seen dressing in drag and telling Renssaler Polytechnic students back in 2017 his predilection for tying up his significant other to dine atop while viewing “Star Trek”.
Nobody could possibly make this stuff, up. Just when you think no one could be so stupid, they go and prove us wrong again. I would laugh, but I have relatives in England.
My genes are from Britain and it’s starting to concern me.
Double the frequency of auctions and hence price changes. Call this an increase in stability. Can nobody see the sheer barminess of this idea.?
Idiots…
Use nuclear and coal to generate electricity.
Save gas to heat homes.
Using electric to heat homes will be a disaster.
Too obvious.
And according to some experts, gas will be needed to make hydrogen to replace gas. You really really really couldn’t make it up!!
As it is said somewhere;
“You will know them by their fruits”
The fruits of their actions… including also their smiles too… it seems.
Fake, cold, empty, heartless…worse than the smile of a clown.
As any other of their fruits… void of empathy and compassion.
Oh well.
cheers
Oh, I thought Griff was the Minister.
No but he will be along soon to tell us that the UK is stabilising the global climate.
No, but certainly the Minister knows as little about energy and reliable electricity production as griff.
How the hell did we ever get to the position that we end up with ignorant fools like this? Mainly, I guess, because they are advised by con-men who are Greens under the covers – but are called advisers. They need to be culled!
affirmative action? gotta have people from the colonies… who are mostly in London- which voted against Brexit?
Well, we know one high-level adviser who is Green under the covers!
It’s what you get when the PM’s brain is between a pair of legs and not his own ones.
Sadly the Labour and Lib Dims are even more extreme in these matters!
Remember it was Labour who introduced the Climate Change Act, Ed Davey who forced through the ruinously expensive renewable subsidies.
Not to mentuon the disastrous Theresa May who enacted Net Zero, with no opposition at all.
To blame Boris is naive in the extreme
Yes, and the SNP is even more extreme than Labour and the Lib Dems. The gap between the political class and the population is increasing all the time – and not just about energy and climate, its also apparent on race and gender.
It isn’t anything new, most of those who have anything to lose will do whatever seems necessary to avoid losing it. — She is a witch. It is her fault.”
Wasn’t it just this past year that the agency long responsible for energy supply in the UK was replaced when it issued a report about the difficulties of survival under net zero policies? Would their successors make the same mistake?
Perhaps a good way of not being subject to volatile natural gas prices is to burn coal and build nuclear power plants?
These people are too stupid to run a lemonade stand. Every single one said to use natural gas as the bridge fuel to the green future, thus increasing demand for natural gas, closed coal plants and nuclear power plants, and then took steps to reduce natural gas production.
They are so stupid they thought natural gas would just appear magically, in large amounts, and cheap, just because that was their fantasy. In Europe, they assumed Russia would just sell them all the gas they wanted at the price they wanted. Russia is acting in its own self interest. Why should it help Europe go off fossil fuels and ruin Russia’s economy?
Europeans still think they are the center of a global empire. The world should dance to their tune. Even these brown immigrants from former colonies have this assumption.
Today, Europe is a nothing burger, yet they want to act like they should run the world.
The voters in Europe are getting exactly what they deserve: screwed.
Europe shouldn’t need America to defend itself from Russia- which it outnumbers several times over- and its economy is many times greater. America should focus on China.
I think that is the big fear. That is what led to World War II.
What led to WW2 was the appeasment of Hitler by liberals who were “anti-war” (sic).
This is a real beaut…
There appears to be a Wunderground Personal weather Station out in the North Sea – not far from where a lot of windmills are..
Its called: Forest – IK14FA1C2 and is Dutch, apparently, but makes no odds
The link below should take you to the monthly average page for September 2021 – where it records an average wind speed, across the whole month, of 1.1km/h
https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IK14FA1C2/graph/2021-09-30/2021-09-30/monthly
if you get there, you’ll see ‘Next‘ and ‘Previous‘ buttons which will take you forwards or backwards, one month at a time.
Each time, just look at the ‘Average Wind Speed‘
Jeezus Wept, are we in some Deep Shit or what
Thanks, haven’t come across that site before. For those who can’t be *rsed here are the average winds speeds for subsequent months (in case you might be accused of cherry picking):
Oct 21 1.1mph
Nov 21 0.7 mph
Dec 21 1.3 mph
Jan 22 0.9 mph
Feb 22 1.4 mph (part month)
possibly slightly below nameplate rating, as you say, deep doo-doo heading our way.
The UK needs a truckers convoy to demand that the government reject the climate change cult and focus on practical energy solutions that work.
That is probably like the South demanding that the national government stay out of its affairs, never realizing that their only chance of survival was to totally crush the North. The establishment, able to rely on OPM and a large supply of cannon fodder, would never compromise then and will never compromise now.
It is a reasonable assumption it will come to that, J.R. Mandating removal of gas heaters and banning FF transportation will do the trick, eventually. Can you imagine what will happen when truckers are told they have to replace their big rigs with electric powered tractors?
Renewables actually do provide some insulation from hydrocarbon fuel price volatility, but they cannot serve as a complete shield, since they cannot fully replace the hydrocarbon fueled power plant infrastructure. The max contribution of wind and solar to a stable power grid is still indeterminate, but it is probably no more than 20-30% of generating capacity.
But there are other means of, if not shielding, at least reducing the impacts of fuel price volatility:
1) Nuclear (fuel volatility is much less than for hydrocarbons)
2) Hydropower
3) Signing long term fuel supply contracts at a time when prices are relatively low (not this year!). Long term contracts won’t lock in prices at the bottom of the market cycle, but can lock them in at middling prices). Inevitably crude oil and natural gas prices are going to come down due to market conditions. Today crude oil is around $90 per bbl. At the next dip it might well drop below $40, and when it does, lock in a long term supply contract at somewhere in the middle, say $70. Ditto with gas.
There’s not a lot of opportunity for Hydro in the UK. Apart from Scotland there aren’t many areas suitable. I can’t imagine a new series of dam builds being welcomed. This is the official UK Government website view.
Future developmentIt is unlikely we will see again the scale of development witnessed in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Opportunities to use this technology on a large scale are now limited, not only because of environmental concerns but also because many of the most economically attractive sites for schemes have already been used. However, it is important we exploit our remaining small-scale hydro resources in a sustainable way.
Some old watermills are also being refurbished and brought back into the energy supply network.
Recent studies estimate there is a remaining viable hydro potential of 850 to 1550 megawatts in the UK. This represents approximately 1 to 2% of current UK generating capacity and so would make a modest but useful contribution to UK renewable energy and emission reduction targets. There are a number of steps that have to be considered before a scheme can be built, eg scheme economics, environmental permits, planning consent and connection to the local electricity network.
Nuclear is therefore the better hedge against fuel volatility in the UK. In France, which already generates roughly 80% of its power with nukes, is already largely isolated from hydrocarbon fuel price volatility. Norway and Iceland, with lots of hydropower and geothermal, also are largely isolated from the volatility.
In the US, we get roughly 20% from nuclear, and until a few years ago, upwards of half from coal, which is generally not as volatile as oil and gas .. but coal use has gone down in the US due to a combination of regulatory limits and the relatively cheap price of natural gas. So the US is still exposed rather heavily to oil and gas volatility.
Greens don’t like hydroelectric for some strange reason. If the UK government were to consider it (if it were viable in the UK) they have the government in such a grip they would stop it.
They don’t like hydro because it works
Andrew, you beat me to it. 🙂
Great minds, and all that.
Market conditions could certainly cause prices to come down. But as they drop the market will change its preference back to oil and gas so the prices won’t go down indefinitely nor even very far. And of course market forces can just as well drive prices up.
The only thing that will reliably drive down the price of oil and gas is not needing oil and gas.
I have no sentimental attachment to oil or gas and would be pleased to wake up one morning to any replacement that costs no more. Notice I say “replacement” not erastz. I mean something at least as convenient and reliable.
In the oil and gas market, “what goes up must come down”. Ever since the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 oil and gas has always suffered extreme ups and downs. When it’s down, people think it’ll never go up .. and when it’s up, people think it will never go down. It always goes up, and it always goes down.
The reason, primarily, is that the balancing of supply and demand is very difficult when demand sharply changes. We saw that first hand in just the last two years of the COVID pandemic. In the first half of 2020 when the first surges in COVID occurred, a combination of government ordered shutdowns and simply voluntary reduction of driving, as well as job losses resulting therefrom, caused a tremendously sharp crash for world wide economies. Right on the heals of the COVID recession was a huge drop in oil and gas prices, due to reduced demand.
As a result, oil producers sharply cut back on exploration and drilling new production wells in the second half of 2020.
Then, we ended up with a V-shaped recession, instead of the usual U-shape in the GDP curve, with employment rapidly ramping up and people going back to former transportation habits … consequently, demand for oil and gas came back up again very sharply.
Unfortunately, the hold back in developing new capacity to address the sharply higher demand resulted in a huge delta between supply and demand, such that prices of oil and gas skyrocketed in the second half of 2021.
Our oil and gas infrastructure follows this same pattern over and over again .. when recessions hit, demand drops, prices drop, and eventually supply drops .. when recessions end and vigorous recoveries begin, demand pops back up, but the lagging supply always takes months to years to catch up.
Here’s a 20+ year view of the sources of generation for the GB grid. It is very noticeable that the UK had the flexibility to switch back into using more coal after the Fukushima accident – until coal station closures made that no longer possible. It’s also notable that there are enormous swings in the availability of wind generation, with February 2020 being the best month, but several poor months in succession in 2021. That’s never going to be covered by a few grid batteries. In fact, I calculated that if we had tried to survive on wind and storage in 2021, we would have needed over 50TWh of hydrogen storage plus over 150GW of generation, and almost 40TWh of battery or pumped hydro storage, with over 120GW of generation. Our storage is measured in GWh, not TWh.
And here’s what happened to day ahead wholesale prices over the post Fukushima period. More stress as coal shuts down, then total chaos when renewables (and interconnectors) fail on top. But while we still had the option to switch, coal helped keep the costs in reasonable control.
The stupidity of that statement is off-the-charts, because wind and solar electricity sources vary all the time, 24/7/365, because the weather and the seasons vary all the time.
EXCERPT from:
BIDEN 30,000 MW OFFSHORE WIND SYSTEMS BY 2030; AN EXPENSIVE FANTASY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/biden-30-000-mw-of-offshore-wind-systems-by-2030-a-total-fantasy
The Biden administration announced on October 13, 2021, it will subsidize the development of up to seven offshore wind systems (never call them farms) on the US East and West coasts, and in the Gulf of Mexico; a total of about 30,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
Biden’s offshore wind systems would have an adverse, long-term impact on US electricity wholesale prices, and the prices of all other goods and services, because their expensive electricity would permeate into all economic activities.
The wind turbines would be at least 800-ft-tall, which would need to be located at least 30 miles from shores, to ensure minimal disturbance from night-time strobe lights.
Any commercial fishing areas would be significantly impacted by below-water infrastructures and cables. The low-frequency noise (less than 20 cycles per second, aka infrasound) of the wind turbines would adversely affect marine life, and productivity of fishing areas.
Production: Annual production would be about 30,000 x 8766 h/y x 0.45, capacity factor = 118,341,000 MWh, or 118.3 TWh of variable, intermittent, wind/weather/season-dependent electricity.
The additional wind production would be about 100 x 118.3/4000 = 2.96% of the annual electricity loaded onto US grids.
That US load would increase, due to tens of millions of future electric vehicles and heat pumps.
This would require a large capacity of combined-cycle, gas-turbine plants, CCGTs, to cost-effectively:
1) Counteract the wind output variations, MW, aka grid balancing
2) Fill-in wind production shortfalls, MWh, during any wind lulls
Such lulls occur at random throughout the year, and may last 5 to 7 days in the New England area.
EXCERPT from:
HIGH COSTS OF WIND, SOLAR, AND BATTERY SYSTEMS IN US NORTHEAST
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-costs-of-wind-solar-and-battery-systems
Any transition from fossil fuels to low-CO2 sources, such as wind, solar, nuclear, hydro and biomass, could occur only when the low-CO2 sources are: 1) abundantly available everywhere, and 2) at low-cost, say 5 to 6 c/kWh, wholesale, and 3) as reliable as fossil fuels, 24/7/365, year after year.
This article presents the all-in cost of wind, solar and battery systems in the US Northeast.
Table 1 shows the all-in cost of wind and solar are much greater than reported by the Media, etc.
Much of the cost is shifted from Owners of these systems to taxpayers and ratepayers, and added to government debts
MINIMUM ANNUAL CARRYING COST OF ANY ENERGY SYSTEM
Simplified Mortgage Method
This method can be applied to Electric Vehicles, Heat Pumps, Electric Buses, Wind Systems, Solar Systems, Battery Systems, etc.
The minimum annual carrying cost of a house, or an energy system, is “paying the mortgage”.
With regard to a house, all other costs, such as real estate taxes, heating, cooling, maintenance, etc., are in addition.
An energy system must have annual revenues = “Paying the mortgage” + “All other costs”
Any shortage of revenues must be made up by subsidies.
The less an energy system is able to “pay for itself”, the more the subsidies.
Subsidies can be reductions in the upfront turnkey capital costs
Subsidies can be reductions of some items of “All other costs”
Subsidies can be paying for the electricity production in excess of market prices
A house, after paying the mortgage, likely is worth more than in Year 1.
However, wind, solar, and battery systems have useful service lives of about 20, 25, and 15 years, respectively.
Thereafter, they still perform at lesser outputs for some time, but their financial value is near zero.
why do I get “corrupt African dictator” vibe off that guy ?
Just couldn’t think of maybe using their own massive gas deposits?
Who would have thought that the UK’s future would include electricity rationing when the wind doesn’t blow?
Eric, you have to stop asking sensible question and expecting logical answers. The “elites” running/ruining the western capitalist democracies are all credentialed morons who have been failing up for their entire careers. They think disasters like their COVId response, the supply chain fiasco, and high inflation, are what success looks like.