Essay by Eric Worrall
First published JoNova; The Express claims a billion pounds per year is being paid to British wind turbine operators who have been asked to disconnect from the grid during periods of low demand, when nobody can use their electricity.
Britain wasting ‘millions a day’ in energy as wind farms told to turn off while bills soar
The UK has been squandering an estimated £1billion a year in energy as the National Grid’s infrastructure cannot handle the volumes of clean power currently being produced
By ANTONY ASHKENAZ
10:01, Sun, Nov 6, 2022…
Speaking to Express.co.uk, Andy Willis, the CEO of Kona Energy, warned that the UK has been spending millions of pounds a day to ask wind farms to stop generating electricity.
He said that this phenomenon, known as an energy constraint payment, means that “there’s basically times of the day when it’s so windy that the electrical infrastructure can’t accommodate the amount of wind that these wind farms are producing.
…
He said: “Over the last couple of years, [the amount spent] has been about £1billion pounds a year, and that is worth caveating by saying quite a complicated calculation. It’s not just the cost of paying wind farms to turn off, but it’s also the cost of paying the gas-fired power station to turn on somewhere.”
…
To solve this crisis, the UK needs to build more large-scale battery storage sites, which help harness renewable electricity, which is nine times cheaper than natural gas under current prices.
…
Read more: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1691983/energy-crisis-uk-wasting-million-energy-wind-farm-turn-off-kona-battery-bills
Batteries are impossibly expensive, so we’re more likely to see a flock of flying pigs than sufficient investment in batteries to make a significant difference to the renewable “constraint payment” problem.
There was some talk the British Government was going to cap payouts to green energy providers under Prime Minister Liz Truss, though I have no idea whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intends to continue the effort to curb green excesses. Liz Truss was replaced by Rishi Sunak after just 50 days in office.
The rational thing to do would be to halt the expansion of wind and solar energy until a solution is found. But if British politicians were behaving rationally about renewable energy, this problem would never have arisen in the first place.
I suspect this uncontrolled cash haemorrhage will continue until the consumer pain becomes unbearable, and Britain is forced to embrace the “Spanish solution” – an abrupt end to the favourable treatment of renewable energy providers.
Alex, I’ll take “British Politicians will wait for the “Spanish Solution” disaster scenario” for a billion pounds per year, please (and don’t pay me in bitcoins).
Not sure about the effect on E-currency but if inflation continues as it has, driven unabated by the skyrocketing cost of energy likely spurned by the intermittency of politically correct energy generation, the British Pound will need to be revaluated into Ounces
“It’s not just the cost of paying wind farms to turn off, but it’s also the cost of paying the gas-fired power station to turn on somewhere.”
Sounds like the grid isn’t managing out its basic task of carrying electricity to where it is needed.
It also sounds to me like this chap from Kona has a battery to sell.
Upgrading the interconnector to export the excess power would also be a sensible solution, as is being done with the surpluses in S Australia.
A lot of the wind capacity is up in Scotland, but most demand is in England.
We would need to spend tens of billions on new transmission networks to match supply and demand. It is not the grid’s fault, the error was made in building the wind capacity in Scotland in the first place.
Ditto exporting the excess power. It still needs to be transmitted from Scotland down to the interconnectors we already have in England
Is Scotland where the wind is? We have that problem here as well. The best wind is far away from the load.
I would say it is not surprising that where there is a lot of wind, and constant wind necessary for wind turbines, there will not be a lot of people settling down for good. How many cities do you see where the wind is always blowing? “Wind Alley” in West Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas runs through the middle of NOWHERE.
“We would need to spend tens of billions on new transmission networks”
You are spending a lot more on fuel. In Victoria 40 years ago, when Hazlewood was young, we had a big surplus capacity of coal off-peak power that couldn’t be used. So the state government persuaded Alcoa to build a huge aluminium smelter at Portland, and built a 500 kV power line over about 350 km to carry the power. This later became the basis of the interconnector to SA. They had to not only pay for the line but give a favorable price. But they deemed it worth it. Glasgow to Manchester is about 350 km.
That interconnector also keeps the lights on in Adelaide when the variable output from wind and solar isnt enough.
Everyone now considers the decision 40 year back to build the smelter 500km away from power generation was a mistake- it was a small rural town with a good port
And of course the 2 day complete blackout was precipitated when the grid instability forced the AC interconnector to switch off suddenly.
Theres also a smaller DC interconnector from NSW grid into SA from near Mildura in states north east, but thats mainly for the rural area nearby.
It will need a lot more than a single HVAC line to connect all the wind farms to the grid , but also the backup sites for when ‘the wind dies suddenly’…. weather prediction for 12 hrs ahead isnt exact enough for power production and grid stability
I have found out that Alcoa had there own coal powered generator much closer to their now closed Pt Henry Smelter at Geelong
In addition there was a 500MW gas generator built at Mortlake beside the HV line only 100km away . This used a new gas field in the area.
They could have known the nearby gas field needed a customer
Alcoa’s small Anglesea mine/power and the Pt Henry smelter were a closed system. Alcoa didn’t send power to Portland from there. It didn’t even c ompletely supply Pt Henry.
The Mortlake gas station, adjacent to the HV line, was built much later, starting in 2008.It was built in a fit of enthusiasm about Otway Basin gas, which hasn’t really worked out. But the result was good gas and electricity connections.
Otway gas hasnt worked out ?
“An expansion drilling campaign has been underway in the offshore Otway Basin since February 2021 to maintain production levels of the Otway gas plant. The drilling campaign is expected to be completed in December 2022.”
needs newer wells fiels to maintain production. Sounds like that is working out OK
“needs newer wells fiels to maintain production. Sounds like that is working out OK”
To maintain production?
“Everyone now considers the decision 40 year back to build the smelter 500km away from power generation was a mistake”
Doubts have been expressed about whether the smelter use was worth it. But I think if you include the unforeseen utility of the line in connecting to SA, it was a good deal.
Wind farms are the newest users, who knew a long distance HVAC would be used for transferring supply .
Maybe it actually has some surplus from South Australia, which is only 275 kV
Not so long back they had to disconnect the power flow from SA….the reason unstable conditions in SA. A separation event they call it.
Which is what I assumed might happen
It is cheaper to build a transmission line for the electricity, especially when it can anticipate a high fairly constant utilisation from a smelter, than it would be to transport the coal to the coast for export or consumption there.
If only we could produce electricity directly from rain, Manchester (and most of the UK) would be self-sufficient
What do you do if nobody wants the surplus Nick? How many days worth of battery capacity does SA have?
The battery capacity isn’t the only issue. An executive in the company that owns the Moss Landing battery station said that one of the challenges with Moss Landing is that it turns out that there periods where – after the battery discharges power to make up for shortfalls – there isn’t enough excess power capacity afterwards to recharge the battery for weeks because the transmission capacity just doesn’t have enough excess capacity over demand. So additional investment to expand transmission capacity is needed on top of the super expensive battery.
That problem should have been understood and taken care of during a system architectural phase. Designing a complex system such as a power grid using the piecemeal approach with components thrown together based strictly on politics, greed and incompetence and expecting to make it work is the ultimate in insanity.
The problem that should have been understood right from the start is that the worse-than-useless wind and solar is intermittent, unreliable, unpredictable, and inconsistent, and therefore ill-suited for supplying electric power in a modern society.
The solution, of course, being to build coal, gas or nuclear power stations and avoid the absolute mess created by attempting to power a high density energy world with low density energy sources that can’t be depended on.
When they talk of excess , they probably mean ultra cheap off peak rates .
But also sounds like the recharging , even off peak may be causing grid stability problems- the reverse of what batteries can do when they are needed to supply shortfalls
Minutes instead of days with their Musk led project.
Last I looked, a Tesla battery costs $152 per kwh stored.
When you scale that price up to grid level requirements, it gets ugly.
UK annual electricity consumption is around 333 terawatt-hours = 333 billion kilowatt-hours.
1 day storage for the entire system would thus require at least 900 million kilowatt-hours; times $152 =$137 billion.
The problem, of course, is that there are weeks and even months where wind delivers far less than “expected”. Texas had a 6 week period from August to September 2022 where wind production was 15% of expected for the entire period…
And even once you have paid this off – the batteries have to be replaced.
I really wonder if these battery pack systems have a 20 year lifespan even.
In the summer and early autumn of 2021 a long period of low wind speeds badly affected wind generation in the UK and across Europe.
In the UK Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) said its wind turbines produced 32% less power than expected during the April – September period.
If batteries were free, it would still be too expensive. The site prep, labor, enclosures, overcurrent protection, switchgear, fire suppression and more costs $200 kWh, $200,000 mWh, 100 hours of storage $200,000 x 100 =$20,000,000. A typical conventional generating station is 1,000 mW=$20 billion for <5 days of storage, BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED! Wake up, it’s never going to happen, forget it, get over it, move on! ($40 billion with batteries).
“$200,000 mWh”
Milliwatt hour?
For best long term storage, LiIon batteries need to be kept at 60% charge. And you shouldn’t discharge them below either 20% or 10%, depending on who you talk to. In either case, you have at best 40% of your battery capacity available to power the grid. You need to at least double that $137 billion.
Expecting Lithium ion grid batteries to go the distance is questionable.
If that much lithium ignites, the toxic clouds will be more dangerous than many volcanoes.
And just imagine the uncontrollable fire when those batteries spontaneously combust
The you PAY other people to take your unwanted electricity which then causes problems for other generators who – strangely – can’t compete with that.
Two days ago the UK was exporting at 5GW, peaking at 5.2GW, at prices that were as low as minus £76/MWh for eight hours overnight. The low prices were necessary because there was a similar glut of wind power on the Continent, and the costs of curtailment there were being paid by British consumers. Meanwhile wind farms on CFDs were being paid the full strike price by way of subsidy, with those on ROCs also collecting their full subsidies. There was not more curtailment in the UK because our subsidies are more generous.
That is not good business, and expanding it would be even less good business.
One point your answer does illustrate is the enormous additional costs of transmission incurred by rising investment in wind, with the prospect of low utilisation of the assets and the need for subsidy in their use. These costs should properly be added to the cost of wind generation when making economic evaluations. The cost of curtailment on the Continent plus the cost of transmission to the Continent from the originating wind farms all has to be subsidised.
A point you did not cover was that much of the curtailment was required to give adequate volumes of inertia providing generation on the grid. This becomes essential when the main contingency risk is loss of an interconnector via a trip, an all too frequent event.
You are such a f*cking idiot.
Be nice!
It’s hard to be nice when you are watching civilization itself circling the drain.
The way I read that comment is it was nice.
Direct maybe, still family friendly, nice and short to someone shucking and jiving with red herring strawmen trying to avoid having to answer straight forward questions.
No.
Just wave a magic wand Nick,
The Beauly-Denny link which brings wind generarated electricity from Northern Scotland to Central Scotland and cost in excess of £600 million to build for 137 miles. Connecting Hornsea 2 to the UK grid will cost even more.
But the main problem is that when the UK is windy so are Norway, Denmark, Northern Germany (but usually all Germany),and Northern France. Funnily enough when there’s no wind in the UK these same places have low wind too. All these wondeful cheap electricity off shore wind “farms” cost a King’s Ransom to connect to anywhere on top of their not so cheap build costs.
The German dumping of excess wind into Poland was not welcome by the Polish grid.
You don’t have to accept that power. A couple of big ground rods can get rid of it…..
Oh great. Then you end up with mutated, and angry, earthworms. End of civilization.
It costs money and energy to transport electricity long distances.
It also requires the building of more power lines. All of which wouldn’t be necessary if we weren’t building unusable wind and solar.
Interconnecting transmission lines have line losses. ~15% loss is typical. That sort of losses makes it unrealistic to expect that interconnectors are a complete solution, even if there is excess power available.
1-2% of energy is lost during the step-up transformer from when the electricity is generated to when it is transmitted.2-4% of energy is lost in the transmission lines1-2% of energy is lost during the step-down of the transform from the transmission line to distribution.4-6% of energy is lost during the distribution
And on top of this we get Net Zero Emissions NZE with “Fossil Fuel Starvation FFS” tagged on; so the grid won’t be able to back up supply when the Wind DOESN’T BLOW. A double whammy.
These politicians are determined to make our lives miserable. AND SOMHOW WE VOTED FOR THESE PEOPLE. Or did we?
In the UK we did vote for them as we, apart from the unnecessary increase in postal voting, turn up and put pencil to paper and stick in a locked box which is not opened until the polls closed and is then counted by human beings overnight. A very simple and reliable system which is not tolerated by the DemoTwats as it can’t be rigged.
The sad point is that we have no other choice to vote for and you can’t persuade the 99% moron element in the electorate that they should shun the election to show their contempt for the main parties so nothing changes.
Too much? As I write, wind is producing 17.31% of demand, which is quite good as most of the time it barely scrapes into double figures. Gas is picking up the slack as usual at 51.02%. I have witnessed it as low as 0.52% (March 28 2022 @ 12:50PM)
I thought the idea of all these underwater interconnecting cables between the UK and Europe was so that we could sell unwanted electricity to our neighbours? No? Perhaps it only works when they can sell us expensive electricity when we aren’t producing enough? Funny old world.
The bottle-neck is on the Scottish borders, not the south coast.
RE
The South East is also bottlenecked. That is why the Grid paid almost £10,000/MWh to Belgium, nominally to keep SE London supplied, but in reality it was to allow maximum export to France a couple of months ago at a time of higher demand. There are two alternative routes to move power from NEMO to IFA1 and Eleclink, one via Canterbury, and the other more directly. The grid is really designed only to handle imports on the interconnectors at present. There are many projects to expand capacity.
When Britain (England and Wales) rolls out SMRs, the Scots can keep the wind all to themselves as they are anti-nuclear they will be relying on wind to power their nation, good luck with that.
It’s about time we had a national-level 100% wind/solar grid pilot project. When it crashes and burns, maybe then it’ll wake Green fanatics up from their NetZero fever dream.
GRID-SCALE BATTERY SYSTEMS IN NEW ENGLAND TO COUNTERACT SHORTFALL OF ONE-DAY WIND/SOLAR LULL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/grid-scale-battery-systems-in-new-england
EXCERPT:
Wind Systems Paired with Grid-Scale Battery Systems
Grid-scale battery systems are increasingly paired with wind systems to reduce the adverse effects on grid stability, due to the variability of wind output, MW. During gusty wind conditions, the output of a wind system has large variations, which could adversely impact the stability of frequency and voltage of the grid.
For example, a utility, or grid operator, may require a 30 MW wind system have an output variability not exceeding 2 MW/min, up or down, to maintain grid voltage and frequency variations within prescribed ranges. See URL.
The battery systems must be capable of charging and discharging to meet the utility-required ramp rates, while also not overheating the batteries.
Overheating would shorten the battery useful service life, and may cause fires, that burn at high temperatures and take a long time to extinguish.
NOTE: The same holds true regarding overheating of EV batteries, in case of 1) fast charging at a charging station, and 2) fast discharging during accelerating and going uphill, and 3) frequent “range driving”, such as make long trips every day, all of which would increase the likelihood of overheating/damage/fires, especially during hot summer days and cold winter days.
NOTE: This NREL report mentions above issues. NREL is a government, pro-wind entity, which tends to see wind through rosier glasses than private enterprise.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/59003.pdf
Solar Systems Paired with Grid-Scale Battery Systems
Variable clouds are the main reason for rapid changes of solar output, in addition to the normal daily cycle. See image
Solar output may decrease by 60% within a few seconds, due to a cloud passing over solar systems.
The time taken for the cloud to pass is dependent upon cloud height, sun elevation and wind speed.
These factors need to be considered regarding solar power output forecasting and integrating the variable output into the grid.
The graph shows solar output profiles for ZIP codes in California. The further north, the less solar.
For example, ZIP code 920 shows a downward spike from about 115 MW to 65 MW, or 50 MW in 10 seconds, or 300 MW/minute, at 1 pm, which would significantly affect frequency and voltage stability on the grid.
For at least a decade, California has been mandating utilities to install grid-scale battery systems on their distribution systems.
The costs of such battery systems are not charged to solar system owners to perpetuate the fantasy “solar is competitive with fossil”
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/large-scale-solar-plants-require-large-scale-battery-systems
Looking at the windfarm example the battery would have to be capable of charging and discharging at up to 30MW, but could ramp up or down by 2MW a minute, so in 15 minutes it could be back to doing nothing. On average it would need to operate at 15MW over the 15 minutes of ramping, charging or discharging about 4MWh. The battery duration required, even covering for closely spaced repeat events is not going to cover for more than an hour, and certainly not a day’s wind lull, which would require 720MWh to be charged up when it started. Now try a fortnight of Dunkelflaute.
The solar chart is a wonderful illustration of intermittency. But again the duration required to cover these high ramp rate events is quite short. Time shifting peak output to sundown uses rather more, and is borderline economic in some areas. Providing an interseasonal capability is a whole different ball of wax.
Battery systems are rated for delivering a power level of, say 10 MW for 4 hours = 40 MWh, as AC, at battery voltage, from 100% full to 0% full. The battery likely would be about 60 to 70% full, when a wind down ramp occurred.
A maximum 2 MW downward wind ramp is allowed by the utility; if exceeded, wind output curtailment would be required, by feathering the blades. The battery discharge would be 2 MW/min x 3 minutes = 6 MWh, if the down ramp lasts 3 minutes.
Roundtrip battery system losses, A-to-Z basis, are about 18% for new li-ion systems, 20% or more, for older systems
The MW and MWh of the battery system would be based on the capacity of the wind system, MW
On average, the battery should be charging and discharging to always maintain a certain charge level to be ready for any up and down wind ramp.
In Hawaii, several battery systems caught fire, because they were charging and discharging too rapidly, i.e., they were undersized and did not have adequate cooling systems.
I think you missed coverting minutes to hours. 3 mins is 0.05 hours.
My calculations assumed a worst case instantaneous switch between zero and maximum generation or vice versa by the wind farm.
You are right.
It should be 2 MW x 3 minutes/60 = 0.6 MWh, delivered by the battery, as AC at battery voltage, during a ramp down of wind output.
The battery is quickly counteracting the ups/downs of wind output to maintain grid stability, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365
It takes a lot of batteries to be able to absorb 30MW without over heating.
And heavy duty cooling systems to exhaust that heat to outside.
And an army of firemen/women to watch the fire burn
ROCs are another Green skam.
(Renewable Obligation Certificates)
In the UK renewables are subsidised through the ROC and CFD subsidy systems, where fossil fuel generators and suppliers must purchase ROCs and CFDs from renewable generators – as a penalty for being ‘dirty’.
This provides distortions in the market, because renewable energy can be sold as renewable energy, but in addition ROCs can also be sold as renewable energy, seemingly doubling renewable supplies. So half of the Green energy in the UK is not Green at all, it is an accounting skam.
Most of the Green Energy sold in the UK is declared to be Green because the electricity supplier has bought Italian ROCs, and yet electricity in Italy is also claimed to be Green. It is clearly a distorted market. Who is accounting for these Italian ROCs? Is this a Mafioso skam? And where do all the UK ROCs go to?
I noticed a problem, because nearly every electricity supplier in the UK is advertising that they are 100% renewable, which is simply not possible. There is a skam going on here, and someone needs to look into this.
Ralph
Do not confuse ROCs, which are designed to ensure that retailers must buy output from the generators entitled to them while providing handsome subsidies, with REGOs, Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin, which are internationally tradable. It is REGOs that allow a solar farm in India to cash in on greenwash vanity. They were increasing in value. The most recent data I can find shows that they are worth up to £8.50/MWh – a significant addition to consumer bills. Part of the reason for the escalation in price (they used to be a few pence per MWh ) is because OFGEM is threatening to disallow some of the overseas sources.
In Europe it is ROCs or now CFDs that are traded as a currency of Greenness.
Every fossil fuel generator must purchase a certain number of ROC-CFDs, to justify their ‘dirty’ energy production. It is a method of draining money from fossil fuels, and subsidising renewables.
My research was a couple of years ago, but I doubt anything has changed.
R
You can read about the role of REGOs here
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-and-social-schemes/renewables-energy-guarantees-origin-rego/energy-suppliers
You can read about CFDs here.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference/contract-for-difference
You can read about ROCs and REGOs here
https://www.edfenergy.com/large-business/sell-energy/rocs-regos
I am presuming that REGOs are a successor to the ROC. It appears to say that the REGO must be sold WITH the green electricity. If this is so, then this is an improvement.
Perhaps this is due to my complaint to parliament, about wind farms doubling the amount of electricity they produce (on paper) by selling the electricity and ROCs separately.
This is how UK suppliers were all using Italian ROCs to ‘prove’ they had green electricity. Quite obviously they were not using Italian electricity – only Italian ROCs.
R
REGOs are applicable to all renewables generation, regardless of any other subsidy mechanism it may enjoy.
REGOs are what Shell Energy use to be able to lie that they provide 100% renewable energy when even the information on their website shows how little is actually produced especially as everyone makes the same claim.
If the UK goes all renewable, then we will need 18,000 gwh of backup energy, to allow for unreliable renewables (probably pumped storage systems). But at present we only have 10 gwh (the Dinorwig plant).
But remember that Dinorwig was the most expensive power station in the world – because the Greeneys insisted it was built INSUDE a mountain. We need to cost in that missing 17,990 gwh of backup (which will cost £trillions), before saying renewables are cheap. And these backup storage systems will take decades to build. And where will we put them??
And if we run out of electricity and heating during a cold winter anticyclone, there will be no food, water, sew.erage, petrol, transport etc. So we will probably loose hundreds of thousands of people, just in one winter. And we will have ten or twenty of those devastating winters, before these backup systems are completed.
Ralph
The UK has nearly 5GW of hydro capacity including 2.7GW pumped storage. Dinorwig is just under 1.8GW. Other pumped storage Cruachan, Ffestiniog, Foyers and Sloy(being convertes) the the rest of pumped storage. Cruachn is inside a mountain, Sloy has four large pipes down the side of the mountains on Loch Lomond side as far as I can remember sure about the rest.
The problem as with wind is that the most suitable locations for large (huge?) pumped storage systems are in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon might be keen to make Scotland an even bigger supplier of clean renewable energy But will the population be happy with Wind and Pumped storage across the Highlands? Who knows, but with more pylons for transmission it might be a difficult sell. Transmission underground is not a problem free alternative, HVAC has capacitance issues and HVDC requires conversion at both ends. Both leading to losses and costs.
Your data is meaningless, as energy storage is measured in gwh rather than gw. Dinorwig contains 10 gwh of energy, before it runs out of water. And it is not a hydro power source, it is a pumped storage unit.
I doubt that the UK has a further 2.5 gw of hydro, as hydro is barely visible in the energy graphs. Plus pure hydro is not classed as Green energy, because it destroys environments.
See the Drax energy plots – hydro never goes above 0.6 gw.
https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=1-month&start=2022-10-12&&_k=avvnss
So my analysis remains correct.
The UK needs 18,000 gwh of energy storage to guarantee renewables reliability, but has less than 15 gwh. Renewables will never be reliable, until we build another 17,985 gwh of storage.
R
A lot of the hydro in Scotland is small scale, connected to the local grid rather than to the national transmission grid. As such, its use is not reported at grid level on a real time basis, in the same way as they miss rooftop and even field solar, industry’s on site backup (usually diesel) generation, and other small scale embedded generation from wind, anaerobic digesters, etc.
Having said that, average hydro utilisation is typically not very high at around 30%, constrained by rainfall upstream. Much of it is used for peak lopping, where it gets better prices.
Overall pumped storage capacity is about 27GWh across the various sites. It will more than double when the 1.5GW, 30GWh Coire Glas project is completed. It is rare for pumped storage to be used at close to capacity, although perhaps unseen in the generation figures it can be used at high rates of overnight pumping to help soak up wind surpluses and provide grid inertia on windy nights. Its benefit is its rapid flexibility for helping to stabilise grid fluctuations from renewables. At least half of Dinorwig’s storage is kept as a black start reserve so operationally it flexes on much less capacity.
Dinorwig often runs to capacity.
Capacity in gwh, not gw.
The pond often empties.
R
Thanks for the info – it’s amazing how the Green-minded have built this overly complicated “Rube-Goldberg” energy machine.
It won’t be reliable even then; having all that storage provides no guarantee of sufficient generation to have the “storage” full enough, and at the right times, for every time the whims of the weather don’t cooperate.
If the UK goes all renewable, the UK will go dark. Just like anywhere that goes “all renewable.”
North Korea, here we come!
If there was a real and “rational” price put on carbon, this would not be a problem.
“Rational” meaning that power produced using carbon-based sources is priced at the real cost-of-emitted-carbon. Of course, that would lead to years and years and years of full employment for lawyers, analysts, accountants, scientists, engineers and others.
It would also lead, eventually, to building enough nuclear power plants to supply the world’s expected demand for electricity — which we were on the cusp of doing several decades ago.
“….the real cost of emitted carbon….” But what about the benefits of using fuel ? And just what are the supposed costs ? If it’s reduced lifespan, we live longer than ever, if it’s Climageddon, a couple of degrees warmer is just milder weather…etc…
The “cost of carbon” is negative – the more it is used the more its society benefits.
On the other hand, wind and solar have brought grief and suffering, energy poverty to areas that have championed its use.
A real and “rational” price on carbon would be negative. Offsetting even the most lurid fantasies of “harm” to the “climate” from WARMING (which is 180 degrees wrong to begin with; a warmer climate is BETTER, not worse) are COLOSSAL benefits which are being ignored.
There IS NO “cost of carbon (dioxide)” – there are massive BENEFITS of carbon (dioxide).
Stop playing their stupid game.
It is not about producing electricity, it is about forcing leftist, anti-human ideology up everyone’s ass. Morons.
Totally agree. Like most organized religions, the climate cult ideology is all about getting total control of the people and their money for the leaders of the cult. The ideology is really nothing more than a scam to separate the rubes from their hard-earned, in most cases, funds to enrich a few based on hot air. Similar to circuses and carnivals and snake oil salesmen of days gone by.
Wake up, morons.
All religions are just a scam to control people? Do you have proof of this?
The atheists coming out of the woodwork to throw stones at organized religion, especially at the Catholic Church, is really grating since it is atheist socialist ideology, with its misanthropic core, is what has infected organized religion not the other way around.
I remember that under Pope Benedict’s helm, there were official statements that criticized the green fascination, especially how it pretends to care about only non-human life forms, and actually seems to hate people.
In the case of the Klimate Kult they are far more like the Anti-Christ religion. They want to “Change the world”, unfortunately they want to change us…
From a world of surplus food to a world of starving masses
…by eliminating nitrogen fertilizer production
From a world of surplus energy to a world of energy impoverished
…by eliminating fossil fuel extraction and mining
From a world of booming economy to a world of financial impoverishment
…by rampant inflation from failed energy policy
From a world of Billions to a population of about a Hundred Million
…of their own choosing
From a world of prosperity to a world of adversity
The rational thing to do would be to halt the expansion of wind and solar energy until a solution is found.
No the rational thing to do is to cease dumping practices by solar and wind to the long term detriment of consumers who need dispatchable power at the correct voltage and frequency.
That could be done at the stroke of a pen requiring all tenderers of electrons to the communal grid to only provide such electrons they can reasonably guarantee 24/7/365 or keep them for their own use. Up to the fickle weather dependents to decide if they want to partner with dispatchables or invest in storage to lift their average tender but we could all guess which would be more economic for them.
This pretty clearly seems to be curtailed electricity.
A billion pounds a year does seem high; the latest data that I can access publicly is from 2015 – curtailment amount was “only” 1.277 million megawatt-hours.
The curtailment amount has certainly increased since then, but even so a billion pounds a year seems high. Texas curtails around 12 million megawatt-hours a year but pays “only” about $250 million a year.
Over the past year curtailed volumes in the UK have been 2.7TWh, as you can see here.
https://www.ref.org.uk/constraints/indexbymth.php
We have had a summer of well below normal performance of wind, so with more normal weather we would have seen larger numbers. Curtailment will now start to grow quadratically as the surpluses in hours of low demand are added to by increased capacity, and as more hours start to see surpluses. The ability to dump surpluses abroad may also become constrained, further increasing curtailment.
Thanks for the info. 2.7TWh = 2.7 million megawatt-hours, so curtailment has more than doubled in 6 years.
Given this and even assuming much higher wholesale electricity prices (Texas averaged around $22/MWh in 2021), it seems very likely that the 1 billion pound figure is because the costs of peaker electricity production during times of shortages is lumped in with curtailment payments in times of excess.
And this doesn’t surprise me. While Texas’ funds for “curtailment” – include payments for peakers – this typically isn’t that much relatively speaking. However, in 2021 Winter Storm Uri caused the infamous outages. That event alone caused $600M of peaker pricing paid; overall Texas’ “curtailment” category payments exceeded $2B.
You can see that the direct payments for curtailment totalled £243m over the last 12 months. So the £750m of balancing cost is probably for something like 2TWh at an average of £375/MWh. Some of the curtailment would not have been replaced. Some of the balancing prices run to over £4,000/MWh. Getting detail on this is beyond my level of access to data.
ONLY?! Why should electric rate payers have to pay an effing nickel?!
Paying people to produce nothing, or to produce nothing useful, just results in more people that produce nothing, or produce nothing useful.
How do they know the power is clean? They washed it?
Funny how the eco-nuts are so gullible, so easy to believe BigGreen, but environmental assessments are required for every other possible endeavour.
UK solar Toucan Energy crashed:
Solar Energy Firm Collapses Owing British Taxpayers £655 Million
An interesting question is why, amid sky high electricity prices, the business went bankrupt. I suspect the answer lies in forward “hedge” sales of its output, perhaps involving connected parties, made at prices that were way below the actual prices that prevailed. Such sales may well have entailed providing mark to market collateral until supply was actually forthcoming. Meanwhile the big profits were being ripped off elsewhere.
Note that Toucan borrowed £655 million from a local council, Thurrock.
Thurrock (/ˈθʌrək/) is a unitary authority area with borough status and unparished area in the ceremonial county of Essex, England. It is part of the London commuter belt”
Per Wiki.
Population about 180,000, so about two thirds the size of Greensboro, N. Carolina, or Geelong, Victoria.
Auto
Ah, so bankruptcy then? Typical. Privatize the (already ill-gotten) gains, and socialize the (recognized) losses.
“To solve this crisis,…….
BUILD FREAKING COAL AND NUKE PLANTS !!!!!!!!!!!!
Can anyone tell me what the cradle to grave costs and emissions are to build, connect to the grid, maintain, decommission and dispose of an offshore wind farm compared to a gas fired power station with comparable output over a 25-year period?
Redistributive change.
The Green blight. What is the excess capacity to demand ratio?
9 times cheaper (aka 1/9 the cost)?
I suspect that this ‘cheap’ wind power doesn’t include any of the additional infrastructure needed to make it as reliable as FF generation.
Am I wrong?
Nor does it include reliable back-up
This is another proof, if one were needed, of how fallacious it is to use the Levelized Cost of Elecricity (LCOE) as the way of comparing wind or solar with conventional or nuclear generation.
LCOE takes the net present value of all cash flows of a wind or solar installation over the life of that installation. It then divides this total by the amount of power generated over the installation life. So you get a parameter which is NPV per unit of production.
You do the same for a conventional or nuclear plant and arrive at a similar figure. When advocates do the sums like this, they end up claiming that renewables are lower cost.
But….
Typically when calculating LCOE transmission and backup are ignored. The hidden assumption is therefore that intermittency either does not exist or is not a commercially important factor in supply. It is like a lettuce supplier (perhaps a green, organic, environmentally correct one) saying to a supermarket chain that it doesn’t matter when it delivers lettuces. It reserves the right to deliver a weeks worth on Sunday and then none for the next week, and so on. And the activist claim is that this is perfectly comparable to a supplier who delivers the same number week-in and week-out.
Then there’s transmission. Because the wind farms are far away from the point of use, someone has to build transmission networks to get the power to where its used. This too is always left out of LCOE. This, in the lettuce example, is like a supplier saying that the lettuce is on his farms, all the supermarket has to do is collect it. The activist claim in this case is that this is commercially comparable to a supplier who delivers to the stores on the times and in the quantities ordered.
There is now a third cost due to intermittency which is being left out. That is the cost of constraint payments. What happens here is that peak production comes at a time when there is no demand, so the buyer pays the supplier not to deliver. In the lettuce example, this would be like the supplier being paid not to deliver the huge load of lettuce he has available for Sunday, because there is neither demand for it nor space to store it. You will look in vain in LCOE estimates for any provision for constraint payments.
How do people get away with this? And why do intelligent and quantitatively oriented people like Nick Stokes on these pages still claim that LCOE is a proper method of comparing the costs of conventional versus renewable?
It is probably because they have never educated themselves on financial investment appraisal, and they indulge in arm-waving that they would never tolerate in their own subject of expertise. You see this in Nick’s comments in this thread. For instance:
Upgrading the interconnector to export the excess power would also be a sensible solution…
“We would need to spend tens of billions on new transmission networks”
You are spending a lot more on fuel.
Doubts have been expressed about whether the smelter use was worth it. But I think if you include the unforeseen utility of the line in connecting to SA, it was a good deal.
This is financial appraisal and argument at the level of literary criticism. Get a copy of Brealey and Myers and do a proper financial analysis.
Include all the costs, constraint payments, intermittency backup so the products which are being costed are comparable, transmission to get the product delivered to the same locations.
I have never seen an analysis like this, not even seen one pointed to, and doubt that any of the activists have ever done one. And am pretty sure that if you do one, renewables will turn out more expensive. Nick however thinks that there will be fuel costs savings, and that these will be high enough to make all the difference. Fine, produce the case and lets see it.
Its an opportunity for Nick. Just get a copy of Brealey and Myers and do one. Otherwise, assertions about costs comparisons are like a literature major considering two bridge designs and saying casually, well, I should think the lighter girders will do fine, and they are a lot cheaper.
What is not being mentioned is that a wind farm that is receiving payments not to generate is free to generate and sell the electricity off the grid. So it gets paid twice which is what is happening in Scotland. And if you thought this lunacy could not get any worse, some of the power goes to spin a giant wheel that is a bit like the rotor of a generator except that this consumes energy instead of generating it. This thing is to provide inertial stabilisation of the grid which was available free of charge from power stations before. Small wonder our standing charges are increasing so much.