From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
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There are increasingly strong signs that European gas prices are back to pre-war lows and may stop that way. [TTF is the European benchmark]. As Timera explain, part of the reason is demand destruction in Europe and Asia, with gas replaced by coal and slowing economic growth in China. Gradually as well LNG capacity is starting to expand.
Catalyst Digital Energy, the UK energy consultants, agree, with day ahead UK prices down to 178p/therm at the end of December.
Naturally this has an effect on consumer prices for gas, but there is also an effect on power prices too, and these are back down to £160/MWh on the wholesale market.
You will recall the many references a few months ago to the claim that gas power is now nine times as expensive as wind power. As was pointed out at the time, this was based on a very short spike in gas prices in August. For most of last year gas was much cheaper than that.
And now that market prices for gas are back to 2021 levels, gas-fired power is actually very competitive with wind power again. Let’s crunch a few numbers.
178p/therm equates to £60/MWh. With a fuel efficiency of 53%, this means that the fuel cost for every megawatt of electricity generated is £113.
BEIS levelised costs for CCGT work out at £85/MWh, but this includes a carbon cost of £32, which is not a cost at all, but a tax. So if we add CAPEX and operating costs to the above £113/MWh, we get a total cost of £126/MWh:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/beis-electricity-generation-costs-2020
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The renewable lobby always want to compare against the CfD prices for offshore wind farms that have not been built. But this is utterly irrelevant, not least because there is no evidence that they will be able to actually fulfil those prices. No, it is the existing tranche of wind farms which we should be comparing.
And according to the Low Carbon Contracts Company database, the average strike price for offshore wind is currently £166/MWh. In any sane energy market, we would be buying up all of the gas generation before we took any offshore wind power. We don’t, of course, because the subsidy mechanism means that renewables get preferential access to the market first. ( As wind farms on the CfD scheme receive a guaranteed strike price, they can give away their electricity for free, in the knowledge that they will still receive their guaranteed income.)
Offshore wind farms subsidised by ROCs costs even more, They receive about £100/MWh in subsidy on top of the market price of the electricity they sell, meaning they currently earn well over £200/MWh.
The Low Carbon Contracts data confirms that power prices are falling back. In the first twelve days this month, the only data they so far have, the average market price earned by wind farms was £110/MWh. With an average strike price of £166/MWh this means that offshore wind generators are now being subsidised again vis the CfD scheme. There was of course a great deal of publicity a few months ago when, for a few short months, they returned money to consumers. I suspect we will nothing from the renewable lobby this time!
This article makes the bizarre assumption that wind power can be compared with gas-fired power. The intermittency of wind power renders it utterly useless for powering an electricity grid.
I think we all know that.
The author certainly does, he’s always writing about the issues
Wind power is a niche solution for those wealthy enough to live in remote off grid locations! It will ALWAYS be too expensive due to its low energy density and intermittency! We would not be having this discussion if corrupt politicians were not able to reward their wealthy friends an donors with subsidies!!
Resorting to outdated technologies will always be a solution for Marxists; think how many “green jobs” you can produce by forcing all your political opponents onto farm gulags!
Windmills should only be in museums.
Greene’s Iron Law of Bird and Bat Shredders (windmills)
(Nobel Prize pending, or at least a participation trophy)
One windmill + no wind = no electricity
Oe bazillion windmills + no wind = no electricity
If the US hired Communist China to redesign our electric grids, they’d recommend lots of windmills and solar panels. The better to promote even more US manufacturing outsourcing to China! And they’ll even sell us Chinese made solar panels for a good price!
Hiring China to redesign our electric grids would not be popular, so we did the next best thing: We have leftist politicians and bureaucrats redesigning our electric grids, which were not broken, and didn’t need to be fixed. What could go wrong?
You’re in fine form today, Richard.
Thanks. I use the Floyd R. Turbo style of debating.
Yesterday I launched a new blog, to replace my three previous blogs. I wanted to spend more time reading about climate science and energy, and less time on other subjects.
No one knew my new blog address yesterday soi I had to write comments all over the place, that I hope made sense, and I left my new blog address with the comments.
I’m thankful there will be 1,000 page views in the first two days for the new blog. I want to spread my lists of recommended climate and energy articles as a public service. We are losing the climate propaganda battle to those pesky leftists. If a good article anywhere allows comments, I intend to complement every author / article that I recommend.
My blogs were always free, with no ads, and no donations ever asked for. If some rich person would send me a $10,000 check, I would tear it up to avoid bias. … And if you believe that. would you like to buy my 25% share of the Brooklyn Bridge?
Honest Climate Science and Energy
At this very moment 14% of the energy produced to power my home comes from wind. That is infinitely more than 0% (useless). I suspect what you actually meant to say is that the intermittency of wind creates a limitation on this source.
Are you sure? The contribution of wind varies enormously by region. Check that out here (scroll down to the map):
https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/
Yes. I am certain. I went to the MISO grid real-time operations page. As of right now the wind contribution is 13%.
MISO is a big area. If you live in Iowa you are much more likely to be rather more wind dependent. Wisconsin – not so much.
It’s one grid with one frequency.
So is GB. Yet it is the distribution of generators including wind farms around the system that determines what your power supply comes from. The North of Scotland has hydro and wind, and maybe Peterhead CCGT if it is running. If it is windy, it won’t be and all the supply will be wind or hydro, with a large surplus exported South. Live in Milford Haven, and your power will come pretty much 100% from Pembroke CCGT any time it is running (and it often is even when it is windy because it is about the most modern on the grid, and it is run to boost grid inertia). Surplus generation flows down the transmission lines across South Wales and into the Midlands, helping supply Birmingham.
Same thing in MISO. Iowa is carpeted in wind farms. If you live in Des Moines and it’s windy almost all your power will be wind.
Very little power can go against the bulk flow. A small amount can because the power factor is not 1, so the direction of power transmission actually reverses for a small portion of each cycle. Since the real demand is at the other end of the line from the power station or wind farm it results in heating the line and reduced transmission efficiency.
You say: “…at this very moment 14% of the energy produced to power my house comes from wind.” Is that 14% 24 hours a day? Does the 14% vary throughout the day? If it varies does that mean the supply to your house varies? If the supply to your house doesn’t vary how is it stabilized?
Yes. Wind energy and thus contribution to whole supply varies throughout the day. Yes. The energy to my house (and other customers) varies throughout the day as well. The supply to my house (and other customers) is stabilized first by the power grid’s inertia since it has instant response and second by the controlled increase/decrease in the output of the system which has a delayed response. Wind turbines, if used correctly, can actually enhance the stability of the power grid especially if they are deployed with the newer synthetic/virtual inertia technologies.
What powers the power grid’s inertia?
Angular momentum, capacitors, batteries, etc. It is basically anything that responds instantly to perturbations in the frequency.
What about the other 86%? You know the part that isn’t wind. That is where you get stability.
You get stability from any supply unit that acts quickly on frequency disturbances. A properly equipped wind turbine generator (WTG) can contribute to a better frequency disturbance response curve vs a system with only synchronous responses. Most WTGs are equipped with inertial response control systems. They are sometimes referred to as synthetic inertia though that is a little misleading since the inertia is still in the form of angular momentum like it is with synchronous turbines. The difference is that synchronous turbines respond to the supply-load imbalance only whereas the asynchronous turbines can be artificially controlled and tuned at any time. Wind farms are now being outfitted with cooperative frequency response systems that coordinates the storage and release of rotational energy in the farm as a whole. In this manner you can either choose to have a quick high magnitude response or a slow low magnitude response depending on the overall goal and how you want to coordinate the individual WTGs in the farm. The other 86% does not have this ability (except maybe solar, but that is a whole other topic).
No the stability comes from the 86%. If the wind isn’t blowing you can have all the do dads on the wind turbines you want, no wind no power.
Yes. The other 86% has inertia too. If wind isn’t blowing the other resources are dispatched instead. This potentially results in a decrease of the stabilizing benefits of the synthetic inertia that WTGs provide.
BTW…the context of your post leads me to believe you’re not wanting to discuss grid stability but future (day-ahead and beyond) resource allocation, dispatching, and planning instead. Is that correct?
Yep, until we had wind and solar on the grid, we NEVER had grid or frequency stability, ALWAYS.
The grid still had inertial stability sans wind. It was just the synchronous form. It worked well and still does today. The only thing you’re missing out without wind is the potential for controlled and tuned synthetic inertia.
The mechanical inertia in a wind farm is very low. Remember that inertia is proportional to the square of angular velocity. At full tilt, a turbine does about 20 rpm, and less at lower wind speeds. Bigger turbines are slower, limited by tip speed. A traditional generator is spinning at 3,600 rpm reliably. Turbine blade mass is kept down, so the only feature in its favour is blade length.
No-one would seriously suggest trying to stabilise a grid based on turbine inertia.
The sum of the inertia of many wind turbines, say thousands in MISO, likely adds up to a significant presence.
And yet they do seriously stabilize grid frequency using WTGs. Remember, there are a lot of WTGs deployed. That in and of itself is a form of stabilizing factor since one tripping out is only a small portion of the whole. A big steam turbine can easily be several hundred MW and if that trips out you’ll see a much larger frequency excursion. Properly equipped WTGs can respond almost instantly with their synthetic inertia to smooth out the excursion.
All this Molly-Coddling of wind is for free?
You must know about 45 to 50% of the all-in LCOE of a wind turbine project consists of various financial in incentives.
THEY ARE THE REASON MANY BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ARE MADE AVAILABLE BY RICH PEOPLE, SUCH AS WARREN BUFFETT
Without these financial incentives, plus free grid expansion/augmentation, plus free additional backup/standby power plants, plus free additional grid management, plus free hazardous waste disposal during life and at end of life, plus free killing of bats and birds, including bald eagles, and whales, plus free ruining of the fishing industry, plus free sickening of people and animals with infrasound, plus free visual blight all over the place, wind is ARTIFICIALLY made to LOOK financially, etc., palatable to ratepayers and taxpayers
Sorry, you’re diving too deep into the political and policy realm. I hate politics. For that reason I’ll disengage for on that line of discussion. If you want to discuss the technical details of energy production I’m all in though.
There would be no wind, solar and battery systems without the huge, politics-inspired, financial incentives
I have an MSME, and MBA, and about 40 years of energy systems analysis experience.
Not looking at the money and the lifetime adverse environmental consequences is exactly what the rich folks want.
They have set up a PR structure to lie and cheat every which way to get their projects built and paid for.
Does your experience lead you to believe that wind power is “utterly useless”?
And how much damage to everyone’s electronics is the grid frequency variability from wind causing?
What?
14% one moment, 0% the next.
That makes it useless.
The fact that it is so variable means it doesn’t prevent the use of much, if any fossil fuels, since the fossil fuel plants have to be kept on hot standby waiting for the wind tho stop blowing, again.
Something that is variable is useless?
Yes, Bdgwx, a variable generator is useless, worse than useless, actually. (Just like an employee who does good work when he shows up but is chronically unreliable and sometimes wants to come in when the job site is closed for the night and he isn’t needed. This would be especially annoying if he claimed the right to be paid for his work whenever he showed up, even if he showed up when there was no work to do.)
If a wind turbine kicks a base-load gas turbine off the grid when the wind starts up, it saves the gas but the capital expenditure on the turbine is now not earning money. This makes the turbine cost more to pay back its financing because it takes longer to do it. And if interest rates are high, it may fall behind and lose money if it generates only a few days a week because wind keeps it from getting on to the grid to earn money.
Yet you can’t just junk the turbine, though, because you need it there 24 hours a day ready to cover when the wind stops. So you are paying for windmills and you are paying for the cost of money to buy the gas turbine. If you didn’t have the windmills you would be buying only the gas turbine plus the gas. There could be a sweet spot where the saving on gas is greater than the cost of money sitting idle but this needs to be empirically observed, not just assumed that money will be saved by buying more windmills..
You obviously know a lot about wind turbines. What you ignore is the effects they cause elsewhere in the system, whether the wind is blowing or not. This tells me you are a booster of wind turbines. Fine. You should believe in what you are selling. But we don’t have to.
Do you want MISO and other grid operator/coordinators to decommission their wind and hydro power units?
Just the useless wind turbines.
Thank the good Lord MISO has, till now, adequate backup/standby plants to INSTANTLY COUNTERACT THE UPS AND DOWNS OF WIND AND SOLAR 24/7/365, year after year.
The more wind, the larger the electricity quantities that need to be counteracted
Bdgwx, I did not mean to say that the intermittency of wind creates a limitation on this source. That is your bizarre interpretation of what I said.
Weather dependent power sources cannot be compared with reliable energy sources. Analysis of the electricity prices charged throughout Europe shows that the more wind and solar capacity a country has installed, the higher its price of electricity. This is caused by a combination of the subsidies for renewable energy and the gigantic costs to electricity grids resulting from the intermittency of renewable energy. The additional electricity system costs mean that intermittent sources of power like wind and solar can never be cost competitive with reliable sources of energy. This means that wind power is worse than useless. It is actually damaging to electricity grids.
In Scotland, wind turbines have also been an environmental catastrophe because of the number of birds and bats that they are killing.
The only people who support wind power are people employed by the wind industry and people who don’t understand the utter uselessness of wind power and the damage that it is causing.
You forgot the brainless brainwashed, who are herded, like sheep, by whatever foghorn blast the loudest.
So what is the general rule you apply to determine if something is “utterly useless for powering an electricity grid”? Rain is intermittent. Does that mean hydropower is “utterly useless”? Pumped water storage actually has a net negative energy output. Does that make it “utterly useless”?
If a power source makes an electricity grid more expensive or unreliable, then it is useless. Wind power does both.
Regarding expense…I get the concern. However, for my area wind is the cheapest form of energy which is why the utility companies in MISO use it so heavily (29% dispatch allocation right now). We have some of the lowest rates I’ve seen where I live. I only paid 0.08 $/kWH in December with more than half of that being on-peak usage. It would be more costly for those in my area if the utility companies in MISO abandoned wind. But each area has their own cost-benefit profile that could be different and less advantageous.
Regarding reliability…LIke I said above wind provides controllable and tunable synthetic inertia that makes it easier to respond to frequency disturbances on the grid. Properly equipped WTGs and farms increase the reliability of the grid; not decrease it.
Wind power is neither more expensive nor unreliable in my area.
Don’t hear what I’m not saying. Wind is not a panacea. It has limitations. It may not be the solution for all areas. But that does not make it useless. And I’ll point out that solar, hydropower, pumped water storage, nuclear, coal, gas, etc. all have limitations as well yet no one seriously calls them useless.
I must congratulate you for having the luck to live in the only place in the entire world where wind power has not made electricity more expensive and unreliable.
Yep.
In the UK industrial demand for electricity has fallen by 20% since the year 2000. Because of unreliables,however, generating capacity has had to increase by over 20GW to meet a significantly lower total demand and this capacity will need to increase a lot more with 40GW of offshore wind in the plans.
There are very few windy areas in the world where some amount of windmills would make sense, but generally the first windmill is overbuilding.
SEE TABLEAT THE LINK BELOW:
Nations With a High Percentage of Electricity from Wind Energy (honestclimatescience.blogspot.com)
Of course you are assuming leftists in charge want perfectly functioning electric grids. I don’t believe that is true. I believe WANT to control people and businesses, and disrupt the economy so much that fundamental transformation is possible. That transformation is from the current socialism to fascism, and last stop is Marxism. EVERY leftist decision makes sense ONLY if you realize the ultimate leftist goals.
I know this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but this is too important for me to sit back quietly, and just observe. Besides, the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality is usually only a year or two.
Daily lists of the best climate science and energy articles I’ve read, which includes this one:
Honest Climate Science and Energy
How do you explain the tens of thousands of windmills used by ranchers for their stock tanks? Do you have a better solution?
It’s the right solution in many instances.
Running an extension cord of sorts for a couple of miles is not very economical for ranchers.
Most importantly, there’s an enormous scale difference from the windmills used for these small water systems and the gigantic turbines used to generate intermittent power for the power grids. Seems like a rather silly example to bring up in this discussion.
Joe,
I believe we do ourselves no favors by being hyperbolic or exaggerating reality. For anyone to say that there are NO uses for windmills is just as disingenuous as claiming that they are a useful grid additive! Both are incorrect; and altering reality should be left to the Climastrologists!
A good off grid solution for pumping water. No batteries needed, only a large water tank. They don’t use windmills if a grid hookup is plausible.
Actually, very often they are used because a nice AC pump and hookup would get stolen! Windmills are low enough tech that most criminals don’t want them. Only hardened, career criminals like politicians use them for their grifts and cons!
If the job to be done can be done intermittently without large costs, then windmills off grid can make sense, sure. Pumping water into a reservoir or cistern would be one of them. Running a hospital ICU would not be.
What does that have to do with using windmills for an electric grid? Privately owned windmills can be used to pump groundwater from the underlying aquifer to the surface where it is stored in stock tanks for livestock.
Ranchers are free to spend their own money on themselves. They can buy windmills or solar panels, hopefully not subsidized by me. Just don’t ask for my money.
You just have to ignore the 60% of the time when the average bird and bat shredder is producing little or no electricity. … I propose strapping leftist green dreamer zealots to windmill blades to spin some sense into them.
I have a lot of experience with infrasonic sounds as a former member of a Michigan audio club, which included nationally known audio engineers.
Member designed subwoofers were in a “contest” to reproduce frequencies under 20Hz. The winner was featured in a national audio magazine article.
The bottom line is about 10% to 20% of audiophiles get nauseous from infrasonic (below 20 cycles per second) sounds, even from music.
Pulsing windmills infrasonic noises would be even worse. These low frequency windmill pulses can’ travel many miles. They are called blade pass harmonics, They are almost completely obscured by using very deceptive A-Weighted sound level pressure measurements.
Far Out: German Study Finds Pulsing Wind Farm Infrasound 20 Kilometres From Turbines – STOP THESE THINGS
Research Breakthrough: Why Pulsing, Thumping Wind Turbine Noise Is So Annoying – STOP THESE THINGS
They are not recognized as a problem because noise ordinances use an A-weighted sound meters that severely roll of bass frequencies (bass frequencies are believed to not damage hearing that much).
With A-weighting the 20Hz, and lower infrasonic frequency could be down -50dB, which is huge, and does not represent what people feel. Those infrasonic frequencies are felt rather than heard.
An honest evaluation of infrasonic frequencies requires an unweighted sound level meter, or at least C-weighting. Every do it yourself subwoofer builder knows how to measure the lowest frequencies. Not with A-Weighting.
In addition, the sound pressure inside a bedroom, particularly near a room wall, can be louder than the same sound measured outdoors. There are room bass resonances that amplify low frequency sound pressure, especially near room corners and walls. Bed usually place your ears near a wall. That’s why windmill infrasound pulses can so easily disrupt sleep.
The in-room bass resonances can be huge, so we do it yourself subwoofer builder audiophiles use parametric equalizers to reduce the bass peaks at our listening positions. I hope this is not too complicated — we audiophiles sometimes forget to just listen to the music and stop analyzing the sound quality.
Daily List of the best climate science and energy articles I read every day:
Honest Climate Science and Energy
Taking the speed of sound as 340m/sec, 20Hz has a wavelength of 17m, and a quarter wavelength of 4.25m which is right in the range of room dimensions. Quarter wavelength produces resonance in an open tube closed at the other end, demonstrated in the lab using a tall narrow graduate.
You call them bird and bat shredders, but I can assure you that this is not the limit of their usefulness:
https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/csp2.366#:~:text=Accordingly%2C%20a%20single%20turbine%20located,the%20risk%20zone%20of%20turbines.
Gas-Fired Power Is Now Cheaper Than Offshore Wind Again
And not just in cash terms, either
“”The £7 million programme, known as ECOWind, is a joint initiative led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in partnership with The Crown Estate, which manages the seabed of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The four-year programme will fund leading-edge research into how offshore wind farms affect the marine environment.
ECOWind will engage the academic community, helping to develop long-term successful relationships between:
researchers
government
industry.
https://www.ukri.org/news/addressing-the-effect-of-offshore-windfarms-on-marine-ecosystems/
Trebles all round.
fox guarding the henhouse . nothing about the effects of acoustic pollution on cetaceans and other sea life . the underwater world is a world of sound . turbines generate large amounts of acoustic disruption , especially in the low frequency range which is where cetaceans operate
Gas fired power was ALWAYS much cheaper than offshore wind, because gas fired power is not weather-dependent, not intermittent, not variable, requires no grid extension/augmentation, does not require backup/standby plants, does not kill whales, does not decimate the fishing industry, and does not require subsidies equal to about 50% of the all-in LCOE of an offshore wind project
And gas includes its own built in storage battery at source.
As if Russian gas and coal was never going to find its way onto the global market again via the likes of India and China. You can control either price or quantity but never both at the same time and leftys always struggle with that marketplace axiom.
The U.S. wants to have regime change in Russia, to divide up the country in small, easily controlled provinces, and give Europe, etc., nearly free access to Russia’s resources.
This would greatly weaken China, which now has low-cost, friendly access to Russia’s resources
This has nothing to do with democracy, four Ukraine provinces in the east, Crimea, etc.
The big tragedy is, the brainwashed Ukraine people are, thus far, are serving as willing participants to be cannon fodder to accomplish it all.
Shouldn’t Russia have just shown Ukraine that their socialism worked better for citizens than western “marketism” ?….you know, instead of rolling in the tanks….
Russia today is a very long way from socialism.
How many people _really_ understand what a fungible resource is?
Climate crazies reading this – response — “We must increase efforts to destroy gas” .
Climate crazies have a response…
“Never ones to let the flames of a culture war go unfanned, Republican politicians have waded into the argument over an imaginary plan to ban gas hobs”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/the-latest-hot-potato-gas-stoves-will-the-culture-wars-never-end
Now, it isn’t about climate or pollution, it’s about culture?
If only climate crazies were self-aware enough to realize that GangGreen is entirely anti-human and anti-life; and take the appropriate response!
Self awareness is not a virtue inherent in leftards, nor an awareness of simple reality.
slowroll,
I beileve that the first word in the first phrase of your reply is completely unnecessary! Other than that, I totally agree!
In addition to slaughtering seabirds, offshore wind may be killing whales and other marine life! It’s almost an ideal solution for murtherous hearted Climate Warriors!
Now, if they can just get it to kill poor children in the Third World, it will be perfect! Oh, wait!
Never mind!
With respects ro Paul Homewood, who does tons of fine work, gas power has always been “cheaper than wind power,” because direct price comparison between the two is akin to comparing the cost of a wind powered car with a gasoline engine “backup” when operating by wind power with a gasoline powered car just using what works all the time.
In other words, wind “pricing” is a false construct because it excludes most of the actual costs of generating RELIABLE power.
This is true, but does not detract from the headline raw numbers. I.e. Even Before [all the other costs] Wind is now more expensive than gas…
…Of course you are right., Windpower by itself is not a generator we can ascribe a cost to. we have to look at its cost overall including the cost of the gas backup.
Of cousrse no one ever does.
Good research and facts. Thank you.
The headline is wrong. Gas will always be lower cost than wind. So called wind generators are ornaments to stupidity. They are outrageously expensive and parasitic on the rest of the grid. There are very few instances where they offer any economic benefit.
Making and installing wind turbines uses more energy than they can ever recover. It would be smarter to burn some of the 4,2bn tonnes of coal China used to make them to produce electricity in the UK rather than manufacturing the ornaments. A wind turbine would need to produce for over 100 years to recover the energy that goes into making it along with the added system requirements to get dispatchable power.
Once the bits start falling off these useless machines they are no longer safe to maintain:
https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/offshore-wind-turbine-failure-prompts-calls-for-no-sail-zone
Such events will become increasingly common. Ships are old after 20 years operating life and their load cycles are less severe than wind turbines and they are easier to maintain. The head picture depicts the future of offshore wind farms – rotting hulks dangerous to any marine traffic in the area and as each on crashes down, it will be an environmental mess. Eventually the will form unnatural reefs. So one potential upside.
There can be little doubt that the UK’s energy business is not just a racket, but a government sponsored racket that the Mafia would be proud to have invented.
Pay me for generating electricity.
Pay me if I don’t.
Pay me to disconnect if there’s already enough.
F___ you, PAY ME!
You missed Pay me for generating electricity which I can then also sell on the spot market if the Grid cannot take it.
According to this article wind turbines made a difference this winter, although it seems the price for this is an unreliable grid where there’s a need to bribe customers to turn off or postpone using electrical devices. The obvious answer is to increase the supply of domestic gas production thus reducing the price without the threat of of an unstable grid from wind turbines. But it seems the lunatics have already taken over the asylum.
LCOE is Liars Cost Of Energy.
A new natural gas power plant can last up to 45 years, while windmills will need to be replaced every 15 years. LCOE never uses correct lifespan periods.
In addition, wind farms will usually be located far from cities where the electricity is needed, so will need long transmission lines, not included in LCOE.
Finally, the average windmill provides little or no electricity about 60% of the time. The remaining 40% is rarely at maximum power output, That’s why windmills need 100% natural gas backup, never included in LCOE
If you have 100% natural gas backup, you don’t need any windmills
All windmills are overbuilding (aka redundant) sources of power.
No windmills, with their unreliable power output, should ever be connected to an electric grid.
Daily list of the best climate science and energy articles I read today, and of course this one is included:
Honest Climate Science and Energy
Gas is always cheaper than wndmills and solar, as is coal and hydro and nuclear.
Real world cost model differences.
Headline is misleading the uninformed. It’s a white-pill/black-pill combination. Home windmill kits would be the way to go if you have a few acres, but government subsidies drive the prices to stupid levels.
IF that technology were forced to compete on a level field THEN it would operate more efficiently?
“Call me Dave” Cameron tried a home windmill kit. It was a disaster. His father in law does much better simply raking in rent for big units on his land.
Yep, a reported £500,000pa.
To add to the problems the grid ran out of transmission capacity to feed demand in the South and in France.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11679309/National-Grid-emergency-requests-Europe-help-avert-blackouts-south-east.html
And yesterday evening while consumers were being encouraged, through payments, to reduce their consumption to save electricity wind generators were being paid to shut down to prevent the grid being overloaded! What sort of madness is this.
Two wrong arguments do not make a right.
In the US PNW, BPA balances wind with hydro make wind a reliable source. There is also large nuke producing base load power that plans refueling outages during spring runoff.
Say 15% comes from wind and 20% from nuclear, that is 35% that is not produced with natural gas. That mitigates the price of gas.
So what coal? The coal trains are still going through on the way to China to make more wind turbines.
If it weren’t for taxpayer subsidies, there wouldn’t be any windmills.
But distribution companies typically have contracts with generators that fix their prices and levelise their costs. Hence consumers are shielded from the volatility of the market. So price drops aren’t felt for some time.