From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
A Tory mayor has urged ministers to get a grip of nationwide electricity grid problems that threaten to torpedo a £300m waste-to-power plant.
Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen warned that capacity problems across swathes of the country were putting at risk the Government’s plans to improve Britain’s energy security and cut carbon emissions.
His intervention comes as the issue threatens the viability of the proposed Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility, a massive incinerator which will generate power by burning household waste from across the North East.
The project, backed by a group of seven councils, had been scheduled to come online in 2026.
But the scheme has been thrown into doubt after the National Grid said it cannot connect the facility to the electricity network until 2031 at the earliest, when capacity upgrades will be finished.
It is just one among hundreds of projects across the UK – including a large number of renewable energy schemes – that are stuck in a growing queue due to widespread grid connection delays.
As the problem grows, ministers are being separately warned that rising costs are imperilling proposals for a £10bn wind farm scheme, and face complaints that Britain is falling behind international competitors in developing cutting-edge nuclear plants.
Mr Houchen warned that a failure to grasp red tape issues strangling the energy industry would ultimately translate into higher bills for households.
He said: “It is going to be difficult to deliver energy security – which in the medium to long term could mean lower energy prices – unless the Government gets to grips with the regulation of how the grid operates and the capacity of the grid full-stop.
“That has not just a knock-on impact for our economic prosperity, but also the Government’s targets to reach net zero by 2050.
“If you want everybody to have an electric car, at the moment the grid can’t support that. None of our energy security goals, or the net zero goals, can be achieved unless this problem with the grid is tackled.”
The lead council behind the Tees Valley incinerator scheme last week confirmed that without an agreement to export electricity – to the grid or a private buyer – the project would be unviable.
Denise McGuckin, managing director of Hartlepool Borough Council, said: “The Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility project is a vital piece of infrastructure for the North-East, which more than one and a half million people living and working across the region will rely on every day to safely and sustainably treat their general rubbish, but it will only come to fruition with a viable energy offtake.”
Ben Houchen forgot to tell us how many billions this would cost the country, and who would pay for it! (An awful lot, and electricity users).
But his comments identify a fundamental flaw in the chase for renewable energy. Schemes like Teeside’s should be made to pay for all of the extra network connections and upgrades needed. How many would be viable if that were the case?
Successive governments have simply ignored the massive cost of increasing the capacity of the grid, both at a national and local distribution level, which their policies will require. Kick the can down the road and let someone else have the problem, seems to be the motto.
Meanwhile the article goes on to report about the rising costs of offshore wind power:
Sweden’s Vattenfall plans to build the giant Vanguard and Boreas wind farms off the Norfolk coast, which would be two of the biggest so far in Britain. Analysts expect they will cost more than £10bn.
But project director Rob Anderson said surging costs are damaging the investment case and warned that the price wind developers are set to be paid for electricity under government-backed contracts might not be enough.
He said: “While we’re ready to press the button, these challenges are making it difficult.”
Vattenfall has yet to take a final decision on either project, meaning it is not yet certain to go ahead, with Mr Anderson’s comments likely to set alarm bells ringing in Whitehall.
It is already evident that the low prices agreed under CfDs for wind farms not yet built are simply not viable. Now it would appear that the rising costs of materials and interest rates are making matters worse.
This increases the likelihood that new wind farms coming on stream in the next few years will simply opt out of their CfDs. Worse still, projects like Vattenfall’s may never even get off the ground, unless the government offers a much higher price.
Nut Zero is a threat to civilization so anything that threatens THAT is beneficial.
Net zero needs to be removed from the English language. It makes as much sense as gracious Hitler, or gracious Stalin or gracious Mao. We all need to stop living a lie.
“Living a lie” is a great description of the Climate Religion.
The UK is a very interesting case to watch. It probably has the most complete real time reporting of electricity statistics, and the financial implications of its Net Zero policies are well reported and analysed. And it seems to be a country whose political class are most determined to do Net Zero no matter what the social and economic cost.
Anyone seriously interested in the cost and provision of backup in the face of intermittency should read Paul Homewood’s account of the latest UK Capacity Auction:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/02/27/uk-capacity-auction-results/
Paul will understand the details of exactly how this works, which I do not. There is a simplified account of it here:
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/capacity-market-0
Its the mechanism, and the auction shows the cost, though its not easy to figure out the full costs, of having enough reliable capacity to run the grid while at the same time moving to intermittent generation.
Basically its a case of, install wind, and also install a duplicate network for when its calm. And pay through the nose to keep it on standby.
But, but, but Nick S keeps telling us unreliables are making electricity cheaper and I’m just reading my ever increasing bills upside down!
Yes. Nick thinks that the cheapest way of generating electricity is to have wind+gas+solar, which he thinks will be cheaper than coal or gas alone. And the reason, in his view, is that the wind and solar will lead to savings in fuel costs.
He has never given any numbers to show this, nor has he ever referenced any study showing it. And it seems highly unlikely. Because the intermittency raises fuel consumption for gas, and is impossible to accommodate with coal. And with wind and solar you have to install large amounts of transmission (as this piece shows). And then you have to pay constraint payments when the wind and/or solar is over generating. On a windy summer day at noon, for instance.
I am prepared to believe his argument if given a proper study with all costs enumerated and ordinary net present value analysis done. With signoff from real grid engineers. But I’m certainly not going to take an amateur’s word for it, and it seems most unlikely to be true.
Nick is an advocate of weighted averages for GAT. Yet he never shows any investment computations for weighted averages of energy supply. In other words, what is the investment cost for
(0%wind + 0%solar + 100%gas)?
Or maybe:
(5%wind + 5%solar + 90%gas)..
It seems funny that the costs for covering low output unreliable never get assigned to them.
What is needed would fit on three spreadsheets. Just take an example, say an example 10GW system. Then write down all the cash flows over 20 years, including fuel, for each of:
— wind + solar + gas
— coal
— gas
Then do the discounted cash flow. Assume current prices of fuel, and do sensitivities to variation.
I don’t have the time or energy to do it. Someone like Paul Homewood would be the ideal person. Needs some research to get the current costings of each technology, build and running costs.
The thing is, the way Nick is finally defending wind is to make the case dependent on the savings on fuel paying for all the costs of the wind installations, including transmission and constraint payments. I just don’t believe the savings in fuel are going to be great enough. And part of the problem here is that when you run the gas intermittently you make it use far more fuel than in constant mode.
I suspect gas is also, when run continuously, more expensive anyway than superheated coal.
Well, this is what’s needed to be done. Nick endlessly reciting that wind and sun are free doesn’t begin to cut it. This is a huge policy decision, we should get some robust numbers. But I have never seen anything like what I’m saying is needed, and Nick has never either done the work himself or pointed to anyone who has.
Creating a highly detailed deep-dive engineering feasibility model of a 90% wind and solar energy grid for the UK would be time consuming and expensive. But easily enough done, relatively speaking if enough money is available and competent people are assigned to do it.
A credible plan for achieving the UK’s Net Zero goals must have that kind of detailed engineering feasibility model as its foundation. That we haven’t seen such a plan is a sign that those pushing Net Zero don’t want to hear the answers a disciplined analysis would provide.
A clean incinerator to reclaim the energy in waste rather than burying it is a great idea. Unfortunately current energy policy has given wind and solar the right to jump the line on access to the grid and that is a major part of the problem with rebuilding a functional and reliable grid. That the incinerator can be shut out of the grid while on and offshore wind farms get a free ride is the definition of insanity and recipe for national poverty.