From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
A huge wind farm planned off the north coast of Scotland will not be built unless “unfair” transmission charges are overhauled, the developer has warned.
The 125-turbine West of Orkney wind farm had planned to generate enough electricity to power two million homes by 2029.
But the consortium behind the project says the cost of connecting to the electricity network – which is highest in Argyll and the north of Scotland – makes it impossible to compete against projects proposed in England.
The UK government said it is considering the charges as part of a wider review.
Transmission charges are imposed on power generators to build and maintain the network of pylons and underground cables which carry high-voltage electricity around Great Britain.
The charges for connecting to the grid were designed to encourage generators to build power stations close to where it is consumed.
It means they are the lowest around London and the south of England, where the electricity travels the shortest distance to reach the most densely populated group of consumers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8x919v8g19o
It’s hardly rocket science, is it?
If you build a wind farm near the Orkneys, how do you think that electricity is going to get to England where it will be used?
According to Grok:
The West of Orkney Windfarm (a 2 GW offshore wind project located about 30 km off the west coast of Orkney and 25 km from the north Sutherland coast) will connect to the UK’s National Grid via a grid connection agreement with National Grid ESO, specifically in Caithness on the Scottish mainland.
Electricity generated offshore will be transmitted as follows:
- Offshore export cables (high-voltage alternating current, HVAC) will carry the power from the wind farm’s offshore substation platforms to cable landfall points on the north Caithness coast. One key mentioned landfall area is to the east of the former Dounreay Nuclear Facility (near Dounreay in Caithness). Up to two cable landfalls and up to five (or more in some descriptions) associated export circuits/cables are planned, with cables buried underground once onshore.
- From the landfall points, onshore underground cables (export circuits) will route inland across Caithness for approximately 20 km (in some references) to a new onshore substation located at or near Spittal in Caithness.
- The onshore substation will handle the electrical equipment (e.g., switchgear) and connect the project directly to the National Grid transmission network. It is associated with the SHET-L Spittal 2 substation (part of the Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission network, which operates in the north of Scotland under National Grid oversight for connections).
Why should anybody else pay for all of this work, other than the wind farm itself?
So it is uneconomic to move electricity from the Orkney’s to the consumer
Who would have thunk it !!!
Just maybe mad red ed is eventually coming up against the financial brick wall
Obviously the wind farm should be paid for the electricity it would have produced if there had been a connection to the grid.
Isn’t that how the system works?
Yes, by the end users. 😉
It certainly is framed to be that way.
We call it “Take Or Pay” where you MUST Take their generation first or Pay them for it anyway…even if you don’t take it or can’t use it.
In America, we pay a “readiness to serve” charge, a monthly fee that is charged to deliver your bill. That’s all you get for it. You can use nothing and still have to pay.
In the UK that’s called a Standing Charge, originally to pay for the network maintenance eg the wires. Now they have added on Bad Debt owed by consumers to the Energy companies as by charging so much its unaffordable to some people, plus green levies. Another plan from Ofgem has higher tax payers paying a higher standing charge. It will become a marxist levy,
‘The 125-turbine West of Orkney wind farm had planned to generate enough electricity to power two million homes by 2029.’
My understanding is that the nameplate capacity is 2 GW.
That is 1 KW per home. But of course, the real capacity will be much less.
So how will it power 2 million homes?
They are “virtual houses” like the “virtual generation” or perhaps it’s the 2 million houses homeless people with no services live in?
More like these Chinese Luxury Apartments
2 GW nameplate capacity is confirmed.
GW versus GW-hr.
How to be impressive without making a good impression.
1KW per home is not much. Not with heat pumps, electric water heaters, electric stoves and so on.
If only it were 1KW per home. nameplate capacity is not what those bird killers deliver, so expect it to be maybe 200 W per home if the wind is blowing.
“So how will it power 2 million homes?”?? Sometimes.
“Homes” arent just the users in wider area grid such as a metro city
The commercial, industrial, educational etc and of course the grid losses.
Depending on the home usage, whether they have gas for cooking and heating, it may be 20-30% of the city’s needs
The UK government said it is considering the charges
Which means they’ll find the money from somewhere.
When most of the power generated is consumed south of the Hadrianic wall and this scheme is well to the north of it… the failure to think it through is true to the modus operandi of this government. Yes, we have older housing stock, but with cheap energy that isn’t such a big deal. It’s when you mess around claiming a faux climate crisis and make energy prohibitively expensive that the notions of fuel poverty start to manifest themselves.
“About £5bn will be invested in home upgrades, including solar panels and batteries, in the form of grants to people on low incomes, as well as £2bn in consumer loans for people who can afford them” – Guardian
People on low incomes tend to live in smaller properties and will certainly have no room for batteries, heat pumps and water tanks , let alone the X2.5 larger radiators. I doubt underfloor heating will be an option. But what Miliband is doing in effect is inviting a whole new host of cowboy builders to rip people off…
“Government officials assured customers as recently as December that the company’s parent company would complete any outstanding work, but a statement on CES’s website now states the firm “will be unable to carry out any remedial works or repairs, or to progress or resolve any existing complaints”.
“There’s no repercussions for these companies. They set up, they make loads of money and then they just disappear,” said CES customer Hannah Luckett“. – MSN
Looking forward to the future government inquiry on how it could have possibly happened….
A survey of the UK by the Energy and Utilities Alliance in 2024 found 12m homes were totally unsuited for the installation of heat pumps, largely for lack of space for the heat pump, larger radiators etc.
CES employed almost 300 people. The charity Fuel Poverty Action said “shockingly weak oversight allowed CES to make massive profits whilst leaving a trail of defective work”
Like the huge problems with the government cavity wall insulation and external cladding schemes before them that have left thousands in unfit homes this is another failing scheme.
Regarding government considering something, there was a clear explanation in a Yes, Minister episode:
Bernard Woolley: “Well, ‘under consideration’ means we’ve lost the file, ‘under active consideration’ means we’re trying to find it.” Sir Humphrey Appleby: “It must be hard for a political adviser to understand this, but I’m merely a civil servant.”
1 meter of undersea cable has about 50 kg of copper. 1 kilometer thus 50 metric tons of copper. 30 km 1500 metric tons of copper. Double that to add the cabling connecting the turbines to the collection point out at sea.
How much coal will be used in China to make that copper out of the raw ores?
‘1 meter of undersea cable has about 50 kg of copper.’
The density of copper is 8960 kg/m^3 , so that is a cable of copper of diameter 8.4 cm.
Is that right?
Carrying 2 GW. Needs a cable between 70mm and 235mm depending on the design used. The cross section of copper needed is at least 25 square centimetres, which would give 2.5 litre per meter. 50 kg may be overdoing it, 30 more likely.
However each transmission circuit can contain between 3 – 9 cables each if operating in parallel for 3 phase transmission
A minimum of 2 cables, one hot and one neutral.
Basic assumption in your analysis is that there will be 1 cable.
How many Diesel Ships to deliver that copper ore from it’s originating country to China for processing?
A bit like the diesel ships transporting Chinese steel to UK for a new “green” development site.
Net Zero Teeside on the old Redcar steelworks site.
Cheaper than UK steel apparently.
Unfortunately the Premium for “Cheap Steel” is far too often collected at a later date
It’s pretty simple. Use the electricity to produce heat, then accumulate and store the heat in cylinders of CO2, or a more potent GHG. Then transport the CO2 to a disused fossil fuel power station, release the stored heat, and generate electricity where it’s needed.
I’m sure enough ignorant and gullible people would think such a ridiculous idea worth pursuing. The same sorts of people who believe that adding CO2 to air makes thermometers hotter!
Maybe H2O?
The most insane energy option is to build yet more wind turbines out at sea north of Scotland.
The cost last year as reported in the Daily Telegraph was over £800,milliom to Scottish windfarms to stop producing when the wind is blowing and they can not shed their electricity into the already saturated grid.
The cost of blocking wind power because it has been built in the wrong location is expected to increase by 25% this year.
Why would anyone in their right mind (Ed Miliband) authorise yet more production of turbines in a remote area that is already over subscribed and will cost the tax payers £1billion for nothing but simply being there this current year?
It’s the plan.
You will have nothing and you will be happy.
Unfortunately, in the case of Wind, it often blows where it isn’t needed but doesn’t blow where it’s needed most…the inherent problem with free energy provided by nature. Nature doesn’t often comply and deliver the free fuel when and where its needed most. Like Solar during the evening peak demand.
Steam took over from sails on ships rapidly without subsidies. It went from ‘it left port last week so should be here in the next 2 to 6 weeks; to ‘it left post last Wednesday on high tide and will arrive next Thursday at high tide. That certainty in arrival paid for the capital and fuel costs.
Society progresses better when innovation drives the market and the market drives innovation rather than when government fiat gives preferential treatment to specific products and services
In the days of coal power, the coal was (and still is) carried by rail to the generators. I guess they never thought of building miles and miles of copper wires to carry electric power from the coal mines to the big cities. How foolish they were 🙂
Why is it that the people promoting these crazy schemes never include cost with their brilliant ideas?
in·nu·mer·ate
[iˈno͞omərət]
I wonder what it would cost to move 2 million homes to Orkney … that would solve the problem. Hey we could make them in a 15 min city like our resident troll wants 🙂
Nobody wants to live there. Too windy.
Rubbish old boy. It’s no coincidence that the Trent Valley power stations were built right over the coalfields of the UK Midlands.
Ditto in Yorkshire:- Drax, Eggborough, and Ferrybridge (among others) were built on a coalfield, right alongside the pre-existing railway lines that supplied them.
That works when the coal mines are also close to the homes being powered.
The question is, which is more efficient to transport long distances. Electricity or coal?
The wind is great at the Strait of Magellan. I refuse to build there until you pay for the transmission infrastructure.
If you believe Google.
“Grid connections for Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power plants in the UK are generally paid for by the private developers/owners of the power plant (e.g., energy companies like Uniper, SSE, Vitol, or ESB). ”
Why should wind turbines be any different?
Anything else and it is just another hidden subsidy/cost of wind.
and the article doesn’t say anything about the capacity of the grid to take the power from Spittal from Caithness down to Engerland where it’s consumed. Is that additional load already accounted-for in the planned upgrades?
Because “Climate Change”.
More likely “Climate Apocalypse”
Hey I just clocked myself over a flying 20 metres and just realized I could be an Olympic Marathon gold medallist with that speed-
Solar and wind overtake fossil fuels in the EU for the first time. Can the power grid keep up?
Watermelon logic 101.
However, the report argues that Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia are “very close” to reaching the tipping point thanks to strong growth in solar generation.
Tipping point? Oh joy, yet another social, context driven definition.
So, if this is true, then as soon as WTG and WV produce 0.00001% more electricity than hydrocarbons, all the coal, oil, and gas generators will collapse, shutdown, blow up, whatever.
Tipping point is the very rapid transition from one state to another once a critical stability threshold is crossed.
Thats because they would have interconnections with the Europe wide grid. So that when the sun goes down the power flows inwards- at at high prices
While true, that does not meet the definition of tipping point.
But wind and sun are free!
/s
And cheaper than cheap.
Just ask Nick.
Yet the supporters of LCOE still proclaim that it is unfair to charge wind and solar generators the cost of connecting their farms with their customers.
Where I am the Grid business charges each generator and each local supply company for its access point.
That’s existing grid.
The local lines supply company charges each new user substantially not just for the physical connection charge but a network charge to pay for the existing infrastructure ( paid for by existing users) but also for upgrades
Maybe car manufacturers should ask the government to pay for transporting their cars to the garages for sale and for their servicing, as well as paying them for ones they can’t sell.
Oh, they already are for EVs with the discounts being offered.
More subsidies aka taxes to come. The whole saga of extortion and insanity continues. Prices will never fall until unreliable “renewables” are discontinued. No chance of that with the current & previous Govts in UK, Reform anyone?
Someone please help punch through the fog of memory.
Wasn’t there an article a while back discussing a 1500 km undersea high voltage DC cable being laid off the English coast?