On another near windless day here in the United Kingdom, Boggart Blog came across a very interesting piece if news. According to figures published by the business and management consultancy LCP, british taxpayers have been paying operators of wind turbines farms for the time their windmills were NOT generating electricity increased to record levels last year as the UK’s cable network and storage capacity struggled to keep up with the amount of electricity generated at times of optimum wind conditions.
Bill-payers were forced to shell out £650m last year (2021) alone to cover the costs of switching off turbines when it is too windy for either the national grid or the turbines themselves to handle and bringing online natural gas powers generators instead.
It is a 70pc jump on the previous year, according to LCP, the organisation which calculated the figures. And this does not include subsidies paid to wind farm operators as compentation for the appromimately 25% of the time the wind is not blowing strongly enough to turn the tubines.
Turbines are turned down or off completely if they are generating more electricity than than the electricity grid can carry at the time. It should be noted that as wind is an unpredictable resource, wind speeds can vary enormously in a short time. The figures, and what they reveal about wind power, highlight the complications of managing the electricity grid at a time varied sources of energy including intermittent and unreliable sources like wind and solar power.
This appalling waste of taxpayers money is blamed on the fact that the UK's limited storage capacity throttles wind power as energy bills surge, which is bollocks.
The question that should be asked is: "What storage capacity?" As things stand there is no technology capable of storing excess energy that is capable of powering a large city (or even a small to middling town,) for a significant time.
Elon Musk's idea for vast arrays of Lithium Ion batteries to power cities proved way too costly when trialled in Australia (and that was before the price of battery quality refined lithium rocketed to approx $75,000 a ton,) while pumped storage such as the Dinorwyg scheme in Wales in which surplus energy is used to pump water to a high level reservoir at low demand times to be released through a hydro electric generator system at peak times only showed that it takes a lot more energy to get the water to the top of the mountain that is generated from letting it run down again.
The only other idea I've heard of is vehicle to grid (V2G) storage in which people charge up their electric cars overnight and discharge them into the grid during peak demand hours. Which is fine until owners want to drive their electric cars.
None of it inspires confidence really.
The other point the LCP report does not address is what happens when wind turbines are not genreating because the wind is not strong enough or too strong. The range of wind speeds within which these over - hyped contraptions can generate current is surprisingly narrow, between around 8 mph and 23 mph. There are 4 large wind farms within 10 miles of my home,
and another 2 in are planning/ in development. They do not work in
storm/still air conditions, meaning in the period April2021/April2022,
there were 83 days when they were not producing energy, although of
course, we paid for 365 days. All we can learn from this is the people in government and the academic community pushing the 'net zero' agenda know nothing at all about electrical engineering and even less about running a solvent business.
The LCP report comes as household energy bills which have soared in the past year are spiralling higher every day due to the mismanagement of energy policy over the past twenty years by governments in the developed nations with the recent spike also, but not entirely because of sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its Ukrainian invasion. These have been the main factors in triggering the highest price inflation and worst cost of living squeeze in a generation, and driving many families into fuel poverty.
The UK Government is making a big deal of introducing a windfall tax on oil and gas producers to help ease the pressure on households, and is considering extending this to electricity generators but that is going to take time to filter down while the needs of families are immediate.
Nor should you assume the people who compiled the LCP report have any solutions or even understand the problem. Chris Matson, an energy industy expert with LCP, said growing wind power was essential for climate targets and energy security. In fact the obsession with wind power, far friom being the answer is at the root of the problem.
Matson added: “And yet because investment in the infrastructure needed to support this expansion [in wind power] has not kept pace, wind curtailment is costing the consumer and the environment. Every pound spent on curtailing wind power is a pound wasted.”
Wind curtailment means that in optimum generating conditions (see above) wind turbines have to be decoupled from the grid because too much current is going in. There is currently no way to balance the output from wind turbines, when there is suitable wind they generate, when there is no wind, or too much wind, or the wind conditions are unstable (gusty) and the turbines are producing no electricity the surpluss from more productive times cannot be stored efficiently so gas fired turbines have to be brought online. The figure of £78 mn in constraint payments quoted by LCP is a gross understating of the true position and is what happens when you believe a report from a part of an industry that is a report on that industry.
Over the last 10 years the wind industry has received over £1bn and in 2020 Scottish onshore wind alone it received £243 mn and in 2021 £107 mn when there was a weak wind system most of the year.
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/371-constraint-payments-to-wind-power-in-2020-and-2021
Without massive subsidies which are added to our bills, no wind turbine would ever be built, they are just not economically viable.
The report LCP's figures are quoted in was commissioned by FTSE 250 power company Drax, which is seeking Government investment to extend its pumped storage hydropower scheme in northern Scotland which it claims will act as a giant battery to store electricity.
LCP said long duration storage such as Drax’s hydropower project was a “particularly attractive” way of dealing with the current problems, but stressed that such measures “would not necessarily mean that all of the cost of curtailment can be avoided”.
Were the report being entirely honest it would acknowledge the failure of previous attempts to store energy by pumping water to a high level reservoir using surplus power and releasing it through hydroelectric turbines when there is a shortfall.
Britain’s wind power industry has grown rapidly over the last decade, with 25.7GW installed capacity now compared to about 5.4GW in 2010, enough to provide power for about twenty million homes.
Much of this is located in Scotland owing to its weather as well as available space both on land and around the coast. However, the cables that transport electricity around the country can only handle so much at a time, meaning that wind farms are paid to cut output when needed.
These costs, in addition to those that ensure electricity supply and demand is matched every day, are met by National Grid but ultimately recouped via a levy on consumer bills.
“In many instances [..] wind generation must be turned down in certain locations and high-carbon gas must be turned up in other locations,” it said.
LCP estimates that Scottish wind power accounted for 94pc of the total amount of wind generation curtailed in 2020 and 80pc in 2021.
Many more wind turbines are set to be built in Scottish waters following a recent leasing round. The Government wants to increase offshore wind capacity five-fold to 50GW by 2030. But we wil still have to keep gas, coal and nuclear power stations running for those times when the wind suddenly stops blowing.
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13 min ago
I suspect that this government is taking us down the road to “third world electrical power status” whereby the nation will have to learn and plan for unexpected and often lengthy power cuts. Personally I rather relaxed at the prospect as I have solar panels with backup batteries and a diesel generator. However, my great concern is for the vast majority who have neither the space or funds to finance a “Plan B”!
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1 hr ago
3 hrs ago
When wind turbines are switched off, the UK burns gas in turbines.
In other words we need to double capital investment (1) in wind, and (2) gas turbines. In the old days, we only spent the money once
By the way, we need this gas in our home gas boilers.
Today Wind = 11%, gas turbines (ccgt) = 54% (grid watch)
When wind turbines are switched off, the UK burns gas in turbines.
In other words we need to double capital investment (1) in wind, and (2) gas turbines. In the old days, we only spent the money once
By the way, we need this gas in our home gas boilers.
Today Wind = 11%, gas turbines (ccgt) = 54% (grid watch)
The 'Worlds Biggest Liquid Air Battery' would have to be replicated 533 times to supply present day household use for just 24 hours with nary a heat pump or EV in sight yet. Remember that is without a factory, office, hospital, streetlight or anything outside of a house or flat turned on. When the whirlygigs go on strike again putting out just 2 or 3% of their claimed output for days at a time nothing will cover it except gas fired plants (or even coal) necessitating an entire back up generating system in reserve at vast cost which will then have to be used to recharge the batteries (of any ilk).
Should every household have a heat pump at a conservative 3Kw consumption that would entail a load of some 66Gw which is the equivalent of the output of 22 Hinkley Point Cs at point of generation. When temperatures plummet to minus 5 or 6 and back up heaters compensate the poor output of said heat pumps double that to 44 HPCs. This is clearly impossible; after all how long has it taken and how much has it cost not to build one.
Then for every home to add an additional 3Kw load which will be turned on at the same time every substation and supply cable in the land will have to be upgraded at vast expense.
You think electricity bills are high now.......you haven't seen anything yet. But at the end of the day it won't do anything 'to save the planet' as China and India etc. forge ahead doing what they want...... displacing the west as they go along.
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THE SCI FI VIEW
What the article does not say is that the National Grid (NG) ESO (electricity system operator) is in the middle of a project that will complete by 2025. When it is finished, there will be no need for any active gas plants on the system at all whenever wind, solar, nuclear and other fuels are generating enough to meet demand. This will happen more and more frequently as 4x the offshore wind is installed.
Currently the grid needs a minimum gas generation active to provide stability services (inertia, frequency stabilisation at various timescales, short circuit current, reactive power). The NG ESO will kick wind off to make room for this minimum gas level.
The NG ESO has implemented some of the initial contracts to provide these services by other means. Some examples:-
- Dogger Bank C offshore wind farm onshore equipment will provide reactive power from 2024, whether generating or not.
- The Cruachan pumped hydro scheme will run one turbine in air to provide inertia and short circuit current when not generating. It provides these services anyway when it is generating.
- Some gas plans will have clutches fitted so that the fixed connection between the turbines and generators is broken. When not generating, the generator is run up to speed using mains power, then provides stability services - when working in this mode is it known as a "synchronous condenser". Coal plant generators can be converted to synchronous condensers.
The NG ESO will only have to kick wind power off the grid when there really is too much of it - not just to make way for gas to provide stability services. Surplus wind power can then be exported via interconnectors. There will also be grid batteries to soak it up, and some of it will be used for green hydrogen production. edited
You are obviously well up on this stuff Peter. Please tell me. This Highview power storage method of cryo storage of fresh air. Is this serious storage that will be mass produced or just a niche method?
Excellent and enlightening comment. Twenty years ago I worked in the industry that manufactures wind turbine blades. Despite this I was of the opinion that because of the intermittent nature of generation, huge pump storage schemes would be needed to compliment them. Politicians who spoke of "XXX Mw of generation CAPACITY" would annoy me. Looks like we have made some leaps forward with much more to come. Thanks Peter.
‘When it is finished, there will be no need for any active gas plants on the system at all whenever wind, solar, nuclear and other fuels are generating enough to meet demand.’ OK so there must be sufficient back up for when wind and solar can’t supply enough (or occasionally nothing). This has to be paid for and thus when needed the owners need to recoup their costs so the prices will be understandably exorbitant. Batteries are nowhere near capable of supplying large amounts of power over long periods of time and will run down and there will be no power available to charge them.
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