UK Government Lifts Ban On Onshore Wind Farms (apnews.com) 118
The British Conservative government has eased planning rules and lifted restrictions that had effectively prohibited the construction of new onshore wind farms in England. The Independent reports: Rules introduced in 2015 by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who also led a Conservative administration, allowed a single objection to a wind turbine application to block its development. The regulations led to a dramatic decline in the number of new turbines granted planning permission. Some Conservatives pressured the current government to overturn the rules. Lawmaker Alok Sharma, who was president of the 2021 U.N. climate change conference and led the lobbying campaign, called them "outdated" and "not a sensible way for a planning system to operate."
Authorities said Tuesday that the eased restrictions mean that onshore wind projects supported by local residents will get approved more quickly. They said elected local officials will have the ability to make final decisions based on the prevailing view of their communities, not just a small number of objectors. Communities that back wind turbines in their areas will also benefit from cheaper electricity, officials said, adding that the way such energy discounts work would be considered later.
Authorities said Tuesday that the eased restrictions mean that onshore wind projects supported by local residents will get approved more quickly. They said elected local officials will have the ability to make final decisions based on the prevailing view of their communities, not just a small number of objectors. Communities that back wind turbines in their areas will also benefit from cheaper electricity, officials said, adding that the way such energy discounts work would be considered later.
British Conservative government ? (Score:5, Insightful)
>> The British Conservative government ........... "outdated" and "not a sensible way for a planning system to operate."
Yes. Spot on.
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It was a bit of electioneering. The right wing press decided to make wind farms and solar farms a big deal, with lots of stories about the awful flicker and loss of "green belt". So the Tories banned them for populist reasons, setting back the UK's net zero efforts by half a decade or more.
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But the conservative UK government just lifted the ban on wind power. Perhaps a bit more nuance on the actual facts would be helpful.
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That was 2017, now the electorate in key target seats wants something done about climate change.
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>> The British Conservative government ........... "outdated" and "not a sensible way for a planning system to operate."
Yes. Spot on.
Pretty much...
Also a bad week to announce it as we're having a heat wave... In a summer that has been unusually cold and wet even for the UK. Tomato (southern) Europe is on fire, Potato (northern) Europe is freezing.
Although the Tories are not having many good weeks.
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Germany had a heat weave, just like recent years. ...
Now it is cooler, and 25C is most certainly not freezing
No idea where "Northern Europe" starts for you, though.
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Cuz it saves the whales?
Asking for a friend.
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Wales never banned onshore wind.
Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:2)
From David "Accidental Brexit" Cameron:
https://www.theguardian.com/mo... [theguardian.com]
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Guardian story is written in such a way as to imply that fewer wind farms were built because of the Cameron changes, and that this led to rising fuel bills.
In fact however several things are going on at once in the UK and its worth disentangling them. The problem is that wind isn't cost effective as a generating technology in this application. Anyone can see this at a glance from looking at the numbers which are available in almost real time at a number of sites including here:
www.gridwatch.co.uk/wind
GW of installed wind yields less than GW for several weeks a year, and there are tens of days when it delivers less than 0.5GW. This means the shortfall has to be made up by burning gas, a lot of it in rapid start mode. This led Jon Butterworth, CEO of National Gas, to say recently that in 2022, without gas, there were 260 days when the UK would have had rolling blackouts, and for 26 of those days they would have had a full blackout. Of course in the UK solar vanishes totally between about November and February, as you can verify from the above site.
These gas installations. the cost of running them, and the transmission facilities to get the wind from the farms to a useful interconnect point are part of the concealed cost of wind. Paul Homewood has added up all the subsidies which wind and solar attract in the UK (they are many and various) and come up with a number of about 450 sterling per household per year.
Until today, wind farms in the UK could be and were blocked by a small minority of local residents. This did lead to a freeze on onshore wind. The implication of the Guardian piece is that if this had not been permitted, if more onshore wind farms would have been built, power costs and prices would have been lower.
That is quite wrong. The more wind you have, the more dependent you are on gas to remedy intermittency, and the higher your costs will be. And the more exposed to sudden surges in worldwide gas prices, or sudden withholdings by major suppliers such as Russia.
So one reason why energy prices rose in the UK is the attempt to move to wind and solar. That always was going to add costs regardless of anything else because you are essentially building two generating systems. The other reason is that the attempt to move to wind, and thus the increase in reliance on gas, happened just at the time of rising gas prices due to Ukraine.
And it also happened when the government, maybe eating its own dog food, has attempted to lower the subsidies to electricity prices. After all, if wind is so much cheaper than conventional, as the climate enthusiasts keep telling us, why are we still being asked to subsidize it?
The answer is, its not cheaper, and when the government has acted on the belief that it is two things happen. The first is that it ends up with politically impossible rising power prices, so it has to subsidize. As it has done through the current price caps. The second is that the suppliers walk, as Vattenfall recently did. The operators cannot make money at the auction prices, so they refuse to build. A bunch of stories about that here:
https://startpage.com/do/searc... [startpage.com]
Bottom line on all this. Contrary to what the wind lobby keeps saying, present UK policy is to more or less double demand, by moving the country to heat pumps for heating and EVs for transport. And at the same time to move power generation to wind and solar, which means wind in the winter. The effect of which will be to raise costs and prices and make the grid unreliable. And so you get the head of the Climate Change Committee in the UK explaining that people will have to stop heating their homes in the evenings, because climate. You have Dieter Helm in some devastating pieces pointing out that Net Zero in the UK is not going to happen.
And you have the political plates shifting in what will be, if Net Zero is persisted with, the prelude to a massive political explosion. You cannot raise prices and destroy supply with impunity,
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The more wind you have, the more dependent you are on gas to remedy intermittency, and the higher your costs will be.
Exactly this.
The cost of solar and wind should also include the cost of the fossil burning or nuclear power stations required to back them up when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow - typically in those typical freezing windless winter night anticyclone conditions. Or maybe they won't bother with any backup and just tell us to sit with blankets around us and drink brandy, because on top of that we will soon be banned from using gas heating which the vast majority of the UK relies on at th
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the cost of fossil fuel burning should include the cost of raising global temperatures and the money that must be spent to mitigate their effects. Similarly, nuclear should include the cost of sequestering their spent fuel for 10s if not 100s of years.
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Similarly, nuclear should include the cost of sequestering their spent fuel for 10s if not 100s of years.
Not entirely. It should include the cost of reprocessing spent fuel into reuseable fuel. That will reduce the cost of fuel, as well as the amount of Un processable waste that will need to be buried. Which will decrease the cost of that.
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Fuel is not reprocessed because fresh mined fuel is cheaper.
So your idea: That will reduce the cost of fuel, is bollocks and
your claim: as well as the amount of Un processable waste that will need to be buried
Reprocessing increases the waste by a factor of ten to 100.
Hint: perhaps you want to read up how much "unspent" aka "reprocess able fuel" is left in "spent fuel" facepalm ...
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:4, Informative)
Similarly, nuclear should include the cost of sequestering their spent fuel for 10s if not 100s of years.
Exactly!
Oh wait, they already do that: the costs associated with dismantling and waste storage are typically considered part of the overall cost of nuclear power generation. These costs are to be covered by funds that are provided for in a "decommissioning plan", which is part of the facility's initial authorization. They may be saved in a decommissioning fund, such as a trust fund.
Funnily enough, wind/solar don't have to include their decommissioning costs (they just let the wind turbine blades rot somewhere).
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Also cars are more efficient at higher temperatures so less fuel is burned
How is that different from just letting the nuclear waste decay somewhere?
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There are not many plants where decommissioning etc. is included in the fees.
They usually get dismantled on tax payers cost.
Nope, every plant built in the West gets its decommissioning fees included in the costs. I even gave you sources to back that claim up.
Where are YOUR sources?
That is nonsense.
a) they do not rot
b) they are made from glass or carbon fibre
c) they get recycled
Tell that to the landfills full of wind turbine blades and broken solar arrays.
And no, they don't get recycled (for now). And if you want to go that route, nuclear waste is actually fuel for the next generation of nuclear plants, so there is that.
You are clueless. At least try to hide it so we don't make fun of you every time.
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FOR NEW PLANTS BUILD RIGHT NOW,. not for the plants build in 1970s, dumbass.
Nope, even for plants built in the 70s, dismantling costs are not paid by taxpayers [www.edf.fr] but by EDF.
Even in Germany, they made sure that it would be Vattenfall, Eon, RWE and EnBW that pay up the dismantling fees...
I'm 56 you fucking idiot. It is common knowledge
I don't like to bring this argument, but considering you are from the generation (and you seem to be very active on that) that actively opposed nuclear, which means you bear direct responsibility to the shit we are in right now, maybe you should update your "common knowledge" to actual knowledge. And l
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We did not make any mess.
You did. Germany is one of the biggest CO2 emitter in Europe. Second only to Poland, except that unlike Poland they have no excuse: they had the engineers, technical knowledge, wealth and political stability to build nuclear plants like France did. Instead, they kept on extracting and burning coal.
Plus Germany founded and funded a lot of anti-nuclear movements (some of them to fuck with their neighbor France, because cheap energy from France is a threat to Germany's industries) in the world. History will re
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Also cars are more efficient at higher temperatures so less fuel is burned
You're going to need to explain that one. ICEs are ultimately heat engines. Those should work better when you have a greater heat differential. I assume that you're talking about the engine being less efficient when it is first started in cold weather when the engine itself is already cold. Once it heats up though, it should be more efficient at lower temperatures.
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Interesting. I would think that's mostly due to people taking short trips, where it takes a while for the engine to heat up.
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The cost of renewables does include the cost of all required backup. The way it works in the UK is that a minimum price is set for energy generated by each plant or farm, which factors in costs like fossil fuel plants needing to be on standby much of the time. They get a higher guaranteed price, and take advantage of high peak prices.
Ironically, the government does tell citizens to just sit around in the dark with a blanket and a bottle of brandy now, because the price of gas forced both electricity and heating prices up so much. The way to solve that is more renewable energy and storage. Remember that we can store gas as well (although again the government closed our largest storage facility, but I think it's back in operation again now) so even on those low wind winter nights we can use the cheap gas we bought when it was blowing.
Scottish Power is also building massive new pumped storage facilities in Scotland, able to keep energy on standby long term.
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"The cost of renewables does include the cost of all required backup..."
No, it does not. The wind farm operators get paid for what they generate. How the grid operator makes use of it is not their problem. The grid operator is obliged to buy it under the Renewables Obligation.
Nor is pumped storage a real runner in the UK. To make wind viable without gas you would have to turn North Wales, the Highlands and the Lake District into pumped storage. Not to mention rebuilding the transmission network. No-on
Re: Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:2)
Yea down with all electrical. All it does is drive up the price of copper. /s
Life's easy when there's only ever 2 factors to take into account. Dumbed down much?
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No, it does not.
Yes, it does, dumbass.
The UK use the same power market rules as the EU.
If you want to sell power: from what ever source you have your power, you have to have a "reserve power" contract with a reserve power operator.
How fucking stupid are you idiots that you do not even know the simplest things about how power markets work, but have the audacity to pollute the internet with your utterly stupid ideas?
You can not offer 1GW on a spot market without buying reserve power for that 1GW. Stupid idio
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The way it works in the UK is that a minimum price is set for energy generated by each plant or farm, which factors in costs like fossil fuel plants needing to be on standby much of the time
Stop spreading disinformation without any source to back you up. This is not how electricity generation work. In the system you describe, you are basically paying for the same electricity twice. This is NOT what is happening.
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Stop spreading disinformation without any source to back you up. This is not how electricity generation work. In the system you describe, you are basically paying for the same electricity twice. This is NOT what is happening.
Everybody with some basic understanding knows about contracts for difference and that is more or less how it works. What is really great is that many of the recent contracts for difference have a negative strike price which means that the wind power generators actually get less than the wholesale price of electricity and subsidise the grid.
Yes, this does actually end up with paying for the same electricity twice. You agree a fixed price for the electricity. Then you have a situation where demand has fallen
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Yeah, it would be nice if economy worked like you wished it worked.
CfD are not what you think it is. This is just a bet on the price of electricity between supplier and consumer (in the sense grid management company). This doesn't mean, like the OP was saying, that CfD include the price of backup sources (coal, gas, nuclear, hydro...).
Nuclear power plants want to keep running and so the grid accepts electricity from them, which it has to do because this is part the rules which provide massive subsidies for nuclear.
You clearly have no idea how the electricity market is structured, nor how nuclear power plants work. Nuclear plants, like coal or gas, or hydro, have to stop generating power
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Germany, which is the most advanced, has spent the last 30 years and 500 billions to basically end up relying on coal, or actually lignite, the worst kind of coal, to keep the lights on. ... Obviously you try to lie about the fact that Germany roughly halved its coal usage last
That is wrong. As you got corrected about this already dozens of times, it does not only make it wrong, but points out: you are lying. Especially as lignite is not worth than any other as coal plants are scrubbed since the late 1970s
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That is wrong. As you got corrected about this already dozens of times, it does not only make it wrong, but points out: you are lying. Especially as lignite is not worth than any other as coal plants are scrubbed since the late 1970s ...
You didn't correct anything. You are German and are butthurt by this fact, which has been proved and reported in various news. Just last week, Germany also decided to destroy some wind turbines to actually mine some more lignite [theguardian.com].
And no, lignite is really worth than coal. The fact that you are denying that just proves my point: you have no idea what you are talking about, and are lying through your teeth.
That is wrong, and also a lie as you got corrected about that as well already dozens of times.
Same thing: you are upset that Germany emits 8-9 times more CO2eq/kWh than France, so you just go crying
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Just to illustrate my point, at the time [nowtricity.com] of writing [nowtricity.com]:
- France is emitting 34g CO2eq/kWh
- Germany is emitting 348g CO2eq/kWh
That's 10 times more.
But don't worry: France is sending you the equivalent of a full nuclear plant (6 reactors) during the night so that you can keep the lights on [rte-france.com].
Do you see the difference between you and me? I correct you, and provide with with facts and actual sources. You just cry around and refuse to acknowledge reality.
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No it is not.
AGAIN: since the late 1970s coal plants are scrubbed. Regardless if it is lignite or hard coal.
And you *should* know that perfectly well, as it is common school knowledge.
So: consider yourself corrected.
If you come with that bullshit again: you are lying
Even for such a simple topic as scrubbers, you have no idea what you are talking about. Scrubbers, in the context of coal plants, are pollution control devices designed to remove certain types of air pollutants from the emissions produced during the combustion of coal: SO2 (Sulfur dioxide), NOx (nitrogen oxides), and particulate matter. The primary purpose of scrubbers in coal plants is to reduce emissions of harmful pollutants that can contribute to air pollution, acid rain, and health problems. CO2 emissi
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more wind you have, the more dependent you are on gas to remedy intermittency, and the higher your costs will be.
Exactly this.
Lies as ever. The backup for wind power in the UK, when the UK doesn't have wind is wind power in Morocco, to which there are excellent connections both through Spain and now, coming on tap, directly around Spain. The great thing about this is that the backup to wind power in Morocco is wind power in the UK since, once you have both connected you have basically captured the prevailing winds and guaranteed that one or the other is generating.
These grid watch people are the same ones that were showing that wind power wasn't effective because it gets switched off. What's the reason for that? The mjajority of power usage is intermittent. Wind power matches that since it can switch on or off in milliseconds and can store energy in the rotation of the turbine. Nuclear power can't match that and so requires massive compensation in the grid. When someone tells you that a Nuclear plant is "dispatchable" they are talking about a limited number of changes taking minutes to hours depending on the plant design. If you have enough, widely distributed enough wind then you can help compensate for the inflexibility of Nuclear.
So wind turbines switch off in order to compensate for the deficiencies of Nuclear, and to some extent fossil fuel plants and then the advocates for those fuels use the result of that flexibility to berate wind.
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The backup for wind power in the UK, when the UK doesn't have wind is wind power in Morocco
Do you really believe what you write? Seriously, spreading misinformation should be punished to some extent.
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Do you really believe what you write? Seriously, spreading misinformation should be punished to some extent.
https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-p... [xlinks.co]
I suppose you will be volunteering for punishment? Are you proposing voluntary imprisonment? Do I get to hire a dom to meet it out to you? What is your proposal?
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So you are saying backup wind power in UK is in Marocco. Then you link an advertisement video.
Well done.
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I see a whole web site there and, with my ad blocker, didn't even see the video. You may want to consider readjusting your browser to take into account the vagaries of the modern internet.
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"Will be" is not the same as "is".
XLinks is a startup, that has zero successful projects to show for. The project is not even launched, but they are looking for investors... The project is expected, from their own statement, to cost £16 billion. As of May 2022, they have secured £40 million. If constructions starts now (which it won't), it will be up and running at best in 2030, if that startup with no experience in real infrastructure work encounter no problems during the project. All that to a
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Lies as ever. The backup for wind power in the UK, when the UK doesn't have wind is wind power in Morocco, to which there are excellent connections both through Spain and now, coming on tap, directly around Spain.
So, the backup for your wind power failing is wind power imported from a foreign source implored over hundreds/thousands of miles of lines? What did the Russian / Ukraine war teach us about having your energy systems at the mercy of a foreign government? Now the odds on Morocco going to war with England are pretty slim, but other shit happens other than war. For national security, better to have small nuclear power systems on reserve in your own country than relay on foreign sources.
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What did the Russian / Ukraine war teach us about having your energy systems at the mercy of a foreign government? Now the odds on Morocco going to war with England are pretty slim, but other shit happens other than war. For national security, better to have small nuclear power systems on reserve in your own country than relay on foreign sources.
There were a number lessons
a) that nuclear plants will be an active target by Russia and it's better not to have any on your own soil.
b) that your grid connection out is crucial and Ukraine only maintained grid stability borrowing electricity from the EU.
c) that grids can be rebuilt under fire with sufficiently brave people like those in Ukraine
c) that the backup is small and local emergency power generation. such as diesel generators and that you just need to have that on standby even if never used
When we look at those lessons then widely distributed wind power which is very difficult to destroy and has nice gentle characteristics as the destruction of individual turbines does not completely eliminate the rest, looks like the only strategically sensible option.
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a) that nuclear plants will be an active target by Russia and it's better not to have any on your own soil.
b) that your grid connection out is crucial and Ukraine only maintained grid stability borrowing electricity from the EU.
c) that grids can be rebuilt under fire with sufficiently brave people like those in Ukraine
c) that the backup is small and local emergency power generation. such as diesel generators and that you just need to have that on standby even if never used
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
You want your strategic power sources local so you can defend them and harden them. Not at the mercy of a foreign power. Ask Germany how that natural gas system worked out for them. When Russia invaded Ukraine gas lines where cut to Germany, and short of going to war with Russia Germany had no recourse in the matter but freeze. An as stated before, if your nuclear plants in your territory are under attack then you have bigger issues to worry abou
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OMG Putin writes on slashdot. I got news for you: we did not freeze and our gas storage is fuller than ever before. Have fun selling your gas for kopecks on the rouble.
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OMG Putin writes on slashdot. I got news for you: we did not freeze and our gas storage is fuller than ever before. Have fun selling your gas for kopecks on the rouble.
Maybe some of you should have froze. The IQ of the country would have went up with out morons like yourself.
Oh yah. go fuck yourself
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OMG Putin writes on slashdot.
You may think you're joking, but it would be a good explanation of why we suddenly have a mass return of the over-enthusiastic nuclear lobby. I mean, the argument has tilted a bit in favour of nuclear given how desperately poorly we are doing on carbon targets, but it's still clear that we have to first make sure we have full renewable capacity.
Re:Maybe this has something to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one who doesn't understand technology is you.
Together with battery storage and long distance HVDC lines, renewable intermittency is a 100% solved problem.
It appears that some people in the UK have woken up and are building the Viking Link [wikipedia.org] connecting the UK to Denmark with 1400MW. It would also appear that the UK trails 'developing' countries like China by a decade in building out their infrastructure.
Or else why do they have multiple 10+ GW lines [wikipedia.org] in operation since 2017? Over thousands of kilometers btw.
Oh btw, HVDC and battery storage projects are generally highly profitable. Very much contrary to fossil fuel projects which require *direct* subsidies to the tune of one trillion USD [iea.org] a year, and much more in indirect subsidies.
You can stay in the past if you want to, but please let the rest of humanity progress.
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Together with battery storage and long distance HVDC lines, renewable intermittency is a 100% solved problem.
Are you smoking crack? It is no way 100% solved. This is a recipe for disaster. Basically, you are putting your power sources far away from the point where they are needed. Not only is that wasteful but it also puts you at the mercy of a foreign power in uncertain times. Not to mention miles of undefended lines that are open to terrorist attacks. In a idea world this would work, but in the real world it is insane.
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Oh. My. God.
This is so absurd I can't even think of where to start.
You must be traumatised by the attacks on powerlines in Alto Adige [icwa.org] in the 60s, right?
Does your country have any police or security forces?
Do you prefer your energy from stable countries like Russia, guaranteed by the almighty Wagner Group [wagnercentr.ru] ("Blood, Honor, Justice, Homeland, Courage")?
Oh the wastefulness of the 3.5% losses of HVDC lines over 1000km [wikipedia.org]. I'm sure you know of secret tech that's 100x more efficient. Please share your wisdom with us
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Oh. My. God.
Where do we get these morons from? Really how stupid are some of you?
Let me explain it to you, I'll type really slow so as not to overwhelm you. We'll use a theoretical but unlikely scenario. Are you with me? I'm going to make something up to help you understand, it won't be real but could be. Got it?
Let's say you are England, and you are importing a lions share of your power from France. You are doing this because its cheap. Sense it is cheap and you are really good friends with France, you de
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When Scotland gains independence, for sure, we'll put the prices up. At least, until we've earned back (in 2025-pounds) the value of Scottish oil in propping up England's economy from the mid-1970s to the early 2010s. Plus interest. We'll definitely be wanting a fair price - but not (quite) enough to make it worthwhile for England to re-invade, re-conquer, and re-hold Scotland.
The trick is, to make the pips s
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You argue against installing intermittent sources of power generation but don't propose an alternative that would have led to cheaper power. What should have been done instead? Keep the coal plants burning? Build more gas turbines? Nuclear is usually proposed as a panacea but the UK doesn't have the greatest track record of building reactors anything close to resembling on-time or on-budget.
My layperson's view is that the problem is more in the way that power generation is priced. If intermittent gener
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On-shore wind in the UK is basically subsidy free now, or at least as subsidy free as any energy supply can be. For national security reasons the government keeps a finger on the scales of the free market.
Offshore wind is extremely cheap too. The last round of auctions had it down to around £27/MWh, compared to about £140/MWh for the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. Cheaper than gas and coal too.
The intermittency issue is because we don't have enough of it. The more we have, the le
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You can ask Texans how well that worked for them during the cold snap of 2021.
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That only happens when the grid operator is so incompetent that they let the fossil fuel plants freeze over.
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'cmon. The UK is totally incompetent and stupid when it comes to building out our grid, but we're not Texas. There are limits.
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Are you sure you can trust the British grid operators after almost two decades of tory mismanagement?
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National Grid is one of the few things that actually seems to work in the UK. At least as far as keeping the lights on goes. I think even the Tories are scared of what would happen if the grid had a major collapse, and don't believe they could spin it as all the fault of renewables.
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Housing development in west London is already stalling due to insufficient grid capacity. This at a time when local and national governments are promising to build more to solve the housing crisis and with the switch to electrical everything happening. It could be well in to the 2030s before there is more capacity. That doesn't sound well managed to me.
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This was a one-in-one hundred year event. California, Germany etc now have at least yearly if not bi-annual planned blackouts.
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A planned black out is: planned.
Aka there is some work on the grid close to the area where the black out is.
It is usually around times where people are at work.
So: what is your point? That somewhere in Germany some times is a black out? Which is planned and announced in the local news papers weeks ahead and announced via loudspeaker cars every day before it happens? Flyers at every involved house door?
Last 20 years I personally never experienced a black out - actually I'm not sure if I ever was involved in
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Funny, we get lots of power outages at our office in NRW due to work during core working hours (something like 9am-3pm), including at least twice this year.
We haven't had a single power outage in London at home or work since I moved here in 2009. I've worked for a number of years in areas with massive building construction going on on multiple neighbouring plots where they would have to make major changes for grid hookups. Maybe they did cut the power for those, but we prioritise it to minimise the impact
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When we have a large high pressure system sitting over us in the middle of winter for 10 days or more causing little wind across the whole of the UK and beyond, how do you propose we make up for the massive electricity shortfall? How much storage capacity do we need, and how heavily utilised will it be the rest of the year? Or how much over capacity in wind electricity generation do we need? Or something else such as nuclear, gas, international interconnects?
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The wind never, ever stops blowing off-shore. Never, in recorded history, has that happened.
In advance of such a period of high pressure, we fill storage. Pumped storage in particular has massive capacity. We also fill up our gas storage. Then, during periods of low wind we rely on the lower output of off-shore wind, and pumped storage, and if needs be gas.
If we can get to 80% coverage with renewables and 10% with nuclear and fossil fuels, energy costs will be far, far, far lower than they are now. And for
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Are you serious? If you have that much wind generation normally, your gas generators will sit idle a lot of the time. They'll need to make up the cost in the short periods they're on. As for our storage, that was mothballed a few years ago because maintenance was too expensive and only just brought back due to Russia's illegal war in Ukraine. Compared with other contemporary countries, we only have a little of.
This is a pi
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Yes, those gas plants will be idle most of the time. There will have to be some arrangement for them to operate that way that makes them economically viable. Fortunately it's well developed technology that can easily do that.
We do that all the time anyway. We have to have plants on standby for peaks, including weather related ones.
Scottish Power is waiting for a decision on the basis on which the storage will operate. It makes economic sense, because while it's not the cheapest option, it enables extremely
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You can do the numbers on the back of a napkin, you would need to flood almost the entire UK with a 10ft pool to provide sufficient water based storage to provide energy in the downtime of solar/wind. There simply isn't enough energy in any mass to make a major difference, most are built where natural lakes and other features exist to provide a significant delta to provide sufficient energy.
Look at three gorges dam, see how big that is, then see how much (or little) energy it produces. About 35 countries ar
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You vastly overestimate the amount of storage needed.
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Please provide some numbers. Your estimates.
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The three gorges dam is designed to produce so much energy.
As it has other goals, too: making the are ship able and fishable.
Your napkin math is kind of flawed, do I need to look up the formulas and sent them to you?
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Please put some numbers in terms of total GW capacity required vs. GW usage and how many pounds that will cost so that the minimal periods can be offset with the methods you proposed, and how much those other methods will cost given that according to your wishes to massively increase wind generation, they'll be economically idle most of the time.
You must be new here. Amimojo doesn't do numbers. He just spouts nonsense and thinks physical laws can be bent to its wishful thinking.
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Hehe, and not really addressing any of my chief points other than continuing to bang the same drum.
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Because I agree with all your points... I was merely pointing out that Amimojo (the guy to which you responded) is a dumbass that is promp to say a lot of false lies. Usually on purpose.
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I would suggest you read Columbus' record of his third voyage. His men nearly died of thirst because there were several days without any wind on his voyage. No or insufficient wind is such a common issue at sea, we developed steam ships to replace sail ships.
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And that was at the coasts of UK?
Are you sure?
I thought he was sailing in a low wind zone, something like "Horse Lattitudes" - but I might be mistaken.
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You're thinking of the "Doldrums". Very specific to the latitude where they sailed, which is considerably further south of the UK. Definitely not the reason for the periods of low wind in the UK.
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UK has no large high pressure zones over it in Winter ... the high pressure zone is over Moskow, which is roughly 5000km to the east ...
You can google the distance.
High pressure zones are rotating clockwise in northern hemisphere, aka clockwise wind.
The high pressure zones lose pressure to the surrounding low pressure zones, hence wind blowing out.
No idea whare that myth is coming from that you have no wind in a high pressure zone. Take a meteorologic class! It might help.
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The intermittency issue is because we don't have enough of it. The more we have, the less intermittency there is
No, that's not how intermittency work. The more you have, the bigger your problem.
No worries though, as long as you don't have much, your french neighbor can sell you cheap electricity from their nuclear plants. Like they did for the past 50 years (except for 2022, we know).
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No, that's not how intermittency works. The wind and sun are not the same over the entire planet. Different areas have different weather.
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Please stop lying, nothing you said is true. Renewables are subsidized heavily in the UK.
Offshore wind is the most expensive form of wind, when averaged over the actual production and subtracting the subsidies (not just nameplate) and including the cost of gas backup it's much more expensive than almost any other form of energy.
The intermittency issue doesn't go away at a country-level, it barely goes away at a continent level, ask Germany. Wind conditions are rather uniform across the UK coastline and matt
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Wind power is also correlated with direct solar heating the earth, so at night there is less wind, period.
At night is more wind.
As the rapidly cooling land area is drawing wind from the sea/coast.
You are so uneducated, why do you even post? Your stupid claims are utterly ridiculous.
I suggest to read up on "continental climate" versus "sea climate"
The intermittency issue doesn't go away at a country-level, it barely goes away at a continent level, ask Germany. Ask about what? Germany produces 50% of its elec
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National Weather Service (.gov)
Prevailing Winds
At night, surface cooling reduces the eddy motion of the air. Surface winds will back and decrease. Conversely, during the day, surface heating increases the eddy motion of the air. Surface winds will veer and increase as stronger winds aloft mix to the surface.
You are an idiot, Germany produces energy from its renewables in the low double digits, they occasionally produce 50% which they export due to lack of demand, they do not continuously generate 50%.
Nothin
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Because the wind works the same everywhere, it is a common misconception that the wind is stronger at night because humans perceive it that way, it is not factually true, it has never been and never will be true.
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In practice, most of what you say is not true. The cost of transmission is clearly included in the cost of renewables as is in the cost of gas or even nuclear.And having more wind farms spread across a broader area reduces intermittency rather than increases is.
Wind farms are subsidized in the UK, through the CfD process, but this process was invented many years ago and was invented specifically to support fossil fuel generation of electricity. So there is parity here. Recent increases in wind farm costs ar
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Wind farms are subsidized in the UK, through the CfD process, but this process was invented many years ago and was invented specifically to support fossil fuel generation of electricity. So there is parity here.K.
In fact that's no longer true. The CfD (Contract for Difference) mechanism guarantees a price which is good for investment, however the price for wind power recently has been negative. That means that wind power actually subsidises other, less cost effective, power types like nuclear and gas.
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Not at all how it works, the UK government guarantees that wind power gets the first demand for energy, so even if you CAN produce cheaper energy while a wind farm is operational, by law you are bound to buy wind energy first. Moreover, the UK government will boost the funding for renewables in the current subsidy auction by 11%, in an attempt to prop up the (failed) wind industry. In 2021 the UK mobilized £12 billion of new government investment into renewables.
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You are the second person to tell me that, but just stating it doesn't make it true.
crucially,
where supply exceeds demand, the current solution is to reduce the percentage contribution of renewables into the energy mix
so in fact as the linked to article points out, renewables are being unfairly disadvantaged.
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GW of installed wind yields less than GW for several weeks a year, and there are tens of days when it delivers less than 0.5GW.
It's normal for the actual power generation of wind to be less than nameplate capacity. This is the capacity factor. 0.5GW for a 1GW nameplate would be a 50% capacity factor, which would actually be pretty good.
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The more wind you have, the more dependent you are on gas to remedy intermittency, and the higher your costs will be.
Depends on how you implement the install. You're right that the windmills only work when the wind is blowing and solar only works when the sun is shining, that's just the way it works. That's why anyone installing wind, solar, or both also need to include the ability to store that power in a distributed energy storage array to make up for the lost slack.
A wind turbine out in the middle of the field that doesn't include energy storage to smooth out the peaks won't work. Distributed storage linked with HVD
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This means the shortfall has to be made up by burning gas, a lot of it in rapid start mode.
That is wrong. And you know it.
You know hours ahead how the wind will be at your plant.
It is called: "prognosis". You can google that.
Dumbass/
Probably won't make any difference (Score:2)
The rules still require that local authorities designate suitable areas for building wind farms before an application can be made.
That sounds fine, except that it requires the planning departments to do something, and they are underfunded and overworked, so it's unlikely to happen.
That makes the prospect of building windfarms deeply uncertain, which makes it difficult for those that want to build them to raise funds, which means that they're less likely to start the lengthy application process, with the end
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It doesn't change anything if the councils agree with the objectors as they just say no as before. What changes is if the councils have mates / donors / backhands from the construction companies they can ignore any objections from the plebs, even if all of them object.
It was an absurd distinction (Score:2)
Offshore wind makes this moot (Score:2)
The UK has large areas of viable coast line into which they are deploying huge numbers of turbines. The govt's own website says they are at 14GW with another 77GW in the process of being developed.
It's hard to see how any on-shore sites would contribute very much capacity in comparison. They seem to have figured out the technical issues with the offshore turbines and there are also big advantages, such as not having to build a big access road to the site with all the environmental issues that entails, and t
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There's nothing moot about the cost difference and infrastructure required onshore vs offshore.
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Untrue.
You still need at least "dirt road" access to the turbines for various maintenance. From small "man+van" stuff like topping up the oil in the lubrication system, to "crane big enough to install a new turbine" to replace blades that have reached their fatigue-limit, replace the main bearings when they reach the end of their working life ...
Every onshore wind farm that I've seen close enough to spot the roads has maintained a network of "dirt roads" to the foot of
UK govt offshore windfarm auction success. (Score:2)
Their proposed electricity prices were so high that the expansion from 14GW of offshore generation today, to a desired 50GW in 2030 has attracted a stunning number of bids in the auction.
With zero bids received, it is expected that zero new offshore wind farms will be developed before this Govt finally collap