It just occurred to me after reading of a local utility wanting to erect a wind turbine on its site:
As we have a National Grid, why do organisations see a need to have their own turbine on their own property? Why don't they sponsor a large and efficient one elsewhere.
I guess the answer is to look good to the local green people.
It might be too complicated to sort out the buying and selling of kWh units the sponsored one would generate. If they have their own, then all the kWh it generates which they use themselves is free, and if they generate more than they need, they can sell it back to the grid (making the meter run backwards).
I suppose the answer is locally produced locally consumed. But you are right in that the investment payback time reduces quickly as the turbine size goes up.
My niece who is keen on these things and works in that business says that the 200k people to be supplied by the new Thanet offshore jobby is about right and based on about a 30% load factor. I've asked her to quote me a business case that one might make to build such a setup - i.e. all the figures involved so we can see how it stacks up. She also said that the cost of Thanet (about £750M, as I recall) was a bit high but not too far off (I think she was expecting about £600M).
She also made the point that:
It is often said that as wind is intermittent, we need backup for all wind sourced electricity. But gas/nuclear have non-100% load factors too, so there is extra capacity to cope with that. She felt that the backup issue wouldn't become significant until such time as 15% or so of our leccy came from wind.
My feeling is having built e.g. Thanet we can then see how it works, whether 30% is reached and whether it costs trillions in ongoing maintenance. Point is that bullshit greenwash will - if it exists in a particular case - be found out in the long run. Just saying "No more boom and bust!" don't actually make it so.
These days FITs (Feed In Tarrifs) get paid 40 odd p/unit(*) for every one you generate wether you use it yourself or export it to the grid (if you do export you get a few pence more).
(*) Sliding scale depending on the capacity of the set small ones, up to 15kW IIRC, get 40+p/unit, big ones (mega watt) are down to few pence/unit.
They cant trade carbon certificates if its someone elses. These are trading at high value.
Well that as well.
There is no point in using the electricity themselves. It is worth three times or more as much if sold to a unsuspecting grid. Its cheaper to buy nuclear and resell it as wind.
Your niece needs to study some engineering.And get a new job. Nuclear is 95% or more uptime and load factor, and it rarely suffers unscheduled downtime. Ditto CCGT etc etc.
Wind is always unscheduled downtime, every minute of every day. Means the backup plant has to be at least partly spinning reserve. Burning gas, going nowhere.
And carbon fuel to put in the helicopters ad boats. And backuyop generators.
The experience of Denmark is with 100% plus wind CAPACITY, at best they are generating 6-10% AVERAGE from windpower, and burning MORE gas to do it than if they had no sodding mills at all.. And electricity is 2-3 times the price it is anywhere else.
Total disaster on cost, carbon reduction and efficiency.
Point is that bullshit greenwash will - if it exists in a
But far too late to save a nations power supply sadly.
Just saying "No more
Renewable energy is a complete waste of time and money, and should be banned.
Apart from waste burning, which makes complete sense.
On 01/10/2010 11:58, Tim Streater wrote: ...
Ask her to work it out on the 7%-10% load factors that independent studies show they have been achieving in practice (some are worse, very few are better)
Colin Bignell
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:
Ah yes, the NP's drum.
Istr that Denmark uses Norway's and Sweden's hydro schemes as pumped storage. Did you just forget that little snippet?
Indeed they do. It STILL doesn't make for any useful carbon reduction.
If they can't do it, we haven't a cats chance in hell.
Can you tell me where you got those numbers from?
The reason conventional power sources have non-100% load factors is that they are turned down or even off when nobody wants the electricity, e.g. at 2 am.
Pixie power can produce 100% power at 2 am and zero power at 6 pm when everybody switches the kettle on.
It is also hugely expensive. IMO it is also dangerous in that well-meaning people think they are doing something about climate change when it is irrelevant.
We only need a mix of power sources if we come to depend (God forbid) on wind and solar. The French are all nuclear with some hydroelectric (they have the Alps and Pyrenees, we don't).
Another Dave
Source pls. And is that on or off-shore wind they have. I'll see what she says about it :-)
Clive George wrote:
Cant remember now..some danish reports on average actual windpower generated in the last three years, taken up by the danish grid. ad their actual last 5 years gas imports.
here we go CEPOS Center for Politikishe studier WIND ENERGY THE CASE OF DENMARK Sept 2009
"The claim that Denmark derives about 20% of its electricity from wind overstates matters. Being highly intermittent, wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark?s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%."
"Over the last eight years West Denmark has exported (couldn?t use), on average, 57% of the wind power it generated and East Denmark an average of 45%.The correlation between high wind output and net outflows makes the case that there is a large component of wind energy in the outflow indisputable."
"The wind power that is exported from Denmark saves neither fossil fuel consumption nor CO2 emissions in Denmark, where it is all paid for. By necessity, wind power exported to Norway and Sweden supplants largely carbon neutral electricity in the Nordic countries. No coal is used nor are there power-related CO2 emissions in Sweden and Norway."
Or if you prefer the German viewpoint:
RUHR economic papers Economic Impacts from the Promotion of Renewable Energy Technologies The German Experience NOV 2009
"Although renewable energies have a potentially beneficial role to play as part of Germany?s energy portfolio, the commonly advanced argument that renewables confer a double dividend or ?win-win solution? in the form of environmental stewardship and economic prosperity is disingenuous. In this article, we argue that Germany?s principal mechanism of supporting renewable technologies through feed-in tariffs, in fact, imposes high costs without any of the alleged positive impacts on emissions reductions, employment, energy security, or technological innovation. First, as a consequence of the prevailing coexistence of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the increased use of renewable energy technologies triggered by the EEG does not imply any additional emission reductions beyond those already achieved by ETS alone, if the two instruments are not coordinated. This is in line with Morthorst (2003), who analyzes the promotion of renewable energy usage by alternative instruments using a three-country example. If not coordinated, this study?s results suggest that renewable support schemes are questionable climate policy instruments in the presence of the ETS. Second, numerous empirical studies have consistently shown the net employment balance to be zero or even negative in the long run, a consequence of the high opportunity cost of supporting renewable energy technologies. Indeed, it is most likely that whatever jobs are created by renewable energy promotion would vanish as soon as government support is terminated, leaving only Germany?s export sector to benefit from the possible continuation of renewables support in other countries such as the US. Third, rather than promoting energy security, the need for backup power from fossil fuels means that renewables increase Germany?s dependence on gas imports, most of which come from Russia. And finally, the system of feed-in tariffs stifles competition among renewable energy producers and creates perverse incentives to lock into existing technologies. Hence, although Germany?s promotion of renewable energies is commonly portrayed in the media as setting a ?shining example in providing a harvest for the world? (The Guardian 2007), we would instead regard the country?s experience as a cautionary tale of massively expensive environmental and energy policy that is devoid of economic and environmental benefits. As other European governments emulate Germany by ramping up their promotion of renewables, policy makers should scrutinize the logic of supporting energy sources that cannot compete on the market in the absence of government assistance."
The most tragically telling comes from this scholarly Estonian study
"The following questions are analysed: - How much wind power capacity will it be technical possible to inte grate into the Estonian power system and the Baltic power system? - How to deal with uncertainty about forecasting of the wind power production? - What are the additional costs for the system of wind power integration? - How does wind power deployment influence the electricity prices in the region? - What is the role of the electricity market in the integration of wind power?
Other aspects regarding wind power integration are the technical requirements for connection of wind power to the grid (grid code issues), and the economic viability of wind power deployment from a socio economical viewpoint and from a stakeholder viewpoint (economic evaluation). These aspects are not dealt with in detail in this study."
Note that nowhere is the question ASKED, let alone answered 'what impact on fossil fuel use (if any) will all this windpower have?
Ther are so many studies I have read, that its hard to track down any given factoid out of the miles of verbiage. Suffice to say the most optimistic estimate was irish, that you might be able to use half teh windpower you generated to save fossil fuel. The most pessimistic was that you would in fact burn more fuel backing up windmills than not having them at all. I think that as in the context of Lithuanian oil shale existing plant, which does not dispatch well. Alternatively they could install new gas turbine plant, and become dependent on Russian gas...
Right, so we're talking about different things. They're generating 20% of their capacity from wind, but other countries are using a significant proportion of that.
And when the wind is lower, is there inflow from Norway and Sweden? Coz that would support the idea that the wind generation is doing well.
France is 78% nuclear. They turn their nukes down at night too. 100% nuclear is possible although its less than an ideal way to run the plant, by modulating the reactors. In many ways its better simply to waste the steam into the sea. Its costs no carbon to make it after all, and the nuclear fuel is a trivial cost compared with the rest.
Or sell off peak energy at such low prices its a no brainer to put in heat banks to store it for the next day.
My winter heat requirements peak out at 10KW. let's say I need to store
8am to midnight worth of heat. in a tank that never drops below 60 degrees, but I will allow to go to 90 degrees.that's 160Kwh oh heat. so I will be charging at night at a healthy 20KW rate. Pretty hard on my 100A supply and transformer, but doable just.
It would shag the grid if everybody did it mind you, but heck if we are using electricity, not fossil to heat houses, that's gonna happen whoever generates it.
Let's say I have a 30 degree working range, and ignore heat losses. Lots of lovely celotex round my underground tank of hot water...with its heat exchangers.In fact all it is is a concrete cast tank with 6 3KW immersion heaters stuck in it on three rings. And a bloody great coil of copper pipe coupled to a pump..that replaces my boiler and pump, and heats my rads at anything up to 60C as well as my DHW.
I can store 30 calories per gram. 30 kilocalories per kilogram and 30 megacalories per cubic meter of hot water, with that temperature range.
30 megacalories is about 35 Kwh, and I only NEED 20.. So a 1 meter cube tank buried in insulation, under the middle of my house, plus some DIY pipework and readily available standard parts enables me to completely replace a domestic 10KW oil boiler with totally cheap rate electricity. And completely meet a large house heating and DHW requirements.This is energy storage that really works. Make that a bath 7 meter long,
1 meter wide and 1 meter deep, and it will run me for a WEEK . Now the ground plan of my house is about 160 square meters Put a 1 meter deep tank under that lot, heat it to 90C and I have enough heat for 200 days of full winter output!!That's cost effective low grade energy storage. If I could then buy spot power at a scalable price, I could take summer off peak and use it in winter..pre buying my winter fuel in summer, and storing it up for the winter.
Would I get a subsidy? Would I f*ck. Its simple, cheap and would really help. Ergo its not eligible for a grant, which only goes to expensive,. complicated and 'is no damned use'.
Lyn, Patent this if you read it.
IF such large scale hot water storage was implemented broadly, and off peak electricity was made a little cheaper - this is cost neutral at an offpeak price of about 4p a unit, excluding capital costs - this one wins hands down.
Now add heatpumps..
(Note: fully utilised nuclear plant is about 4p a unit anyway: So it works for that. Wind is about 10p-40p a unit, so you are screwed with that of course.) Finally, if there is a teeny bit of control gear that only cuts the heaters in as the grid frequency rises above 50Hz, which essentially signals that the grid is 'looking for load' you have a marvellous load balancing system on the grid.
You will charge your heatbank when there is power surplus only. Or if your heatbank is desperately cooling..But even that is actually doable another way..if a weeks ultra cold weather is anticipated, the power management can call on generation kit to keep the frequency a wee bit high during each night, ensuring good charge, and drop it back hard for short periods during the day to recover overall synchronisation. This ensures everyone's heatbank is nice and hot..and during the cold spell, run long periods of under frequency, and only shorter periods of very high frequency to shorten everyones charging period.
Don't take this as a marvellous way to make wind power work though. The idea of this is to try and reduce demand fluctuations to optimise efficiency on nuclear and conventional sets, not to balance generation instability by throwing massive circulation currents round a metastable grid massively over specced grid subject to the random input of wildly geographically dispersed totally unpredictable sustainable energy sources..Oh no. we don't want that wind driven waste of grid capacity thank you. The ideas is to make better use of what we have (already paid for)
The idea is not to store windpower when you can, because you still have to get it to the consumer. The idea is to fully utilise the grid and steady generation capacity you have online, running at close to its best efficiency ...
It's so simple cheap and clever that it has no chance of being adopted however.
see earlier posting. For sources.
The MORE gas comes about because they aqre running into issues: a lot of Denmark uses CHP for district heating. This cant use electricity offpeak or otherwise, so they cant eat into that, nor can the switch it off when the windblows cos they need the HEAT it produces. So although they can ramp down coal, they have to then backup with gas instead, because they need a LOT of backup. Essentially what happens is that when the wind DOES blow, they either simply dump the electricity, because no one wants it at all, or sell it at uber low prices to Norway and Sweden, who simply switch off a few hydro plants, which doesn't save any carbon either.
So no possible savings in carbon there, anywhere,.
When the wind doesn't blow, they have to import shitloads of hydro from the interlinks, which is fine, but there isn't enough hydro to fully back the sodding mills up, so they end up pusging the go button on some gas turbine kit. And running that at part load and crap efficiency, and Russian gas.
It's what happens when you let marketing dictated engineering policy mate. A complete balls up.
Twas ever thus.
yes, but not nearly enough. And it doesn't save any carbon there anyway, because they aren't using any (much) to start with.
So you have the position that an excess of windpower is thrown away or exported, subsidised heavily by the Danish consumer, and saves no carbon. It doesn't even generate DANISH carbon credits
A lack of windpower causes new expensive fast start gaq turbines that never were used or needed before, to be swung in.
meanwhile Denmark's base load CHP kit, which really works and is very efficient, would have to be replaced by something no ones invented yet, and a load of heatpumps that probably would require completetely new buildings to take advantage of the, and yet more expense.
That's not true. Hydro is one of the more effective ways of storing energy, either via pumped storage, or just not running the thing and letting the reservoir fill up.
that isn;t actually what I disputed.
I merely noted that a surplus of windpower exported into a 100% hydro country saves no carbon in that country. And saves no carbon in the country of origin either.
It merely displaces a cheap efficient form of carbon free energy (hydropower) with an expensive inefficent one (wind power) run across long expensive and not 100% efficient interlinks.
It's a lose lose situation really.
It would be nice if the hydropwer could then be used to back the windmills up, but there isn't enough interlink and besides, the Swedes and so on rather want to use it themselves, especially in dry (and rather windless) years.
And don't probably see why they should turn it into pumped storage at their expense merely to make Danish stupidity seem less so.
The Danes are free to make their electricity only 4 times as expensive as they need be, and rent a bit of Sweden to build a measly couple of gigawatts pumped if they want, I suppose, and their two billion Euro interconncetor to it, but it's not the Swedes problem, really it's not.
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