SOT Dunkelflaute

like now?

Cheers

Dave R

The snag with renewables is that they don't work all the time, so you need some gas-powered power stations that can be fired up to fill the gaps. That's not an insuperable problem.

It's not an insuperable problem, but someone has to pay for it to sit idle, and to run at less than peak efficiency in order to be able to pick up a dropped renewable ource quicky enough.

How does that cost compare with the seemingly huge price (and incredibly long delay in procurement) of new nuclear power stations?

nib

The snag is, without storage, you have to have enough backup sitting around to replace the lack of renewables.

Until the nuclear fleet is increased to provide a larger baseload (providing just over 12% at the moment) then you have to have a massive amount of generating capacity available at short notice as backup.

I suppose you could consider it as similar to a hybrid car which can do occasional short bursts on battery, but still needs an internal combustion engine for anything major.

Cheers

Dave R

These dark, windless days are not that frequent. Actually, the sun came out an hour ago, here in London. So, if renewables work say 80-90% of the time, that's very roughly 80-90% of the gas saved.

I assume that we already have the gas plants, so it's more a question of not decommissioning them, rather than building new ones?

It is. You cant make the wind blow or the sun shine at night.

Ergo a workable grid ALWAYS involves more cost and complexity that the wind operators DO NOT PAY FOR

But YOU do.

In the end the cost in carbon and cash terms of making renewables work exceeds the cost of a nuclear powered grid several times over.

Oh the problem is insuperable.

There are no solutions, only alternatives.

Several times worse than even the most bureaucratically inflated nuclear power station.

Rubbish.

Yep the sun is out and generating 0.3% of our electricity.

We are currently in a Dunkelflaute and for the past few days wind has contributed little, currently around 12,000 wind turbines producing 4% of demand.

The problem with solar is is that around 90% of what it produces is in the 8 months with the longest days. It produces little (approx 10% of it's yearly output) in the 4 coldest months.

It's misleading to imply if renewables worked 80 % of the time that alternatives would only have to make up the 20% shortfall. Unfortunately our current wind and solar tend to fail to produce anything at times so the backup is not just something small - it has the produce the bulk of the demand. Effectively we are paying twice, once to install the renewables and then paying again to have a 100% backup for weeks during the year, usually during winter.

If you watched the video you may have seen that many of the green solutions are not that green, or cheap, once you realise that something has to back them up when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

The not in my backyard brigade are now actively campaigning to have no more electric pylons to connect to all these distributed wind farms. No-one informed the environmentalist part of the green movement that wind turbines and pylons destroy the beauty of our countryside :)

What pathetic logic from a Classic ArtStudent.

Here, tell you what, I've got cheap tickets on an aeroplane that flies

The sun may have come out, but just look at the actual power from solar. Barely 1.2GW, And from wind, 1.30GW.

Nuclear power is double that.

Even tree burning Drax is producing more power

Renewables 'work' all the time dear boy, its just that their power output is pathetic in winter for solar and in calm high pressure for wind.

Dont be such an ArtStudent. It isn't whether solar is 'working ' or not, its 'how much power its making'

And if you cant count beyond ten with yiur sock son, leave the argument to someone who can.

We dont have enough gas plants, and no one is interested in building any more because they cant actually make money running 10% of the time unless they are s*it efficiency OCGT units that can sell into a market at 50p a unit.

And burning more fuel than the CCGT would *if there were no renewables at all*

Renewables don't lower prices Renewables don't lower emissions Renewables don't improve reliability.

Why then are we using them?

Well yes.

It is clear that GB has problems with Simple Sums

The cartoon you need is this.

My view of the hybrid is that it removes the need for e petrol engine to do asnything below 20mph. As a result my long-term average since new is 55mpg.

Solar will only produce anything at all at most 50% of the time, on average. And less than that if you want anything close to its peak output around the middle of the day.

You can get 55mpg out of a car on a long trip without it being hybrid. Hybrid scores in towns because of the recovered energy in braking.

Typical Soviet accounting.