Windfarms paid to shut down

[The Natural Philosopher]

geography and cost and water

[The Natural Philosopher]

Rubbish. Its fully bi directional at flat out rate.

[Guy Dawson]

Geography. For pumped storage you need storage in the form of lakes.

A pumped storeage system is basically a hydro system where you can also pump the water back to the high lake when there's surplus electricity.

There's a limit to the number of suitable lakes and amount of water they can store.

Guy

-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Dawson@SMTP - [e-mail] // ICBM - 6.15.16W 57.12.23N 986M

4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 The Reality Check's in the Post! 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4

[Guy Dawson]

Chronic under investment in the national grid means it's not what it used to be.

Backup circuits are being used to provide additional capacity resulting in a loss of backup capacity.

Guy

-- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Dawson@SMTP - [e-mail] // ICBM - 6.15.16W 57.12.23N 986M

4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4 The Reality Check's in the Post! 4.4>5.4 4.4>5.4

[Dave Liquorice]

surplus

I don't remember the lights going out, ergo the power wasn't needed.

Whitelee 322MW Farr 92MW Hadyardhill 120MW Blacklaw 124MW Millennium 50MW Beinn Tharsuin 30MW

Total 738MW

Not much compared to the 30,000MW base load that nuclear provides or the up to another 30,000MW that gas/coal provide.

So would a coal or nuclear station be compensated at the same rate for the power they couldn't sell in similar circumstances?

Level playing field please.

[Steve Firth]

I can feel a Yorkshireman moment coming on...

You won't produce 30GW? By, but you had it easy... we wouldn't produce

250GW and our parents would make us eat gravel.

[Huge]

It's not that we "can" only have two of them, we just do.

Because no more have been built.

I assume not because of geography and cost.

[Huge]

Quite. They can back up at a few moments notice.

[ARWadsworth]

They can make it rain?

[John Williamson]

It's in Wales. Not only that, it's in the wet bit of Wales.

[Derek G.]

From Wikipedia :

"The stalling of the UK nuclear power programme in the late 1980s and the coincident dash for gas increased the proportion of dispatchable plant on the network, making the use of pumped storage for day/night load balancing less attractive. As a result, a similar facility planned for Exmoor was never built."

According to Wiki the project was completed in 1974. Simple inspection would reveal that was the start of the era of the second Wilson Labour Government which I prefer to call "The years of stagnation" when many large scale capital projects, such as new nuclear stations and major new motorway schemes were cancelled leaving part built motorways not reaching their destinations without regard to the consequences of the lost facility.

Derek G

[dennis]

Due to total mismanagement of the economy and a lack of funds to pay. Pretty much the same as the last government.

[ARWadsworth]

No way

[geoff]

[Gib Bogle]

Reducing power output from a hydroelectric system is equivalent to storing energy in the hydro lakes. There may be issues with the possible rate of change.

[Gib Bogle]

LOL

[Andy Dingley]

How many moments though? The design can come on line for generation in a little over a minute. If it's a pre-planned boost (post Eastenders kettles) it's about 15 seconds. Coming on line as a power dump though was never seen as needing this fast response (after all, they were mostly sinking surplus from Trawsfynydd), so can't react so fast.

It's not a barrier to Dinorwig's use for wind power, but if it was designed now, it would be designed differently.

[Huge]

If they run the pumps fast enough.

[The Natural Philosopher]

On the contrary, its the huge extra demand placed on it by intermittent renewable energy that is the problem.

You need a grid conceptually oversized by the inverse of the intermittent power source load average. Wind is about 25% overall. That means to do the same job as conventional, you need 4 times as many power lines etc.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Coal is being paid to remain idle right now.