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The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

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Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#71

Post by ta545 »

londons_explore wrote: post #29

If the UK were ruled, and all decisions made, by a benevolent dictator, then the solution to this problem is easy. Consider every option of where to build the wind turbines, and where to build power cables, add up the cost of every option, and choose the cheapest (environmentally and/or monetarily) that gives everyone the power they need. An ideal market would produce the exact same result right? Well not quite... An…

Well there was a benevolent dictator in the recent past (upto 1995), when the grid was publicly owned.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#72

Post by briffle »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #48
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

Curtailment, like negative prices, seems like something that it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about. Probably the cheapest and best option is to build more wind and not care too much if it increases curtailment. Yes, all the things mentioned should be looked into and done when it makes financial sense but "wasting wind" is much less a thing to worry about than "burning gas", and I'd rather was…

> I'd rather waste wind than waste money. How is paying wind farms hundreds of millions of pounds to turn off wind generation not wasting money?

you should see how much per MW/h it costs for power from a "Peaker" power plant.

Looks like $150-$198/MWh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#73

Post by tialaramex »

redleader55 wrote: post #39
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

Curtailment, like negative prices, seems like something that it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about. Probably the cheapest and best option is to build more wind and not care too much if it increases curtailment. Yes, all the things mentioned should be looked into and done when it makes financial sense but "wasting wind" is much less a thing to worry about than "burning gas", and I'd rather was…

Balancing a nationwide power grid is very complex. Some energy sources can be started and stopped instantly, but are limited - water. Others are plentiful, but unpredictable - wind. Others are predictable, but take a long time to start and stop - gas, coal(several hours), nuclear(1 day to start, fast to stop, but very expensive). A balanced grid will need all of them, will need them in quantities which can cover faul…

> but take a long time to start and stop - gas

Despite the insistence that Closed Cycle Gas Turbines can't react quickly, because they're by far the largest component that we could start and stop the UK does in fact very quickly increase and decrease output from the CCGTs. For example this morning 2.79GW at 0600 to 3.89 at 0700.

There are much faster options, batteries, import, even the pumped storage is seconds instead of minutes - if available, but CCGT is just not that slow to change compared to the weather. In that same period the wind power went from 10.9GW to 11.4GW. 500MW is a lot of power but it's not more than 1.1GW

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#74

Post by epistasis »

jl6 wrote: post #70

That 70% energy loss in round trip conversion to hydrogen doesn’t look so bad if the alternative is 100% loss by not running the turbines.

That really depends on the capex of the hydrogen equipment. It has to be extremely low to justify not curtailing.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#75

Post by sh1mmer »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #45

California is facing a similar issue dealing with its solar duck curve[1], where prices essentially go negative during periods of peak solar generation. As far as I know residential PG&E customers can't buy energy in spot market prices, or else there could be some innovative arbitrage opportunities, like only running bitcoin miners when power is cheap. 1. https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/confronting-duck-curve-..…

If only there were some actually useful use of excessive energy that weren’t mining bitcoin.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#76

Post by dahfizz »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #4

Curtailment, like negative prices, seems like something that it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about. Probably the cheapest and best option is to build more wind and not care too much if it increases curtailment. Yes, all the things mentioned should be looked into and done when it makes financial sense but "wasting wind" is much less a thing to worry about than "burning gas", and I'd rather was…

> I'd rather waste wind than waste money.

But doesn't wasting wind waste money if we have to pay so much for curtailment?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#77

Post by londons_explore »

So why are these undersea cables so expensive?

Lets do a little Math... A cable that moves 4GW of electricity 450 km is say +-1 million volts and 2000 amps.

Assuming we want no more than 3% losses in the cable at full load, then each conductor needs to be 40mm diameter aluminium, at a total material cost of $3.6M

To insulate a 1 million volt cable, we need 100mm of PVC - total cost $60M.

And we'll obviously need a few mm of steel + more PVC on the outside for protection from the environment.

And now add in the manufacturing cost, and the cost to get it into place...

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#78

Post by cycomanic »

teruakohatu wrote: post #30
pleb_nz wrote: post #6

So does NZ.... Man this place blows especially in Canterbury where I am. Nearly every single day it's windy enough that it annoys and sometimes ruins being outside. I must say 3 to 4 times a week 'f** this windy hole' to someone. Sitting in the roaring 40s trade winds why doesnt NZ have more wind generation is baffling.

The reason that all or almost all of the power you use is renewable. Adding more renewable generation in the South Island won't help the coal generation in the North Island. Right now, investment in infrastructure needs to be made to move power from Manapōuri to the North Island. As to why we are not replacing the 1.8m tons of coal we import from as far away as Indonesia with wind or solar in the North Island? I don'…

Yes NZ is baffling. NZ is a place which could easily be 100% renewable with very little investment. There is plenty of wind, sun and the large hydro power station could serve as backup/storage. However I see dramatically less windfarms and solar installations than in a place like Germany which has much less sun and wind.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#79

Post by alkjsdlkjasd »

jthirkle wrote: post #20
mattcoles wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that curtailment is needed to incentivise private businesses to invest in wind when the output and demand can’t be correlated, but if the government owned the wind farms then it wouldn’t matter if we wasted right? We could just always be overproducing and wouldn’t have to pay for it.

The UK government? Owning things? Surely you can't be serious...

They seem to be re-nationalising the railways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_British_Railways

Maybe not: "The Transport Secretary announced on 19 October 2022 that the Transport Bill which would have set up GBR would not go ahead in the current parliamentary session."

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