91–100 of 396 posts
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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."
A very interesting and well-written article. I'd love to subscribe and see what else the author has, but oddly their blog has no RSS feed. Oh well!
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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'…
It looks like there's just one HVDC interaliand link capable of sending 1.2GW, and dating back to 1964. Why not install 7 more? That would allow the entire current demand for the entire of NZ to come from the south island. 10M USD per km, average 800km from centre of south island to Auckland, $8b in total. 43,000 GWh generation per years, that's just 2.5c per kWh over 10 years on your bill. https://www.researchgate.n…
There is a very high bar for building infrastructure accross the Cook Strait due to environmental concerns.
The problem is a lot of our power is far south, not center of the South Island, and our costs to build are likely multiples of what is costs overseas.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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."
the franchising sysem won't be coming back
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author of the article here Electricity prices in the UK (and most other places) are set by the marginal unit, which is the most expensive unit that needs to be turned on to meet demand. All other generation for that time period gets paid the same price. The marginal unit in the UK is usually gas, hence the sensitivity to gas prices
My understanding is most wind was bought at a guarenteed price by the government at the time of construction, so a wind farm producing 1MWh gets paid say £40 regardless of the cost of electricity on the grid - even if marginal cost was £20/MWh As users are then paying £90/MWh for gas, does the excess £50 go to the government or to the wind far owner?
I think one of the most important elements is buried - electricity pricing is uniform across the entire UK. That seems nuts to me, and incentivizes building in locations that are less useful - it's likely cheaper to build in Scotland, higher production from more wind, you get paid more (for expected yield plus curtailment apparently), and you have less wear on the equipment when you adjust to lower output.
Is the UK not a unified grid? Most of the US is. A kwh is a kwh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author of the article here Electricity prices in the UK (and most other places) are set by the marginal unit, which is the most expensive unit that needs to be turned on to meet demand. All other generation for that time period gets paid the same price. The marginal unit in the UK is usually gas, hence the sensitivity to gas prices
My understanding is most wind was bought at a guarenteed price by the government at the time of construction, so a wind farm producing 1MWh gets paid say £40 regardless of the cost of electricity on the grid - even if marginal cost was £20/MWh As users are then paying £90/MWh for gas, does the excess £50 go to the government or to the wind far owner?
However, notice two further considerations:
1. Such contracts eventually expire. Exactly when varies. But the wind farm is still there, just now the energy price all goes to the operator.
2. Older government subsidies were not CfD. Ten years ago if you built a wind farm you got a direct subsidy. The CfD schemes come into existence from about 2014. They're one of a small number of good ideas the Tories had. They're in line with Tory ideology, but they also actually make sense in the world that actually exists.
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.
I know quite a bit about most of the things discussed in the article from having worked for a renewables company and yet I learned quite some new bits I didn’t know about, for example the intra-UK submarine HVDC connectors (and their eye watering cost). Not a very long article but packed with clearly written and valuable information. Great stuff
We need to figure out how to reduce long distance power transfer. Imagine a global power distribution network, the entire world could be 100% solar & wind. Perhaps one day...
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…
https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
... most of the modern light water nuclear reactors are capable (by design)
to operate in a load following mode, i.e. to change their power level once
or twice per day in the range of 100% to 50% (or even lower) of the rated
power, with a ramp rate of up to 5% (or even more) of rated power per minute.