Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

archy.deberker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 396 posts

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#141

Post by nawitus »

grey-area wrote: post #111
archydeb wrote: post #10

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

Is that a good idea? It doesn’t sound very sensible to price everything at the cost of the most expensive unit, why do they do that?

The reasoning is that it incentives electricity producers to offer max amount of electricity at low prices without speculating how to maximize profit (as their sell offer will practically speaking have zero effect on the spot price). Nuclear plants, wind power, solar can just offer to sell at everything at around 0c/kWh.

It's claimed that another type of market would cause companies to speculate with their sell offers and thus generate less electricity. It would be interesting to see how this kind of market would work in reality, though.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#142

Post by smcl »

blibble wrote: post #94
alkjsdlkjasd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

since covid it has been essentially nationalised: the government took on the risk and any pnl the franchising sysem won't be coming back

I'm sure TransPennine Express and Avanti West Coast passengers would love that but it's not quite true (yet?)

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#143

Post by consumer451 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #136
stdbrouw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, that's not what the article is about. If more wind power gets built in Scotland to serve needs in England, then increasingly more of that output will have to be curtailed because we simply can't move the energy to where it needs to be, to the point where the only thing adding more wind farms would do is to provide a tad bit more energy when there's hardly any wind to distribute. In all other scenarios, having…

The article leaves an impression that curtailment is a problem that is costing us money. See most other comments here as evidence of that. I'm explicitly calling for more curtailment, because it isn't a problem and doesn't need to be solved. Burning fossil fuels is a problem to be solved. High electricity prices are a problem to be solved. Both of those problems can be solved by building more wind power , which almos…

> To repeat, curtailment is not a problem and does not need to be solved.

Agree 95%. The only valid question involving curtailment is how much must occur at each individual turbine or farm to make it a bad investment.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#145

Post by timerol »

TylerE wrote: post #84
fencepost wrote: post #83

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.

Even in the parts of the US that are unified grids, a kWh is not a kWh. Where you live determines how expensive your electricity is. Compare Cambridge, MA https://electricityrates.com/compare/electricity/02139/ with Philadelphia, PA https://electricityrates.com/compare/electricity/19101/. About twice as expensive in MA.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#146

Post by tupac_speedrap »

mikaeluman wrote: post #87

The UK seems to have a very interesting situation. We also have a proposal for curtailment in Sweden for wind power producers, but for a different reason. In the UK, curtailment seems needed due to power transfer capacity issues. In Sweden it is purely due to grid stability reasons. As wind does not work as a baseload power source this becomes problematic as too much wind power generation can then negatively affect p…

https://gridwatch.co.uk/demand/percent

It's been very windy recently so we are hitting around 40-60% wind power at the moment but there were moments last year where we were only getting 3% from wind power if it isn't very windy and unfortunately that means using more gas turbines for power which is an expensive source of energy at the moment.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#147

Post by moffkalast »

Reason077 wrote: post #137
moffkalast wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ramping it up is likely the problem, since all plants can reduce power on a dime by just varying the generator coil current I think. You could just keep it spinning nonstop without a load I suppose, but for anything but nuclear it's not gonna be economical.

A nuclear power plant can't just "keep spinning without a load" - all that energy has to go somewhere! If a nuclear plant is disconnected from the grid (tripped), the nuclear reaction must be stopped (eg: by inserting control rods into the core).

Of course it can, just short the generator coils and you have a free brake. The turbine should then still have resistance and shouldn't overspeed. Or just idk, use it to pump some water in a loop or discharge through some resistors. Getting rid of power isn't that hard if you want to do it. Simplest solution would I suppose be to just have an outside radiator that brings the steam to cooling tower levels of manageability so you can throttle the turbine with just a valve.

The thing is, they don't really want to do it if they can save fuel by shutting down.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#148

Post by adrianmonk »

> evidence from Texas suggests that windfarms do not end up near population centres even in markets with locational pricing and liberal planning laws

The windy part of Texas is not the part where most people live. The western part of the state and the panhandle are windy but also pretty dry. Most of the people live more toward the central or eastern part of the state where it's greener but less windy.

Pricing incentives may just not be enough to overcome that.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#149

Post by entropicgravity »

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…

HVDC is now a thing. Collecting solar in Northern Austrialia and sending it to Singapore over a 3800km long transmission line. Under construction now.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#150

Post by mytailorisrich »

scrlk wrote: post #119
mytailorisrich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to upgrade the national grid. This is needed anyway because it is already maxed out and demand will dramatically increase with the transition to EVs.

Tell that to Ofgem. The latest price settlement for electricity transmission and distribution networks (RIIO-T2 and RIIO-ED2) has cut the amount of investment the networks are allowed to carry out.

I bought a petrol generator even before Covid.
Post reply on HN