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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

#181

Post by youngtaff »

sh1mmer wrote: post #75
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.

Charging cars, heating water in a well insulated tank

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#182

Post by ZeroGravitas »

midasuni wrote: post #172
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How would building 100 times as much wind power in Scotland reduce gas usage in England/wales without building more north/south interconnects?

The connection isn't saturated all the time. Total curtailment is only 6%.

The graph of the day they screenshot shows the curtailment stops as soon as people wake up and start using electricity. On many days there is no curtailment.

And... You can build wind in other places, like the offshore wind near Dogger Bank they show on the map and then forget about.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#183

Post by youngtaff »

tialaramex wrote: post #97
ta545 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The government. The mechanism is called Contracts for Difference, and as the name implies they work by ensuring the difference between an agreed strike price and the actual price - in either direction is paid 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 sub…

Even suppliers who sign CFDs can delay the start of the contract - Orsted are doing this for one of their recently commissioned wind farms

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#184

Post by midasuni »

tialaramex wrote: post #97
ta545 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The government. The mechanism is called Contracts for Difference, and as the name implies they work by ensuring the difference between an agreed strike price and the actual price - in either direction is paid 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 sub…

I think the cfds were a Lib Dem idea. Like other good things from the coalition (equal marriage, working people tax cuts etc)

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#185

Post by derriz »

PaulHoule wrote: post #100
redleader55 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear power plants can vary their output faster than most people think, see 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…

Varying output from a nuclear plant is mostly achieved by simply releasing the generated steam into the atmosphere instead of sending it through the turbine[1].

But operating a nuclear plant in this fashion pushes up the price per MWh considerably given their very high cap-ex and op-ex. And while fuel cost is negligible for nuclear, creating more nuclear waste per useful MWh generated is a further drag on costs.

So as a solution, it "works" if the nuclear plant does not have to compete in terms of price with other sources of electricity. But nuclear fails to compete on cost even if operated continuously - it's uncompetitive with cheap, quick to deploy, low op-ex, modern tech like CC gas turbines or renewables in most western electricity markets and can only survive with government subsidy[2].

[1] https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0703/ML070380209.pdf [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/04/19/biden-adm...

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#186

Post by socks »

xiphias2 wrote: post #22

One more thing that can be used for soaking up rarely generated free energy are cheap old inefficient Bitcoin miners. There are many places already using it for this. Bringing Bitcoin miners to a place at this point is just shipping a container.

This sounds great, but in reality, this concept is also a curse. Moving Bitcoin miners is much easier than building transmission lines - potentially discouraging funding for the infrastructure needed to move the energy where it is more useful. I remember reading of BTC mining companies moving their infrastructure right next door to remote coal fired power plants, getting extremely cheap rates, which otherwise might have been completely decommissioned due to transmission costs.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#187

Post by cm2187 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #100
redleader55 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nuclear power plants can vary their output faster than most people think, see 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…

But using a nuclear power plant as a backup when there is no wind doesn't make any sense. If you build a nuclear power plant you might as well use it, costs the same either way. And if you use it, why building wind?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#188

Post by flgb »

Symbiote wrote: post #164
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.

At least this shows different prices in different regions, but I'm not sure why. The article contradicts it. https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/r505_deemed_ra...

Wholesale energy prices are uniform, network service prices aren't.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#189

Post by bsder »

3 billion pounds (the estimated cost of the HVDC link) seems like it would install a LOT of local storage which would alleviate problems from both the transmission blockage and the bursty nature of wind power.

HVDC links are a good thing, but why is storage not the first step?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#190

Post by cm2187 »

fmajid wrote: post #157
entropicgravity wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's this incredible project to build a 10GW solar farm in Morocco (1/3 of UK peak consumption) and bring the power to the UK via HVDC cable. Amazingly they estimate only 10% losses despite being over 3800km long: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built? And then there are pumped hydropower storage project like this one with a proposed storage capac…

I hope they will have good anti-submarine defences. And one more strategic dependency on another country.
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