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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

#221

Post by throwaway2037 »

entropicgravity wrote: post #149
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…

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

"Under construction now."

Wiki says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia-Asia_Power_Link

    projected to begin construction in mid-2023
And:

    In January 2023, Sun Cable went into administration, the equivalent of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#222

Post by liketochill »

avianlyric wrote: post #162
consumer451 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Curtailment is never a bad investment. If anything it’s fantastic for wind investors. Someone is paying you twice for not using your assets. You get all the revenue, and have zero wear and tear on your equipment. In an extreme scenario you could even be paid for not turning on non-functional equipment. What a fantastic deal.

Generally outages, deratings, and unavailable equipment have to be reported to the system operator. Not doing so and then claiming for lost revenue from broken equipment due to curtailment would be fraud.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#223

Post by theptip »

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.

> A kwh is a kwh.

Start to finish, the OP is a detailed analysis of why this is not true.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#224

Post by esteth »

cm2187 wrote: post #42
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…

The problem is that there was no wind in the coldest days of December when we needed electricity the most. Building more of something that goes to zero when you need it doesn't help. With huge storage capacity, maybe, but even the author of the article doesn't seem to think storage is particularly practical.

I don't think the suggestion is to replace gas generation facilities with wind, but to concentrate new power generation on wind.

The incremental cost of keeping a gas generator working is very close to zero compared to all the other expenses involved in building the plant and buying gas to burn in it. We can keep all our gas infrastructure around and simply use it less often if we have more wind.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#225

Post by TheDudeMan »

socks wrote: post #186
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 h…

Carbon tax fixes this.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#226

Post by TheDudeMan »

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.

Why not Bitcoin? You can sell it for cash. Do you not like cash? You can plant trees with cash or lots of other green things.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#228

Post by rtpg »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #27
SamBam wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Sure, letting turbines spin and not use the power, while burning extra gas, isn't worse for the environment than just burning gas in the first place (though it's significantly more expensive to triple-pay for the energy), but it's better is to turn that unused power into used power. The article wasn't decrying the existence of excess wind power, it was trying to describe the best solutions…

The article says we pay three times, curtail wind and then burn gas. Which is bad. But all the solutions are aimed at reducing the curtailment of wind. Rather than reducing the gas burnt. If the money saved by building more wind (or solar) and not having to burn gas saves more money then who cares if more wind is "wasted"? It would be nice to use every last drop, but I dont want to actually spend money to achieve tha…

I think that on a holistic level if you reduce curtailment then in the end you get side effects (in the geometrical sense) that can cascade.

If we store more wind power to reduce curtailment, then that power can be used later. I end up getting a larger fraction of my overall power through wind, so my neighbor can have more access to alternative sources of power that I am not using. Their neighbors now have access to more power as well, because my neighbor is pulling more from my now unused infrastructure.

The gas burnt at peak might not change! But out of peak the balance can change (at least until, say, Scotland is running 100% on wind I guess). The nice thing with storage (especially hydro storage, which sidesteps everyone's universal answer of "batteries are expensive") is that you get to actually hold onto the energy and be "smarter".

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#229

Post by rtpg »

morepork wrote: post #28
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.

Assuming a competitive market, the outcome is essentially the same right? If the government builds more than would be economic for a private company they're paying the extra through construction costs/maintenance/financing that they would have been paying to incentivise the extra turbines.

Except if the government owned it then there is no profit motive to begin with. At one point the number of intermediaries does start mattering (though I imagine that power suppliers are lower margin than other businesses)

There are a lot of details about... I suppose organizational theory? Which makes the decentralization nicer. But profits come from somewhere

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#230

Post by sbaiddn »

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…

Not a nuclear engineer, but Im curious to know how they do it - throttling nuke is hard. I only know the stream "dumping" method.

There's good reason why they are hard to throttle. For starters thermal contraction shortened lifespan; but also because the nuclear cycle itself doesn't lend itself to throttling safely - nuclear products create "retarded (?) neutrons" which are the cornerstone of a stable control system (as opposed to prompt neutrons) and also significant amounts of neutrons poisons which are normally "burned" at equilibrium steady state power levels but which accumulate if you throttle down (therefore be needing even more prompt neutrons).

My understanding is that the more you need to rely on prompt neutrons for your neutron balance the more unstable your reactor (starting them up, therefore, is delicate). Throttling the power upsets this balance by at least two different mechanism.

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