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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

#241

Post by dTal »

radiowave wrote: post #123
tialaramex wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 inst…

An interesting complicating factor here is that much of the UK's installed base of CCTG stations were built during the 90s with the intention of replacing many of the smaller coal-fired stations, which would typically be doing 2-shift operations (i.e., day and evening). Now, those CCGT stations are increasingly used to counterbalance renewables, and (as you point out) are now running on much shorter cycles than they…

The only thing that matters for climate change is the amount of gas burned - the efficiency with which we turn it into work is irrelevant. If we reduce the amount of gas burned, at a cost of burning the remaining gas less efficiently, that's still a win.

In a certain sense one should expect lowering usage to inevitably lower efficiency, as a sort of inverse corollary to Jevon's paradox (which states that as efficiency rises, total usage does too).

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#242

Post by stuaxo »

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.

Generating a load of heat, when part of the what renewables are for is averting climate change seems counterproductive.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#244

Post by entropicgravity »

NamTaf wrote: post #231
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.

To be clear, Sun Cable entered administration this week. I wouldn’t hold your breath. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-admi...

Ok sure apparently I'm a week out of date, but several other projects are in the works and many of these have already been built. There isn't a problem with the technology.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#245

Post by dTal »

derriz wrote: post #185
PaulHoule wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I am skeptical that renewables are cheaper than nuclear when one factors in the impossible amounts of energy storage required to make them meet the same reliability guarantees that nuclear (and fossil) can meet - indeed, as far as I know, there exists no proven, cheap, scalable technology to store power at grid scale at all.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#246

Post by louloulou »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #101
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…

You have two problems: 1) a lot of wind means there's too much power... that has to be used somewhere, that's why you have negative prices, to get someone to take that power off the grid and use it for something, sometimes useless, and someone has to pay for that 2) no wind means you still need gas, hydro, nuclear etc. powerplants, because you need power even when there is no wind and sun, so you need all the power g…

they should just mine bitcoin with it

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#247

Post by entropicgravity »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #221
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.

"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.

OK sure, that particular project may have been halted but it's not because of technical problems. And plenty of HVDC transmission lines have already been built. The key thing about HVDC is that it follows a dropping price curve similar to semiconductor manufacturing so prices will continue to come down.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#248

Post by defrost »

stuaxo wrote: post #242
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.

Generating a load of heat, when part of the what renewables are for is averting climate change seems counterproductive.

At Earth scale it's not human generated heat that's the problem.

The problem (simplified) is that vast amounts of energy from the Sun fall daily across the globe.

An amount of that energy generates a great deal of heat at the land surface and ocean layer.

Much more heat by magnitudes than humans create.

Some of that heat warms the land, water and lower atmosphere, a great deal of that heat radiates outwards toward space ..

A balance was struck that's been more or less "just right" on average for some 200K years.

We have altered that balance by increasing the insulating properties of the lower atmosphere via increased CO2 (with worse flow on effects from increasing methane and water vapor).

This additional trapped energy is causing more powerful atmospheric events and increased mean tempretures.

But the cause is insulating in very large amounts of energy, not generating small amounts of energy (at the appropriate relative scales).

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#249

Post by defrost »

NamTaf wrote: post #231
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.

To be clear, Sun Cable entered administration this week. I wouldn’t hold your breath. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-11/sun-cable-enters-admi...

G'damn it.

That's a shame, I wasn't entirely onboard with the logistics of crossing the massive fault lines along the route .. but I admired the ambition and scope of the project.

Be interesting to see if this is the end or just a pause waiting for fresh capital.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#250

Post by defrost »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #221
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.

"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.

The cable and power transmission parts of that scheme were sound - the routing across one of the more volcanic and faulted geological regions in the world was sketchy.
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