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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

#261

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

landemva wrote: post #256
belorn wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious that nuclear can not compete against natural gas when natural gas is priced cheaply and the pollution caused by fossil fuel is put on society rather than the operator. A combined grid of renewables and fossil fuels has been the primary strategy in most European countries and was working very well in keeping prices low until Russia invaded Ukraine. The big problem is that energy prices are set based o…

> The big problem is that energy prices are set based on the most expensive unit that needs to be turned on That is not a problem, it is the incentive to have supplies available so they can be turned on.

I get why it works this way because the alternative would be to force the fossil generators to sell at the renewable price and thereby making it uneconomical for them to operate which leads to brown-outs. I just think the societal costs the up very high because EVERYONE is paying a premium on power, and the total sum of that premium is only going to increase as we move more and more stuff over to electricity.

I therefore wonder if the market couldn't be structured in a better way which would still ensure that the fossil backup generators are adequately compensated but smoothes the extra cost over the remaining cheap GWh. Something like a meditating party which is aware of the production costs and buys up the daily power and sells it on at an averaged price. There are probably good reasons why this wouldn't work, but I am too stupid to figure them out.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#263

Post by Panzer04 »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #261
landemva wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big problem is that energy prices are set based on the most expensive unit that needs to be turned on That is not a problem, it is the incentive to have supplies available so they can be turned on.

I get why it works this way because the alternative would be to force the fossil generators to sell at the renewable price and thereby making it uneconomical for them to operate which leads to brown-outs. I just think the societal costs the up very high because EVERYONE is paying a premium on power, and the total sum of that premium is only going to increase as we move more and more stuff over to electricity. I there…

That's what financial hedging and the like do - users and producers can sell power at guaranteed prices in exchange for missing out on price volatility. Ultimately, it's probably fairest that the wholsesale power market works the way it does to ensure guaranteed power - It costs money to provide a 100% service guarantee.

It's worth noting there are some demand response initiatives and the like that are approaching this from the other side - they will pay a user to not use power at particular times of high load. If you don't want to pay a premium on power, I suspect there will be providers happy to oblige, so long as you are willing to forgo the 100% service guarantee.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#264

Post by easytiger »

archydeb wrote: post #10
nateguchi wrote: post #3

One thing that I find hard to understand is how the electricity prices in the UK have gone up so dramatically (blaming gas prices) when a large amount of the electricity is not generated from gas. Is the price being artificially inflated?

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

An article on how energy pricing from supplier>consumer is determined or created would be really interesting.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#265

Post by perilunar »

epistasis wrote: post #74
jl6 wrote: post #70

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.

Why are electrolyzers so expensive? The glass ones used in school labs are stupidly simple — just some glassware and a couple of electrodes — so why are they so expensive on an industrial scale?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#266

Post by mikaeluman »

tupac_speedrap wrote: post #146
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.

Thanks. Then it's essentially the same situation. I imagined UK might be more fortunate due to being an island.

But then wind power can only be part of a mix of energy sources, with a strong supply of baseload power backing it.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#267

Post by mikaeluman »

bamboozled wrote: post #155
mikaeluman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you look at the situation in Germany? The foremost country on renewables... And brown coal.

Ok so what’s the difference ?

Doesn't seem to be a difference. UK just has better access to gas, for now I presume.

Without a baseload power source a modern economy just can't function. That is why intermittent sources like wind and solar must be a minority of the energy supply.

In Germany they don't have access to hydro and have chosen to dispense with their nuclear capacity. That leaves gas. Without Russia that is becoming hard and expensive. That leaves coal. Germany had enormous deposits of coal.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#268

Post by mikaeluman »

esteth wrote: post #224
cm2187 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Still does not help when the wind simply is not blowing. You can't have an energy system dominated by intermittent sources.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#270

Post by Joeri »

SamBam wrote: post #11
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…

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 wasn't decrying the existence of excess wind power, it was trying to describe the best solutions for using that power.

But it was missing the most obvious long term solutions for excess wind power: carbon capture and hydrogen generation. We cannot build enough excess wind power to ever have too much for those “sinks”.

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