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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

#321

Post by eru »

cdogl wrote: post #240
Gwypaas wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is taking the most expensive power source with a large portion of the costs being the initial investment and then not running it 100% is economical suicide.

Not if the market provides incentives to curtail, which it does with negative pricing. If other energy sources can curtail enough at the same price, they’ll do it. Otherwise nuclear will. The costs you’re alluding to can’t be avoided, but they’ll be spread across the system. This is all predicated on the market operator actually having the systems in place to signal the need for curtailment effectively, of course. Th…

I'm not sure why you would ever curtail something like wind?

Could you at least mine bitcoin or something like that?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#322

Post by 98Windows »

Quindecillion wrote: post #308

Negative prices on power i.e. curtailment, is the perfect use case for Bitcoin mining. Obviously there needs to be some amount of battery storage of energy too, but once the storage capacity meets the needs of the local grid, and the batteries are full... what do you do with the excess power? May as well mine Bitcoin with it and make some profit on that excess energy. Energy buyer of first and last resort.

Please stop, bitcoin is a waste of electricity, it has no economic value. Its cancerous. Just make hydrogen or some other storable material.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#323

Post by Quindecillion »

iso1631 wrote: post #310
Quindecillion wrote: post #308

Negative prices on power i.e. curtailment, is the perfect use case for Bitcoin mining. Obviously there needs to be some amount of battery storage of energy too, but once the storage capacity meets the needs of the local grid, and the batteries are full... what do you do with the excess power? May as well mine Bitcoin with it and make some profit on that excess energy. Energy buyer of first and last resort.

Hydrogen electrolysis and increasing interconnects seem a more useful thing to do.

I haven't followed the technology very closely, but it was my understanding that large scale storage of hydrogen isn't here yet, if it ever will be?

And even if you built out more transmission, you're still limited by how far you can go. On top of that the infrastructure needed to transmit over large distances (1000km) is huge. Then there's a bunch of regulatory red tape to cut through, NIMBY push-back etc.

It's unlikely that a power company has the time, resources, and money to set up such massive transmission projects on top of their core business.

However, it's relatively easy to truck in a bunch of shipping containers filled with ASICs and connected with satellite internet (if in remote areas). Boom, you've just turned negative power prices into positive prices literally overnight.

Maybe such a cost saving gives them the additional capital they need to tackle the larger projects of hydrogen storage or transmission?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#324

Post by Quindecillion »

98Windows wrote: post #322
Quindecillion wrote: post #308

Negative prices on power i.e. curtailment, is the perfect use case for Bitcoin mining. Obviously there needs to be some amount of battery storage of energy too, but once the storage capacity meets the needs of the local grid, and the batteries are full... what do you do with the excess power? May as well mine Bitcoin with it and make some profit on that excess energy. Energy buyer of first and last resort.

Please stop, bitcoin is a waste of electricity, it has no economic value. Its cancerous. Just make hydrogen or some other storable material.

I'm sorry you don't understand the value of Bitcoin.

Your ignorant hate for something you haven't taken the time to understand is cancerous.

So no, I won't stop.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#325

Post by Wildgoose »

karol wrote: post #305

Haven't seen such mumbo-jumbo for a while. UK has an issue with winds getting too strong because of deforestation. There is a project to re-forest the north coast to coast. Then these trees can be also burned for energy as biomass. Just look it up.

Deforestation is historic, your comment implies it is recent.

We know from comprehensive aerial photographs of the UK taken by Germany in the 1930s/40s that the UK has much more forest coverage now than it had then.

The UK switched to coal beginning in the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth because of the lack of forests providing a source of wood. The current reforestation projects have nothing to do with "an issue with winds getting too strong because of deforestation". There isn't any recent deforestation - just the opposite in fact.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#326

Post by jon-wood »

pstrateman wrote: post #220
Reason077 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't be long (perhaps in the next 2-3 years) before the UK grid will be able to operate for periods without any CCGTs running at all. We've already come quite close this winter, with record low CCGT output and record high wind turbine production. Wind turbine output, although variable, is also fairly predictable: so good modelling and scheduling should ensure that when CCGTs do operate, they can run as efficientl…

It's easy to reduce gas usage if you simply don't provide power arbitrarily. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/national-gri...

This was blown way out of proportion by the press for about a week a few months ago. Someone got hold of the National Grid contingency plan for situations where projected power generation doesn't meet demand, and somehow extrapolated that into "the National Grid are poised over the disconnect button, and will be certain to use it any day now".

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#327

Post by aembleton »

pornel wrote: post #110
user568439 wrote: post #85

Seems like factoring the location is the easiest solution. If energy were much cheaper in Scotland, some factories would move there, more people would move there as well and you would not need to transport so much energy across the country. But I guess there are more things to consider than the energy in that decision.

I'd also love to have real-time pricing as an option on the consumption side. It's so dumb that we have "smart" fridges that can tweet, but not smart to avoid their energy use during peak hours. It's a thermal battery!

Get Octopus Agile [1] and you can query their REST API [2] to find the energy prices. Then you could control your fridge via a smart switch.

1. https://octopus.energy/agile/

2. https://developer.octopus.energy/docs/api/

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#328

Post by stdbrouw »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #300
stdbrouw wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video you link is about that second scenario: intermittent high availability of renewable resources that can't be used, which is fine for the very same reason that when you're putting solar panels on your own roof you design for what you think it'll net on average, or even what you want to get out of it in fall winter and spring, not for peak power at noon on a cloudless summer day, which would be irrelevant and…

The video specifically mentions transmission congestion as an example of "lack of system flexibility" as one of several non-oversupply reason to curtail. Timestamp: 1 minute 5 seconds. If the NREL is specifically making videos to dispel unhelpful myths about a topic then it's worth at least watching their short video before continuing to spreading those very same unhelpful myths.

Fair enough, my apologies, I did skim the video and read the page but didn't watch the video in full so I missed that part.

I still feel like you're failing to engage with the issue here:

* NREL, just like the UK grid operator, is worried about curtailment and is taking active steps to limit it, the only difference is that while some uninformed schmucks think that any curtailment is bad, grid operators think a little curtailment is to be expected and they just want to keep it within bounds with an awareness of the opportunity costs that you mention -- sometimes it may be cheaper to just build new capacity and not worry about it at all, sometimes not. See for example this 2014 report: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy14osti/60983.pdf They're saying: "relax, a little curtailment is nothing to worry about, let us do the worrying", they're not saying it's a non-issue. If it's not an issue, why are new interconnections being built at all? Why is locational pricing being considered at all?

* unless renewables are already 100% of the energy mix at a given point in time then any kind of curtailment has to logically be due to either congestion or some other technical limitation (a hiccup in planning/projection or inflexibility of other generators) and strictly speaking cannot be due to overproduction; that said, the original article describes a situation where transmission capacity is not just insufficient for peak production (even if it could have been used) but may slowly get to the point where it's insufficient for average production... both are technically "congestion" but do you really not see the difference?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#329

Post by eftychis »

Wildgoose wrote: post #318
eftychis wrote: post #290

To the commenters saying that wind farms should move South or blaming wind farms or other energy producers. (My opinion and knowledge follows.) That is the whole idea of a robust and efficient transmission network: to transfer power from where it is cheaply generated across even countries; and mitigate any power production or transmission network failures. Say there is bad weather/physical catastrophe/heat wave in X…

Scotland has a different legal system and even historically insisted upon separate versions of otherwise national concerns - for example that is why there is a "National Trust"[1] and a separate "Scottish National Trust". Since the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament this tendency has only accelerated. [1] A charity that maintains stately homes and other historic artefacts

Interesting and informative. Thank you!

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#330

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dmurray wrote: post #299
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The article says we pay three times It isn't true, though, is it? The curtailment payment is instead of the regular payment, not in addition to it. Possibly also instead of some tax breaks the wind turbines got contingent on being operational - but that's only shifting costs from the taxpayers to the electricity consumers, who in the large are the same people. Paying twice is still not as nice as paying once, but i…

The Drax report they link to (which has some nice photos of the Star Wars set from the recent Andor series) suggests when you net off the avoided support payments, that you save between 1/3 and 2/3 thirds of the cost when you curtail wind, rather than pay twice for it:

https://www.drax.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Drax-LCP-Ren...

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