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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

#331

Post by iso1631 »

smcl wrote: post #275
midasuni wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what corbynites tell you the problem has never been privatisation or the franchise system - certainly not the TOCs. Indeed the system has managed to take Marylebone and the Chiltern main line from near closure under government control to providing massive investment and high quality thanks to long term franchises. The competition has lowered prices dramatically for those that care (in 1990 a 3 hour return Man…

I don't have a strong opinion personally about the franchise system as I don't use any UK rail. My gut tells me they're not adding any value and they might as well be nationalised but someone whose opinion I trust (rail engineer and YouTuber Gareth Dennis[0]) has said that ditching them and nationalising it entirely wouldn't really fix what people think it would. However it has to be said that TPE and AWC have stood…

Yes both of those franchises are failing, and if they aren't meeting their KPIs then they should have the franchise stripped.

Some of that is infrastructure (the cancellation of platform 15/16 at Piccadilly means the new Ordsall chord is basically useless, but they tried to use it anyway), I don't know enough about TPE to fairly attribute it, but with AWC it's franchise operation -- especially staff availability. Some of that is also government interference.

Why the left think a tory government would be any better running services than the train operators is anyones guess. When you dig down to it they seem to want more tax subsidies to big businesses (the ones who pay the £400 first class peak time returns on Manchester-London) and high income commuters (the ones with 50% discounts via season tickets who cause peak problems in the same way peak is a problem on the electric grid, and who typically earn far more than the average UK person who commutes via bus or van/car)

Fortunately the franchise system means many lines have significant competition, and you can choose based on journey time, price, and reliability.

Where privitisation does have its weakness is the financing of rolling stock.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#332

Post by ccalloway »

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…

It can be designed for, but it wasn't designed for when current UK nukes were built; they were intended to replace baseline coal plant.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#333

Post by johnyzee »

cwalv wrote: post #258
TheDudeMan wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you live in a developed market with no need for the utility bitcoin provides, then to you bitcoin is only a waste of energy, and energy generation is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In this case you see it as all cost and no benefit, and any counterpoint goes against your dogma, which is 'inconvenient' or irritating

> a waste of energy Not if the energy is wasted anyway (or worse, costs money to get rid of).

> a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions Except if it is wind power.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#334

Post by Reason077 »

ErikCorry wrote: post #271
Reason077 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HVDC links are more efficient than terrestrial AC transmission lines over long distances.

Also a lot more expensive. The UK is not big enough for it to make technical sense.

The equipment costs (eg: converter stations) for an HVDC link are more expensive, but by running under the sea you save on a lot of other costs (ie: civil engineering, land acquisition, etc).

Building any new transmission line through densely-populated England is extremely expensive. Even if you can secure the necessary land and wayleaves, nobody wants them running near their house and spoiling the views, so significant segments have to run underground in tunnels, greatly increasing costs.

Besides, the UK is not that small when linking England and Scotland. The proposed Eastern Green Link 2 (EGL2) is 440 km long: there are many existing HVDC connections much shorter than that around the world!

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#335

Post by ccalloway »

ErikCorry wrote: post #193
blibble wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built? why would this be necessary when the entirety of Great Britain is one synchronous grid?

Strangely there already is one between Scotland and Wales and two more are proposed (see the article). I suspect NIMBYism is a big part of the explanation. Airborne AC links are efficient but ugly. Underwater AC links are tolerated by Nimbies, but inefficient. So you end up with underwater HVDC links.

You are absolutely right. Building pylons through much of England means dealing with highly organized NIMBYism - from people who care a lot about their local 'environment' but very little about catastrophic floods or fires in other countries, and highly opportunistic landowners who can name their price for use of their land.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#336

Post by adrianN »

dTal wrote: post #245
derriz wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

What impossible amounts? You can play around with a small model here: https://model.energy/ It's simplified of course, but the estimates should be in the right ballpark.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#337

Post by kwhitefoot »

gehsty wrote: post #138
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…

You can transmit a lot of power long distances with HVDC systems. 2GW systems are in development (TenneT 2GW platform & 525kV DC cables) & HVDC interconnectors can be several hindered km long…

The North Sea Link between Norway and the UK is already up and running and has a capacity of 1.4 GW. It is currently (10:53 UTC) supplying 3% of the UK load.

See https://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#338

Post by ZeroGravitas »

stdbrouw wrote: post #328
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Nevertheless, as wind and solar energy penetrations increase, there may come a time when changes in operating protocols would not lead to reduced curtailments, and rather that curtailment volumes could rise as a fraction of total wind and solar generation.

In their conclusion, from a decade ago, they suggest that in the future (i.e. now) with larger amounts of renewables curtailment will go up.

It's like people dying during heart operations. If the number of deaths go up because you are treating more people is that a good or a bad thing? If people come away with the idea that heart operations are too risky, when the science suggests we should be doing even more of them, because the vast, vast majority save lives is that good science communication?

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#339

Post by dTal »

pydry wrote: post #312
dTal wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

>as far as I know, there exists no proven, cheap, scalable technology to store power at grid scale at all It's called pumped storage. We dont need as much storage as people think. Solar and wind anti correlate and a vast amount of demand can be time shifted.

I was wondering if someone was going mention that. Pumped hydro is great, but it's not scalable. You need favorable geography to make it economical at all, and in the end it doesn't store enough energy to do more than smooth over transient grid fluctuations lasting a few hours. The UK is, relatively speaking, quite well provisioned with pumped hydro - its largest storage facility is Dinorwig in North Wales, which is built into a mountain with very favorable geometry - it has nearly 6 times as much capacity as the next biggest station. It can store enough energy to run the entire UK for... about 16 minutes. That's not going to do the trick if the grid runs entirely off wind and solar and you have a dark, calm day, let alone the weeks at a time that weather can be unfavorable. And there isn't anywhere to put another hundred Dinorwigs, never mind the budget.

It's because of this that there's a lot of talk about wild ideas like pressurizing abandoned mines and so on - there are a lot of mines around. But then we're back to the "proven technology" sticking point.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#340

Post by ccalloway »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #129
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…

> Others are plentiful, but unpredictable - wind. I think it depends on how you define unpredictable. Wind power forecasting[1] is used pretty extensively as I understand it by all major windfarms. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_forecasting#Uncerta... [2] https://www.cerc.co.uk/forecasting/wind-energy.html [3] https://aemo.com.au/en/energy-systems/electricity/national-e...

There is a hierarchy of time availability of power supply:

  1. power available when you want it, and you can choose on the fly
  2. power available when you want it as long as you know in advance
  3. power available at a time that you don't choose, but you can predict
  4. power available at a time that you can neither choose not predict
Examples are (roughly) 1: gas or hydro, 2: nuclear or coal, 3: sun or tidal, 4: wind. You can also think of demand types that require each of these levels or better. Of course each of these categories contains its own sliding scale of how far in advance you have to decide or can predict. Wind is not completely unpredictable, but it is further down this hierarchy than almost any other source of generation.

Moving generation up this hierarchy, or demand down it, is always going to give some benefit. Well designed power markets should make sure that there is some fair incentive for any such step.

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