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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

#121

Post by oliwary »

Here is what I do not understand about these kinds of dynamics: Are they not the perfect way to encourage the creation of energy storage companies and technologies?

It seems like there is a massive opportunity to purchase energy when it is cheap or even negatively priced, figure out some way of storing it, and then sell it back once the price is higher. Over time, this could stabilize the grid and encourage development and scale benefits in energy storage.

Where are these companies? Are the technologies not yet efficient enough, even when the price of electricity is negative? Or is this technology being deployed already?

EDIT: Well turns out this is covered in the article. Hoping there will be more development in this direction in the future!

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#122

Post by aliqot »

oliwary wrote: post #121

Here is what I do not understand about these kinds of dynamics: Are they not the perfect way to encourage the creation of energy storage companies and technologies? It seems like there is a massive opportunity to purchase energy when it is cheap or even negatively priced, figure out some way of storing it, and then sell it back once the price is higher. Over time, this could stabilize the grid and encourage developme…

> figure out some way of storing it

My hypothesis is this being the issue.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#123

Post by radiowave »

tialaramex wrote: post #73
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…

> 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 were designed for.

A report from a few years back (which I'm afraid I've utterly forgotten the source) examined the data on this, and argued that as a result of this changed pattern of use, these CCGT stations were now not achieving nearly the kind of efficiency figures they were designed for, which from a carbon point of view is not good news - we might still be emitting lots of the stuff, but just not getting as much practical benefit from it as we used to.

Now, I'm not meaning to suggest that this is a disaster, or that is somehow invalidates the entire of concept of renewables, but it does point to the need to be careful about what we take to be a useful measure of progress - and that merely the quantity of supply to the grid in GWH isn't necessarily it.

And the article under discussion here is of course picking away at another strand of this same idea - when we connect these generators together, it gives rise to system-level effects, and we need to be thinking about the outcomes, both beneficial and harmful, in system-level terms as well.

(Edited for spelling.)

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#125

Post by toast0 »

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.

The US runs three major grids: East, West, and Texas. There's interconnections, but capacity is limited. Sounds like the UK is similar here with the bottleneck between Scotland and southern England.

Within the US grids, there's really subgrids with interconnection and bottlenecks, too, but those interior bottlenecks aren't brought up as often as say overnight wind production in Texas being over local demand as well as interconnect capacity.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#126

Post by stuaxo »

Our system favours England over scotland, with the national grid charging Scotland much more to move energy around.

With all the electricity generated there it should be cheaper - this could incentivise accelerating the electrification of trains in Scotland, currently only 25% of the network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_in_Sco...

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#127

Post by stdbrouw »

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…

Again, that's not what the article is about. If more wind power gets built in Scotland to serve needs in England, then increasingly more of that output will have to be curtailed because we simply can't move the energy to where it needs to be, to the point where the only thing adding more wind farms would do is to provide a tad bit more energy when there's hardly any wind to distribute. In all other scenarios, having more capacity will not translate into not burning gas!

The article describes an entirely different problem than "oh no, it's very windy/sunny and we don't know how to use all of this energy" which is not solved with better distribution, but with storage and demand regulation.

And actually, the article is in complete agreement with you that we needn't be overly worried: curtailment isn't the end of the world, but we can solve it and it turns out that some of those solutions are cheaper than just building more farms, or would incentivize building those farms closer to where the energy is needed.

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#129

Post by paranoidrobot »

redleader55 wrote: post #39
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…

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...

Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

#130

Post by Reason077 »

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…

Most reactors in service operate at a constant load, and don't vary output according to demand. Certainly in the UK they do not. Sometimes reactors are operated for extended periods at reduced load for various reasons (eg: to conserve fuel and extend the time before a refuelling shutdown is required), but they don't vary output day-to-day.
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