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The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

wastedwind.energy

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Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#141

Post by ErikCorry »

misiek08 wrote: post #16
punnerud wrote: post #9

Norway already have this kind of solution where a companies on the same land can register to the grid companies, and the production and consumtion within the same messurement intervals is not counted as selling to the grid. This way you can use the public grid for your own "internal" transfer.

It looks like UK, like many other countries, already have grid that can't cope with casual usage and transferring power from farms to users. Adding "renting" of grid sound like it could make it even worse (if possible).

The Norwegian grid is divided up into different regional grids and they each have different electricity prices. Those who build interconnects between the areas can get some of the price difference. It's very different from the UK market, which pretends to have a single area, runs auctions to determine the price and then has to make post-auction adjustments (in the billions) to fix the fact that electricity can't be transmitted across the grid.

See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#144

Post by ErikCorry »

3D30497420 wrote: post #7

This website doesn't provide much context if you're not familiar with the situation. I found this article helpful: https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/octopus-energ...

The problem is they are treating it as a free market issue with hourly auctions, but the 'free market' system ignores transmission. So the windmills can sell cheap electricity in the auctions that can't be delivered to anybody who needs it. Then after the auction you have to pay the windmill operators to switch off the excess production.

The OP linked site lists one of the solutions as "Make energy cheaper where supply is strong." This sounds obvious, but UK (and German) politicians don't want to do it, so we continue to get this dysfunctional system.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#145

Post by grues-dinner »

lmm wrote: post #126
notTooFarGone wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.

I mean just read the link and they're objecting to a 120m-wide trench being dug through their countryside. Which is easy enough to sympathise with.

The consultation area is 120m wide, not necessarily the trenching. The working width is often far less than that: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/340431/download

In this drawing, you can see the area in the map and it is not 120m wide along the trench: https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download. For scale, the grid squares are 1000m.

A 400kV trench construction swathe also includes the soil storage areas - subsoil and topsoil are separated for return afterwards, as well as clearance to the fencing (https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/357086/download).

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#146

Post by VoodooJuJu »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #47
grues-dinner wrote: post #30

Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-... . And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. Like th…

Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.

[dead]

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#147

Post by Telaneo »

ragebol wrote: post #104
eigart wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! It would be interesting to see how this looks on a map. Electricity exports (/prices) is a MASSIVE controversy in Norwegian politics, so it would be pretty funny if Norwegian power is replacing the curtailed wind power.

I've only heard about this, but do I understand correctly that: - Norwegian hydro-electricity is normally quite cheap - 'They' built a cable from Norway to the rest of Europe to couple the markets - Since the markets are coupled, mainland Europe buys the hydro-electricity from Norway, driving up prices in Norway. - People are pissed, understandably I guess. Correct?

Correct. One additional problem beyond the price hike was also the fact that the price came to be wildly unstable. One day it was bascially free and the next day it was approaching 1 euro per kwh, where as before, the price usually came to about 1 NOK (10-12 eurocent) per kwh after taxes and such, and hadn't moved significantly from that in over 10 years.

See Fig 2 here[1] for just how spiky the market became after the price hike.

Also bear in mind that Norway does most of its residential heating with resitive heating, precisely because electricity has historically been so cheap. Heat pumps are getting more popular, and burning firewood got very popular during the price hike, but basically no-one heats with gas, as there's no infrastructure to support it.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266695522...

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#148

Post by cameronh90 »

arethuza wrote: post #116
cameronh90 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also each of those layers have a bunch of sub-layers. Look at any large planning application and you'll find hundreds of pages of consultations with various stakeholders who have no incentive to support it. The NHS, police, fire service, etc. usually raise objections to everything because, obviously, any development makes their jobs more difficult. It serves little purpose besides fodder for the NIMBYs.

"NHS, police, fire service, etc. usually raise objections to everything" I've never seen any of those organisations raising objections - I don't think they are even consulted on the planning applications I have seen? Planning applications for housing developments usually have a huge number of objections from nearby residents but the few organisations consulted seem to usually say that they've reviewed the plans and t…

I live in inner London so maybe it's a regional thing, but developments here usually include consultations from more organisations than I knew existed. Here's a recent one from near me: https://anewcentreforlewisham.com/planning/

I forget which of the various huge documents contains the local organisational consultations, but one of them does. The planning application itself (DC/24/137871) contains 340 documents. News quotes, for example, Greenwich council:

> While the scheme would appear as part of a tall building cluster, it risks harming the open character of Blackheath and the setting of heritage assets. The report requests additional winter views to fully assess visibility and potential harm.

(bit of an odd objection considering you can see Canary Wharf from there and there's a heavy traffic road running through the middle of it...)

I'm not suggesting that, for example, things like NHS concerns that there aren't enough local hospital beds or whatever aren't important, but I guess my view is that they shouldn't really be part of an individual planning decision.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#149

Post by deanc »

mixedbit wrote: post #32

I wonder how practical it would be to build a system that would let home appliances cheaply overuse energy when there is a peak in wind or solar production. For example: * Let heat-pumps heat homes to say 23C instead of 20C * Let freezers decrease the temperature to say -30C instead of -18C * Let electric water heaters heat water to say 70C instead of 50C, such water can then be mixed with more cold water Such overus…

We have this system in Finland and whilst I was sceptical at first, it works much better. Electricity prices are published about 24h in advance for 15m intervals (was 60m up until 2 weeks ago). You can therefore time your usage dependent on demand on the grid (which is correlated to production of course).

We've saved 100s of euros annually on our electric bill by limiting sauna, washing machine + dishwasher to low-cost hours. Sometimes it's impossible and it's days at a higher rate - but for a 2 person household it's costing us 15-20e a month (+ additional transmission costs)

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#150

Post by pards »

mixedbit wrote: post #32

I wonder how practical it would be to build a system that would let home appliances cheaply overuse energy when there is a peak in wind or solar production. For example: * Let heat-pumps heat homes to say 23C instead of 20C * Let freezers decrease the temperature to say -30C instead of -18C * Let electric water heaters heat water to say 70C instead of 50C, such water can then be mixed with more cold water Such overus…

My parents had a off-peak hot water system when I was growing up. The insulated tank would fill and heat up during off-peak hours (i.e. late at night), and merely keep it warm during the rest of the day.

The downside was that once the hot water was gone, we had to wait until the next day for more. The last person to shower occasionally got a cold shower.

On-demand systems win here.

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