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The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

wastedwind.energy

151–160 of 334 posts

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#151

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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.

People oppose everything. * Lattice overhead powerlines? Eyesore (should use the new T style ones), house values, wind noise, hums, WiFi interference, cancer, access roads, hazard to planes, birds * T-frame pylons: boring ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electr... ), eyesore (we prefer the lattice ones), most of the above too * Underground: damaging to the environment, end stations are eyesores…

Saw multiple people on HN literally 2 days ago complaining about how noisy solar is. Absolutely baffling.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#152

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You don't "build" such a system. You change the metering to follow supply, and everything else will follow naturally. You'll have enthusiasts that'll do homebrew systems to take advantage of the economy, then you'll have companies catering to their (tbh, hobby), then you'll have products that are actually useful, then you'll see mass adoption. Like in everything else. Trying to plan a huge strategy from the onset fee…

> You change the metering to follow supply, and everything else will follow naturally. Tell me your wonderland where this has happened . . . There are whole countries with wireless meters. There must be papers showing how much effect it has on consumer consumption? Ignore one-off examples, I'm interested in population level effects and statistics.

There's a program called Hilo [1] in Québec where it's using the Hydro-Québec Rate Flex D [2] to automatically stop the heating during peak demand.

> With Rate Flex D, you can save quite a bit of money, since most of the time in winter, you’ll be charged less than the base rate, except during occasional peak demand events, when you’ll be charged more than the base rate.

[1] https://www.hiloenergie.com/en-ca/ [2] https://www.hydroquebec.com/residential/customer-space/rates...

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#153
post #84
post #45

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Why wouldn't you build wind turbines in Southern Germany? "Generally less wind" does not mean "wind power is infeasible", which it is absolutely not. There are fewer good spots, but that's why, say, the state of Bavaria aims for less than one fifth of the total capacity than the state of Lower Saxony, despite being almost twice as large. It's also not "aggressively" subsidised at all. It's actually about 0.3 cents pe…

But he said > then offset the lower average wind speed by increasing subsidies If true, it means that because wind in those regions is infeasible, they have to subsidise it. Initial (multi-decade) subsidies to kicks things off makes sense because the plan is to get them to pay off eventually. But increasing subsidies in regions where it's _never_ going to work is disingenuous and a waste.

I don't know what the name of the internet law is, but I think it goes something like: when someone tells you about a regulation and how outrageously stupid it obviously is, they probably misrepresented it or frames it in an adventurous way.

In this case, there is no "increased subsidies for less feasible regions". And if you know anything about the region, it's very implausible. Southern states are generally not forerunners for wind power, with Bavaria's governing party being downright hostile. They are not increasing subsidies, that's for sure.

My best guess is that this refers to either differences in subsidies between the states - Lower Saxony has lower to no subsidies because building wind turbines is popular and profitable there without additional funding. Bavaria meanwhile probably lacks experts and has to bring them down from Lower Saxony or NRW, increasing building costs even at locations just as suitable as in Lower Saxony. So yeah, they might still have state subsidies, but not because they want wind power where it's infeasible. You wouldn't find an operator for that.

Another guess is that maybe this about the process for bidding on subsidies. This is a method where for large-scale projects operators can bid on executing projects not just with money but also by the amount of subsidies. For off-shore power, that subsidy often goes negative now, i.e. it's practically a license cost now. That does indeed mean that less desirable projects, which are probably less ideal for power generation, receive more subsidies, but that's a far cry from building wind power in "infeasible" locations.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#154

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…

This is all true, the NIMBYs are real and we must construct additional pylons... but the largest part of curtailment costs come from the UK energy sector's project mismanagement.

1. We have two undersea cable projects (EGL1&2) to provide transmission capacity between all the new windfarms in Scotland, and SE England where it's used. Both projects are years late.

2. But we keep approving and switching on more windfarms in Scotland anyway ("connect and manage" policy)

3. The bottleneck that the undersea cables aim to get around - the transmission lines between North Scotland and Northern England - are at lowered capacity because maintenance is due, and it's non-negotiable.

Basically everything will be great in 2030 when every project delivers at once, but until then, enjoy exhorbitant curtailment costs.

https://ukerc.ac.uk/news/transmission-network-unavailability...

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#155

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.

In Norway, power cables have been a top-tier political issue for years. They make electricity more expensive locally, since the surplus power can be exported instead of needing to be dumped for 0 or negative cost.

Even without new physical cables - very recently Nordic power markets switch to Flow Based Market Coupling (FBMC) - which basically takes physical properties of the existing lines (coupling points) in grid balancing operations, which allowed some underused lines to be used more (practically) - which made electricity cheaper in some locations, and more expensive in others (because cheaper electricity flew from that region to more expensive ones). It is akin to blocking train lines to a holiday resort because poorer people will be able to access it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already kind of in place. I’m on the Octpus agile tariff that gives different electricity tariffs every 30 minutes - with 24 hour notice if tomorrow’s prices. Whenever electricity prices go negative I have automations to force-charge my solar batteries from the grid, turn on hot water heaters in my hot water tank (normally heated by gas etc. ).

Having just had solar and a battery fitted by Octopus I'm interested - would you mind sharing what you use for automation here please?

Sure, I use Home Assistant running in a little raspberry pie in the lift.

There is an Octopus Integration that exposes current prices (and much else) to HomeAssistant.

There is another Integration that works with my solar panels and another that works with my batteries and can change mode (self use, force charge, force discharge etc.)

So from there it’s really just a question of setting up some if-then automations to turn on smart switches, charge the batteries if prices go negative.

You can also gradually add more nuanced automations like turning on water heaters if the panels are generating more than 1kW and the batteries are over 90% charged.

I’m not a programmer, it’s all fairly easy to do.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#157

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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've definitely seen an NHS comment on a planning application near here along the lines of 'for this number of new houses we need this amount of money to increase GP provision'. I guess it feeds into Section 106 stuff?

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. A "battery farm" in my area was recently vetoed by the council despite being approved by planning. However, the government has just overridden the council so it's back on.. for now. I think a big problem with the UK is how many "layers" there are for such a small country and how each layer has its own processes of appeal. So you have to get past the local residents, past the planners, past the local council,…

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.

The comments I've seen from police are normally specific suggestions that designs be amended to follow the Secured by Design [1] guidelines, rather than blanket objections to building something.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secured_by_Design

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#159

A couple of days ago it says wind cost us £1m. It can't take many days like this to offset a GWh of grid level storage, able to complete absorb environmental gluts like this.

It really depends on how much excess capacity the north south interconnects have. You'll have to store the energy where it is produced and then get rid of it when the windfarms are not producing (and there's demand in the south). I'm sure someone did the math on this and it is not economical at the moment, otherwise this would have been lower hanging fruit than adding interconnects.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.

I also actually really like the look of wind turbines. They seems to be just the right blend of graceful, majestic and futuristic. The old 2-blade ones are a bit visually noisy as they look like they oscillate, but they're basically extinct now. I am somewhat sympathetic to, in the case of wind, low-frequency noise complaints, but I strongly suspect most of them are just tacked on for good measure.

Yeah, I get why people don't want wind turbines right next to their house, but also in my country I see people in the countryside complaining about turbines that are literally in middle of a forest, many kilometers away. It's just pathetic, especially since we're talking about economic backwater, where tax revenue and jobs from those turbines are a significant plus.
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