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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

#201

Post by bee_rider »

grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #172
arethuza wrote: post #94

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.

Yeh I'm about 2km from a large wind park, it's the least obnoxious thing imaginable. Jogging through them at night with their dim red blinking strobes or watching them work overtime on a windy winter day is great and gives you a sorely needed feeling of optimism and hope for the future. Yes directly underneath them there is some gentle swooshing noises but I think beyond 500m it's basically imperceptible. Nothing I'd…

I can’t stand the fact that we put everything to committee when we’re trying to do something good, but not otherwise. I live near a highway, I can hear the cars all day, where’s my veto? I’ve lived near trains—but they were freight trains, so I didn’t get the “public transit is helpful for the little people” veto, I guess.

It’s like we can only accomplish anything as a society if if the fact that it is going to piss people off is baked in.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#202

Post by gambiting »

yrro wrote: post #189
raverbashing wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBYs dragging things down as usual They would probably object to battery installation next to the generators as well

Yup. > A solar farm that could have powered “all the households in Witney” has been refused permission by West Oxfordshire District Council. The application, by Ampyr Solar Europe, was for a site at Curbridge, south of Witney. The planning committee focused on the risk of a fire from the proposed battery storage, which they said could contaminate the water supply at a nearby wedding venue. > Cllr Nick Leverton (Con,…

>>West Oxfordshire District Council

Are these the same people who refused to let Clarkson open a pub because - and I quote - "it would be too popular"?

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#203

Post by lozenge »

phatfish wrote: post #112
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.

Let me introduce you to Nigel Farage.

It all links back to preventing renewable energy and maintaining our dependence on fossil fuel imports from autocratic nations and "big enough to lobby" O&G industry. The locals and their dislike of power lines are just convenient pawns.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#204

Post by hshdhdhehd »

epolanski wrote: post #197
hshdhdhehd wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me. If it literally in my back yard. It's a tradegy of the commons game theory thing. I benefit from the power but please rig it somewhere else.

We have a similar situation in Italy with garbage. Nobody wants new waste dumps anywhere near (tens of miles) of their own houses, and each time there's an insane amount of blockades and protests. Bureaucracy gets very messy because towns and provinces and regions (equivalent to less federated us states, more or less) and the central government start having legal disputes over those things that drag decades.

Long term a waste dump (landfill) can be good. Cap it off and it becomes park land or sports field.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#205

Post by aembleton »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #92

Could use an opportunistic energy load-dump like a desalination plant... Singapore had a similar situation with fresh water shortages, and had excessive waste-methane energy from Oil refineries. It eventually became a net exporter of fresh water at a profit no less. Fresh water is also easy to store off-peak hours, and distribute using existing infrastructure. Additionally, large factory Rotary-Power-Conditioners can…

Or start creating eFuel which is very energy intensive but might become necessary for aircraft.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#206

Post by Alex-Programs »

lmm wrote: post #131
_kidlike wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they are installing now smart meters with sim cards in Greece, and of course everyone started complaining, shaming the gov, claiming corruption, etc... General population doesn't understand that fixed pricing includes an extra cost which is the risk that the electricity provider has to account for. That risk has a calculable price, which is passed down to the consumers. But because it's baked in the flat rate, nobody…

> Smart/dynamic pricing actually benefits the consumer. No it doesn't. The customer has low risk appetite and would rather pay a premium for predictability.

Clearly the consumer should automatically trade futures as a hedge!

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#207

Post by citrin_ru »

bee_rider wrote: post #194
amiga386 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 windfarm…

I wonder why somebody doesn’t open a datacenter in Scotland. Sounds like they have too much power… also it is a bit chilly, right?

Despite wind energy being in excess in Scotland AFIR end users are still paying very high prices due to marginal pricing used in the UK - electricity cost is set by the most expensive source of energy (even if it is 0.1% of the mix) and most of the time gas is the most expensive source. I think marginal pricing is detrimental but there is no political will to axe it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#208

Post by bee_rider »

Loughla wrote: post #161
arethuza wrote: post #94

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 don't mind them in the distance. I would love if these stupid things were 40km away. The closest is like 500 meters away from my house. They're awful. I live in the country for the peace and quiet and dark at night. Now with a wind farm, there is a constant background hum that reminds me of living near a highway in the city, and a swishing noise that's louder than the cicadas and other night time bugs. Also, the re…

I live in the country near a highway, if we could ban anything louder than a cicada I’d be quite happy to save us all a lot of fossil fuels!

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#209

Post by ErikCorry »

veltas wrote: post #182
ErikCorry wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 supp…

Not that obvious when some tax payers will pay for new energy infrastructure and then also watch their prices go up because it wasn't built near them.

You mess with the markets at your peril. If you pay people to produce electricity that can't be consumed then you will waste a lot of money.

If the transmission capacity is limited you need to expose that signal to the market, not attempt to hide it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#210

Post by ErikCorry »

p_l wrote: post #174
ErikCorry wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge issue, see the depressing web page on Südlink. Massively delayed, much more expensive, and less efficient because it has to be underground. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suedlink Germany, like the UK, has dynamic national electricity pricing, which makes no sense when the interconnections are not powerful enough to actually make it a single electricity market.

Germany is very weird in a certain way of total belief in power of free market. So you see, the market was supposed to correct that. But profit laid with cheap gas turbines to backstop wind and buying from france ;)

It's not a real free market, though, if you ignore transmission. Since transmission is a scarce resource it needs to be part of the market to send the signal to build more of it (or more battery storage, or better located production). The national auctions obscure the actual resource shortage and therefore the market can't work.
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