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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

#301

Post by Moldoteck »

cedilla wrote: post #217
Phil_Latio wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the whole clean energy transformation in Germany has a tax payer burden of 3 trillion or more till 2045. Frances nuclear plants didn't even receive 1 trillion of subsidies in total since their existence (according to my quick research). But let's say France and Germany are even in subsidies or France pays slightly more: I thought it's about Co2? Again: France has 1/6 of the Co2 emissions compared to Germany. Jus…

You're mixing up historic costs with current costs. As an illustration: the moon landing cost just $25 billion dollars, the Manhattan project even just $2 billion, what do you think a project of these scales would cost today? You're also mixing the status quo with your (unclear) desire of how the world should be. Germany spent the last 80 years to build up an energy grid built on coal – nuclear peaked at 30%!. Of cou…

Germany spent over 360bn on eeg alone till now, not adjusted to inflation. That's about 2x the cost of entire french nuclear fleet. And EEG is projected to rise further.

In 20y since EEG creation, Germany achieved much poorer decarbonization vs France during Messmer

You can check out today how nicely is that investment performing https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DE/live/fifteen_min...

So Germany did both spend more and achieved poorer results which can be seen literally today or in yearly average. All this while it has highest household prices in EU per eurostat (last year, this year it'll probably be topped by Romania)

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#302

Post by Moldoteck »

cedilla wrote: post #233
Phil_Latio wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this case, there is no "increased subsidies for less feasible regions" https://energiewende.bundeswirtschaftsministerium.de/EWD/Red... > The price actually paid is the bid price, which is adjusted up or down by a correction factor. This is higher in low-wind locations and lower in high-wind locations. Put simply, this means that where there is a lot of wind and yields are high, there is slightly less money per k…

I thought you were referring to that. But what's so bad about highly profitable places receiving less subsidy? Framed that way it's not as outrageous, right? There's no malicious encouragement to build wind power where it does not make sense. But why are there subsidies anyway? Well, all forms of power are subsidised, nuclear power the most, and renewables and coal about to the same tune (in Germany). Also, the elect…

Nuclear power in EU is least subsidized per IPEX. Renewables get about 15x more subsidies. Fossils about 30x more. Again, data is open

German household prices are highest in EU https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... And industrial ones in top 5. All this despite EEG subsidies. Without them the price would be about 6ct/kwh higher

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#303

Post by amiga386 »

ErikCorry wrote: post #298
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…

It's easy to blame project mismanagement, when it was always well known that undersea cables are much more expensive and difficult than the on-land cables that the Nimbies scuppered. And it's unsurprising that windfarms in Scotland keep getting planned when the operator can collect these payments while switching off their turbines to reduce wear and tear.

EGL2 was proposed in 2015 and was meant to be operational by 2023. It wasn't even approved until August 2024. Construction began a month later.

EGL1 has already suffered a 16 month delay thanks to its constructors: https://www.offshore-energy.biz/supply-chain-constraints-pus...

> The partners attribute the delay to market conditions, supplier withdrawals, and a delayed final offer from an unnamed supplier, asserting they took all reasonable steps to secure the supply chain given the challenging circumstances.

We can certainly "what if" with NIMBYs pylon-blocking, but I'd still say it's mismanagement of the EGL, either by the government, Ofgem or the constructors, that have led to these delays. If these delays hadn't happened, we'd have EGL2 available today and the maintenance on old pylons would have less of an effect.

It's actually good news that there's so much interest in investing in wind farms! Scottish windfarm companies do have to bid at auction to be permitted to build, it's ultimately up to the government what bids they accept. The Tories fucked up and set too low a price, no investors were interested - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66749344 - their successors aren't making the same mistake: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly8ynegwn4o

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#304

Post by bee_rider »

samrus wrote: post #293
bee_rider wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I discussed that in the second half of my post, so I’m not sure how to respond to this question.

How would users make their demands dispatchable? The demand is the demand. The supply has to match

It depends on the specific load, dishwashers can be configured to run when the price drops a bit, heating can be configured to allow your house to get a little colder, and if the market provides enough incentive, adding insulation will become economical.

I mean it is a big pile of interests that needs to be optimized. One option is to expose it to the market and let the supply and demand optimization process have a go at it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#305

Post by IshKebab »

yrro wrote: post #284
arethuza wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're a windy island surrounded by sea - which seems to be pretty ideal for wind generation going by the number of huge projects underway?

Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air has a rough estimation of the amount of energy we can generate from offshore wind. https://www.withouthotair.com/c10/page_62.shtml 16 kWh/day/person for shallow offshore and 32 kWh/day/person for deep offshore To build enough wind turbines to generate 48 kWh/day per person is estimated to require 60 million tonnes of steel. That's three times the amount of steel that the United…

That book hasn't aged well in my opinion. Reality has done much better than its doom and gloom predictions. On that very page he is doubting that the UK will ever have 33 GW of installed offshore wind capacity, but we're already at 16 GW.

We don't have to generate 48 kWh/day/person for it to make sense to build a mountain of offshore wind.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#306

Post by triceratops »

Tor3 wrote: post #168
pards wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good water heaters are key. Mine is 200 liters and I've experienced cold water exactly once in three decades: One day 3 guests took hour-long showers each. Normally a family of five will never experience cold water. The one I'm getting now has two coils, one to quickly heat water at the top half, the second to heat from the bottom - they're never on at the same time. Internal heat around 75 C, mixed to cooler on the…

> 3 guests took hour-long showers each

WTF showering for one hour? That's a great way to quickly become persona non grata in my house.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#308

Post by UltraSane »

zerkten wrote: post #244
grumpy-de-sre wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> feeling of optimism and hope for the future. I thought I was strange for feeling this when I brought my US-raised kids back to Northern Ireland this spring. Some would have been visible from my childhood home had they been built earlier. It made me think that maybe these people can get something right for the future.

There are a LOT of wind turbines in the US.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#309

Post by p_l »

ErikCorry wrote: post #210
p_l wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

sshhhh, you're breaking the perfect invisible hand of market Germany wants to dogmatically push in EU grid

The mandatory EDI platform to interact on German market is also a bit annoying, though it's in details theory is theoretically /s solid

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#310

Post by port11 »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #265
grues-dinner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I assume from context that the "house values" you and several other apparently British posters are using is what in the US we would call "home prices"? Or have I guessed wrong and it is being used more like "family values"? If the latter, what kind of values are meant?

It's home prices indeed AFAICT. It's fairly bloody-minded ti think house prices will go down with nearby renewables, it'd be a small blip if any at all. Give me wind turbines around and take away the cars and delivery motorcycles.
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