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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

#41

Post by actionfromafar »

raverbashing wrote: post #29
daedrdev wrote: post #4

The UK has notoriously long build times for new power lines which heavily contributes to this problem. I think the FT said a new connection for a big user or power supplier often takes ten years, with planning alone now reaching 4.5 years and half of all new connections getting sued, which is insane considering the productivity loss and how it’s a already known problem. Sadly the government seems dar more interested…

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

Everyone knows battery installations radiate 5G vaccines. Subscribe to my Kennedy-adjacent newsletter.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#42

Post by physicsguy »

arethuza wrote: post #19
physicsguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Octopus energy guy Greg Jackson has come out swinging for regional pricing but the incentives are terrible given fair chunks of the country just aren't suitable for wind and a lot of the places that are are less densely populated and so it affects people less there too.

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?

Sure but some areas are better than others - east coast is preferable because it's more continuous than west coast even though wind is stronger (and gustier) on west coast.

It's even more dramatic between countries, I saw in my previous job that for e.g. a country like India with monsoon season typically curtails it's turbines for a large part of the year.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#43

Post by p_l »

misiek08 wrote: post #12

Do they shut down whole production? It looks like the setup is lacking simple PID with slowing down the turbines (by rotating blades of course) or shutting down only part of it? Maybe I lack some of the context here, but that's the first thought.

Actual execution of curtailment depends on mechanism of individual turbine and various support equipment at provider.

Essentially the "electricity market" is putting out orders for increasing or decreasing production (plus various auxilliary services, like frequency stabilisation), and production companies use often pretty complex mechanisms to both bid and trade them dynamically. It goes from somewhat large portions traded day ahead, to even minute by minute adjustments, and the actual pricing/trading etc. involves details like "how fast can you deliver/reduce the energy".

Some double-fed generator turbines carefully manage waveforms generated into excitation coils to very dynamically adjust power flows, some use permanent magnets and pretty beefy inverters. Some can even provide dynamic reactive sinks in case of big load falling off the grid.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#45

Post by cedilla »

Phil_Latio wrote: post #20

Germany pays about the same each year: Wind is turned off, but the investors get their guaranteed profit from the tax payer. Meanwhile wind is aggresively expanded. They even go so far to now build wind in the south of Germany and then offset the lower average wind speed by increasing subsidies...

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 per kWh actually produced, which is basically nothing compared to fossil power subsidies (8.6 cents per kWh using gas, or 20 cents per kWh using coal), and let's not even start talking about nuclear power (34 cents per kWh)

Wind power is so cheap compared to fossil and even a bit cheaper than solar, so maybe Germany should start expand it agrresively.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#46

Post by Angostura »

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…

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. ).

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#47

Post by notTooFarGone »

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.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#48

Post by fidotron »

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…

You have to get the energy to the appliances though, and there is the bottleneck.

It does looks like it will make some sort of sense for compute workloads to move around to be at locations near surplus energy generation. As someone else mentioned bitcoin mining (with the benefit of heat generation) could also be used, but if this practice becomes widespread the attachment of bitcoin pricing to what is in effect negative local energy prices may prove to be a structural problem with it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#49

Post by mynti »

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…

This will probably take a little longer for private use, but the industrial sector is already doing this. Cooling chambers being cooled down further during cheap electricity prices (or sunshine when they have their own solar) or storing heat/"cool" underground

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#50

Post by ChocolateGod »

daedrdev wrote: post #4

The UK has notoriously long build times for new power lines which heavily contributes to this problem. I think the FT said a new connection for a big user or power supplier often takes ten years, with planning alone now reaching 4.5 years and half of all new connections getting sued, which is insane considering the productivity loss and how it’s a already known problem. Sadly the government seems dar more interested…

The UKs level of bureaucracy makes Brussels look like a breeze.

For any new project it seems we have have years discussing whether we should have a discussion about whether to start a new project.

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