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The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

ukerc.ac.uk

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Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#51

Post by philjohn »

blauditore wrote: post #38
epgui wrote: post #22

It seems to me that a bigger issue is lack of storage. With battery storage acting as buffers we would normalize/smooth out required transmission rates.

All I keep hearing is that storage is crazy expensive. Otherwise this would be a very obvious solution to everyone.

But storage has dropped in cost over the last 10 years, by a factor of around 5x.

And with cell chemistry that is more resilient to charge and discharge cycles (LFP) coming to fruition in the last 5 years (and at a lower cost than NMC) it makes sense that we're only now seeing large-scale investment - the yield curve has hit the sweet spot.

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#52

Post by willvarfar »

teamonkey wrote: post #40
benbojangles wrote: post #26

How do other countries cope

Different geography. The majority of the UK’s population is in the South; it has a lot of wind capacity in general but especially in the very North. So the problem is getting it from North to South, not helped by how mountainous Scotland is.

Most countries have generation a long way from populated areas. They also typically have much better and more modern and being built out transmission architecture so it is less of a problem though.

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#53

Post by philjohn »

pjc50 wrote: post #18

The B6 boundary: https://www.neso.energy/publications/electricity-ten-year-st... The power lines follow the two main road links, the A1 and the A74/M6. I suppose that's not surprising from an access point of view. What is surprising is that the solution to NIMBY opposition is to route offshore and underwater, at considerable expense - and still getting opposition at the landing points. Fortunately one of the landing…

The new T-Pylons[1] they've installed in the south-west aren't even as much of an eye-sore as the old fashioned ones either

[1] https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-i...

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#54

Post by scythe »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
jayflux wrote: post #15

Transmission is a real problem and just like Nuclear, we haven’t improved it in the past 30 years. So both eastern green link projects (offering more capacity) are due to be finished in 2029, “ok” I think “but surely we’re doing some work onshore to improve the existing network in the meantime..” > Due to ongoing project work for increased power flow from North to South across two Transmission Owner (TO) regions and…

I suspect part of the foresight was exactly to create this situation, where the problem is framed as lack of transmission capacity. Because the alternative - building transmission capacity before it was needed - is even less politically feasible. Public money can only be spent when the need is so blatant it can no longer be ignored, and then everyone sits around and says "well why didn't we do that sooner".

It's not just the cost of building. There's huge NIMBY opposition to the construction of transmission lines:

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-electricity-py...

Of course, the same arguments killed the construction of onshore wind in England, which would have prevented needing the new powerlines (or at least not so much).

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#55

Post by philjohn »

mishagale wrote: post #14
thelastgallon wrote: post #8

There are two things we can do with energy, move it across space or move it across time. Moving it across space requires transmission infrastructure (which is state owned or rapacious corp owned -- very slow to build or upgrade; rent seeking, regulatory capture). The other option is to move across time, which is using batteries. Cars are rarely driven more than ~20 mins/day which make them the ideal energy storage de…

Bear in mind that in the UK, a large chunk of the populations lives in either rented accommodation, high-rise flats, or both. And also, standard housing policy in London is for new developments to have fewer parking spaces than homes (to encourage public transport use over cars). For many people in the UK, having an EV charging port on the side of your house isn't possible, because they don't have a house, or they do…

That's fair, but also, a plurality of households have off-street parking, so the amount we need to solve for is already lower.

We DO need to solve for it though, because it's ridiculously cheap to drive an EV in the UK if you can have an L2 charger installed (2p per mile versus 20p per mile for even an efficient diesel/petrol car) and that should be made available to all.

Is the solution chargers in every lamp post? Or on every off-street parking, with billing tied back to your energy provider (allowing you to use smart tariffs like Intelligent Octopus Go)?

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#56

Post by pyrale »

jayflux wrote: post #15

Transmission is a real problem and just like Nuclear, we haven’t improved it in the past 30 years. So both eastern green link projects (offering more capacity) are due to be finished in 2029, “ok” I think “but surely we’re doing some work onshore to improve the existing network in the meantime..” > Due to ongoing project work for increased power flow from North to South across two Transmission Owner (TO) regions and…

> just like Nuclear, we haven’t improved it in the past 30 years.

That's plain wrong.

Transmission system have massively evolved compared to what they were 30 years ago. Typically, at the TSO I know, the way people work looks nothing like it was 30 years ago.

Nowadays, every 5 minutes, we simulate the whole network for each of the consumption forecasts we have (one per 15 minutes) in the next two hours, plus the effect of every network loss, plus we simulate whether the planned workarounds fix the situation.

There are also newer generations of automated protective mechanisms on the lines, new automata, a new SCADA, etc. The network has also been expanded significantly with several new interconnections, more interactions with our neighbours, etc.

On the "market" side, we have plenty of new tools that allow us to do what's explained in the article's introduction, since the system didn't work like that before Europe's electricity market reforms.

And that's just a very small part of what changed.

> Maybe it’s controversial, but id argue for stopping more generation until transmission or storage is sorted

It doesn't work like that. Transmission evolves over time according to needs. It makes no sense to "freeze" for a time to let TSOs adapt. What needs to be done, however, is maybe give the market a little bit less deciding power, and give the TSO a little better feedback loop to force market operator to provide workable solutions.

Also maybe the political forces pushing renewables with LCOE analysis need to understand that generation build cost is only a fraction of what's paid for an electric system.

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#57

Post by penteract »

pjc50 wrote: post #16
jayflux wrote: post #15

Transmission is a real problem and just like Nuclear, we haven’t improved it in the past 30 years. So both eastern green link projects (offering more capacity) are due to be finished in 2029, “ok” I think “but surely we’re doing some work onshore to improve the existing network in the meantime..” > Due to ongoing project work for increased power flow from North to South across two Transmission Owner (TO) regions and…

I suspect part of the foresight was exactly to create this situation, where the problem is framed as lack of transmission capacity. Because the alternative - building transmission capacity before it was needed - is even less politically feasible. Public money can only be spent when the need is so blatant it can no longer be ignored, and then everyone sits around and says "well why didn't we do that sooner".

From the article, it looks like the problem is partially caused by significant parts of the transmission network being temporarily shut down due to ongoing upgrades. These could probably have been started slightly sooner, but they are already underway, so I don't think your point is weel supported.

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#58

Post by rswail »

mishagale wrote: post #14
thelastgallon wrote: post #8

There are two things we can do with energy, move it across space or move it across time. Moving it across space requires transmission infrastructure (which is state owned or rapacious corp owned -- very slow to build or upgrade; rent seeking, regulatory capture). The other option is to move across time, which is using batteries. Cars are rarely driven more than ~20 mins/day which make them the ideal energy storage de…

Bear in mind that in the UK, a large chunk of the populations lives in either rented accommodation, high-rise flats, or both. And also, standard housing policy in London is for new developments to have fewer parking spaces than homes (to encourage public transport use over cars). For many people in the UK, having an EV charging port on the side of your house isn't possible, because they don't have a house, or they do…

Then the proposal doesn't affect them one way or the other.

But as public transport is electrified, it is perfect to be incorporated into the grid. Vehicles follow predicted schedules, they are used in a predictable way from the depots, so charging can be optimized, and knowing their schedule, the charge on the battery can be kept optimized as well.

Re: The Quiet Driving Force Behind Rising Curtailment Costs in Great Britain

#59

Post by teamonkey »

willvarfar wrote: post #52
teamonkey wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different geography. The majority of the UK’s population is in the South; it has a lot of wind capacity in general but especially in the very North. So the problem is getting it from North to South, not helped by how mountainous Scotland is.

Most countries have generation a long way from populated areas. They also typically have much better and more modern and being built out transmission architecture so it is less of a problem though.

> Most countries have generation a long way from populated areas.

Sweden and Norway are the only European examples I can think of. Power generation is often outside cities, yes, but closer. I'm 50 miles from a Nuclear power station, for example, which is not atypical. That's 1/10 the distance we're talking about.

Ideally it would be closer to the population, but I think the correct the way of looking at it is that there is a large, mostly untapped resource in the North which somehow has to be transported.

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