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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

#71

Post by radu_floricica »

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 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 feels (and is!) daunting. Just make sure the price fits the reality, and savings will follow naturally.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#72

Post by arethuza »

physicsguy wrote: post #42
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?

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.

The north of the UK is definitely windier than the south, but I'm not sure that the west is windier than the east - it's certainly wetter?

e.g.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/European-Offshore-Wind-A...

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#73

Post by rmind »

Well, it is not really a new problem. Stopping-starting nuclear power plants is also slow and costly. Pumped-storage hydroelectricity and industrial batteries are good ways to solve it at the grid level. In addition to the possibility of some local solutions others have mentioned.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#75

Post by bargainbin »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #47
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.

It’s so prevalent there’s a dedicated term for people who oppose it: NIMBY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#76

Post by hunglee2 »

Massive scale out of EV's should help with this - each car becomes a storage unit absorbing excess energy production. You really need a continental if not global scale grid system to constantly distribute the energy inputs. Only a few geographical units are big enough to make this happen, China being really the only one who can do it, and is doing it.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#77

Post by andy99 »

jopsen wrote: post #59
andy99 wrote: post #8

What is this percentage-wise? Every technology will have some waste, and obviously it should be minimized if economical. But I think the efficiency is more important than just raw waste numbers. How much energy gets wasted putting energy into and out of storage, how much on solvable transmission inefficiencies, etc. Is this the lowest hanging fruit?

A quick search points to: https://tamarindo.global/insight/analysis/uk-storage-need-in... Which claims curtailment is about 10% That's not nothing, but could also just be the cost of doing business. If you stop building when curtailment occurs at peak wind, you'll have less cheap energy when wind isn't at peak.

pumped storage efficiency is 70-80%, so too for batteries. Probably not a completely fair comparison, but for example that appears to make curtailment more efficient than storing the power.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#78

Post by k33l0r »

wongarsu wrote: post #58
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…

The only thing you would have to do to make this happen is to change electricity pricing from a fixed rate to a dynamic rate based on actual market conditions, along with a standardized way of accessing current pricing. This would drive consumers to shift their behaviors to take advantage of cheap prices, and smart appliances could access the price feed to make decisions like the ones you mention. Another simple one…

Electricity contracts with 1-hour pricing are already pretty popular at least in Finland, even for consumers. I myself have one.

Plus large parts of Europe are currently transitioning to more granular 15-minute pricing: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/trading/transition-to-15-mi...

You can still get fixed tariff electricity contracts but you'll end up paying a bit extra in return for greater predictability…

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#79

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

IshKebab wrote: post #10

Probably the simplest solution is just to not pay for curtailment. If you build your wind farm in Scotland then you just have to accept that you aren't connecting it to an "infinite demand" grid. I think people have also suggested paying for electricity based on the location in the UK but the grid financial system is already so insanely complicated due to Thatcher's energy privatisation that making it even more compl…

> Probably the simplest solution is just to not pay for curtailment. If you build your wind farm in Scotland then you just have to accept that you aren't connecting it to an "infinite demand" grid.

That requires splitting the market into two zones along the bottleneck. Like for example Sweden has done. Then those wind turbines won't be bid into the market when the cross zone transmission capacity is maxed out.

You can imagine how palatable the politicians finds' it to split off Scotland to be its own market zone with vastly cheaper electricity.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#80

Post by grues-dinner »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #47
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.

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/light polluters, more construction traffic, should be HVDC not AC, house values

* Solar farms: waste of good land (golf courses are fine) noise somehow, construction, eyesore (but a 400 acre field of stinky bright yellow rapeseed is OK), house values

* Onshore Wind farms: all the birds all the time, access, eyesore, noise, dangerous, should be offshore, house value, waste of land, I heard on Facebook the CO2 takes 500 years to pay back

* Offshore wind farms: eyesores, radar hazard, all the birds, house values somehow, navigation hazard, seabed disruption

* Build an access road: destroying the countryside, dust if not surfaced, drainage, house values

* Don't build an access road: destroying roads, HGVs on local roads, house values

* Nuclear: literally all the reasons plus scary

Some of them are fair on their own, but it really adds up to a tendentious bunch of wankers at every turn who think the house they bought for 100k in 1991 and is now worth 900k is the corner of the universe.

> As a foreign influence

I'm sure these people would never take foreign cash: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93k584nvgeo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyk1j92195o

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