The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
wastedwind.energy
The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
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Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#2Ireland has the same problem, they're waiting on getting another interconnect to france online before building out more windmills. There's enough offshore wind to power the whole island, but it's not predicable enough to power the grid 24/7
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#3Multiple transmission network upgrades are planned to reduce excessive curtailment: https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/where-it...
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#4The 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 in forcing digital ids.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#5The pressing question is, how much £ per £ lost need to be invested in grid infrastructure to reduce this number?
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#6A family member lives on the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.
There is a community trust on one of the islands which has built wind turbines.
However it took about 2 years before they were certified and connected up to the grid, and rather disappointingly it hasn't made local prices cheaper.
The electricity is sold to the grid and that money goes to the community trust.
Which seems bureaucratic?
I wish we could have decentralized electrical grid generation.
(not an Electrical engineer)
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#7This website doesn't provide much context if you're not familiar with the situation.
I found this article helpful: https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/octopus-energ...
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#8What 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?
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#9Norway already have this kind of solution where a companies on the same land can register to the grid companies, and the production and consumtion within the same messurement intervals is not counted as selling to the grid. This way you can use the public grid for your own "internal" transfer.
Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain
#10Probably 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 complicated is kind of insane. Just not paying is actually a simplification.
Though this figure includes paying for gas generators to replace the wasted wind which costs 3x more than the curtailment payments. Still, those payments feel less morally galling.