6 ms·

UK Wind Farms Are Overstating Their Output

31 points by blackethylene 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago
Sounds like good, old-fashioned British capitalism to me - lying is made extremely lucrative for big companies, while regulation & enforcement are only for the little people.
physicsguy 3y ago
The curtailment periods in the UK are already a problem, particularly in Scotland where there is now not enough grid capacity. There's no point building massive farms up there now without corresponding National Grid investment, which isn't happening anywhere near fast enough.
- deepnet 3y ago
  This is very interesting can you link somedata sources for funding and capacity ? Your insightful comment is much appreciated. Many thanks for sharing your research
  - physicsguy 3y ago
    https://news.yahoo.com/wasted-wind-power-could-add-151805433.html https://news.yahoo.com/wasted-wind-power-could-add-151805433... https://www.thenational.scot/news/23532508.wind-farm-curtailment-costs-see-scottish-renewable-power-wasted/?ref=twtrec https://www.thenational.scot/news/23532508.wind-farm-curtail...
  - kitd 3y ago
    https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/eastern-hvdc-link/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/eastern-hvdc-link/
- Mvandenbergh 3y ago
  There's a huge amount of North-South capacity being built as part of the holistic network design programme which will unlock a lot of capacity and substantially reduce curtailment.
- happymellon 3y ago
  I don't remember where I saw it previously, it could have been here, but Octopus is looking to fix this. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/25/octopus-build-own-electricity-pylons-national-grid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/25/octopus-buil... It does make me wonder why the National Grid can't keep up. We can all see how BT has a massive conflict of interest with OpenReach, which is why AltNets are thriving. But what's stopping National Grid?
  - physicsguy 3y ago
    Octopus don't have deep enough pockets to do that really. They're still making a loss despite the hype they get.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Locals hate pylons. As do Tory MPs. I guess Octopus are just willing to push harder on the planning permission system.
deepnet 3y ago
Why is there so much less tidal power. The tides are constant, unlike wind and sun. The UK has a lot of coast and a lot of tides.
- Marazan 3y ago
  Tidal power involves harnessing the power of corrosive sea water. Once we work out how to do that in a cost effective way the UK is in a brilliant position. But until then it is an active area of research.
- pydry 3y ago
  Tidal power is very, very expensive. It's more expensive even than nuclear power.
- awjlogan 3y ago
  https://www.orbitalmarine.com/ https://www.orbitalmarine.com/ is one company working on it. As another comment states, working offshore unbelievably challenging (corrosion++, weather, position etc). Orbital's innovation is that the rotors move to a position where they can be serviced from the surface, rather than requiring any underwater activity, so it's a lot cheaper.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
  There are plans for big tidal barrage projects, especially in the Severn Estuary. Apart from creating power they'd also protect cities from rising sea levels. They always run into Nimbys who don't understand that sea birds etc are far more threatened by the direct effects of climate change than by projects that affect their habitats in a designed way.
  - Angostura 3y ago
    > They always run into Nimbys who don't understand that sea birds etc are far more threatened by the direct effects of climate change than by projects that affect their habitats in a designed way. That's incredibly dismissive of genuine environmental concerns about immediate effects on coastal ecology
roomey 3y ago
Jacob Reese Mogg is involved, you know there's a bit of back scratching going on there then.
- rawling 3y ago
  > Bloomberg News analyzed 30 million records from 2018 through June 2023 > Former UK Energy Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg said [...] JRM was Energy Secretary for 2 months in 2022. I'm not sure that justifies this comment. Is there a greater link that the article doesn't express?
  - notahacker 3y ago
    Mogg's brief tenure as energy secretary was notable mainly for him proposing a cap on the profits of renewable and nuclear energy providers specifically, having previously been opposed to government intervention in energy markets when oil and gas company profits spiked. That obviously doesn't mean there's any substantive link between his politics and the Bloomberg study (and he denies being a climate-change denier and supported other policies aimed at encouraging the expansion of renewables anyway) but the context might be helpful to people who don't know who Mogg is
- daniel-s 3y ago
  There is not reference or context in your comment. Are you simply suggesting that someone is corrupt because you dislike their political position?
  - phatfish 3y ago
    I suspect they dislike the person. JRM is the type to jump on any wedge issue like renewables that might appeal to his GB News viewers and boost his figures (crazy that politicians in the UK can have a permanent campaign platform, not even the US allows this nonsense). It's very reasonable to take anything he says or implies with a massive grain of salt.
  - cjs_ac 3y ago
    Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very strange politician. Here's a short documentary about him[0]. Highlights include: * Being the subject of a French television documentary when he was 12 years old[1]; * Campaigning against abortion (which itself is weird in the UK outside of Northern Ireland) while investing in abortion pills; and * Campaigning for election in one of the most deprived areas of the UK, while accompanied by his nanny (as in, the person employed by his parents to raise him when he was a child) so that she could iron his shirts. He has been described as a 'real life Dickensian villain' and a 'haunted Victorian pencil', and is frequently referred to on Reddit as 'the honourable member for the nineteenth century' (prior centuries are often substituted). He is also responsible for the first recorded use of the word 'floccinaucinihilipilification' in Hansard (the official transcript of Parliamentary proceedings). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfaC0tMFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfaC0tMFDM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bp0Szk19J8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bp0Szk19J8
pjc50 3y ago
It's probably time to phase out curtailment payments. If renewable is to be the default form of generation it can't have special treatment forever. And it would be an incentive to deploy battery systems on the wind farm side of the grid connection to smooth peaks. (The whole "overstating your forecast" thing sounds a lot like LIBOR)
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > It's probably time to phase out curtailment payments. If renewable is to be the default form of generation it can't have special treatment forever. Curtailment payments are an incentive for the grid operators to build out transport capacity and for grid consumers to invest into dynamic load control.
- ViewTrick1002 3y ago
  Do like Sweden or Norway and split the grid at bottlenecks like the Scottish border and it will be solved by itself by having lower prices in Scotland. It is a political problem, not technical. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
martinald 3y ago
I think the UK by 2030 (or so) is actually going to have a really major problem with too much renewable capacity at times - not just not enough transmission capacity, just too much full stop. There's currently 30GW of wind in the UK (offshore + onshore), plus an ambition to get another 35GW of offshore installed in the next 6 years. I'm not sure whether that will be met, but I would project at least another 20GW of offshore wind will come online based on in construction/approved projects by 2030. At that point we'll have 55GW of wind, plus a huge amount of solar (probably 25GW minimum, potentially a lot lot more). UK electricity consumption is very low per capita and it is falling rapidly with not much sign of this changing. I think we are going to be in a position where we have (way) too much power at least 50% of the year. Some will be able to be used for storage, and some potentially exported via HVDC, but I fear the generation on windy + sunny days will be pretty enormous. This would all get sorted out by 'the market' but CfD contracts basically pay to keep producing whatever the price (I believe some of the contracts may have changed slightly on this). Which really distorts the market.
- ta1243 3y ago
  Scope for the increase in electric use between electric cars (244b vehicle miles, or 60TWh) and moving from gas to heatpumps (250TWh of domestic gas usage, so 80TWh), that adds a constant load 24/7 of 15GW (if it were evenly spread through the year)
  - s8s8discourse 3y ago
    SME industrial production. Business electricity is/can be significantly more expensive than domestic electricity prices. It's a significant variable cost. Consider a small CNC routing enterprise running 4 machines. Each machine averages 25kW, with extraction, air supply etc contributing another 50kw. Heating the space in winter (CNC routers lock out if the ambient temperature drops below 18c) is incredibly inefficient, because when the extractors are running you're emptying the workshop of air (that you paid to heat) multiple times an hour. Pre-covid the hourly electricity run rate would be in the region of £45/hr (0.27p / kWh) At the worst of the energy price crises, the run rate was > £180/hr (I know of one shop that was paying 111p/kWh for a period). Now we're paying 0.38p / kWh or £70/hr. That's a baseline increase of >£10k a year... SME workshops have died because their pricing model just couldn't flex to accommodate that. STABLE energy pricing is equally important as CHEAP energy pricing.
nobodyandproud 3y ago
This is a naive question, but would batteries to offset actual (and predicted) excess be too costly?

31 points by blackethylene 3y ago

Sounds like good, old-fashioned British capitalism to me - lying is made extremely lucrative for big companies, while regulation & enforcement are only for the little people.

physicsguy 3y ago

The curtailment periods in the UK are already a problem, particularly in Scotland where there is now not enough grid capacity. There's no point building massive farms up there now without corresponding National Grid investment, which isn't happening anywhere near fast enough.

deepnet 3y ago
This is very interesting can you link somedata sources for funding and capacity ? Your insightful comment is much appreciated. Many thanks for sharing your research
- physicsguy 3y ago
  https://news.yahoo.com/wasted-wind-power-could-add-151805433.html https://news.yahoo.com/wasted-wind-power-could-add-151805433... https://www.thenational.scot/news/23532508.wind-farm-curtailment-costs-see-scottish-renewable-power-wasted/?ref=twtrec https://www.thenational.scot/news/23532508.wind-farm-curtail...
- kitd 3y ago
  https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/eastern-hvdc-link/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/eastern-hvdc-link/
Mvandenbergh 3y ago
There's a huge amount of North-South capacity being built as part of the holistic network design programme which will unlock a lot of capacity and substantially reduce curtailment.
happymellon 3y ago
I don't remember where I saw it previously, it could have been here, but Octopus is looking to fix this. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/25/octopus-build-own-electricity-pylons-national-grid/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/01/25/octopus-buil... It does make me wonder why the National Grid can't keep up. We can all see how BT has a massive conflict of interest with OpenReach, which is why AltNets are thriving. But what's stopping National Grid?
- physicsguy 3y ago
  Octopus don't have deep enough pockets to do that really. They're still making a loss despite the hype they get.
- pjc50 3y ago
  Locals hate pylons. As do Tory MPs. I guess Octopus are just willing to push harder on the planning permission system.

deepnet 3y ago

Why is there so much less tidal power. The tides are constant, unlike wind and sun. The UK has a lot of coast and a lot of tides.

Marazan 3y ago
Tidal power involves harnessing the power of corrosive sea water. Once we work out how to do that in a cost effective way the UK is in a brilliant position. But until then it is an active area of research.
pydry 3y ago
Tidal power is very, very expensive. It's more expensive even than nuclear power.
awjlogan 3y ago
https://www.orbitalmarine.com/ https://www.orbitalmarine.com/ is one company working on it. As another comment states, working offshore unbelievably challenging (corrosion++, weather, position etc). Orbital's innovation is that the rotors move to a position where they can be serviced from the surface, rather than requiring any underwater activity, so it's a lot cheaper.
TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
There are plans for big tidal barrage projects, especially in the Severn Estuary. Apart from creating power they'd also protect cities from rising sea levels. They always run into Nimbys who don't understand that sea birds etc are far more threatened by the direct effects of climate change than by projects that affect their habitats in a designed way.
- Angostura 3y ago
  > They always run into Nimbys who don't understand that sea birds etc are far more threatened by the direct effects of climate change than by projects that affect their habitats in a designed way. That's incredibly dismissive of genuine environmental concerns about immediate effects on coastal ecology

roomey 3y ago

Jacob Reese Mogg is involved, you know there's a bit of back scratching going on there then.

rawling 3y ago
> Bloomberg News analyzed 30 million records from 2018 through June 2023 > Former UK Energy Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg said [...] JRM was Energy Secretary for 2 months in 2022. I'm not sure that justifies this comment. Is there a greater link that the article doesn't express?
- notahacker 3y ago
  Mogg's brief tenure as energy secretary was notable mainly for him proposing a cap on the profits of renewable and nuclear energy providers specifically, having previously been opposed to government intervention in energy markets when oil and gas company profits spiked. That obviously doesn't mean there's any substantive link between his politics and the Bloomberg study (and he denies being a climate-change denier and supported other policies aimed at encouraging the expansion of renewables anyway) but the context might be helpful to people who don't know who Mogg is
daniel-s 3y ago
There is not reference or context in your comment. Are you simply suggesting that someone is corrupt because you dislike their political position?
- phatfish 3y ago
  I suspect they dislike the person. JRM is the type to jump on any wedge issue like renewables that might appeal to his GB News viewers and boost his figures (crazy that politicians in the UK can have a permanent campaign platform, not even the US allows this nonsense). It's very reasonable to take anything he says or implies with a massive grain of salt.
- cjs_ac 3y ago
  Jacob Rees-Mogg is a very strange politician. Here's a short documentary about him[0]. Highlights include: * Being the subject of a French television documentary when he was 12 years old[1]; * Campaigning against abortion (which itself is weird in the UK outside of Northern Ireland) while investing in abortion pills; and * Campaigning for election in one of the most deprived areas of the UK, while accompanied by his nanny (as in, the person employed by his parents to raise him when he was a child) so that she could iron his shirts. He has been described as a 'real life Dickensian villain' and a 'haunted Victorian pencil', and is frequently referred to on Reddit as 'the honourable member for the nineteenth century' (prior centuries are often substituted). He is also responsible for the first recorded use of the word 'floccinaucinihilipilification' in Hansard (the official transcript of Parliamentary proceedings). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfaC0tMFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzfaC0tMFDM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bp0Szk19J8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bp0Szk19J8

pjc50 3y ago

It's probably time to phase out curtailment payments. If renewable is to be the default form of generation it can't have special treatment forever. And it would be an incentive to deploy battery systems on the wind farm side of the grid connection to smooth peaks. (The whole "overstating your forecast" thing sounds a lot like LIBOR)

mschuster91 3y ago
> It's probably time to phase out curtailment payments. If renewable is to be the default form of generation it can't have special treatment forever. Curtailment payments are an incentive for the grid operators to build out transport capacity and for grid consumers to invest into dynamic load control.
ViewTrick1002 3y ago
Do like Sweden or Norway and split the grid at bottlenecks like the Scottish border and it will be solved by itself by having lower prices in Scotland. It is a political problem, not technical. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map

martinald 3y ago

I think the UK by 2030 (or so) is actually going to have a really major problem with too much renewable capacity at times - not just not enough transmission capacity, just too much full stop. There's currently 30GW of wind in the UK (offshore + onshore), plus an ambition to get another 35GW of offshore installed in the next 6 years. I'm not sure whether that will be met, but I would project at least another 20GW of offshore wind will come online based on in construction/approved projects by 2030. At that point we'll have 55GW of wind, plus a huge amount of solar (probably 25GW minimum, potentially a lot lot more). UK electricity consumption is very low per capita and it is falling rapidly with not much sign of this changing. I think we are going to be in a position where we have (way) too much power at least 50% of the year. Some will be able to be used for storage, and some potentially exported via HVDC, but I fear the generation on windy + sunny days will be pretty enormous. This would all get sorted out by 'the market' but CfD contracts basically pay to keep producing whatever the price (I believe some of the contracts may have changed slightly on this). Which really distorts the market.

ta1243 3y ago
Scope for the increase in electric use between electric cars (244b vehicle miles, or 60TWh) and moving from gas to heatpumps (250TWh of domestic gas usage, so 80TWh), that adds a constant load 24/7 of 15GW (if it were evenly spread through the year)
- s8s8discourse 3y ago
  SME industrial production. Business electricity is/can be significantly more expensive than domestic electricity prices. It's a significant variable cost. Consider a small CNC routing enterprise running 4 machines. Each machine averages 25kW, with extraction, air supply etc contributing another 50kw. Heating the space in winter (CNC routers lock out if the ambient temperature drops below 18c) is incredibly inefficient, because when the extractors are running you're emptying the workshop of air (that you paid to heat) multiple times an hour. Pre-covid the hourly electricity run rate would be in the region of £45/hr (0.27p / kWh) At the worst of the energy price crises, the run rate was > £180/hr (I know of one shop that was paying 111p/kWh for a period). Now we're paying 0.38p / kWh or £70/hr. That's a baseline increase of >£10k a year... SME workshops have died because their pricing model just couldn't flex to accommodate that. STABLE energy pricing is equally important as CHEAP energy pricing.

nobodyandproud 3y ago

This is a naive question, but would batteries to offset actual (and predicted) excess be too costly?