11 ms·

The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

282 points by bashy 1y ago

seanalltogether 1y ago
Ireland 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
- VagabundoP 1y ago
  So much energy being left on the table. Grid scale batteries will really help here.
scrlk 1y ago
Multiple transmission network upgrades are planned to reduce excessive curtailment: https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/where-its-happening https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/where-it...
- arethuza 1y ago
  Those 4 "Eastern Green Link" projects look interesting - pretty sensible given how close most places in the UK are to the sea to go for subsea cables. Fewer problems with planning permission as well...
daedrdev 1y ago
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 in forcing digital ids.
- raverbashing 1y ago
  NIMBYs dragging things down as usual They would probably object to battery installation next to the generators as well
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Everyone knows battery installations radiate 5G vaccines. Subscribe to my Kennedy-adjacent newsletter.
    - manarth 1y ago
      A vaccine against 5G? That'd really blow some peoples' minds!
      - blitzar 1y ago
        Big vaccine and big telco just want to get their claws into you and then you will need boosters for 6G and 7G
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - petercooper 1y ago
    They do. A "battery farm" in my area was recently vetoed by the council despite being approved by planning. However, the government has just overridden the council so it's back on.. for now. I think a big problem with the UK is how many "layers" there are for such a small country and how each layer has its own processes of appeal. So you have to get past the local residents, past the planners, past the local council, past the county council, and past the government (not to mention the local MP, if they decide to get involved!) before anything happens when, historically, a more top down approach would be taken to get things going quickly.
    - cameronh90 1y ago
      Also each of those layers have a bunch of sub-layers. Look at any large planning application and you'll find hundreds of pages of consultations with various stakeholders who have no incentive to support it. The NHS, police, fire service, etc. usually raise objections to everything because, obviously, any development makes their jobs more difficult. It serves little purpose besides fodder for the NIMBYs.
vollbrecht 1y ago
The pressing question is, how much £ per £ lost need to be invested in grid infrastructure to reduce this number?
- c0n5pir4cy 1y ago
  A lot and is fixing the grid is full of other complexities - but that's not actually the best fix here. The UK could change it's wholesale energy pricing model to something that encourages usage to move closer to generation (zonal or nodal pricing). Currently customers using cheap wind power are essentially punished if there is gas backed generation elsewhere in the UK and the energy companies reap the profit.
tomaytotomato 1y ago
A 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)
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  It is illegal to sell electricity directly to someone else. To sell electricity you need to be licensed as an energy supplier. So currently it is illegal to, for instance, sell your excess wind or solar electricity to your neighbour. You have to sell it to the grid and it goes into the "common pool".
  - keyringlight 1y ago
    With battery storage is it feasible to isolate/disconnect, move and then reconnect at another location, or once certified and turned on is it considered part of a system that can't be divided. It would be adding a significant cost to enable 'movement' of energy if you didn't need storage before and would need to be charged ahead of time, but it seems similar to fuel where I could give gas to a neighbor. I wouldn't expect that kind of scenario to work for the vast majority of people, but on a remote island it could be the kind of solution that gets engineered to keep homes working when an official solution takes a long time to arrive.
    - ragebol 1y ago
      There are plug-in batteries these days. Charge it in one home, then chuck an extension cord over the fence to discharge to another home (ignoring safety concerns...)
    - pjc50 1y ago
      What you want is an electric car with "V2G" (vehicle to grid) technology. Still not quite publicly available yet.
3D30497420 1y ago
This 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-energy-greg-jackson-wind-farms-climate-b2828421.html https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/octopus-energ...
- misiek08 1y ago
  Thanks. This make it even more crazy. Paying for not produced energy (probably some great deals secured there - with guarantees from both sides no matter the reality) and also same owners of both types of production sites. Funny how such deals get done, probably only to meet the magic "2030" rules, without taking into account situations like the one happening right now.
- eigart 1y ago
  Thanks! It would be interesting to see how this looks on a map. Electricity exports (/prices) is a MASSIVE controversy in Norwegian politics, so it would be pretty funny if Norwegian power is replacing the curtailed wind power.
  - ragebol 1y ago
    I've only heard about this, but do I understand correctly that: - Norwegian hydro-electricity is normally quite cheap - 'They' built a cable from Norway to the rest of Europe to couple the markets - Since the markets are coupled, mainland Europe buys the hydro-electricity from Norway, driving up prices in Norway. - People are pissed, understandably I guess. Correct?
    - Telaneo 1y ago
      Correct. One additional problem beyond the price hike was also the fact that the price came to be wildly unstable. One day it was bascially free and the next day it was approaching 1 euro per kwh, where as before, the price usually came to about 1 NOK (10-12 eurocent) per kwh after taxes and such, and hadn't moved significantly from that in over 10 years. See Fig 2 here[1] for just how spiky the market became after the price hike. Also bear in mind that Norway does most of its residential heating with resitive heating, precisely because electricity has historically been so cheap. Heat pumps are getting more popular, and burning firewood got very popular during the price hike, but basically no-one heats with gas, as there's no infrastructure to support it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666955223000357 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266695522...
andy99 1y ago
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?
- jopsen 1y ago
  A quick search points to: https://tamarindo.global/insight/analysis/uk-storage-need-intensifies-as-wind-curtailment-costs-hit-400m/ 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.
  - andy99 1y ago
    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 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
    - jopsen 1y ago
      Well, presumably electricity prices are relatively low when curtailment happens, and high when there is no curtailment. So maybe storage can make some sense. But before you go expand the grid or add batteries, it's probably fine to over build or curtail some more :) Okay, I honestly don't know. Because this comes down to the numbers -- it's really just an economics exercise. I guess my point is: scary absolute number of money spent on curtailment, makes a great headline, but doesn't mean anything.
punnerud 1y ago
Norway 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.
- misiek08 1y ago
  It looks like UK, like many other countries, already have grid that can't cope with casual usage and transferring power from farms to users. Adding "renting" of grid sound like it could make it even worse (if possible).
  - ErikCorry 1y ago
    The Norwegian grid is divided up into different regional grids and they each have different electricity prices. Those who build interconnects between the areas can get some of the price difference. It's very different from the UK market, which pretends to have a single area, runs auctions to determine the price and then has to make post-auction adjustments (in the billions) to fix the fact that electricity can't be transmitted across the grid. See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
    - punnerud 1y ago
      This is a layer way lower than that, this is between solar farms and buildings, solar farms and close factories. Not big electric zones like that.
IshKebab 1y ago
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 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.
- physicsguy 1y ago
  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.
  - arethuza 1y ago
    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?
    - physicsguy 1y ago
      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.
      - arethuza 1y ago
        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-Atlas_fig7_6532939 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/European-Offshore-Wind-A...
dollylambda 1y ago
Dumping excess energy into something like Bitcoin mining is an interesting way to spend excess green energy that would otherwise fizzle. Mining Bitcoin is sort of ideal for this type of situation because it doesn't matter the frequency/time/duration for which you mine Bitcoin, and the coins can be quickly liquidated to recapture revenue.
- rapsey 1y ago
  And from the heat of bitcoin mining you could heat homes.
  - Arrath 1y ago
    This still faces the rather fundamental problem of getting the excess power from point of generation across the grid to somewhere than can consume it.
    - fifilura 1y ago
      Decentralize by throwing out the heater in each house and putting a miner there instead?
    - rapsey 1y ago
      You can put up bitcoin miners anywhere.
- SXX 1y ago
  Even of we agree it's a good idea most likely this doesn't make financial sense. Crypto minimg hardware costs a lot of momey upfront, getting outdated fast and to make profit it must run 24/7 which is obviously impossible when there is no energy excess.
  - Gigachad 1y ago
    True. But if the energy is free then you could probably use last gen hardware too. It must not be worth it still since no one is doing it.
misiek08 1y ago
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.
- p_l 1y ago
  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.
Phil_Latio 1y ago
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...
- cedilla 1y ago
  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.
  - ghusto 1y ago
    But he said > then offset the lower average wind speed by increasing subsidies If true, it means that because wind in those regions is infeasible, they have to subsidise it. Initial (multi-decade) subsidies to kicks things off makes sense because the plan is to get them to pay off eventually. But increasing subsidies in regions where it's _never_ going to work is disingenuous and a waste.
    - cedilla 1y ago
      I don't know what the name of the internet law is, but I think it goes something like: when someone tells you about a regulation and how outrageously stupid it obviously is, they probably misrepresented it or frames it in an adventurous way. In this case, there is no "increased subsidies for less feasible regions". And if you know anything about the region, it's very implausible. Southern states are generally not forerunners for wind power, with Bavaria's governing party being downright hostile. They are not increasing subsidies, that's for sure. My best guess is that this refers to either differences in subsidies between the states - Lower Saxony has lower to no subsidies because building wind turbines is popular and profitable there without additional funding. Bavaria meanwhile probably lacks experts and has to bring them down from Lower Saxony or NRW, increasing building costs even at locations just as suitable as in Lower Saxony. So yeah, they might still have state subsidies, but not because they want wind power where it's infeasible. You wouldn't find an operator for that. Another guess is that maybe this about the process for bidding on subsidies. This is a method where for large-scale projects operators can bid on executing projects not just with money but also by the amount of subsidies. For off-shore power, that subsidy often goes negative now, i.e. it's practically a license cost now. That does indeed mean that less desirable projects, which are probably less ideal for power generation, receive more subsidies, but that's a far cry from building wind power in "infeasible" locations.
grues-dinner 1y ago
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-ramsay-slams-wensum-valley-pylons-decision 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 this objection from a village near (but not actually on) the underground stretch near Manningtree: https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Council/PC-response-to-NG-July-2024-CR-1-26.07.24.pdf https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Counc...
- notTooFarGone 1y ago
  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.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > Who opposes Power lines? A LOT of politicians. Here in Germany, SüdLink got massively delayed and 8 billion euros more expensive because the back-then regional governor and edgelord Seehofer, who later rose to federal Interior Minister, caved to NIMBYs and insisted on burying the cables which is now feared to negatively impact the farmland soil [2]. > As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls. That already happens. Germany's far-right AfD, that regularly protests against everything related to the adaptation of the electricity grid, has had a multitude of scandals involving Russian influence. [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-kabinett-beschliesst-teure-erdkabel-1.2680966 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-k... [2] https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/erdstromkabel-landwirte-muessen-extremen-ertragseinbussen-rechnen-580824 https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/e...
  - p_l 1y ago
    Heard lots of grumbling from an acquaintance in Germany that a big issue is, I quote, "Bavarians not wanting either overground nor underground power lines that would bring power from north to south, so at best we sell wind power from north to west and the south of germany buys nuclear from france" ;)
mixedbit 1y ago
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 overuse would then reduce energy consumption when the production peak is over (heat pumps could stop working for some time until the temperature decreases from 23 to 20, etc.)
- Angostura 1y ago
  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. ).
  - ratherbefuddled 1y ago
    Having just had solar and a battery fitted by Octopus I'm interested - would you mind sharing what you use for automation here please?
    - Angostura 1y ago
      Sure, I use Home Assistant running in a little raspberry pie in the lift. There is an Octopus Integration that exposes current prices (and much else) to HomeAssistant. There is another Integration that works with my solar panels and another that works with my batteries and can change mode (self use, force charge, force discharge etc.) So from there it’s really just a question of setting up some if-then automations to turn on smart switches, charge the batteries if prices go negative. You can also gradually add more nuanced automations like turning on water heaters if the panels are generating more than 1kW and the batteries are over 90% charged. I’m not a programmer, it’s all fairly easy to do.
dumbfounder 1y ago
Any numbers on how much energy isn’t sensitive to time? Is it reasonable to say that people can just use energy more when it’s windy to save money? Perhaps if could incentivize people to have large local batteries to eat it up during these times and use it during more costly times? But that seems very expensive.
- PeterStuer 1y ago
  That is the whole "smart grid" idea. Problem is that people are rightly suspicious that as usual, the "smarts" are not there to serve them, but to maximally squeeze them and maximize profits for the operator.
- Tor3 1y ago
  I'm going to have V2H installed (Vehicle-to-Home), where excess power from the solar panels will charge the car battery, and the car battery can feed the home at night. I'm planning on following a setup I saw in another house, it seemed to work very well.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
This is why you don't let "markets" run things at national scale. Short-term profits and for-profit policy lobbying are utterly incompatible with building intelligent, robust, future-proof infrastructure.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- aembleton 1y ago
  > This is why you don't let "markets" run things at national scale. Even food distribution?
  - nagisa 1y ago
    I suspect what they are alluding to is the perverse incentives that materialize when the market does not have an ability to adapt to real costs incurred based on the relative location between generators and consumers. Food is a bad counter example here, as retailers are not prevented from adjusting their prices the further away you choose to live off major population hubs. OTOH electricity in many cases costs the same in the entire country (incl. UK.) This means that energy consumers are not incentivized by these expenses to consider the real costs of the grid. They will rather build a new factory/etc close to London where they might expect to have access to better workforce pool instead of in Scotland right next to the overproducing turbines. NIMBYism against new grid infrastructure would also largely disappear overnight if the market actually made economic incentives (in a form of reduced electricity prices/fees) for people to accept infrastructure bringing that electricity to them. The way things stand today – when electricity costs the same to everybody in the country – of course you wouldn't want any works in your vicinity.
mjgant 1y ago
The author has a few of these wind curtailment dashboards, like this one, https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment which breaks down the total by month and by specific windfarm.
oliwarner 1y ago
A couple of days ago it says wind cost us £1m. It can't take many days like this to offset a GWh of grid level storage, able to complete absorb environmental gluts like this.
- manarth 1y ago
  Pumped hydro is an approach that is in use on the grid today, and has future proposals earmarked for development. https://www.coireglas.com/project https://www.coireglas.com/project The key challenges are deploying large-scale energy storage, and transmission of stored energy to areas of demand.
  - oliwarner 1y ago
    Dinorwig is an amazing place to visit. Not sure if they're open right now but go if you can. Yeah, I like pumped hydro and even with its lower efficiency, it's cost effective... but I live in the Fens and I'm looking at solutions that work everywhere. Local storage is going to be more important once a significant portion of the country has an EV and heat pump.
- jcattle 1y ago
  It really depends on how much excess capacity the north south interconnects have. You'll have to store the energy where it is produced and then get rid of it when the windfarms are not producing (and there's demand in the south). I'm sure someone did the math on this and it is not economical at the moment, otherwise this would have been lower hanging fruit than adding interconnects.
nashashmi 1y ago
Imagine if wind slowed down all across the country because of wind turbines. The long term effects would be less soil erosion and less mountain erosion and water turbulence. What would the short term effects be? Bird populations will find it more difficult to travel long distance with fewer winds? Temperatures would sore in some places while dropping in other places? Pollution will become more stationary instead of being distributed and diluted? What is the critical point of build out that would have such visible effects?
- ta1243 1y ago
  The entire UK energy demand is about 10% of the kinetic energy of the wind over the UK on a typical day. You'd have to extract a lot of energy to make a measurable difference. The extra energy dumped into the atmosphere from climate change makes a far larger impact.
- pjc50 1y ago
  The energy comes mostly from the Atlantic. You're not going to cover that in turbines.
ViewTrick1002 1y ago
This is called re-dispatch. The market is setup up to treat Britain like a copper plate but the grid is limited north-south. The solutions are: 1. Divide the grid into two zones along the bottleneck. Then no redispatch is needed and building more capacity in the south is worth it since the prices will go up. 2. Expand the transmission grid capacity to remove the bottleneck therefore removing the need for re-dispatch.
rmind 1y ago
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.
hunglee2 1y ago
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.
- aembleton 1y ago
  You still need an expansion of the grid to get the energy to the EVs.
Joel_Mckay 1y ago
Could use an opportunistic energy load-dump like a desalination plant... Singapore had a similar situation with fresh water shortages, and had excessive waste-methane energy from Oil refineries. It eventually became a net exporter of fresh water at a profit no less. Fresh water is also easy to store off-peak hours, and distribute using existing infrastructure. Additionally, large factory Rotary-Power-Conditioners can knock out most kinds of short-term periodic silliness on AC power lines. Some data centers use something similar with a flywheel-in-vacuum to keep things running during power fail-over to generators. Best of luck =3
- aembleton 1y ago
  Or start creating eFuel which is very energy intensive but might become necessary for aircraft.
  - Joel_Mckay 1y ago
    That was tried in the late 20th century in places under oil embargo, and it failed to scale up for several reasons. Generally, bio-fuels proved more practical using fermented alcohols or fat transesterification into B100. A genetic engineering solution for salt-water tolerant fuel crops or microbes is highly probable. If I recall correctly, methanol powered vehicles would get significantly lower mileage per tank of fuel, and tended to damage petrol engines. =3
myrmidon 1y ago
It's good to raise awareness of this. I think that grid upgrades are the only good solution here (and those are already happening), because shifting enough consumption towards where the windfarms are strikes me as ridiculous (what fraction of London is going to migrate to Glasgow once electricity is 40% cheaper there, honestly?) and just luring a handful of new datacenters to Scotland (with cheaper electricity) is not gonna cut it. Demand-side anything (or even storage) is not gonna solve this either, because the british north/south grid connections are already close to the limit most of the time; this is not just a peak-power problem. There are very similar problems in Germany (insufficient north/south grid connectivity), and expected long-term costs (within 2037/2045) are in the €200b range (roughly half is for off-shore connections): https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023-06/EN_GDP_2037_2045_V2023_2E_1.pdf https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023... (take with a grain of salt because this is material from the grid operators, not some neutral source).
- lars512 1y ago
  Isn’t that just assuming that people, rather than industry, is the main consumer? Perhaps there are energy hungry industrial applications that could move.
  - stepbeek 1y ago
    Absolutely. I had imagined green hydrogen production or something similarly intensive to be the solution.
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    UK domestic electricity is roughly equal to industrial (94 vs 82 TWh). Commercial is 62. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a28656478525675739051/DUKES_2025_Chapter_5.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a286564785... A lot of curtailment happens at night: strong offshore wind and low demand. So not only do you need to provide enough of a price delta for the industry move to be worth it (sacrificing proximity to other amenities and customers, eating the relocation costs, loss of employee supply, etc) but you also need the industry to be operating 24/7 (or start doing it). Some industries can do that, but not all. And then one day when the grid upgrades are done, the risk is the incentives are cut and now you're stuck at the wrong end of the country.
rjakobsson 1y ago
Bitcoin could be the solution here.
- tclancy 1y ago
  "The solution to, and cause of, all power problems."
  - rjakobsson 1y ago
    Stranded energy is ideal for the bitcoin network.
temporallobe 1y ago
The UK seems like one giant HOA.
lucasRW 1y ago
[flagged]
cmsefton 1y ago
The craziest thing about UK energy is that it uses marginal pricing, where the price of energy is dictated by the most expensive generator to meet demand i.e. gas. Doesn't matter if your energy is coming from wind or solar, you're still going to be charged according to the price of gas. Until this can change, consumers are always going to suffer and think green energy isn't cheaper.
- sambeau 1y ago
  This is the main issue. People simply cannot afford to use this extra power. If power was cheap then all kinds of devices would switch to electric, especially heating and cars. The other issue is that the UK has unpredictable weather and no way to store energy at a grid-level. It can store enough to load balance spikes but there is still nothing to replace the months of gas we once had stored in giant salt chambers (you can thank Liz Truss for decommissioning those). Without vast amounts of long-term energy storage we will continue to throw away power when we have too much and fire up gas generators when wind power isn't making any (which happens surprisingly often).
nQQKTz7dm27oZ 1y ago
[dead]
stavros 1y ago
And here's how this is spun by the media: https://archive.is/WLKm0 https://archive.is/WLKm0
DrScientist 1y ago
I think the idea of connecting wind turbines directly to hydrogen electrolysers when they are producing an excess is an interesting idea. Stops the power being wasted ( though obviously hydrogen generation is less efficient than direct use ), and also creates a stored form of the energy for less windy days. BTW also not suggest a hydrogen everywhere energy economy - use it centrally to augment/replace gas powered backup.
belorn 1y ago
"Hooray! No wind has been wasted today (so far)."* This week the northern-ish parts of europe are hitting one of the highest price point for electricity in recent time, with prices going for around $0.5 per kw/h. Calm weather in combination with low production from solar is creating a shortage in production, at the same time as the weather is getting colder. There is a lot of money on the table to get energy produced at the right time and right place. Having energy produced at the wrong time and in the wrong place is not worth anything.
gandalfian 1y ago
People leave out that when the wholesale electricity prices are above the Government guaranteed price the Government makes a profit on selling the wind electricity. So in this example when the grid is full to the brim with wind energy but there is still a demand for last resort gas backup generators the wholesale price of electricity must be high and the government is minting money from the wind turbines, even while paying some to turn off... This is not always the case. But it would be interesting to hear, taking into account the high electricity prices since the Ukraine energy crisis, how much the Government makes from selling the power at a profit and renting the sea floor to the turbines, minus the subsidies paid when prices are low or the wind turbines have to be turned off. It's hard to make a judgement on the economics of it all without knowing this. We may be paying far less for subsidised wind power than we think.
B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago
It's going to be fun when most everybody who has a detached or semi-detached house installs solar panels and batteries, and nearly stops paying for grid power. What's the possible demand drop, 20%? More?
johnnyApplePRNG 1y ago
Stop treating "wasted wind" like bad luck and start treating it like a budgeting error. Ring-fence constraint payments and convert them into a build mandate: every £1 spent curtailing in a zone next year becomes £1 of capex allocated to relieving that exact bottleneck (HVDC, transformers, phase shifters). Pair it with a fast-track permit for projects that follow existing transport corridors and bury through parks/towns only when the cost of delay exceeds the cost premium. Sweeten the deal locally: automatic bill credits or rooftop/heat-pump grants for residents along the route. If we’re going to socialise the waste, we should socialise the upgrade-and make the "do nothing" option politically expensive.

282 points by bashy 1y ago

Ireland 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

VagabundoP 1y ago
So much energy being left on the table. Grid scale batteries will really help here.

scrlk 1y ago

Multiple transmission network upgrades are planned to reduce excessive curtailment: https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/where-its-happening https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade/where-it...

arethuza 1y ago
Those 4 "Eastern Green Link" projects look interesting - pretty sensible given how close most places in the UK are to the sea to go for subsea cables. Fewer problems with planning permission as well...

daedrdev 1y ago

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 in forcing digital ids.

raverbashing 1y ago
NIMBYs dragging things down as usual They would probably object to battery installation next to the generators as well
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Everyone knows battery installations radiate 5G vaccines. Subscribe to my Kennedy-adjacent newsletter.
  - manarth 1y ago
    A vaccine against 5G? That'd really blow some peoples' minds!
    - blitzar 1y ago
      Big vaccine and big telco just want to get their claws into you and then you will need boosters for 6G and 7G
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- petercooper 1y ago
  They do. A "battery farm" in my area was recently vetoed by the council despite being approved by planning. However, the government has just overridden the council so it's back on.. for now. I think a big problem with the UK is how many "layers" there are for such a small country and how each layer has its own processes of appeal. So you have to get past the local residents, past the planners, past the local council, past the county council, and past the government (not to mention the local MP, if they decide to get involved!) before anything happens when, historically, a more top down approach would be taken to get things going quickly.
  - cameronh90 1y ago
    Also each of those layers have a bunch of sub-layers. Look at any large planning application and you'll find hundreds of pages of consultations with various stakeholders who have no incentive to support it. The NHS, police, fire service, etc. usually raise objections to everything because, obviously, any development makes their jobs more difficult. It serves little purpose besides fodder for the NIMBYs.

vollbrecht 1y ago

The pressing question is, how much £ per £ lost need to be invested in grid infrastructure to reduce this number?

c0n5pir4cy 1y ago
A lot and is fixing the grid is full of other complexities - but that's not actually the best fix here. The UK could change it's wholesale energy pricing model to something that encourages usage to move closer to generation (zonal or nodal pricing). Currently customers using cheap wind power are essentially punished if there is gas backed generation elsewhere in the UK and the energy companies reap the profit.

tomaytotomato 1y ago

A 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)

mytailorisrich 1y ago
It is illegal to sell electricity directly to someone else. To sell electricity you need to be licensed as an energy supplier. So currently it is illegal to, for instance, sell your excess wind or solar electricity to your neighbour. You have to sell it to the grid and it goes into the "common pool".
- keyringlight 1y ago
  With battery storage is it feasible to isolate/disconnect, move and then reconnect at another location, or once certified and turned on is it considered part of a system that can't be divided. It would be adding a significant cost to enable 'movement' of energy if you didn't need storage before and would need to be charged ahead of time, but it seems similar to fuel where I could give gas to a neighbor. I wouldn't expect that kind of scenario to work for the vast majority of people, but on a remote island it could be the kind of solution that gets engineered to keep homes working when an official solution takes a long time to arrive.
  - ragebol 1y ago
    There are plug-in batteries these days. Charge it in one home, then chuck an extension cord over the fence to discharge to another home (ignoring safety concerns...)
  - pjc50 1y ago
    What you want is an electric car with "V2G" (vehicle to grid) technology. Still not quite publicly available yet.

3D30497420 1y ago

This 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-energy-greg-jackson-wind-farms-climate-b2828421.html https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/octopus-energ...

misiek08 1y ago
Thanks. This make it even more crazy. Paying for not produced energy (probably some great deals secured there - with guarantees from both sides no matter the reality) and also same owners of both types of production sites. Funny how such deals get done, probably only to meet the magic "2030" rules, without taking into account situations like the one happening right now.
eigart 1y ago
Thanks! It would be interesting to see how this looks on a map. Electricity exports (/prices) is a MASSIVE controversy in Norwegian politics, so it would be pretty funny if Norwegian power is replacing the curtailed wind power.
- ragebol 1y ago
  I've only heard about this, but do I understand correctly that: - Norwegian hydro-electricity is normally quite cheap - 'They' built a cable from Norway to the rest of Europe to couple the markets - Since the markets are coupled, mainland Europe buys the hydro-electricity from Norway, driving up prices in Norway. - People are pissed, understandably I guess. Correct?
  - Telaneo 1y ago
    Correct. One additional problem beyond the price hike was also the fact that the price came to be wildly unstable. One day it was bascially free and the next day it was approaching 1 euro per kwh, where as before, the price usually came to about 1 NOK (10-12 eurocent) per kwh after taxes and such, and hadn't moved significantly from that in over 10 years. See Fig 2 here[1] for just how spiky the market became after the price hike. Also bear in mind that Norway does most of its residential heating with resitive heating, precisely because electricity has historically been so cheap. Heat pumps are getting more popular, and burning firewood got very popular during the price hike, but basically no-one heats with gas, as there's no infrastructure to support it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666955223000357 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266695522...

andy99 1y ago

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?

jopsen 1y ago
A quick search points to: https://tamarindo.global/insight/analysis/uk-storage-need-intensifies-as-wind-curtailment-costs-hit-400m/ 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.
- andy99 1y ago
  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 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
  - jopsen 1y ago
    Well, presumably electricity prices are relatively low when curtailment happens, and high when there is no curtailment. So maybe storage can make some sense. But before you go expand the grid or add batteries, it's probably fine to over build or curtail some more :) Okay, I honestly don't know. Because this comes down to the numbers -- it's really just an economics exercise. I guess my point is: scary absolute number of money spent on curtailment, makes a great headline, but doesn't mean anything.

punnerud 1y ago

Norway 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.

misiek08 1y ago
It looks like UK, like many other countries, already have grid that can't cope with casual usage and transferring power from farms to users. Adding "renting" of grid sound like it could make it even worse (if possible).
- ErikCorry 1y ago
  The Norwegian grid is divided up into different regional grids and they each have different electricity prices. Those who build interconnects between the areas can get some of the price difference. It's very different from the UK market, which pretends to have a single area, runs auctions to determine the price and then has to make post-auction adjustments (in the billions) to fix the fact that electricity can't be transmitted across the grid. See https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/live/fifteen_minutes
  - punnerud 1y ago
    This is a layer way lower than that, this is between solar farms and buildings, solar farms and close factories. Not big electric zones like that.

IshKebab 1y ago

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 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.

physicsguy 1y ago
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.
- arethuza 1y ago
  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?
  - physicsguy 1y ago
    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.
    - arethuza 1y ago
      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-Atlas_fig7_6532939 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/European-Offshore-Wind-A...

dollylambda 1y ago

Dumping excess energy into something like Bitcoin mining is an interesting way to spend excess green energy that would otherwise fizzle. Mining Bitcoin is sort of ideal for this type of situation because it doesn't matter the frequency/time/duration for which you mine Bitcoin, and the coins can be quickly liquidated to recapture revenue.

rapsey 1y ago
And from the heat of bitcoin mining you could heat homes.
- Arrath 1y ago
  This still faces the rather fundamental problem of getting the excess power from point of generation across the grid to somewhere than can consume it.
  - fifilura 1y ago
    Decentralize by throwing out the heater in each house and putting a miner there instead?
  - rapsey 1y ago
    You can put up bitcoin miners anywhere.
SXX 1y ago
Even of we agree it's a good idea most likely this doesn't make financial sense. Crypto minimg hardware costs a lot of momey upfront, getting outdated fast and to make profit it must run 24/7 which is obviously impossible when there is no energy excess.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  True. But if the energy is free then you could probably use last gen hardware too. It must not be worth it still since no one is doing it.

misiek08 1y ago

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.

p_l 1y ago
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.

Phil_Latio 1y ago

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...

cedilla 1y ago
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.
- ghusto 1y ago
  But he said > then offset the lower average wind speed by increasing subsidies If true, it means that because wind in those regions is infeasible, they have to subsidise it. Initial (multi-decade) subsidies to kicks things off makes sense because the plan is to get them to pay off eventually. But increasing subsidies in regions where it's _never_ going to work is disingenuous and a waste.
  - cedilla 1y ago
    I don't know what the name of the internet law is, but I think it goes something like: when someone tells you about a regulation and how outrageously stupid it obviously is, they probably misrepresented it or frames it in an adventurous way. In this case, there is no "increased subsidies for less feasible regions". And if you know anything about the region, it's very implausible. Southern states are generally not forerunners for wind power, with Bavaria's governing party being downright hostile. They are not increasing subsidies, that's for sure. My best guess is that this refers to either differences in subsidies between the states - Lower Saxony has lower to no subsidies because building wind turbines is popular and profitable there without additional funding. Bavaria meanwhile probably lacks experts and has to bring them down from Lower Saxony or NRW, increasing building costs even at locations just as suitable as in Lower Saxony. So yeah, they might still have state subsidies, but not because they want wind power where it's infeasible. You wouldn't find an operator for that. Another guess is that maybe this about the process for bidding on subsidies. This is a method where for large-scale projects operators can bid on executing projects not just with money but also by the amount of subsidies. For off-shore power, that subsidy often goes negative now, i.e. it's practically a license cost now. That does indeed mean that less desirable projects, which are probably less ideal for power generation, receive more subsidies, but that's a far cry from building wind power in "infeasible" locations.

grues-dinner 1y ago

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-ramsay-slams-wensum-valley-pylons-decision 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 this objection from a village near (but not actually on) the underground stretch near Manningtree: https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Council/PC-response-to-NG-July-2024-CR-1-26.07.24.pdf https://holtonstmary-pc.gov.uk/assets/Documents-Parish-Counc...

notTooFarGone 1y ago
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.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Who opposes Power lines? A LOT of politicians. Here in Germany, SüdLink got massively delayed and 8 billion euros more expensive because the back-then regional governor and edgelord Seehofer, who later rose to federal Interior Minister, caved to NIMBYs and insisted on burying the cables which is now feared to negatively impact the farmland soil [2]. > As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls. That already happens. Germany's far-right AfD, that regularly protests against everything related to the adaptation of the electricity grid, has had a multitude of scandals involving Russian influence. [1] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-kabinett-beschliesst-teure-erdkabel-1.2680966 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/streit-um-stromtrassen-k... [2] https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/erdstromkabel-landwirte-muessen-extremen-ertragseinbussen-rechnen-580824 https://www.wochenblatt-dlv.de/feld-stall/betriebsfuehrung/e...
- p_l 1y ago
  Heard lots of grumbling from an acquaintance in Germany that a big issue is, I quote, "Bavarians not wanting either overground nor underground power lines that would bring power from north to south, so at best we sell wind power from north to west and the south of germany buys nuclear from france" ;)

mixedbit 1y ago

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 overuse would then reduce energy consumption when the production peak is over (heat pumps could stop working for some time until the temperature decreases from 23 to 20, etc.)

Angostura 1y ago
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. ).
- ratherbefuddled 1y ago
  Having just had solar and a battery fitted by Octopus I'm interested - would you mind sharing what you use for automation here please?
  - Angostura 1y ago
    Sure, I use Home Assistant running in a little raspberry pie in the lift. There is an Octopus Integration that exposes current prices (and much else) to HomeAssistant. There is another Integration that works with my solar panels and another that works with my batteries and can change mode (self use, force charge, force discharge etc.) So from there it’s really just a question of setting up some if-then automations to turn on smart switches, charge the batteries if prices go negative. You can also gradually add more nuanced automations like turning on water heaters if the panels are generating more than 1kW and the batteries are over 90% charged. I’m not a programmer, it’s all fairly easy to do.

dumbfounder 1y ago

Any numbers on how much energy isn’t sensitive to time? Is it reasonable to say that people can just use energy more when it’s windy to save money? Perhaps if could incentivize people to have large local batteries to eat it up during these times and use it during more costly times? But that seems very expensive.

PeterStuer 1y ago
That is the whole "smart grid" idea. Problem is that people are rightly suspicious that as usual, the "smarts" are not there to serve them, but to maximally squeeze them and maximize profits for the operator.
Tor3 1y ago
I'm going to have V2H installed (Vehicle-to-Home), where excess power from the solar panels will charge the car battery, and the car battery can feed the home at night. I'm planning on following a setup I saw in another house, it seemed to work very well.

TheOtherHobbes 1y ago

This is why you don't let "markets" run things at national scale. Short-term profits and for-profit policy lobbying are utterly incompatible with building intelligent, robust, future-proof infrastructure.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
aembleton 1y ago
> This is why you don't let "markets" run things at national scale. Even food distribution?
- nagisa 1y ago
  I suspect what they are alluding to is the perverse incentives that materialize when the market does not have an ability to adapt to real costs incurred based on the relative location between generators and consumers. Food is a bad counter example here, as retailers are not prevented from adjusting their prices the further away you choose to live off major population hubs. OTOH electricity in many cases costs the same in the entire country (incl. UK.) This means that energy consumers are not incentivized by these expenses to consider the real costs of the grid. They will rather build a new factory/etc close to London where they might expect to have access to better workforce pool instead of in Scotland right next to the overproducing turbines. NIMBYism against new grid infrastructure would also largely disappear overnight if the market actually made economic incentives (in a form of reduced electricity prices/fees) for people to accept infrastructure bringing that electricity to them. The way things stand today – when electricity costs the same to everybody in the country – of course you wouldn't want any works in your vicinity.

mjgant 1y ago

The author has a few of these wind curtailment dashboards, like this one, https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment which breaks down the total by month and by specific windfarm.

oliwarner 1y ago

A couple of days ago it says wind cost us £1m. It can't take many days like this to offset a GWh of grid level storage, able to complete absorb environmental gluts like this.

manarth 1y ago
Pumped hydro is an approach that is in use on the grid today, and has future proposals earmarked for development. https://www.coireglas.com/project https://www.coireglas.com/project The key challenges are deploying large-scale energy storage, and transmission of stored energy to areas of demand.
- oliwarner 1y ago
  Dinorwig is an amazing place to visit. Not sure if they're open right now but go if you can. Yeah, I like pumped hydro and even with its lower efficiency, it's cost effective... but I live in the Fens and I'm looking at solutions that work everywhere. Local storage is going to be more important once a significant portion of the country has an EV and heat pump.
jcattle 1y ago
It really depends on how much excess capacity the north south interconnects have. You'll have to store the energy where it is produced and then get rid of it when the windfarms are not producing (and there's demand in the south). I'm sure someone did the math on this and it is not economical at the moment, otherwise this would have been lower hanging fruit than adding interconnects.

nashashmi 1y ago

Imagine if wind slowed down all across the country because of wind turbines. The long term effects would be less soil erosion and less mountain erosion and water turbulence. What would the short term effects be? Bird populations will find it more difficult to travel long distance with fewer winds? Temperatures would sore in some places while dropping in other places? Pollution will become more stationary instead of being distributed and diluted? What is the critical point of build out that would have such visible effects?

ta1243 1y ago
The entire UK energy demand is about 10% of the kinetic energy of the wind over the UK on a typical day. You'd have to extract a lot of energy to make a measurable difference. The extra energy dumped into the atmosphere from climate change makes a far larger impact.
pjc50 1y ago
The energy comes mostly from the Atlantic. You're not going to cover that in turbines.

ViewTrick1002 1y ago

This is called re-dispatch. The market is setup up to treat Britain like a copper plate but the grid is limited north-south. The solutions are: 1. Divide the grid into two zones along the bottleneck. Then no redispatch is needed and building more capacity in the south is worth it since the prices will go up. 2. Expand the transmission grid capacity to remove the bottleneck therefore removing the need for re-dispatch.

rmind 1y ago

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.

hunglee2 1y ago

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.

aembleton 1y ago
You still need an expansion of the grid to get the energy to the EVs.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago

Could use an opportunistic energy load-dump like a desalination plant... Singapore had a similar situation with fresh water shortages, and had excessive waste-methane energy from Oil refineries. It eventually became a net exporter of fresh water at a profit no less. Fresh water is also easy to store off-peak hours, and distribute using existing infrastructure. Additionally, large factory Rotary-Power-Conditioners can knock out most kinds of short-term periodic silliness on AC power lines. Some data centers use something similar with a flywheel-in-vacuum to keep things running during power fail-over to generators. Best of luck =3

aembleton 1y ago
Or start creating eFuel which is very energy intensive but might become necessary for aircraft.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  That was tried in the late 20th century in places under oil embargo, and it failed to scale up for several reasons. Generally, bio-fuels proved more practical using fermented alcohols or fat transesterification into B100. A genetic engineering solution for salt-water tolerant fuel crops or microbes is highly probable. If I recall correctly, methanol powered vehicles would get significantly lower mileage per tank of fuel, and tended to damage petrol engines. =3

myrmidon 1y ago

It's good to raise awareness of this. I think that grid upgrades are the only good solution here (and those are already happening), because shifting enough consumption towards where the windfarms are strikes me as ridiculous (what fraction of London is going to migrate to Glasgow once electricity is 40% cheaper there, honestly?) and just luring a handful of new datacenters to Scotland (with cheaper electricity) is not gonna cut it. Demand-side anything (or even storage) is not gonna solve this either, because the british north/south grid connections are already close to the limit most of the time; this is not just a peak-power problem. There are very similar problems in Germany (insufficient north/south grid connectivity), and expected long-term costs (within 2037/2045) are in the €200b range (roughly half is for off-shore connections): https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023-06/EN_GDP_2037_2045_V2023_2E_1.pdf https://www.netzentwicklungsplan.de/sites/default/files/2023... (take with a grain of salt because this is material from the grid operators, not some neutral source).

lars512 1y ago
Isn’t that just assuming that people, rather than industry, is the main consumer? Perhaps there are energy hungry industrial applications that could move.
- stepbeek 1y ago
  Absolutely. I had imagined green hydrogen production or something similarly intensive to be the solution.
- grues-dinner 1y ago
  UK domestic electricity is roughly equal to industrial (94 vs 82 TWh). Commercial is 62. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a28656478525675739051/DUKES_2025_Chapter_5.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a286564785... A lot of curtailment happens at night: strong offshore wind and low demand. So not only do you need to provide enough of a price delta for the industry move to be worth it (sacrificing proximity to other amenities and customers, eating the relocation costs, loss of employee supply, etc) but you also need the industry to be operating 24/7 (or start doing it). Some industries can do that, but not all. And then one day when the grid upgrades are done, the risk is the incentives are cut and now you're stuck at the wrong end of the country.

rjakobsson 1y ago

Bitcoin could be the solution here.

tclancy 1y ago
"The solution to, and cause of, all power problems."
- rjakobsson 1y ago
  Stranded energy is ideal for the bitcoin network.

temporallobe 1y ago

The UK seems like one giant HOA.

lucasRW 1y ago

[flagged]

cmsefton 1y ago

The craziest thing about UK energy is that it uses marginal pricing, where the price of energy is dictated by the most expensive generator to meet demand i.e. gas. Doesn't matter if your energy is coming from wind or solar, you're still going to be charged according to the price of gas. Until this can change, consumers are always going to suffer and think green energy isn't cheaper.

sambeau 1y ago
This is the main issue. People simply cannot afford to use this extra power. If power was cheap then all kinds of devices would switch to electric, especially heating and cars. The other issue is that the UK has unpredictable weather and no way to store energy at a grid-level. It can store enough to load balance spikes but there is still nothing to replace the months of gas we once had stored in giant salt chambers (you can thank Liz Truss for decommissioning those). Without vast amounts of long-term energy storage we will continue to throw away power when we have too much and fire up gas generators when wind power isn't making any (which happens surprisingly often).

nQQKTz7dm27oZ 1y ago

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stavros 1y ago

And here's how this is spun by the media: https://archive.is/WLKm0 https://archive.is/WLKm0

DrScientist 1y ago

I think the idea of connecting wind turbines directly to hydrogen electrolysers when they are producing an excess is an interesting idea. Stops the power being wasted ( though obviously hydrogen generation is less efficient than direct use ), and also creates a stored form of the energy for less windy days. BTW also not suggest a hydrogen everywhere energy economy - use it centrally to augment/replace gas powered backup.

belorn 1y ago

"Hooray! No wind has been wasted today (so far)."* This week the northern-ish parts of europe are hitting one of the highest price point for electricity in recent time, with prices going for around $0.5 per kw/h. Calm weather in combination with low production from solar is creating a shortage in production, at the same time as the weather is getting colder. There is a lot of money on the table to get energy produced at the right time and right place. Having energy produced at the wrong time and in the wrong place is not worth anything.

gandalfian 1y ago

People leave out that when the wholesale electricity prices are above the Government guaranteed price the Government makes a profit on selling the wind electricity. So in this example when the grid is full to the brim with wind energy but there is still a demand for last resort gas backup generators the wholesale price of electricity must be high and the government is minting money from the wind turbines, even while paying some to turn off... This is not always the case. But it would be interesting to hear, taking into account the high electricity prices since the Ukraine energy crisis, how much the Government makes from selling the power at a profit and renting the sea floor to the turbines, minus the subsidies paid when prices are low or the wind turbines have to be turned off. It's hard to make a judgement on the economics of it all without knowing this. We may be paying far less for subsidised wind power than we think.

B1FF_PSUVM 1y ago

It's going to be fun when most everybody who has a detached or semi-detached house installs solar panels and batteries, and nearly stops paying for grid power. What's the possible demand drop, 20%? More?

johnnyApplePRNG 1y ago

Stop treating "wasted wind" like bad luck and start treating it like a budgeting error. Ring-fence constraint payments and convert them into a build mandate: every £1 spent curtailing in a zone next year becomes £1 of capex allocated to relieving that exact bottleneck (HVDC, transformers, phase shifters). Pair it with a fast-track permit for projects that follow existing transport corridors and bury through parks/towns only when the cost of delay exceeds the cost premium. Sweeten the deal locally: automatic bill credits or rooftop/heat-pump grants for residents along the route. If we’re going to socialise the waste, we should socialise the upgrade-and make the "do nothing" option politically expensive.