Author Topic: UK power grid situation!!  (Read 12460 times)

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Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #100 on: December 13, 2022, 09:18:38 am »
I see the French, Dutch and Norway ICTs are maxed out too. We also seem to be usng pumped storage early in the day, that's normally reserved for sudden peak loads (kettle breaks).

Almost half (26 out of 56) of our nuclear plants were halted a few weeks ago. A few have been restarted since then, but there's still a significant fraction that is halted. You bet we are maxed out.

Ouch. What was/is the common cause? Fractures?

It's a combination of multiple factors, which, to be fair, would require a pretty long and detailed explanation. Otherwise the short version may look too much like a conspiracy theory.
One of the factors was that they were under maintenance, but how come that many plants could end up under maintenance at the same time, that's complicated (and sounds unbelievable.)
I have not heard of any particular incident. I think it's relatively standard maintenance, now sure some of our plants are getting a bit old, so maintenance is required and sometimes longish.

All reasonable. ISTR our nukes have similar (non)operating characteristics.

Most of the year our nukes have been generating 4-4.5GW, but in the past few days it has been up to just under 6GW.

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The management of our energy company EDF has also been largely questionable for over a decade.

But all in all, we have been sabotaging our energy production capabilities in most of Europe. There's absolutely nothing unexpected here.

Here too for various reasons, some commercial and some political doctrine :(

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Apparently all is well as we're going to build "green" hydrogen pipelines. Yes, really. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/h2med-hydrogen-pipeline-france-cost-25-bln-euros-spanish-pm-sanchez-says-2022-12-09/

At a glance, hydrogen pipelines don't seem completely unreasonable.

OTOH, we are apparently building a housing estate that can be powered by hydrogen and natural gas. It will be a testbed. I wonder if success will be declared before the usual domestic and road-level maintenance has started being necessary. https://hydrogen-central.com/hydrogen-homes-uk-neighbourhood-green-energy-revolution/
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Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #101 on: December 13, 2022, 09:26:04 am »
Read yesterday in the Guardian I think it was that wind power was down to under 3.6% here in the UK, of course being the Guardian it was all down to global warming that there was no wind. Thing is here in the UK we have always had foggy days that go on for a few days or even a week and when there is fog there is no wind, guess these city idiots just don't realise this and think the wind is a steady state thing.

The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.
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Online Zero999

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #102 on: December 13, 2022, 09:29:11 am »
Read yesterday in the Guardian I think it was that wind power was down to under 3.6% here in the UK, of course being the Guardian it was all down to global warming that there was no wind. Thing is here in the UK we have always had foggy days that go on for a few days or even a week and when there is fog there is no wind, guess these city idiots just don't realise this and think the wind is a steady state thing.

The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.
One idea is to put a load of off shore wind turbines in the North Atlantic, from Southern Spain, all the way up to Norway and Iceland. The wind will always blow over some part of the ocean, depending on the weather pattern. I don't see how it's any more feasible than covering the Sahara in solar panels, which has already been shown to be impractical. The problem is distribution.
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #103 on: December 13, 2022, 09:38:19 am »
The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.
One idea is to put a load of off shore wind turbines in the North Atlantic, from Southern Spain, all the way up to Norway and Iceland. The wind will always blow over some part of the ocean, depending on the weather pattern. I don't see how it's any more feasible than covering the Sahara in solar panels, which has already been shown to be impractical. The problem is distribution.

Distribution is an issue; I haven't looked to see the fundamental significance of the issue.

As for increasing the geographic area when considering the reliability/dispatchability of wind, yes it will help. But...
  • the UK is better than most places for wind, so adding areas won't be as beneficial as "expected"
  • larger areas run into the same long-distance distribution problems
  • show me the CDF. Until then it is merely all hot cold air.
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Offline G7PSK

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #104 on: December 13, 2022, 10:32:02 am »
[quote author=tggzzz

The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.
[/quote]

The number of foggy days is fewer than it was in the 60's and 70's although over the past few years it is increasing again proving if anything that the weather is variable, if the weather is really going to get more extreme that means winds will be higher and wind turbines shut down in high wind. If we really want net zero carbon and have enough energy for modern life the money being put into wind and solar especialy ther subsidies should be diverted to fusion.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #105 on: December 13, 2022, 10:39:37 am »
Quote from: tggzzz

The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.

The number of foggy days is fewer than it was in the 60's and 70's although over the past few years it is increasing again proving if anything that the weather is variable, if the weather is really going to get more extreme that means winds will be higher and wind turbines shut down in high wind. If we really want net zero carbon and have enough energy for modern life the money being put into wind and solar especialy ther subsidies should be diverted to fusion.
The clean air act and less particulate pollution is why fog is less common. Now when we get high pressure in winter, it's more likely to give clear, sunny weather, rather than fog. It might also be why the the average winter temperature has increased slightly more, than summer. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest the prevalence of fog is increasing again. There's been quite a few foggy days this winter and the last, but that's not enough to suggest a trend.
 

Online tom66

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #106 on: December 13, 2022, 11:04:47 am »
Relying on fusion to solve the zero carbon problem is just as foolish as relying on carbon capture to make fossil fuels OK to use.  Fusion has not yet returned a positive result, the longest true fusion reaction was about 30 seconds and still did not return more energy than it required.  YES, it might be possible in the future and we absolutely should throw more money at it, but in the meantime wind turbines are zero carbon, efficient, and cheap to build, so we should continue to build them. 
 

Online tom66

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #107 on: December 13, 2022, 11:30:49 am »
The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.

I don't know if anyone is proposing wind ex storage as a viable grid supply - if they are then you are quite right to shout at them.

The reality is that a purely wind powered grid would require some form of storage.  Batteries are very unlikely to be viable, unless there is a massive advance in the technology (like 2-3 orders of magnitude).  So we have to look at chemical storage, as we know that already works, e.g. most gas storage is done underground in large natural salt caverns, or by pumping gas back into expired gas fields.  There are already some demonstration plants in operation that are producing hydrogen from excess renewable energy.

I would like to see what your math looks like it you take the current ~25GW of wind capacity, increase it to ~100GW (which is likely to be where we are in about 15 years), but add storage of about 50TWh (~10 days) into the grid.    There are a few papers on this concept, it is known as 'renewable superpower' (a bit of a marketing term but the idea is to overbuild renewables to overcome  their intermittency).  So your 0.1GW now becomes 0.4GW, still not enough to run the country right, but you can use hydrogen or natural gas instead, and it's got a very small carbon footprint (hydrogen zero, natural gas only due to fugitive emissions).  The best thing about this concept is, if you do it with synfuel natural gas, you don't even need to renew the power plants.  If you do it with hydrogen, you'll need to replace parts of natural gas plants, or build new fuel cell plants, to convert it into electricity, but the overall efficiency is probably a little higher.  You can then also supply the gas into homes to run heating (with homes steadily moving over to heat pumps). 

The current storage capacity in the UK is ca. 5 bcm of natural gas, which is about 50 TWh, and 70% of this is in one facility (Rough natural gas field.)  At a consumption of 45GW, assuming 40% CCGT efficiency (real drawdown ~100GW), that capacity alone is enough for 500 hours of electricity production.  You'd need to add heating and industrial demand of gas to that too, so we'd likely need to roughly double the current storage capacity to make this viable.   Fuel cell plants and more wind make it ever more viable.

The beauty of this route is that it allows you to slowly transition to renewables without great risk. 

Edit - corrected typo
« Last Edit: December 13, 2022, 11:34:30 am by tom66 »
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #108 on: December 13, 2022, 12:31:41 pm »
The "global warming thing" is that extreme weather will become more frequent.

The "wind is always blowing somewhere" is a longstanding mantra od the idiot green fringe that also measures energy in GW. It is easily disprovable, courtesy of gridwatch. I took a year's wind production and plotted the CDF. As a rule of thumb in the UK, if the peak wind output is X GW, then the wind output will be below X% for X% of the time. Example: if the peak output is 10GW, then it will be 0.1GW or less for 1% of the year, i.e. 3 days.
I don't know if anyone is proposing wind ex storage as a viable grid supply - if they are then you are quite right to shout at them.

The reality is that a purely wind powered grid would require some form of storage.

I don't know what "wind ex storage" is.

All intermittent (i.e. non-dispatchable) sources imply storage is required.

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I would like to see what your math looks like it you take the current ~25GW of wind capacity, increase it to ~100GW (which is likely to be where we are in about 15 years), but add storage of about 50TWh (~10 days) into the grid.    There are a few papers on this concept, it is known as 'renewable superpower' (a bit of a marketing term but the idea is to overbuild renewables to overcome  their intermittency).  So your 0.1GW now becomes 0.4GW, still not enough to run the country right, but you can use hydrogen or natural gas instead, and it's got a very small carbon footprint (hydrogen zero, natural gas only due to fugitive emissions).  The best thing about this concept is, if you do it with synfuel natural gas, you don't even need to renew the power plants.  If you do it with hydrogen, you'll need to replace parts of natural gas plants, or build new fuel cell plants, to convert it into electricity, but the overall efficiency is probably a little higher.  You can then also supply the gas into homes to run heating (with homes steadily moving over to heat pumps). 

I'm not going to poorly duplicate what is freely available elsewhere.

Best source, lauded by everybody from "big energy" to "hardcore greens" and politicians is https://withouthotair.com/ Available as a pdf, if you prefer.
  • This remarkable book sets out, with enormous clarity and objectivity, the various alternative low-carbon pathways that are open to us.    Sir David King FRS Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, 2000-08
  • For anyone with influence on energy policy, whether in government, business or a campaign group, this book should be compulsory reading.    Tony Juniper Former Executive Director, Friends of the Earth
  • At last a book that comprehensively reveals the true facts about sustainable energy in a form that is both highly readable and entertaining.    Robert Sansom EDF Energy
  • ... a really valuable contribution ... The author uses a potent mixture of arithmetic and common sense to dispel some myths and slay some sacred cows.    Lord Oxburgh KBE FRS Former Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
  • Engagingly written, packed with useful information, and refreshingly factual.    Peter Ainsworth MP Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
  • Everyone who cares about the survival of humanity should read this book. ... I've been reading books about energy and climate change for the last 20 years, and this is the best yet.    Stephen Tindale Co-founder, Climate Answers and former Executive Director of Greenpeace UK.
  • It is a fabulous, witty, no-nonsense, valuable piece of work, and I am busy sending it to everyone I know.    Matthew Sullivan Carbon Advice Group Plc

He outlines the basic physics, chemistry and biology of energy generation and energy consumption. He presents half a dozen plausible alternatives, without preferring any of them.

Key concept: numbers not adjectives, and make the arithmetic add up.

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The current storage capacity in the UK is ca. 5 bcm of natural gas, which is about 50 TWh, and 70% of this is in one facility (Rough natural gas field.)  At a consumption of 45GW, assuming 40% CCGT efficiency (real drawdown ~100GW), that capacity alone is enough for 500 hours of electricity production.  You'd need to add heating and industrial demand of gas to that too, so we'd likely need to roughly double the current storage capacity to make this viable.   Fuel cell plants and more wind make it ever more viable.

The beauty of this route is that it allows you to slowly transition to renewables without great risk. 

That's misleading #1: Rough is (?can?) only operating at 20% of capacity, thus reducing the 50TWh to 22TWh. Quite a difference.
That's misleading #2: wind on its own is not a solution. For every 1W of installed wind power, you also need an extra 1W of dispatchable power - even though you won't need it most of the time.

Storage is the key, and is now more of an issue than generation. Any entity that comes up with a practical way of grid scale energy storage will become as rich as Croesus. Currently the only practical solution is pumped storage hydropower, and the capacity for that is very limited in the UK.

Nobody should present half-baked proposals unless they explain how they fit in the physical world outlined by MacKay.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2022, 12:35:13 pm by tggzzz »
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Online tom66

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #109 on: December 13, 2022, 01:19:33 pm »
Wind ex storage would be a grid powered by wind power with negligible amounts of storage, assuming that it will always be windy.  What's hard to understand about that?  Anyway, no one sensible is proposing that as a solution.  Every fully renewable proposal that has some thought behind it includes the need for storage. 

I have read nearly all of MacKay's book; I wouldn't be proposing what I suggest if it wasn't somewhat feasible.

But:  MacKay died in 2016, and the book was last updated in ~2014.  In that time, available technology has changed, and wind power has been constructed at an immense scale. 

For instance, wind systems are now well integrated into the grid.  NG/ESO understand when wind won't be available and when to have additional supply on hand.  Constructing wind power in the sea is far more feasible and we can put 20MW offshore turbines up now.  A wind farm can be commissioned in a matter of months, far quicker than any nuclear or gas power plant, but it can generate comparable power to one in good conditions.  In his book, MacKay provided limited analysis of off-shore wind, which a 100GW-sized wind grid would consist mostly of  (he also did not provide any analysis of new technologies, such as floating off-shore, or newer turbines that can sink into 100m deep trenches).  Onshore wind is worth constructing because it is *so cheap* to build, and cheaper than offshore to maintain, but it carries a political price and therefore we're unlikely to see much new developments here.  It's less effective and less consistent than offshore, but storage (and combining it with offshore) makes that kind of thing less important.



(That forecast is a little inaccurate - the UK already has 25GW of wind capacity and it's ~2023.)

You would not need significantly more dispatchable power.  You would simply maintain and replace as necessary the existing natural gas power generation equipment, which is normally enough with nuclear to support the grid under most conditions without wind.  That we are burning a few percent of coal now shows we don't quite have enough, but we are not that far behind, and constructing at a normal pace is sufficient to keep up with additional demands like EVs, heat pumps etc., and there will also be a few new nuclear reactors coming online in the 2030's.  Note that a major benefit to having the renewable super-power would be that electricity in certain conditions would have a very low price; consumers would be heavily incentivised to buy it at certain times to e.g. charge their car or home batteries, or shift behaviour of large industries, shift patterns for aluminium smelters already avoid operation in the 4-7pm peak, but this would change to be based on forecast wind and grid availability.

Rough may be only used at 20% currently, but it will be fully reopening soon; it's a crying shame this government has inadequately funded storage.  But hopefully Russia's actions show that is increasingly necessary to maintain energy independence which wind power and storage enables.   Anyway, I said we'd need more storage, this is not the hard part.  There are lots of depleted gas fields, and there will be more come the end of North Sea gas and oil.   I'm sure we can figure that bit out.  The difficult bit is the syngas stuff, that is the new infrastructure that needs to be built en-masse.  Such plants would likely be located near to the terminus of existing wind power supply lines to reduce losses and costs.  Also, we need considerable upgrades to the 400kV supergrid, as at present the Scottish wind power supply is often limited by the two main 400kV lines feeding the rest of the UK. 
« Last Edit: December 13, 2022, 01:26:22 pm by tom66 »
 

Offline G7PSK

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #110 on: December 13, 2022, 02:12:27 pm »
I live in Norfolk not far from the coast and very often when I go up to the coast even when there is a favourable wind most if not all the visible offshore wind turbines are at a standstill when the land based ones are turning, not sure why this is.   
 

Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #111 on: December 13, 2022, 02:26:02 pm »
Wind ex storage would be a grid powered by wind power with negligible amounts of storage, assuming that it will always be windy.  What's hard to understand about that? 

It an obscure phrase that you probably invented on the spur of the moment, and which failed to communicate what you meant.

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I have read nearly all of MacKay's book; I wouldn't be proposing what I suggest if it wasn't somewhat feasible.

But:  MacKay died in 2016, and the book was last updated in ~2014.  In that time, available technology has changed, and wind power has been constructed at an immense scale. 

The fundamentals haven't changed one iota; that's what makes the book so valuable.

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For instance, wind systems are now well integrated into the grid.  NG/ESO understand when wind won't be available and when to have additional supply on hand.  Constructing wind power in the sea is far more feasible and we can put 20MW offshore turbines up now. 

True, but irrelevant to the key point about storage.

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A wind farm can be commissioned in a matter of months, far quicker than any nuclear or gas power plant, but it can generate comparable power to one in good conditions. 

Nonsense, unless you are using "commissioned" in a non-standard way that you haven't bothered to specify (cf "wind ex storage").

Cherry picking (e.g. "in good conditions") is a bad debating technique, suitable only for politicians and salesmen.

It is true that getting a conventional nuke operating is slower than a wind farm. The SMR approach is yet to be tested.

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In his book, MacKay provided limited analysis of off-shore wind, which a 100GW-sized wind grid would consist mostly of  (he also did not provide any analysis of new technologies, such as floating off-shore, or newer turbines that can sink into 100m deep trenches).  Onshore wind is worth constructing because it is *so cheap* to build, and cheaper than offshore to maintain, but it carries a political price and therefore we're unlikely to see much new developments here.  It's less effective and less consistent than offshore, but storage (and combining it with offshore) makes that kind of thing less important.

Those are variations on a theme, and nothing fundamental.

100GW with storage is larger than we would require. Without storage we would want something around, say, 1000GW to avoid outages,

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(That forecast is a little inaccurate - the UK already has 25GW of wind capacity and it's ~2023.)

No, the UK doesn't. It has 25GW peak capacity, which is very different. In the last year
  • On 2nd August it had own to 0GW (zero) output.
  • 1.7% of the time it had <1% of the peak output (i.e. <250MW).

Please do your research before making statements such as those below.

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You would not need significantly more dispatchable power.  You would simply maintain and replace as necessary the existing natural gas power generation equipment, which is normally enough with nuclear to support the grid under most conditions without wind. 

"Normally enough" is what happens in third world countries and back in the 70s. I've experienced both those, and it sucks.

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Rough may be only used at 20% currently, but it will be fully reopening soon; it's a crying shame this government has inadequately funded storage. 

What's your source for "will be fully reopened" and definition of "soon"?

Arguably it isn't up to the government to fund storage: that is the company's responsibility. Whether the government allows the companies to escape their responsibility is a different question.

Quote
But hopefully Russia's actions show that is increasingly necessary to maintain energy independence which wind power and storage enables.   Anyway, I said we'd need more storage, this is not the hard part.  There are lots of depleted gas fields, and there will be more come the end of North Sea gas and oil.   I'm sure we can figure that bit out.  The difficult bit is the syngas stuff, that is the new infrastructure that needs to be built en-masse.

"I'm sure we can figure that out" is not sufficient.

Syngas has no advantages (and many disadvantages) over natural gas, and is an irrelevant distraction.
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Online tggzzz

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #112 on: December 13, 2022, 02:27:35 pm »
I live in Norfolk not far from the coast and very often when I go up to the coast even when there is a favourable wind most if not all the visible offshore wind turbines are at a standstill when the land based ones are turning, not sure why this is.

Speculation without knowledge: breakdowns/maintenance, whichwill be more frequent due to the harsh environment.

There's a reason why onshore is preferred.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Online themadhippy

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #113 on: December 13, 2022, 02:33:07 pm »
Quote
in certain conditions would have a very low price
:-DD
Quote
it's a crying shame this government has inadequately funded storage.
  you want the tax payer to  pay for the maintenance  privately owned  infrastructure twice ,were already paying for that privilege as part of the daily standing charge. heres a better idea ,put there own  hands in there own pockets and pay for it out of there profits.If you want the tax payer to pay for it then put it back into  state ownership
 

Offline G7PSK

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #114 on: December 13, 2022, 02:34:55 pm »
I live in Norfolk not far from the coast and very often when I go up to the coast even when there is a favourable wind most if not all the visible offshore wind turbines are at a standstill when the land based ones are turning, not sure why this is.

Speculation without knowledge: breakdowns/maintenance, whichwill be more frequent due to the harsh environment.

There's a reason why onshore is preferred.
Where is the speculation here, I said I live near the Norfolk coast and very often they are at a standstill, that is what I have seen, I did not give a reason, I think this is a statement of fact as I have seen it. I have just been on the MET office web site and they say that fog is one of the most frequent weather conditions in the Uk especialy around the east coast where many if not most of the offshore wind farms are.
 

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #115 on: December 13, 2022, 04:03:07 pm »
I live in Norfolk not far from the coast and very often when I go up to the coast even when there is a favourable wind most if not all the visible offshore wind turbines are at a standstill when the land based ones are turning, not sure why this is.

Speculation without knowledge: breakdowns/maintenance, whichwill be more frequent due to the harsh environment.

There's a reason why onshore is preferred.
Where is the speculation here, I said I live near the Norfolk coast and very often they are at a standstill, that is what I have seen, I did not give a reason, I think this is a statement of fact as I have seen it. I have just been on the MET office web site and they say that fog is one of the most frequent weather conditions in the Uk especialy around the east coast where many if not most of the offshore wind farms are.

My speculations, not yours.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline G7PSK

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #116 on: December 13, 2022, 04:26:00 pm »
I live in Norfolk not far from the coast and very often when I go up to the coast even when there is a favourable wind most if not all the visible offshore wind turbines are at a standstill when the land based ones are turning, not sure why this is.

Speculation without knowledge: breakdowns/maintenance, whichwill be more frequent due to the harsh environment.

There's a reason why onshore is preferred.

Where is the speculation here, I said I live near the Norfolk coast and very often they are at a standstill, that is what I have seen, I did not give a reason, I think this is a statement of fact as I have seen it. I have just been on the MET office web site and they say that fog is one of the most frequent weather conditions in the Uk especialy around the east coast where many if not most of the offshore wind farms are.

My speculations, not yours.

Ah sorry about that my mis understanding. Although I dont see 80 odd all breaking down at once, might be the wind is wrong though as these wind turbines only work in a relatively narrow wind speed range. Or could be down to demand, I read that both wind and solar can earn more idle than working due to the way subsidies are run, but if as so many claim wind and solar are cheaper than other forms of power generation why do they need subsidies the power companies would be running to build them as it would be more profitable.
 

Online themadhippy

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #117 on: December 13, 2022, 04:34:33 pm »
Quote
why do they need subsidies
To aid  the transfer of  public funds to private  pockets without  the public realising how were being ripped off
 

Online Nominal Animal

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #118 on: December 13, 2022, 05:10:41 pm »
Here in Helsinki, the city-owned energy company Helen is making record profits, and has hiked prices to around 0.25-0.35 €/kwh, about double or triple what they themselves pay for electricity and generating it.  (They produce energy, especially central heat and cooling, and sell electricity to about 400,000 customers all around Finland, some of it bought off the European electricity "market" (price-fixing cartel designed to shield coal and gas use).  A BIG player here in Finland.)

When questioned, they said "We're using this opportunity to save for future transition to green energy", and refused to cut their prices.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #119 on: December 13, 2022, 06:41:32 pm »
Here in Helsinki, the city-owned energy company Helen is making record profits, and has hiked prices to around 0.25-0.35 €/kwh, about double or triple what they themselves pay for electricity and generating it.  (They produce energy, especially central heat and cooling, and sell electricity to about 400,000 customers all around Finland, some of it bought off the European electricity "market" (price-fixing cartel designed to shield coal and gas use).  A BIG player here in Finland.)

When questioned, they said "We're using this opportunity to save for future transition to green energy", and refused to cut their prices.

If it's city owned, can you not vote for different people to run the city?
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #120 on: December 13, 2022, 07:34:17 pm »
The main reason globally for this largely made-up "energy crisis" seems indeed this "transition" to green energy that is being now forced at all costs, while we are nowhere near ready for this transition.
And are some companies taking advantage of it? Of course.

 

Online tom66

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #121 on: December 13, 2022, 08:08:08 pm »
Wind ex storage would be a grid powered by wind power with negligible amounts of storage, assuming that it will always be windy.  What's hard to understand about that? 

It an obscure phrase that you probably invented on the spur of the moment, and which failed to communicate what you meant.

Huh? 
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/ex_2

The word 'ex' is frequently used as a shorthand for 'excluding' in British English, for instance:

"The price is £1500 ex VAT"

This is common British vernacular, and an internet forum where abbreviations are perfectly fine.  In fact, if you type 'define:ex' into Google - or any word for which you do not know the meaning - I expect you will find the definition without issue. 

The fundamentals haven't changed one iota; that's what makes the book so valuable.

Well, yes, and no -- like all publications it has only the foresight of the author at the time of publication.  MacKay's work includes this diagram of the coastal areas of the UK:



Fig 70, pg 61, ch 10 "Offshore Wind".  Yellow indicates up to 25m deep, purple 25~50m deep, and unhighlighted is beyond that, to save you finding that description.

If you compare that to the situation as of 2021 here:
https://www.windenergynetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/A1-Map_Issue-57-WEB.pdf

Then you can see that many of the 50m areas are already filled in, and even some exploration and early planning is underway in areas beyond 50m deep.  This is despite MacKay's words (pg 62):

Quote
I’ll include this potential deep offshore contribution in the production
stack, with the proviso, as I said before, that wind experts reckon deep
offshore wind is prohibitively expensive.

MacKay believes such a section, if filled densely, could achieve 240GW.  The probably reality is somewhere around 1/3rd of it could be filled with turbines, achieving a peak production capacity of around 80GW. Combined with existing wind gets you to my 100GW figure.  Combined with going to 75m - 100m turbines, which have already been used (https://www.boslan.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/BOSLAN_monopile_foundations.pdf, pg 7), I have very little doubt we could go well beyond MacKay's estimates.

This does not make MacKay a bad author.  His work is fantastic - the heat pump section is particularly enlightening (and it's one reason I believe the mass-conversion of UK homes to heatpumps is effectively impossible).  But, he wrote it with the knowledge available in 2014, and technology has moved on.

Quote
A wind farm can be commissioned in a matter of months, far quicker than any nuclear or gas power plant, but it can generate comparable power to one in good conditions. 

Nonsense, unless you are using "commissioned" in a non-standard way that you haven't bothered to specify (cf "wind ex storage").

Cherry picking (e.g. "in good conditions") is a bad debating technique, suitable only for politicians and salesmen.

It is true that getting a conventional nuke operating is slower than a wind farm. The SMR approach is yet to be tested.

I think SMR will turn out to be a pipe dream, but let's see if it happens.  It has my support, just like fusion, we need to approach the problem with all options.  But we should spend the most effort on things that currently work and can be demonstrated to work.  How many commercial SMR plants are there, compared to windfarms full of 20MW turbines?

Those are variations on a theme, and nothing fundamental.

100GW with storage is larger than we would require. Without storage we would want something around, say, 1000GW to avoid outages

No.  1TW would be far too much with current projected demands.  I don't think you're appreciating what storage does to resolve the intermittency issue.

No, the UK doesn't. It has 25GW peak capacity, which is very different. In the last year
  • On 2nd August it had own to 0GW (zero) output.
  • 1.7% of the time it had <1% of the peak output (i.e. <250MW).

Please do your research before making statements such as those below.

Do you think that I don't appreciate wind sometimes goes to zero watts? The whole point of storage on such a scale is to make wind power viable (and solar in countries which have good insolation.) 

The whole point about overbuilding the amount of wind power is that you store the excess by converting it into hydrogen or hydrocarbon fuel, and then use that fuel when there's no wind.  You combine that with demand management, so encouraging usage of energy when it's more readily available, and conservation when it isn't - e.g. EV chargers that run more on excess wind.

If you don't understand how that can work I don't really know what to say. 

Quote
You would not need significantly more dispatchable power.  You would simply maintain and replace as necessary the existing natural gas power generation equipment, which is normally enough with nuclear to support the grid under most conditions without wind. 

"Normally enough" is what happens in third world countries and back in the 70s. I've experienced both those, and it sucks.

Just a phrase.  The modelling uses 100 or 300 year projections with large margins to ensure there would always be capacity available in storage.

Quote
Rough may be only used at 20% currently, but it will be fully reopening soon; it's a crying shame this government has inadequately funded storage. 

What's your source for "will be fully reopened" and definition of "soon"?

Arguably it isn't up to the government to fund storage: that is the company's responsibility. Whether the government allows the companies to escape their responsibility is a different question.

Error on my part.  "Soon" it will be open to 50% capacity, not 100%.  The current capacity including Rough is around 9 days usage in winter (I gave figures based on 10 days.  It's less than the seasonal average.)  But, Centrica have stated they want 100% by 2030,  but want government funding to do so.  I am also not a fan of the government funding private enterprise, but it's a thing this government has done repeatedly (for instance, see Hinckley C.) 

I would much prefer to see more infrastructure owned by the state, and grid-level storage would be part of that.  It should be owned and run by the ESO or similar organisation (ESO is becoming publicly owned soon, currently it's owned by National Grid plc.)

Quote
But hopefully Russia's actions show that is increasingly necessary to maintain energy independence which wind power and storage enables.   Anyway, I said we'd need more storage, this is not the hard part.  There are lots of depleted gas fields, and there will be more come the end of North Sea gas and oil.   I'm sure we can figure that bit out.  The difficult bit is the syngas stuff, that is the new infrastructure that needs to be built en-masse.

"I'm sure we can figure that out" is not sufficient.

Well, the good news is I'm not in charge of grid and power engineering for the UK, so you don't need to rely on me "figuring it out".  There are people working in this area that know way more than both of us working this stuff out, and I am summarising research, papers and thought patterns here.  This is not a formal treatise on how wind power and storage could work, just a discussion. 

The other good news is this is not happening any time soon.  Whilst the UK is seeing the odd day with zero fossil usage for electricity, it's very unlikely we'll see sustained zero fossil fuel usage for decades to come.  National Grid is planning for around 2035 for a sustained zero carbon grid (as they say "net zero", but a little hand-wavy), but it's quite likely to still require some fossil fuel usage until about 2040 or so.

In terms of storage, the UK has comparatively little in use right now.  About 9 days' gas (see above) whereas NL has around 130 days.  If we use depleted gas fields, we should be able to achieve capacities similar to Europe.  Note that Europe has traditionally had more storage as it has had less access to LNG, so the UK has had no need to develop much storage historically, and this was also used as justification to shut down Rough in 2017.  Really, Rough is a small field in comparison to the capacity of the North Sea gas fields.  For instance, one field in Scotland has been proposed to store CO2 of 360,000,000 tonnes, at a sixth of its capacity.  (If that were CH4, it would be around 30 TWh if filled fully.)  And that is one field in the North Sea.  We certainly have no shortage of fields that could be developed for this purpose.  And of course, we can use the existing European transmission network to buy and sell the synthetic gas across the continent or use LNG transports.  There are also inland fields, or converted coal gas mines, available.

Syngas has no advantages (and many disadvantages) over natural gas, and is an irrelevant distraction.

I use the wrong term here, my apologies.  By syngas I was referring to synthetic or substitute natural gas, produced by something like a power-to-gas process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_natural_gas

For instance, you could use the Sabatier reaction, but there are others.

It's not yet clear whether natural gas or hydrogen will win here.  Natural gas is easier to use, as existing gas boilers, power plants, and industrial processes can use it, and it is easier to store and transport than hydrogen.  However, it has greater losses.  Current research suggests about 70% conversion efficiency could be achieved with an optimised CH4 conversion system;  hydrogen may be able to achieve 80%.  The conversion loss is one reason that you need to overbuild the wind power and the storage capacity, because your storage will be less efficient than using the energy directly.  The really cool thing about Sabatier is it uses CO2 from the atmosphere, so processes that trap CO2, like fertiliser production via CH4 (a huge amount going into the soil carbon cycle) it is negative for carbon emissions.  And even if you burn it in conventional boilers etc., it is effectively carbon neutral if fugitive emissions are kept low enough.
 

Online Nominal Animal

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #122 on: December 14, 2022, 02:44:17 am »
Here in Helsinki, the city-owned energy company Helen is making record profits, and has hiked prices to around 0.25-0.35 €/kwh, about double or triple what they themselves pay for electricity and generating it.  (They produce energy, especially central heat and cooling, and sell electricity to about 400,000 customers all around Finland, some of it bought off the European electricity "market" (price-fixing cartel designed to shield coal and gas use).  A BIG player here in Finland.)

When questioned, they said "We're using this opportunity to save for future transition to green energy", and refused to cut their prices.

If it's city owned, can you not vote for different people to run the city?
Large majority of those who live in Helsinki tend to lean quite far left, and believe Helen is doing the Right Thing.  They believe the families that are having trouble paying their electricity bills are guilty of causing climate change, and therefore deserve to have a poor Christmas, and are just getting payback for their past climate crimes.
And that rather than Helen cutting their profits a bit, the government should help those having difficulty paying their electricity bills anyway, because the transition to green energy is more important than anything else and must not be questioned or risked.

It is politics mixed with the worst facets of urban stupidity.
 
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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #123 on: December 14, 2022, 02:51:56 am »
Someone said: "We just don't need the vast majority of the population".
Nice times. :palm:
 

Offline IanB

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Re: UK power grid situation!!
« Reply #124 on: December 14, 2022, 03:50:20 am »
Storage is the key, and is now more of an issue than generation. Any entity that comes up with a practical way of grid scale energy storage will become as rich as Croesus. Currently the only practical solution is pumped storage hydropower, and the capacity for that is very limited in the UK.

One of the most promising ideas being investigated here is to turn the electricity into hydrogen (or less easily, ammonia), and store it, and then turn it back to electricity when needed.

For hydrogen it is a case of electrolysis and fuel cells, but storing the hydrogen in large quantities is difficult. Ammonia is easy to store as a liquid in tanks, but electrolysis/fuel cells that work with ammonia is a very emergent technology, far from practical deployment.
 


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