Slashdot Mirror
Record Wind Power Levels Trigger Energy Price Fall Across Europe
New submitter Forty Two Tenfold writes "Electricity prices across Europe dropped last month as mild temperatures, strong winds and stormy weather produced wind power records in Germany, France and the UK, according to data released by Platts. The price decline was more marked in Germany, where the average day-ahead baseload price in December fell 10% month over month to €35.71/MWh. On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh."
Considering that money is not going to subsidize some Arab regime, does not add carbon to the atmosphere, and does not use up a non-renewable resource, I'd say it's a great deal. More, please.
More than half of my power comes from domestic hydro, wind, and landfill gas sources, with the rest most likely produced from nuclear and domestic sourced coal and natural gas.
It's not like energy companies ever pass on cheaper wholesale prices to their customers.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Please note that those prices are day to day EPEX spot prices and have as much in common with the rate you get charged as a consumer/business. Even less than brent spot prices influence fuel prices at your gas station, since most electricity consumers have a yearly price agreement. The huge variation is due to the over-capacities of German networks during high wind/ sun times. This overload has to be sold to other meta consumers if necessary at a negative price. This is one of the reasons why a lot of companies here in central europe are investing in transportation (high voltage DC networks) and means to store the overproduction (water/salt/batteries).
€35.71/MWh from the generator is not exactly cheap by US experience.
The cheapest electricity in the USA today is in Kentucky (coal country) where it goes for about 6 cents/kWh. That is about $60/MWh, which is considerably more than 35 euros. I live in California, and I pay from 12 to 30 cents per kWh ($120 to $300 per MWh) depending on usage tier.
Man, i was going to post the exact same thing about Ontario Hydro and our somewhat "failed" green energy program.
We have one of the largest nuke plants in the world (Bruce nuclear, #2) but all they do is buy super-expensive wind and sign long term contracts to do so as well.
When the NIMBY people complained they forced the wind generators anyhow.
That is one of the problems with wind and solar: they are unpredictable. Free markets cannot "smooth it out" for consumers, because if there is large-scale reliance on renewable and the wind/solar generation fails, then there will be a shortage of conventional fossil-fuel/hydro/nuclear generated power. A better solution may be the development of longer term energy storage and batteries, such that consumers can buy at low prices and avoid buying at higher prices.
€35.71/MWh from the generator is not exactly cheap by US experience.
Only thing I could find on US electricity prices where http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/update/wholesale_markets.cfm
What is cheap and what is expensive electricity in the US?
The ones affected are the companies that actually own power plants to generate power and sell it to the utility companies, as they are the ones who see their earnings fluctuate between $0.50/MWh to $60/MWh.
And guess what? These market conditions make it hard to impossible to make a profit out of modern clean gas-fired power plants. I know of at least one example (The Netherlands) where an ultra-modern gas-fired plant had to be closed down and dismantled because it couldn't compete. It was a plant that could both supply a base load and respond quickly to variations. It could compete very well as a peak-load plant ... but not as a base load supplier. Unfortunately the market for peak loads had shrunk to the extent that it could no longer be operated at a profit.
The plants best suited to survive in this market are old, dirty, written-off coal plants (base load) and old dirty written-off peakers. Oh irony ... abundant (but quite volatile) green power kills off the cleanest and most modern fossil fuel plants first. I bet the Greens don't like that.
Not sure what you are thinking or if you're confused about units, etc. but ... /MWh which is close to the euro 35 ($47) price in TFA.
A quick search of US Wholesale prices shows a range of $31 to $71 for last year with highest prices in the Northeast. California was $42
So... price for this wind power is on par with US wholesale prices for all (coal, hydro, NG, etc.) averaged together... not really 3x.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
That's not just not exactly cheap, that's 3x the cost of power here in California
I think you need a new calculator. 35.71 euros is about $49. That is less than 5 cents/kWhr. Where in California are you getting a kWh for one third of a nickel?
Just to save time, let's all agree that wind power could never, ever, ever work in North America. Or solar. Obviously the blah blah blah mumble mumble obfuscate is so different here that it would be impossible.
Also, North American wind is like TOTALLY different from European wind.
Three Squirrels
I assume TFA is referring to wholesale energy prices, so you cannot directly compare that to your retail rate.
According to this article:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/1/10/energy-markets/negative-spin-europes-amazing-electricity-prices
"Over the Christmas holiday, which typically causes a drop in energy demand, wholesale electricity prices in Germany, the Nordic region, the Czech Republic and Slovakia turned negative on excessive renewable energy production and mild weather."
On December 24, 2013, when industrial and business power demand dropped sharply, the price of German power for intra-day delivery fell to an average of -€35.45 per megawatt-hour between 0000 and 0600 in the morning, touching lows of -€62.03/MWh halfway through that period.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
wind doesn't vary on a minute by minute basis, though. Perhaps we don't need batteries, so much as we need a way to communicate pricing signals to the consumers.
If I had a device that I could set price points to, say, start a load of laundry or run the refrigerator compressor, or hold off on the AC when a price transmitted by the power company is high or low, I could make my own demand follow the actual supply more closely.
Just because I might have a few big-power needs, doesn't mean I can't be flexible with when they are executed, if I have some way of knowing when a good time is.
I would want the information to be a price that I choose, though, rather than the "smart metering" I've seen elsewhere where the device allows the power company to decide when your devices run. If I'm picking, I can override, for instance if I'm going to an interview in a few hours and just noticed I need to wash a suit or something.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Now we just need a practical, ecologically friendly way of storing, long term, the excess energy that has nowhere to go. It's great that this much wind energy can be generated under unusual conditions, it would be better if we would store the large quantities that no doubt went to waste for want of adequate storage technology.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
A better solution may be the development of longer term energy storage and batteries
An even better solution is to pass through the fluctuation in the wholesale prices directly to the consumers. This will stimulate a demand for appliances that are "price aware". So refrigerators, freezers, and AC will pre-chill when power is cheap and coast when it is not. Water heaters, clothes dryers, etc. will disconnect their heating elements when prices surge. Instead of only trying to smooth the supply, we should try to change the demand to meet the supply, and market prices are the best way to achieve that.
My calculations are 60 euro time 1.37 equals 82.2 dollars divided by 1000 or .082 or 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour. .5 euro times 1.37 equals .685 dollars divided by 1000 or .000685 or .0685 cents per kilowatt hour. The most expensive is close to what I pay and the cheapest is far less. At the cheapest rate my electricity bill would be less than 1% of what I now pay. 14.5 kilowatt hours per penny is almost free.
The Greens TKO The Fossils!
Greens:1
Fossils:0
You can because if the retail rate vastly exceeds the wholesale rate you know that you are being ripped off.
Such ripoffs are why solar photovoltaics are very popular where I live despite being an expensive way to generate electricity. Cutting out the middleman becomes worth it when the middleman gets very greedy.
That is one of the problems with wind and solar: they are unpredictable. Free markets cannot "smooth it out" for consumers
Free markets can, if the grids can. It's the infrastructure that needs a large scale upgrade. Just because we can't do it yet doesn't mean that it's technically impossible.
Ezekiel 23:20
On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh.
I have seen a nice bumper sticker before: Solar and wind are allright, but nuke's do it all night.
I agree with this sentiment. Shame Germany is phasing out nuclear in favor of coal.
I don't see anything in the article about "Record Wind Levels", just that December was more windy than November. And a significant driver for the lower prices was lower demand due to warmer temperatures. But it's okay to cherry pick data in this context.
The price fell because of a surplus that probably wasn’t being fully consumed. I wonder what kind of energy storage solutions they have. Batteries have substantial energy loss between charge and discharge, and supercapacitors aren’t cheap or super enough.
Belgium is around 20 euro cents per kWh for the end consumer. And the end-consumer will just pay what they usually pay.
I'm from Portugal, this type of "green-article" never tells the whole story .
,this is terribly expensive for us, because the more subsidized energy is produced , naturally we paid more and more. Portugal already has one of the most expensive energy prices in Europe, but as the price of energy sold to public is regulated, dont reflect the real and crazy cost, consumers have accumulated a huge tariff debt to the system . In Portugal this tariff debt already exceeds 4000 million € in Spain now exceeds € 25000 million €.
We have a serious problem with subsidized renewable energy , as has Spain , or Germany ( but these are rich and in Portugal we live in a severe crisis).
When there is too much wind and hydro generation, prices in the energy market fall, BUT producers of renewable energy ( exluindo large hydro ) receive the same guaranteed rate ( feed-in tariff). As these producers have priority in the system all energy produced by them have to be bought, even if there is much cheaper energy in the market (gas, nuclear, oil, etc), even if it's free as has happened several times in the past (in Germany last year energy price at one day was negative) we have to buy the subsidized energy !
So actually what happens when there is too much wind and rain
To get an idea of prices paid to subsidized energy, here I leave these two pictures:
Annual change in average cost per type of energy: http://i.imgur.com/MFaPFRZ.png
Annual changes in the average cost of energy subsidized vs. average market cost: http://i.imgur.com/OFn71pI.png
Nuclear is baseload and quickly loses efficiency if you try to ramp it up and down and makes up most of Ontario's energy production. Wind's nameplate capacity in Ontario is under 2GW and they also have plenty of hydro & gas.
In 5 years of tracking the output from IESO I can't recall nuclear falling below 9.5GW.
Yes, the wind farms have "must-take" but if they are not producing, they don't get a penny.
Ontario has tried several times to price out building 2 new nuke plants and every time the bill gets much higher & the timeline longer.
When the nuke industry finds a way to build faster & cheaper without compromising reliability, they'll do very well.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Given the track record of UK power companies they will probably try and fiddle it so works out as a price increase to consumers. If there was any justice those running these companies should be looking at serious time behind bars for what they have been up to, Hollywood accounting and manipulating the wholesale prices to justify increasing household bills. As it is they will be allowed to retire to their huge piles in the home counties with probably a knighthood or some such to keep them cosy.
These are wholesale prices. Once you add in VAT and the EU's subsidy taxes the actual retail prices are quite a bit higher.
The prices also vary quite a bit from country to country, and within countries.
http://energy.globaldata.com/media-center/press-releases/power-and-resources/europe-paying-more-for-electricity-than-us-states-globaldata-consultant-with-dramatic-differences-seen-between-countries
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/10/27/berlins-ballooning-electricity-rates-become-highest-in-europe/
I suppose I'm considering a longer term buying and usage scale. The article mentions the high prices were December 11th, and the low prices were December 24th. It is concerning to me that my appliances might not operate for 13 days at a time until the price drops again. Certainly price aware appliances are a good idea, and could be combined with a battery or storage mechanism. But ideally I want to buy electricity at 0.50 euros/MWh, store it and ignore high prices while I continue to use my appliances at arbitrary times, buy additional electricity when the price falls again, and then laugh at anyone who paid 35 euros/MWh because they got their electricity from conventional generation while mine was generated and stored from renewable.
I forgot to mention that as fossil energy plants (natural gas turbine plants, etc) have long stops, the government has to pay them big compensations for not producing, as anyway they are necessary to the system.
On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than â60/MWh â" the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year â" only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to â0.50/MWh.
What you really must know there is that these low costs are not passed on to the customer. On the contrary, energy prices for private users have been constantly rising for years.
Why? Because our corrupt bullshit non-government has passed laws that exempt the - wait for it - biggest industrial users of energy from taxes. Which, of course, means that the rest of us have to pay their share.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes, but at the retail level subsidies are charged to the end user.
Not sure the wholesale price accurately reflects the complete picture.
Not sure the wholesale price accurately reflects the complete picture.
Soaring energy bills in the UK is little short of a crisis but with little correlation to the wholesale cost of the energy, I the prices here don't fall at all.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/nov/16/energy-prices-rise
Wholesale vs retail.
Distribution charges add $0.07-0.12/kWh. I think that includes the markup on wholesale prices as well.
Load following nuclear plants are possible and many designs (such as the PBMR) are intended to follow load. This is patently false
Although wind power does not contribute to global warming through greenhouse gas emission, it does extract kinetic energy from the atmosphere and therefore may alter global climate even at continental scales
It may be the lesser of evils compared to some other supplemental energy options but it isn't perfect- and it isn't a good candidate for base load
Not sure what you are thinking or if you're confused about units, etc.
I'm pretty sure the poster was dividing 35.71 by 1000 to get KWh price and getting .3571 rather than .03571. Then they said "47 cents per KWh!? That's 3X our residential price!". Fairly simple, and easy, mistake to make when working with with one set that scales by 1000 (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) and another item that scales by 100 (dollars to cents).
In California, at least, I'm pretty sure there is no markup on wholesale prices. Utilities get a regulated fixed profit based on distribution charges.
Obviously, one would need to know the forecast prices for at least some period of time in the future and use that to find the compromise in convenience and price when running said appliance.
Obviously you may not want to wait for prices to drop in certain cases.
The hundreds-of-millions of dollars spent every year by the fossil fuel industry, in order to curve public opinion, really comes to light when articles like this are posted. An overwhelming number of commenters (for this site) would have us think that "big wind" is pulling the wool over our eyes, and that nonsense like "clean coal" is the only fair way to generate power. Unreal. I've seen similar happen elsewhere (e.g. anything about fracking on reddit), but they are here now too, infecting helpless threads with pseudoscience bullshit. Had to make sure I hadn't stumbled onto Fox News, nope, it's Slashdot. Yikes. Is anywhere safe?
Moses Lake, Washington has a 2.5 cents/kWh industrial rate. Commercial rate less than 5 cents. Its all hydroelectric.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
The only problem is, that stupid German laws make sure, that nothing of the price fall ever reaches the end cosumers. Prices for alternative energy are guaranteed in Germany and the difference between market price and guaranteed price has to be paid by all consumers. This same law also makes sure, that environmental impact of energy production doesn't go down, because although production of renewable energy is surging at some times, conventional productions remains the same (just driving market prices low and increasing exports). All paid by the law guaranteed prices for renewables.
Yes, that's how a subsidy works... Your government believes the long-term benefits of renewables are worth a (hopefully modest) short-term electrical price increase to incentivize the investment in building and installing them. If that has changed, the government should review the rule, and perhaps modify or change it.
Once the tariffs end, you can never have "too much wind", as the power companies can just tell the wind turbine operators to adjust the pitch of their blades to reduce supply to reasonable levels, when needed. Similar applies to solar. Since it's not a fossil-fuel plant, they aren't wasting any money on fuel when they just don't operate at peak efficiency.
And short-term negative energy prices like this are a HUGE opportunity for someone to invest in grid-scale energy storage. When there are strong winds and the power company doesn't want all the electricity you can provide, you could always use the excess to do something like charge batteries, generate hydrogen, heat-up an insulated tank of liquid sodium, pump water up to the top of a dam, process other valuable atmospheric gases (liquid nitrogen?), or similar. The more wind capacity you have, and the more often you have zero or negative electricity prices, the more economic it is to build a facility like that.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The device connected to the wind TURBINE (there is no mill) is called a GENERATOR. This is where the magnets are. Generators are connected to the turbines in Coal plants, gas plants and nuke plants too. They all use magnets.
Maybe allowing speculators to connect to the grid and buy, store, and sell electricity would smooth it out.
Other than Hawaii almost all US electric generation is from domestic sources since oil is WAY too expensive on a $/BTU basis to compete with coal and natural gas, it's much better used for transportation and for feedstock for the petrochemical industries (plastics, cosmetics, medicine, textiles, etc).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
we have cut down so many trees already, that we have to erect a few million extra turbines.
Wind is a perfect candidate for base load.
'Zero' running costs, e.g.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wind and solar is predictable enough or which part of the articles day ahead price did you not get?
Do you really think if the weather report for tomorrow predicts my plant will yield 1.134GW that the actual variation makes me any trouble? Or that I accidentally will only produce half of it?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This is already in the works.
This is what smart meters an smart grids are for.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Germany is not phasing out nuclear in favour of coal, but in favour of wind.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
He said 'short term' ... that means for me in hours or less.
Current reactors don't do that. If you power a reactor a bit down it gets difficult to power it up again, due to different characteristics of moderation (waste products).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Except it can't guarantee a continuous base load, so there goes its suitability.
Wind is a perfect candidate for base load.
I don't think you know what that word means...
Well, energy prices on the market don't quite reflect the prices for private end users.
In 2014, as a regular German citizen I have to pay about 0.3 € per kWh, which is about $409.8 per MWh. Combined with all the other living costs here, I can guarantee you that it doesn't feel like "almost free" at all.
So... price for this wind power is on par with US wholesale prices for all (coal, hydro, NG, etc.) averaged together... not really 3x.
TFA says nothing about the price of wind power. Only that increased supply (vs demand) has caused prices to drop.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
here in Germany, solar and wind power is painted as unreliable yet we export energy to France, our neighbhour with the good, reliable atomic power - which, reliably, has to shut down its nuclear plants every summer and winter when power demand is highest...
The Greens TKO The Fossils!
Greens:1
Fossils:0
Until the wind dies :D
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Thanks to climate change, we are bound to getting more wind. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Included in the wholesale rate obviously since those charging the retail rate are not responsible for transmission.
well there is dual rate metering, commonly known as Economy 7 in the UK. You just get charged less for electricity during the night when demand is at its lowest.
Unfortunately they charge you more for metering it, even thou its pretty much just a relay which switches metering clocks at set times.
It's fairly easy to be power efficient these days. The annoying thing is its not the unit rate that makes much of a difference to my bills but the standing charge levys and other fee's. doubling my electricity use would probably would change my bill in the order of 10%. If I got dual rate metering my bills would increase.
Another con is the prepayment meter which again brings in a standing charge and higher unit rates making the bills much higher than they would be without it. This tends to mean the poorest people in society are paying the highest energy costs. This is quite hard to escape once you are in this trap if you are living week by week it is very difficult to save enough money so you are able to pay the bill when it comes in.
It's made even more difficult in that the meter rates tend not to be adjusted when the prices go up and so when you attempt to escape all of a sudden you find your prepayment meter which was supposed to help you budget has quietly been building up a debt. suppliers like this because it holds their customers captive as you can't switch suppliers while there is an outstanding debt.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Base load is a limited way of thinking about things.
Really, a more generic model is that you need to follow the power usage curve. That's the only thing that matters. If you think about it that way, nuclear and big coal plants aren't too great either because it tends to be uneconomical to ramp the production up and down. For nuclear, you need to be operating as close to 24x7 you can get to recoup the capital costs.
This more generic way of thinking about things also allows us to see that even in base load scenarios, you will have gaps where the base load plants are offline, e.g nuclear plants go offline for refueling and service.
The job of a good power system is to make sure you have capacity that can relatively quickly ramp up production to fill in the gaps, e.g. hydro power or gas plants, or perhaps in the future some sort of grid-level storage. Wind power is compatible with this model. That's why it, despite your remark, actually works just fine in practice.
The price decline was more marked in Germany, where the average day-ahead baseload price in December fell 10% month over month to €35.71/MWh. On a daily basis, December was a month of extremes for Germany, with day-ahead base prices closing on December 10 and 11 at less than €60/MWh – the highest over-the-counter levels seen all year – only to fall to its lowest level December 24 to €0.50/MWh.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
RIght now, oil costs are extremely high even though gas is relatively cheap. In the more settled markets of the 1990s coal generated electricity costs at the lowest cost generators were in the range of 1 - 2 cents per KWh ($10 - $20 per MWh).
14.5 kilowatt hours per penny is almost free.
Check the article for price on Xmas Eve. And I'd like to know your opinion about THAT.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
There are two different definitions of 'base load' in common use:
- In one definition, the base load is the minimum amount of power that must be provided at any given time and situation. Ideally, every utility will be able to meet its base load requirements even if all the variable load sources (wind, solar, etc) are simultaneously unavailable. Base Load generation facilities are power plants that can reasonably be expected to be available at any time for as long as is needed -- coal and gas powered power plants, nuclear plants, hydroelectric power.
- In the other definition, base load facilities are those which must be run at full output if that is possible in order to satisfy economic expectations and eventually pay for the investment in the facility. Unpredictable sources like wind are likely to be baseline load under the second definition, but not the first.
There are two problem areas here:
- Using the first definition, a utility must be able to somehow satisfy maximum demand even if major variable supplies are unavailable.
- Using the second definition, base load sources must be given priority lest the owners lose money. If utility owners routinely lose money, there will be no new utilities built, and possibly no maintenance of existing facilities. The problem is that most power sources are base load sources under this definition, thus everyone must have priority.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Most customers won't accept that. They want their previously negotiated and contracted prices, and be done.
Here in the USA they would start talking about how the poor poor billionaires that own these power companies need government bailouts because of falling electricity prices.
Oh woe is the Robber Baron, for his massive fortunes are not growing fast enough. We the people must help this poor destitute billionaire..
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think you meant that the article says nothing about the cost of wind power, which is correct. An oversupply is the cause of the price reduction, and that is a result of all of the sources combined, not just wind. The question is, how much money is each source making or losing when prices are depressed? You won't find that information in most of these types of articles, but it is an important factor in future investment.
wind doesn't vary on a minute by minute basis, though.
I think perhaps you need to get outside of the basement occasionally and actually experience this wind phenomenon.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Well the EPA does what it can to make sure the poor cant heat themselves here in the USA. Wood stoves are currently under battle as polluters. Even though the Rocket mass heater burns so completely that very little comes out of the chimney.
IF you outlaw heating systems that people can gather the fuel themselves for, you lock them into more of a slavery system.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Pumped storage is great in theory. In practice, it's got some problems -- including, but not limited to -- inefficiency, lack of suitable sites, and evironmental issues from constantly fluctuating water levels. But the BIG problem is the huge amount of water that has to be moved to buffer energy to meet the electricity needs a modern industrial society on low wind days.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Now can we stop bitching about global warming? See, it's not all bad.
Can we stop bitching about cancer? See, it's not all bad -- now I can smoke cigarettes through the hole in my neck!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Your business model is based on the cost of power in L.A.? Ya, right.
They're using the metric system for their costs? Then it's anyone's guess. XD
Maybe that's why one should have more than one wind turbine, and they might be placed in different locations?
Unfortunately, more or less "by definition" most here on /. don't know what it means :D
Baselaod: the amount of energy you always feed into the greed, regardless of demand. In germany that is roughly 40%.
Can be done with any plant, as long as you have an at least 1 hour forecast. And that is what we do (yes I'm german, yes I worked nearly 10 years in the energy industry).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Both of your definitions are no "definitions". :D
They are layman interpretations of the true definition
Baseload: the amount of load you always feed into the grid, regardless of demand. That means even at night when your "demand" is only roughly 30% of the peak, you still feed the typical 40% "base load" into the grid, it is used to fill up pumped storages. Traditionally -- as you explain correctly -- done with cheap plants that run nearly at 100% *all the time*. With the side effect that those plants are also relatively slow in load following
There are two problem areas here:
- Using the first definition, a utility must be able to somehow satisfy maximum demand even if major variable supplies are unavailable.
That is wrong. As *base laod* is not used for *maxiumum demand* but only for far less then half of the *maximum*, the rest is done with load following and peak plants.
- Using the second definition, base load sources must be given priority lest the owners lose money. If utility owners routinely lose money, there will be no new utilities built, and possibly no maintenance of existing facilities. The problem is that most power sources are base load sources under this definition, thus everyone must have priority.
That is not true as well. As modern *base load* plants are similar quick in demand change and adaption as normal load following plants. In fact they are the same thing. It is only a planning decision which plants you use for base load tomorrow
If I know I will have enough wind tomorrow I will plan today how much of that wind power I consider base load.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Ofc it can be guaranteed, or what you think how germany is using wind power as base power? By magic?
Did it ever happen that a region that had a wind prognosis of lets say 40km/h to 60km/h suddenly had ZERO wind? Or significantly less then 40km/h?
Don't know how good the weather reports in your country are, but in europe they are very reliable (after all the atmosphere found no trick yet to trick out the scientists on so simple stuff as a 24h wind forecast.)
And as the other poster pointed out: germany is not huge, but still roughly 1000km from north to south and 700km from east to west. So: plenty of place to have wind farms, so if indeed at one edge the wind vanishes, the rest still produces energy.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No generator can "guarantee" a continuous base load, and no generator ought do so. What we need to do is guarantee that supply meets demand in every minute of all 8760 hours of the year. Traditionally, that means being able to adjust supply to meet demand, but in the future it will also be adjusting demand to meet supply (think: charging electric vehicles, etc).
As long as we have enough generation all the time, it doesn't matter if any given generator can provide a continuous level output. Wind alone isn't enough -- but hydro, wind, solar, landfill gas, geothermal, large storage (pumped hydro), small storage (electric vehicles), reducing demand (energy efficiency), large instantaneous demand reduction (demand response), small widespread instantaneous demand reduction (air con/elec heat small thermostat adjustments) may well be enough. If it isn't, combustion turbines (CTs) can be used in a pinch to help with energy, ramping, or regional voltage support.
"Base load" is a 20th century concept which was appropriate and necessary when the number of generators were small, the grid was vertically integrated, and we lacked the computational ability to accurately understand the outage risks of a large, complex system. As the 21st century progresses, you won't even hear the term "base load" because it's just not something that even makes sense for a modern electric grid.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
He said 'short term' ... that means for me in hours or less.
Current reactors don't do that. If you power a reactor a bit down it gets difficult to power it up again, due to different characteristics of moderation (waste products).
The difficulty is due to xenon, which can limit the magnitude of the load follow. However, trust me there are reactors that can follow. History of load following reactors from the American Nuclear Society
Although wind power does not contribute to global warming through greenhouse gas emission, it does extract kinetic energy from the atmosphere and therefore may alter global climate even at continental scales
It may be the lesser of evils compared to some other supplemental energy options but it isn't perfect- and it isn't a good candidate for base load
All energy sources have pitfalls. The advantage of renewables such as wind, solar, geothermal and others is its renewable and key to the long term survival of the human race at a decent but lower standard of living. When we lose fossil fuels in the coming centuries, provided that civilization doesn't collapse, being forced to rely on renewables will destroy our throwaway culture. To get our money's worth out of renewables will require doing everything in our power to extend the lifespan of our solar panels, wind turbines and so on particularly after all the low hanging fruit is taken.
The principle disadvantages of renewables are the amount of space required and the unpredictability of them. Wind has unknown effects on global climate and kills flying animals (birds, bats and insects). Solar could have an effect at global scales like wind power. Solar could withdraw some heat from the planet. But could that withdrawal compensate for global warming? I doubt it.
Fossil fuels have the primary advantages of being energy dense and predicable. So fossil fuels take up less space. But fossil fuels are polluting and will not last much longer.
Also nonrenewable is nuclear. Nuclear is extremely energy dense and will take longer to use up than fossil fuels. Aside from extremely hazardous nuclear waste that could be used for nuclear bombs, nuclear is relatively clean. Nuclear will likely be turned to when the rate that fossil fuels that can extracted from the planet go into sharp declines and renewables are unable to meet the gap.
Ah, I thought it was boron and not xenon, varies likely by reactor type and other set ups.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Same price, but from a source that doesn't screw up the planet. Still a win.
Yeah, me too, I'm with a public utility in Oregon and the monthly newsletter a while back was talking about the wholesale rates and how the investments they made in wind a decade ago are paying off, and that power is cheaper than the market power, and they're investing in new farms as fast as they can. There used to be an option where people could buy only renewable power in a segregated market (simulated, same wires) and it cost about double. Still, there was a waiting list. Then as the investments paid off and oil prices shot up, suddenly those people were getting lower bills. So they changed it so the green-only power has a fixed markup now, so that people can support investment. There is still a waiting list.
Actually that link suggests it probably is a good candidate for base load.
You're jumping from not perfect to not for base load, but nothing is perfect. If it is better than the other things already in use, then increasing it is good, regardless of it starts carrying the base load. Yeck, if it is better than what we have... especially if it is enough to carry the base load!
Are they idiots for blocking low efficiency, high side-effect fuels, or for winning a small battle?
In Oregon I'm paying 5 cents for the electricity, and another 6 cents for delivery, with transparent markup (public utility)
One problem with comparing the prices is that there are different types of contracts; wind we get on fixed contracts, where it is very cheap because the capacity is purchased in advanced. Any coal power we get is off the spot market, where it is vastly more expensive than wind, hydro, or nuclear.
In Kentucky, their coal power is cheap not because coal is cheaper, but because they're getting it on a fixed contract.
California experiences perpetual growth, and has trouble getting the number of fixed contracts that they would desire based on what they know they need. And because of the size of the California market, energy companies try very hard to play games with the maintenance schedules to increase the percent that is bought off the spot market.
Inside the same market, hydro is cheapest, next is PV, nuclear, wind, natural gas, and pulling up the rear, coal. Obviously there will be a very tiny area right around the physical coal where the transport and storage costs are close to zero, where it probably beats natural gas.
No fret. Another honking huge HVDC cable to France to get more nuclear power to the UK under construction. Plus a nuclear power plant built with Chinese and French funding actually IN the UK.
In Oregon where utilities are culturally expected to be cooperative to end user PV, you just have to have a digital meter (you buy the upgrade if you don't already have it, but my city is converting everybody for free in 2 years) and a standard inverter. They don't "hate" it, they "love" it, and they promote it heavily. You don't need new wires, so there is nothing for them to pay for. It doesn't increase electricity usage in the neighborhood, so where would these wires go? The electricity flows from you, to your nearest neighbors that are drawing power. They see it at the sub-station as the power draw going down. First, what you produce flows inside your own house wires first. So if you're using the AC and generating PV at the same time, it is flowing directly, it is not going through your meter, and you reduced your bill at full price. If you're producing and using at different times, then you're getting credited at wholesale, which just comes off your bill.
It reduces the maintenance on the substation, it lowers the load on the local system. It is all win for the last mile provider. I mean, unless they're worried about lower usage. In that case, public utilities will love it, and private utility companies will hate it.
It only takes one local election to start a public utility.
Natural gas generators can spool up and down at the cost of efficiency. Nuclear power plants can also idle for a bit. In France in the night for e.g. they often turn down a reactor and run the generators on the hot water for some time more.
You know what? Constant spooling up and down worsens efficiency of any kind of engine or heat engine.
The prices are not inflated for all industries - some companies (at the moment app. 1700, until the end of 2014 another 1000 - all of them industries with high energy input) are exempt from some fees AND are able to procure energy directly at the electricity trading exchange. The strange situation at the moment is, that german companies with high energy intake (>40 GWh/a) pay less than the european average and that future prices for 2015 or 2016 are well below lets say dutch or french prices (36€/MW for D, 42 €/MW for F, 44€/MW for NL). German utilities do love wind power, but only as far as small and medium customers with no access to EEX or PHELIX are concerned...
Well, for example I live in Oregon, and my local public utility owns wind farms in Wyoming. People in Wyoming next to the wind farm don't see lower prices at all for having it there. But I sure do.
But ideally I want to buy electricity at 0.50 euros/MWh, store it and ignore high prices while I continue to use my appliances at arbitrary times, buy additional electricity when the price falls again, and then laugh at anyone who paid 35 euros/MWh
If you could do it then they could do it and they'd save the power themselves rather than sell it for next to nothing or even negative amounts. So the moment such a storage device existed, the huge fluctuations would go away.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And the nuclear plant is staffed by Chinese workers, while UK workers remain unemployed ...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Wouldn't tall buildings have the same effect. Especially those built close to the coast? This would have the effect of preventing cool moist air from moving inland during the day and preventing cold land air moving out to sea at night.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
we have oligarchs spending millions to kill alternative energy (to coal and oil). Meanwhile, the aftereffects of pollution is killing the plebs. See Freedom in WV for the latest example.
Please remember to think more than a day down the road... That is not very much money, to invest in the most important part of living (next to food) in the modern world. So now, just because it is cheaper, you want to burn more coal again? The future is made of renewable energy, but we have to pay now to save ourselves later. And luckily enough for those in parts of Europe, it's being built so quickly, people will actually get to experience extremely low energy prices soon, all the time. Hang in there...