World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm Opens Off Northwest England (reuters.com)

The world's largest offshore wind farm has opened off the northwest coast of England. "The wind farm has a capacity of 659 megawatts (MW), enough to power almost 600,000 homes, and overtakes the London Array off England's east cost which has a capacity of 630 MW," reports Reuters. From the report: The Walney Extension (as it is called) is made up of 87 turbines built by Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, and covers 145 square kilometers (55 square miles), which is equivalent to around 20,000 football pitches. The 40 eight-megawatt MHI Vestas turbines being used stand 195 meters (213 yards) tall and are the largest wind turbines in operation globally. Britain is the world's largest offshore wind market, hosting 36 percent of globally installed offshore wind capacity, data from the Global Wind Energy Council showed. Walney Extension was among the first renewable projects to secure a so-called contract for difference (CFD) subsidy from the British government in 2014. The contract guarantees it a minimum price for electricity of 150 pounds ($195) per megawatt hour (MWh) for 15 years. You can view some drone footage of the offshore windfarm via Orsted.

Comments

Firm tits, tight ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I like.

*BSD buys the farm

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD die? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 20 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD effectively lost all of its market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

The record is unambiguously clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wind power has a history of losing money in the UK. This is especially true for the more expensive off shore projects.

The good thing is being out over water means that when one of these has a failure and starts on fire that they won't threaten to start a wildfire. Instead the bits and pieces will fall into the water so that the lubrication oils and heavy metals will contaminate the fish and birds.

I hope your north sea natural gas drilling is going well, you'll need it to keep the lights on when the wind isn't blowing.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called "constraint payments".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/08/wind-farms-paid-100m-switch-power/

Incredibly, the wind farms receive on average 40 per cent more cash when they are switched off than when they are producing electricity, according to an analysis of official figures.

The turbines have to be shut down at certain times because Britain’s electricity network is unable to cope with the power they produce. The wind farm owners then receive compensation - called ‘constraint payments’ - for not producing electricity.

The REF pointed out that EDF Energy which owns Fallago Rig, a wind farm in Scotland, has lodged a plan to extend the wind farm even though it received one of the highest constraint payments last year.

Well, no shit people are going gangbusters on building more wind power! If they get paid by the government for not producing power, and a big subsidy on the power they do produce, then people will be building windmills until the government cuts off the subsidies.

This is a huge money pit and the UK should shut this off, or at least dial it back, until they can figure out how to better manage wind power than paying the windmill owners to not produce power.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that effort to dream up bullshit. You should consider getting out more. I recommend a trip to a coal mine, where you can wank yourself silly while rolling around in coal dust and calling out MAGA repeatedly. If you're lucky, you'll find someone to dress up as Trump and piss on you.

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange payment structure, sure. I guess this is a strong incentive to improve the grid, so the power can be used rather than wasted.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. For one thing, we need more power generation that doesn't emit CO2, even at the expense of having to pay for it.

Also, consider what happens if we stop these payments: we'll end up with fewer wind generators. This'll save us money at times where the wind is very high and we're generating too much wind power, but what about the rest of the time? We'll end up having to pay to generate that power in gas plants instead. If the extra money spent on gas is greater than the constraint payments being paid to wind farms, then you'd be stupid to stop the latter. It'll cost you more money.

The article you linked hints at this when it says 'The National Grid said the wind constraint payments were “the most economically efficient way of managing additional green capacity”.'.

I don't have data on how often these payments are being made, but I can tell you that the UK's wind farms spend a significant amount of time generating less than the highest amount they generate, which suggests they don't spend a lot of time in shutdown mode (and it's worth noting that "shutdown mode" doesn't mean they're shut down; it means they're generating lots of power, which is great because that's exactly what you want).

I'm not saying these payments are desirable in and of themselves; obviously the grid needs upgrades to avoid wasting wind power (while considering the cost of doing so, and the impact of reduced constraint payments on the rate of new wind generation capacity, because we still want more of it). I'm just pointing out that this may very well be the overall cheapest option available, even before considering that we want to subsidise wind generation in order to get more of it.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

People might take you more seriously if you stopped calling them windmills.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Bluefirebird]

Paying 92.5£/MWh for nuclear (Hinkley Point C) is peanuts in comparison with the 195£/MWh for the offshore wind farms.

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the hard part of the problem, because affordable storage is purely imaginary at this point. It is foolish to subsidize and encourage expansion of intermittent power when there is no solution in sight. Pumped hydro is the preferred option, but geographically limited.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. For one thing, we need more power generation that doesn't emit CO2, even at the expense of having to pay for it.

If cost is not a concern then why not use an energy source that is more reliable and emits less CO2? Such as nuclear power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-i-favor-nuclear-power.html

Also, consider what happens if we stop these payments: we'll end up with fewer wind generators. This'll save us money at times where the wind is very high and we're generating too much wind power, but what about the rest of the time? We'll end up having to pay to generate that power in gas plants instead. If the extra money spent on gas is greater than the constraint payments being paid to wind farms, then you'd be stupid to stop the latter. It'll cost you more money.

Or, they could use nuclear power. That's what they could use the rest of the time. Nuclear power has lower environmental impact that natural gas so that seems more logical to use nuclear power to cover when the wind doesn't blow.

The article you linked hints at this when it says 'The National Grid said the wind constraint payments were “the most economically efficient way of managing additional green capacity”.'.

I don't have data on how often these payments are being made, but I can tell you that the UK's wind farms spend a significant amount of time generating less than the highest amount they generate, which suggests they don't spend a lot of time in shutdown mode (and it's worth noting that "shutdown mode" doesn't mean they're shut down; it means they're generating lots of power, which is great because that's exactly what you want).

I'm not saying these payments are desirable in and of themselves; obviously the grid needs upgrades to avoid wasting wind power (while considering the cost of doing so, and the impact of reduced constraint payments on the rate of new wind generation capacity, because we still want more of it). I'm just pointing out that this may very well be the overall cheapest option available, even before considering that we want to subsidise wind generation in order to get more of it.

It seems counter intuitive to keep adding more wind generation capacity and pay them to sit idle. It would seem more productive to put that money towards the structures needed to manage the wind power they have now so they can store that excess generating capacity, or do some kind of load shifting. Paying for more and more wind power when it seems they have too much already is just making the problem bigger. If they keep building more wind farms then at some point, or so it seems to me, that this paying wind farms to sit idle will not be so economically viable. Something would have to become cheaper than what they are doing now.

I found a document on the UK nuclear power plans and I didn't read it all just yet as it is very long.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/united-kingdom.aspx

It appears that the UK is planning on building more nuclear power plants. There must have been a change of heart on nuclear power 10 or 20 years ago. Seems like an awfully long time to build some nuclear power plants while they are spending so much money to subsidize wind power they can't use.

I'm guessing "big wind" has a strong lobby in the government to get such a sweet deal on subsidies.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[bazorg]

This is a huge money pit and the UK should shut this off, or at least dial it back, until they can figure out how to better manage wind power than paying the windmill owners to not produce power.

Here's a suggestion: instead of having multiple private companies involved, this could all be money moving from one pocket of a public energy company to another pocket of the same company, without the tax payer being burdened by the inefficiency of this made-up "competitive market".

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

sure.
http://redgreenandblue.org/2018/08/08/energy-storage-work-australias-battery-system-saved-8-9-million-6-months/

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the problem with Hinkley Point is it can irradiate the Irish sea and with it parts of Ireland and Wales...thankfully windfarms don't do that

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Alwin Henseler]

Paying 92.5£/MWh for nuclear (Hinkley Point C) is peanuts in comparison with the 195£/MWh for the offshore wind farms.

Does that number include costs for post-operation dismantling of the facility, cleanup of the site, storage of the waste products over the centuries or more that may be needed, compensation / cleanup costs in case of accident(s) over the course of its operation, or release of radioactive waste products that may be within regulatory norms but still ends up in the environment?

And b) if it includes post-operational cleanup costs: is that number realistic? In the case of nuclear, history tends to show otherwise.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[nojayuk]

Does that number include costs for post-operation dismantling of the facility, (etc.)

Yes. Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life? God knows but by the time wind and weather have wrecked them the original builders will be long gone and unaccountable to anyone.

Offshore wind farm power availability is about 30% of dataplate so this new facility will produce, on average about 250MW, not the headline attention-grabbing absolute maximum of 659 MW. Some days it will produce a lot more, some days a lot less even if we need the electricity right then. The Hinkley Point C nuclear facility will produce 3.2GW for most of the time, not being dependent on weather conditions. Uptime for modern nuclear plants is about 80-85% or so and outages for refuelling and maintenance are usually pre-planned well in advance.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off, I live in Ireland and don't want any radiation in the sea here. I'd rather pay a bit extra than get cancer.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[nojayuk]

I live in Ireland and don't want any radiation in the sea here.

News that may shock you, I know but seawater is naturally radioactive, more than 10,000 Bequerels per cubic metre. Most of that activity is due to naturally-occurring potassium-40, the rest tends to be from various decay products from uranium-bearing rocks and other natural materials. A couple of Bq per cubic metre in seawater is from man-made sources, usually remnants from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Some more is waste isotopes dumped into the sewers by hospitals, ending up in outfalls near the coast in places like Boston (there was a panic by some people when I-131 was found in Boston harbour soon after the Fukushima reactors overheated and leaked radioactive material into the Pacific. It turned out to come from a hospital which didn't have to sequester radioactive waste the way a nuclear power plant legally has to).

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good to know. It is time that humanity gets togethee and destroys the greatest destroyer of women and minorities. Every year disadvantaged minoritiies are killed in swimming accidents. The ocean harbors things like sharks that eat minorities. Now we know the ocean is radioactive and giving minorities breast cancer.

Lets protect out minorities. Lets destroy the radioactive ocean and replace it with environtally safe windmills. Cover every single fucking inch of the planet with windmills,

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[sjbe]

Yes. Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life? God knows but by the time wind and weather have wrecked them the original builders will be long gone and unaccountable to anyone.

You use this as an argument against a wind farm but in the next paragraph ignore the same problem with nuclear power which you seem to be a fan of.

The Hinkley Point C nuclear facility will produce 3.2GW for most of the time, not being dependent on weather conditions.

And it cannot be throttled up or down to match need quickly. You seem to be under the misapprehension that variability in supply is always a bad thing. Sure it carries some challenges but if you have enough variable sources they end up with baseline consistency as a group. Plus it's easy to shut off a single wind turbine which isn't true for nuclear or coal fired power stations.

Uptime for modern nuclear plants is about 80-85% or so and outages for refuelling and maintenance are usually pre-planned well in advance.

As usual the nuclear fanboys come out to play. The reality is that nuclear plants have several problems that they cannot easily mitigate.
1) They make people nervous. Even though they rarely fail, when they do they have the capacity to do so catastrophically (and have so this is not hypothetical) and no reactor design we have has entirely mitigated this possibility. So politically they are unpopular even when they make technical sense.
2) They require ridiculous amounts of regulation and oversight to be safe which makes the economically challenging to operate profitable.
3) We have no good solution for the waste they generate
4) The liability requires government backed insurance guarantees and risk pools
5) The fuel for them carries geopolitical problems (including WMD weapons proliferation in some cases)
6) The approval and construction process for them takes a very long time

Nuclear needs to be a part of the solution but nuclear has its own problems so it's simply not going to be viable to replace fossil fuels much beyond what it already has.

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our energy bills have on average a £200/year tax added to them to pay for this crap.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[dunkelfalke]

https://qz.com/1348969/europes...

Not being dependent on weather conditions my arse.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[nojayuk]

And it cannot be throttled up or down to match need quickly.

I don't expect the two reactors at Hinkley C to be throttled at all, they'll run flat out 100% of their uptime since they'll only produce 15% of Britain's electricity demand at its lowest point (midsummer Sunday nighttime). There are a few other existing reactors providing a predictable 7GW or so but most of the on-demand generating capacity is met by fast-start combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT) which can be brought on-line quickly to meet demand. Most of that 7GW of existing nuclear capacity is going away in the next ten to twenty years as the older AGRs are taken out of service -- there will be a single 1100MW PWR built in the 1990s left operating after the AGRs are shut down until Hinkley Point C comes on-line.

Having too much capacity is a totally different and much less serious problem than having too little (blackouts, rationing etc.) and weather-dependent renewables can't guarantee sufficiency to the same level that nuclear can.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life?

Yes. Worn-out windmills can be sold as scrap. No strange or radioactive stuff, just concrete and steel. The generator contains copper and is valuable for recycling into other electricity-related products.

And if they just leave the worn-out windmills standing, it is not much of a problem. A row of broken towers is ugly, sure. But they won't kill you and won't pollute. Just a bunch of artifical rocks. Easily torn down if you worry about them falling on a boat or something.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[nojayuk]

A number of river-sited reactors have curtailed output recently because they have limits on how much they can raise the river water temperatures with their condenser loops. This is also true for coal-fired and even solar thermal plants which use river water for a cold-sink. It's possible to use land-based evaporative systems for the cold-sink condensers but that uses up water and costs more so it's not common except in desert conditions where solar thermal generating plants like Tonopah deplete the local aquifers for that purpose.

Britain has about 15GW or so of grid-connected wind generating capacity, including the new offshore wind farms being fellated in the press recently. Via an online monitor I've seen these grid wind turbines peak at 10GW at times (usually when storms are blowing through). I've also seen it produce only 50MW total for several hours at a time when a lull settles across most of the country. It averages about 3GW over a year but that's an average, it swings a lot and there's no certainty that it will produce lots of electricity when we need lots of electricity. Vast overcapacity of wind would help alleviate that risk. Several hundred GW of turbines would be a good start but that would cost a lot of money to build and maintain and replace after a couple of decades.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Progressives get to eat the nuclear waste. Then we rocket-shot them toward the sun ... all the time playing Kumbyahhh babe Kumbyyaaaaa.....

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Alioth]

However, wind generating capacity does tend to be the greatest when we need lots of electricity. We tend to need the most power during the wet and windy winter months...when the wind bit of the wet and windy means wind generation is at or nearly at peak production.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) They make people nervous. Even though they rarely fail, when they do they have the capacity to do so catastrophically (and have so this is not hypothetical) and no reactor design we have has entirely mitigated this possibility. So politically they are unpopular even when they make technical sense.

There are molten salt designs that are pretty safe. In particular, they have tested that they survive a total loss of cooling. Which is rare, but exactly what happened at Fukushima. Unfortunately, Fukushima wasn't using molten salt. (The molten salt boils in the hottest places. Bubbles are much thinner than liquid, so there is less material in the active zone and the nuclear reaction stops. Salt pushed out of the active region is displaces into regions where the geometry and neutron-absorbing materials prevent further nuclear reactions.

The sad thing is, nobody has build a large-scale molten salt reactor for energy production.

2) They require ridiculous amounts of regulation and oversight to be safe which makes the economically challenging to operate profitable.

Sure, energy is not free. But fossil is really expensive if you can't emit CO2 - so expensive n
obody except researchers do that. Anyway, if nuclear is so burdened, leave it to governments.

3) We have no good solution for the waste they generate

Yes we have.
Old reactor designs produce waste that may need a million year of storage. Modern designs can burn all that waste, creating more energy per gram uranium/thorium used as a bonus. The only waste you get then, is fission fragments. They may require 800 years of storage, and there are plenty of buildings that old around. We know how to build storage that lasts a few thousand years. Be it deep caves or pyramids.

4) The liability requires government backed insurance guarantees and risk pools

Sure, this is the cost of nuclear. Crank up the price of electricity as needed, see if people still pay.

5) The fuel for them carries geopolitical problems (including WMD weapons proliferation in some cases)

A problem that is solveable. Inspection regimes, and the fact that thorium is much harder to use for bomb purposes.

6) The approval and construction process for them takes a very long time

Nuclear needs to be a part of the solution but nuclear has its own problems so it's simply not going to be viable to replace fossil fuels much beyond what it already has.

Nuclear may be slow - but that is not much of an argument. We'll simply live with expensive energy for some time. Either nuclear gets built, or some greener alternatives gets developed into usefullness.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[AHuxley]

AC re "generate that power in gas plants instead"
At a lower price saving people real money each utility bill....

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[nojayuk]

"Wet and windy" tends to be in the spring ("March winds and April showers") and autumn here in the UK. We often get long lulls with little or no wind in the mid-winter when it's dark eighteen hours of the day. A quick check on the Gridwatch site's records for 30 days between mid-December 2017 and mid-January 2018 shows peak wind generation of about 9.7GW (at 2017-12-31 13:15:33) but there was a lull lasting about 30 hours when the wind contribution to the grid was less than 1GW (2018-01-11 through 2018-01-12). During that dip the lowest wind-generated output was about 280MW.

Hope and wishful thinking doesn't keep the lights on.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear is more expensive. It's that simple.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[drinkypoo]

Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life?

Since it won't be radioactive, their decommissioning estimates should actually be accurate, unlike every nuclear plant that was ever decommissioned.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Uecker]

I know nobody reads the story... But this is an old contract for a project going for a project opening now. Hinkley will open in 2025 or so...

"Walney Extension was among the first renewable projects to secure a so-called contract for difference (CFD) subsidy from the British government in 2014.
The contract guarantees it a minimum price for electricity of 150 pounds ($195) per megawatt hour (MWh) for 15 years.
Since this was awarded, the cost of offshore wind has fallen dramatically to a low of 57.50 pounds per MWh in the last auction held in 2017."

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[angel'o'sphere]

God knows but by the time wind and weather have wrecked them the original builders will be long gone and unaccountable to anyone.
And to where would they be gone?

Offshore wind farm power availability is about 30% of dataplate
Hint: don't build your wind plant at a place where you only get 30% nameplate.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[angel'o'sphere]

Hope and wishful thinking doesn't keep the lights on.
But being interconnected with the rest of Europe does, and being interconnected with the largest synchronized grid of the planet does.

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[q_e_t]

https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/customers/about-your-energy-bill/the-breakdown-of-an-energy-bill.html

The total of environmental and social obligation costs is 8%. The average UK electricity bill is about £600, so the total obligation is thus £48, plus VAT (5%) or £50.

The elements going into the social and environmental obligation payment are numerous, and outlined on the page. It's nowhere near £200, though.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[q_e_t]

From 2016 in the Telegraph (not really a supporter of this sort of thing):

"The cost of building offshore wind farms has fallen to a new low, with Sweden's Vattenfall winning contracts to build two projects in Danish waters for just over €60 (£51) per megawatt-hour (MWh)."

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[q_e_t]

And before anyone mentions capacity factors that is MWh, not MW. MW does not include capacity factor, cost per MWh does.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[blindseer]

Nuclear is more expensive. It's that simple.

Then we should subsidize it until it's cheaper. If that works for other low CO2 energy sources then it should apply to nuclear as well.

Nuclear power also works at night, in high winds, in no winds, when it's raining, cold, hot... okay maybe it has to reduce power when it gets really hot. That's why we need a mix. Pick energy that's cheap, low CO2, and safe. The top three on that is onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear, not necessarily in that order. Then comes things like (also not in any particular order) geothermal, biomass fuels, off shore wind, and concentrated thermal solar. (Cite on CO2 emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... )

Solar PV is just a bad idea all around. Anyone that thinks that PV is cheap is only looking at the subsidized cost, the real cost is very high except when laid out flat on a field. Putting PV on rooftops might mean not losing any area of value but it can multiply the cost by five times. (cite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) Solar power isn't all that safe either, considering how many industrial accidents there are per real energy produced. Solar PV is also very resource intensive. (cite: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... )

If people believe that solar and wind can get cheaper if we will it so and throw enough money at the problem then we can do the same to make nuclear cheaper.

If nuclear power costs too much then lower the price. It's that simple.

Re: Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

The195 was for projects in 2014, price is now 57, approaching half nuclear

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[blackest_k]

The main problem with wind is it can change output quite rapidly and traditional gas and coal stations can take a couple of hours to ramp up and down. The grid is a balancing act you need to produce enough to satisfy demand. Producing too much increases the frequency and too little decreases the frequency it's too little that can produce problems a sudden failure of a station can cause a cascade failure if it isn't reacted to fast enough and this can be less than a second. There are different ways to manage this. An easy one is freezer plants, you can drop power to these for up to a couple of hours without too much of a problem. Reducing demand is similar to increasing production. Smaller generators can ramp up quickly they tend to be pricey unlike a base load generator. There are also inter-connectors between countries there is one between wales and the republic of ireland and one one between northern ireland and scotland. Electricity can be flowing either way on these and power is traded on these continually.
Capacity payments seem like a strange thing but without them capacity would not be built, unfortunately there was a bit of a problem with the crash in 2008 capacity was being built and coming online but demand for electricity fell. This actually caused electricity prices to rise because less was being sold. Capacity payments are going down.

In ireland up to 65% of Wind Energy can be powering the grid thanks to small energy producers who can react quickly to balance the grid. Typically the grid supplies between 3000 to 5000 MW but it can go higher or lower. Without Peaking plants there just wouldn't be the supply available when its needed. Capacity payments ensure this peak supply is there when needed. Europe actually operates a single market for electricity. Electricity can be sent to other national grids as required. Brexit may bring some changes to how the interconnectors are operated currently there is a new one being built between Ireland and france which can handle around 4x the power that the 2 existing ones between ireland and the uk can handle.

I guess the hardest thing for most people to understand is why pay for electricity not to be produced? It's the variation in demand currently maybe 3000 MW is being used in ireland without over capacity you wouldn't have the 5000MW needed in the day. Wind Power mainly replaces peaking plant which is expensive to run.

If your interested

http://smartgriddashboard.eirg... gives a pretty good breakdown of the power generation in Ireland. For the Grid Northern Ireland and the Republic act as one.

http://ireland2050.ie/ pretty much gives a great background in Energy generation.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me be clear:

The price in the UK never goes negative. This is theoretically possible but not common.

Constraint payments are made because there is insufficient transmission capacity for power- and coal and gas get MORE constraint payments than wind. That is because all generators put in bids of how much they need to be paid to get constrained. Gas and coal are cheaper to constrain because when they get constrained they save fuel. The windpower is free so why not take it.

The reason wind gets constrained is lots of windpower is in scotland whihc has bad transmission links.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Uecker]

Nuclear is more expensive. It's that simple.

Then we should subsidize it until it's cheaper.

Nuclear has gotten subsidies for more than 60 years.It always ever got more expensive. There is a word for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

If that works for other low CO2 energy sources then it should apply to nuclear as well.

No. Why?

Nuclear power also works at night, in high winds, in no winds, when it's raining, cold, hot... okay maybe it has to reduce power when it gets really hot.

Great. But the problem is that you basically always have to have it running to not make the economics worse.... This means it is not too useful to have nuclear in a modern grid.

 

That's why we need a mix.

Yes, but a mix without nuclear as nuclear is simply too expensive.

Pick energy that's cheap, low CO2, and safe. The top three on that is onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear, not necessarily in that order.

No nuclear is not cheap. You said yourself we should just subsidize it until its cheap. So you are even contradicting yourself. If it were actually cheap, people would roll out nuclear and there would be no nuclear fanboys whining on slashdot on how we should have nuclear.

Solar PV is just a bad idea all around.

No, it is a great idea to give it a chance as it is getting cheaper and cheaper. In contrast to nuclear which always got more expensive in the past.

If nuclear power costs too much then lower the price. It's that simple.

If it were simple. Nuclear would be cheap by now. It is a very old technology which still isn't cheap. I think this makes it very obvious that it is not simply.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Uecker]

You are comparing a price from 2014 for a plant which opened now to a plant opening (maybe) in 2025 or so. Guaranteed prices for new contracts for offshort wind are 60 £/MWh as of last year.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[dyslexicbunny]

My understanding (which is limited to things I've read) of the nuclear cost issues stemmed from a few factors: NIMBYism lawsuits delaying work/political interference, limited manufacturing of specific reactor designs so benefits of scale could never take effect (most operating reactors are somewhat different designs), and retroactive regulatory compliance for plants under construction (not that I'm apposed to regulatory compliance but it did require a lot of reconstruction).

Surely a standardized reactor design that can be built quickly is simple in comparison to what was historically done. Would all that still be cheaper than alternatives? That I really don't know.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[vandamme]

Then there's the ten years or more before you get a single watt out of it. Slapping up wind farms or solar is near instantaneous by comparison.

Re:Will this one lose money too?

[Uecker]

While lawsuits and bureaucracy certainly contributed to that, it is by no means the only factor. I would say it also has a lot to do with the size and the complexity of the projects. It is like huge software projects almost always have cost overruns. Surely, standardized software design methodology would prevent this too, right? In practice it is never easy and the same is true for nuclear. On paper, it all looks good and simple, but it practice it quickly gets really complicated.

Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[sidetrack]

See also https://www.electricitymap.org... for realtime CO2 intensity of electricity production across a big chunk of the world... e.g. right now (morning peak), the UK's running on 28% gas, 24% nuclear, 19% wind, 8% coal, 4% solar.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Alain Williams]

Here is a real time G.B. National Grid Status, shows that wind is 15% (as I type).

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[JaredOfEuropa]

Nice map, that. Sad to see my country doing the worst of pretty much all western European countries, though it's been known for a while that we're nowhere near our goals for renewable energy. The good news is that in a few years we'll complete 2 new wind parks in the North Sea, each with about 1400MW capacity. But by the time they come online they won't be the largest anymore either. Offshore wind is taking off in a big way everywhere.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that map is amazing.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

For a good breakdown of the UK market you can check out gridwatch too. This includes Nuclear, Coal, Biofuel, Gas, Wind, Solar, DC Interconnectors,

http://gridwatch.co.uk/

The UK is lucky in that it has a lot of offshore wind and gas potential as well as the political will to construct new nuclear power stations. Also it has an extensive rail and shipping network so it should naturally be one of the first countries to achieve a low carbon footprint.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[AmiMoJo]

This should give wind a major boost in the UK. Hopefully the first of many.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[leathered]

I often visit Gridwatch and it really demonstrates the volatility of wind energy. I've seen it as high as 35% of total generation and a big fat 0% during a cold and still night; which ironically is when you need that energy the most.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[jabuzz]

The UK is really lucky that it is the best spot in the entire world for tidal power, which unlike wind and solar is predictable and guaranteed. At least when the tide stop being predictable and guaranteed we have bigger problems than having no electricity.

The UK could basically get most of it's energy from tidal if there was just the will to build it. Instead we get hung up about diminished salt flats for birds. Oh and the absolutely hilarious bit is that the Solway Firth is one of the better spots for tidal generation. Top spots are Bristol Channel with around 8GW, Pentland Firth with possibly as much as 20GW, the Mersey with around 1.5GW. Further being an island much of this generation can be paired up around the coast line to give fairly continuous power. Add in some additional pumped storage (there is a lot of capacity potential for that in the UK) and we are golden.

Instead we pump ~30GBP billion into a nuclear power station that would generate about one quarter the output of a tidal scheme in the Bristol Channel which would be cheaper to boot.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Gonoff]

e.g. right now (morning peak), the UK's running on 28% gas, 24% nuclear, 19% wind, 8% coal, 4% solar.

The part of the UK I come from produces 125% of its electrical needs from wind. Years ago, I came across people who told me that I should be angry at the wind turbines because they are ugly, cause interference and kill lots of birds.

They aren't, they don't and they don't so nobody got angry but it is nice to know that even a small, underfunded, area like Orkney can be a net exporter. If Elon Musk wants to come up, he can install some of his batteries - as long as he doesn't call anybody nasty things...

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Bearhouse]

Thanks; very interesting - shows that the only two "green" countries in Europe are:

1. Norway (the place was designed by God for hydro, it would appear), and
2. France, which is pretty-much all nuke.

So, if you're not Norway....

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

Love that map. Interesting that the greenest areas (France, Ontario, Sweden, etc) are Nuclear or hydro.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[AmiMoJo]

Friends of the Earth said the tidal was the least bad option and backed it in the UK, so it's not environmental objections that are the issue. It's money and being risk averse.

Why take a risk on tidal when nuclear is backed by massive, infinite government subsidies? Especially when wind is getting so cheap so fast too.

Also, last I heard it was up to £54 billion.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[AmiMoJo]

Offshore wind is a lot more stable, one of the main advantages of it in fact.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[lorinc]

Rejoice! You're going to pay more after leaving the EU and the introduction of a tariff on the imported french electricity.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[drinkypoo]

I've seen it as high as 35% of total generation and a big fat 0% during a cold and still night; which ironically is when you need that energy the most.

Don't worry, global warming has made it so that England needs the energy the most during the day, so they can run AC.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[whoever57]

during a cold and still night; which ironically is when you need that energy the most.

No, it's not. There is a reason that there are electricity tariffs such as "Economy 7", which provides cheaper electricity at night.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

France exports its CO2 production to the uranium mines.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Solandri]

Tidal power is too low density. Wind is already very low density (replacing the Fukushima nuclear plant with wind turbines would require several hundred km^2). But a 1.5 MW wind turbine with 22% capacity factor (average for land, it's actually higher in the UK due to more consistent winds) produces (1.5 MW)*(0.22)*(24 hours) = 7.92 MWh per day.

7.92 MWh = 28512 MJ. If you figure the average tide is 1 meter and happens 2x a day, then to produce the same amount of energy from tidal power requires an area of

Potential Energy = mgh
28512 MJ/day = (2 tides/day) * (1000 kg/m^3) * (x m^2 * 1 m) * (9.8 m/s^2) * (1 m)
x = (28512 MJ) / (2 * 9.8 m/s^2 * 1000 kg/m^3 *1 m) = 1 454 694 m^3, or nearly 1.5 km^2.

So you need to enclose about 1.5 km^2 of ocean to produce as much energy on average as a single 1.5 MW wind turbine. Some places experience higher tides, but that's highly dependent on geography. Islands in particular tend to experience ocean-like tides (1 meter or less) since having large tides depends on a resonance between the tidal flow and the movement of water in/out of an inlet. The inlet also helps in that 3 sides are already blocked off by land, so nature has already done most of the work for you in enclosing the huge amount of water area needed to generate reasonable amounts of energy from tidal power.

Same goes for using underwater turbines to tap into tidal power. At 2x per day, the current the tides generate is too slow (a fraction of a m/s). As the energy of motion goes as 0.5*m*v^2, despite water being 800x denser than air, it only takes a slight wind velocity for turbine in air to produce more energy than a turbine underwater.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[blindseer]

France exports its CO2 production to the uranium mines.

Just like how the UK exports its CO2 production from wind to the mines for the copper, steel, aluminum, and rare earth metals?

Looks like off shore wind and nuclear are at a tie on greenhouse gas emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The UK already has had problems with too much wind power and has been paying wind farms to sit idle.
https://www.express.co.uk/news...

That's assuming the wind farms weren't producing power anyway, or forced to shutdown because of high winds.
https://stopthesethings.com/20...

HIGH WINDS!?!?!?!? They had to turn off the devices to collect power from the wind because the wind was too powerful.

Do you really believe that the people that do these calculations don't consider the CO2 from the uranium mining? Nuclear and wind produce 1/2 the greenhouse gases of concentrated solar power and 1/4 of that from solar PV. Solar is just a bad idea. Wind is only a good idea if there is some storage to go with it. For that I like hydro, it's not as good as wind and nuclear on GHG emissions but both wind and nuclear need storage and so it would be wise to use the means of storage with the best record on cost and GHG emitted.

Re: Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily your calculation is total gibberish because it is the flow through the swept area of the blades which matters. You obviously know nothing about the subject, why are you commenting?

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[stooo]

>> replacing the Fukushima nuclear plant with wind turbines would require several hundred km^2
That's good, because the Fukushima nuclear plant grown larger and now occupies 1000km^2 of land, so with smart wind and solar implantation, Japan could probably increase the nameplate capacity of Fukushima from -0.2 GW today to 40 GW

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[stooo]

>> "green" countries ... 2. France, which is pretty-much all nuke.
That's not true.
This map is real time "as of now", and in average over a year it's muuuuuuch much worse, and very different.

Basically France exports a lot of nuke electricity, esp. to Germany in the summer, but imports much more coal based electricity in the winter from Germany. This is due to the bad use of electric heating in France.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Uecker]

Not really, Some electricity exported from France may flow through Germany. But Germany is actually a net exporter of electricity all year round. Yes, France has to import in the winter and also sometimes in summer if it gets so hot hat the nuclear plants have to be down regulated to avoid over heating of rivers. Also sometimes a lot of plants are down for some reason.

Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[Anonymous Coward]

UK current energy requirements are approx 1600 TWh per year. With electrification of transport and heating, this could be reduced to approx 1200 TWh per year.

The high grade tidal resource is approximately 17 TWh per year for Bristol and approx 1.5 TWh for Mersey. Pentland Firth has scope for perhaps 30 TWh per year, but is a much lower grade resource due to the lower tidal range.

There has been a recent independent analysis of UK energy policy which regards tidal as irrelevant, because of high costs, high environmental impact and lack of resource which would prevent large scale deployment and learning.

In contrast, roof top solar PV has scope for 100 TWh per year, and high grade wind resources could supply 1000 TWh.

For reference, the new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point is expected to have an annual output of approx 25 TWh per year.

Open Source Realtime grid CO2 intensity map

[sidetrack]

Oh yeah, should have said - it's GPLv3 code is here - https://github.com/tmrowco/ele...

Bird Killers

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in 'Murica we use superior clean coal technology that does not kill birds. #Tromp2020 #MAGA

More 'climate change' propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Sickening, isn't it, how this site constantly pushes this blatant FRAUD on us all... Oooh, look at me, I'm so concerned about 'climate'...

Try reading an opposing view for a change:
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com

Re:More 'climate change' propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you LynnwoodTroller?

? Football pitches

[Anonymous Coward]

How much is that in swimming pools or Rhode Islands?

Re:? Football pitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, in Tesla PowerWalls? That's a lot of wind they are going to have to manage, and it's going to take a huge battery pack like they built in Australia.

Oh, and who pitches a football? Don't people like... kick them? With their foot?

World's largest < 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

The Walney Extension (as it is called) is made up of 87 turbines built by Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, and covers 145 square kilometers (55 square miles), which is equivalent to around 20,000 football pitches. The 40 eight-megawatt MHI Vestas turbines being used stand 195 meters (213 yards) tall and are the largest wind turbines in operation globally.

Is this supposed to be impressive, that such a massive investment of resources still can't replace the energy of even a single gas turbine on one small site? Nor can it produce energy on demand, so this entire farm is incapable of reliably powering even a single home. Claims about "cost" are meaningless while externalizing the storage or backup generation required to integrate this intermittent energy into the grid.

Depending on the energy mix, this may actually be even worse than using gas plants exclusively, from both carbon and resource perspectives. Combined cycle gas plants are twice as efficient as the (cheap) peaking gas plants often coupled with and required by intermittent renewables, offsetting any potential gain. Since the northeast US appears intent on replacing clean nuclear generation with inefficient gas combustion, it is difficult to consider this as progress.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

Too early; reading fail. Scratch the US comment. Everything else still applies.

16th century wind and water wheels

[Anonymous Coward]

I did some back of the envelope calculations about old wind and water mills. The interesting thing is that they were very low power devices, in the order of 1 to 2 horse power only. One cannot practically power a modern home with an old water wheel or wind mill. Nevertheless, I will install a wind gennerator and solar panels at my next home. It just feels like such a waste to do nothing with the power blowing by every day.

Re:16th century wind and water wheels

[filesiteguy]

Been running solar (3 KWh) for ten years. It is wonderful. I'm adding an additional 6 KWh next month. Of course, I'm in California, so I get sun 350 days per year.

Price wtf?

[MrL0G1C]

So why are we paying so much? Denmark are paying half the amount for offshore electricity per MWh. This govt is useless with money.

Re:Price wtf?

[Cederic]

It's a subsidy. Just couched in a form that forces inflation and fucks up old people trying to stay warm in winter.

Re:Price wtf?

[leathered]

Indeed. People have been losing their shit over the £93/MWH strike price for Hinkley Point C so why aren't people outraged about this?

Re:Price wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most recent awards have been at much lower prices, less than 6p/kWh in at least one case. This one's from 2014.

Re:Price wtf?

[CrimsonAvenger]

So why are we paying so much?

Hmm, about 60% of the income for this windfarm is government price supports for the next 15 years...

Not sure why it needs price supports, if, as is frequently stated here, it's one of the most economical forms of energy, and far cheaper then coal or nuclear....

Re:Price wtf?

[thegarbz]

Offshore wind is incredibly expensive. You're thinking of onshore wind which comes in at 1/3rd of the cost.
That said offshore wind has some benefits that onshore doesn't: Predictability, strength, and it doesn't take up land. However offshore wind pretty much loses on a cost basis quite spectacularly.

Re:Price wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

ONtario canada got screwed hard by wind farms in the same way. Dont be like ontario

Re:Price wtf?

[angel'o'sphere]

On shore wind has the same predictability as off shore wind.
It only is usually not as strong and not as steady.

Re:Price wtf?

[thegarbz]

On shore wind has the same predictability as off shore wind.
It only is usually not as strong and not as steady.

Yes true. Thanks I used the wrong words. Steady is a much better way to describe it.

Re:Price wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast. There are bid for offshore farms being awarded without subsidies to go online 2022-23 IIRC. Not in the UK yet.

Re:Price wtf?

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,
there are specialized companies that craft and sell localized wind prognosis data.
That is used to 'predict' the output of windfarms up to 4 hours ahead (actually up to 40h but only 4h are relevant for scheduling your other power plants). The data is used to determine how to dispatch your dispatchable plants (or plan for it).
Similar companies make prognosises for solar power.

The dispatcher of a fleet of plants usually knows quite accurately how his wind and solar plants will perform in the foreseeable future and plans his dispatchable plants a few hours ahead.

Re:Price wtf?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does £57.50 /MWh sound? Thats the latest strike price.

The price has fallen hard. Super hard.

The risk now is that developers won't actually be able to build out capacity at that price.

Re:Price wtf?

[q_e_t]

The UK is doing away with subsidies. I didn't think new (not already planned) ones were going to be subsidised from this point onwards. I might be wrong.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Barsteward]

it'll all make sense to you when battery storage is in place

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[pjt33]

Is this supposed to be impressive, that such a massive investment of resources still can't replace the energy of even a single gas turbine on one small site?

Could you quantify that? I'm not sure how much a single gas turbine on one small site should produce, but a quick web search shows that GE's gas turbines produce 34 MW to 557 MW, so even the top end is less than the 659MW output given in the summary above.

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More like 297MW+

[Anonymous Coward]

There may be 659MW of installed capacity, but they expect a capacity factor of >45%. (https://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/walney-extension-united-kingdom-uk63.html)
So it adds about 297MW+ to the grid.

To put that in perspective, the UK has 14GW of active installed coal fired power stations.
It doesn't replace the 520MW from the Kilroot power station that is due to close this month.

Re:More like 297MW+

[Computershack]

To put that in perspective, the UK has 14GW of active installed coal fired power stations.

Not for long. All coal fired powerstations have to be closed in the next half decade and many of them have already begun to shut down if they haven't already. Near me there are three with a few miles of each other. Ferrybridge C has closed with its coal stockpile nowhere to be seen and a waste/biomass plant has been built on the same site, Eggborough is in the middle of closing down and hasn't generated power for over a year and Drax, which was one of Europe's largest coal fired stations is running at least 50% on gas/biomass/waste.

Re:More like 297MW+

[q_e_t]

Ferrybridge has been converting to gas for a while, unit by unit.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

The Walney Extension (as it is called) is made up of 87 turbines built by Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, and covers 145 square kilometers (55 square miles), which is equivalent to around 20,000 football pitches. The 40 eight-megawatt MHI Vestas turbines being used stand 195 meters (213 yards) tall and are the largest wind turbines in operation globally.

Is this supposed to be impressive, that such a massive investment of resources still can't replace the energy of even a single gas turbine on one small site? Nor can it produce energy on demand, so this entire farm is incapable of reliably powering even a single home. Claims about "cost" are meaningless while externalizing the storage or backup generation required to integrate this intermittent energy into the grid.

Depending on the energy mix, this may actually be even worse than using gas plants exclusively, from both carbon and resource perspectives. Combined cycle gas plants are twice as efficient as the (cheap) peaking gas plants often coupled with and required by intermittent renewables, offsetting any potential gain. Since the northeast US appears intent on replacing clean nuclear generation with inefficient gas combustion, it is difficult to consider this as progress.

So they build these highly efficient natural gas fired power plants. Then they build a big wind farm. And to keep the CO2 emissions low they pay the people with the wind farm to not produce power. Do they like paying for their electricity three times over?

Build some nuclear power plants already! Stop subsidizing more wind power! Maybe start up on the wind subsidies again after there's some batteries or something in place to avoid having to shutdown the wind power generation.

One large gas turbine or one small coal generator

[Anonymous Coward]

So a 145 sq km deployment of almost 100 turbines is equivalent to a single small utility scale power station.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor can it produce energy on demand, so this entire farm is incapable of reliably powering even a single home.

The UK has had 10+ GWh of battery power on it's grid, since the 50's/60's. Energy on demand from wind isn't a massive concern.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

it'll all make sense to you when battery storage is in place

How long will that take? People keep talking about grid scale batteries in the future tense. Is this another case of "only ten years away, and always will be"?

Help me out here on how it is helpful to build wind power now, then "throw away" the capacity by shutting them down. Then also paying them to shut the wind farms down. Wouldn't it make more sense to build the batteries first? So that the batteries can help manage the existing wind, solar, and even coal and natural gas? Seems to me that having batteries on a coal plant would be a nice stop gap measure to keep from having to dial it up and down to match the load. Coal plants like to run hot and steady. Have enough batteries with the existing coal and wind then they could probably manage to shut down some coal plants permanently. Then manage growth in demand with more wind and more batteries.

At a minimum just stop spending money on windmills. If the batteries are going to get cheaper in ten years then just put the money in a banking account and let it earn interest. There's a good chance that wind power gets cheaper in that time too.

I'm not seeing the sense in this, you're going to have to explain this. I doubt waiting for the batteries to make sense in the future will be all that helpful in clarifying this. That's assuming the batteries ever come to be.

Re: World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

Now consider the 45% capacity factor for the wind.

Re:One large gas turbine or one small coal generat

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's worse than that. It's quite possible that this wind farm will end up producing as much CO2 as if they just burned natural gas in a combined cycle plant.

Wind power is only "green" if there is access to hydro for storage. Maybe batteries could do just as well as hydro, or perhaps even better, but it seems we simply can't build them fast enough. Hydro storage is dependent on favorable land features and climate, so they can't be put just anywhere we want.

20,000 football pitches?

[110010001000]

What is it with Europeans always measure things by soccer field size? Can we have a normal measurement, like Library of Congresses?

Re:20,000 football pitches?

[Gonoff]

What is it with Europeans always measure things by soccer field size? Can we have a normal measurement, like Library of Congresses?

As it is outside the USA, they will call it football. Actually, I understand the US game of Hand Egg hast a field much the same size as what most humans call a football pitch

Re:20,000 football pitches?

[CanadianMacFan]

You're confusing the units. Football pitches measure area while Library of Congresses measure amount of data.

They don't always use football pitches. For very large areas it's number of Wales.

For some more interesting conversions see The Reg online standards convertor

Re:20,000 football pitches?

[drinkypoo]

As it is outside the USA, they will call it football. Actually, I understand the US game of Hand Egg hast a field much the same size as what most humans call a football pitch

So just to be clear, you're complaining about a game where you kick the ball at the end of every play being called "football" when you call the field for a game where you're not allowed to throw anything a "pitch"? You can't even spell Aluminum right.

Re:20,000 football pitches?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTH is 'aluminum'. But you are right, this should be compared to the size of Belgium, not football or cricket pitches. I presume after Brexit only comparisons to the size of Wales will be allowed, or for smaller areas, Rutland.

Whatever happened to those wind storage walls?

[Applehu Akbar]

I can remember a flurry of interest in pairing large offshore windfarms in shallow European waters with large, wall-off "islands" of sea adjacent to the farm. Whenever there was excess wind for the grid offtake, seawater would be pumped into this enclosure, available for release as hydro when the wind slackened. Was this idea ever tried?

Re:Whatever happened to those wind storage walls?

[JaredOfEuropa]

It's an old idea: in the 80s, the infamous "Plan Lievense" called for damming off the Markermeer in the Netherlands to create a reservoir for generating hydro power. The Plan is still a favourite example problem to pester students of civil engineering with so quite a few variations have been calculated. The original plan called for a 23m height differential with water being pumped into the reservoir, but was deemed to expensive and risky (a dam breach would cause massive flooding). There's talk of a similar facility to be placed in the North Sea near wind farms, perhaps with the water being pumped out rather than in. A feasibility study has been conducted and there's a group trying to get funding for a small scale pilot.

Cherry picking facts

[sjbe]

So a 145 sq km deployment of almost 100 turbines is equivalent to a single small utility scale power station.

With near as makes no difference zero carbon emissions or other pollutants, free and renewable fuel, uses no arable or otherwise useful land, little/no waste products, eliminates geopolitical influence of fossil fuel producing countries, cheaper if you eliminate subsidies from fossil fuel stations, and the list goes on. Just because we've built bigger fossil fuel plants doesn't mean this wind farm is a bad idea. Furthermore the dispersed deployment has no relevance at all since 3/4 of the earth's surface is water. Exactly what are we losing by using a tiny fraction of that ocean to generate power?

While I won't deny that fossil fuel fired plants maintain some advantages in some circumstances, let's not pretend that a wind farm has no advantages over fossil fuels.

Re:Cherry picking facts

[AHuxley]

Fossil fuels make energy when its needed for a low price. Not just when the wind is blowing within set limits.

Re:Cherry picking facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a low price after the effects of climate change are factored in?

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

I like your plan. When the coal plant shuts down for good, keep the site alive but stuffed with batteries

At a minimum just stop spending money on windmills. If the batteries are going to get cheaper in ten years then just put the money in a banking account and let it earn interest. There's a good chance that wind power gets cheaper in that time too.

But you have to build windmills to maintain the industry. Yea the ideology of deregulated free-market everything really is a bold faced lie. It doesn't apply to everything. So, you'll waste a billion on these windmills. Don't do this too much, but if you don't you'll risk loss of expertise and loss of the industrial supply chain. It's much like how a useless war plane or useless rocket will be designed and even built and used. If you don't, because holding for 20/30 years is better on almost all counts, what will you do 20 years from now? You'll be fucked. Sadly, we could do with less corruption and pork.

Wind is definitely green

[sjbe]

It's quite possible that this wind farm will end up producing as much CO2 as if they just burned natural gas in a combined cycle plant.

Some rando person's blog is hardly an authoritative source but I'm sure it feeds your confirmation bias. Plus did you even read your citation? It doesn't support your argument at all. Obviously you are a fan of nuclear and nuclear is fine but it isn't going to replace fossil fuel stations because it has its own severe problems - some political, some economic, and some technical. Nuclear carries risks that too many people are uncomfortable with. Nuclear will (and should) be a part of the solution but the real heavy lifting to reduce our need for fossil fuels is almost certainly going to come from solar and wind plus some battery tech.

Wind power is only "green" if there is access to hydro for storage.

That's is quite simply false. Particularly when you compare it to fossil fuel fired power stations it typically replaces. And hydro isn't particular eco-friendly in a lot of cases.

Maybe batteries could do just as well as hydro, or perhaps even better, but it seems we simply can't build them fast enough.

Sure we can but we've really just gotten started on building the production capacity. It's going to take a minute to get there and it's growing very fast. Not as if we are building nuclear plants left and right either so I'm not sure what you think the viable alternative might be.

Re:Wind is definitely green

[Anonymous Coward]

That "rando" is Dr. Ripu Malhotra. I put his name in Google and found his author bio on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Ripudaman-Malhotra/e/B002YEZ3Z2

His "Cubic Mile of Oil" blog is his means to updates to the book he co-authored of the same name.
https://www.amazon.com/Cubic-Mile-Oil-Realities-Averting/dp/0195325540/

I believe this is an authoritative source.

Re:Wind is definitely green

[blindseer]

I'm quoting the sibling post because it's got some good information that's being ignored out of a lack of moderation points for ACs.

That "rando" is Dr. Ripu Malhotra. I put his name in Google and found his author bio on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Ripudam...

His "Cubic Mile of Oil" blog is his means to updates to the book he co-authored of the same name.
https://www.amazon.com/Cubic-M...

I believe this is an authoritative source.

Here's another "rando" that also happens to have a doctorate degree in how the environment works. Dr. Patrick Moore. He was a founding member of Greenpeace but left after they lost their sight on the science behind their motives.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/food...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Greenpeace hates chlorine, because chlorine was used as a weapon in World War One. Well, it's chlorine that keeps municipal water systems safe for drinking. Chlorine is the basis of many medicines. Just like we use nuclear technology to fight cancer, diagnose diseases, explore the universe, and provide safe and plentiful energy. But, because we also used nuclear technology to make weapons, we have groups like Greenpeace opposing nuclear power. Dr. Moore likes nuclear power and he's convinced me to like nuclear power.

I'll take the words of two people with doctorates on the merits of nuclear power over a bunch of "randos" on the internet. Maybe if people stopped to look at the science instead of the hysteria from Greempeace then we'd have a much better world to live in.

But what do I know, I'm just some "rando" typing on a computer in his basement. Don't listen to me, listen to Dr. Malhotra and Dr. Moore.

Forget installed capacity - means nothing

[labradort]

Installed capacity has meaning for hydro power, coal and nuclear. For solar and wind, it is like the relationship between the maximum speed on your car's speedometer vs what the roads and traffic allow.

Here is what all of the wind power in UK is generating in this live grid display:

https://www.gridwatch.templar....

If you look at the tiny graphs under the dials it displays wind power as a blue line in the second column. It peaked at about 5 GW wind production on Sunday Sept 2, and then was nearly zero Monday morning. The concept that the wind is always blowing somewhere is not true for a place as small as the U.K.

Re:Forget installed capacity - means nothing

[q_e_t]

The concept that the wind is always blowing somewhere is not true for a place as small as the U.K.

It always blows when I am cycling, and always against me. It's made doubly hard as my commute to and from work is uphill both ways.

Bullshit. Pumped-storage is ideal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Any shitty dump can be a near-perfect energy storage. All you need, is a height difference, a river, and not too warm weather. Pump the water up for storage. Let it flow down to get it back. It is highly efficient too. And better than wasting the energy in any case.

Molten salt, which is already efficient, still does not hold a candle to it.

And in all cases, there are zero excuses, for being so incredibly retarded, that you can not even get resources to go in perfect cycles, and use *up* a *finite* resource! Like ... can you not think ahead more than your next stack of stolen cash/t
resources, even if it factually is *guatanteed* to kill us all, including you, if you continue??

If you really have this death wish, do not fuckin DARE to take MY planet with it. Yeah, before that happens, somebody will help you with that. (=resource wars)

660 MW for 600k homes?

[etash]

How exactly does a 660MW plant power 600k homes ? Does each home only use 1.1KW ? seriously ?

Size references

[NEDHead]

I understand (not really, it is sort of stupid actually, who really can imagine 20,000 football fields stuck together) but this is about England for Gods' sake, can't you speak in terms of soccer fields!!!! ?

Re:Size references

[trash eighty]

You are right it is England so its football pitches

Re:Size references

[NEDHead]

Humor detector broken?

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only use? What kind of electric bill do you get? (1.1kW*365days*24houres) is a 9636Kwh. I make do with a quarter of that at most.

Great site - what's is measuring?

[Okian Warrior]

Hovering over countries (and US states) at random, I see that the UK is (at 9:45AM Eastern, US):

63% low carbon
40% renewable

Good for them! Uh... now I'm wondering what those numbers actually mean.

Since the percentages add to 103%, I assume they are measuring different things. Then, 63% of *what* is low carbon, and 40% of *what* is renewable?

Poring through the FAQ for explanation is not viewer friendly, they're not doing the public a favor. And for most cases, when the percentages add to *less than* 100% who would realize that they are measuring different things?

Or am I missing something?

Re:Great site - what's is measuring?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about this site in particular (it's new to me), but on other sites I've seen the percentages be of energy demand rather than of energy produced, which means the percentages can go over 100% when the grid is producing more energy than necessary. There's usually a corresponding demand chart somewhere which shows the surplus/deficit in total. (Deficit might mean, for example, that the gap is being made up by importing energy from a neighboring territory.)

Re:Great site - what's is measuring?

[sidetrack]

Renewable is a subset of low carbon. Low carbon will also include e.g. Nuclear (which is non-renewable because the fuel can only be used once).

lowcarbon - renewable = nuclear

low-carbon could also include e.g. gas with carbon sequestration, but this doesn't really exist on the grid (yet), apart from maybe one or two small demo plants.

Re:Great site - what's is measuring?

[sidetrack]

Oh yeah, and the numbers themselves are the % of the instantaneous demand at the time they are shown. Full breakdown by source is shown in the sidebar when you click on a map area...

Re:Great site - what's is measuring?

[angel'o'sphere]

You are missing imports and exports.

Cold pussy and hot beer.

[Anonymous Coward]

#MAGA

Nice, but not enough

[p51d007]

Nice to have as a supplement, to coal, water, nuclear, but, wind/solar is just an ADDED resource, not a REPLACEMENT resource. You have to have some place to STORE the energy created by wind/solar, which is a finite amount of energy. If there is a PEAK demand, and you don't have the SUPPLY capacity, then you have to cut back. With coal/nuclear, you can spin up the generators, to GENERATE more energy on demand. I don't have a problem with wind/solar, but, they cannot be a REPLACEMENT for coal/nuclear.

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Takes a 10kw generator for backup for our house, still can't power everything. You need to power demand when people are using power, not necessarily all night overnight and at absolutely flat usage rates. Nobody's use is flat. Nor is usage flat in any area I have ever read of.

Wrong figure

[Anonymous Coward]

Old figure. The strike price last year was down to $57.50, significantly below the price for Hinckley.

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[drinkypoo]

Takes a 10kw generator for backup for our house, still can't power everything.

Turn off your cluster, then, or stop making carbon fiber. I was able to run a whole house including a deep well pump AND a shallow well jet pump on a 7kW generator.

The great lakes Wind farms are still years off

[pgmrdlm]

Even though Europe does have off shore Fresh water wind farms, the great lakes are still researching bird deaths. Ice build up on the lakes I can understand, not a lot of knowledge about that. But, bird deaths. Do these people not read or research already in place European Fresh Water wind farms. Or do they just like wasting money.

Re:The great lakes Wind farms are still years off

[whoever57]

It's a delay tactic.

Gone fishin'

[Anonymous Coward]

There's gonna be some great fishing right there. All those dead birds will be like chum..

Re:Gone fishin'

[giggleloop]

Wind turbines kill around 300,000 birds annually, house cats around 3,000,000,000. Clearly we need to be throwing cats into turbines!

Re: Gone fishin'

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, your blatant false equivalency would actually mean something if there were anywhere near the same number of wind turbines as cats on the planet. But as this is not the case, you're just spouting nonsense.

Fossil fuels are subsidized heavily

[sjbe]

Fossil fuels make energy when its needed for a low price.

False statement. Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized to the tune of about $5 Trillion annually (that's 6% of global GDP) and that doesn't even include the costs of dealing with the pollution (including CO2) they are permitted to just dump in the atmosphere and elsewhere. Fossil fuels only seem cheap because we subsidize the crap out of them both directly and indirectly. Fully burdened they actually are more expensive than wind in a wide variety of use cases.

Not just when the wind is blowing within set limits.

Have you ever been off shore in the ocean? I'm guessing not because for all practical purposes the wind is ALWAYS blowing in the sorts of places they put a wind farm. There is some variability but it is far less than you are supposing.

Re:Fossil fuels are subsidized heavily

[AHuxley]

Whats "Fully burdened"? The price people have to pay for all the new green energy? The price a nation pays for existing fossil fuels at a lower cost?

Re:Fossil fuels are subsidized heavily

[blindseer]

An interesting link there. What I found especially interesting was further down the page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:

        Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
        Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
        Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
        Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)

Compare that to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Net electricity generation by energy source in 2016[1]
    Natural gas (33.8%)
    Coal (30.4%)
    Nuclear (19.7%)
    Hydro (6.5%)
    Wind (5.5%)
    Biomass (1.5%)
    Other (2.6%)

I know I'm comparing different years here but I'd think it's safe to assume some year to year consistency on funding. We see nuclear power get 7% of the tax subsidies and yet produces 20% of the electricity we use. Renewable energy gets 45% of the tax subsidies but produces maybe 10% of the electricity.

Nuclear power is as "zero carbon" as wind or solar. Nuclear power is safe, this is especially true in the USA. I'm tired of this talk of Chernobyl and Fukushima as examples of nuclear power being unsafe. First, neither happened in the USA. Second, those are old reactors built decades ago and have very little in common with how nuclear reactors are built today. Even with those two high profile cases of nuclear power gone wrong we still have plenty of other reactors, hundreds of them, that didn't make the news because they hurt no one.

When it comes to nuclear power being expensive well, just look at how much money nuclear power has been getting from the government in looking to make it cheaper. Just imagine how much cheaper nuclear power would be today if it got funding like wind and solar. Or, even as much money as was spent on fossil fuels.

Politicians like to make happy mouth noises about an "all the above" energy policy but when it comes to actually funding what works they short change nuclear power every time. If they were serious about lowering CO2, providing cheap and reliable energy, and reducing reliance on foreign energy sources, then they'd be giving nuclear power funds on par with its portion of the energy we consume.

I don't like the idea of energy subsidies, they should all go away. However, if we are to have subsidies then let's do it based on the actual energy produced. Since the goal is to reduce CO2 as well then reduce the subsidies based on that. Nuclear power produces a HUGE amount of energy and very little CO2. We should reward this accordingly.

Fossil fuels are not cheap because of the subsidies, they get very little subsidies compared to other sources and the amount of energy we get from it. Fossil fuels are cheap because it's easy to get and we have centuries of experience in digging it up and turning it into useful work. We learned a lot on how to turn uranium into useful work, maybe if we put some effort into learning more we could make it even cheaper. If we want "all the above" on energy then be honest about it.

why so expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

$195/MHh is about the same as the overnight (lowest) tier charged to household customers in CA. Yes, that's delivered delivered to the home, so the CA price includes distribution, public programs (subsidies for poor people), etc. The utilities are fond of telling us how little of the cost goes to power-production, that a majority goes to other things. CA is the 5th most expensive in the US, behind Hawaii, Alaska, Connecticut, and Massachusetts and just ahead of New York. The rates in the 10 least expensive states is about 1/2 of the CA rate.

That wind power is fairly expensive even with free fuel.

Did they pay for the ocean area?

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. That is the rule of thumb used to estimate power consumption in the pre-bitcoin mining era.

Is it a large-scale bird grinder?

[kriston]

Where are we at with these things being large-scale bird grinders or not?

Re:Is it a large-scale bird grinder?

[Gravis Zero]

These turbines are gigantic and move at a slugs place, so no these will never be "bird grinders".

Re:Is it a large-scale bird grinder?

[kriston]

Nobody says they will "never be 'bird grinders,'" according to the literature. The jury is still out:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/

Re:Is it a large-scale bird grinder?

[Gravis Zero]

These are a set of the LARGEST turbines in the world and they are offshore. Smaller turbines that are on shore are more likely to kill birds. These will never be bird grinders, you twit.

Re:Is it a large-scale bird grinder?

[JabrTheHut]

A magazine I’ve never heard of links to an anonymous blog stating it’s really bad. Hmm. Paid-for pseudo-science?

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[angel'o'sphere]

Does each home only use 1.1KW ? seriously ?
On average at a given time, yes. Actually much less.

My Aunt would be so happy

[Anonymous Coward]

My Aunt grew up on Walney Island. Then moved to the London and started working on the earth enterprise project (trying to teach conservation of fossil fuels). She started this work in 1972.. In the 60s on a visit home to her parents on Walney she told them, and their neighbors that they should build a wind turbine farm off the coast, as it was a prime location.

She passed away last spring, and I have been trying to transcribe her work to her site I set up for her.

http://theearthenterpriseproject.theearthenterpriseproject.com/

She was known in Europe as the old running lady, since 1972 she ran 10 miles a day, and 25 miles every sunday.. Used electricity for one light bulb at night, and boiling water for a cup of tea and used left over water for a sponge bath, all while using no heat. She also swore off motorized transportation..

https://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/news/croydon-news/croydon-running-lady-died-following-531606

Re:My Aunt would be so happy

[Anonymous Coward]

What a fantastic person she was! May her memory be for a blessing.

Wrecks

[JimSadler]

In my area when we have our frequent wind storms it is not rare to have a commercial vesel of large size lose power and be driven onto our beaches. In one case the bow of an ocean liner came across the sand and was resting in the swimming pool of a condominium. Fixing that sort of thing is very expensive. Now, can these windmills take a hit from a large ship? How well do these turbines do when we have 180 mph. winds that gust even higher? How often would an event be expected based on local historic events and what cost would be involved to repair or replace the turbine?

Re:Wrecks

[q_e_t]

In my area when we have our frequent wind storms it is not rare to have a commercial vesel of large size lose power and be driven onto our beaches. In one case the bow of an ocean liner came across the sand and was resting in the swimming pool of a condominium. Fixing that sort of thing is very expensive. Now, can these windmills take a hit from a large ship? How well do these turbines do when we have 180 mph. winds that gust even higher? How often would an event be expected based on local historic events and what cost would be involved to repair or replace the turbine?

There's a lot of coastline, not so much wind turbine, so the chances of a ship hitting a turbine is very small. They feather the props in high winds. There would be an issue if the feathering broke, but then the blades are varied to make the best of the wind anyway, so a misbehaving turbine would be spotted quickly and preemptively feathered. If the ability to point into the wind also went, that might be an issue, but they are pretty tough.

peak, base - doesn't fit - negative price

[FeelGood314]

We need a base load of power generation. Something cheap that will generate a continuous amount of power. Ignore (Shoot) all the Green Peace virtue signalers and nuclear would be perfect for this. We also need peak production, something that can be throttled up and down easily. Hydro is best for this but requires actual geography to have provided it. Coal and natural gas also work. Tide, wind and solar don't actually fit in this model. They don't make power when we need it and we still don't have a good way of storing it. Batteries aren't good enough yet and pump and storage maintenance costs are too high (even if your capital is free and the electricity cost goes negative).

Negative price - The UK government has guaranteed the operators they will pay a fixed price for the electricity produced by these windmills. That means that when the wind blows and no one wants the electricity the price of electricity will go negative. People will be paid to consume electricity. In Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvanian and Michigan we did the same thing. Here the wind blows the most after everyone has gone to bed in January and February. This is also our lowest consumption time.

I've dealt with the bureaucracy in electrical grids in many countries. The stupidity is amazing but the UK is special, they have an extra layer of cronyism and arrogance that no other country has.

Re:peak, base - doesn't fit - negative price

[Anonymous Coward]

No you need a proper distribited interconectde grid.
Hydro is simple for storage, plus there are others current and being developed.
You just want to pick and choose to subsidise your favourite method (probably coal) to use that power when demand is low (no such thing as base load, could always go lower if people swich things off).
People like you just don't understand the modern world.

People will be paid to consume electricity. In Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvanian and Michigan we did the same thing.

You must have just set your imaginary base too high.

Re:peak, base - doesn't fit - negative price

[dyslexicbunny]

Couldn't home or business users take advantage of the negative power rates to charge batteries that would be used to provide power during non-free times? And if enough users opted for this approach, the rates would become positive during those current negative rate periods and other periods might reduce due to lower power demand?

YEah, need a lot of power at night.

[Anonymous Coward]

What with all those factories open and running full pelt, and all those SETI@HOME PCs running their blockchains.... Big demand, peak demand, even, at night. ;course when Sellafield went offline for one of its generators for 18 months, that wasn't meaningful, after all, it only left a few score MW hole that we had to buy from france... And Didcot being out of the picture for two years at the same time, no worries. It's only renewables that are unreliable....

Because the Hinkley price is guaranteed inflation+

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst the strike price for this offshore stuff is less than 60. I figure that the 2/3rds price is part of the reason. Some will still whinge because it's "hippy shit".

Don't see any issue with field/pitch

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's called a football field too. Meanwhile you have a world cup that only three countries play in and you use "foot" instead of "hand"for YOUR game of "foot"ball.

Plus you wear all-body diapers to protect your delicate skin....
And know why there are so many points scored in the games whilst soccer doesn't, and frequently no score draws and 1-0 wins are common? High scoring games are more liable to fit the statistical modelling whilst a low scoring game can be won by a side that was merely lucky, meaning the gambling houses can't manipulate the games so easily and actually DO risk losing.

Daily Hate Mail lied to you.

[Anonymous Coward]

The subsidy for the average household for all reneable subsidies and so on is $6. The rest is for things like grid replacement and insurance, nuclear cleanup and so on.

Nuclear does 60% capacity factor.

[Anonymous Coward]

And coal isn't much better. So why are you whining? Oh, I get it, this is "hippy shit" and that is bad.

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[Solandri]

The homes themselves use less. But if you add in all the additional support services needed for those homes (power for street lighting, water pressure, service workers, etc), it ends up being about that high. It's even more if you include industrial power usage to produce the things people buy to put in their homes (food, clothing, your car, TV, computer, etc).

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[Anonymous Coward]

How many MW do the turbines produce when the fuel supply is cut off...

Just curious.

Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[blindseer]

But you have to build windmills to maintain the industry.

You mean like how we have to keep building nuclear power to maintain the industry?

We were building nuclear power around the world like mad 40 or 50 years ago and then... we stopped. People have become fearful of nuclear power because it's a mystery to them. We have accidents like at Fukushima because the people that know how they work retired, have gone senile, or died. When we need experts to fix what's broken we are finding that the best people for the job are over 80 years old or under a headstone.

I keep hearing on how decommissioning costs for nuclear power keep rising. Well, that's what happens when there is a lack of expertise and infrastructure. Then there's the complaints on having no place to put the waste. That's what happens when funding for facilities to process and dispose of this waste gets held up in congressional "debate" for THIRTY YEARS ! This isn't a problem that just appeared, our grandparents were talking about this. A quick Wikipedia search will show that the US federal government has been looking at Yucca Mountain as a potential disposal site since 1957, and approved it as a site in 1987. The government should have been able to start packing this hole in the ground with waste in 1998.

Nuclear power is expensive now because we killed the industry 40 years ago. We can make it cheaper if we only spend the money to build the infrastructure, just like we did with wind and solar. The longer we wait the more expertise in this field is lost. Claiming that we will never need this expertise again is simply false. All those nuclear power plants in operation now will have to be shut down and torn apart at some point, because nothing lasts forever. We'll need a place to dispose of the waste. People will have to become experts in this. We can train these people now or we can have them learn on the job, where mistakes can cost lives.

Because we stopped maintaining this nuclear power industry there's a shortage of medical isotopes for treatment and diagnostics. NASA is running short of their supply of reliable radiothermal generators for exploration. Missions failed because they tried to rely on solar power instead. If they had some strontium or plutonium to keep the electronics warm and powered up then we'd know more about the solar system now.

Nope, we can't have "nu-ku-lar" because... reasons. Since we lost all we learned from previous mistakes we will just have to repeat those same mistakes.

Re: World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes

[q_e_t]

Now consider the 45% capacity factor for the wind.

At any given time the wind turbines might deliver 0% or 100%, ditto the gas turbines, although it that tends to be demand-led unless broken. The latter is why most plants have three or more gas turbines as the grid hookup won't generate revenue if you are waiting for a part for your single gas turbine, but wind farm failure is only typically a small fraction of the total. However, gas turbine capacity, if all power is demanded, is around 90% of nameplate. It's a limitation of the use of nameplate. If you simply multiplied the nameplate by the capacity factor and quoted things as 'typical' and 'up to' for the current nameplate, it might make comparison easier. But the peak here is still greater than any gas turbine, and even the 'typical' value greater than most.

What you really need to look at is a combination of cost per MWh, and whether it is either dispatchable, or its availability matches demand, not purely nameplate MW, and then also the emission profile. It's not simple, as it depends on your overall mix of energy resources, potentially covering intermittency issues. You could argue, that to cover this, then you might look at the overall cost of wind turbine plus gas turbine pairings (or other systems), but that's not really the way a large grid with multiple resources will operate.

Re:One large gas turbine or one small coal generat

[q_e_t]

Oh, it's worse than that. It's quite possible that this wind farm will end up producing as much CO2 as if they just burned natural gas in a combined cycle plant.

Your link actually says:

Analysis by Larsen and Rez shows that we would do better in terms of carbon emissions if instead of installing low capacity factor wind or solar systems and backing them with natural gas, we simply used a combined cycle natural gas plant.

which is something slightly different.

The abstract is:

The capacity factor of wind farms in different regions of the United States has been calculated from hourly wind data and the power curves of the wind turbines. In places with constant high winds like the Texas panhandle, capacity factors of 40% are possible. However the capacity factors in less favorable locations in Illinois or New York are below 20%. Reliable capacity factor estimates are important since displacing efficient combined cycle gas turbines from baseload generation by intermittent wind power could lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Before a site is considered capacity factors should be calculated from the power curve of the proposed wind turbine and measured wind data throughout the year, preferably at hub height.

So, noting that it mentions low capacity factor wind, the paper is presumably suggesting ones that are sited such they have a capacity factor of 20% are not very economically viable, but in the case of the TFA, we are talking 45% capacity, so the above criticism linked from the blog may not be relevant.

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[q_e_t]

working backwards, the average UK electricty bill is about £600, and it;s about £0.12/kWh, so that's 600/0.12 = 5000kWh. 5000/(365*24) is 0.6kW average. Given that people tend to not use that much when asleep, apart from the fridge and freezer, and not that much when at work, then yes 1.1kW is about right on average. Peak is another matter, but not everyone runs the kettle for tea at the same time, and less so given people don't tend to watch TV in the same way and so don't all rush to run the kettle in the ad break of Coronation Street.

Re:660 MW for 600k homes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotted the American.
You just use a lot of power. And big cars. Maybe compensating for something?

Nuke is bad

[stooo]

>> Nuclear power is expensive now because we killed the industry 40 years ago.
Nuclear is expensive because the endless government and military subsidies stopped 40 Years ago.
And that was a good decision.

Subsidies

[volmtech]

My son manages installation contracts for these things. One worthy noted the subsidy increased the farther offshore the turbine was. He went for the longest distance and went to Siemens to get them built. The sales staff no being dummies went to the engineers and ask if putting units that far out was possible. After some calculations they said sure. The sale people then ask when could they be delivered. Shocked the engineers replied ,"Do you know how much that is going to cost!"