Ed - that's a really helpful link. I'd estimated about 24TWh for the UK and once you start getting into those orders of magnitude it's easy to get an order of magnitude out and not realise it! I'll study it - thank you!
Is the aim to make it dispatchable (in the gas sense) or just flexible enough to meet demand? Would be interesting to see a similar analysis for all nuclear
Correct. Ed's links above provide useful background on what that implies in terms of excess generation capacity, storage capacity, import capacity, and demand curtailment. Around $2.2 quadrillion for the US, falling to $220 trillion if currently unviable battery technologies can be commercialised.
This is a joke. The local council in Launceston, Cornwall recently said no thanks to a proposed solar farm which would have generated power for 11,000 homes....undaunted EDF is trying to install one on 200 acres of productive farmland near Truro instead, which would supply 9000 homes. The land has been farmed since medieval times. 200 acres, for a measly 9000 homes. You could cover the entire country in solar panels and it would still not generate enough power for the whole UK. This is all madness, utter madness.
What, for a measly 9000 homes? And no, it wasn't sheep grazing for export. You might not have noticed but we do produce a lot of our own food in the UK, and more and more farmland is being turned over to huge industrial solar farms to power a small number of homes erm....for part of the year. Solar and wind are unreliable and intermittent they can't be used in isolation, we need back up. Unfortunately for the green dreamers.
I’m afraid I don’t know anything about agriculture in Cornwall so I don’t know what the land is/was used for
In Wales we have solar proposed on sheep fields. The sheep can still graze underneath but there is a reduction in stocking density, so we will produce less Welsh lamb
However only 5% of Welsh lamb is eaten in Wales, 55% in the rest of the U.K., 40% is exported. So we have a trade off, export lamb or produce electricity. I have no idea which is best
200 acres is pretty tiny, the proposal that I live in the middle of is 3,000 acres
Wind and solar are intermittent, but very reliable in that they do what you would expect them to do
Read the FES for how we will deal with intermittency
The narrative that the profits from oil, fish, water, and now wind should be retained in Scotland (with the costs of developing them obviously accruing to some adult figure elsewhere) has provided a rich seam of Scottish Separatist grievance to mine for decades.
Isn’t low capacity factor a feature of small turbines? 23% is normal for the old fleet. Hence 200+ m for onshore and 350 m for offshore now being proposed
Is U.K. energy policy based on capacity factor or the CfD?
Hughes, G. (2020) Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality. Available at: https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/365-wind-power-economics-rhetoric-and-reality (Accessed: 25 November 2022) offers some useful insight on this point. Fig 6 shows the time to first failure, which deteriorates with increasing turbine size. The text also discusses the decline in load factor with age which, combined with rising opex, destroys economic metrics.
What are the Scots going to do with "their" wind anyway? I thought that Scottish wind farms were being curtailed because of the lack of transmission lines. Surely they want to sell their leftovers to the Sassenachs for more pennies?
I think we imagine it can be put in a big battery and we can get it for "free". We are very fond of "free" things. Which is to say - things paid for by others.
They do, I don’t think it’s ever been anyone’s idea not to export it south. Once England is utterly dependent on Scotland for keeping the lights on it gives Scotland far greater bargaining power
Richard,
Some thoughts (US based) on storage requirements and costs to make wind and solar dispatchable.
https://www.therightinsight.org/Current-Storage-Deficit
Ed - that's a really helpful link. I'd estimated about 24TWh for the UK and once you start getting into those orders of magnitude it's easy to get an order of magnitude out and not realise it! I'll study it - thank you!
Richard,
The "all-electric everything" requirements are truly staggering.
https://www.therightinsight.org/All-Electric-Storage
https://www.therightinsight.org/All-Electric-Everything
Is the aim to make it dispatchable (in the gas sense) or just flexible enough to meet demand? Would be interesting to see a similar analysis for all nuclear
Dispatchable in the sense you expect it to have when your baby is in an incubator that requires a power source.
So the right degree of flexibility, to have power from somewhere when needed
Correct. Ed's links above provide useful background on what that implies in terms of excess generation capacity, storage capacity, import capacity, and demand curtailment. Around $2.2 quadrillion for the US, falling to $220 trillion if currently unviable battery technologies can be commercialised.
Or whatever results from FES2024
This is a joke. The local council in Launceston, Cornwall recently said no thanks to a proposed solar farm which would have generated power for 11,000 homes....undaunted EDF is trying to install one on 200 acres of productive farmland near Truro instead, which would supply 9000 homes. The land has been farmed since medieval times. 200 acres, for a measly 9000 homes. You could cover the entire country in solar panels and it would still not generate enough power for the whole UK. This is all madness, utter madness.
The debate I am readying for is what is meant by “productive” farmland. If it sheep grazing for export, are we not better producing energy?
What, for a measly 9000 homes? And no, it wasn't sheep grazing for export. You might not have noticed but we do produce a lot of our own food in the UK, and more and more farmland is being turned over to huge industrial solar farms to power a small number of homes erm....for part of the year. Solar and wind are unreliable and intermittent they can't be used in isolation, we need back up. Unfortunately for the green dreamers.
I’m afraid I don’t know anything about agriculture in Cornwall so I don’t know what the land is/was used for
In Wales we have solar proposed on sheep fields. The sheep can still graze underneath but there is a reduction in stocking density, so we will produce less Welsh lamb
However only 5% of Welsh lamb is eaten in Wales, 55% in the rest of the U.K., 40% is exported. So we have a trade off, export lamb or produce electricity. I have no idea which is best
200 acres is pretty tiny, the proposal that I live in the middle of is 3,000 acres
Wind and solar are intermittent, but very reliable in that they do what you would expect them to do
Read the FES for how we will deal with intermittency
Do Scottish Nationalists really think they are being robbed of wind gold? Is that a quote from the FM? Or have some people been moaning on socials?
The narrative that the profits from oil, fish, water, and now wind should be retained in Scotland (with the costs of developing them obviously accruing to some adult figure elsewhere) has provided a rich seam of Scottish Separatist grievance to mine for decades.
But from the SNP or just people moaning?
The SNP.
Isn’t low capacity factor a feature of small turbines? 23% is normal for the old fleet. Hence 200+ m for onshore and 350 m for offshore now being proposed
Is U.K. energy policy based on capacity factor or the CfD?
Hughes, G. (2020) Wind Power Economics – Rhetoric and Reality. Available at: https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/365-wind-power-economics-rhetoric-and-reality (Accessed: 25 November 2022) offers some useful insight on this point. Fig 6 shows the time to first failure, which deteriorates with increasing turbine size. The text also discusses the decline in load factor with age which, combined with rising opex, destroys economic metrics.
Is this the same Prof G Hughes who wrote the reports for the Global Warming Policy Foundation?
What are the Scots going to do with "their" wind anyway? I thought that Scottish wind farms were being curtailed because of the lack of transmission lines. Surely they want to sell their leftovers to the Sassenachs for more pennies?
I think we imagine it can be put in a big battery and we can get it for "free". We are very fond of "free" things. Which is to say - things paid for by others.
They do, I don’t think it’s ever been anyone’s idea not to export it south. Once England is utterly dependent on Scotland for keeping the lights on it gives Scotland far greater bargaining power