The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[LongQ]

Wayoftheflower said:

Ali G said:

Wind really hammering out the power again..

Under two percent of demand @ 0.72 GW.

Even the Dutch interconnect is fairing better at 1 GW.

So much for wind generating anything 'surplus' in the foreseeable.

http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Fortunate that Solar is doing well at 5+ GW then isn't it.

You do realise that the solar numbers are estimates don't you? Based on modelling.

How real they are is difficult to tell. Most likely large error bars if they were graphed.

[Ali G]

80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050

Which is what UK government has signed up to. 50% by 2030.

Given that it will be challenging to cut off gas supplies for domestic GCH etc, the balance has to come from the grid.

And apparently without going for nuclear!

Insane..

[Ali G]

And as daylight is petering out..

Wind now down to 0.48 GW (1.3 % of demand)

Solar down to 2.6 GW (7.1% of demand) and falling....

Obvious is obvious.

[Mr GrimNasty]

The following are US orientated but just as applicable (I haven't checked the whole thread to see if it is a repost).

The maths/logic of wind etc. simply does not add up (well worth diving off to some of the linked sources/commentaries in these as well).

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-envi...

http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/10/3/the-...

http://manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2016/10/13/29m...

Meanwhile RWE is planning 2.5 GW gas power plant - which is the inevitable future of power generation in the UK, but because of the windmill fiasco distorting the energy market, it's unlikely it will be worthwhile building it.

If we had been building these gas plants instead of windmills, our electricity bills would be falling, not rapidly rising to pay for the uneconomic and inefficient and grid destabilizing windmills.

http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2017/0...

Eventually, after the first few winter blackouts, and widespread cold deaths, they will start emergency building gas power plants, but by then the mess will be so bad it won't help bills.

[LongQ]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

brief reply earlier as on my phone.

To expand - like most time you post on the subject WC98 - you don’t “actually” know do you ?

FWIW I’ve got reports on my desk that do know.

I can tell you are wrong in various counts, but for a giggle - you say the CTV’s are hugely expensive to Run.

Tell me - whats a 20m CTV cost per day - roughly of course.
something like these :




In case people are interested - rather than talking out of their arses this is how they operate ….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfUhBKZR4sU



WC- whats the Day rate / cost ?

A quick search turned up this paper

https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/35403052/Ve...

There does not appear to be a date on it.

However references it makes suggest that the data is about 5 years old so Paddy will probably tell us it has not been superseded and all of them are now so cheap to run it's not worth bothering to raise the invoices ....

[V8 Fettler]

durbster said:

V8 Fettler said:

What happens when wind is minimal?

The world figured out ways to keep a consistent supply of water regardless of rainfall, so I'm sure we can figure this out.

It seems we can certainly generate enough power but we can't store it, so I was pleased to see the investment into batteries announced yesterday.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/uk-bec...

Research and development into storage and transportation of energy is surely where the answer lies, over and above harnessing it in the first place.

No it hasn't https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/1...

[V8 Fettler]

alangla said:

durbster said:

Research and development into storage and transportation of energy is surely where the answer lies, over and above harnessing it in the first place.

It seems that as well as the research into batteries, we probably also need to look at building more pumped storage. Other than Cruachan/Dinorwig, are there any suitable (hopefully NIMBY free) locations in the UK? Are there even any existing hydro stations that could be converted to pumped storage? The only one I can think of round here might be Sloy, but that's currently only 150MW apparently, not sure how much more capacity you could get out of it without flooding Loch Lomond.

Pumped storage is primarily designed for peak lopping, also grid black start. We would need to hollow out most of the larger Lake District hills for pumped storage to meaningfully replace wind generation when wind is minimal for several days.

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

That paper does not give any mention of day rates of the CTVs that WC98 told us about.

The estimates given were more relevant to the offshore Installation vessels (jack up vessels) but since then oversupply in the market and the points I gave made previously about WTG growth has made many almost surplus to requirements

So much so a vessel like the Fred Olsen Windcarrier, Swire Blue Ocean vessels with their 1,000te cranes and Capex costs originally in excess of $150m are now available to charter as low as €35,000 a day

It also mentions using conventional shipping cost models for the Capex repayment. Incorrectly among other things.


Back to the matter / question though.

CTV rates that WC98 mentioned in his sweeping statement of inaccuracies, what was he basing it on?

i was basing it on day rates for a mates commercial fishing boats when doing guarding duty inn the north sea for the oil and gas industry and the wind industry. your idea of cheap may not be my idea of cheap. are these boats electrically powered by wind and solar or do they require fossil fuel to run

what else was wrong in my post btw. care to address the issue regarding how many days weather impacts the maintenance schedule ?

[LongQ]

V8 Fettler said:

alangla said:

durbster said:

Research and development into storage and transportation of energy is surely where the answer lies, over and above harnessing it in the first place.

It seems that as well as the research into batteries, we probably also need to look at building more pumped storage. Other than Cruachan/Dinorwig, are there any suitable (hopefully NIMBY free) locations in the UK? Are there even any existing hydro stations that could be converted to pumped storage? The only one I can think of round here might be Sloy, but that's currently only 150MW apparently, not sure how much more capacity you could get out of it without flooding Loch Lomond.

Pumped storage is primarily designed for peak lopping, also grid black start. We would need to hollow out most of the larger Lake District hills for pumped storage to meaningfully replace wind generation when wind is minimal for several days.

To get any equivalent of Pumped Storage at the scale required to last for several days would require something the size of the majority of Northern Scotland and then power rationing.

Still, like most thing, it is probably within the bounds of of human ingenuity to undertake the engineering - heck the Chinese did something similar with the Three Gorges dam a while back. Hardly any controversy at all now ...

All very expensive though, especially was a standby mechanism.

So it comes down to how much future generations are prepared to pay for their electricity.

Maybe the government could set up a task force to ask them?

Easy enough to do - just pop into all of the nurseries and playgroups and first years at junior schools and ask them. Should be nice clean data as kids will likely give entirely honest answers at that age.

If anyone wants to read about a variety of schemes with further analysis try this search link.

http://euanmearns.com/?s=pumped+storage

[LongQ]

LongQ said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

brief reply earlier as on my phone.

To expand - like most time you post on the subject WC98 - you don’t “actually” know do you ?

FWIW I’ve got reports on my desk that do know.

I can tell you are wrong in various counts, but for a giggle - you say the CTV’s are hugely expensive to Run.

Tell me - whats a 20m CTV cost per day - roughly of course.
something like these :




In case people are interested - rather than talking out of their arses this is how they operate ….https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfUhBKZR4sU



WC- whats the Day rate / cost ?

A quick search turned up this paper

https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/35403052/Ve...

There does not appear to be a date on it.

However references it makes suggest that the data is about 5 years old so Paddy will probably tell us it has not been superseded and all of them are now so cheap to run it's not worth bothering to raise the invoices ....

This report seems to be a little more "inside the industry" specific and also more recent (2015).

I suspect the costs are more seasonally variable than, say, car hire rental or holiday hotel pricing.

But then such variability is something that the industry lives with daily.

http://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/downloads/wfsv...


I'm not quite sure why this is labelled as a "sample" though - consultancy firm showing what they can do? Are the numbers just made up?

[durbster]

I'm keeping an eye on my Australian friends with regards domestic solar, as they should be leading the way. One mate is just getting a 5.8Kw system added to the 1.9Kw system he had installed in 2010. The interesting part is that he said the cost of the new system is about the same as the old for three times the power.

Sounds like good progress to me.

[LongQ]

durbster said:

I'm keeping an eye on my Australian friends with regards domestic solar, as they should be leading the way. One mate is just getting a 5.8Kw system added to the 1.9Kw system he had installed in 2010. The interesting part is that he said the cost of the new system is about the same as the old for three times the power.

Sounds like good progress to me.

Or the original stuff was really expensive for what it offered.

[jas xjr]

do not know where else to discuss this.
i have a simple and reliable methods of generating electricity through wind power. it would work every day.
unfortunately i do not have the money to develop the idea or patent it. i would like to monetise it as i am not able to work or run a business any more.
i have thought that i should just put the idea out in the public domain and be done with it. but it would be nice to monetise it.

[Wayoftheflower]

Mr GrimNasty said:

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-envi...

That article is interesting, it reports that 9.8millions people are employed in the US in fossil fuel power generation compared with 208,000 employed by solar industry. However Forbes reports that oil and gas employed 187,000 and solar 374,000, so one of those sets of figures is a bit out.

[silentbrown]

Wayoftheflower said:

That article is interesting, it reports that 9.8millions people are employed in the US in fossil fuel power generation compared with 208,000 employed by solar industry. However Forbes that oil and gas employed 187,000 and solar 374,000, so one of those sets of figures is a bit out.

Go to the source. https://energy.gov/downloads/2017-us-energy-and-em...

The 9.8million figure is from an industry-funded report, which is fairly comprehensively trashed here. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/news...

Basically it's not just generation (direct jobs) but also Indirect (all jobs in the supply chain) and induced (jobs resulting from the income spend of the first two groups).

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

The presumption you make on the weather, and accessibility in incorrect - and of course the analysis of the site when being evaluated takes in to account things like this and the cost in the LCOE etc etc.
CTV's transfer in seas up to 1.75Hs, giving far more sailing days and maintenance days than you give credit for. Some site deploy a 'go to' vessel too to be deployed in greater sea states for 'instant reaction' intervention offshore on foul days, but overall - sites send Technicians offshore on a 24/7 rotational basis and in deep winter may only loose 15-17% of availability due to the conditions.
So- you point of
". i can't imagine them sitting around fully crewed for weeks on end waiting on the wind dropping (how ironic) to allow access" is also wrong.

you must be in sales to spin that response out of what i posted ! if you think an 18 metre boat is going to transfer people to a turbine in any kind of proper weather (have you ever been to sea in a vessel that size in what professionals would term bad weather) you are sadly mistaken. particularly that type of catamaran as they have a tendency to plough nose down in bigger weather. the reason they use cats is the weather they are permitted to operate in ,your 1.75 hs (slight to moderate conditions hobby sailors would venture out in) is that they are very stable in small seas, but those are not significant weather at all.

so they sail in the amount of days i give them credit for, not your version. i know the parameters for working from this type of vessel at sea, you obviously don't.

that is why i already mentioned weather patterns would have been studied to work out maintenance programs in the first place,which you failed to note, then introduced in your own post as something i had missed.

i would be interested to know exactly what sort of crew, engineers ,boat and fuel consumption figures those costing a boat at 1200 quid per day expect. 3 k a day for a vessel plus two crew on standby is doable including fuel costs (priced at gallons per hour, none of these boats are inexpensive to run) , but i have no idea what you would get for 1200 quid.

[jet_noise]

jas xjr said:

i have a simple and reliable methods of generating electricity through wind power. it would work every day.

<snip>

I believe the PH response is "can I interest sir in 5 beans?".
That's when I've stopped laughing, do you have a fan to keep it going through still periods?

Wind power is not dispatchable. Any such energy source can never be a significant portion of a worldwide energy supply without huge excess capacity or societal changes from on demand usage to when available.
Ain't gonna happen while I have a vote!

[wc98]

one point to note paddy. a while back in the thread we were talking about wind speeds required for the next generation of large wtg. i underestimated them and i recall you being surprised at how high they were. i think it was 20 mph (i hope, if it was m/s they better be reliable, they won't be seeing much maintenance) ,now 20 mph for any length of time offshore will generate waves bigger than your 1.75 hs criteria. so we are left with the situation that for these new large wtg to be efficient they need a level of wind that will preclude maintenance on the days they are operating correctly.

now i don't actually know how many hours per year preventative maintenance a wtg needs spent on it ,it may well be extended periods of no maintenance are not an issue, but be certain anyone planning 24/7 maintenance shifts on these things will be standing crews down on a regular basis.

[Ali G]

Well with restrictions to be placed on the internal combustion engine as a means of vehicular propulsion, thereby putting even greater stress on the National Grid, I can see a growing market for household diesel/electric power generation.

Self sufficiency etc.

[babatunde]

LongQ said:

durbster said:

I'm keeping an eye on my Australian friends with regards domestic solar, as they should be leading the way. One mate is just getting a 5.8Kw system added to the 1.9Kw system he had installed in 2010. The interesting part is that he said the cost of the new system is about the same as the old for three times the power.

Sounds like good progress to me.

Or the original stuff was really expensive for what it offered.

The cost of solar panels has fallen substantially, so much so that Australia has rules on how large an array you can have at home and feed power into the grid.