The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Wayoftheflower]

LongQ said:

Heartland fingered by the Guardian and NYT? From 2012.

Is that it?

Guardian report based in something in DeSmogBlog? How incredibly unbiased!

Maybe this is why?

http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-abo...

From 2011. So more or less the same time.

But heck, they are both just blogs on the Internet so should be disregarded according to PH rules as set by a few of the posters here.

Hilarious, "Popular Technology" wouldn't want to be mistaken as some sort of rival to popular science.
Not that you could easily do that considering the quality of the output.
Popsci
Poptech

Congratulations on linking a full hat trick of Heartland institute shill sites though.

[Ali G]

If anyone is intersted, here is E.ON's original scoping doc for Rampion.

https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk...

This bit is quite interesting...

Rampion scoping doc said:

Overall, the general area and designated sites identified in the region support
significant bird populations. Drawing from the range of data reviewed and the
experiences recorded for other offshore wind farm sites in the UK, the following
species are considered to be of principal potential concern in relation to the proposed
Rampion Offshore Wind Farm development:
• Terns (common, little, sandwich and roseate)
• Fulmar
• Gannet
• Auk
• Divers (red-throated and black-throated diver)
• Swan (Bewick’s swan)
• Geese (dark-bellied brent goose)
• Ducks (red-breasted merganser)
• Gulls (Mediterranean, common, black-headed, lesser black-backed, herring,
greater black-backed and kittiwake), and
• Waders (bar-tailed godwit, golden plover, grey plover and lapwing).
For the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm, it will be important to understand the influence
of two potential ornithological migration patterns acting in differing ways as well as
breeding species:
• Seabird migration (between the North Sea, English Channel and the Atlantic),
and
• Wildfowl, wader and passerine migration (between the UK and continental
Europe).
The English Channel has the potential to act as a bottleneck for seabirds during their
spring and autumn passage owing to the proximity of the English and French
coastlines. There is also likely to be the potential for significant movements of birds
between designated sites on the two coasts (England and France). The English
Channel is approximately 100 kilometres wide between Eastbourne and Dieppe in
France.

[LongQ]

Wayoftheflower said:

Absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about linking from wiki, if it tells you something you don't like, deal with it. If it's inaccurate, correct it.

But if you'd like everything directly then HERE is the 273 page report on the blackout, the conclusion of which is, well the short version is, you should read Wikipedia.

Given that there are many aspects of the SA Electricity delivery mechanisms, both physical and administrative, that seem to have been unable to withstand the storminess experienced, there is potential for a discussion about the failures (multiple failures) to last for a long time and be very inconclusive in the end. The report will, as is normal in the century, find collective responsibility and no single point(s) of blame.

It was nobody's fault - except maybe Gaia.

Here is an interesting section from the Wiki entry.


Is it accurate? Who knows. To slightly modify your suggestion above;

" from wiki, if it tells you something you don't like, change it."


From the Wiki content:

"AEMO identified software settings in the wind farms that prevented repeated restarts once voltage or frequency events occurred too often. The group of wind turbines that could accept 9 ride-throughs in 120 seconds stayed on line through much of the event before the system went black. The rather larger group of turbines that could not accept this many repeated ride-throughs dropped out, instigating the overload and shutdown of the interconnector, and hence the electricity supply. AEMO has suggested better fault ride-through capability for the wind farms. "

So what we have here, it seems, is a total system that has either

not been adequately specified in terms of control management in extreme situations; or

not been managed as specified for some reason of lack of oversight or communication; or

a total system that has been compromised by changes (which mostly seem to be adding wind and removing traditional generation) but the reduction in grid resilience has not been spotted or not been addressed at the time the storm hit.

Luckily there was no such Statewide repeat in the subsequent Dec 2016 and Feb 2017 events, though presumably the grid was (is?) still fragile. Hence the idea of leasing floating electricity generator ships from Turkey for a while while they fix things. I guess the Musk battery thing may be related to "fixing the resilience" attempts.

The Official Report seems to have some rather more nuanced phrases to consider - so I'll come back to that.

It''s interesting that the Wiki thing and the bits of the report I have read and seem commented upon don't seem to come up with much more that was discussed, albeit without the benefit of a recorded second by second event timeline, at the point of the original grid collapse.

Note also the apparent difficulty experienced in getting things restarted in a way that the entire grid could function once again (aside from the loss of connectors and the downed cables). Moral of the story is you don't want the grid to fail - but if it does you need to be sure that you can resurrect it quickly - something that can be quite tricky at times.

Edited by LongQ on Wednesday 12th July 15:52

Edit for minor typo.

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 13th July 11:52

[Wayoftheflower]

rovermorris999 said:

You obviously don't know Joanne Nova's work. But that aside, whoever funds it, how about addressing the content rather than the messenger? Are those coal power stations not being built?
I don't give a flying fk who funds what, the veracity of what is said is the important thing.
I would love 'renewables' to work well and cheaply without direct subsidies and without indirect ones such as carbon pricing but sadly they don't.

Obviously I don't, care to share?

I always want to know who's paying for what I'm reading, Joanne's article has pretty biased language associating coal power with "Freedom and Wealth" do you agree?

As for subsidies, it looks to me like they being handed out to power generators of all sorts.

FT article from January.
"Small gas and diesel-fired plants — each generating up to 20MW of electricity — have become an important part of the UK energy mix as old coal and nuclear plants shut down. Their growth has been aided by lucrative payments for generating at times of peak demand without the hefty transmission charges faced by large power stations." Article

Why excessively subsidise small producers? Which is really better for the end-user? As of several pages ago the data from Gridwatch says to me the UK already has a huge (>6GW) over capacity in peak transient generation, ten percent is idled full time and a third is turned off every night.

[LongQ]

Wayoftheflower said:

LongQ said:

Heartland fingered by the Guardian and NYT? From 2012.

Is that it?

Guardian report based in something in DeSmogBlog? How incredibly unbiased!

Maybe this is why?

http://www.populartechnology.net/2011/04/truth-abo...

From 2011. So more or less the same time.

But heck, they are both just blogs on the Internet so should be disregarded according to PH rules as set by a few of the posters here.

Hilarious, "Popular Technology" wouldn't want to be mistaken as some sort of rival to popular science.
Not that you could easily do that considering the quality of the output.
Popsci
Poptech

Congratulations on linking a full hat trick of Heartland institute shill sites though.

Ah!

So you are a fully paid up believer then with the information manual to keep you informed.

Good to know.

As you like Wiki as a source here is the entry for DeSmogBlog which seems to be the primary original of the Guardian article to which you linked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeSmogBlog

However, as this particular exchange is about a subject that takes us a long way from the thread title I'm going to bale out at this point. We could pick it up on the Politics thread if you like. It's probably not worth it though.

[XM5ER]

Wayoftheflower said:

XM5ER said:

WOTF, your links are utterly outdated and have been debunked thoroughly. That's why nobody is listening to you.
HTH

Have they? PLEASE LINK TO THIS DEBUNKING!

How about, NO!

Shouty weirdo.

[Wayoftheflower]

LongQ said:

Ah!

So you are a fully paid up believer then with the information manual to keep you informed.

Good to know.

As you like Wiki as a source here is the entry for DeSmogBlog which seems to be the primary original of the Guardian article to which you linked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeSmogBlog

However, as this particular exchange is about a subject that takes us a long way from the thread title I'm going to bale out at this point. We could pick it up on the Politics thread if you like. It's probably not worth it though.

AH! I follow the evidence, wherever it leads. That's the lovely thing about science, the most dearly held belief can evaporate with one solid fact. The entire scientific consensus on climate change could disappear overnight should new data emerge, wouldn't that be nice.

Interesting wiki on Desmogblog, I didn't know they were award winning.

[Wayoftheflower]

XM5ER said:

How about, NO!

Shouty weirdo.

Well that's me convinced, bravo sir! you an undiscovered debating superstar. Remember with great power comes great responsibility.

[XM5ER]

Wayoftheflower said:

AH! I follow the evidence, wherever it leads. That's the lovely thing about science, the most dearly held belief can evaporate with one solid fact. The entire scientific consensus on climate change could disappear overnight should new data emerge, wouldn't that be nice.

Interesting wiki on Desmogblog, I didn't know they were award winning.

Please continue this discussion in the CC politics or Science thread. I specifically started this thread to avoid these kinds of shenanigans.

[Likes Fast Cars]

So getting back on topic then.....

Do we think Hinkley Point is a good idea, or a potential white elephant?

[Wayoftheflower]

Likes Fast Cars said:

So getting back on topic then.....

Do we think Hinkley Point is a good idea, or a potential white elephant?

The logic of replacing transient capacity with fixed capacity (up to the 22GW Christmas Eve annual low) makes sense to me. But the politics of the proposed pricing will need explaining.

[LongQ]

Likes Fast Cars said:

So getting back on topic then.....

Do we think Hinkley Point is a good idea, or a potential white elephant?

The idea of a Nuclear facility? Yes

The Location? May as well. It has previous and there are not so many location available that offer the right site conditions.

The Prime Contractors? No idea really. Depends whether they have "learned" anything from recent projects in order to improve things for this one.


The Design? Again, no idea. As per previous comment really. No alternatives are available, as I understand it, unless "the authorities" are prepared to accelerate approvals for other design concepts or shop elsewhere.

The funding deal? I suspect the Strike Price or whatever it may now be called will look OK, comparatively, by the time the thing is commissioned. Indeed edging the expected price upwards in the minds of the punters (compared to what they think they pay on bills right now) might be astute on several counts.

[s2art]

Likes Fast Cars said:

So getting back on topic then.....

Do we think Hinkley Point is a good idea, or a potential white elephant?

Not looking good at the moment.

[Ali G]

But...

Hinkley Agreement

Hinkley Agreement said:

EDF Group and other investors will be responsible for funding this project. Consumers will pay for the electricity it generates from 2023 through their bills. Building a new fleet of nuclear power stations could reduce bills by more than £75 a year in 2030, compared to a future where nuclear is not part of the energy mix.

However,

EU said:

The commercial agreement reached today on key terms is not legally binding, and is dependent on a positive decision from the European Commission in relation to State Aid.

One for Brexit!?

[WatchfulEye]

Wayoftheflower said:

The logic of replacing transient capacity with fixed capacity (up to the 22GW Christmas Eve annual low) makes sense to me. But the politics of the proposed pricing will need explaining.

The pricing is high, but it's the exact same model as used for any other low-carbon generation at the time the contracts were signed.

The strike price is calculated so as to deliver a pre-determined return on investment, based up on a construction cost/time schedule provided by the bidder. EDF will have submitted costings (for construction, O&M, fuel and waste processing) to justify the strike price offered. It's very much the same as for converting coal power stations to wood pellets, or building wind farms.

The subsidy scheme runs until 35 years from first operation, or 35 years from date of pre-agreed operation date (which ever is earlier). If the project slips past the agreed commencement date, then this eats into the duration of subsidy. The actual agreed date is confidential, and it is likely to have been padded from the publicly announced date 2025. In this way, project risk is all with NNB. If the project does turn into a failure, it'll be the French and Chinese governments paying for it.

[LongQ]

LongQ said:

Wayoftheflower said:

Absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about linking from wiki, if it tells you something you don't like, deal with it. If it's inaccurate, correct it.

But if you'd like everything directly then HERE is the 273 page report on the blackout, the conclusion of which is, well the short version is, you should read Wikipedia.

Given that there are many aspect of the SA Electricity delivery mechanisms, both physical and administrative, that seem to have been unable to withstand the storminess experienced, there is potential for a discussion about the failures (multiple failures) to last for a long time and be very inconclusive in the end. The report will, as is normal in the century, find collective responsibility and no single point(s) of blame.

It was nobody's fault - except maybe Gaia.

Here is an interesting section from the Wiki entry.


Is it accurate? Who knows. To slightly modify your suggestion above;

" from wiki, if it tells you something you don't like, change it."


From the Wiki content:

"AEMO identified software settings in the wind farms that prevented repeated restarts once voltage or frequency events occurred too often. The group of wind turbines that could accept 9 ride-throughs in 120 seconds stayed on line through much of the event before the system went black. The rather larger group of turbines that could not accept this many repeated ride-throughs dropped out, instigating the overload and shutdown of the interconnector, and hence the electricity supply. AEMO has suggested better fault ride-through capability for the wind farms. "

So what we have here, it seems, is a total system that has either

not been adequately specified in terms of control management in extreme situations; or

not been managed as specified for some reason of lack of oversight or communication; or

a total system that has been compromised by changes (which mostly seem to be adding wind and removing traditional generation) but the reduction in grid resilience has not been spotted or not been addressed at the time the storm hit.

Luckily there was no such Statewide repeat in the subsequent Dec 2016 and Feb 2017 events, though presumably the grid was (is?) still fragile. Hence the idea of leasing floating electricity generator ships from Turkey for a while while they fix things. I guess the Musk battery thing may be related to "fixing the resilience" attempts.

The Official Report seems to have some rather more nuanced phrases to consider - so I'll come back to that.

It''s interesting that the Wiki thing and the bits of the report I have read and seem commented upon don't seem to come up with much more that was discussed, albeit without the benefit of a recorded second by second event timeline, at the point of the original grid collapse.

Note also the apparent difficulty experienced in getting things restarted in a way that the entire grid could function once again (aside from the loss of connectors and the downed cables). Moral of the story is you don't want the grid to fail - but if it does you need to be sure that you can resurrect it quickly - something that can be quite tricky at times.

Edited by LongQ on Wednesday 12th July 15:52

To follow this up a little, here's the link for the report once more.

http://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/N...

The Executive Summary, which I assume is about as much as the politicians will read, can be found on pages 7 to 10 of the PDF.

Basically it says that the the problem was the result of at least 3 storm strikes on some power lines that disrupted operation of the grid in a way that the automated systems could not work around successfully with the configuration deployed. Humans would not have been about to do much about it either.

Although it appears that the wind farms were not themselves damaged by the storms the effects of the control systems implemented to connect the wind components to the local grid and the interstate connectors was a failure to contain the problem which has a series of knock-on effects over a period of about 2 minutes that took the system down.

The implication is the the nature of wind farms, absent additional technology for managing supply consistency and frequency control, was set up to fail under the circumstances that prevailed during the storm.

Put simply, despite the renewables investment and the expensive electricity costs for the consumers, the grid as designed, implemented and, presumably, quality checked and signed off was simply not robust enough for the conditions.

You have to read a little between the lines but the message is that more traditional generation in the mix would have helped both stability during the event AND the efforts to get everything back on line for the consumers.

All of this led to some changes being made to some settings at some wind generation sites and some other belt and braces efforts to gain better control and limit the spread of any future problems around the grid.

In part the Musk battery PR gig is part of the bandage activity - presumably ignored for some reason when the drive to wind was initiated.

The reports of leasing Turkish Electricity Generator ships will be another angle on the same "get the public thinking we are doing something meaningful" PR trip.

Both will cost the State and therefore the consumers significant sums (unless Tesla make a complete mess of the installation contract details.)

The report, appears to be very carefully written in order to avoid pointing any finger of blame in any direction or directions, yet to indicate the nature of the problem areas without equivocation.

Clearly the SA grid, as it has evolved under the direction of local political policy directives, was not what was required. If the technology necessary to make it more failure resistant exists then we can presumable assume there was some failure of planning, design and investment.

If parts of the required technology do not currently exist - there are some hints that that might be the case - then the decision to develop the SA grid along the lines adopted may need to be questioned. Strongly.

Hopefully these matters will be well to the fore of the minds of the UK planners and regulators as they rush to meet decarbonisation targets set by failed politicians.

It would be nice to have some evidence that that is actually the case but I don't expect to find anything to that effect in the public domain.

[Mr GrimNasty]

I can't remember if it was Paddy or Durbster, but on the climate change thread it was denied the windmills were largely the reason for one (and other outages) in S/Aus.

The final reports confirmed reliance on wind was the primary cause, not the collapsed power line - the lights would have stayed on if the windmills were one or 2 gas power stations.

Of course by then it was pointless resurrecting the argument to prove 'you' wrong.

Apart from that, from every corner of the world, we have empirical evidence that reliance on wind is expensive and degrades the grid and energy security.

No one can credibly deny that fact.

"Despite thirty years of government subsidies and hundreds of billions in direct investments in green technologies, wind power still meets just 0.46% of the earth’s energy demands. That’s next to nothing."

Less than burning wood & dung!

Why The Renewable Energy Industry Is (Mostly) A Scam:-

https://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/06...

Edited by Mr GrimNasty on Thursday 13th July 11:37

[Wayoftheflower]

Mr GrimNasty said:

The final reports confirmed reliance on wind was the primary cause, not the collapsed power line - the lights would have stayed on if the windmills were one or 2 gas power stations.

Edited by Mr GrimNasty on Thursday 13th July 11:37

I haven't had time to read the full 200page report yet, can you please provide the page you found that fact on?

[LongQ]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

With all due respect, when I also said mush the same about the SA power outage - I was labelled a charlatan with nothing more than political spin.

When was that Paddy?

The thing about the report Exec. Summary is that it seems to make a lot of effort to avoid making any one background aspect or event a scapegoat for the failure.

In context that is probably the correct way to report when considering only the events on the day as a purely technical failure and how to address it.

The root causes of the problem, at a technical level, seem to be identified. (They will only know with any certainty when all steps have been implemented and some similar weather events and catastrophic line failures have failed to produce the same level of post event problems.That, of course, may not happen for another several generations, the weather being as unpredictable as it is at its extremes.)

The underpinning policy decisions and, perhaps, the budget allocation decisions are not really discussed as far as one can see from the Exec. Summary. It's hard to see how they are not germane to the overall event but not hard to understand that they are probably well beyond the remit of the report.

For the purpose of this thread, per its title, both the technical matters and the policy development decisions (including funding of the entire grid system for resilience) would seem to be pertinent.

In particular the grid design has to have sufficient generation inertia and frequency stability available in the event of partial failures. The more variable the supply (minute by minute) the more important those stabilising interventions become. Traditional fossil plant at scale has inertia built in and controls in place for maintaining a frequency within relatively tiny operational tolerances, as required and assumed by most of the modern world's electrical equipment. Weather influenced renewable generation does not currently offer the same level of continuity at the generation source so it need to be built in somewhere else. For smaller percentages of the total generation network deployment it is not unreasonable to assume that traditional plant has the capacity and ability to take up the balancing role.

However, as more and more renewable generation is rolled out - especially if it is replacing traditional generation - the ability of the traditional plant to perform that technical regulation role is eroded. At 100%, as the politicians seem intent to pursue their dream, there would be no technical regulation unless it is built in by other means. Other means, in terms of existing technology, seems to mean some sort of flywheel (to emulate the inertia of traditional generating plant) or the new hope of battery based storage.

The challenge for either is being able to store enough energy to offer both short term supply to satisfy regular demand while a generating problem is repaired, AND the facilities needed to restart a grid system after a brown out or blackout. From my understanding neither resource would be likely to offer a service with any degree of confidence for any outage lasting more than a few minutes. In terms of costs the battery based solution has high cost and I have seen no evidence that there is any guarantee that the costs will fall to what one might term "sensible" levels in the short term. In the long term I suppose it would be possible to reset the perception of what constitutes "sensible" costs.

Network resilience deliverable as considered necessary according to the generation technology mix is a policy matter and investment cost concern that should not be separated from the cost of point of generation LCoE. If it is maybe the proposals should have a relative risk factor presented when sent of approval.

[XM5ER]

Wayoftheflower said:

FT article from January.
"Small gas and diesel-fired plants — each generating up to 20MW of electricity — have become an important part of the UK energy mix as old coal and nuclear plants shut down. Their growth has been aided by lucrative payments for generating at times of peak demand without the hefty transmission charges faced by large power stations." Article

Why excessively subsidise small producers? Which is really better for the end-user? As of several pages ago the data from Gridwatch says to me the UK already has a huge (>6GW) over capacity in peak transient generation, ten percent is idled full time and a third is turned off every night.

You've highlighted the issue that we on these threads have been talking about for many years. STOR is hugely costly and only necessary because of the dash for wind and solar, so a market distortion caused by a market distortion. Another "hidden" cost caused by "cheap" wind.