The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[phumy]

alangla said:

phumy said:

Imagine pumping all that residual heat from the condensers straight back into the rivers, you`ll have the fisheries dept and the ecologists jumping up and down because all the fish and weeds will die, i think its down to volume of available water.

I get that, but take the Fiddlers Ferry/Longannet comparison - Longannet is on a riverbank, albeit at the point where the Forth starts to really widen out beyond the Kincardine Bridge (actually, did Kincardine power station have cooling towers?), so I guess the question is why wasn't Fiddlers Ferry built on a wider part of the river?

Many factors are used in siting a large power plant, even in them days, available connections (power), where will the fuel come from, how will it reach the plant, cooling water availability, NIMBY`s, Planning permissions, enviro permissions etc etc

[Condi]

dickymint said:

Either way care to discuss the content?

Not especially. We are not going to agree on it. The fact it was funded by the GWPF suggests it was written to present one side of the argument.

What I don't understand is how/why he thinks that simply increasing the energy cost is going to be publicly acceptable, or even how this is supposed to happen. Carbon is traded across the EU, no just domestically, and its not a 'tax' its a market driven pricing mechanism. Given he is suggesting a 50% or so increase in wholesale energy costs, is it hardly something any government can hide without consumers noticing, and it would also go against both Conservative and Labour policies, on either the energy market or their attitude to business. It may be that the developers have relied on optimistic numbers, or it may be they have contracts in place which are sustainable at the CFD strike (note that the report does point out the commercial details are sensitive and the author doesn't have a clue what contracts have been signed at what prices, he also makes assumptions over financing costs which could easily be wrong, given the income is guaranteed by the government, and thus are likely to be cheaper than commercial loans. Turbine manufacturers are giving guarantees on performance, insulating the operating company from lower than expected performance, and he doesn't know what guarantees have been given). His assumption over performance is almost certainly wrong, as he is using aggregated data from existing wind farms. While I dont have the data to hand, it would be sensible to assume Beatrice has shown a load factor above average; helped by its location and also the newer turbines which work well over a wider range of wind speed. The most efficient wind farms are doing 45%+ load factor, considerably above the 38-30% he uses.


Who knows, maybe he will be right and a load of people will lose a load of money. I still fail to see how any government would/could simply increase wholesale energy costs to make the CFDs look better, it is more than likely investors across several companies will end up wearing any losses. Given the huge investor appetite for CFD backed generation (excluding nuclear), there are enough people who have done the sums to assume that they cannot all be wrong.

[matchmaker]

alangla said:

Ok, this is more a "The past of Power Generation" question, but anyway. Prompted by the post above about Fiddlers Ferry, why are English thermal stations from the middle of the last century generally located inland, even if only a few miles inland and equipped with massive cooling towers, while Scottish ones, e.g. Longannet, Inverkip, Peterhead etc are located either on the coast or on river estuaries and don't have them? The only Scottish power station I can think of, apart from long-closed places like Pinkston in Glasgow, with cooling towers was Chapelcross near Annan. Just a difference in design policy between the CEGB and SSEB/Hydro Electric? Why wasn't Fiddlers Ferry built a few miles downriver & just using water from the Mersey Estuary?

Barony in Ayrshire was located inland and used cooling towers.

alangla said:

phumy said:

Imagine pumping all that residual heat from the condensers straight back into the rivers, you`ll have the fisheries dept and the ecologists jumping up and down because all the fish and weeds will die, i think its down to volume of available water.

I get that, but take the Fiddlers Ferry/Longannet comparison - Longannet is on a riverbank, albeit at the point where the Forth starts to really widen out beyond the Kincardine Bridge (actually, did Kincardine power station have cooling towers?), so I guess the question is why wasn't Fiddlers Ferry built on a wider part of the river?

Kincardine didn't have cooling towers - it used water from the Forth.

[gazapc]

dickymint said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/07/27/electr...

It's good to see that they have switched from complaining that the price of renewables offered is too expensive to that prices being offered are too cheap...

Even at the highest level, wholesale prices make up only a proportion (well below half) of overall consumer costs. So claiming bills could 'double' is disingenuous at best. If things go wrong and costs are significantly higher, then it seems bizarre to suggest overall prices would double just for a couple of wind farms (and yes, I have seen executed CFD contracts)

These are companies making multi billion £ investments. Not decisions taken lightly without proper due diligence. Companies would absorb the losses in the same way existing issues are captured by warranties or cashflow (for example, gearbox replacements at one of the earlier offshore projects).

[Condi]

BBC reports that Beatrice wind farm was opened today, coming in £100m under budget, suggesting that costs are falling faster than SSE and their investors had expected.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-49125399

[rscott]

Condi said:

dickymint said:

Either way care to discuss the content?

Not especially. We are not going to agree on it. The fact it was funded by the GWPF suggests it was written to present one side of the argument.

What I don't understand is how/why he thinks that simply increasing the energy cost is going to be publicly acceptable, or even how this is supposed to happen. Carbon is traded across the EU, no just domestically, and its not a 'tax' its a market driven pricing mechanism. Given he is suggesting a 50% or so increase in wholesale energy costs, is it hardly something any government can hide without consumers noticing, and it would also go against both Conservative and Labour policies, on either the energy market or their attitude to business. It may be that the developers have relied on optimistic numbers, or it may be they have contracts in place which are sustainable at the CFD strike (note that the report does point out the commercial details are sensitive and the author doesn't have a clue what contracts have been signed at what prices, he also makes assumptions over financing costs which could easily be wrong, given the income is guaranteed by the government, and thus are likely to be cheaper than commercial loans. Turbine manufacturers are giving guarantees on performance, insulating the operating company from lower than expected performance, and he doesn't know what guarantees have been given). His assumption over performance is almost certainly wrong, as he is using aggregated data from existing wind farms. While I dont have the data to hand, it would be sensible to assume Beatrice has shown a load factor above average; helped by its location and also the newer turbines which work well over a wider range of wind speed. The most efficient wind farms are doing 45%+ load factor, considerably above the 38-30% he uses.


Who knows, maybe he will be right and a load of people will lose a load of money. I still fail to see how any government would/could simply increase wholesale energy costs to make the CFDs look better, it is more than likely investors across several companies will end up wearing any losses. Given the huge investor appetite for CFD backed generation (excluding nuclear), there are enough people who have done the sums to assume that they cannot all be wrong.

Interesting - he managed to write a report about renewable energy costs without knowing what the commercial agreements are. Pretty impressive.

[Condi]

rscott said:

Interesting - he managed to write a report about renewable energy costs without knowing what the commercial agreements are. Pretty impressive.

The point about the Beatrice CfD and the Moray East CfD being £80 per megawatt hour different is quite interesting, but he doesnt have any information to make the assumptions and conculsions he has drawn, because the speed things are improving and advancing mean that performance and cost data from 5 years ago is so out of date it cannot be used to forecast future economics. By jumping to the conclusion that the government are going to have to manipulate the whole energy market just to ensure the round 3 CfDs are not costing overseas investors millions of pounds he just presents a piece of rubbish, rather than anything worth discussing.



PS: I'd wager a virtual pint with anyone that Turbowaffle (or indeed anyone else) doesn't constructively reply to any of the points in this post or my one further up. Instead he will totally ignore the counter-argument and post something completely different.

Edited by Condi on Monday 29th July 16:28

[Talksteer]

phumy said:

alangla said:

phumy said:

Imagine pumping all that residual heat from the condensers straight back into the rivers, you`ll have the fisheries dept and the ecologists jumping up and down because all the fish and weeds will die, i think its down to volume of available water.

I get that, but take the Fiddlers Ferry/Longannet comparison - Longannet is on a riverbank, albeit at the point where the Forth starts to really widen out beyond the Kincardine Bridge (actually, did Kincardine power station have cooling towers?), so I guess the question is why wasn't Fiddlers Ferry built on a wider part of the river?

Many factors are used in siting a large power plant, even in them days, available connections (power), where will the fuel come from, how will it reach the plant, cooling water availability, NIMBY`s, Planning permissions, enviro permissions etc etc

I think NIMBYs needed to be wealthier to be effective back when most of our old coal power plants were built.

Most of the last generation of coal plants with 500MWe units in them were built near to where the coal was hence in the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire coal fields.

Before then most plants were actually built in or near to cities and were much smaller.

[StanleyT]

phumy said:

alangla said:

phumy said:

Imagine pumping all that residual heat from the condensers straight back into the rivers, you`ll have the fisheries dept and the ecologists jumping up and down because all the fish and weeds will die, i think its down to volume of available water.

I get that, but take the Fiddlers Ferry/Longannet comparison - Longannet is on a riverbank, albeit at the point where the Forth starts to really widen out beyond the Kincardine Bridge (actually, did Kincardine power station have cooling towers?), so I guess the question is why wasn't Fiddlers Ferry built on a wider part of the river?

Many factors are used in siting a large power plant, even in them days, available connections (power), where will the fuel come from, how will it reach the plant, cooling water availability, NIMBY`s, Planning permissions, enviro permissions etc etc

And of course, Fiddlers Ferry was built where there have been hundreds of years of chemical industry (hence why the Catalyst Chemical Museum is a mere few miles away), including caustic production, tanning and in the second world war, mustard gas production (on both banks of the Mersey, company eventually became Chloride I think). So seeing as there was a rail link, coal had already been delivered in droves to previous and the rail link meant a connection to Yorkshire coalfields etc etc etc. Of course, evryone could remember what the site had been used for so why not whack a power station on, couldn't do any more harm?

You wouldn't have chosen in the 1940s / 1950s / 1960s to site Fiddlers Ferry where it was for water quality for cooling, just about the most corrosive heavy metal laden sludgy estuary in the country at the time.

Ten years ago, I was on a radiological training course, which reminds you that "nuclear power" isn't all that we get a dose from, and not all radioactivity is dose-ey. The is more alpha radiation from Thorium in the ash raft at Fiddlers Ferry than the is in "the most Hazardous building in Europe at Sellafield". Which is true as it is gamma (and neutron?) radiation in the Sellafield building.

Coal raft is the entire region between power station and river....
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Fiddler's+Ferry+...

Be interesting this time round to see how Warrington Council play the "brownfield site for housing development" giving it's history (already mooted in the local plan for redevelopment even though a couple of burners at the old lady may still have last one run on the bars).

[dickymint]

Condi said:

The point about the Beatrice CfD and the Moray East CfD being £80 per megawatt hour different is quite interesting, but he doesnt have any information to make the assumptions and conculsions he has drawn, because the speed things are improving and advancing mean that performance and cost data from 5 years ago is so out of date it cannot be used to forecast future economics. By jumping to the conclusion that the government are going to have to manipulate the whole energy market just to ensure the round 3 CfDs are not costing overseas investors millions of pounds he just presents a piece of rubbish, rather than anything worth discussing.



PS: I'd wager a virtual pint with anyone that Turbowaffle (or indeed anyone else) doesn't constructively reply to any of the points in this post or my one further up. Instead he will totally ignore the counter-argument and post something completely different.

Edited by Condi on Monday 29th July 16:28

As regards your PS you may well be right, time will tell. Personally the last time I accepted a wager in here (real money) it got welched on when suddenly the odds and terms were suddenly changed - but hey ho the Irish can't always be lucky

[turbobloke]

The people of HK believe...in free money. It's not unusual, when politicians are numpties with other people's money.

Taking a wider view, and with no copy and paste from news sites, here's a summary. Check the link.

Seeing The Invisible

• one political Party in India - maybe the world - stands for reason
• everything must be questioned
• we remain concerned that Indian politicians have been sloshing taxpayer resources into renewables...
• ...and other inefficient technology
• this in the name of “climate change” dogma
• politicians should be acting as 'the voice of reason'
• yet globally politicians are presiding over a free lunch
• they continue to feast on panic
• if an electorate is scared, it becomes easier to take their money off them

Sanjeev Sabhlok, The Times of India, 28 July 2019
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-t...

H L Mencken said:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins

The Adjustocene is an era of costly hobgoblins aka Pied Pipers.

[rscott]

turbobloke said:

The people of HK believe...in free money. It's not unusual, when politicians are numpties with other people's money.

Taking a wider view, and with no copy and paste from news sites, here's a summary. Check the link.

Seeing The Invisible

• one political Party in India - maybe the world - stands for reason
• everything must be questioned
• we remain concerned that Indian politicians have been sloshing taxpayer resources into renewables...
• ...and other inefficient technology
• this in the name of “climate change” dogma
• politicians should be acting as 'the voice of reason'
• yet globally politicians are presiding over a free lunch
• they continue to feast on panic
• if an electorate is scared, it becomes easier to take their money off them

Sanjeev Sabhlok, The Times of India, 28 July 2019
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/seeing-t...

H L Mencken said:

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by an endless series of hobgoblins

The Adjustocene is an era of costly hobgoblins aka Pied Pipers.

No response to the comments on your last post then. Just more waffle from you.

[BigMon]

What does that have to do with the thread title?

There is far too much irrelevant noise on this thread which drowns out the interesting content posted by those who work within the industry.

Two other threads are available for climate change related material. It really is about time the mods clamped down here.

[Evanivitch]

turbobloke said:

The people of HK believe...in free money. It's not unusual, when politicians are numpties with other people's money.

And yet the link shows that EV sales continued to grow after Tesla sales dropped.

[Gadgetmac]

BigMon said:

What does that have to do with the thread title?

There is far too much irrelevant noise on this thread which drowns out the interesting content posted by those who work within the industry.

Two other threads are available for climate change related material. It really is about time the mods clamped down here.

This has been said many times before but he likes to pollute all of the climate threads with his libertarian-inspired climate denial agenda. The mods will never do anything about it I’m afraid.

[turbobloke]

Two additional news items of relevance to the thread.

The federal government is “frightening” the population with the debate about climate action measures such as higher prices for fossil car fuels and domestic flights
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/federal-gover...

H L Mencken said:

The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins

Check

The New Gas Revolution That Could Make Renewable Energy Obsolete
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31...
A process that generates low-cost electricity from fossil fuels while producing near-zero air emissions will do just that.

Mate

[StanleyT]

turbobloke said:

Two additional news items of relevance to the thread.

The federal government is “frightening” the population with the debate about climate action measures such as higher prices for fossil car fuels and domestic flights
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/federal-gover...

H L Mencken said:

The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins

Check

The New Gas Revolution That Could Make Renewable Energy Obsolete
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31...
A process that generates low-cost electricity from fossil fuels while producing near-zero air emissions will do just that.

Mate

The CO2 cycle has been around a while but more in chemical industries. CO2 at high T and P has some very useful, and very interesting projects!

Somewhere though, don't they have to create the oxygen as a feed, that isn't cheap always? (And had its own "carbon footprint").

Mind you, having a battle with our own works envirofundamentalist at the moment as I have a test rig discharging 100 tonnes CO2 into the atmosphere. This is very bad. It kills bunnies over an area the size of Wales. (No concern though for our process operators, 100 miles from Wales?). I have repeated to the works envirofundamentalist that is it "recycled CO2" - i.e. Air Liquide gave it to us, from the atmosphere in the first place, not combustion CO2.

Apparently, we now have to account for the cost of Air Liquide's separation step in our "Carbon Footprint", even though as far as discussions with suppliers go, they also account for it anyhow! (Aside I always though Carbon Footprint was what you got when your overshoe fell off whilst working on an AGR Graphite reactor).

I did ask the works envirofundamentalist, if he kept his mouth shut, could we offset some of the test rig CO2 vs. her breathing? I suspect a disciplinary heading my way next week......

[jshell]

It has been about gas for a very long time. That's why Shell and others have been shifting over to gas from oil, mostly. They're not daft!

[rscott]

turbobloke said:

Two additional news items of relevance to the thread.

The federal government is “frightening” the population with the debate about climate action measures such as higher prices for fossil car fuels and domestic flights
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/federal-gover...

H L Mencken said:

The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins

Check

The New Gas Revolution That Could Make Renewable Energy Obsolete
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31...
A process that generates low-cost electricity from fossil fuels while producing near-zero air emissions will do just that.

Mate

Yet another flying visit to dump your stuff here then.

You obviously aren't bothered about actually discussing anything, given your complete failure to respond to comments on your other posts.

[turbobloke]

rscott said:

turbobloke said:

Two additional news items of relevance to the thread.

The federal government is “frightening” the population with the debate about climate action measures such as higher prices for fossil car fuels and domestic flights
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/federal-gover...

H L Mencken said:

The aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins

Check

The New Gas Revolution That Could Make Renewable Energy Obsolete
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/07/31...
A process that generates low-cost electricity from fossil fuels while producing near-zero air emissions will do just that.

Mate

Yet another flying visit to dump your stuff here then.

You obviously aren't bothered about actually discussing anything, given your complete failure to respond to comments on your other posts.

You obviously don't know anything worthwhile about thread contributors...in any case did I miss something worth replying to? It's easily done with all the pointless, off-topic, desperate, nothing-else-to-offer ad hom content (as above) from you and a few others who can't cope very well with either evidence or viewpoints that aren't glossing over the ridiculous cost and obvious inadequacy of renewables.

Meanwhile back on-topic - given that energy is a major factor in the cost -get this under-estimate of the cost of USA Democrat AOC's so-called Green New Deal.

AOC's Green New Deal would cost $70K-plus per household in first year says Study.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/30/a...

Apparently the GND goes way beyond swapping fossil fuel energy for renewable energy by including state-sponsored jobs, universal health care and an increased minimum wage (etc etc) making cost estimates inevitably lower-bounds while confirming beyond doubt that the aim is not saving a planet with reduced emissions and healthy fluffy bunnies but a transparent socialist wet dream at the expense of a nightmare for the taxpayer.

That's the thing with the current daft fad for daft energy policies, sci-tech is fascinating but it's all sixth-form politics.