Cost of curtailment and "turn-up"

[dan_b]

Data-viz man Robin (who has done the live wind generation map) has now done a live calculator for the cost of wind curtailment and associated gas turn-up costs. And it's a bit grim on the finance side I have to say.

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment

In short,
In 2024 curtailment and turn-up cost was a whopping £1,230,000,000 (yes, billion…)
In 2025 curtailment and turn-up so far has already cost £264,000,000.

I used to not be that bothered by curtailment and the idea of "wasted wind" as it's going to be an inevitable side-effect of having to build out significantly more peak wind than demand in order to manage low wind days. But these numbers have given me pause for thought.

What, if anything, can be done, other than the obvious "build more grid connections" and "build more storage"?

[nowty]

Octopus thinks that the annual cost will be £3.7 billion by 2030.

https://octopus.energy/blog/stop-wasting-wind-power/
"But it's not just the waste of power we're worried about. It's the knock-on effect on people's bills. By 2030, it's projected the costs of turning off the turbines will rise to a staggering £3.7billion."

[MikeNovack]

I used to not be that bothered by curtailment and the idea of "wasted wind" as it's going to be an inevitable side-effect of having to build out significantly more peak wind than demand in order to manage low wind days. But these numbers have given me pause for thought.

What, if anything, can be done, other than the obvious "build more grid connections" and "build more storage"?

It is intrinsic to power from wind that it will always be highly variable, That is because the power available in wind goes up as the CUBE of the wind speed. So one day of wind at 10 m/sec is more power than the rest of the week at 5 m/sec. Also it is very difficult to build mechanical devices efficient at more than 10:1 power ratio. If OK at the high end then overbuilt/too much friction at the low end. Effective use of wind power would require vast battery storage and/or vast overbuild with most of the power wasted.

The first experimental wind plant was more than 80 years ago on Grandpo's Knob in Vermont. It operated until 1945 when lost the blades and with the war on, not priority to repair. I am mentioning this only because this site was selected precisely because the winds there usually 40 mph. In other words, a rare ideal site because uniform wind speed. There are few spots like that.

[Joeboy]

Data-viz man Robin (who has done the live wind generation map) has now done a live calculator for the cost of wind curtailment and associated gas turn-up costs. And it's a bit grim on the finance side I have to say.

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/curtailment

In short,
In 2024 curtailment and turn-up cost was a whopping £1,230,000,000 (yes, billion…)
In 2025 curtailment and turn-up so far has already cost £264,000,000.

I used to not be that bothered by curtailment and the idea of "wasted wind" as it's going to be an inevitable side-effect of having to build out significantly more peak wind than demand in order to manage low wind days. But these numbers have given me pause for thought.

What, if anything, can be done, other than the obvious "build more grid connections" and "build more storage"?

Flexible tarrifs that can react in a timely fashion along with a similar population?

[dan_b]

Indeed, hence the point of what else can we do other than grid reinforcement/interconnectors and storage?
Do we think the entire general population will be happy to go to fully variable tariffs to incentivise/ penalise consumption?

There are loads of good wind spots in the seas - strong, laminar wind with no NIMBYs to protest their development - hence the recent growth in off-shore wind farms.

I used to not be that bothered by curtailment and the idea of "wasted wind" as it's going to be an inevitable side-effect of having to build out significantly more peak wind than demand in order to manage low wind days. But these numbers have given me pause for thought.

What, if anything, can be done, other than the obvious "build more grid connections" and "build more storage"?

It is intrinsic to power from wind that it will always be highly variable, That is because the power available in wind goes up as the CUBE of the wind speed. So one day of wind at 10 m/sec is more power than the rest of the week at 5 m/sec. Also it is very difficult to build mechanical devices efficient at more than 10:1 power ratio. If OK at the high end then overbuilt/too much friction at the low end. Effective use of wind power would require vast battery storage and/or vast overbuild with most of the power wasted.

The first experimental wind plant was more than 80 years ago on Grandpo's Knob in Vermont. It operated until 1945 when lost the blades and with the war on, not priority to repair. I am mentioning this only because this site was selected precisely because the winds there usually 40 mph. In other words, a rare ideal site because uniform wind speed. There are few spots like that.

[Joeboy]

Indeed, hence the point of what else can we do other than grid reinforcement/interconnectors and storage?
Do we think the entire general population will be happy to go to fully variable tariffs to incentivise/ penalise consumption?

There are loads of good wind spots in the seas - strong, laminar wind with no NIMBYs to protest their development - hence the recent growth in off-shore wind farms.

I used to not be that bothered by curtailment and the idea of "wasted wind" as it's going to be an inevitable side-effect of having to build out significantly more peak wind than demand in order to manage low wind days. But these numbers have given me pause for thought.

What, if anything, can be done, other than the obvious "build more grid connections" and "build more storage"?

It is intrinsic to power from wind that it will always be highly variable, That is because the power available in wind goes up as the CUBE of the wind speed. So one day of wind at 10 m/sec is more power than the rest of the week at 5 m/sec. Also it is very difficult to build mechanical devices efficient at more than 10:1 power ratio. If OK at the high end then overbuilt/too much friction at the low end. Effective use of wind power would require vast battery storage and/or vast overbuild with most of the power wasted.

The first experimental wind plant was more than 80 years ago on Grandpo's Knob in Vermont. It operated until 1945 when lost the blades and with the war on, not priority to repair. I am mentioning this only because this site was selected precisely because the winds there usually 40 mph. In other words, a rare ideal site because uniform wind speed. There are few spots like that.

I don't think that penalise should be a part of it. Incentivise only. Most folk would embrace the chance if given it i think?

[Stinsy]

I don't think that penalise should be a part of it. Incentivise only. Most folk would embrace the chance if given it i think?

Some people can only think "stick", it is just the way they're wired.

We should be seeing regular "Power Hours" but instead it is just funneling more millions-and-millions from ordinary folk to Dale Vince!

[Oliver90owner]

There is more than one reason for curtailment. The costs of curtailment payments is well exceeded by the cheaper power from renewables than burning fossils.

Two main reasons.

1) the grid was constructed backwards for off-shore wind turbine generation - “heavier duty’ conductors/contactors/pylons/transformers/voltages/etc nearer the historical fossil generating plants (mostly in the middle of the country and the for operation at what was the edges of the network. That now means that distribution is problematic and requires billions of investment to change the grid network.

2) The need to retain ‘spinning reserve’ for the unlikely (but possible) grid outages. It used to be at least 5GW but is now around 2GW - but that is 2GW that is always generated by fossils. The grid is expecting to be able to run OK without that hisorical spinning reserve during this year (forecast from about 2022).

I expect if curtailment and that spinning fossil plant “required but not actually ‘needed’) were taken into account, the percentage of available renewables would be quite a few percent higher, than recorded by the simple calculation of actual generated power.

[AE-NMidlands]

2) The need to retain ‘spinning reserve’ for the unlikely (but possible) grid outages. It used to be at least 5GW but is now around 2GW - but that is 2GW that is always generated by fossils.

apart from these things, of course: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/e ... enser.html

[smegal]

2) The need to retain ‘spinning reserve’ for the unlikely (but possible) grid outages. It used to be at least 5GW but is now around 2GW - but that is 2GW that is always generated by fossils.

apart from these things, of course: https://www.siemens-energy.com/global/e ... enser.html

And could be generated by biomass.