Wasted wind power

[resybaby]

Basic item on the BBC for 'wind newbies' like me re lack of transmission lines affecting uptake of wind power potential in the UK.
Smaller turbines but placed more locally to end users maybe?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082

[Stinsy]

Or wind turbines placed close to existing grid infrastructure?

[Ken]

When RE type organisations need publicity they trott out this. There are loads of money being payed to operators on the grid to ensure nearly 100% reliability. The organisations paying for the new grid infrastucture are not going to pay billions £ in advance of the new supply but aim to complete at some point closer to the time that its needed. This happened with the west coast HVDC undersea cable. I doubt the millions£ they talk about for constraint payments would even pay the interest on idle infrastructure. Nothing is black and white.

[dan_b]

Small turbines close to urban areas don't work - the turbines aren't tall enough to get consistent wind speeds, and they're too close to the gubbins we build near the ground (like houses) which creates turbulence.

And then people don't like to see wind turbines not working properly/ at all, so you get nimbyism and the narrative of unreliable renewables continues.

Wind turbines work best when they're very tall (the higher they are, the more access to faster, consistent laminar wind, and the bigger they are the more swept area they can access, both of which means higher power output) and a long way away from anything else (which means less turbulence). Like 50miles off shore. Which means you need transmission capacity.

[Swwils]

Even in favourable locations they don't co locate them for whatever reason.

[Oliver90owner]

There is never any mention of what it would have cost customers, if the used wind power had not been available.

[John_S]

In this thread
https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/view ... 238#p41238

there was an informative report on the carbon intensity of the grid both in various European countries and the UK.

I had not appreciated the difference between the European grid and the UK grid. The european grid is one huge synchronous interconnected grid running from Portugal in the west right the way across Europe to Poland or further in the east. The UK grid is an island with only DC connectors to the European grid. Thus the UK has to be self reliant on maintaining grid inertia.

At its most basic, generators are either synchronous where the set the grid frequency and maintain inertia usually with huge flywheels, or asynchronous where they follow the grid frequency. Renewable energy is mostly asynchronous. There has been much debate about the amount of renewable/asynchronous generation with accepted amount increasing over time from below 20% to 50% and higher. The report states that the maximum was 68% in 2023 compared with up to 80% in Spain and Germany thanks to the stability provided by the European grid. Scotland, when it claims that renewables provide 100% generation, conveniently forgets that the rest of the UK is providing it with grid stability.

I appreciate that the grid operators are working on how to allow more asynchronous generation but there will be a practical upper limit below 100%. Also that batteries and boxes of electronics can provide synchronous power from DC generation but we all know that electronics can go up in puffs of smoke.

The UK's pipeline of wind generation is now almost 100GW https://www.renewableuk.com/news/643056 ... ast%20year.

Given our maximum demand is currently ~45GW, I have often wondered if anyone has told the wind farm operators that there is almost certainly going to be a lot of curtailment in the future.

[dan_b]

aah but "green hydrogen" with all that "spare" renewable energy .......

[Mart]

aah but "green hydrogen" with all that "spare" renewable energy .......

Brilliant mate. Maybe we should start a 'free the Milton one' campaign, and get those Nikola One's rolling (downhill) again.