Bishop Hill A wind-up
Jan 20, 2012 Economics Energy: wind Thanks to a reader for alerting me to a new report from the Netherlands Institute for International Relations, ‘Clingendael’. The institute has a new programme looking at what it calls "the issue of the growing mismatch between long-term energy needs, climate change visions and short-term market developments".
The report covers the question of just how much conventional power capacity is required to back up wind farm installations. Here are some excerpts from the conclusions:
Wind power has a low capacity credit (in NW Europe). This means that wind power does not significantly replace other generating capacity; alternative power sources need to be in place, together with new installed wind capacity for at least 80% of installed wind capacity, to ensure that there is sufficient back-up to meet market demand at times of reduced wind power supply. Most of this will have to come from conventional power plants. If hydro capacity from Norway is available, this back-up capacity could be reduced to approximately 70%.
The effectiveness of wind power to reduce CO2 emissions is directly related to the level of CO2 prices. In today’s energy market with low CO2 prices, new installed wind power tends primarily to replace gas-fired power, resulting in limited CO2 reduction, and thus becomes an expensive and less effective way of reducing CO2 emissions.
Reader Comments (18)
Windpower gives 18% of the installed kW, on sea it seems one can obtain 22%.
Those percentages are produced randomly.
It is therefore strange that Clingendael claims that you only need 80% stand-by! You need 100% stand-by for a modern society.
As concerns the kW coming from Norway there are two questions:
1) Why only 10%? Is there not enough in Norway, or are there too many others?
2) The distance between the Netherlands and Norway is a bit too long.
Clingendael better looks into the report of the late ir Haaksema.
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to see that whoever decided to set the Y axis scaling of the inset sea level graph found on the link, has an agenda.
Give it a while and Caroline Lucas will be pushing the line that wind power is a back-up for gas, nuclear and coal.
Germany is waking up to the same thing with solar.
I'm confused by the argument that fossil fuels should not be used today because they will run out one day.
If we stop using them today then they have already "run out". What are we saving them for ?
@ Jack Hughes,
There's always straw - man.
The Clingendael report is a high-level report, written by people with little insight in technical matters. The situation with the OCGT backup is much worse than described in the conclusions. Cees Le Pair has shown that during normal operation in the Netherlands wind turbines will increase fossil fuel consumption & CO2 emission, due to inefficiencies during ramping up and down of the gas turbine installations. See (English) http://www.clepair.net/windSchiphol.html
You missed this important quote:
I agree with Albert. Current analyses of Le Pair (and Fred Udo in Ireland) show that wind trubines increase CO2 emissions.
"If we stop using them today then they have already "run out". What are we saving them for ?"
It's a raw material that is too valuable and useful just to burn.
> It's a raw material that is too valuable and useful just to burn.
What else could we use diesel fuel for?
JWR writes:
"As concerns the kW coming from Norway there are two questions:
1) Why only 10%? Is there not enough in Norway, or are there too many others?
2) The distance between the Netherlands and Norway is a bit too long."
The Nor-Ned cable connects southern Norway with north eastern Netherlands and at 600km long was the longest submarine power cable ever laid when work started in 2006 and after much delay was commisioned in 2009. It runs at 400kv. DC. Another cable, Brit-Ned, connects the UK to it and it comes ashore, I think, on the Kent side of the Thames estuary. Brit-Ned was laid 2009-10.
Energy will be a home run investment for the next decade or so. Eventually the West will either revert to hydrocarbons, nuclear or hydrocarbons manufactured with nuclear. All those massive greenie alternatives will be like the pet rocks of the 1970s. Although there is not one instance of a pet rock killing it's owner.
Wind's capacity credit is exaggerated in almost every study I know of. For example look at the Germany's wind power duration curve: There's ~15% probability that 5% total nameplate power will not be met. In winter when load peaks this will probably be a bit less, but still nothing to be relied on.
@Phillip Bratby (Jan 20, 2012 at 10:16 AM)
These are different issues, capacity and fuel (CO2-) savings.
Also I disagree with the analysis of Fred Udo. My calculations show CO2 savings around 540...560g per kWh_wind_energy for the eirgrid data, depending of the Ansatz.
@John Silver
The "useful raw material" argument is a different point - not made in this Clingendael report.
The report's angle is in section 2:
I don't buy the "useful raw material" argument anyway. Why not use oil as a fuel AND a raw material?
Who decides if me driving to the beach with my family is more useful than me buying a plastic boat for the kids ? And why can't I do both ?
Wow - who knew..??
It's clear that wind is hopelessly inappropriate as a source of dispatchable power to the grid. Those in favour talk of more intelligent control of the grid but it's the ramping up and down of conventionals which is the problem here.
If there were any use for (particularly offshore) turbines it would be to manufacture fuel (e.g.. hydrogen) on-site. However, the economics of this are even worse than straight generation due to energy loss in the manufacturing process.
Jan 20, 2012 at 8:27 AM | JWR
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Just a guess but Norway probably has a supply agreement with its Scandinavian neighbours and those probably have first call on the surplus.