Sunday
Aug122012
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Wind: a zero-sum industry
Aug 12, 2012 Energy: wind Christopher Booker has a devastating critique of the government's energy policy today. The numbers speak for themselves.
At one point last week, Britain’s 3,500 turbines were contributing 12 megawatts (MW) to the 38,000MW of electricity we were using. (The Neta website, which carries official electricity statistics, registered this as “0.0 per cent”).
It is 10 years since I first pointed out here how crazy it is to centre our energy policy on wind. It was pure wishful thinking then and is even more obviously so now, when the Government in its latest energy statement talks of providing, on average, 12,300MW of power from “renewables” by 2020.
Everything about this is delusional.
Reader Comments (66)
Mike Williams
I am not sure that I follow your argument. Are you saying that in the future the wind will blow steadily over the UK? For a few days last week the amount of electricity generated by wind would have been derisory no matter how many turbines had been built. 6,000 X 0 = 0 and 30,000 X 0 = 0. That is why wind is a useless grid power source. In the jargon of the electricity industry, wind is not dispatchable.
Mad Brown drove the country onto the rocks at full speed despite knowing the rocks were there.
Cameron has decided, having been persuaded by his mates on the land by the rocks who have all invested in canvas and rope, that to get the economy off the rocks, he will dismantle the engines and replace them with sails,,,,,,,,,,,,,
It's collective madness.
And now the nuclear men are starting to say:
"well if wind can get away with charging £145/Mwh for rubbish, then sure as hell we'll have a slice of that for delivering caviar".
Can't say I blame them. Just shows what happens when you corrupt a commodity market by subsidising one sector of that market: And governments have created this commodity market. Time was when a generator had some responsibility for delivering not just energy, but also firm capacity, frequency stabilization, var compensation and security of supply. All that's gone now, and all you need to do is shove energy onto the grid at £145/MWh a pop and stuff any concerns for the consumers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9471193/EDF-Energy-puts-price-cap-on-Hinkley-Point-nuclear-plant.html
Don't you just love Mr de Rivaz's smug smile!
Why is it that if everyone on this thread (with the possible exception of Mike Williams) seems to understand the problem, not one of our MP's (apart from Peter Lilley) does?
"flawed logic that ignores both the historical context and the fact that the future is not the past."
That's a load of horseshit, and you're the one with flawed logic..
Power output = number of turbines * amount of wind.
If amount of wind = 0, which it is fairly regularly, then you get no power so have to provide it by alternative means.
NO amount of 'outside the box' thinking can negate this fact.
Nial
Anyone have any idea what the 3500 windmills cost?
Yes, Nial - but you're overlooking the key point of Mike Williams's post. What's needed, you see, is more "investment or development". Enough of these and the wind could be made to blow all the time. Easy really. Maybe giant fans (powered by renewable energy of course) would do the trick.
It seems to me that we have a huge problem in that no significant Conservative politician is prepared to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes.
Our prime minister is fundamentally a PR man. When he decided to Greenwash the Conservative party, he made the hugely misjudged decision, as part of his project, to install a comedy wind turbine on his London house. Had he had any decent education in physics or maths, or any properly educated advisers, he would have realised that such an installation would make him look ridiculous and ill-informed. And indeed it did.
His family connections, we are told, reap a significant income from subsidies provided by relatively poor electricity consumers. It is the relatively poor consumers who, through their artificially inflated bills, fund the feed-in-tariffs from which Mr Cameron’s family connections benefit.
If you are a rising MP looking for preferment, can you imagine how difficult it must be to speak truth to power, especially when there are such conflicts and there is a truly embarrassing and revealing history.
A politically well-connected friend of mine thinks that we will have to undergo some really traumatic grid event before the political class comes to its senses. By the time we experience such an event (and he is thinking multiple fatalities), it will be too late. Even gas power stations take time to construct. I hope my friend is wrong but fear that he is right.
Mike Post:
Your analysis may well be part of the story. But have a look at my post on this thread at 8:43 PM on 12th. The DECC paper and the National Grid report to which I refer appear plausible and (particularly the latter) comprehensive. An MP who, like most people, knows little about how electricity gets to the plug might understandably be persuaded by them that all is well. And all the more so if he/she is blinded by green prejudice (probably the minority) or by fear of seeming ignorant or politically incorrect.
Mike Post; the grid event has happened in Germany where the overseeing committee warned recently that the whole system having failed 900 times in a year was on the verge of total collapse. Merkel sacked her environment minister, a 40-ish greenie lawyer.
His replacement then set out at the behest of his home town, which is into solar, to increase the solar cell investment when that is one of the big problems!**
He has now been reined in and 23 coal fired power stations are being built [I had thought it was 29]
**PV switches out at 50.2 Hz to protect the LV grid. However, it it all does it at the same time, the grid collapses. Hence they are retrofitting the whole lot with central soft shut down controls.
Robin Guenier: The points you make are good. It all contributes to part of a slow-motion train crash. I would not sleep if I were one of the people reassuring the politicians that all will be well. I note that the National Grid is optimistic about the future of CCS! But it is a statesman's job to evaluate the advice given by the advisers because it is the politicians, not the advisers, whose reputations will be shredded when it all goes wrong.
SIF: I wonder how long it is going to take Germany to construct its way out of the danger zone?
Mike Post:
Reputation shredding rather depends on what you mean by "all goes wrong". This thread is essentially about what would happen if, as is planned for the near future, our energy supply was largely dependent on wind and (as is inevitable) the wind doesn't blow. But that's not going to happen: there's no possibility that all the turbines that would be necessary can be built in time. As I said to Scottie (12th August):
Yes, it will be a mess. But my experience tells that no reputation will be shredded. That's not how it works. For example, consider the massive project for a new and comprehensive computer system for the NHS. Several people (see for example this article written 10 years ago) tried to explain why it was unlikely to succeed. They were either ignored or treated with contempt. Unsurprisingly it all went wrong, wasting about £12 bn of taxpayers' money. But no reputations (of officials or ministers) were shredded. They were barely even criticised.
Robin Guenier:
The NHS computer system failure was a catastrophe but nobody was directly hurt. Only a huge amount of money was thrown away, terrible though that was.
When the grid goes down, it will be different. Citizens will suffer.
It is important that the political leaders who are failing us are firmly associated with the fantasy energy policies which they are pursuing. Messrs. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and Yeo for starters.
My point, Mike, is that it's most unlikely that the grid will go down. Quite soon it will be obvious that it's utterly impossible to build all the wind turbines necessary to hit the target. See Booker's article here. It would mean commissioning about fifteen every day for the next four years. As Booker says, it's delusional. Sooner or later this will become obvious - even to the dimmest MPs. It's almost certainly understood now in the corridors of the DECC - although they're probably struggling to decide how to tell the Secretary of State. So, as I said, compromise - even policy reversal (e.g. keeping those old plants going and/or a massive build of gas fired units) - is inevitable. Probably quite soon.
When that happens, our political leaders will be able to bow to the greens - we terribly sorry, they'll say, we really really tried but we had no choice. And thus nobody is shredded.
Robin Guenier
We shall see. I hope you are right.
Patient Judy, @ judithcurry.com has reprinted an article on Scottish Wind Energy from oilprice.com and is getting a nice discussion, nothing you haven't blown through several times here already.
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