Bishop Hill RenewableUK get desperate
Aug 17, 2012 Energy: wind GWPF Greens Gordon Hughes' GWPF report on the costs of wind power contains the following claim:
Meeting the UK Government’s target for renewable generation in 2020 will require total wind capacity of 36 GW backed up by 13 GW of open cycle gas plants plus large complementary investments in transmission capacity – the Wind Scenario. The same electricity demand could be met from 21.5 GW of combined cycle gas plants with a capital cost of £13 billion – the Gas Scenario. Allowing for the shorter life of wind turbines, the comparative investment outlays would be about £120 billion for the Wind Scenario and a mere £13 for the Gas Scenario.
This seems clear to me. The capital cost - see the words there in the middle? -of wind energy is much higher than that of gas.
Now look at how BusinessGreen reports Hughes' work (the article is written by Maria McCaffery, the chief executive of RenewableUK (formerly the British Wind Energy Association):
Among the more absurd assertions put forward in this paper is the contention that wind energy is 10 times more expensive than gas, but his comparison is flawed. He fails to include the cost of gas itself and only includes the cost of building a gas-fired power station and the infrastructure to go with it. As most right minded people know, a gas-fired power station without any gas does not generate any electricity. Perhaps his calculations exclude the cost of gas because the costs of this fossil fuel are so difficult to predict and very volatile. The comparison is certainly not like-for-like and is very misleading.
I think we have established something about the integrity of Renewables UK.
Reader Comments (59)
Probably meant £13bn rather than £13, but who's worried about a few decimal places?
We already knew that RenewableUK [correct spelling] has no integrity.
McCaffery, as with everyone else in the renewables' industries, cannot be trusted. This is because she has implied that despite windmills costing 10 times as much, we save because the energy is free. This is not true for two reasons:
1. Including 11% disconnection by 2020, estimated by NGC to protect the grid, real average capacity factor will be ~18% meaning 82% direct gas fuel requirement for that nominal windmill capacity.
2. With no pump storage to absorb surges, including the CO2 cost of the windmills the fall in efficiency of the standby system, particularly the need for substantial open cycle plant, means the combined system will emit more CO2 than just CCGTs.
The latter is something the likes of McCaffery are desperate to keep from MPs and the public. There is clearly a conflict inside DECC because the CSO, MacKay, has reportedly warned of the need to construct massive pump storage to save any CO2 with the windmill system.
Reportedly, the Minister has refused to accept this advice possibly because instead of 10 times the capital cost, it'll be ~20 times AND the Lake District and much of Scotland will be inundated with hell to pay from environmentalists.
I'm also beginning to wonder if the refusal to accept engineering facts may be because of other factors than political face, e.g. City carbon traders apparently strongly influence the Committee for Climate Change which oversees DECC.*
*www.ipa.org.au/.../did-global-warming-send-lehman-brothers-broke
The green movement is usually made up of hysterical, alarmist nutjobs, but here they do have a point
The energy source to operate a wind turbine is free, whereas gas isn't. Sure, wind is not very reliable, hence the back-up gas generation requirement and also windmills may need more frequent renewal than a gas-powered generation plant (is that what they mean by renewables?). Both need to be built maintened and decommissioned of course.
Perhaps more relevent would be a comparison of the through the lifecycle cost projections (30 years out) at different gas price levels and also to include potential variations rare metals prices needed for windmill construction?
It's clearly a massive straw man:
The figures under debate in this instance have *never* been about the cost of energy but the cost of building the infrastructure.Has Renewable UK included the fossil fuel costs for the back-up generation in their figures for wind?
The wind generation needs the gas generation for backup, so the gas must be paid for in both cases, whereas the gas generation does not need windpower for backup. The gas needs a tenth of the cost of infrastructure compared to wind.The real problem is the vested interests. The other problem is political stupidity which can only be improved by mass lobotomies.
It occurs to cynical old me that this disparity of capital costs has pinned down exactly what is wrong with our policy, but for the wrong reasons. We go windy, and the wind industry gets a bucket of money to spend and so does the gas industry buillding backup. Everybody gets a nose in the trough. Wer go for gas and the wind people are out but the gas guys get more. Whether or not they are funded by government or privately, the more money washing about the more sticks to greedy fingers. OK, the wind people don't charge for fuel, but their mills require constant maintenance and eventual replacement, which costs they don't seem to factor in, not to mention the gas used by the standby units.
Rhoda's hypothesis is that if there were a Mr Fusion sold in domestic appliance shops and using kitchen scraps it would be in nobody's interest to push it. We really need to make this process realistically competitive, what we have now is a sham.
Sorry: correct URL http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/1438/did-global-warming-send-lehman-brothers-broke
Hang on one minute. Does this mean that I'm being ripped off by "Good Energy"? They are getting the electricity for free, then charging me for it! The dirty thieving ...
Re-reading the article I can't believe they were foolish enough to say this:
A windmill without wind does likewise and I know which I would rather rely on.Similarly:
As is the wind.Yep - he seemed to miss the fundamental point - its the CAPITAL cost. Incidentally - does the capital cost for wind include the massive additional infrastructure (pylons; cables; wayleaves; access roads; substations, etc) which (usually remote) wind farms require..?
It will also be intersting to see which - if any - wind turbines actually LAST the twenty-five year estimated 'life' - especially those in that most hostile of environments - the North Sea....
Cue a growing number of forlorn-looking towers, blades drooping, gradually rusting away on their massive concrete bases, as maintenance becomes more and more unaffordable...
The only non nuclear/non pump storage way to get the CO2 savings is to decentralise power generation to homes and businesses by fuel cells. These are >50% methane to electricity and the waste heat is kept so you don't have the ~50% loss of energy in cooling towers for CCGT.
The problem is the carbon traders who control DECC will try and stop this because their business plan is to have windmills as a monopoly power supply including heating domestic premises, with every transaction being creamed off as profit.
If the renewable energy industry had been honest at the beginning, we would not have all those wind farms.
1. Gas only.
2. Wind, with all associated costs, plus all costs of gas only to supply back-up.
How can wind AND gas emit lower CO2 than gas only? This negates the whole point of 'low carbon' energy.
How can wind AND gas be cheaper than gas only?
The stupid, it hurts.
There's an interesting paper - HC517 (WIND59) http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/writev/517/m59.htm by an apparently well-qualified engineer by the name of William Bowie looking at the economics of CCGT generation v wind + OCGT.
His contention is that as wind rarely produces more than 25% of its faceplate capacity it needs 75% backup - which due to the necessity of fast response times needs OCGT generation (CCGT can respond quickly but the heat-exchanger systems upon which their increased efficiency relies, cannot - so CCGT behaves like OCGT under these circumstances). CCGT produces 0.4 tonnes of CO2 per MWh, OCGT produces 0.6 tonnes. Thus 0.6 tonnes x 75% = 0.45 tonnes. Conclusion: Wind + OCGT backup produces more 0.05 tonnes of CO2 per MWh than continuous CCGT.
...And as the GWPF report states quite unequivocally, the capital costs of using wind are an order of magnitude greater. For anyone other than a government minister (or ZDB or other innumerate "green") it'a a no-brainer.
Pogo
Many thanks for that - I've been trying to get my hands on some figures.
If the cost of gas is volatile and hard to predict, consumption of it must also be hard to predict, since consumption is a function of its price. And if consumption is hard to predict, then so are emissions.
Foaming loonies like McCaffery can't have it both ways. You can't argue that emissions over 100 years are entirely predictable whereas an input to those emissions, energy price, isn't, over much shorter timespans.
The only rational and honest people in all this are those who make markets in carbon emissions. They don't need to believe, much less push, any of it. All they need to belive is that there's a market and an honest profit to be had.
If a government chose to pay Amazon to sell tenners for a fiver, in exchange for Amazon directorships for members of the government, that would be corrupt. It wouldn't be corrupt for you or I to buy the tenners, though.
>The energy source to operate a wind turbine is free, whereas gas isn't.
Gas costs to extract from the ground, a large amount of maintenance.. Wind ALSO costs to maintain the equipment.
The main difference is that gas has a vastly higher energy density than wind.
With all the talk about wind energy and in particular the subsidies I see no one stressing the fact that all wind generated energy, every KW, is paid for in full at the highly subsidised rate - even when it can't be used (eg night time) when the power stations are at maximum turndown. My guess is that about half is paid for to achieve zilch.
[snip]
We frequently hear from opponents of nuclear energy that the costs of decommissioning are immense. I wonder if any of the fanciful costings we hear for wind power include the costs of removing these enormous towering eyesores once they have come to the end of their undoubtedly short lifespans.
I'm betting not
Regarding William Bowie's figures that Pogo references:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/writev/517/m59.htm
Is he double counting the need for wind back up? He reduces the number of MWh that a wind turbine will get with the capacity factor (27% onshore wind, 30% offshore wind, 80% gas) which looks OK. Then he says that if you buy MWh of wind then you need to buy 75% as many MWh of gas, too. That maybe OK. But if you do that then you have bought 1.75MWh, which you can reliably consume. He compares that against the price of 1MWh of gas, when it should be the price of 1.75MWh of gas?
Am I missing something? Accountancy is not my favourite subject!
BH is a little hypocritical in criticising the BusinessGreen article.
- The article says that the report claims a 10x difference in cost, omitting the fact that the numbers refer to capital costs (or 'investment outlays', which might or might not be the same).
- But your article of 6th Aug chose to contrast the £124bn 'investment outlay' for wind with a £13bn 'capital cost' and ignored the next paragraph of the report that mentioned that gas would have a cost.
You chose to draw attention to a 10x factor and ignored the calculations later on in the report that put the ratio of lifetime costs at nearer 2:1.
BitBucket: there can be no saving in gas for a windmill system with CCGT/OCGT standby because five real-life studies of such systems have shown that taking into account the CO2 cost of the windmills, CO2 emissions rise compared with having no windmills. Indeed, the only CO2 saving is replacing coal with methane.
Even if BitBucket is correct and the cost disadvantage of wind compared to gas is only 2 to 1, moving to wind still makes no sense. The real driving force behind the unsightly and landscape despoiling wind farms remains and always will remain the baseless notion that the preponderant cause of supposedly dangerous warming is our CO2 emissions. We should never loose sight of this overarching fact.
Hughes addresses the revenue costs in the very next paragraph to the one referred to by Maria McCaffery.
"Wind farms have relatively high operating and maintenance costs but they require no fuel. Overall, the net saving in fuel, operating and maintenance costs for the Wind Scenario relative to the Gas Scenario is less than £200m per year, a poor return on an additional investment of over £110bn."
She may argue that his calculations are wrong (and she does), but her claim that 'he fails to include the cost of gas itself', is wrong.
Ted Swart: "Even if BitBucket is correct and the cost disadvantage of wind compared to gas is only 2 to 1..."
Note that the numbers are in Hughes' report (table 1, from memory) not from me.
Neither did hughes include the cost of gas that would be used under the "wind scenario" either.
If the evidence that there is little saving in CO2 with windmills (due to the back-up gas power stations running less efficiently) is generally true, then the total amount of gas consumed by either just gas or wind and gas will be very similar.
Thus the cost of gas is not important for making the comparison, only capital cost and maintenance cost are relevant.
Even on a 2:1 cost ratio, this assumes the cost of trashing the environment with windfarms is zero. The cash cost is zero but the non-cash cost is immense.
OK back of an envelope. We need 36Gwhrs. CCGT = 60% efficiency, open cycle 35% needed for 75% of the time.
Current UK gas price 2p/KWhr
CCGT cost £(36 * 2 *10exp9) / (0.6 * 10exp5) = £120million
Open cycle cost £(36*2 *.75*10exp9) / (0.35 * 10exp5) = £154 million.
[snip]
Like I say, back of an envelope. Anyone correct my maths?
Should have said the Open Cycle is used to back up windmills. So wind + backup uses more gas than a stand alone effient gas generator. Notice I assume wind averages 25% efficiency.
By the way has anyone factored in the cost of all the green jobs we said to be creating? They should be added to the cost of the windmills. And it does not look like any corresponding drop in numbers emplyed in the gas electricty generation employment.
Efficient! I reserve effi... for windmills.
How many windmills? How many coal/gas/nuclear power stations?
@JK on Aug 17, 2012 at 2:16 PM
I think that it's an "either / or"... Either the wind turbine is generating or the OCGT backup, not both at the same time, so that to produce a continuous MW for an hour you'll be consuming gas for 75% of the time. To extend your example though, if you buy 1 MWh of wind you'll get an additional 3 MWh of gas by the time the wind turbines have managed to generate it...
It doesn't quite work that way in practice (see the Young Report referenced earlier in the blog) but it's a reasonable analogy. (I theenk). :-)
One nuclear power staion occupies about the same area of land as one wind turbine (because of wind turbine separation differences). It takes about 3,000 2MW or 2,000 3MW wind turbines to produce the same amount of electricity as one nuclear power station. Hence there is 2,000 - 3,000 times as much damage to the landscape from wind turbines (whilst ignoring the fact that wind turbines are much taller, rotate occasionally and produce lots more noise). Of course the electricity from nuclear power stations is useful as it provides baseload, whereas the uncontrolled electricity from wind turbines is just a menace to the grid and to consumers.
A large nuclear power station provides 2.5 kW/m^2. A wind farm produces 1 W/m^2.
Jo Nova has an interesting article putting wind power into a global context.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/how-much-electricity-do-solar-and-wind-make-on-a-global-scale-answer-not-much/#comment-1108578
spartacus:
A powerful concept, energy density, not understood by the layman. I recall calculating that the energy density of a nuclear reactor is about 1.0E15 that of moving air (wind).
I hope you realise that by knocking back the two main 'mistakes' in climate science, the false claim that IR from the Earth's surface is S-B level for a black body in a vacuum, also that the lower atmosphere radiates as a black body [a claim made by Houghton, p 11, 3rd Ed.], so-called 'back radiation', really an experimental artefact of pyrometers, this pseudo-science is flattened!
Put in straightforward physics from spectroscopy [band inversion] and the GHE is from turning off IR emission in GHG bands, surface temperature rising to compensate for fewer convection, emission sites.
No need for the 'blanket' and the perpetual motion machine of 40% increased energy that miraculously appears in the models and which by vastly increasing evaporation over hypothetical sunlit ocean, creates the imaginary positive feedback.
spartacus/Phillip Bratby
And in (very) simple terms each nuclear power station requires one plug to connect it to the grid. Each turbine also requires one plug to connect it to the grid.
OK, I said it was a very simple analogy but given that each windfarm is spread over a wider area than a power station what sort of a power loss are we talking of between turbine and the main feed to the grid and between that feeder and the actual grid connection itself which, in the case of an installation planned for close to where I used to live, was more than 5 miles away.
It would be helpful if you could explain this to me since I don't whether I might be talking rubbish!
There's a simple solution [snip]: simply connect them [those who disagree] to the windmills, which they can use as they like (e.g. pumped storage on the roof, for windless days) and pay the subsidies, while the rest of us carry on as we used to, before ROC's and FIT's. They won't mind, because they're saving the planet, and we'll be happy, because it makes no difference...
Mike; the cost of connection of windmills is very high because it's low voltage, high current hence cables must be substantial.
@auralay (Aug 17, 2012 at 3:44 PM) Using your numbers and the two scenarios sketched out at the top to generate 21.5 GW-h of electricity,
Gas : 21.5 GW-h(electricity) @ 60% efficiency (CCGT) = 35.8 GW-h(gas)
Wind (+gas) : 36 GW-h * 25% capacity factor = 9 GW-h(e)
21.5 - 9 GW-h(e) = 12.5 GW-h(e), @ 35% efficiency (OCGT) = 35.7 GW-h(g)
So the Wind scenario uses (very) slightly less gas.
"We frequently hear from opponents of nuclear energy that the costs of decommissioning are immense. I wonder if any of the fanciful costings we hear for wind power include the costs of removing these enormous towering eyesores once they have come to the end of their undoubtedly short lifespans. I'm betting not" --Peter Wilson
I bet yes. I've read more than one windfarm lease, and they address taking the site back to the original grade, removing concrete foundations, etc., etc. I'm fairly sure if such matters are prominent in leases, they are also part of any feasibility study.
@Bill.
Hmmm. Point taken.
So on your calculation, we use essentially the same amount of gas (and so the same CO2 emissions, if that concerns you) for either senario. So the running costs are the same and we can lookat the difference in capital costs as like for like.
However-
This is assuming that wind will always make the shortfall between 21.5GW need and 12.5GW backup gas capacity. Considering the frequent times that wind produces 0% of power needs, I think this is beyond doubtfull, maybe even beyond cloud cookoo land...
auralay, your numbers are wrong. The 36GW quoted at the top is the capacity of the turbines. So if they all run at full whack for an hour you get 36GWh. In other words, you calculation is 'per-hour'. But your results, £120 and £154 per-hour, are much too big.
The quote at the top says 21.5GW is actually needed, but let's use 20GW, which is 20 million KW. If gas is 2p per KWh, then 20 million KW for an hour costs £400,000. If used for only 75% of the time the cost comes down to £300k, and at 35% and 60% efficiency we get £857k and £500k respectively.
These are per-hour prices, so for a year (*24*365) we get £7.5bn and £4.4bn. Every year, unless the price of gas changes.
@auralay "This is assuming that wind will always make the shortfall between 21.5GW need and 12.5GW backup gas capacity."
The GWPF website is currently 'unavailable', so I don't know the author's reason for choosing that much gas capacity. Note that these two are not the only power sources; if the designated OCGTs can carry the load while other CCGTs can ramp up or down, that's good enough.
"Considering the frequent times that wind produces 0% of power needs, I think this is beyond doubtfull, maybe even beyond cloud cookoo land..."
Yup. Look, e.g., at UK wind power from 8 to 10 Aug:
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html
bitbucket,
It seems you threw in an extra 75% scaling for the Gas Scenario BOTE calculation.
In the Gas Scenario the gas turbine is running 100% of the time, so you don't need to scale the £400,000 by 3/4. At 60% efficiency for a year, the total would be £5.84bn. Just to cross-check my math, the Wind Scenario fuel cost estimate for 20 million KW for a year is £400,000 * 75% / 35% times 24 * 365, which equals £7.50bn.
I'd question Bill Woods' figures where he reckons that 'the Wind scenario uses (very) slightly less gas'. Remember that the gas-fuelled generator providing backup for the turbines will be wound up and down in power as the wind varies: under these conditions of use it will rarely, if ever, be running at its highest efficiency. Consequently, it will use rather more gas than it would use if it were allowed to spin up to optimum power and stay there.
The same is already true of many of our existing coal stations. The equipment was explicitly designed to run at peak efficiency at its design load, but under modern 'marketised' conditions it, like the backup gas station, is wound up and down as the instantaneous price varies.
Whom the Gods would destroy ...
Hang on, I’m getting a bit lost here. BitBucket gives the figures 35% and 60% efficiency and Earle Williams gives the figure 60% efficiency. Where do these figures come into it? The 2p per Kwh is exactly that. The cost of producing a Kwh of electricity using gas. Where does the efficiency come into it? Am I misunderstanding something?