Bishop Hill How to make money doing nothing
Jan 8, 2014 Energy: wind The Times has a big front-page splash on windfarms today. I haven't seen the full story, but the headline is: "Windfarms will be paid billions to switch off".
That should set the cat among the pigeons.
In related news, the Telegraph has been reporting that factories will be paid to operate at night so as to use energy from windfarms.
Bishop Hill
I've now located the underlying report that the Times has reported. Here's an excerpt:
On the basis of the NG figures, which show that 13 projects with a connected capacity of 600MW* generated £17m of constraint payments in the three months ending 30th June 2013, what total value of constraint payments can we expect from a contracted connection of 36.5GW on average five years#ahead of the system being capable of transmission? A simplistic calculation is (36,500MW/600MW) x £17m x 20 quarters = £20,700,000,000 (£20.7bn). There is not, so far, any other calculation to dispute this.
That’s TWENTY POINT SEVEN BILLION POUNDS.
Reader Comments (28)
That's one way to increase their working life. Switch them off.
"The Times has a big front-page splash" - only in Scotland I think?
Elsewhere it's business as usual: "Don’t downplay climate risk, farmers tell Paterson".
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/10553640/The-storms-are-no-different-but-we-are.html
Sorry this is a great post in the Telegraph on the current storms and I don't think has been picked up by you.
Please delete if you wish.
I have often thought that if we want to subsize landowners, why not simply pay them without requiring them to put up these huge turbine farms at vast expense and inconvenience to themselves and us?
Think of how much better it would be. No environmental damage, no inconvenience to them, lower costs for the electricity companies because they would not have to fund connections or backups and could just get on with generating real electricity, no third parties involved taking a cut of the payments.
The great thing would be that we could pay far more landowners if we cut out all the middlemen, and then we would ask for something useful in return. Like footpaths. Or maybe we would ask them to stand on their heads for five minutes in the nearest town center at least once a week. Or maybe they should have to do some community service.
Once you realise that you can achieve the goal of paying them a subsidy without having to go through all this nonsense of pretending to generate electricity, all kinds of useful and interesting services they could perform start to occur to you.
It would actually be like set-aside. We would pay them NOT to install wind farms. Then we would save a fortune, the electricity companies would save a fortune, and they would make money. Just like we all do very well by paying them not to sow wheat or produce milk.
I am wondering if the principle should be extended. Does anyone know any government agency who will pay me not to write in C++? Its something I have always wanted to stop, but I am in the grip of this strange compulsion. I am sure that a generous subsidy would help me get out of it.
Paul Matthews -
Can I just say, on behalf of farmers all over the country, that that story is about Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers Union. His views on climate change do NOT represent the majority of the members'. We are slightly embarassed that he keeps on quoting the Munich Re 'Global Warming is Coming So You'll All Need Extra Insurance' press release from a couple of years ago.
I'm working on a letter to the Times to respond to that story!
Shouldn't the costs of switching off the wind turbines be paid by the Greens? After all, they are the people who wanted them!
Charlie Flindt
Please copy the letter here when finished.
Well. I am sure that for that kind of money we could totally ban the scourge of C++ from every house, business and place of worship in the country!
And just who will be paying for this unmitigated folly?
Charlie,
Why doesn't the guy get voted out?
Regards
Mailman
I'm sure power generation used to be about efficiently providing cost-effective energy.
These days it seems to be about least efficiency and maximum cost, with a vacant nod to "pollution" reduction.
It's almost as if the power-hungry political class has noticed that energy is power and they should be the only ones to have it. The citizens should not be able to wield any power themselves, even from a socket on the wall.
Mailman (Jan 8, 2014 at 11:20 AM):
Probably for the same reason Yeo will be re-elected – because the general electorate are generally ignorant – often to the point of outrightly stupid – and will vote for whom they have always voted, as did their dad, and their granddad… you know the story.Paying people not to "damage" is nuts !
Cos, If there was proper validated science, you would simply get power producers to PAY for CO2 damage. However, in the real world since the CO2 certainty is all dramaqueening hysteria it won't stand up in court, so we pay non-polluters on the basis that they are doing good. They are not going to sue us.
- Someone should sue the government on behalf of the bill payers, as money is being taken from them on flimsy evidence.
As someone suggested at Process Engineering, why not use night time wind power to switch on street lights and improve road safety?
I'll stop short of suggesting that Scottish wind power be used to electrocute Westminster MP's sitting at night: There isn't the grid-transmission capacity.
So factories will have to work at night, and the employees will presumably be on permanent night shift when they are working to pay their expensive energy bills. Public transport will also have to run at unsocial hours to get them to and from work as cars aren't allowed in the green utopia. Do the ordinary working public realise how hard the greens intend to shaft them?
Or enough to decommission 20.7 nuclear power plants at the end of their allowed lifetime, All of which would have been producing reliable and consistent power throughout their lifetime rather than being worthless for 50% of the time
I think the cost will be far higher. When the ouput of non-despatchable generators (wind and solar) exceeds about 20% of demand, then they will have to be constrained. The higher the installed capacity, the greater the %of the time they will be constrained. The costs will rise exponentially with installed capacity.
Unfortunately it is impossible to get anyone in Government to understand (or listen).
I think the cpost will be far higher. When the ouput of non-despatchable generators (winf and solar) exceeds about 20% of demand, then they will have to be constrained. The higher the installed capacity, the greater the %of the time they will be constrained. The costs will rise exponentially with installed capacity.
I think the cpost will be far higher. When the ouput of non-despatchable generators (winf and solar) exceeds about 20% of demand, then they will have to be constrained. The higher the installed capacity, the greater the %of the time they will be constrained. The costs will rise exponentially with installed capacity.
>> It's almost as if the power-hungry political class has noticed that energy is power and they should be the only ones to have it. The citizens should not be able to wield any power themselves, even from a socket on the wall.
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:04 PM | Unregistered CommenterReg. Blank --
Correct - and energy provision is not the only part of society affected by this curious phenomenon. Its root cause is an inability to distinguish a literal description of a state of affairs from a metaphorical one. And we, the people, are expected to share in it. Ask yourself: when did you last hear anyone use the term 'mass psychosis'? It is not as if... with one bound, we all became free (in a kind of post-millennial, post-democratic, postmodern way).
This is what MP's mean when they talk about 'giving certainty to investors'. Since when have investors deserved certainty?
Quite so Billy. If I as a voter wish to save money, and want a safe haven for my hard earned, then I have the choice of various accounts, very few of which will pay me more than one percent interest, if that. If I choose a slightly riskier investment I can get a better return, but the risk rises.
If I'm a better off retired-at-55 ex public servant, with a fair bit of cash put by, I can put solar panels up and get a guaranteed return running at around 10%
If I'm a land owner or developer I can get even better rates, risk free.
It's not what I call capitalism.
In Stuart Young's report, the payments of £17m related to wind farms north of Inverness. The bottleneck in the system is at Beauly, about 10 miles to the west of Inverness. There are other such constraints, in particular at the English-Scottish Border.
These problems will increase massively, but the cost will be nothing like £20.7bn in the next five years. This assumes:-
- the planned capacity of 36GW all came on-stream on 1st January
- that the bottlenecks are endemic across the system.
To calculate the costs properly requires more research. But the bigger story is with this comment
The problems north of Inverness highlight an important, and politically explosive, aspect of the issue. The National Grid splits the 36GW of new capacity into three areas; 21GW from England & Wales; 6GW from Southern Scotland; and 11GW from Northern Scotland. The Scottish North/South divide is roughly along the Highland fault line running through Stirling and Perth. Most of the existing infrastructure south of Hadrian’s Wall, as the (coal-fired) power stations are concentrated in Yorkshire and the Midlands, with a net transfer of power South. At present Scotland can export up to 3GW of electricity southwards. Much of the upgrade will be an additional 14GW into Lancashire and Yorkshire and 11GW through Stirling and Perth.
It is unfair to overly criticize at Stuart Young. He has tried to grasp a part of the huge potential costs of current policy. By looking at a small part of the picture, Young has managed to exaggerate that component. But the totality is far worse. Working out a proper cost forecast would take a small, independent, team, on a budget of less than 0.1% of the future marginal costs of the renewables option. But such a team is unlikely to be brought into being as the conclusions would undermine Climate Change Act 2008, the judgement of the 500 MPs who voted for it, and financial underpinnings of the case for Scottish Independence. Finding the true state of affairs may be of huge net benefit to Britain, particularly the poor and future generations. But the alternative "political realities" are those that we work by.
Alternatively you could try reading the report Young says he used as the basis for his "Briefing Note". The last page forecasts costs through to 2021. They are orders of magnitude smaller than Young's estimate.
Wrow!
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZI9ePhPh_48/Toqi3JznwuI/AAAAAAAABjY/l3prrzm-fuQ/s1600/03.jpg
I checked out the link. The author says that £17m has been paid for 600Mw capacity over 3 quarters. That is PQ = 17/(600*3) £million per Mw per quarter. So 36,500 Mw over 20 quarters would cost PQ*36,500*20 = £6894m
What else is wrong?
-- Peter
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