Bishop Hill Failure to deny
Oct 16, 2014 Deben Energy: grid Lord Deben and his team have issued a response to Owen Paterson's speech last night. There's plenty to take issue with. For example, readers will recall my amusement over their scientific travails over future rainfall, so it's fun to see that they are having similar problems with the temperature trends: they are touting a 0.05 degrees per decade rise as showing that surface temperatures have not stopped. Given that the error in the record appears to be considerably larger than 0.05 degrees in a single year, I think it's fair to say that the trend is indistinguishable from zero.
But perhaps of greater interest is the CCC's response to Paterson's central point, namely that we face a risk that the lights will go out. Here's what Lord D has come up with:
Claim 3: The lights will go out because of decarbonisation
There is no fundamental conflict between decarbonising and keeping the lights on. Keeping the lights on depends on having enough capacity available to meet demand at all times; decarbonisation depends on the bulk of generation coming from low-carbon sources. There are challenges relating to increased penetration of intermittent technologies on the grid, but these can be met given an appropriate response.
CCC, DECC, academia and many others have published many scenarios that decarbonise while maintaining system security. DECC have also introduced a capacity market to ensure sufficient capacity at all times – the first phase of that scheme qualified far more capacity than needed to keep the lights on (over 60GW compared to a 51GW requirement).
STATUS: Rejected. Building low-carbon capacity can help to keep the lights on, supported by capacity incentivised through the capacity market.
It's fair to say that if you flooded every valley in the country and carpeted the oceans and the remaining land with wind turbines, you might be able to generate enough renewable energy to meet demand.
But what the CCC doesn't seem to dispute is that we face a real risk of the lights going out.
Reader Comments (103)
@Raff Why do we "have to take special measures when home use peaks in TV break" Good question
1. voltage spikes : the blip of everyone switching on their kettle for a couple of mins at once is not cos we don't have enough power plants rather if that surge is not managed it will cause spikes on the network off 220V which could damage home equipment
situation 2 of just not having enough supply cos we don't have enough plants to meet demand is an entirely different matter If 100s of factories which need to run 24 hours a day to keep furnaces from damaging etc. need gigawatts of electricity then you and a few million mates sacrificing your fridge for half an hour isn't going to cut it
(someone can explain better than me )
..I do like the solution that twe should build huge connectors to the NEW coal powered plants in Germany (which are equipped with the old stuff from the closed down coal plants in the UK)
Doug Proctor (6:59 PM): I would take issue with you that Dibble and the others speak of your first three types of certainty.
1. While the numbers crunched are consistent in their results, they are not consistent with reality. The maths is suspect.
2. While they might think that they have figured things out and how they work, etc., the evidence is that there is an awful lot more that they do not know, and may not even be aware of, than there is of what they think they know. They are not being particularly smart.
3. They seem to be at odds as to what path they actually want to be on: is it carbon-reduction (whatever that might mean)? Is it reducing power usage? Is it lessening dependence on crude oil? Or is it reduction of the human population? Whichever it is of those, the intentions and goals are far, far from laudable.
The future for this country, and for much of the “western” civilization is not particularly good, taking into account the actions of politicians and their craven responses to the more rabid factions. As Philip Bratby has quoted, there is a strong possibility that “there will be civil unrest, rioting, looting and deaths.” Turning of your citizens’ fridges to save yourself paltry amounts of energy is a good way of accelerating that future.
no leccy -> "dave"'s head on a pike.
simples <<squeak>>
Jamesp:
Even a very inefficient fridge consumes less than 250 kWh/a. A typical modern one less than half that. They only operate about 25-30% of the time, and consume rather less power than 1kW - 1-200W is more like it. So being generous we can divide your figure by at least 15, maybe 40.
Albert Stienstra: "100 MW of demand management is pathetic, on a total demand of 30 - 40 GW. It will have no influence whatsoever."
So in your world if National Grid wants to engage companies that use large amounts of electricity in a scheme to shed demand when the grid is under stress, it doesn't ask those that can only shed 100MW (such as stewgreen's 60MW steel furnace) because such a small amount will have "no influence whatsoever". Presumably it approaches companies who use, what, an order of magnitude more and can shed it all at a moment's notice? Such as....?
In any case, my example was for 10% of suitable fridges after one year of sales. Add in all the other types of devices that could shed load and several years of sales and the figure multiplies up, probably to several GW. But that is probably still pathetic to you good people - if we can't shed 10GW through demand management it is not worth shedding 1GW, eh?
stewgreen, no, when many people in houses (you know the "home use of electricity" which is "nothing compared to other sectors") all turn on their kettles at once there really is not enough supply. If the grid did not take special measures, like bringing extra supply online, the grid frequency would drop and the grid could collapse. You must have heard of pumped storage being used to protect against such events. Or maybe not.
Jeremy Vine and the BBC were at it again, casting doubt on Paterson's arguments while bigging up those of the alarmists. Vine said, "The scientific community is agreed climate change is real.........Mr Paterson BELIEVES (my emphasis) that the earth's temperature has not risen in 18 years, contrary to the scientific community". They are effectively brainwashing the average listener who hasn't done any personal research.
@Raff No here is no comparison between the blip surge of even millions of kettles ..and ongoing industry.
- The end of Coronation street kettle only goes on for 2 minutes ..they are are not drawning gigawatts for hours on end .. one is a blip concern , the other other concern is a huge ongoing lack of power.
- It is the same kind of lack of appreciation for perspective that creates the confusion in the mind of the public "I don't understand why we need coal and nuclear, when we can get all the power from a few solar panels and a few dozen wind parks"
... you might as well say .. "I don't understand why we build houses with breeze blocks, why don't we use lego bricks instead ?"
1 GW is indeed still very small on a demand of 30-40 GW, only 3%. When the wind ceases to blow, 8 GW or more power input is lost. And as regards fridges; Paterson clearly does not talk about load shedding but gives energy saving as an argument for demand management. But no energy will be saved, on the contrary.
Meanwhile, over in the twitterverse, Mr. Nice Guy (aka Richard Betts) was doing his usual "find the least relevant tidbit ... and rip it from its context":
And, for the record, here's the full context of Paterson's remark [courtesy of U.K. Spectator]:
In light of the foregoing, I suppose it's possible that Mr. Nice Guy just doesn't care that the RS has failed to retract this paper.
Nonetheless, some might conclude that - using his favourite mode of communication with us plebes - Mr. Nice Guy is simply bound and determined to do his "jewel in the crown, of British science and global science" best to cast doubt on the validity of Paterson's observations. But I couldn't possibly comment ;-)
Dear Mr or Ms Raff,
you are so insistent on the subject of mains frequency controlled demand management, that I think you must have a patent on this idea. In the past I have had many discussions with would-be inventors trying to sell me impractical ideas for commercial reasons; this discussion here looks very similar.
Electricity demand management is NOT to the advantage of the UK public or the economy. It will relegate the UK to the group of third-world countries without electricity security. The only reason to push this idea, under the guise of "smart grid", is to save the current renewable energy technologies. Unfortunately, they are beyond saving.
The more advanced developing economies will continue to build fossil fueled dispatchable electricity plants. China, India and even Germany are building coal plants to ensure electric energy security. I am really surprised that the UK policy is to continue on the dead-end road of renewable energy, without any safeguards like in Germany.
Smart Meters/? Just say no
http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/
It doesn't add up
I think it was Raff who was banging on about 1kW fridges. Is his a walk-in one, perhaps..?
Martyn
>Can't we have something a little more dramatic than "the lights will go out"
I'd like to dream up a pithy phrase to the effect that civilisation will stop, but on reflection, I think that the original hints at that. Total darkness, unless you find yourself down a country lane at night in a broken-down car with a dead battery, is quite a rarity for most westerners these days, and quite scary if you find yourself in it. It doesn't take too much imagination (although possibly more than Ed Davey has) to think what an inner-city would be like with no lighting, especially if there are also no phones or means of communication...
"Keeping the lights on" is a good phrase, too.
Steady on guys, skeptics attack the arguments with the weapon of reason,
instead of attacking the arguer with the weapon of anger, shouting & namecalling
...that's the characteristic of the alarmist side
Paul Homewood has a new post Gummer’s Renewable Dream Land OCTOBER 17, 2014
Albert
+1
The measure of a country's civility used to be the reliability of its postal service. Now it is the reliability of its electricity supply.
Raff
Fridges are a particularly useless example of demand management, because:
a) they don't use much (about ten times less than your estimate of 1kW)
b) they are not even on most of the time, thanks to their thermostats.
I am returning your homework and suggest you do the sums again.. :-)
Here’s a preview of what might be in store, already operating in California as a metering option:
http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/plans/smartrate/index.page
Quote: 'PG&E will notify you the business day before a SmartDay by SMS text message, email, or the phone you provide to us, so you can use less electricity on the SmartDay, 2-7PM. It’s that simple.'
Oct 16, 2014 at 2:02 PM | retireddave
I really can't imagine Rich as a professor, a peer during my Reading days. As an aside why do they have 4 heads of department in Meteorology, does that mean nobody id actually in charge.
Hilary, Richard can't have seen the context to give the answer he did. I do read it though as him saying the paper shouldn't be retracted, though I'm obviously just reading into the statement here as quoted by you.
Lord Deben (John Gummer) writes in a way that demonstrates that he has no understanding at all as to what is going on.
Lord D has always been very sure of the 'facts' that he chooses to accept without challenge and without a clue. I really do not think he grasps that solar does not work well at night, nor that our wind turbine fleet frequently contributes a negligable amount of power to the grid, often for several weeks at a time during times of winter high pressure.
He seems to think that a solution can be found to the dissappointing performance of solar at night, and of wind power on still days.
I offer John a cunning plan. We should floodlight all solar panels and we should install fans to drive turbines in still weather. Both can be done by employing small generator sets which can be diesel fueled. Simples!!!
On a more serious note I feel that we should have a law which makes the likes of Gummer (I dont like to use the name Deben - the Deben is a lovely river), and civil servants who tell them what they want to hear, accountaable when they bahave stupidly, or as fools, for so long as they live.
When the lights go out Gummer and his like should be investigated and if it is shown that they acted stupidly, or naively, they should be stripped of all titles and honours and, where appropriate, fined or if grossly inept, jailed.
When the lights go out Gummer will have an explanation and we can be confident it will be our fault, not his or his cronies.
Weve seen a gaggle of 'useful' supporters of the faith since climategate. Tim Yeo, Muir Russell, Oxburgh come to mind. We need an honest approach, which means being prepared to consider and evaluate all the evidence from whatever side of climate argument it may come from.
If the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal wonder why UKIP has emerged as such a threat to them they have only to look to the likes of Gummer and his kind.
Personally I believe that the 'climate ' issue may fundamenatlly change politics when the cost of power rockets and the lights go out.
Fridges could be remotely switched off..?
Don't you DARE mess with my 24-year-old side-by-side Amana...
The demand due to fridges is nothing compared to several million 2 kW kettles being turned on within seconds of each other. Coronation Street has an average audience of 9.5 million viewers. Let's assume that typically 3 people in each household watch it together. So you could still have some 3 million kettles likely to be powered up - and it doesn't matter a damn if it's only for seconds, never mind minutes or hours. 6 GW of load is equivalent to 2 large power stations, and close to the capacity margins the grid is now down to. That's why pumped storage, like Dinorwig, is so important to maintaining grid stabilty. Any generator or inverter will have a continous and an intermittent (or short term) rating. The latter will vary with duration, and may not be much if the continous demand is already being supplied. Find a way to "manage" all those kettles and the grid managers might have an easier life. It's well known that the TV schedules are a vital part ot their jobs.
I think some of you need to take a reality check (although it should be termed, an unreality check). Brussels has already 'banned' (i.e. prevented the further production or sale) of high wattage vacuum cleaners, and already have hair-dryers in their sights for new legislation . No doubt this will eventually spread to ovens, hobs, microwaves, toasters, fridges, freezers and even toothbrushes, in their quest for a zero carbon utopia.
@ salopian
None of the products you name will use less energy when its power rating is reduced. Hair drying will take longer, just as cooking, baking, toasting etc. The same or more energy, the same or more CO2. There will be no utopia. Of course, people with PPE education probably cannot grasp this.
On demand management, mains-carried signals have been in use for many years in Switzerland (and maybe other countries). On a visit to Zurich back in the noughties I heard much grumbling in the office because the locals' domestic water heaters had not run overnight. Apparently the utilility company had cut them off due to a power shortage.
Secondly I fail to understand why, as part of the smart meter scheme, we cannot follow the example of France (and others). There, consumers are encouraged to move heavy loads outside peak demand periods by a - standard - split tariff system. Also water heaters are linked to the low-tariff periods, unless over-ridden manually.
They've been doing it for 20+ years and it seems a blindingly obvious way to smooth the "peakiness" of demand patterns but we have'nt got there yet.....
Clearly demand management doesn't save energy. That is not its purpose.
There are various ways to meet sudden changes in demand, but they come down to either dropping demand or raising supply. For sustained increases in demand extra supply must be brought online, but that takes time. In the interim or for short peaks, supply can be raised by
- using pumped hydro
- large batteries
- flywheels
- keeping reserve power plant spinning
- diesel generators
and demand can be reduced temporarily by:
- paying industrial users who are willing to shed load to do so
- arranging for many small devices that are willing to shed load to do so
Each of these has its advantages and disadvantages. We end up with a combination. What surprises me is that climate science "scepticism" should correlate so strongly with finding controversy here when none need exist.
On demand management, mains-carried signals have been in use for many years in Switzerland (and maybe other countries). On a visit to Zurich back in the noughties I heard much grumbling in the office because the locals' domestic water heaters had not run overnight. Apparently the utilility company had cut them off due to a power shortage.
Secondly I fail to understand why, as part of the smart meter scheme, we cannot follow the example of France (and others). There, consumers are encouraged to move heavy loads outside peak demand ...
---------------------------------------------------
Yada yada yada. You just don't get it, do you? In your ideal world, people would be rostered to have lunch between 11.00 am and 5.00 pm to avoid wasteful peaks.
Oops, sorry I said that. It might give them ideas.
So we all agree that demand management does not save energy. The point is that some rabid, lying environmentalist told Paterson that this frequency-controlled demand management DOES save energy. This is a typical Greenpeace trick; promote a lie about something - think Brent Spar - so that in the simple minds of politicians the lie is welded fast. By the time proof is provided that Greenpeace told a terrible lie nobody in policy land takes notice anymore.
The second point is that demand management by load shedding for a couple of hours does not do ANYTHING to compensate wind energy intermittence.
The best way to raise supply is to use OCGTs. Every CCGT has a gas turbine that can be ramped up very quickly. So, any CCGT that is idle can be used. When the steam cycle comes up the gas turbine can be ramped down.
"lying environmentalist told Paterson ...", yeah sure. More likely they explained to him how it works but, being a history graduate, it went clear above his head and he had no idea what it was all about. Saving energy probably came into the discussion at some point (like, if you shed load temporarily when demand spikes rather than running up a hundred diesel generators, there will be a net energy saving) and he latched onto that as the only take-away message within his comprehension.
Raff - have you looked into the emissions performance of diesel generation? Do you have any numbers?
Do you have examples of operational flywheel storage? Similar for batteries? Quantified examples preferred. Thanks.
For mikeh:
//
Economy 7 is the name of a differential tariff provided by United Kingdom electricity suppliers that uses base load generation to provide cheap off-peak electricity during the night.
Houses using the Economy 7 tariff require a special electricity meter which provides two different readings - one for electricity used during the day, priced higher, and the other for the night, priced lower. The night (off-peak) period lasts for a total of seven hours, hence the name; however it may or may not be a continuous period,[citation needed] as it may alternate between the two prices during the night.
The first mention of Economy 7 is in 1978:[1] "A new off-peak tariff known as the 'Economy 7' tariff was introduced in October [1978]. It featured a seven-hour night rate some 20 per cent cheaper than most night-time tariffs, made possible by economies in the night-time operation of the system." In more recent years the difference between day and night rates has become much larger, with typically over 50% reduction [2] (though dependent on the supplier). Choice of the Economy 7 tariff results in either or both of an increased standing (fixed) charge or increased daytime rate. (Also known as "White Meter", mainly in Scotland, with appropriately white-cased meters.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7
//
not banned yet, try looking on the Internet if you want examples. Beacon Power does flywheels. Battery storage at grid level is popping up more and more, some in prototypes, a few production (there was one brought online in Germany recently) - its response time is far quicker than any traditional system. Diesel sucks, but it will still be around for a long time yet. There's also pumped air storage, although I don't know of any operational plant, and there are other new technologies.
The point of my comment was not to compare and contrast but to explain that there are many ways to manage the grid in the face of demand spikes/changes (and I'm not talking about sustained demand increase), each with its own pros and cons. We will use them all if they make technical and economic sense - and many do.
For Bishop Hill's aged opponents of any new technology, the only means we should use seems to be to keep traditional plant spinning ready and maybe, at a pinch, pumped hydro (and I'm sure they hate that 'cos it is not coal or gas, but then the grid is already dependent upon it). There may be the odd grid engineer here and there who has grown up with fossils only (and reluctantly hydro) and can't image anything better (and hate to become out of date), but the world is changing.
@Raff
>> the world is changing <<
Yep, just like the climate. But I guess that even you would agree that it's never a bad idea to throw a decent audit or two - and maybe even a rigorous cost-benefit analysis - into your new-technology deployment planning at some stage. That strikes me as being a rather more grown up and responsible way of going about things than a blind response to baseless alarmist squeaking.
And BTW, sprog, relatively 'aged' I may be, but at least I've got the guitarist with Jungle and the percussionist/drummer with klangkarussell amongst my offspring to keep me "up wiv da Kidz", or however it is you speak at home. You seem to be confusing the BH contributors (there's a fair amount of smarts and experience amongst that lot, so it's probably unwise to come across as too sniffy) with the Victor Meldew Home for Useless Old Farts.
The article is about this "...Paterson's central point, namely that we face a risk that the lights will go out."
And now we have come down to "grid management of demand spikes".
For sure, none of the "new technologies" mentioned in the comment stream (not very new at all, really) aimed at grid management of demand spikes are going to help solve the problem of a too small margin between generation capacity and electricity demand. Demand is not the problem here; demand is well-known, for each day, week, month and season and it holds little surprises, apart from spikes. The problem Paterson was talking about is sustained lack of generation capacity, caused by wind energy intermittence. Sustained means hours, days and sometimes weeks.
Nobody should have mentioned grid management of 30 minute demand spikes to Paterson as a grid supporting technology for wind energy intermittence. Paterson’s speech was not off-the-cuff, the main points must have been discussed beforehand. The people who gave him this example must have either believed this is a good solution or they suggested it to make him look foolish.
And then, the comment stream finishes with an ad hominem. Typical of the green activists when they have no more arguments.
Audits can be good; depends upon the auditors and their intentions. Auditors that get stuck on the same subject for 15 years are of course less use than a chocolate teapot. No audit is required to see that temporarily shedding a load that can safely be shed on a spike in demand is going to be more cost effective than running up extra supply (or keeping excess supply running permanently), whatever the supply technology. Similarly it is not hard to see that improved efficiency of use is likely to be the best way to "generate" extra overall supply (i.e. "negawatts"). It is remarkable that Paterson did not include improved efficiency in his shopping list.
Shorter Raff: "No, sorry, I don't".
I gave you some pointers, go and look. You can't possibly believe that grid storage using batteries, flywheels and other tech is not happening unless you have your head stuck firmly in the sand. Or unless you just read the Bishop, Watts and the like who do their best to avoid reporting anything that could undermine their preferred dogma.
"You can't possibly believe that grid storage using batteries, flywheels and other tech is not happening unless you have your head stuck firmly in the sand"
Yes, I'm well aware of battery storage on a grid scale - the most cited example would be Fairbanks in Alaska. From memory this cost several $ million, takes up the space of a small warehouse, and can keep the town running for some 7 MINUTES - sufficient time to fire up diesel generators if the main grid link goes down. Quite how this technology would help the UK during a typical winter blocking high, lasting for a week, is not immediately obvious to me. Similarly the much talked about idea of using millions of electric cars to cover short term lack of generation capacity is also not going to be much help if the nation can't get to work the following morning.
I look favourably on CHP (as championed by Richard North) as a much better way to utilise energy, BUT it would require a complete turn around by politicians, to say nothing of the massive amount of digging up of roads and pathways to install the necessary pipes. Remember the complaints when Cable & Wireless / Virgin Media were installing their networks? Think an order of magnitude worse than that!
"No audit is required to see that temporarily shedding a load that can safely be shed on a spike in demand is going to be more cost effective than running up extra supply"
But are you taking the FULL cost into consideration? Somewhere earlier a "60MW" steel furnace was mentioned - forget shutting one of those down, even for a few minutes. And what about a hypothetical factory which shuts an hour early - the lost production has to be made up, and do the employees get sent home with less pay? Demand management has its place, but we are talking about a long term deliberate political attempt to destroy a reliable grid, and push this country down to the level of a developing nation. And all based on junk science...
Dave Ward, you are confusing its purpose. Pumped hydro cannot keep the country running for long either. Do you hold it in the same disregard? What do you suggest is the best way to manage the grid for short term fluctuations in supply/demand?
CHP is clearly sensible in theory. But it requires coordination of generation and use. Either there need to be manufacturers (or farming or other uses that need heat) that can use the heat located adjacent to the power station or there needs to be district heating (which is likely to be very expensive to retrofit). Why was it never done much in the UK? I'm sure there are both good and bad reasons, but money is likely to have been at the bottom of it.
On demand response, the cost for domestic appliances is trivial (cents once in full production). Industrial users, like the furnace mentioned (which is supposedly too small to bother with according to someone upthread), are not forced into demand shedding, they do it voluntarily because they are paid for it and, presumably, the payment is enough for them to make (or at least not lose) money. Or do you think they volunteer to shut down at a loss? It is by no means a new mechanism so why should it exercise the Bishop's disciples so much?
Raff - I'm not confusing anything. Go back and read the story, in particular this quote from the CCC's response:
"Keeping the lights on depends on having enough capacity available to meet demand at all times"
At ALL times includes during darkness (no solar output), and regular periods of no wind. There is NO storage technology capable of covering winter peak demand for one night, never mind a week. Those of us BH "disciples" you clearly despise, are not happy that a once reliable grid, with ample spare capacity is now getting close to collapse, through years of deliberate mismanagement. Another major power station breakdown and it could be relying on fleets of diesel generators - heavily subsidised (by us), and far from an efficient use of finite resources. Demand management - involving industry shutdowns - is just papering over the cracks, and whilst it might be acceptable in a developing economy, is an admission of failure in a (supposedly) "First World" society.
"Industrial users are not forced into demand shedding, they do it voluntarily because they are paid for it and, presumably, the payment is enough for them to make (or at least not lose) money"
And who provides that money??? You seem to think cost effectiveness is OK so long as someone else is paying for it. How very socialist...
The real tragedy is that, properly planned and implemented, CHP could not only have avoided this farce, but dramatically reduced fuel consumption AND CO2 emissions. As to whether the second one is actually necessary, is another matter...
Dave Ward, when I said, "you are confusing its purpose", what did you think "its" referred to? Answer: demand management. That is what I have been talking about in my posts. Demand management has gone on for many years - look an National Grid's "Balancing Services" pages if you are really interested. Its purpose is to maintain stable frequency and voltage. It is not a new idea caused by shortages of generation capacity as you seem to believe. If it wasn't for companies being prepared to drop load at a moment's notice the grid would be less stable and less efficient. And there would probably need to be even more than the 100% redundancy of conventional generators that there is now.
Who provides the money? The same people who would provide it if other means of grid stabilisation were performed, customers.
You are dismissive of socialism and then yearning for it in adjacent sentences. Priceless! Who's going to plan CHP in a non-planned economy?
Oct 17, 2014 at 2:34 PM | Unregistered Commenter Rob Burton
Well, Rob, I suppose he might have "skimmed" whatever he saw (as is his wont from time to time). But in another thread (out of the blue) for some strange reason he felt obliged to repeat his charge, declaring that Paterson's mention of this poor little snail was "merely a strawman".
And truth be told, at this point (when I know far more than I did a few days ago) ... I have to say that, well, it's worse than I thought!
If you have a chance, take a look at my comment of Oct 21, 2014 at 5:24 AM in The snail paper and let me know what you think ;-)
Demand management is Soviet-style thinking, completely wrong for a Western economy. It leads to an economic death spiral. The electricity grid is a prime economic enabler and should be managed by generation capacity only.
Upstream in the comments it is proposed to disconnect a 100MW aluminum smelter from the grid and pay the owner for his/her loss of business.
This is fundamentally wrong on two counts: first the owner of the smelter is subsidized for doing nothing and secondly the GDP is decreased by the loss of business. Instead of subsidizing the disconnection the money should have been used to install - in time! - an OCGT or CCGT generator since these can be ramped up very quickly.
Windfarms are a special case. They are normally paid when the grid cannot accept high wind energy output, so then again they are being subsidized for doing nothing. This should of course not be done. Just like any other generator plant, the grid management should take the windfarm off the grid when there is too much capacity. It is up to the windfarm owner to investigate whether it is economically feasible to store wind energy on his/her premises and offer it at a time the grid can use it.
Albert, demand management is nothing new and has no connection with Soviets. Dave Ward might like it if it had such a connection, as he seems to want elements of a planned economy that can build district heating systems in conjunction with power stations.
Your gripes about smelters going off line and losing production is questionable. You'd need to know how such smelters operate and the economics of that operation to judge. Does a 1/10/30 minute interruption make a difference to production? Is it continuous production or batch? My guess is that you know nothing of any of that, you just assume that it is bad because, well it just must be.
Of course you could be right. It might be cheaper to build some extra gas turbines and keep them in the necessary state of readiness (spinning?) year round, 24/7, for the scores of times each year when another gas turbine, coal or nuclear plant falls off the grid. The cost would get passed on to all grid users and most users would know nothing of it. Or it might be that asking customers to drop demand in such occurrences is cheaper and keeps the grid stabilised better. I will defer to National Grid on that, but I'm sure you just know the answer.
As for constraint payments, conventional plant gets constrained on/off with payment as well. Is that something that just should not be done, or is it different for them?
Raff, why do business operate 24/7? It's not because eletricity or people are cheaper at night. It's because you have to run continuously. Getting things up to a temperature where they're hot enough to be maluable is very expensive and energy consuming. Once there you have to process the whole batch or it solidifies in the wrong place. Even small drops in temperature would change the quality. This applies to things other than metals.
Imagine power glitches in the manufacture of medical products or food. How long would you like your temperature sensitive stuff waiting for the power to come back on?
TinyCO2, you too? Demand response and interruptible loads are a worldwide characteristic of electricity markets. From Texas to Singapore you'll find this sort of mechanism in place. If there was anyone on this forum who knew anything about the subject they might educate you. Then again they probably wouldn't want you educated; people who know what they are talking about are not so easily led into "battle".
Think of it this way. From free market capitalist principles, there is a service that needs providing - namely that of aiding in grid stabilisation by either providing extra generation capacity or shedding load at a moment's notice. Anyone can bid. If a company can commit to shedding load in the required response time cheaper than another can generate the equivalent extra power, they get the contract. But you and your friends say that is wrong in principle, because... its just wrong...
And yet you doubtless claim to be in favour of free markets and capitalism. You are so fixated on global warming and fighting anything that you are told is related to it that you tie yourself in knots.
Yeah, those businesses have parallel supplies, no emissions saved. What's the point? The company I used to work for had its own electricity generation capacity. It dismantled it because it couldn't compete on price with the grid. It ultimately couldn't afford the gas here either and moved to... Mobile, Texas where gas was cheap enough to run the plant and the electricity supply.