Bishop Hill Sturgeon cries for help
Feb 17, 2015 Energy: grid Having gone hell for leather to make wind power the centrepiece of Scottish energy policy, having fought tooth and nail to prevent new nuclear and coal-fired capacity and at best only lukewarm on gas, the Scottish National Party are now having to face the consequences of what they have done. It looks like a case of a cry for help:
Firstly, we have demands that Westminster do something about the perilous security of Scotland's electricity supply:
The First Minister has written to David Cameron urging the UK Government to review the security of Scotland's electricity supply.
Nicola Sturgeon said UK energy policy was compromising energy security north of the border and called on the Prime Minister to act.
And then, having made quite sure that an onshore oil and gas industry will not develop north of the border, it is now crying out for tax breaks for the ailing North Sea:
THE UK Government can no longer ignore calls for urgent tax changes that could spark a “resurgence” in the North Sea oil industry, Nicola Sturgeon has said.
Scotland’s First Minister claimed it was clear that “urgent fiscal stimulus” was needed to increase exploration work.
Make no mistake. Sturgeon is not a fool and neither was Alex Salmond before her. Their pursuit of wind power and their wrecking of conventional power generation north of the border was motivated by the desire to win green votes. This is the problem with having politicians in control of anything - you always run the risk of the dumb leading the blind to policy chaos.
Reader Comments (61)
Sam - yes energy policy is not devolved to Scotland, but planning is, and as the SNP (and the Labour/Liberal coalition government before it) have not been in favour of any new coal or nuclear stations none have got beyond early stage planning. An Australian company was very keen to build a new coal plant at Hunterston a couple of years ago, but sadly WWF and FoES organised a letter of objection campaign to kill it off at the local planning stage, citing the usual CO2 will kill us all bollocks. The SNP government did nothing when Ayrshire Council then rejected the planning proposal. Salmond should have called it in on grounds on security of supply and national interest but he evidently only took advice on energy policy from Richard Dixon, Lang Banks and others in the Green Blob. Meanwhile Ian Merchant was making himself very comfy on Salmond's couch in Bute House, no doubt counting the subsidies coming his way from all the totally unreliable windfarms being approved. So it will be very interesting when Longannet closes and the wind does not blow - Torness can still provide 1.2GW, and Hunterston B about 600MW? Peterhead gas is currently moth-balled, and with the recent closure of Cockenzie, there are no other significant dispatchable thermal plants. Hydro can generate 1.5MW if it has been raining heavily and the lochs are full. But in winter cold spells hydro produces very little because the precipitation falls as snow and the rivers freeze. The pumped storage at Cruachan is only 400MW and can only lasts for 12 hours. Foyers is only 300MW. The scheme proposed for Coire Ghlas above Loch Lochy (300MW for 6 days or 600MW for 3 days?) is still a very expensive pipedream.
For as long as I can remember, Scotland has been a net exporter of electricity to England, on average about 1GW. If it is windy we still will be able to export, but grid balancing and security is going to be a real challenge, and when the wind drops we will be needing to import at least 3GW to meet our peak demand of 6GW? That said, with 10-15 years to go before the first French/Chinese nuclear plants come online, the projections suggest that England won't have any surplus to export anyway - http://snag.gy/uH4Cn.jpg so we are all up the creek without a paddle. As I and others have said before, it is quite staggering that this situation has come about in a developed country so dependent on a stable electricity supply, and heads need to roll.
Gordon
Thanks for the reference. I have already seen it.
You say: "Political power without responsibility = a crisis in power supplies."
I accept completely all that you say up to this point .The sides of the equation refer to different things. The left side does refer to the SNP in energy policy. The right side refers to Westminster's responsibility.
sam
Some things I didn't understand
1. Why close Longannet when it will work on gas/biomass/ sludge ie it's co-firing not just coal.
2. Why would it have high grid charges of £40m, instead of English £4m ?
(both of which are nothing relatively anyway. ...2,400MW @£40/MWh = £100K/h = £2.4m/day turnover)
.. The thing is its right next to its customers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Fife coast industry
3. The people who should be paying high transmission charges are the windfarms cos they are hundreds of miles away abd upto the islands and Orkney etc.
- Last years news story was life extended to 2025 ..so probably negotiation politics going on.
BTW What is Scotlands real electricity use ? there seems to be no proper stats even tho there are totals for electricity use in the UK .
Theres just this BS measure "homes" ..that Scot has 2.4m and Longannet power 2m well add in gov and industry and you might need 7-10m homes worth.
As I see this Scotland is facing several energy problems in the near future, and all of them due to SNP policies:
Problem 1: Lack of Capacity
The closures of Huntaston and Thorness are not that far off. If Longannet is also closed then the only major sources of generation will be the hydros, all those magnificent windmills, and the interconnectors. On a good, windy day (of which there'll be few) they'll have enough to meet demands. But since the commonest output of wind mills is 8% of rated capacity
http://www.adamsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Assessment7.pdf
for most of the time, they'll not have enough generation north of the border.
Problem 2 and 3: Lack of Grid Inertia
Tied in with problem 1: Scotland has a declining generation inertia - not enough big, heavy rotating plant to help with stabilising grid frequency. This gives rise to two more problems:
2 Lack of Grid Frequency Stability
3 Lack of Grid System Response to protect against load or generation loss.
Actually 2 and 3 should be getting interesting now, especially in remote locations like Wick and Thurso.
You could, of course, revamp the hydro plant to make it responsive and provide reactive compensation, but they've invested so little in their hydro plant that will take time, and such operation would be a waste of the generation capacity of the hydros.
They've been warned about these problems, all caused by excessive reliance on wind generation. Moreover, the Beauly-Denny line is also going to prove to be a complete waste of money since it will do nothing to ameliorate these problems.
The solution is in their hands: build more conventional generators in Scotland and stop building windmills.
Anyway, thank you Scotland for showing us the folly of investing in wind.
Capell.
Good points, especially with regard to inertia which seems to be little understood by many commentators in talking about wind and solar PV.
The reason normally given by National Grid for curtailing wind output in Scotland is not grid capacity, but that there is too much intermittent load on the system. This is shorthand for precisely the issues of inertia, stability and response which you mention.
A power engineer of my acquaintance says that he despairs of trying to discuss power generation with politicians who very obviously have no understanding of the basics of how power is generated, balanced and distributed.
Gordon,
Have you seen the UKIP energy policy?:
http://www.ukipmeps.org/uploads/file/energy-policy-2014-f-20-09-2013.pdf
This gets my vote! I live in a constituency where my vote has never counted (c.f. the Salmond/Sturgeon bleat re disenfranchisement), so why not vote UKIP as a protest? They have the only energy policy that will actually work.
Capell
First,energy policy is not a devolved power. Then there is this:
Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN-1)
I have copied and pasted a few bits of it.
"1.5.2 In Scotland and in those areas of the REZ where Scottish Ministers have
functions, the IPC will not examine applications for nationally significant
energy infrastructure projects except as set out in paragraph 1.5.3. However,
energy policy is generally a matter reserved to UK Ministers and this NPS
may therefore be a relevant consideration in planning decisions in Scotland."
"3.3.5 The UK is choosing to largely decarbonise its power sector by adopting low
carbon sources quickly. There are likely to be advantages to the UK of
maintaining a diverse range of energy sources so that we are not overly
reliant on any one technology (avoiding dependency on a particular fuel or
technology type). This is why Government would like industry to bring
forward many new low carbon developments (renewables, nuclear and fossil
fuel generation with CCS) within the next 10 to 15 years to meet the twin
challenge of energy security and climate change as we move towards 2050."
"3.3.22 If we assume, as is prudent, that total electricity demand is unlikely to remain
at approximately current levels (and may have increased) in 202533 and that
a larger amount of generating capacity will be required to serve even the
same level of demand34 then, based on the UEP high fossil fuel and carbon
price scenario, the UK would need at least 113 GW of total electricity
generating capacity35 (compared to around 85 GW now), of which at least
59 GW would be new build. A further breakdown of this figure to illustrate the
scale of the challenge facing us in terms of new electricity generating
infrastructure provision by technology type would be as follows:
● around 33 GW of the new capacity by 2025 would need to come from
renewable sources to meet renewable energy commitments as set out in
Section 3.4;
● it would be for industry to determine the exact mix of the remaining
26 GW of required new electricity capacity, acting within the strategic
framework set by the Government;
● of these figures of 33 GW and 26 GW respectively, around 2 GW of
renewables and 8 GW of non-renewable technologies are already under
construction36. This leaves a balance of 18 GW to come from new nonrenewable
capacity; and
● the Government would like a significant proportion of this balance to be
filled by new low carbon generation and believes that, in principle, new
nuclear power should be free to contribute as much as possible towards
meeting the need for around 18 GW of new non-renewable capacity by
2025."
lapogus has been the only commenter to provide an instance where an application to build a (coal) power station was rejected by the local Council. The SNP government did not call that decision in for review. Do you know of any planning applications to build power stations in addition to that that have been made and rejected and not called in for review?
sam
Sam.
As I, and Capell, have already pointed out, this is meaningless division when SG control energy planning policy and their Energy Consents Unit (the hint is in the name) is deciding (rubber- stamping) large numbers of Section 36 wind power stations.
Well bullet point 3.3.32 number one sets out our stall for renewables. 11,000 3 MW windmills - no problem; we'll put 'em all out at sea - what could go wrong?
And then all the renewables will all be subsidised, and non-dispatchable. This will slice and dice the UK baseload nicely, but at the same time, not meet the UK needs.
And then we have the ludicrous optimism of " it would be for industry to determine the exact mix of the remaining 26 GW of required new electricity capacity". Why would any operator of a gas plant want to enter a market in which they will be required to vary load to a high degree, and may be forced to provide power when prices are low? This is what is happening in Germany. They more likely to say "Stuff this for a game of soldiers, it's easier to operate elsewhere".
Coal is disqualified since no one has come anywhere close to demonstrating a CCS system that's economic. And the won't for the foreseeable future.
Our nuclear plans are chaos. With little or no remaining nuclear generating expertise left in the country, we exploring licensing of two different types of reactor, one of which is no where near demonstrating commercial viability. Whatever happened to the idea of building AP1000s as per the Wylfa B plans?
I think SNP are worried that if they get independence then they'll be saddled with operating a grid system that's seriously bust.
Gordon,Capell,
I am simply trying to point out that the impetus for the emphasis on wind energy in Scotland and the absence of other kinds of energy generation comes from Westminster policy and the fact that there is more wind in Scotland.
It would have been useful to know from lapogus's post what were the reasons for the local Council refusing planning permission for the coal power station and whether there have been more planning applications refused. If there have not been more planning applications then it is not appropriate to blame the SNP for approving wind energy if no company wishes to build alternatives, given the UK policy.
As I said earlier, the SNP has bought the green agenda - so has Westminster. To criticise the SNP requires IMHO, in fairness also to criticise the policies that influence and guide SNP policies. Geronimo's earlier post is one that comes near to my opinion, except that I don't think in terms of stupidity and smartness - unless it is a reference to the overarching policy which to this layman seems to be not joined up.
sam
PS I think I've done here. Best wishes.
Like SNP's Sturgeon the Libdem's Huppert believes the "We can do electricity with 100% Renewables Fantasy" , but my points on his blog just lie unanswered :
Stew Green 29th Jan '15
- Julian, 1. In 2025 where are we going to get the gas for standby power stations that are normally needed to work in tandem with intermittent wind, solar and piddly straw bale power stations ?
– 2. Please show us your graphs of future UK gas consumption and imports marked with the point that UK gas imports fall to zero.
(So that we can compare it against what happens in the real world.)
– 3. If you are going to suggest that gas standby power stations are going to be replaced by magic unproven solutions like battery banks and tiny domestic fridges linked to smart meters, then please supply similar graphs of future projections.
4. Will any electricity end up coming from diesel generators ?"