Lordly questions

Energy: Self-sufficiency

Question

2.52 pm [15 October 2102]

Asked by Lord Ezra

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the UK could again become self-sufficient in energy

....will [my noble friend] confirm that there will be adequate electricity supplies and generating capacity, in view of the recent report of Ofgem that stated that there might be a reduction in capacity in the next four years?

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/1210150001.htm#12101518000364

From Today's Moderator

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Three years until the lights go out

Ofgem, the UK's energy regulator, has apparently announced that the UK should expect power outages to begin in the winter of 2015-16.

Britain risks running out of energy generating capacity in the winter of 2015-16, according to the energy regulator Ofgem.

Its report predicted that the amount of spare capacity could fall from 14% now to only 4% in three years.

Ofgem said this would leave Britain relying more on imported gas, which would make price rises more likely.

The government said that its forthcoming Energy Bill would ensure that there was secure supply.

That last bit is not a joke. The government really thinks that throwing money into the wind is going to make things better. Really, I wouldn't like to be Lord Deben, Chris Huhne, Ed Davey, Gregory Barker or Lord Marland when it all goes dark.

More holes in the IPPR report

Gerard Wynn's article points out the differing views on wind intermittency of the green subsidy junkies at IPPR and those who have to deal with the problem, namely National Grid.

Regarding day-ahead variability, the [IPPR] study did not anticipate problems: "Wind power, at penetrations likely in the UK by 2020, is variable and predictable in much the same way as demand," it said.

That confidence is not matched by Britain's transmission operator, National Grid, which published a consultation earlier this year on whether to upgrade its wind power forecasting.

"The main challenge associated with wind power is its variability; wind power output is highly dependent on weather conditions and carries a high degree of uncertainty," it said.

"As the volume of wind power capacity increases, so will the effect of wind variability and hence the accuracy of the wind power forecasts will become more important for both National Grid and the industry in terms of balancing their own position."

The National Grid highlighted the problem of cut-out, for example, where high wind conditions force turbines to switch off, removing output suddenly: "These events are difficult to forecast accurately in terms of magnitude of impact and timing."

There's more on these lines in the article. Read the whole thing.

The car crash of energy policy

Gerard Wynn, writing at Reuters, tries to explain the effect that wind generation will have on electricity grids in Europe. The point he's getting at is that because wind and solar (a) have zero marginal cost and (b) are vastly subsised, they will displace gas (and coal) when they are available. That means that gas and coal have to recover their fixed costs and make their profit at times when wind and solar are not available, rather than 24/7 as previously.

The effects could be scary. No, make that terrifying:

Britain's Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has estimated that prices would have to rise to as high as 10,000 pounds ($15,700) per megawatt hour (MWh) for short periods, from an average of around 45 pounds. Prices in Britain have historically never exceeded 938 pounds per MWh.

German industry counts cost of renewables

Der Spiegel is reporting that all those wind farms in Germany are having an unfortunate effect on the stability of the electricity grid and that manufacturing industry is counting the cost.

It was 3 a.m. on a Wednesday when the machines suddenly ground to a halt at Hydro Aluminium in Hamburg. The rolling mill's highly sensitive monitor stopped production so abruptly that the aluminum belts snagged. They hit the machines and destroyed a piece of the mill. The reason: The voltage off the electricity grid weakened for just a millisecond.

Workers had to free half-finished aluminum rolls from the machines, and several hours passed before they could be restarted. The damage to the machines cost some €10,000 ($12,300).

A problem that is no doubt coming to an employer near you soon.

Parsing the report on the draft Energy Bill

The House of Lords informal working group on the draft Energy Bill has reported. I have made some excerpts from their paper, together with my take on what is meant.

[1] We understand that the Government’s long term aim is that of a competitive market for electricity but we have serious doubts that it can be reached by the mechanisms proposed in the Draft Bill.

Translation: This is a shambles.

[2]...if these proposals are implemented, the process for awarding contracts to supply electricity will, for much of the time between now and the end of the decade, be largely at ministerial discretion.

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Salmond's leap

OilPrice.com features an interview with Scotland's green-energy-obsessed First Minister, Alex Salmond. Here's an excerpt.

Oilprice.com: Scotland is famously doing very well in achieving its renewable energy goals with provisional generation statistics confirming that 2011 was a record year for renewable generation in Scotland, up 28.1 % from the previous record in 2009. Your well publicized target is 100% renewable electricity by 2020. How are you coming along with that? Is this figure really achievable?

Alex Salmond: Our Electricity Generation Policy Statement confirms that our 100% renewable electricity is technically feasible although we are not complacent and accept that it will be challenging. Delivery of the target will require around 16GW of capacity. We currently have almost 5GW operational. With a further 3.3 GW consented or operational and over 20GW in planning or scoping we are confident that the target can be delivered.

These numbers don't seem to quite stack up. Peak demand in Scotland appears to be 6GW, and an optimistic assessment of wind turbine efficiency would be 20% or so. Therefore, to meet peak demand you'd need 30GW of capacity. If Salmond is assuming that he can double the efficiency of wind farms then it's quite a leap.

The passing of the Climate Change Act?

Christopher Booker notes what appears to me to be the beginning of the end for the Climate Change Act.

[W]hat we see emerging here for the first time is an official admission that, in order to keep our lights on and our economy running, we have no alternative but to rely massively on fossil-fuel gas, which will drive a coach and horses through the Climate Change Act’s target of an 80 per cent emissions cut.

Of course, the politicians will deny this, but they can only do so on the basis of wishful thinking. They are not going to get their “carbon capture” or their 32,000 wind turbines, let alone those “hundreds of thousands of green jobs”. In all directions they are screwed. And not the least telling feature of last week’s statement was that it made no reference to the shale gas revolution which has already halved US gas prices in five years, and which could solve our own energy problems by providing cheap gas for centuries.

Of course, the fact that our energy needs will be met by shale gas and that the Climate Change Act will be tossed to the wind doesn't mean that the government will stop funding wind turbines. But there will be a growing realisation that the taxpayers' largesse is not anything to do with energy. It will be seen for what it is - a gargantuan fig-leaf behind which politicians like Ed Davey can hide their cowardice.

Levelised costs

Two quotes on levelised costs as a metric for energy generation types:

The standard measure used by many public agencies to compare the costs of generating electricity using different technologies is the levelised cost per MWh. As will be explained below, this can be a perfectly adequate measure for making comparisons in a centrally planned electricity system when the issue is whether to build nuclear, coal-fired or gas-fired plants to operate most of the time – i.e. on or close to base load. Unfortunately, this measure may be quite misleading as a basis for making cost comparisons when considering investment decisions for either (a) electricity systems that operate on the basis of market pools (such as the UK), and/or (b) technologies which are inherently intermittent, such as many forms of renewable generation (such as wind power).

Gordon Hughes - Why is wind power so expensive?

A key attraction of onshore wind over other low-carbon forms of electricity generation is cost. In terms of levelised cost onshore wind is currently the cheapest renewable technology in the UK. It could become fully competitive with older conventional sources of energy as early as 2016, according to analysts at Bloomberg.

Sam Fankhauser, LSE blog

Black and greenie

Richard Black has been chatting to some environmentalists (I kid you not) and they've told him that the government isn't as green as they said they were going to be, and there is concern that there is going to be a dash for gas.

"There are growing pressures to create a UK energy system very heavily dominated by gas," Michael Grubb, chair of energy and environment policy at Cambridge University, told BBC News.

"There's a risk that the government is trying to give the gas industry assurances that could be misleading because they are not compatible with all we know about climate change."

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