Saturday
Mar022013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill The great still
Mar 2, 2013 Energy: wind Commenters have been noting the preposterously low output of the wind fleet at the moment - currently generating about 0.4GW or a tenth of one percent of demand.
The environmentalist argument is that by use of smart grids we can import wind power generated in other parts of Europe (I think this is because the spirit of European cooperation will inspire them to offer it to us rather than using it themselves.
However, a look at the current windspeed map for Europe suggests there may be a flaw in this plan:
;)
Update on Mar 3, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Last night wind generation fell to 0.029GW.
;)
Reader Comments (133)
The green movement has this eventually covered already : when the wind doesn't blow you get cut off. Simples. Everyone is 'asked' to make sacrifices to save the planet.
And in any case stop thinking of yourselves - think of the children!!
Wind (or lack of it), has always been a problem. This commentary was from a paper about "Peak Coal".
"The first great requisite of motive power is, that it shall be wholly at our command, to be exerted when and where and in what degree we desire. The wind, for instance, as a direct motive power, is wholly inapplicable to a system of machine labour, for during a calm season the whole business of the country would be thrown out of gear.
Before the era of steam-engines; windmills were tried for draining mines; "but though they were powerful machines, they were very irregular, so that in a long tract of calm weather the mines were drowned, and all the workmen thrown idle. From this cause, the contingent expenses of these machines were very great; besides, they were only applicable in open and elevated situations."
The Coal Question: An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines, Author: William Stanley Jevons, Edition Used: London: Macmillan and Co., 1866. (Second edition, revised) First Published: 1865
http://www.eoearth.org/article/The_Coal_Question:_Opinions_of_Previous_Writers
Some comments on fuel taxation are pertinent:
"Sydney Smith described how a man in former days was taxed at every step from the cradle to the coffin. But through coals we shall be taxed in everything and at every moment.
Our food will be taxed as it crosses the ocean, as it is landed by steam upon the wharf, as it is drawn away by the locomotive, as the corn is ground and the bread mixed and kneaded and baked by steam, and the meat is boiled and roasted by the kitchen fire. The bricks and mortar, the iron joists, the timber that is carried and sawn and planed by steam, will be taxed.
The water that is pumped into our houses, and the sewage that is pumped away, and the gas that lights us in and out, will be taxed. Not an article of furniture or ornament, not a thread of our clothes, not a carriage we drive in, nor a pair of shoes we walk in, but is partly made by coal and will be taxed with it.
And most things will be taxed over and over again at each stage of manufacture. Materials will be burthened in the cost of steam-carriage, and the want of outward coal-freight—in their steam conveyance here—in the machinery that is to manufacture them—the engine to drive the machinery. At every step some tool, some substance, some operation will suffer in cost from the use of taxed coal."
Worth highlighting in the main article?
!
That coal generated 51.8%
!
"Such figures confirm theoretical arguments that regardless of the size of the wind fleet the United Kingdom will never be able to reduce its conventional generation fleet below peak load plus a margin of approximately 10%."
Er, has anyone told Dave yet that this means his brilliant plan to run the country on weknewables is well and truly fcuked?
Here's my invention: wrap wires all the way round the earth from pole to pole and hey presto! One giant dynamo!
@ Jimmy Haigh
Your proposal for turning the Earth (or should that be turning the turning Earth?) into a giant dynamo is certainly a bold one but all those wires would interfere with the wind making the output of the wind turbines even smaller. The wires would also block out some of the sun's light thereby reducing the output from solar panels.
Perhaps you could run a wind farm on the hot air generated by climate sceptic propoganda sites?
EM. you do understand what this all means, don't you? It means that wind cannot be a large proportion of the electricity supply no matter what the economics. Can you concede that or are you just going to be facetious?
"Perhaps you could run a wind farm on the hot air generated by climate sceptic propoganda sites?"
Muddle headed I'm afraid EM - "hot air" from humans ultimately comes from the energy inputs they receive and, for most of us in the developed world, that is predominantly supplied from fossil fuel inputs.
btw - re: your other thread comment - "I presume that was sarcasm. Here's your chance to demonstrate how scientific debate should be done".
Did you do any rough numbers for your "hot air" proposal to see if it could stack up to plug the gap? You know: no. of sites, no of pages, no. of views, avg. amount of "hot air" per view, distance from "propaganda viewing sceptic/believer" to windfarm, distance loss coefficients, conversion of air temp to wind velocity mechanism, additional wind speed generated, error bars... etc etc etc?
Do please share, along with your base reference case comparing your proposal to having calm, informed debate with the avoided extra fuel consumption going directly to the most efficient conversion mechanism. Looking forwards to seeing how scientific debate should be done.
Rhoda Klapp
Facetious seems to be a normal mode of communication here. Try counting the number of facetious posts on the Sir John Beddington thread, or this one.
Humour aside , I agree that under our current "business as usual" conditions, you are correct. The mistake is to assume that business as usual can continue indefinately.The long term problem is worse than most people here are willing to face. Wind power is intermittent and unreliable, but there will come a time when we have little else.
We currently burn 41 million tons of coal per year. UK coal reserves are 120million tons, thats three years of supply at our current consumption if we had to be self-sufficient. We actually mine about 5 million tons/year.
Most of what we burn is imported, 35 million tons. Half of that comes from Russia, 6% of their output.
How confident are you that Russia will continue to be a reliable supplier?
Last month they lost 18 people in a mine accident. Pro rata, that's one death to add to the price of our coal generated electricity this year.
I see nothing facetious about that.
Coal reserves
http://www.tuc.org.uk/industrial/tuc-21192-f0.cfm
The UK has plentiful coal reserves currently estimated to be at least 3.1 billion tonnes which is enough for around 60 years at current production levels.
0.029 eh? The only figure I've seen which comes anywhere near to that is Mike Mann's r2 value...
EM -
"Last month they lost 18 people in a mine accident."
Nice to see you paying attention to real world issues. Have you any data on deaths/injuries during power cuts?
Also; have you researched the h and s record of the wind industry? Have you any data per kWh delivered which you can share? Caithness Windfarm Information Forum have a paper that you might like to check - head to their front page where it is currently linked.
@entropic
'Perhaps you could run a wind farm on the hot air generated by climate sceptic propoganda sites?'
No such stuff, my increasingly chaotic and thermochallenged pal.
For all good sceptics know that the heating stopped fifteen or so years ago. It is only the alarmist sites that try to conceal this unfortunate fact with huge quantities of bluster, wind and p**s......
> We currently burn 41 million tons of coal per year. UK coal reserves are 120million tons,
Current reserves are 2344 million tonnes underground and 852 million tonnes on the surface. This gives us a bit more than 3 years supply.
> Most of what we burn is imported, 35 million tons. Half of that comes from Russia, 6% of their output.
I only have the figures for 2010. In that year we imported 26.5 million tonnes:
37% from Russia (and it was less than 4% of their output)
25% from Columbia
17% from USA
12% from Australia
USA, India, South Africa, Australia and, of course, China all produce more coal than Russia and all have substantial reserves so if Russia stops supplying coal then we can shop elsewhere.
TerryS said:
As funny as this is I fear it is an all too common a thought amongst our betters and their pet technocrats.
FarleyR
"Simples. Everyone is 'asked' to make sacrifices to save the planet." I think that should be most people since some people are more equal than others (apologies to George Orwell).
The select few would include Al Gore (I need my own power station for my Mansion and huge boat)!
And of course the likes of Jim Hansen (I fly first class but the plebians should not fly at all).
And especially the Greens and their Hollywood clowns since they are saving the planet and therefore other people do not matter, they can suffer for the planet!
@Roger Longstaff
By gosh but that verse from the song "The Good Ship Venus" brings back memories from the early 1960s here in Dublin when I was in the FCA...Forsa Cosanta Aituil...(similar to your British Territorials but not as well supplied) and it was the most popular song sung in the back of the truck when we were going off for the day on some sort of excercise.
The captain's name was Morgan etc...PW
Mar 3, 2013 at 1:05 PM | Entropic man
That was certainly an argument winner. Don't be too harsh on this site; your comments are not treated in anything like the vile manner that those of sceptics are treated with on warmist sites.
I wondered when ET would turn up? ET you did not disappoint!
I'm sure the combined output of the hot air generated on sceptic sites, Fairy f***s and the incandescent brilliance of your intellect, will solve the minor issues we are experiencing with our Wind and Solar
power contibutions.
EM, The argument that something will one day run out is a strange argument for relying on something that doesn’t work now.
We are all hoping for a new technology that produces copious amounts of power for the future. Which is most likely to deliver it? A crappy economy that runs on unreliable power or a nice healthy economy running on a limited but not imminently endangered supply? When that new technology comes along is it best have plenty of money or be broke? If you’ve put up loads of new equipment and infrastructure that the new technology doesn’t need then it’s all been a huge waste of energy and CO2. Does that make sense?
On current figures, it’s almost certain that current and near future wind farms will be retired/broken before coal shortages are likely. If we have to have them I’d rather it be when we need them.
Also, the Russians or whoever has coal can always be persuaded to part with it if you offer enough cash. However no matter how you plead or how much money you throw into the air, the wind won't be interested.
I think I can guess the answer, but what happens to sewage systems that use electric pumps if the power goes off?
How many of these are there the length and breadth of the country?
Dear Prime Minister (CC: Tim Yeo),
I have a plan. It is a little plan. We (that's you) should invest the nations's wealth in a power station I have designed. The thing is - and don't tell anyone - this is the ugliest power station you've ever seen and its mean time to failure is days, rather than years (not to mention its abysmal power factor - you do understand power factors, don't you? They did cover this at Eton, didn't they?), but I think it is the best thing you will ever do. It is so Green - actually, more a bile colour - and so designed to save the planet (Mars that is - but don't tell anyone that either).
All I need you to do is get Yeo and Deben to sign off on this and no-one need know.
Cushty...
Yours, Snotrocket (science)
Steve Jones
I should have added a sarc. tag or a smile. It was intended to be no more serious than many of the comments here. As a serial disagreer with the site's stance I get lots of rudeness and sarcasm directed my way from the dafter denizens, along with some much appreciated serious discussion from more sensible members.
You are right, though. By US standards things are done much more politely.
TerryS
The figure I gave was for UK Coal Ltd. Of that 105 million tons they reckon that about 45 million tons is economically recoverable.
Your figure for total reserves came from the Energy Minister Charls Hendry in 2011, How much of that is recoverable, I know not.Since this as much a political figure as a technical one, he probably preferred to leave out the subtleties.
http://www.ukcoal.com/why-coal/need-for-coal/world-coal-statistics
tinyCO2
I think a lot of this argument about resources is timescale related. You are thinking in decades, I'm thinking in centuries.
I'm considering cAGW, a factor which your beliefs preclude as a consderation. I also lack your faith that future technology can solve all our problems.
> How much of that is recoverable, I know not.
Reserves are coal deposits that can be extracted. You are thinking of resources which is simply coal deposits whether they are recoverable or not.
Worldwide, there are 847 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves.
Martin A wrote
"I think I can guess the answer, but what happens to sewage systems that use electric pumps if the power goes off?"
When the '87 storm hit it took down the power cables and we were without pumped sewage for nearly a week. All the village drains go to the pumping station at the end of our drive and, as we had at that time the lowest drain in the village, it backed up and came out in my front garden. Then when the power came back it all went away. The lawn was a fabulous green for two years.
No central heating. No pumped hot water. No telephones. Think of it as being like a John Wyndham story without the triffids.
JF
EM, I don’t rule out the possibility of CAGW but I do rule out serious action on CO2 until all major countries are convinced of it and as yet, none of them are. Without a strong temperature signal, there is no real concern. The UK is just playing with its eco toys thinking that we can just stick up a few windmills and carry on as before. It’s actually counter productive because it gives people the erroneous impression we are achieving something whereas the UK continues to use more and more resources. Money that should be set aside for a viable technology is being frittered on vanity projects. People who haven’t thought through the issues think that a bit of loft insulation and a twisty light bulb will cut our output significantly. Why do they do this when the 65% of homes already done haven’t shown up in the statistics?
There may come a time when people have to do without energy or at least have it rationed. At that point we will all be in it together. I don’t have any desire to go first. Will it be any consolation to future generations that the Brits suffered a few extra decades of hardship before we all had to make significant changes to society? If a decent technology doesn’t present itself and we discover we urgently need to do something about CO2 then it would be more CO2 effective to switch over to Nuclear entirely, ban personal transport and slash consumerism. One year of that would be worth far more than decades of expensive electricity. At that point, if there’s a need we can build those stupid windmills.
PS anyone who utters the ‘Britain should act as an international role model on CO2’ stinker deserves all the abuse and derision they get.
PPS Setting money aside to pay for rapid CO2 reduction could be call 'The Sunny Day Fund'.
Martin A / Julian Flood: What happens ... if the power goes off?
See my comment (6:05 PM) on this interesting thread. (Perhaps EM might note this.)
The solution is obvious.
Let the people who believe in renewable energy get exclusive priority access to wind and solar energy by taking them off the grid and hooking them up to these sources.
When the wind blows and the sun shines they can feel really teriffic about themselves. At night and when the wind stops they can have the honour and privilege of being on the front lines making the gratifying sacrifices that will so please Mother Earth - a win win situation.
In the meantime, the rest of us will benefit from all of the newly found capacity in our generating system. Everybody's happy.
Finally, a creative and useful application for Smart Meters!
EM
You seem puzzled by facetious comments. Possibly they arise because a number of people have been tearing their hair out for years in utter frustration at the sheer pig-headed determination of our government (and others) to do everything they can to spend their and our way back to the Stone Age using tens (or in fact hundreds) of billions of pounds of our hard earned money. Not only do they insist on continuing this quite unbelievable stupidity in spite of all the scientific evidence that they are wrong in every conceivable way but a worldwide industrial/media/educational/pseudo scientific/financial complex has grown up with tentacles everywhere following the money politicians have fire hosed at a problem that never existed for one second in the real world. And that complex, steeped in mendacity and rotten and corrupt at every level continually feeds back and reinforces politicians' fantasies lest the torrent of looted taxpayers' money should falter for even an instant. But I suspect that you have not even noticed.
The Opposition should propose as a good-faith demonstration that whenever the UK's collective Wind Fleet produces less than 3 GW, that the circuit breakers on the Houses of Parliament and all annexes be pulled. Let the government be first to explore the future era of the Blackout.
Has there ever been such as proposal?
Thanks for that - much as I imagined.
I think that phones (eg classic rotary dial or even 1970's/80's push button phones) will still work. Worth buying one at a car boot sale and checking that it goes.
Entropic man: Perhaps you could run a wind farm on the hot air generated by climate sceptic propoganda sites?
But that would be a huge and reliable source of energy. The fatal flaw I see is that, having such a reliable source of energy, "sceptic propoganda (sic) sites would no longer be needed and so would close. They would then have to re-open as production stopped and so on. Over time the economy would be modulated by a square wave of period ten years or so.
@Martin A
Line powered phones such as the early push-button models; (I worked on testing components for the IXT (Inexpensive Telephone) which was the first volume model in the UK; still require a functioning exchange at the other end. I'm not sure if the battery backup in modern exchanges will cope with weeks of power loss.
I remember the winter of '82 in my part of Somerset. A massive blizzard coincided with gales and a spring tide to overcome the sea wall and flood much of the town.
Police put out calls for people with 4x4 vehicles (which weren't common then) to help evacuate the old and vulnerable.
We were without power for almost three days and I had to rescue my elderly parents from their nearby all-electric bungalow and move them in.
To keep a big rambling, draughty old house even barely habitable with one open fire and a wood burner took about four hours a day chainsawing logs - which fortunately we had plenty of.
I take a lot of comfort from this memory because I'm absolutely sure that, as soon as the first general power outages occur - the entire climate movement will self-combust like one of those alien monsters at the end of a crappy sci-fi movie.
Remember how the Sun turned on the Tories after Black-Wednesday - when Kelvin MacKenzie told Major "I've got a bucket of shit on my desk, prime minister, and I'm going to pour it all over you".
That'll be nothing to the way the tabloids will turn on the entire political class when the lights go out.
The politicians will do a lightning handbrake turn and scapegoats will be needed - lots of them.
The less adroit climate bureaucrats, activists and scientists will be, metaphorically, sent to the gulags while the rest of us pay through the nose for our power until shale comes on line.
I don't know where the final versions of plans for electricity shortages are but these are links to discussion papers about how to maitain supply to certain businesses during blackouts. Some may find them interesting. They were made during the planning for H5N1.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page40550.html
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/reliability/downstream/page30313.html
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file35360.pdf
I'm considering cAGW, a factor which your beliefs preclude as a consderation. I also lack your faith that future technology can solve all our problems.
Mar 3, 2013 at 5:31 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
EM, one cannot base any industry on an unreliable energy resource. You cannot have metro, trains, airplanes?, stell or metals industry, glass or ceramic or any factory running on wind.
The grid is the most complex machine and we leave now incompetents to tamper with it.
An unreliable grid causes huge loses, even miliseconds can make machines run amok. Sorry, you do not think in centuries. You do not think even in years.
If people would use this way of thinking they would still struggle to solve the horseshit problem supposed to engulf our cities in the beggining of the previous century.
The energy generated by wind depends on the 3rd power of the wind speed, which makes it highly variable. As long as it is only noise in the background the other generators can compensate for it, but the more noise is added to the system the more problems it will cause.
It is not a random noise that compensate itself through millions of windmills, but it is synchronise over large areas.
It would be as if the molecules in your room would have the tendency to sudden gather in a corner, then suddenly to spread all over. Difficult to organise breathing with such molecules.
@entropic
You say
'I think a lot of this argument about resources is timescale related. You are thinking in decades, I'm thinking in centuries.'
I can almost hear the moral superiority oozing from your self-satisfied pores. Do you also like to consider yourself to be 'far-sighted' and 'a visionary'? These are the polite fictions used in obituaries to convey that the deceased was probably completely barking bonkers, and definitely not much in touch with day-to-day reality.
The good news is that if - despite all the indications that are coming in thick and fast - we really were to have a problem, then windmills can be installed quite quickly. There is absolutely no point in installing them now in case they are the best of a very bad series of choices we need to make by 2300. Especially when.we could probably decide to use them (or not) in 2285 without lead times being a problem.
What is far more urgent is what is going to replace the power stations that we are voluntarily closing (!!) in the next few years. Windmills are not a substitute for those.
Does anyone know if there are convenient lampposts outside the DECC premises? The name 'Mussolini' and his unhappy fate has come unprompted to my mind........
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/energy/reliability/downstream/page30313.html
Another page that includes documents about fuel shortage plans. These were prepared for the previous government but I doubt things would be much different in an electricity crisis.
My understanding was that exchanges have a backup diesel generator that could indeed keep going for weeks, in addition to the batteries. Can't remember where I got the idea. Anyone know for sure?
---------------------------------------------
Just found this after posting the above:
" With most of our line plant being underground by the 1980's gales didn't give us as much trouble as in the past, but with the big storm of September 1987 many overhead power lines were down and for several days I was keeping Ousden exchange going with a portable generator which needed refuelling every few hours. Nowadays even the small rural exchanges have an automatically starting diesel generator.
Jack Hoxley 2009 "
http://www.newmarketlhs.org.uk/telephoneexchange5.html
After '87 our local exchange got a standby generator. I don't know if it's still there (you know how things get forgotten when savings must be made).
JF
Worldwide, there are 847 billion tonnes of proven coal reserves.
Mar 3, 2013 at 6:09 PM | TerryS
If you burned that lot you would release 1,24 trillion tons of CO2. Thats four times our total release since 1750, eight times what we've released since 1975.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html
If the median IPCC prediction for cAGW is correct , that's a minimum of 4,4C warming from coal burning alone on top of what we've already started.
If cAGW is wrong you can burn what you like.
That's the bet. Our descendants collect the winnings or the forfeit.
Latimer Adler
I gave up on "moral superiority", "far sighted visionary" and all that guff years ago. I do know that humans are short term thinkers, tending to choose short term benefits, even with larger long-term costs.
Professionally or otherwise, I have studied climate, geology, evolution, astronomy, and cosmology . These have me thinking in deep time from centuries up to billions of years. I'm quite comfortable considering implications in 2300 from decisions being made now.
With times to equilibrium for CO2 induced temperature rises calculated between 100 years to 1000 years, waiting until they are overwhelmingly obvious is a little late. You are looking in the short term at transient changes, when you should be considering the final equilibrium states. By the time you can measure the latter, it will be way too late to do anything about it.
EM Is the UK planning to burn it all? I thought that there were other countries involved? Gosh!
You're stuck in the 'Brits have to make a stand' mode. Why? I don't remember being voted the conscience of the World. For many countries the UK would be the opposite of a role model. If you feel the need to mention that we're privileged, I'll agree with you and say I'd like to keep it that way. What you do is your affair. If you want to make amends I suggest you trade lives with someone less fortunate than you.
Many of those of us alive today and by progression future generations, owe our existance to the progress made using fossil fuels. If beneficiaries of that luck want to curse it then that's fine with me.
EM: "That's the bet. Our descendants collect the winnings or the forfeit."
Sorry to risk shaking you out of your comfort zone thinking in "deep time", but did you do any research on current impacts of power cuts? Have you done any research of the impacts of major economic recessions/depressions?
TinyCO2
I gave you figures based on world consumption. Bring everyone up to our consumption levels and you'll go throught that 814 billion tons of coal worlwide in 166 years.
Have you done any research of the impacts of major economic recessions/depressions?
Mar 3, 2013 at 11:39 PM | not banned yet
I've lived through several. I was in London during the "winter of discontent" when we got hit by the ropadope of miners strikes, depression and the OPEC oil crisis.
Remember the Three Day Week and the power cuts?
I am no keener to go back to those conditions than you are, but my perception of the situation is that they are going to come regardless. All our decision making can do now is to vary the tradeoff between short term protection of our lifestyle and long term damage.
Never forget that centuries ago grain was ground on wind driven machinery. It was not so useful, convenient or efficient. This is proved by the fact that the moment any better technology came along most windmills were abandoned. They were retained only in (reliably windy) areas where they were useful, or where it was too expensive to replace them.
Either way the vast majority were replaced and the glory days of wind power have passed.