Dogger Bank's giant turbines herald a wind of change in UK industry
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Strike prices are a form of option or insurance which guarantees income for the producer over the long term regardless of market prices. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-dif...
By comparison, when Hinckley Point C is finished, it will have a strike price of £92.50. And the solar panels I have on my roof are paying me 14p/kWH in subsides because they were build under the old regime.
You can even buy them (https://www.northseafossils.com/). A mammoth molar is a few hundred $. Prices go up for rarer parts ($19,999 for a largely complete skull, for example https://www.northseafossils.com/component/jshopping/product/...)
it does seem that maintenance on the bigger ones is more complicated and requires more sophisticated gear ,not to mention difficulties of operating in North Sea
So instead of having to maintain 10 1.4MW turbines, you only need to maintain 1 14MW turbine.
edit: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-w...
That is 3.6MWh per hour.
As we have 3600 seconds per hour, it’s 1kWh per second.
Say rotation is one per second, it’s 1 kWh per rotation for a 3.6MW generator.
A few kilowatthours per day for an average home?
In the press, at least, it seems that the UK is consolidating on wind as the 'green solution', when it's clear the UK needs a much more mixed solution.
Doggerland is interesting purely for the bones and artefacts that are dredged up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discovery_and_inves...).
It's a shame the article didn't mention anything about that.
This paper is a bit dated, but explains well some of the concerns: http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limi...
Take a look at the actual time when wind power contributed little or nothing. It's mostly night hours between 23:00 and 5:00.
Contrary to conventional power sources, wind power can be regulated basically "on-the-spot" by turning turbines on and off.
Living next to a small on-shore wind farm, I can tell you from first hand observation that most of the time turbines are turned off deliberately, because production simply exceeds demand.
A chart like the one you've linked to doesn't tell the whole story and can be very misleading indeed. You'd need to plot the actual load on the grid versus production to get a better picture.
you could just disengage the dynamo..
Keep in mind that the rotors and mechanical parts are subject to wear and tear.
A rotor that's feathered experiences less mechanical stress and thus lasts longer. Same goes for any other moving parts.
It's a measure to increase the lifetime and reduce the risk of fires (e.g. from spinning too fast due to lack of mechanical load from the generator).
Ultimately, the energy has to go _somewhere_, if it's spinning.
> "Britain faces green energy disaster as lack of wind triggers new blackout warning"
Actual quote says:
> National Grid said the margin notice “highlights that we would like a greater safety cushion between power demand and available supply” but “does not signal that blackouts are imminent”.
In short: yes, regenerative or "green" energy requires a different approach, including overprovisioning, short term storage, and stand-by power stations (e.g. natural gas-powered ones) in order to work reliably.
That's not news, however, that's a well known fact. Plus both wind and solar can be predicted fairly well over the short term and a more intelligent grid could be used to adjust demand accordingly to also help with this.
It's an issue, sure, but not a show-stopper.
I agree, just I couldn't find a better link to the National Grid announcement.
If what you say is true, then the grid is being run in a more carbon intensive way than necessary. Why would this be?
For the situations where all power sources are at max output and there is still not enough power, then the UK will pull power from France. This typically happens when East Enders (TV Soap Opera) finished and millions of people turn on the kettle (high powered water heaters of 2 or 3 kW).
Its a shame that this regulation and UI environment is not already ready, since these vehicles are already being mass-manufactured.
I'm curious though. If the UK wants to 'go green', then why turn wind turbines off at all, rather than turn off some carbon-based power stations instead? What's the reasoning behind that?
This is a problem I've raised before - if we have excess wind electricity, why aren't we storing it? The UK doesn't really have that much pumped storage/hydro: you need hills and dams, and almost all of those are in areas of outstanding natural beauty, and are therefore difficult to build.
Why on Earth does gridwatch.co.uk not work in Firefox?!
Other sites that do: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ (this is the one I've seen linked more often over the years) http://grid.iamkate.com/
They changed the rules back again last year though [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/02/uk-governme...
Also noise has been mentioned by some people as a consideration. https://www.ramblingsdc.net/wtnoise.html has an interesting page on it (and a 2012 vibe).
Source: I've worked, within IT, in the oil and gas sector for many years.
It turns out that offshore, the air contains a lot of minerals and water droplets that make it much more abrasive than the air over land. This is a particular problem for turbine blades, as their leading edge is moving through the air at a significant speed: enough to gradually ablate away the leading edge material! Consequently, offshore turbine blades need to be replaced more often than onshore turbine blades. This is one of the reasons that larger turbines are more economical: fewer larger turbines mean fewer, larger blades that need to be periodically replaced.
Apparently GE have announced that they can do this now but there's no specific mention of it on the UK ones https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-...
Previously they just had to bury them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...
And with one comment, 100 circular economists screamed out in pain.
Recycling is clearly the preferable option
Oil is treated as a consumable in cars and ends up in the atmosphere. Salt is used in food. Why would anyone want to recycle these materials? They are considered "worthless" by the rest of society. If you bury them they at least stay in the ground instead of ending up in the atmosphere.
Glass fibers are just SiO2 (glass). The two most common elements on earth. [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy#Bisphenol-based
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth...
This is the kind of wishes presented as facts that discredite almost all articles about new renewables.
They don't say if this 16k figure is peak charge, they don't say how these homes are powered when the wind is down, if this price includes all costs (transport, subventions, storage...), etc.
It gives the impression that electricity works like fuel : you just extract it, then use it when you want.
> they don't say how these homes are powered when the wind is down
You can run gas plants, which you have to do anyway because they produce less CO2 than coal plants. The nice property of gas power plants is that the fuel is quite expensive, meaning you only run them when you have to. So naturally they will yield to renewables if there is wind available.
>It gives the impression that electricity works like fuel : you just extract it, then use it when you want.
If you run wind power to avoid CO2 emissions then that's exactly the way it works. It doesn't matter when you stop burning gas. What really matters is that you are burning less gas.
CO2 levels in the atmosphere were 280ppm before the industrial revolution. It took much less than 200 years to add another 45% CO2 on top of that. We are at 409.8ppm now. This means 120ppm or around 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere is man made and that percentage is going to increase in the future. You have to consider that not all of the CO2 ends up in the atmosphere. A lot of it is also absorbed by the ocean. It took a lot of human effort to get this far and now we have to stop it from getting worse.