First blackout of the wind power heavy system

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

Since this "almost easy" grand plan doesn't feature any backup FF generation, can I ask how many days worth of biogas will be stored? It'll need to be a lot since there won't be any 'spill' when the wind isn't blowing (or worse blowing too much) & those 13M BEVs will need charging after 24 hours.

It does feature FF back up, 13% from gas in fact. But ideally that would be bio-gas instead produced from the excess RE generation resulting from an overcapacity build out.

And the 13% would of course reduce with a broader mix of RE, and then there's interconnectors with Europe moving excesses around.


Also, I already mentioned the gas figure represents ~47 days (it's in the quote you posted), but that's obviously annual, so any point in time storage would be far less as RE gen (mostly wind I assume for the UK) phases between too much and too little.

mmmmikey

Hexane wrote: »

Say what? Are you suggesting the bear AIs are going to take control of the moon or something? The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out, it's not controllable (King Canute knows that) but it sure is predictable.

To be fair to GreatApe, I think you've missed the point a bit here.....


Just as you can make your car go faster by putting your foot on the accelerator, yout can make a gas or coal powered station generate more energy by turning up the gas or shovelling in more coal. But you can't make a wind farm generate more energy by asking the wind to blow harder or a tidal station to generate more energy by asking the tide to come in a bit sooner. That is, the fundamental characteristics of these RE sources are different.


So if you have a network of gas power stations and one fails you can compensate by turning the others up a bit, but if you have a network of wind power stations you can't do this. That's not to say that RE is bad - the problem can be solved in other ways. The point is simply that simply substituting FF stations for RE stations has the potential to lead to more power cuts and more needs to be done to ensure resilience.


Hope this makes sense

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

Since this "almost easy" grand plan doesn't feature any backup FF generation, can I ask how many days worth of biogas will be stored? It'll need to be a lot since there won't be any 'spill' when the wind isn't blowing (or worse blowing too much) & those 13M BEVs will need charging after 24 hours.

Marty boy is referencing a website with a model which is unrealistic

For instance it assumes the UK in 2050 has only 30 million homes when we will have closer to 36-37 million homes. The model also assumes people will be okay (forced?) To turn their heating down to 17 centigrade in the winter

Both those make the model highly unrealistic
And I think bio gas is also a cop out
He spends pages and pages arguing that coal and gas burning is dangerous and bad for health well a molecule of methane is a molecule of methane doesn't matter where it comes from so why is he backtracking on the dangers of methane useage?

Anyway if you build out 20-25GW of interconntors things become a lot easier

I can see a pathway to 95% clean grid if you don't electrify heating
If you electrify heating it will be a 70-80% clean grid

edgex

mmmmikey wrote: »

Much as it pains me to admit it, having read this a few times, I think there is some merit in the original post.


I think the point being made is that although wind generators are no more or less likely to fail than, say, gas generators, the impact of a wind generator failing is more significant.


If you have ten gas generators delivering power and one of them fails, operators at the other nine put an extra 50p in the gas meter and they generate a bit more to make up the shortfall whilst the issue is resolved.


However, if you have ten wind generators delivering power and one fails, you've lost 10% of your power and you're stuffed because you can't make the wind blow more on the other nine. Hence the greater need for batteries or some other form of backup.


Having said that, since a wind farm is a collection of individual wind turbines it should be possible to design a solution that removes most of the single points of failure and makes them inherently more reliable, reducing the need for backup. And the backup only needs to last long enough to bring another form of generation online or ramp up power generation somewhere else.


So I certainly don't think that wind as a power source is dead. To put a positive spin on this, this incident does show just how successful the growth of the wind industry has been.

It is bleedingly obvious that it wasn't the 'wind' part of the system that failed, but a power grid component. Exactly the sort of component that would be somewhere in the connection between any power generation type & the national grid.

The Hornsea windfarm is still under construction, there are multiple wind turbines currently online. For the entire farm to stop supplying power, either all the turbines were stopped, or there was a connection issue. If the wind speed had been too high, the turbines will shut themselves off, but that situation would have been reported, & it is likely that other nearby windfarms would also have been affected.




Little Barford is 727 MW (the gas power station that failed) It is 2 units.
Hornsea 1 (still under construction) is 1200MW (7MW wind turbines)

So it takes 54 wind turbines to replace 1 unit at the power station.

What's the probability of 54 separate turbines failing compared to 1 unit?

mmmmikey

edgex wrote: »

It is bleedingly obvious that it wasn't the 'wind' part of the system that failed, but a power grid component. Exactly the sort of component that would be somewhere in the connection between any power generation type & the national grid.

Yes, agreed. The point I was intending to reinforce wasn't so much about the probability of a wind farm losing it's grid connection vs. other power stations, but more about the ability (or lack thereof) of other wind farms at other points on the grid to ramp up to cover the shortfall when a wind farm, or any other power source for that matter, goes offline for any reason.

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

Hope this makes sense

It does, but it's entirely based on there being spare gas capacity unused.

That could of course be used to step in when there's a wind issue too, couldn't it, and it could even be burning bio-gas produced when there is simply too much wind.

What's absolutely guaranteed going forward is that gas will be used to top up (demand follow) for RE, but will steadily reduce as more and more RE gets commissioned. The existence of ~25GW of CCGT gas capacity is complimentary to the expansion of RE.

zeupater

mmmmikey wrote: »

Yes, agreed. The point I was intending to reinforce wasn't so much about the probability of a wind farm losing it's grid connection vs. other power stations, but more about the ability (or lack thereof) of other wind farms at other points on the grid to ramp up to cover the shortfall when a wind farm, or any other power source for that matter, goes offline for any reason.

Hi

For comparison you'd need to consider the type of reserve asset and the status when it's called upon ...

... for example to reach Pmax, an unloaded but spinning FF plant would react differently (~10minutes?) to one that is operating at (say) 40% (~2-5minutes?) capacity or one that needs to be started afresh from cold (or almost cold!), the difference being really important when a significant event happens elsewhere, and that's where the likes of Dinorwig are supposed to cut in with it's standby to Pmax (~1.3GW) ramp-up being around 12seconds, with an ability to maintain output whilst other assets are called into service.

HTH
Z

mmmmikey

I would agree with the last 2 points made which I don't think contradict my underlying point that simply "swapping out" gas power stations with wind farms has the potential to lead to unreliability and power cuts because of the different characteristics of the power sources. That is not to say it has to or this can't be avoided with appropriate management and design of the grid, but the more that wind power increases (and long may that happen!) the more of an issue this becomes.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the outcome of the Ofgem report is and how far ranging any recommendations are.

I thought the press coverage was interesting too. Although the biggest reported impact was on rail transport, not much seemed to be made about what seemed to be inordinate delays in getting the rail network up and running again (although this was touched on). Most power-critical organisations have well developed plans to deal with power outtages, and although I can see that you can hardly have a backup generator to run a few dozen trains, it did seem that there were some big gaps in the contingency planning for the rail network. If it was me, I'd be shining the same spotlight on the rail network as I was shining on National Grid.

JKenH

This appeared in the paper today. I thought about moving it to the news thread but in view of the link made (journalistic licence) I decide to leave it here. Please don’t shoot the messenger.



https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/15/wind-farm-behind-massive-blackout-awarded-nearly-100000-compensation/

Edit: Just out of interest I read that the contract price for Hornsea is £158.75/MWh.
When we discuss the cost of offshore RE it would seem logical to factor in the cost of constraint payments to arrive at a true cost per MWh to the grid. Does anybody know the figures involved?

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

Edit: Just out of interest I read that the contract price for Hornsea is £158.75/MWh.
When we discuss the cost of offshore RE it would seem logical to factor in the cost of constraint payments to arrive at a true cost per MWh to the grid. Does anybody know the figures involved?

I don't know, but I'll make an assumption based guess, that curtailment payments won't be on top of the CfD strike price.

Basically, if the wind is generating, then the wind farm will get a guaranteed amount of money, the price they sell the leccy at, plus (or even minus) a top up to reach the CfD contract strike price.

So if they are asked to curtail (something gas used to mostly do and receive money for) then they would lose out on the CfD figure, and presumably therefore that is what is made up.

BTW, for anyone interested, off-shore wind has made startling improvements in costs, the oldest CfD's were issued at £170/MWh (in today's money) whilst the most recent are down to £65/MWh. Hopefully this years auction results, due in Sept(ish) will be even lower.

The figures for all the CfD's can be found here - CfD Register

And it's important to note that the figures are not the subsidy but the total the subsidy will take the income up to. As we get ever closer to ~£50/MWh the subsidy element will approach zero, as on average, that's roughly the estimated spot price for leccy going forward.