The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

QrizB said:

If we keep those sorts of numbers the "green levy" will be negative again this quarter!

Even better now and averaging over 18GW for the day. Winds of 50mph here according to my anemometer and we are not in an exposed location. 

QrizB

Looking at Drax charts, Windy maps and where the ScotWind leases are it seems that, currently, the existing wind farms in the North Sea are seeing a lull but in future the leases west of the Orkneys could fill the gap nicely.

Tonight and tomorrow it will be the North Sea's turn again.

Verdigris

National solar peaked at 4.44GW today. Onward and upward!

JKenH

A good few days work by wind, almost managing to coordinate peaks and dips in generation with demand. Are we, though, nearing maximum wind in the UK? When some days wind is already meeting 60% of demand I am wondering how cost effective it is to invest in much more wind generation than what is already in the pipeline. 

If one were to leave CfDs out of the equation then further expansion of wind is likely to produce ever diminishing returns and put smaller older turbines out of business. I wonder what would happen to the likes of projects like the Ripple wind turbine if the wholesale price is driven down to 5p/kWh? Wind generation is only really profitable when the wind isn’t blowing or when we have external events like the gas crisis bumping up the price. We can of course export our excess but if we remove much more of our FF generation then we will be increasingly at the mercy of imports at times of crisis and in a crisis that’s when the imports are least like to be available. 

There is still an enormous appetite for wind farms with investors (witness the success of the Greencoat UK Wind fund) and some of the Oil Majors are muscling in and paying over the odds as part of their attempts to be seen to be green but do the economics of more and more wind stack up. I am not talking about the environmental argument benefits but hard cash if investors aren’t  going to get burned. 

Verdigris

We need enough wind and other renewables to replace the energy currently provided by fossil fuels but we also need a massive increase in storage, both diurnal and seasonal, to properly utilise it.

QrizB

JKenH said:

If one were to leave CfDs out of the equation then further expansion of wind is likely to produce ever diminishing returns and put smaller older turbines out of business. I wonder what would happen to the likes of projects like the Ripple wind turbine if the wholesale price is driven down to 5p/kWh? Wind generation is only really profitable when the wind isn’t blowing or when we have external events like the gas crisis bumping up the price.

Ripple's OPEX is around 2p/kWh, if you go by their proposal document.

Also, that Drax screenshot shows that we've been importing 2.5GW from the Continent through all this. We could turn that around and export instead. (The UK is relatively wind-rich.)

Plus there's all that gas heating to displace.

ABrass

JKenH said:

A good few days work by wind, almost managing to coordinate peaks and dips in generation with demand. Are we, though, nearing maximum wind in the UK? When some days wind is already meeting 60% of demand I am wondering how cost effective it is to invest in much more wind generation than what is already in the pipeline. 

If one were to leave CfDs out of the equation then further expansion of wind is likely to produce ever diminishing returns and put smaller older turbines out of business. I wonder what would happen to the likes of projects like the Ripple wind turbine if the wholesale price is driven down to 5p/kWh? Wind generation is only really profitable when the wind isn’t blowing or when we have external events like the gas crisis bumping up the price. We can of course export our excess but if we remove much more of our FF generation then we will be increasingly at the mercy of imports at times of crisis and in a crisis that’s when the imports are least like to be available. 

There is still an enormous appetite for wind farms with investors (witness the success of the Greencoat UK Wind fund) and some of the Oil Majors are muscling in and paying over the odds as part of their attempts to be seen to be green but do the economics of more and more wind stack up. I am not talking about the environmental argument benefits but hard cash if investors aren’t  going to get burned. 

Nope, there's always export, up to 17GW and climbing.

JKenH

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

If one were to leave CfDs out of the equation then further expansion of wind is likely to produce ever diminishing returns and put smaller older turbines out of business. I wonder what would happen to the likes of projects like the Ripple wind turbine if the wholesale price is driven down to 5p/kWh? Wind generation is only really profitable when the wind isn’t blowing or when we have external events like the gas crisis bumping up the price.

Ripple's OPEX is around 2p/kWh, if you go by their proposal document.

Also, that Drax screenshot shows that we've been importing 2.5GW from the Continent through all this. We could turn that around and export instead. (The UK is relatively wind-rich.)

Plus there's all that gas heating to displace.

This is what I had to say about the first Ripple offering 

“In the example quoted in the prospectus an investment of £1879.50 (£1790 plus 5%) buys 1.08 kwp which is estimated will result in average generation of 2900kwh p.a. If I have understood this correctly the cooperative returns 4.5p/kwh generated so you get back £130.50 in “savings“.

Part of your saving is return of share capital, and part is trading benefit.

5% of the initial investment is £93.95 so the trading benefit (I.e the return on investment) is £36.55 p.a. or 2% p.a. Subject to the caveat (see below) that the savings are sufficient to cover the return of capital. (The savings are based on the wholesale cost of electricity being £65/MWh)“

If the wholesale price were 5p/kWh then after OPEX of 2p, the return to shareholders would be 3p/kWh or £87 pa which is less than the £93.95 return of capital so each year the investment produces a loss of £6.95.

Presumably the imports we see are because they are cheaper than home generation. That is the principle behind the connectors - when power is cheaper in, say, France, we import it and when more expensive we export to France. 

Yes there is the gas heating to displace but the same problem arises as with generation. On low wind days, say,  when we currently produce 1 GW then with double our wind capacity we will produce 2GW. If by then we have added 5GW of demand to replace gas heating, we will have a further shortfall of 3GW which most probably will have to come from FF. Just to meet the additional heating demand we would need 5 times our current wind generation capacity on those days. If you recall a week or so ago when NG issued a capacity notice it was cold weather. It is generally cold in winter when the wind isn’t blowing much. High winds are frequently (not exclusively) associated with milder days like at the weekend. 

Adding more wind will therefore exacerbate the problem as we will be paying to have FF plants on standby or longer rather than letting them run efficiently for longer. 

We need wind as part of our mix but adding another 20GW of wind capacity will not remove 20GW or even 5 GW of FF capacity. We will still need almost the same standby FF capacity as we have already and still need to generate almost as much as we do currently (perhaps 1GW less) on those cold still winter days.

Verdigris

As I keep saying, we need storage for greater proportions of renewables and if we have more nuclear than baseload. This has been known for decades but successive governments have not tackled this, preferring to spaff money on vanity projects like HS2.

thevilla

"We will still need almost the same standby FF capacity as we have already and still need to generate almost as much as we do currently (perhaps 1GW less) on those cold still winter days."

So what? Surely the expensive bit is burning gas? Paying for plant to remain idle isn't ideal but don't assume the running costs are not the most significant expense.