Please take a look at this site which shows live minute-by-minute graphs of the National Grid power sources.

At the time of writing total demand is 60GW. Coal is providing 43% and wind only 0.1% (The total output of our 2,430MW installed wind capacity is a measly 41MW, only 1.7% of rated capacity).

Gas, 20,400 MW, 39.2%
Coal, 22,400 MW, 43.0%
Nuclear, 8,100 MW, 15.7%
Wind, 41 MW, 0.1%
Hydro, 150 MW, 0.3%

Why are we spending billions quadrupling wind capacity when it cannot be relied upon to generate power when we need it most - during the coldest week of the year?

Why doesn't the IET board or IET membership attempt to bring this issue to the attention of the public and politicians?

As Sarah Palin says.... "we need more Nucular...."

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Not sure what Sarah Palin's got to do with it - but she certainly seems to have a better grasp of the realities of energy generation than the happy-clappy la-la brigade running the Department of Climate Change & energy. But nevermind eh? Who cares if bills skyrocket, lights go out and the country goes to pot?

That was just a joke, when she proclaimed North Korea was the USA's ally, she couldnt pronounce Nuclear properly and it sounded more like 'Nu-cu-lar'. lol

Ps when its cold.... the wind doesnt blow, which doesnt make sense considering thats when we need the extra power most. Ohwell, there is always France's Nuclear stations that we can tap from through the Channel sub sea link. )

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Generation from wind turbines is always going to be controversial and we have lots of wind but its not a constant source. Its part of a mixed plan to ensure we have some diversity in power generation for the short term. The roll out of nuclear power (however controversial this may be) wont happen for another 10-15 years therefore we have to look at all the renewable sources. I appreciate there is a cost to this and we as end of line customers will pay more for electricity in the future.
In the UK we have contributed considerably to the pollution of this planet, Im afraid its pay back time.
I am not a big fan of wind power, especially off shore turbines. The sea is a very unforgiving place to put these expensive items.
Nuclear power is the way to go and we need to accept it and crack on building them.

I agree. National Grid should also show how much is being bought from overseas too, to be realistic.

Shaun, It does show how much is being imported from the 3 interconnectors we have to France, Ireland and Holland.

The French interconnector is 2000MW in either direction and contributed 3.3% today compared to winds effort of 0.3%.

I didn't realise coal was still the major generator so very interesting.

Why do we need a 'mixed plan' exactly? Coal and gas seem to be doing fine. How does having 30% capacity dependent on unreliable wind increase our security of supply exactly? You can get LNG from anywhere in the world via our new LNG ports: the US & Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Qatar and many others. An abundant, low cost, efficient, low pollution, multi-source, high-energy fuel that can be easily stored. What's not to like?


Seriously, look at the figures: Wind was producing 0.1% all week. Even if we had 10x as many turbines we'd only get 1% of demand. You simply can't replace the 43% coal with wind and expect the lights to stay on. Get real.


Yes - I agree if DECC get their way we'll have to pay ALOT more. Double at least.


Hang on. UK air and water are cleaner than they've ever been since the industrial revolution. What pollution are you referring to? I agree certain foreign industries are bad polluters. Take rare earth production in China for instance: a highly polluting and environmentally damaging process - but a fast growing one: China controls 95% of all rare earth production - essential for windmill magnets and CCFL light bulbs.


Who are we paying back exactly? Al Gore? Wealthy landowners? Vestas? BWEA? Ex-government minsters? Look, if you feel the need to assuage some irrational sense of eco-guilt please feel free to make a donation to charity. But please don't insist we all help you line the pockets of wealthy subsidy farmers.

Also please remember that when our energy bills skyrocket, all remaining UK manufacturers will be forced to move overseas to countries where energy prices aren't inflated. Ironically this will increase pollution - since countries like China and India don't have our strict rules on emissions and pollution. But at least we'll all feel better about ourselves right?

I took a look into our site today because I suspected that we have probably just been through a wind power "worst case" period and to see whether there was any discussion. Ipayyoursalary is presumably being deliberately obtuse in their response on UK pollution responsibilities by ignoring CO2, however the overall questions are valid ones to be asked.

The neta link is great and I was interested taking a slightly wider look, so downloaded the historic data and compared 1-10 October (chosen essentially at random) with the latest 10 days (17-26 Dec).

These do show a poor picture for wind, if not quite as bad as painted. For the October 10 days wind contributed 481,000MWH, 2.87% of a total of 16.7M. I believe that suggests wind working pretty much at expected efficiency. However for the latest 10 days we see wind contributing 171,000MWH, 0.78% of a total of 21.9M. So in these conditions we saw wind output drop to around 1/3 at a time when demand was up 30%. (As it happens, wind is back to 2.7% for the last 24 hours).

Other comparisons show that coal has taken up by far the largest part if the demand increase, so perhaps this reflects how we need to be, pumping up our dirtiest energy source at the times of unusual supply/demand pattern whilst wind power does supply a rising part of the base load most of the time. At the moment I also believe we do need to be making that longer term investment in nuclear (and clean coal).

One aspect of wind is that it is capital intensive, but has low ongoing cost (difficult to see anyone compromising our wind supply). This is a good thing to have in a mix which is also highly dependent on an imported commodity subject to rising demand.

However it is important that all this is reasonably, sensibly and openly discussed something which, as others suggest, I hope the IET can help facilitate.

Edited: 31 December 2010 at 04:54 PM by MarkBrockbank

I've been following this post with interest. I'd like to offer a couple of clarifications:
- The NETA site is reporting on 2430MW of installed wind farm capacity, whereas there's 5194MW actually installed, so the figures reported by IPYS and others are likely to be understated by a factor of x2

- Most wind turbine generators use doubly-fed induction generators, which are essentially induction machines with a wound rotor connected to an inverter. As far as I'm aware, there's only 1 manufacturer of wind turbines of any significant rating using permanent magnet alternators.

Now a couple of questions for the nuclear supporters:
- What's the historic (say past 10 years) availability of UK nuclear generation? I've heard it's pretty poor, but haven't been able to find substantiation either way.

- How are we going to deal with the nuclear waste?

Jonno

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Jonno

The Nuclear Power Station near me was shut down for months when cracks were found in the core.
No one wants the high level waste. 50 years on and no solution. Perhaps another 50 years might do it? I know, lets throw the problem at our children.
There are only two Nuclear Power stations being built in the western world. Both are way over budget. Nuclear Power is still a fossil fuel technology that we have to import. We can do better.

The upside to coal is that its becoming cleaner with the introduction of FGD.

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On the contrary - since the installed capacity is 5GW the figures are even worse for wind which, at the time of writing, is generating only 30MW = 0.57% of rated capacity and 0.06% of the total 50GW demand.

Remember it's the worst case power output that determines backup requirements - not the average over a week. Based on these figures, UK wind needs 100% backup. So we need to pay twice for every MW: Once for the windmill, and once for the conventional power station which must be kept on permanent standby.

Note that the backup station will be operating in an inefficient mode - continually ramping up and down with the unpredictable fluctuating wind output - causing greater emissions and wear than if it was operating continuously at optimum load.


Interesting. I haven't been able to find any links about non-Neodymium turbines. Vestas certainly use Neodymium. Would be interested to see links to any non-rare-earth turbines.


Not a big fan of nuclear but just wanted to point out - you can't compare a scheduled generator shutdown for maintenance with the continuous unpredictable power dropouts due to lack of wind.

There's simply no comparison: With conventional stations you can plan and schedule maintenance to ensure sufficient backup is available. With wind you need more-or-less 100% backup, 100% of the time.

The latest estimate for the Hinkley Point twin reactors in Somerset is £9 billion,an increase of £1 billion from just a year ago.
This country is in danger of sleep-walking into a future where Britain is once again in hock to an industry with a massive legacy of dangerous waste and a voracious appetite for public subsidy.

There seems to be a misinterpretation of my earlier post - if NETA are reporting on 2430MW of installed wind capacity and the total installed capacity is 5194MW, the conclusion I draw is that the impact of the difference (2764MW) is not being reported. However, it's probable (dependant on relative locations) that the actual wind generation is proportionally greater. Whilst I'm uncertain why this difference is not being reported, it may well be that this comes from smaller wind farms that individually are too small to report on, and maybe being treated as "negative load".

Looking further at the NETA report, it's clear that load demand isn't constant and that the number and type of generation being called upon varies throughout the day (with noticable different trends at weekends) and with seasonal trends. The variability of renewables is normally accommodated without constraint (we are after all seeking to reduce CO2 emmissions), as is the output of base-load generation (nuclear & coal) which finds it difficult to adjust its output on a minute-by-minute basis.

The NETA report also demonstrates the manner in which wind forecasts are taken into account in forecasting the balance of demand required. Wind is reasonably predictable on a 2-day forward view with much more certainty on a shorter term - similar in fact to NGET forecasts of load demand!

The size of spinning reserve (immediately available "spare" generation capacity) provided by a spread of conventional generation operating at part-rating (and hence with reduced efficiency) is there to pick up the demand in the event that the largest single generator, or interconnector, trips off the system. This is typically 1.3GW to match the sudden loss of Sizewell B. Costs for spinning reserve are estimated at ~£160M pa.

I hope that someone will be able to enlighten me on my query re the historic availability of Britain's nuclear generation fleet - the very poor figures I was referring to were due to breakdown, not scheduled maintenance. I think I may otherwise have to make a request to the SoS for Energy under Freedom of Information.

On a final point, I'm aware that Vestas use strong magnets to secure floors, ladders, doors etc within their WTGs to avoid drilling/ welding attachments to the tower structures (which cause stress raisers), but have no knowledge of their use within their alternators. If anyone knows differently, please post details.

I trust this may clarify some misconceptions.

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I refer the gentleman to the 'Wind Forecast Out-turn' graph which regularly shows errors greater than 100% between the 2-day wind forecast and out-turn - errors which are acknowledged in the 'Information' panel. Now compare that to the daily load graphs which are highly repetitive and easily predictable. There's no comparison between a +-50% error 2-day forecast for wind and a >30-day +-1% accurate forecast for conventional capacity. (1% here accounts for any rare unscheduled outages)

Re: cost of 1.3GW spinning reserve. Running at 80% capacity a 1.3GW station would generate 9000GWhrs pa. I'm paying 12p/KWhr = £120K/GWhr so at that price the output of a 1.3GW station would be worth 9000 x 120K = £ 1.1 Billion. I find it hard to believe an operator would be prepared to provide such a backup station for a measly end-customer cost of £160M.

And we're talking about costs to backup >10GW of 100% variable wind here - so much more costly.


The effect of UK wind on CO2 emissions will be negligible due to the spinning reserve. And this is before you consider that, every year, China increases it's CO2 emissions by an amount greater than the entire UK output. So the net global effect of UK 'action on CO2' is zero. (Unless you believe that China and India are going to follow our example and impoverish their people in the hope of reducing globally averaged temperature anomaly by a few tenths of a degree next century).

Best Regards & Happy New Year!

Wind is reasonably predictable on a 2-day forward view with much more certainty on a shorter term - similar in fact to NGET forecasts of load demand

Certainly not my understanding. There has been much improvement in forcasting but we still have a long way to go.
Every wind farm built has a met mast installed. Its purpose is to gather data so that forcasting can be improved.

Returning and picking up on a couple of the discussion topics, I don't read the "Wind Forecast Out-turn" as pessimistically as some. From what I can see (though I will admit I can only see the last day's data - would be useful if a longer period was downloadable) although the forecast is frequently wrong, it is conservative, under-estimating what is delivered. This means it won't lead to failure to match demand, but might put unneeded backup capacity on line.

I freely admit I don't know how speedily gas/coal outputs can be varied however the "Generation by Fuel Type" graph shows that substantial variations take place by the hour through the day. Comparing the two suggests to me that a reasonable level of matching is feasible.

Looking at the core topic of the efficiency & stability of wind power, the question raised of how much capacity there is is a bit of a red herring. For whatever reason the neta figures monitor 2430MW of wind capacity and what matters for this discussion is how this performed in the possibly "worst case" scenario we have seen in the past few weeks.

Looking at the numbers I took from neta another way, for my "control" 10 days in October wind was averaging 1002MW per hour. Assuming I have understood and correctly interpreted the figures, this means it was running at 41.24% of capacity which, I believe, is actually pretty good. Looking at other sites suggests that you should expect wind to run at 30-40% of rated capacity. Then we come to the 10 days in December and wind averaged 357MW/hour - 14.72% of capacity.

This is the thing which most interested me because this variability, and how we manage it, is the key.

What it says to me is that we need to have cover for about 25%-30% of installed wind "capacity" - although in truth this is to cover around 70% of the expected actual wind output - which will be available probably 90%+ of the year.

So what is the real cost of this, and how significant is it ?

Ipayyoursalary refers to spinning reserve, but I would have thought that much of this needed capacity would either be able to be largely static (eg it's very unlikely to be needed in summer) or be "spare" overhead in generators running under capacity - in the quoted example the cost difference between running a station at 70% and 80% of capacity is, of course, much less than 10% of the lifetime capital + running cost of that station.

Indeed, that we have very substantial "spare" capacity already is demonstrated by the fact that our power consumption is that last 10 days in December was 30% higher than the same period at the start of October, achieved without blackouts.

So the question is not one about having spare capacity, but what is the impact of wind upon it, and what difference does using wind for a percentage of base load for much of the year make.

I downloaded the half-hourly power source data for the last three months from this link:

Link to Neta data in CSV format

It only takes a minute to load it into excel and work out the stats. (The columns are unlabeled - so you have to compare recent figures with those listed on the neta website to work out which column is which).

I calculated the following stats for wind output relative to rated capacity for the whole 3-month period (assuming the monitored capacity was constant and equal to the quoted 2430MW).

Max = 85%
Min = 0.37%
Average = 25.6%

Wind output was less than 5% for a total of 7 days over this 3 month period. The longest continuous period with <5% rated wind output was 53 hours from 20th to 22nd December. Also one of the coldest periods.


On the contrary, the figures I downloaded from the link above clearly show 99% backup is required. If we choose to backup only the average 25% wind output, then that backup will be called upon 60% of the time according to the excel spreadsheet I made from the figures.

Another issue: My understanding is that the energy companies are legally obliged to pay for whatever wind power is being generated - regardless of whether it is required at the time, or whether it is operationally convenient to accept it. So if a storm blows up in the middle of the night when demand is low the windmill operators get paid regardless. Of course operators pass all these costs on to end customers after dipping their beaks (so you won't hear them complaining). Nevermind, it's just the poor hard-working bill-payers who get shafted.

Happy new year!

Edited: 01 January 2011 at 06:00 PM by Ipayyoursalary

Wind generators have full access to the grid, so whatever they generate goes into the grid and the other generators have to compensate. It's the only generator which has full unlimited access. That means the end consumer (us) has to pay whatever the price of the wind generation is.

The British nuclear fleet has been historically poor due to a bad technology choice (gas reactors). The next generation of reactors will be PWR's which are the most common design in the world and very good performers. The figures are published and available on the WANO site.

Breakdowns in any power station can shut the station for months depending upon the fault. A CCGT station near me was shut for 18 months for repairs. These are very large pieces of machinery and it is not common to keep many spares.

It's difficult to look at costs for generators and compare them but if we took all the incentives away what would the market build for us?

I think the reality is without incentives the market would only build gas stations because that is more or less what the market has done for the past 20 years.