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Saw an article today that said renewable energy sources like wind farms are being shut down as elec not being used. If this Is the case why doesn’t the supply/demand imbalance mean it could be cheaper and thereby see greater usage.
Leccy?
Link?
Isn't over production used to fill pumped storage (Obvs till its is full)?
It's true that they get shutdown and what's more the operators get compensatory payments to make up for the loss in generation they can sell!
Renewables is used to the maximum it can be, I'm sat here in one of the largest gas fired power stations in the country at the moment and we're generating precisely 0MW on standby right now. The country is abut half running on renewables and nuclear, (45% which will likely increase as the wind picks up later) . There always needs to be a few large gas or coal units running because the transmission system needs some mechanical inertia to keep the grid stable at 50Hz.
Edit -
Isn’t over production used to fill pumped storage (Obvs till its is full)?
That would consume a bit of excess for a few hours, but we've not actually got much pumped storage capacity as a country because without making a shit load more dams, (i.e. flooding a load of valleys) we don't have particularly great geography for it.
You can't turn up and down the old generators easily so it is difficult to adjust them to provide balance.
If demand is running around 100 and renewable can provide between 10 and 30 then you need to run the traditional generators at 90 to cope with the possibility of renewables dropping to 10. This means that you might have to 'throw away' up to 20 of renewable - or rather turn it off.
You can’t turn up and down the old generators easily so it is difficult to adjust them to provide balance.
You'd be surprised. We can ramp a unit up from standby to the output of a decent size windfarm (350MW) in 20 mins if it's still hot from the last run. It can take upto 4 hours from stone cold, but it'd be very unlikely that so many units around the country would be in that state any normal variation and most shocks couldn't be coped with. Last time was when we had those blackouts in the midlands and north west a couple of years ago, and I can't remember the previous similar incident like that in the UK, (I can remember a few in the US though!)
Its summer so the electricity usage is generally lower than the base load that all the power stations/wind farms/solar farms etc can supply.
Very simply put its a case of longer days so less lighting required, warmer so less heating required and the UK doesn't really go in for domestic Aircon in the way that, for example, the southern states of the USA do.
During Winter its a different matter but the load requirements still fluctuate both during the day and from week to week.
There is some capacity to store the electricity that is produced but it's still nowhere near what it could be. There has been a lot of investigation work done on using electric vehicles as a way of holding and feeding power back into the national grid when required as they can be thought of a nice big mobile storage batteries but the work still needs to be done on Grid 2.0 to allow this to happen at any reasonable scale (not an expert of power generation but I have done work on EV's so tend to approach the power issue from the other direction as a user rather than a supplier)
IIRC the CHADEMO system on the Nissan Leaf was developed for this purpose but its pretty much old tech now and has been superseded by the now standard CCS charging sockets which doesn't (might be wrong here though).
without making a shit load more dams, (i.e. flooding a load of valleys) we don’t have particularly great geography for it.
I volunteer North Wales on the condition that all the three peaks charity walkers going for a cup of tea on Snowdon in their flip-flops are sealed in the valley first.
There has been a lot of investigation work done on using electric vehicles as a way of holding and feeding power back into the national grid when required as they can be thought of a nice big mobile storage batteries but the work still needs to be done on Grid 2.0 to allow this to happen at any reasonable scale (not an expert of power generation but I have done work on EV’s so tend to approach the power issue from the other direction as a user rather than a supplier)
I’ve been involved with a couple of pilot projects that between them looked to get over 2,000 V2G installations.
Between them they got less than 100 because vehicle owners didn’t really want to sign up.
There is a lot of potential there, the electricity network is mainly capable (synchronised charging is more of an issue) but the commercial and regulatory issues will need a lot of sorting.
The technical issues with the chargers weren’t good either.
I think it’s 10 years away, but I’ve been wrong before.
Vehicle to home on the other hand…
Some form of real time economy 7 to switch on appliances in times of excess perhaps, hideously expensive infra structure to roll out though i assume.
And wrecks the demand diversity the electricity system is based on.
You'd need to build a bigger network to cope.
Trust me. This kind of thinking is what I do for a living.
Isn’t there a cable to Norway that is supposed to be used to tap into their pump storage capacity and they use our excess wind?
Well that’s more than a flux capacitor needs but I’m guessing from your tone that is isn’t actually all that much?
It’s not nothing that’s for sure.
GB peak demand is in the order of 50GW (I haven’t checked recently and C-19, Brexit and the coming recession will have messed up recent figures anyway).
In the DNO I work for (circa 13% of GB) we have around 5GW of renewables connected - but it doesn’t all generate at one time.
A typical base load coal plant from the old days was around 1.8GW - Drax was the biggest at 3.6GW.
Meanwhile there are 30 million cars. If they were all EVs charging at say 3.5kW (slow rate) then that’s 100GW (it’s also not going to happen). More realistically if everyone slow charges at home (also not going to happen, as only 60% of people have off street parking) then it diversifies out to about 30GW. (If folk really, really want to use fast chargers then that’s expensive in network terms). Personally I think EV charging can be done provided we don’t have tariffs to encourage people to do it at specific times. If we do, it’s trickier.
Don’t get me started on heat pumps.
This isn’t to say what will happen - it’s just to put a scale in 1.4GW.
It did for a while. The octopus agile plan had day ahead pricing and reflected the actual price of power at that point, even going negative sometimes. The problem was during the recent issues it also reflected the shortages and the huge spikes in pricing so it stopped making sense to use it.
When things stabilise and the planned vast amount of off shore wind is built we will see this sort of thing being more common.
it’s just to put a scale in 1.4GW
But there's 6 others already! Three to France, one to Netherlands, one to Ireland and one to Belgium
6.5GW in total which is over 10% of 50GW peak, and probably 20% of typical demand.
That’s all very well and good, but why has my Octopus Energy electricity doubled in price if they only use renewable energy?
* I know it’s not that simple but it really does beg the question.
tthew - agreed there are others (I had in my head a slightly different grouping, but not very different).
Not sure it’s as simple as saying 20% most of the time. One has to look at the technical and commercial energy markets either end of the link. If we are looking to export due to surplus in the market, then the opposite end has to be in a position to use or store the energy at the same time - and the prices have to make sense - and the stability and resilience of the respective systems.
However, interconnectors in this discussion are probably a bit of a red herring going forwards as most of the renewable energy will need to be generated local to use or the system either won’t work or will require massive upgrade.
Coal by wire becoming wind by wire is a nice idea - it probably sorts 25-30% of the problem. If that.
That’s all very well and good, but why has my Octopus Energy electricity doubled in price if they only use renewable energy?
It's a complete fallacy that Octopus only 'use' renewables. There aren't separate circuits for green and dirty elections, so you're getting the same mix as anyone else in the end. Being at the generation end of the process, I don't really know how all the separate trading markets interact, but presumably if expensive dirty fuel and the price of Carbon makes conventional generation more expensive, there's more demand for wind/solar generation and the price increases accordingly.
Not sure it’s as simple as saying 20% most of the time
Ha - if only! Can be as much as 20% of demand would have been a more accurate summary. And as you pointed out that's current demand and when market conditions are right.
Sometimes the renewables are just in the wrong place, eg, if Scottish wind farms producing power that England could use, but the interconnector doesn't have the capacity to transfer it. The generators get paid compensation for shutting down in such cases, and the compensation is defined by their contracts and can be more than they would have made if their power had been used.
That’s all very well and good, but why has my Octopus Energy electricity doubled in price if they only use renewable energy?
There's an article about that issue here:
https://www.goodenergy.co.uk/why-are-energy-prices-still-so-high-2/
Some form of real time economy 7 to switch on appliances in times of excess perhaps, hideously expensive infra structure to roll out though i assume.
Actually not I wouldn't think. Most of the higher end white goods I've bought recently have had options to switch themselves on when your solar panels are working and are WiFi connected so I can see what is happening on an app. I wouldn't then think that the software changes are that bad to switch themselves on or off when the energy companies want to use that extra load to smooth demand. Some devices like dishwashers could even be asked just to pause halfway through some cycles if they needed to temporarily reduce demand. For me it seems like quite an easy win (relatively)
Interesting. Never seen that feature before but guess I don’t have high end appliances. My most recent tumble driver does have WiFi but you can’t turn it on and off remotely only select the programme. Others simply offer the option to delay the start, or finish.
I've seen the reviews for such features. Let's just say manufacturers should stick to appliances and stay away from InternetOfShit.
It's a good idea in theory but stopping a dishwasher or washing machine is probably going to use more power once you heat the water back up again. Also, who the hell wants to play washing roulette when they may have somewhere to be?