Energy infrastructure

The fact that this guy is still on Twitter, and paying for it, is my first concern if he wants to have his opinions taken seriously. He's a pro-nuclear lobbyist, and while some of his points are sensible, he sees everything though an anti-Green prism which occasionally makes him look like an idiot.

He portrays Germany's energy crisis as the embrace of wind and renewables, but Germany's big mistake was to go all-in on cheap Russian gas to try gain a competitive industrial advantage. They scaled back and postponed green energy programmes because they weren't commercially viable while gas was "so cheap". Surprise, surprise… Putin wasn't Germany's friend, and as soon as he needed to weaken Germany, he turned off the taps.

Bowing to populist pressure and shutting down their Nuclear capacity was a big mistake; replacing that capacity not with green energy, but yet more Russian Gas, was the fatal move.

Ireland is dependent on gas because we had no other choices, and we're slowly weaning ourself off it. Germany had those other options, and it threw them away to double down on making themselves vulnerable to a known madman.

Comparisons aren't that useful, really.

Mark Nelson owns a nuclear energy "consultancy" so the twitter thing is a form of marketing/advertising for him.

He has been spouting the same anti-renewables shtick for years in an absolutely shameless way as he tries to pimp his companies "services".

The above stuff from twatter is his typical disingenuous one-sided look at energy. A spike of 800/MWh in wholesale prices is all the fault of renewables, Energiewende, etc.

But Mark had no comment, that I can find, on when wholesale prices spiked to over 2500/MWh multiple times in France. So a price spike in Germany to 800/MWh means "Energiewende is a failure" and renewables are useless but multiple price spikes 3x higher in France in 2022… crickets… The fact is, despite occasional flows in the other direction, that Germany has been a net electricity exporter since 2002 and in 8 of the last 10 years has been the biggest electricity exporter in the world.

He's part of a surprising large number of people who seem to have become personally invested in, and gleefully excited by the idea that, renewables in general and German energy policy in particular will fail spectacularly. Of course, like any fact-ignoring cult, all their predictions over the last 2 decades have been duds. I mean if the Russian gas ban didn't cause the complete collapse of Germany - absolutely guaranteed according this group - you'd imagine they might get tired of being wrong… but no, the end-of-the-world is still nigh again apparently.

Reading would help. I said that the root of Germany's problems is abandoning a perfectly functional nuclear fleet and substituting it with cheap gas from Russia. Becoming reliant on a leader who had already shown that he would use energy supply as a weapon wasn’t the brightest idea ever.

Not sure if anyone has claimed it's possible to run a grid with solar and wind alone, that would sound very optimistic.

For 2050 and net zero, is it enough for the electricity generation sector to be itself net zero or better? I don't see the need for hydrogen or floating offshore in the picture. Wouldn't we have enough generation if we focused on fixed offshore and onshore wind, solar and increased connectivity? We could use the Corrib Gas field for storage and use the existing gas-fired generators for those times when demand exceeds wind+solar. If energy independence is a concern, we can use the next 25 years to prospect for another gas field.

Farmers have more legal freedom to change the use of part of their lands than other private citizens or companies. Allocating a small portion of a larger holding that is being actively farmed for a new use (solar in this case) is much easier than someone buying that small parcel of land and trying to allocate 100% of it for solar. This is a system that has been deliberately designed to favour farmers who want or need to supplement their income, and that's why companies can't come in and just buy out the land: it would cost them a lot more in the long run.

But nobody is forcing anyone to sign up for a contract that does not suit them. Those terms aren’t great, but there may be someone they’d suit. If not, the operators would have to make a better offer. The landowner is on the front foot here - nobody is forcing them to agree.

A good summary of the legal position on solar use is here: Legal Matters: tax and subsidy issues with solar farms - Farmers Journal The question of inheritance tax is clearly answered there. Change of use does result in the loss of a particularly generous tax-relief on land rental income that applies only to rentals for farming use, but it’s up to the landowner to account for that loss with anyone looking to use their land. As with anything, you’d be mad to make a decision like this without a lawyer and an accountant.

If we still had proper co-ops (rather than large agri-food corporations), then they would be the ideal vehicle for such solar-farms: groups of farmers get together to pool poor land, the co-op pays to put panels on it, and everyone shares the income. The co-operative system was invented for this kind of capital project, where one farmer alone couldn’t get the work done, but these days, our "co-ops" only really have shareholders, not members.

You seem to be assuming that CO2 reductions are a 1:1 ratio with every MW of wind power on the grid. That is clearly nonsense. Also there is nothing to celebrate about trends in the cost of power over that time despite the repeated lies spun on the subject by wind apologists

Do you think I am not aware…

Yes. Deeply…

The market wholesale price is known and the CFD strike price of every supplier is known.

Since electricity market liberalization in 2007, the price of every single kWh which flows through the system is public knowledge.

It may suit your narrative to say "we can never know the cost" and then invent a bunch of mickey-mouse numbers and then go "look it's expensive!". Costs and prices within the electricity sector have never been more transparent in history.

Aren't there threads in politics where you can bang on about "green evangelists" and the like? The idea of this thread is to focus on technical/engineering/news aspects.

In fairness, almost all of the "bashers" have engaged with the topic and offered alternatives from time to time. You don't have to agree with them, but they're here in good faith to discuss the problem and its solutions. For the other dude, there's always the ignore feature (tap any poster's name to get to their profile, and it's available from the "👤" menu there)

Our energy infrastructure is crippled? What does this mean in practical terms? Inability to add new grid connections? Rolling blackouts? Equipment failure?

And what do you mean when you say "renewable sources are not homogeneous"? Are you emphasizing that Ireland has more wind power potential than most countries?

I'm very open to discussing alternative solutions with you (it looks like most people are) but you don't really seem to be willing to have that conversation, it's just "everything is wrong and the greens are at fault". Forgive me for saying but that's getting a bit tiresome: most of the genuine problems you've pointed to are either 25 years in the future, are occurring in another country, or are the result of poor business decisions.

I understand if you're simply in the demographic of "I hate wind turbines". They have loads of negative points. As do battery farms and solar. But we're not currently flush with alternatives. I know plenty people working on tidal and wave power, but those are not without their own problems. And Mayo Renewables isn't looking ideal either. There's no silver bullet here.

I think hedging our bets with renewables/interconnectors/gas peakers and reducing demand (home solar etc) is currently the least-worst solution available to us for all sorts of reasons.

Wind by its very nature is inconsistent. Can you point to anywhere in the world where it is 'consistent' and do you have a threshold in mind for consistency?

I think one of the issues is that wind ,on its own is not a magic bullet , it's improved vastly by grid scale batteries , smoothing out supply and demand peaks , and giving time to bring gas generation on line ..

It works well with gas - in theory gas is low capital but high running cost , whereas wind is very low running cost but capital forward ,

It could be argued that we over pay for wind, obviously getting hold of turbines has gotten a lot dearer , post covid,and post Feb 22, I'd be intrigued to know how low the cost of wind generated power can go in Ireland , especially when mature wind farms retender , ( how long do their supply contracts run for )