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Wind farms - ugly truths

fclauson

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Birdnuts

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

43% increase in bat numbers since wind farms were rolled out.

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Actually your link says nearly all the recovery occurred prior to 2003 - most of the wind capacity in the countries/regions studied has been added in the last 10 years and the survey itself is nearly 5 years out of date. Indeed many of the areas included in the study such as Bavaria have a much lower number of wind turbines than the rest of Germany, the majority of which was not included in this study. In any case it was not a Europe wide study and did not compare regions with high wind farm densities to areas with few or no wind farms. A more pointed study on this matter in Germany is more revealing as to the effects of wind farms on Bats. And given the increasing sprawl of wind turbines in Germany and elsewhere it certainly is a cause of concern.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150210211831.htm

Birdnuts

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

.

Yeah right. Just pointing out that we have a lot of unproductive land. And roofs. Of course scenic and amenity areas already pay for them selves. It's a counter point to "it would take X amount of space to do what nuclear will do". In theory we could install up to 25GW of solar on the bogs Bord Na Mona won't be using in 2030. Actually you probably could up that by 50% if solar efficiency keeps increasing. It's not going to happen but its possible.

.

You really have it in for our peatlands don't you!! These natural carbon sinks should be restored and will then contribute far more to our Environmental performance than another non-dispatcheable, expensive subsidized energy folly being inflicted on our grid. On that note the OECD commentary on our performance just last week in that area is revealing.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/ireland-has-third-highest-electricity-prices-in-oecd-34147981.html

fclauson

So some more ugliness for you - the Apple data Center will add some 250Mw of demand to the grid - that's around 10% on a summer's evening of the total demand for Ireland with probably just 250ish new jobs

Its being proposed that the data center will only use "renewable energy" but how does that work - at present there is sub 23Mw coming from the Irish wind fleet

so how will this work ?

take a read of http://the-law-is-my-oyster.com/2015/11/02/the-myth-of-green-data-centres/

Capt'n Midnight

fclauson wrote: »

So some more ugliness for you - the Apple data Center will add some 250Mw of demand to the grid - that's around 10% on a summer's evening of the total demand for Ireland with probably just 250ish new jobs

Its being proposed that the data center will only use "renewable energy" but how does that work - at present there is sub 23Mw coming from the Irish wind fleet

It's the tired old "renewables can be intermittent" argument again.

Obviously they can't use renewable power at times when it's not there, but this means that on average the grid will have to use 250MW more renewables. So that probably means 750Mw nameplate capacity, which means on a good day a lot more fossil fuel will be displaced.

And of course there are the ancillary jobs in services, not least the jobs to install and run perhaps 750MW.

Having excess capacity means we can hit that 55% of renewables our grid can take at lower wind speeds. If you take into account the minimum number of high inertia generators needed for grid stability then the rest could come from as little as a third or even a quarter of the nameplate capacity so reducing the times we need to burn fossil fuel.

fclauson

Nonsense

these companies have claimed they run on 100% renewable

so yesterday when 23Mw came from renewable across Ireland what happened - data centers closed down - no - they used nasty dirty C02 producing fuels

Its marketing hype - I am greener than you - its to please Wall Street

It has nothing to do with the power coming in to a site only coming from renewables

or will they use the diesel gens on site - 64 of them potentially - if they were true to their green they should have built a bit of pumped storage or a few batteries (once they calculated the CO2 impact of making them) or a compressed gas storage tank

Will they be paid by ESB in low wind situations to use their own Gens as in the UK at present

this data center will not go dark any time soon

fclauson

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Having excess capacity means we can hit that 55% of renewables our grid can take at lower wind speeds. If you take into account the minimum number of high inertia generators needed for grid stability then the rest could come from as little as a third or even a quarter of the nameplate capacity so reducing the times we need to burn fossil fuel.

You are working on maths of the infinity - as the number of wind turbines trends towards infinity then there will always be some form of renewable energy about - so on days of zero wind even with an infinite number of turbines there will be zero Mw

There is a second problem - building data centers will increase our demand which means we will increase our CO2 output - so to just stand still you need to build your afore mentioned 750Mw of wind - but that does nothing to reach the mad 2020 target - you will have to build 1000's of Mw to achieve this - and there in lies the problem.

There was a reference (cannot find it now) but apple is around 8% of demand and other DC's will total around 10% - so thats close to 20% of demand just for DC's all of which add very minimum jobs but do add costs

so in the the world of infinite its possible but when Mr Consumer has to pay we are in trouble.

In Northern Ireland the Michelin factory has just closed - 850 jobs - because of energy costs - and remember NI already has a fuel poverty rate of 40%+

SeanW

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you may want to check your auto-correct it's not spelt evasions, it's spelt evidence.

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-europe.htmlcould there be a correlation with the rollout of wind farms ??

As has been posted previously, your study is out of date and it shows that the majority of the increase occurred before 2003 and flatlined immediately thereafter.

You need to select your sources even more carefully than you likely already are, because your own link also refers to this:
http://phys.org/news/2013-11-high-mortality-turbines.html

Nutshell, in just 2012 alone, windmills killed at least 600,000 bats and likely anything up to 50% more than that. Again, as with the 200,000 each year killed in Germany, this literally puts windmills up there with White Nose Syndrome as an existential threat to bat populations. I can scarcely believe that the mainstream environmental movement is actually advocating this.

You couldn't make it up.

LOL
You keep ignoring that France is committed to drop to 50% nuclear within a decade.

I've already addressed this: I've stated in the past that I believe this to be occuring for political, rather than practical reasons - it was a key plank in the election manifesto of some French leftists who came to power a few years ago. IIRC no reason was given other than "we're Socialists". You couldn't make it up.

I do not believe that French electricity prices will stay low if this policy is carried out. Nor do I believe that they can maintain a 90%+ non-fossil electricity supply. Not for one second.

We've tried to explain to you that retail and wholesale prices are very different. But you keep ignoring it and harping on about ust the retail price.

If you pay an electricity bill, the retail price is the only price that matters. You don't pay the wholesale price so it's completely irrelevant, especially when the market is so heavily interfered with that the retail price is the only credible guide to what the hell is going on.

It's like arguing about how much it costs to produce beer in different countries by comparing the price of a pint in pubs. Comparing the price in supermarkets would be a better option but even that doesn't take into account the VAT or excise duty.

Your simplistic analysis ignores one key point:

If the government provided "sustainable" beer production with massive subsidies funded by taxes on beer sales. Given the subsidies, it might only cost 10c a can to make the "sustainable" beer and sell it wholesale, but the resulting product might cost €3 a can. It would be somewhat boneheaded to argue that this makes any sense.

You have also completely ignored the fact that Hinkley C will be getting 9.25p a KWhr or whatever that index linked price will have gone up to if/when it ever starts generating. And no guarantees that price won't go up or that there won't be yet more hidden subsidies behind it.

I've already stated (albeit likely well into the past) that I consider this excessive and I don't know why 2nd gen reactors can help the French retail power for €0.15 a unit while the Hinkley C will cost. 9.25p a Kwh wholesale.

But adding a sane margin between 9.25p and the retail price will almost certainly be cheaper than what they're paying in Germany and Denmark.

Yeah right. Just pointing out that we have a lot of unproductive land. And roofs. Of course scenic and amenity areas already pay for them selves.

You specifically mentioned Sandymount Strand and the Burren. The flippin' Burren. Again, I couldn't make this stuff up in a million years.

In theory we could install up to 25GW of solar on the bogs Bord Na Mona won't be using in 2030. Actually you probably could up that by 50% if solar efficiency keeps increasing.

Solar power. In Ireland. Even if these things are as cheap as you keep telling us they are, there is that slight problem that solar power in Ireland would produce power with a direct inverse correlation to demand - so you wallpaper the bogs with solar panels at some enormous cost and you get 25GW on a warm summers afternoon when everyone's gone to a picnic or the beach. You get absolutely nothing on winter nights when the temperature goes to -17 and everyone's got electric heaters on.

Our minimum ever summer night valley was a little over 1700MW. We'd have to backup a nuke with enough spinning reserve too.

LOL. Data centres work 24/7, and fclauson's link suggests a 24/7 need for 1,136 MW is coming down the tracks, that's nearly enough to justify a single 2nd Gen nuclear reactor like one of the 4 blocks at Cattenom. Remember, that 1,136 MW is just from one small section (data centres) of one industry (Information Technology). Remember also that I am not recommending an EPR, as I consider 1600MW per unit to be too much - so the question of how good a plant type it is, is a total strawman.

so you really need that spinning reserve.

Ireland has some hydro and interconnection to the UK, in a common market Ireland could share spinning reserve with the UK over a number of interconnectors for a limited amount of the backup need.

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, he has seen the light

Yes, the area around windmills could be used for arable farming, that's hardly a concession that windmills do not limit the use of land for any other purpose.

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one he said
The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one but still they come!

Wayne Jeff - Eve Of The War Lyrics
Yeah since we got windmills German tourists have been staying away in droves.

I'm not familiar with this song, so I'm not sure what you're getting at, but if you're suggesting that there are lots of German tourists coming to Ireland to see windmills, that would be quite bizarre. Though not surprising.

They don't cost a fortune.

All countries that have followed Green energy policies pay obscene elecrtricity prices. Much of the German electricity price is Energiewende related taxes. Same in Denmark. All of it pushing electricity prices up to Niue, Kiribati, Samoa type "tiny islands in the middle of the ocean" prices, i.e. obscene. And these are not theoretical "wholesale" prices (which are violently unstable and meaningless), these are the actual, electricity bill in the letterbox prices.

Payback time is less than nuclear plant construction time.

That's why it costs twice as much to buy electricity in Germany as France? Why do German wind-farmers require so much Energiewende related taxes?

43% increase in bat numbers since wind farms were rolled out.

Most of it before wind farms were rolled out en-masse, which suggests that other factors were responsible:

Bat populations in Europe plummeted in the latter half of the 20th century, their habitat wrecked by intensive agriculture, deliberate destruction of their roosts or use of toxic chemicals to treat timbers in old buildings.

And the third wish is for economic magic, "storage would be too cheap to meter" stuff.

LOL, said by somoene who wants to spend everyone elses money on power plant types that produce power in a directly-inverse pattern to demand :pac:

I have repeatedly pointed out that cheap wind and solar have utterly decimated pre-existing pumped storage in Germany. Short version Storage is so expensive that it can only exist when you have guaranteed peaks where power costs multiples of the base rate. Thanks to renewables these peaks are fewer.

Germany's electricity market is so FUBAR that the grid operators routinely paying users to waste electricity (which you can bet is a cost not passed on to the wind farmers). Even with this, by your own admission the economics of storage are also so FUBAR that there's no way to save this energy for when it's needed. W.T.F?

The article seems pretty self-explanatory - what is it exactly that you would like me to explain?

I guess I was hoping you could explain why this was not a (yet another) reason to look at the insanity that's going on in Germany and change course with all due haste. Evidently you could not, hence the sarky bs.

Perfect example of you ignoring posts that don’t suit your argument. In such scenarios, the company in question could easily sue the power suppliers for damages.

Have you actually read the link? German industrial companies can only claim €5,000 from the grid operator for these damages, regardless of the cost of the fluctuation which could run North of 20 times that.

In any case the grid operator is just "piggy in the middle" they didn't decide on the Energiewende, boneheaded politicians and electorates did.

Macha

French nuclear can "offer" a cheap retail price because the price is subsidised and set by the French government, not the market . It doesn't reflect the actual cost of French nuclear plants. EDF repeatedly asks for increases. Here's an article from 18 October defending the recently agreed price increase to fund retrofits of the existing fleet (in French) :
http://www.europe1.fr/economie/electricite-jean-bernard-levy-le-pdg-dedf-veut-des-augmentations-acceptables-2531551

This had been pointed out to you quite a few times by now so it would be good if you could stop repeating it.

Markcheese

So that means you'll be boycotting your local supermarket , cos they have back up diesel generators, as does pretty much every hospital - damn it cant even put milk in your tae, dairy farmers all haveback up diesel gennys .
yes the renewable energy thing with apple is green wash but so what ...

fclauson

Another blog talking about how expensive Irish electricity is http://cormaclucey.blogspot.ie/2014/11/irish-energy-policy-expensive-mess.html?m=1.all

SeanW wrote: »

If you pay an electricity bill, the retail price is the only price that matters. You don't pay the wholesale price so it's completely irrelevant, especially when the market is so heavily interfered with that the retail price is the only credible guide to what the hell is going on.

Retail prices vary enormously from ~14c per KWh to ~20c per KWh depending on supplier. When you're talking about a variation of ~50% or so, that's a pretty good indicator that they're *not* a credible guide but are conflated with people remaining with a supplier instead of shopping around year to year. Market clearing price is a much more robust estimate - which can be adjusted to capture anything that you reckon it misses.

SeanW wrote: »

Germany's electricity market is so FUBAR that the grid operators routinely paying users to waste electricity (which you can bet is a cost not passed on to the wind farmers). Even with this, by your own admission the economics of storage are also so FUBAR that there's no way to save this energy for when it's needed. W.T.F?

I think there's a misunderstanding here - that's the generator owners bidding negatively into the power market. Not the Grid Operators making a crazy decision. Different entities making this very different to what you're suggesting.

The generators are paying to avoid start up/shut down costs (both financial and in opportunity costs due to being unable to sell power a few hours later as they take time to be ready to start again). You see this negative pricing crop up in markets with nuclear or other long start generators - it's not a bug and it's usually good for consumers.

fclauson wrote: »

Another blog talking about how expensive Irish electricity is http://cormaclucey.blogspot.ie/2014/11/irish-energy-policy-expensive-mess.html?m=1.all

That's weird. Ireland's market prices are actually on par or lower priced than the UK equivalent. Continental Europe is a different story but they've got the advantage of being well connected with other power systems (so much better economies of scale/trading potential).

djpbarry

fclauson wrote: »

Its marketing hype - I am greener than you - its to please Wall Street

It has nothing to do with the power coming in to a site only coming from renewables

It also has very little to do with the current discussion.

djpbarry

SeanW wrote: »

If you pay an electricity bill, the retail price is the only price that matters. You don't pay the wholesale price so it's completely irrelevant, especially when the market is so heavily interfered with that the retail price is the only credible guide to what the hell is going on.
…
I've already stated (albeit likely well into the past) that I consider this excessive and I don't know why 2nd gen reactors can help the French retail power for €0.15 a unit while the Hinkley C will cost. 9.25p a Kwh wholesale.

There you go comparing retail and wholesale again.

SeanW wrote: »

Solar power. In Ireland. Even if these things are as cheap as you keep telling us they are, there is that slight problem that solar power in Ireland would produce power with a direct inverse correlation to demand…

Why do you keep throwing out these complete falsehoods? Are you actually arguing that Ireland doesn’t require electricity during summer days?

I can’t also help noticing the contradiction in your argument. Your laughing at the idea of harnessing solar power in Ireland, whilst simultaneously claiming that every summer in Ireland, everyone is out enjoying the glorious weather.

SeanW wrote: »

All countries that have followed Green energy policies pay obscene elecrtricity prices. Much of the German electricity price is Energiewende related taxes. Same in Denmark. All of it pushing electricity prices up to Niue, Kiribati, Samoa type "tiny islands in the middle of the ocean" prices, i.e. obscene. And these are not theoretical "wholesale" prices (which are violently unstable and meaningless), these are the actual, electricity bill in the letterbox prices.

Suppose Ireland decided to have an “Energiewende” of its own, except rather than a mass roll-out of renewable energy-related infrastructure, Ireland went all-out nuclear.

What do you suppose that would do to electricity bills in the short term?

SeanW wrote: »

I guess I was hoping you could explain why this was not a (yet another) reason to look at the insanity that's going on in Germany and change course with all due haste. Evidently you could not, hence the sarky bs.

Is there some insurmountable problem outlined in the article that I’ve missed?

SeanW wrote: »

Have you actually read the link? German industrial companies can only claim €5,000 from the grid operator for these damages, regardless of the cost of the fluctuation which could run North of 20 times that.

I am not familiar with the ins and outs of German corporate law (and I doubt you are either), but anyway, your repeated claims that Germany’s grid is becoming increasingly unstable don’t stand up to scrutiny. The following is taken from the Council of European Energy Regulator’s latest report on the Continuity of Electricity Supply:

Germany and Denmark have two of the most stable electricity supplies in Europe.

Birdnuts

L wrote: »

That's weird. Ireland's market prices are actually on par or lower priced than the UK equivalent. Continental Europe is a different story but they've got the advantage of being well connected with other power systems (so much better economies of scale/trading potential).

Not really - Luceys piece was referring to the cost of retail energy in Ireland while your link above refers to the wholesale price of energy ie. The price before you add in the likes of PSO levies, grid costs etc.

Birdnuts

djpbarry wrote: »

. The following is taken from the Council of European Energy Regulator’s latest report on the Continuity of Electricity Supply:

Germany and Denmark have two of the most stable electricity supplies in Europe.

If you read the actual link it includes electrical outages due to severe weather events that obviously has nothing to do with energy generation or grid issues. Obviously some countries are more prone to severe weather events than others in the case of wind storms, heavy snow events or mult-cell thunderstorms etc. due to their particular climate or geography

I think far more interesting is what happened in the UK just last week highlighting the folly of wasting billions on an unreliable intermittent supply of energy while neglecting to invest in the maintenance and upkeep of baseload plant

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11975069/Power-plant-breakdowns-force-National-Grid-to-issue-alert.html

"problem was compounded by low wind speeds meaning most of Britain’s 6,500 onshore and offshore wind turbines were barely generating any power just as demand hit its highest.

Markcheese

Birdnuts wrote:

"problem was compounded by low wind speeds meaning most of Britainâ€™s 6,500 onshore and offshore wind turbines were barely generating any power just as demand hit its highest.

So does that mean fossil fuel is unreliable too ?

fclauson

Markcheese wrote: »

So does that mean fossil fuel is unreliable too ?

You missed the point - its about the UK under resourcing its energy requirements in the belief that wind would supply the deficit

fclauson

djpbarry wrote: »

It also has very little to do with the current discussion.

Its my OP so I think I can determine what is in and out of scope

Capt'n Midnight

fclauson wrote: »

You missed the point - its about the UK under resourcing its energy requirements in the belief that wind would supply the deficit

If you are going to make extraordinary claims you'll need extraordinary evidence.

And as for under resourcing , remind us again just how much Hinkley C will cost over it's life ,to the nearest £10 Bn ?

Please show where they believed that wind would make up any shortfall. Please try a little harder rather than harping on and on about how "wind is intermittent" as if the people who manage grids have never even considered that possibility.

The UK has been adding interconnectors. There's also demand shedding and general efficiencies too.

Markcheese

fclauson wrote: »

You missed the point - its about the UK under resourcing its energy requirements in the belief that wind would supply the deficit

Am I ? . The uk 's grid is short on power . ( largely due to a lack of investment) They're not planning on renewables getting them out of this hole . I don't think any proponent of renewables argues that they don't need to be backed up . As ( which is proved by your example ) does all other power source-

Birdnuts wrote: »

Not really - Luceys piece was referring to the cost of retail energy in Ireland while your link above refers to the wholesale price of energy ie. The price before you add in the likes of PSO levies, grid costs etc.

Yes, but PSO levies, and dispatch balancing aren't that much proportionately. It's weird that if our market price is lower our retail prices are *higher*.

Macha

fclauson wrote: »

Its my OP so I think I can determine what is in and out of scope

[mod]Um, that's the moderator's job. [\mod]

djpbarry

Birdnuts wrote: »

If you read the actual link it includes electrical outages due to severe weather events that obviously has nothing to do with energy generation or grid issues.

Yes, I'm aware of that. The point is it has been claimed that Germany has an "unstable" electricity supply, when the available evidence suggests otherwise.

Birdnuts wrote: »

I think far more interesting is what happened in the UK just last week highlighting the folly of wasting billions on an unreliable intermittent supply of energy while neglecting to invest in the maintenance and upkeep of baseload plant...

Eh, clearly it's the ageing coal plants that are unreliable?

Capt'n Midnight

We are only getting 2.5GW from wind at the moment.

Birdnuts

Pretty devastating critique of Britains foray into wind/solar by Cambridge Professor David McKay who was the UK's Chief Government Scientific Advisor in the Dept for Energy and Climate Change up to last year in this weeks Economist

Macha

[mod] can we avoid lazy link referencing and try to actually form a coherent argument using data/points raised in that link? It makes for better a better debate [/mod]

Birdnuts

djpbarry wrote: »

Eh, clearly it's the ageing coal plants that are unreliable?

I think what most reasonably objective people got from that article is that Britain has failed to maintain and invest in its baseload plants and instead blew vast amounts of money on wind/solar, which as recent weeks have shown, was utter folly.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4608290.ece?shareToken=79922a19fb6d195f12bd6caf015bad80

A good summing up of the situation in the above link

djpbarry

Birdnuts wrote: »

I think what most reasonably objective people got from that article is that Britain has failed to maintain and invest in its baseload plants and instead blew vast amounts of money on wind/solar, which as recent weeks have shown, was utter folly.

Hinkley Point C?

Birdnuts wrote: »

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4608290.ece?shareToken=79922a19fb6d195f12bd6caf015bad80

A good summing up of the situation in the above link

It's not a good "summing up" at all. It's just the same, lazy arguments again.

Markcheese

Birdnuts wrote:

I think what most reasonably objective people got from that article is that Britain has failed to maintain and invest in its baseload plants and instead blew vast amounts of money on wind/solar, which as recent weeks have shown, was utter folly.

You could also argue they've failed to invest properly in their renewables. Every source of power needs apropriate back up - wind ,nuclear ,gas or coal needs apropriate back up . Usually gas suits most situations - old coal generators would not be seen as apropriate back up for most scenarios - they're base load ( and probably considered not the most reliable but cheap base load)

Capt'n Midnight

Birdnuts wrote: »

I think what most reasonably objective people got from that article is that Britain has failed to maintain and invest in its baseload plants and instead blew vast amounts of money on wind/solar, which as recent weeks have shown, was utter folly.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34767194

And ministers' political decision to reject onshore wind energy and solar power in the countryside is likely to stem the growth of two of the UK's cheapest sources of clean energy.
...
even changes designed to reduce bills might indirectly increase them in the long run.

He said the uncertainty generated by the U-turns in policy would increase the risk to lenders and so increase the cost of borrowing, which could push bills up.