Tuesday 20 July 2010

Electricity Generation and Green Technologies

6 Jan 2010



6 Jan 2010

In a recent 24 hour period these were the percentages of GB electricity generated from various energy sources.

Gas 47.8%
Coal 28.9%
Nuclear 19.6%
Wind 0.4%

Wind produced a mere 163 megawatts at around midnight last night, against an installed capacity of just over 4 gigawatts. That represents a load factor of four percent.

Last June The Guardian was in all seriousness retailing us the government’s claims offshore wind farms could generate one quarter of the UK’s electricity needs. Do you believe either The Guardian or the Government? Answers in one word on the back of a postage stamp.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/01/monument-to-folly.html

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8th jan 2010

An interesting discussion just now on radio4 PM between Eddie Mair and ?? about the government's announcement of the granting of licences for more off-shore wind farms. (Nothing can even start until at least four years hence.)

The spin is, as stated in the OP above, that 25% of UK electricity requirement can supposedly be provided from this source.

The interlocutor was permitted to defuse the spin somewhat by informing us that the claimed 30 GW (gigawatts) of production translates into 10 GW at the most (because the wind does not always blow - duh!)

Another bit of spin was also defused. The government claims this new offshore electricity generation will provide ALL the UK's household needs. Sadly, domestic electricity consumption only amounts to 4% of total usage in the UK.

You learn something new every day!

And another thing!

The cost per extra watt of electricity produced by wind turbines is incredibly dear, even more than by nuclear generation, apparently, because of the back-up required from conventional power stations on windless days.

Can we actually afford a vastly inflated cost of our essential fuel especially when 300 years of coal reserves lies underground?
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White House Needs New Look At Energy

By MICHAEL J. ECONOMIDES
21 Jan 2010

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=518743





The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.

Nor has the US administration, mired in Kyoto and Copenhagen global climate rhetoric, acknowledged that fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal will still account by then for over 85% of world energy demand, a largely unchanged contribution from what it is today.

Instead there is constant rhetoric about solar (the president’s favorite during the campaign), wind and “advanced biofuels” which, when combined, are not likely to account for more than 1% or 2% of the world energy demand over the next several decades.


Who's kidding who?

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In the 2008 Climate Change Act is a target to require the UK to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by at least 80%. This Act was passed with the support of all political parties.

Are they utterly barmy?

Oh, but never mind, the "reduction" can be purchased via Carbon Credits. So that's all right, then. Phew! I though they SERIOUSLY intended to de-industrialise (de-carbonise) the UK economy. But no the carbon reduction illusion can be financed by the enhanced fuel bills we will all be paying, are ALREADY PAYING, in fact.

Did you know that?

Are you OK with that?

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Just found this interesting article about the challenge of introducing Green technologies.



The End of Magical Climate Thinking

BY TED NORDHAUS, MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER | JANUARY 13, 2010

the long-term failure of Kyoto and all other efforts to establish binding emissions caps is virtually assured and is a function of a basic technological problem. We simply do not have low-carbon technologies today that can at large scale replace fossil fuels at a cost that any political economy in the world is willing to impose upon itself. There will be no political solution to climate change, no binding international agreement to substantially reduce emissions, and no effective domestic carbon cap until low-carbon technologies are much cheaper than they are today...

The technologies we need will not materialize in response to carbon prices or emissions caps. Nor will they arrive, as many conservatives would have it, by getting the government out of the way and simply allowing a new generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to tinker away in their garages.

Rather, we need to create a new clean energy economy in the same way we created our information economy: by identifying a set of well-defined technical problems and mobilizing the human resources of our technologically advanced civilization -- our scientists, laboratories, universities, and engineers -- to solve them...

These technical questions are not difficult to grasp and in fact have already largely been laid out by Chu in his remarks to the New York Times. How do we convert sunlight into energy much more efficiently than solar panels do today? What combination of chemicals can store more energy in batteries that are smaller and lighter? How can we manufacture a next generation of self-contained nuclear reactors that are safer, smaller, and cheaper than the large ones of the 1950s and 1960s? And how can we engineer new biological organisms to serve as a cheap fuel alternative to oil?

Solving global warming's technology challenges will require not a single Apollo program or Manhattan Project, but many. We need to solve technical problems across a range of technologies and at a variety of stages along the road from technological development to demonstration to commercialization to mass deployment...

green lifestyles and energy conservation will not reduce the average American's energy consumption 80 percent over 40 years...

The hard work of mobilizing the resources and institutions necessary to engineer our way to a low-carbon economy will look profoundly different from both the histrionics at Copenhagen and the slick sales pitch offered by carbon traders in Washington...

Transforming the global energy economy from fossil fuels to low-carbon alternatives over the next 50 to 100 years is such a monumental technological undertaking that it is quite understandable that many would either declare it impossible or retreat into magical thinking. We must resist these temptations...

After two decades of domestic and international failure to take real action on climate change, it is time for the purveyors of magical thinking to take their exit so that the main act can begin.


Full article here
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/20....inking?page=0,1

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Wind power is a complete disaster

Posted: April 08, 2009,
Michael J. Trebilcock

By Michael J. Trebilcock
Financial Post
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs....#ixzz0gZ q6MFtR

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power’s unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark’s largest energy utilities) tells us that “wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.” The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that “Germany’s CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram,” and additional coal- and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Indeed, recent academic research shows that wind power may actually increase greenhouse gas emissions in some cases, depending on the carbon-intensity of back-up generation required because of its intermittent character. ....

Industrial wind power is not a viable economic alternative to other energy conservation options. Again, the Danish experience is instructive. Its electricity generation costs are the highest in Europe (15¢/kwh compared to Ontario’s current rate of about 6¢). Niels Gram of the Danish Federation of Industries says, “windmills are a mistake and economically make no sense.” Aase Madsen , the Chair of Energy Policy in the Danish Parliament, calls it “a terribly expensive disaster.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2008, on a dollar per MWh basis, the U.S. government subsidizes wind at $23.34 — compared to reliable energy sources: natural gas at 25¢; coal at 44¢; hydro at 67¢; and nuclear at $1.59, leading to what some U.S. commentators call “a huge corporate welfare feeding frenzy.” The Wall Street Journal advises that “wind generation is the prime example of what can go wrong when the government decides to pick winners.”

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"Lessons Learned: E.ON Netz GmbH, the largest grid operator in Germany, reports in its Wind Report 2005, that "Wind energy cannot replace conventional power stations to any significant extent...The more wind power capacity [on] the grid, the lower the percentage of traditional generation it can replace."

EON Netz Wind Power Report 2005, Germany

http://www.windaction.org/documents/461

FIGURE 5 shows the annual curve of wind power feed-in in the EON control area for 2004, from which it is possible to derive the wind power feed-in during the past year:

1. The HIGHEST wind power feed-in in the EON grid was just above 6,000MW for a brief period, or put another way the feed-in was around 85% of the installed wind power capacity at the time.

2. The AVERAGE feed-in over the year was 1,295MW, around one fifth of the average installed wind power capacity over the year.

3. Over half of the year, the wind power feed-in was less than 14% of the average installed wind power capacity over the year.

The feed-in capacity can change frequently within a few hours. This is shown in FIGURE 6, which reproduces the course of wind power feedin during the Christmas week from 20 to 26 December 2004.

Whilst wind power feed-in at 9.15am on Christmas Eve reached its maximum for the year at 6,024MW, it fell to below 2,000MW within only 10 hours, a difference of over 4,000MW. This corresponds to the capacity of 8 x 500MW coal fired power station blocks. On Boxing Day, wind power feed-in in the EON grid fell to below 40MW.

Handling such significant differences in feed-in levels poses a major challenge to grid operators.

__________

In order to also guarantee reliable electricity supplies when wind farms produce little or no power, e.g. during periods of calm or storm-related shutdowns, traditional power station capacities must be available as a reserve. This means that wind farms can only replace traditional power station capacities to a limited degree.

An objective measure of the extent to which wind farms are able to replace traditional power stations, is the contribution towards guaranteed capacity which they make within an existing power station portfolio. Approximately this capacity may be dispensed within a traditional power station portfolio, without thereby prejudicing the level of supply reliability.

In 2004 two major German studies investigated the size of contribution that wind farms make towards guaranteed capacity. Both studies separately came to virtually identical conclusions, that wind energy currently contributes to the secure production capacity of the system, by providing 8% of its installed capacity. As wind power capacity rises, the lower availability of the wind farms determines the reliability of the system as a whole to an ever increasing extent. Consequently the greater reliability of traditional power stations becomes increasingly eclipsed.

As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously

to around 4% (FIGURE 7).

In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms.

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Apr 12 2009
7:08 PM
Just a couple of nitty gritty comments from Denmark:

1. re: "Denmark, the world’s most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity" - it should be noted that ~ 45 percent of the annual production cannot be put to use in the Danish grid (due to 'balancing problems' i.e. supply/demand mismatch), so it must be exported, mainly to Norway and Germany - often at very low spot prices! The wind turbine operators, on their side, are guranteed a fixed price per kWh produced, with the balance being paid by the Danish electricity consumers. The total annual 'surcharge' thus placed on their shoulders is in the order of US$ 8.000.000.

2. re: "pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone)" - I don't understand how that percentage was calculated: The 'actual' emission in 2005 was 49.4 Gt, in 2006 it was 57.3 Gt, corresponding to a 16% increase - the 'corrected' emission in 2005 was 51.0 Gt, in 2006 it was 52.4 Gt, corresponding to a 2.7% increase; it should furthermore be noted, at the 2005 'actual' emission (49,4 Gt) was clearly an 'outlier', with alle preceding years in the 50+ Gt bracket.

The crux of the matter is that the highly diversified Danish electricity production - based on the triad of
1) Wind turbines,
2) (conventional) coal plants and
3) 'decentralized' gas-fired plants for production of hot water (for heating purposes) AND electricity

- gives rise to huge 'balancing problems', problems that will become aggravated if/when MORE wind turbines are introduced!

Germany is reaping the benefits of wind energy, it is building coal burning plants to replace nuclear, by extension windmills, because green energy doesn't work. Shell dropped their interest in green (biofuel being the antithesis of green) like a hot potato, sheiks are losing or have lost interest in financing farms. They listen to their advisers (and I would think they are the world's best). It is everything you said in the article and more.

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From Arno Arrak

The EU has declared that ten percent of its transport should use biofuels by 2020. I bet you did not know that this requires that seventy percent of its cropland should be devoted to producing nothing but biofuel. Grain prices are already sky high thanks to current projects and there have been food riots in poor countries as a result. For England this means using their entire present grain harvest for biofuel and requires her to import as much grain as she now grows. No one has any idea of where that grain will come from.

Or take the windmills. Denmark is ahead of everyone in windmill land. But in 2002 they declared a moratorium on new windmill projects. Why? Because the wind does not blow steadily. They found that when the wind was light they had to buy expensive electricity from Germany. And when it was strong they had an excess on their hands. You cannot store it so they ended up selling it to Norway below their own cost. It was a lose-lose proposition and the Danish people are now paying the highest electricity rates in Europe.

And if you think that windmills are carbon free think again. It turned out that because of the uncertainty of wind speeds the outputs of individual systems kept fluctuating and it was necessary to keep a conventional “spinning reserve” on hand to take up that unpredictable slack at a moment’s notice. They get approximately eight percent of their electricity from these windmills. The same amount of power could be supplied at far lower cost by just one conventional coal-fired power station.

If the Waxman-Markey ever becomes law we are in for a whole lot of such irrational actions, all to fight a non-existent warming.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/10/my-thanks-and-comments-for-dr-walt-meier/

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As someone who has studied the wind power industry for several years and acts as an expert witness at wind power station public inquiries (it is a mis-nomer to call them wind farms), it is patently obvious that they are expensive white elephants whose sole purpose is to enrich developers and land owners (and other vested interests). The BWEA (now RenewablesUK) is one of the biggest peddlars of lies that I am aware of and yet it has the government's ear. Everybody else apart from developers and landownerssuffers financial loss, loss of amenity and destruction of the countryside. Industry will die or leave the country to places where there are reliable suppplies of competitively priced electricity. Money is being diverted to wind that should be spent on proper electricity generating stations. It is likely that we will have electricity supply shortages in the next 5 years or so due to the dash for wind.

One of the reasons the government wants to install smart meters in every home is so that they can restrict our energy use and avoid brown or blackouts as the result of nulabour's energy policy (or lack thereof - about a dozen energy ministers in 13 years results in lack of coordinated policy; and putting energy with climate change in DECC under Ed Miliband was the final straw).

May 1, 2010 | Phillip Bratby, Bishop Hill
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2....k.html#comments

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« Last Edit: Apr 12, 2010, 7:14pm by marchesarosa »Report to Mod - Link to Post - Bac

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