Reposted from Clive Best’s excellent blog
Posted on October 23, 2014 by Clive Best
I have noticed that wind power delivered to the Grid is always less than 6 GW, no matter how windy it gets. This was clearly demonstrated on October 21st when wind speeds across the country reached around 50 mph for most of the day. The wind output was simply bumping along continuously below 6 GW. Something fishy is going on – What is it?
winds
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The heart of the problem becomes clearer once you start looking at the constraint payments made to wind farms under the Grid’s ‘balancing mechanism’ (see: ref.org.uk). Large wind farms were paid a staggering £2 million on 21st October to disconnect from the Grid. These payments are priced at over £90 for each MWh of ‘generated’ wind energy which is then simply thrown away !
ref
Nor is this an isolated incident. Over the past year constraint payments have been increasing continuously as more capacity has been added. We can see similar periods over weekends last August and April. All these hidden costs for wind are passed on to the consumer through their monthly bills.
6GW-limit
The UK installed wind capacity is 11.2 GW but the effective load capacity on a perfect day of wind is apparently only around a maximum of 60 %. The Grid simply cannot handle more than 6GW of instantaneous wind power, whereas it has no problem with 30GW of Coal or Gas. I think the problem lies in the Grid topology which is based on large power lines to central generators. The high voltage connections to dispersed wind farms cannot handle large power, and this is made worse by unpredictability. There is really no point adding any new wind capacity until the underlying infrastructure is upgraded. But how much would it cost to completely redesign the National Grid, and is it really worth it when we could simply build large modern gas and nuclear plants compatible with the existing Grid?
This message of course is not what the green Wind lobby want to hear. They want to instal as much as possible because they can’t lose. They get paid whatever happens reaping handsome profits from ‘phantom’ energy. Why are they not also charged for the extra expense to upgrade the Grid?
Finally lets look at the headline wind energy statistics that are often quoted. Renewable Energy UK quote that the UK fleet of wind farms generate 27,263,077 MWh of Energy each year. This is based on DECCs own DUKES review of on-shore and off-shore capacity factors (27.82%). So let’s now look at the actual electrical energy supplied to the Grid over a full year of operations. I have integrated the total energy supplied to the grid over the last 13 months based on hourly monitoring.
Power delivery by Fuel type to meet Peak demand every day since September 2013. Weekdays peak demand occurs around 18:00 and at weekdays around 20:00.
Power delivery by Fuel type to meet Peak demand every day since September 2013. Weekdays peak demand occurs around 18:00 and at weekdays around 20:00.
The average daily electrical energy supplied to the Grid by Wind farms between 1st September 2013 and 1st October 2014 was 22,833,000 MWh. The total energy generated in a 12 month period September to September was 20,217,523,383 MWh. This demonstrates that up to 26% of the reported energy paid out to wind farms is simply thrown away. This fact is well hidden from public scrutiny because we all pay for such wastage through our electricity bills. Wind drives energy prices up. DECC and the Wind industry would prefer you not to know because it undermines their economic case for green energy.
Similarly the real ‘savings’ of CO2 emissions from wind were 3 million tonnes less than the official DECC figures of 11.7 million tonnes, and which also ignores the increased emissions of Gas plants to balance Wind. The real capacity load factor of Wind Farms was 20.6% and not the quoted 28.7%, once you take into account the discarded excess wind energy.
The real costs of Wind electricity should be revised upwards by 35%. Only if and when the Grid gets upgraded to handle multiple power lines to such a dispersed energy source as wind can the current DECC and wind industry figures be believed. The costs of upgrading the Grid are enormous and must be factored into the real costs of expanding wind energy. Until the Grid is upgraded it makes hardly any sense at all to add any new UK wind capacity. That is unless you are a wind operator with guaranteed 20% return on investment underwritten by the UK government.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
‘on October 21st when wind speeds across the country reached around 50 mph for most of the day’
Is this a clue? Note the curve and the cut-out speed – about 56 mph = 25 metres/sec.
The Grid will have switched wind power off-line well before the turbines cut-out. The constraint payments are based on the total capacity of each wind farm. Note that this also includes the broken turbines! According to REF there are confidential constraint agreements with large operators which are not included in their database so payments could actually be double the quoted figure. This would then agree with the Daily express story of £5M paid out on October 21st
I have been counting the number of feathered turbines in wind farms as I drive around the country. I reckon up to 10% of all turbines are currently broken. Why are they not being repaired ? Perhaps the constraint payments have something to do with it since they are included in the total installed capacity.
The power line from Scotland to England is currently limited to 3 GW !
‘Over the past year constraint payments have been increasing continuously as more capacity has been added.’
‘There is really no point adding any new wind capacity until the underlying infrastructure is upgraded.’
The current policy called ‘Connect and Manage’ is to keep building wind turbines even when the transmission lines won’t be ready to take their power, so a short-term ‘bulge’ in constraint payments is expected. Official explanation here:
http://www.nationalgridconnecting.com/grounds-for-constraint/
Re the chart – it looks as if wind speeds over 14 m/s give no extra benefit.
Update (from the link):
‘So far this year, National Grid has paid £33.8m to wind farm operators for limiting their generation output to manage system issues; constraints management was a major contribution to this figure. This represents about 5.2% of the total cost of operating the transmission system.’
At least the Daily Express is trying to inform the public. In today’s paper on page 28 right up in the top right corner is a tiny entry by one Anil Dawar.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/527846/Wind-turbines-dramatically-inefficient
Wind turbines at 90 per cent efficiency LESS than 20 hours a year
WIND farms fall hopelessly short of achieving their full electricity generating capability, a study has found.
Experts discovered that turbines break the 90 per cent efficiency mark for only 17 hours a year.
Data showed wind farms generate below 20 per cent of supposed output for 20 weeks a year and less than 10 per cent for nine weeks.
The statistics are in a report by the respected Adam Smith Institute think tank and Scientific Alliance.
The findings follow news that a Lords committee was told relying on wind power would lead to a doubling of energy bills and power cuts by 2030.
http://www2.nationalgrid.com/UK/Our-company/Electricity/Balancing-the-network/
Balancing up the costs
There is a cost in this balancing activity, but it is very low for consumers – no more than a few pence a year on a typical electricity bill. As part of a ‘balancing mechanism’, each power station makes a ‘bid’ that reflects what they are willing to be paid – or to pay – to be taken off or moved on to the network.
In 2012/13, the total cost of balancing the network was £803million which makes up around 1 per cent of consumer bills. Ofgem regulates these balancing costs and gives us incentives to keep them down.
The balancing costs are made up of a number of elements and one of these is constraint costs.
The total cost of constraints in 2011/12 was £324million. Of this amount, £31million was for wind constraints.
The total cost of constraints in 2012/13 was £170million. Of this amount, £7million was for wind constraints.
Wind constraints reduced because of the investment made in reinforcing the transmission network. The reinforcements increase the capacity to transport more energy, but while doing the work, we need to take parts of the network out of service which reduces the capacity and leads to us needing to constrain some energy in the interim
This is massive corruption, the biggest boondoggle in History.
In 2001, the man who closed down my company, and who went on to create the UK’s largest Renewables’ Corporation, boasted of the subsidy farming. he died in 2011.
He was associated with the people who, on the basis of money extracted illegally from a W Midlands’ Company, paid for Brown and, later Balls, to get into power. The payback was PFI and Renewables’ subsidies.
Read Hansard, late Nov. early Dec. 1997, questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The last government was our first Mafia-controlled administration, except part of our Mafia were educated in middle range Public Schools.
Large wind farms were paid a staggering £2 million on 21st October to disconnect from the Grid.
I want a large wind farm of my own in my back yard, and another one in my front yard.
Maybe that in italics “The average daily electrical energy supplied to the Grid by Wind farms between 1st September 2013 and 1st October 2014 was 22,833,000 MWh” should have been the total electrical energy over those 13 months instead ?
thefordprefect says: ‘There is a cost in this balancing activity, but it is very low for consumers – no more than a few pence a year on a typical electricity bill.’
The true figure is nearly £34 million in 10 months, as I quoted earlier:
‘So far this year, National Grid has paid £33.8m to wind farm operators for limiting their generation output to manage system issues; constraints management was a major contribution to this figure. This represents about 5.2% of the total cost of operating the transmission system.’
Another report shows up the weaknesses of wind power:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/27/Government-is-Whistling-in-the-Wind-on-Practical-Case-for-Wind-Power
Wind Farm developers and the politicians who support them know it is a scam.
They need to be charged with fraud and when found gulity, imprisoned.
The whole “renewable energy” policy cries out for judicial review.
But they are trying to prevent ordinary people who are affected by damaging policies (like promoting wind “power”) from asking courts to review them.
Latest proposals will require you to go to Court to first establish a basis- and guess what? It has will be VERY expensive.
We need to act now before this possible remedy is removed.
Then the thieving b******s will be untouchable.
oldbrew says: October 27, 2014 at 7:52 pm
thefordprefect says: ‘There is a cost in this balancing activity, but it is very low for consumers – no more than a few pence a year on a typical electricity bill.’
The true figure is nearly £34 million in 10 months, as I quoted earlier:
‘So far this year, National Grid has paid £33.8m to wind farm operators for limiting their generation output to manage system issues; constraints management was a major contribution to this figure. This represents about 5.2% of the total cost of operating the transmission system.’
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OB
My figures are in fact from National Grid.
Quoting from breitbart is not really a source of repute. Any ideas where your figures come from?
So even when the wind blows wind power sucks.
Reblogged this on the WeatherAction News Blog and commented:
Ripping off the public to subsidise land owners…and…massacring birds. What’s not for a green to like?
Ford: My figures are also from the National Grid. Breitbart was just a report, not the source of the quote.
Maybe I didn’t make that clear, but referred to my earlier comment which had this link:
http://www.nationalgridconnecting.com/grounds-for-constraint/
See the paragraphs headed ‘Assessing the results’.