UK offshore wind auction set to flop.

[scotview]

Have you compared the LCOE with other forms of generation?
-sd

Aye, but the name plate is a lie when the win' disnae blaw'

[UncleEbenezer]

I had hoped that tidal might be a good area to invest, but my, ahh, investment... in Atlantis has pretty much sunk without trace.

V8

As has my Atlantis investment. A management with fingers in far too many pies to make a good job of them, which is a huge shame.

I have higher hopes of my investments in Nova and QED.

[servodude]

Have you compared the LCOE with other forms of generation?
-sd

Aye, but the name plate is a lie when the win' disnae blaw'

That's all considered in the LCOE

It seems eternally ubiquitous for motivated blawhards to continually point out that "aye sure sometimes there's naw wind" as if the folk that design, install, operate and profit from the generation of electricty in the industry weren't fully aware of how the key resource they are exploiting functions
specifically LCOE is averaged over the lifetime of whatever plant and for wind includes a "capacity factor" that deals with this

This stuff is only very loosely related to rocket science, which people seem to regard as pretty well covered in the "we've got to know what we are doing stakes", so it shouldn't be beyond the ken of even lay folk to understand that the intermittent nature of the fluctuations in pressure of the Earth's atmosphere and how that pertains to the capture of the energy within it for the conversion to electricity has been, and will continue to be, well understood, modelled and measured by the people that are investing their time, effort and money in to it as a commercial enterprise.

As a generator there isn't much to beat wind at scale (for cost or turnaround) but I don't expect folk to stop constantly draggin oot the same "if your auntie had baws" argument agin it - even though it's a bit of a waste of everyone's time

That's not to say there aren't new challanges with storage though

[Urbandreamer]

The government (red or blue) is 100% hell bent on the UK redressing climate change (whether real or imaginary) as far as I can see. I also bet there is a lot of MP vested interests in "green" energy.

Sorry to be so negative but that's how I see it.

Which is why it has made the changes to dates required for the phasing out of "petrol" cars? Or the changes to home heating? Or, the windfall tax, which can be offset if you seek to extract oil or gas?

Sure, I know that it happened over the last year, but it did happen.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 15195.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... en-targets

After 24 hours of frenetic political briefing, the prime minister held a hastily convened press conference at Downing Street to announce that the 2030 ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars – and gas boilers – would be pushed back to 2035.

Those who follow the news may recall car manufacturers being ... somewhat surprised, at the turn of events.

Windfall tax:
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britai ... 023-03-13/

The EPL includes an investment incentive that means oil and gas firms can offset from their tax bill 91.40 pounds in every 100 pounds spent on new production.

However to be fair, Net zero is STILL a legal commitment.

https://www.theccc.org.uk/what-is-clima ... ty-to-act/

The Climate Change Act commits the UK government by law to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 100% of 1990 levels (net zero) by 2050.

Hence the government legally does have to try and support low carbon projects. Wind power itself is simply not enough in and of itself.
Returning to wind power, they have bumped the cfd price, but as yet we have not had an auction at that price. Who knows if the recompense covers the windfall tax and if the offer will be trusted.

[jaizan]

Nobody, and I repeat NOBODY, has claimed a position of zero carbon.

I didn't specify whether my "zero carbon" reference was net or gross, so before calling me a straw man, try looking in the mirror.


Being realistic, we will need to be taking an awful lot of carbon out of the atmosphere to make up for all the gas and coal needed to generate electric when the wind isn't blowing.
Bear in mind electricity consumption will increase when we're all forced into heat pumps and electric cars.
Plus all the CO2 from sectors that can't easily use electric.

So NET zero would require near zero CO2 output from electricity generation.


Right now, wind is putting out 2.955 GW. Under 10% of our wind capacity. Good luck heating homes with that.
Wind power is unfit for purpose.

[Urbandreamer]

Being realistic, we will need to be taking an awful lot of carbon out of the atmosphere to make up for all the gas and coal needed to generate electric when the wind isn't blowing.
Bear in mind electricity consumption will increase when we're all forced into heat pumps and electric cars.
Plus all the CO2 from sectors that can't easily use electric.

The point is to use MORE electricity! That way you CAN use energy without the carbon emission rather than be forced into those emissions.

Sure there are industries that HAVE to emit CO2, if we are to have our comfortable lives. Almost all of them are "chemical" based.
Pass CO over hot ore and emit CO2. The oxygen being extracted leaving metallic copper or iron. Add a controlled amount of carbon back to the iron and you have steel.
Heat calcium carbonate (limestone) and pump hot air over it, emitting CO2. You get lime. Mix some other stuff in at the start and you get cement, used in concrete.

We can't avoid those type of industries, which is why we need to use as much wind, solar and nuclear to power our vehicles and heat our homes as we can.

Your argument is that we should ignore these facts, because we sometimes need to use gas?

Over the last year almost 60% of our electricity was provided by emitting carbon. Significantly less than five years ago! It will NEVER be zero, but we might emit less carbon in total if we use wind turbines for heating and transport at least some of the time. Instead of gas and oil all of the time.

Ps re gas boilers specifically. We need to increase very significantly the amount of electricity generated without carbon emission for simple resistive heating to make sense. Heat pumps, apparently a bete noire for some, change the numbers nearer to the status quo. Oh and nearly every UK home currently has at least one heat pump. It's called a refrigerator and is used to keep food cold.

[tjh290633]

Being realistic, we will need to be taking an awful lot of carbon out of the atmosphere to make up for all the gas and coal needed to generate electric when the wind isn't blowing.
Bear in mind electricity consumption will increase when we're all forced into heat pumps and electric cars.
Plus all the CO2 from sectors that can't easily use electric.

The point is to use MORE electricity! That way you CAN use energy without the carbon emission rather than be forced into those emissions.

Sure there are industries that HAVE to emit CO2, if we are to have our comfortable lives. Almost all of them are "chemical" based.
Pass CO over hot ore and emit CO2. The oxygen being extracted leaving metallic copper or iron. Add a controlled amount of carbon back to the iron and you have steel.
Heat calcium carbonate (limestone) and pump hot air over it, emitting CO2. You get lime. Mix some other stuff in at the start and you get cement, used in concrete.

We can't avoid those type of industries, which is why we need to use as much wind, solar and nuclear to power our vehicles and heat our homes as we can.

Your argument is that we should ignore these facts, because we sometimes need to use gas?

Over the last year almost 60% of our electricity was provided by emitting carbon. Significantly less than five years ago! It will NEVER be zero, but we might emit less carbon in total if we use wind turbines for heating and transport at least some of the time. Instead of gas and oil all of the time.

Ps re gas boilers specifically. We need to increase very significantly the amount of electricity generated without carbon emission for simple resistive heating to make sense. Heat pumps, apparently a bete noire for some, change the numbers nearer to the status quo. Oh and nearly every UK home currently has at least one heat pump. It's called a refrigerator and is used to keep food cold.

I spent most of my working life in and around the glass industry. Carbon based fuel has long been the main source of energy for melting. The melting process itself involves reactions between carbonates and silica sand which involve the evolution of carbon dioxide. The principal carbonates are soda ash and limestone. They could be replaced, but the replacements start from the carbonate in any case.

What can be changed is by switching from fossil fuel to electricity for the melting process. The evolution of carbon dioxide from the melting reactions cannot be avoided, but cold top electric meters eliminate combustion processes and the associated pollution problems.

Ideally the electricity comes from a reliable source, like hydroelectric power or nuclear. If wind power is the principal source, then there has to be a flexible standby source. Gas or oil is the only practicable fuel for a standby generator which can be brought into action at short notice, without being on hot standby. Probably the best is combined cycle gas turbine generation, as used in some of the current generating plants, combining a gas turbine and a steam turbine. In theory battery power or stored hydro power could be used, but only for relatively short periods.

Some gas will have to be used unless we go 100% nuclear.

TJH

[Urbandreamer]

Some gas will have to be used unless we go 100% nuclear.

TJH

Sadly, ignoring that we can't be 100% if we rely upon a second energy source, gas or storage/hydro would be required if we were "100%" nuclear.
The simple fact is that nuclear is incredibly slow to respond to demand changes. As I linked to on another thread upon this board.

I'll post the link again.
https://www.neimagazine.com/features/fe ... -11210843/

Nuclear’s large volume and always-on nature has always been as much of a management challenge as a benefit. It is predictable, but has always run the risk of tipping the system into oversupply at times (such as overnight) when demand is low.

The article has some interesting things to say about wind and the cfd mechanism as well. Well worth a read.

Possibly we should just accept the concept of mixed generation.

Ps I didn't quote the rest of your post as I can't either add or disagree.

[bonrepos]

I have just read about vanadium flow batteries which appear to be cheaper than lithium ion batteries.
They appear to have a capacity up to 36 hours if I've read it right.
Does anyone know much about this?