THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 25, 2023
Time to fight Offshore Wind Projects
Reader submitted content.
(AP) by Wayne Parry, Associated Press Ocean City, N.J
Opponents of offshore wind energy projects in New Jersey are gathering force legally and politically as they seek to snuff out the nascent industry.
Within the last week, three residents groups sued New Jersey over a key approval of its first planned wind farm; the research arm of Congress agreed to investigate the impact of offshore wind on the environment and other areas; and lawmakers in two counties most heavily impacted by wind farms stepped up their efforts to block the projects. Save Long Beach Island, Defend Brigantine Beach, and Protect Our Coast NJ filed an appeal Friday in state Superior Court of New Jersey’s determination that the Ocean Wind I project is consistent with state coastal management rules.
The project is New Jersey’s first, and a U.S. subsidiary of Danish wind developer Orsted could begin construction this year if remaining approvals are obtained.
The appeal follows a decision by the investigative arm of Congress, the Congressional Accountability Office, to study the impact of offshore wind on the environment and other areas — something opponents have long wanted.
Bruce Afran, an attorney for the groups, said the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection “has acknowledged the wind turbines will destroy marine habitat, compress the seafl oor, severely damage marine communities, compromise migration corridors for endangered marine mammals, cause commercial fishing stocks to decline, and injure the beach economy.”
“Yet, the state persists in the bizarre belief that this massive engineering project will not injure our state’s coastal zone, one of the most important marine communities on the East Coast and the core of New Jersey’s $47 billion tourist industry,” Mr. Afran added.
The DEP declined to comment, and state attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Jeanne Fox, former head of the DEP, the state Board of Public Utilities and former regional head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, called the lawsuit “a delay tactic.”
“Numerous environmental studies have been done regarding offshore wind, for this specific Ocean Wind project and in general,” Ms. Fox said. “The greatest threat to the ocean habitat, sea mammals and fish is the climate crisis. Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels.”
The project would build 98 wind turbines about 15 miles off the coast of Ocean City and Atlantic City. It is the first of three offshore wind projects to receive approval in New Jersey so far, with several more expected in years to come.
Mr. Afran cited numerous sections of the DEP’s April decision on Ocean Wind I acknowledging potential negative impacts on the surf clam industry; changes to the ocean floor from wind turbine foundations and equipment; and the regular use of the area as a migratory channel by five species of whales, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815425
Time to fight Offshore Wind Projects
Re: Time to fight Offshore Wind Projects
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 25, 2023 AT 10:53 AM
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
CCM: “Numerous environmental studies have been done regarding offshore wind, for this specific Ocean Wind project and in general,” Ms. Fox said.
“The greatest threat to the ocean habitat, sea mammals and fish is the climate crisis.”
“Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels.”
*********************************
All of which is pure UNSCIENTIFIC BULL**** which begins with a flawed and unproven, unprovable and quite hysterical premise that there is in fact a CLIMATE CRISIS!
THE SKY IS GOING TO FALL, PEOPLE, THEREFORE IT IS FALLING, IT’S GOING TO KILL US ALL UNLESS WE THROW TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT IT, AND IN THE MEANTIME, BE SCARED AND RUN LIKE HELL FOR THE NEAREST SHELTER!
Where is the PROOF of a climate crisis?
There is NONE!
It is a hysterical speculation!
Is the climate changing?
Of course, because it is always changing.
Are windmills going to stop the climate from changing?
Not at all, and in fact, by disrupting air flow, they will exacerbate it.
But we are dealing with LAWYER’s GAMES here, people, not “science,” which today is a mockable word worthy of nothing but contempt, because it has become synonymous with STUPID.
And what the lawyer’s are doing is starting from the unproven premise that there is a CLIMATE CRISIS, and then when they do their supposed environmental impact statements, and this can all be independently verified by going to the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) website https://www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/n ... ble-energy , they arrange the supposed “facts” to support the pre-determined conclusion that these wind farms are good for the environment, to wit:
* Environmental Assessments in Support of Leasing
* Environmental Impact Statements in Support of Project Approvals
And that, people, is a clear PERVERSION of the true purpose of doing an actual, independent, scientific environmental impact analysis, because you don’t do environmental impact studies to support what you have already decided to do, as is the case here.
You do a proper environmental impact assessment of WHAT YOU PROPOSE!
But that is all gone down the toilet and out the drain now.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815425
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
CCM: “Numerous environmental studies have been done regarding offshore wind, for this specific Ocean Wind project and in general,” Ms. Fox said.
“The greatest threat to the ocean habitat, sea mammals and fish is the climate crisis.”
“Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels.”
*********************************
All of which is pure UNSCIENTIFIC BULL**** which begins with a flawed and unproven, unprovable and quite hysterical premise that there is in fact a CLIMATE CRISIS!
THE SKY IS GOING TO FALL, PEOPLE, THEREFORE IT IS FALLING, IT’S GOING TO KILL US ALL UNLESS WE THROW TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT IT, AND IN THE MEANTIME, BE SCARED AND RUN LIKE HELL FOR THE NEAREST SHELTER!
Where is the PROOF of a climate crisis?
There is NONE!
It is a hysterical speculation!
Is the climate changing?
Of course, because it is always changing.
Are windmills going to stop the climate from changing?
Not at all, and in fact, by disrupting air flow, they will exacerbate it.
But we are dealing with LAWYER’s GAMES here, people, not “science,” which today is a mockable word worthy of nothing but contempt, because it has become synonymous with STUPID.
And what the lawyer’s are doing is starting from the unproven premise that there is a CLIMATE CRISIS, and then when they do their supposed environmental impact statements, and this can all be independently verified by going to the Bureau of Ocean Management (BOEM) website https://www.boem.gov/renewable-energy/n ... ble-energy , they arrange the supposed “facts” to support the pre-determined conclusion that these wind farms are good for the environment, to wit:
* Environmental Assessments in Support of Leasing
* Environmental Impact Statements in Support of Project Approvals
And that, people, is a clear PERVERSION of the true purpose of doing an actual, independent, scientific environmental impact analysis, because you don’t do environmental impact studies to support what you have already decided to do, as is the case here.
You do a proper environmental impact assessment of WHAT YOU PROPOSE!
But that is all gone down the toilet and out the drain now.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815425
Re: Time to fight Offshore Wind Projects
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 27, 2023 AT 10:44 AM
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
CCM: Jeanne Fox, former head of the DEP, the state Board of Public Utilities and former regional head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, called the lawsuit “a delay tactic.”
* * * * *
So who then is this Jeanne Fox who is telling us that “The greatest threat to the ocean habitat, sea mammals and fish is the climate crisis,” and “Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels,” other than just another political hack, because only politically-reliable political hacks get those kinds of positions in the first place, and why would anyone in their right mind then believe a word she says, about anything, but specifically about off-shore windmill farms?
Other than being politically reliable, what particular expertise does she possess that would make her any kind of expert on the subject?
For example, if we go to her all-important Linked in page, which is where important people like Jeanne Fox let the candid world know just how incredible and important they are, what we find for her is as follows, to wit: Climate Crisis fighter, Adjunct Professor, Feminist, Public Servant.
And there we have it, people, for that is it.
And that in turn brings us to a Daily Caller article titled “Massive Energy Corporation Says Up To 30% Of Its Wind Turbines Could Be Malfunctioning” by Will Kessler on 23 June 2023, where we have a dose of the reality that eludes “Climate Crisis fighter” Jeanne Fox, to wit:
Siemens Energy announced Thursday that it will be undergoing a technical review after it was found that up to 30% of its wind turbines could have faulty components, according to statements made by the company.
Siemens Energy, an international energy company that seeks to “decarbonize global energy systems,” announced that it is withdrawing its profit guidance for the year after subsidiary Siemens Gamesa found that there was a “substantial increase in failure rates of wind turbine components.”
The company believes that between 15% and 30% of its installed fleets are suffering from component failures, Jochen Eickholt, CEO of Siemens Gamesa, said during a Friday morning analyst call.
“The fact that we have identified more quality problems marks a significant setback for us.”
“These quality problems go beyond what we were previously aware of, and they are directly linked to selective components at a few but important suppliers,” Christian Bruch, President and CEO of Siemens Energy, said during the call.
“At this point in time, we believe that the costs are likely to be in excess of 1 billion euros.”
Siemens Energy stock fell 36% as of Friday morning after the announcement, according to MarketWatch.
The use of wind energy has received criticism as operations grow in size, incurring more maintenance costs and environmental concerns.
Newer, larger turbines designed to generate enough power to fuel renewable energy desires suffer from a greater rate of component failure, resulting in higher maintenance costs, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some environmentalists also claim that wind farms harm animals, including birds, through habitat destruction and obstructing air travel.
end quotes
So, people, ask yourself this important question here – who do we believe?
Should we take the word of self-professed and self-acclaimed “Climate Crisis fighter” Jeanne Fox who is parroting the Biden line, here, telling us “Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels?”
Or should we perhaps go with reality as it exists, instead?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815425
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
CCM: Jeanne Fox, former head of the DEP, the state Board of Public Utilities and former regional head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, called the lawsuit “a delay tactic.”
* * * * *
So who then is this Jeanne Fox who is telling us that “The greatest threat to the ocean habitat, sea mammals and fish is the climate crisis,” and “Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels,” other than just another political hack, because only politically-reliable political hacks get those kinds of positions in the first place, and why would anyone in their right mind then believe a word she says, about anything, but specifically about off-shore windmill farms?
Other than being politically reliable, what particular expertise does she possess that would make her any kind of expert on the subject?
For example, if we go to her all-important Linked in page, which is where important people like Jeanne Fox let the candid world know just how incredible and important they are, what we find for her is as follows, to wit: Climate Crisis fighter, Adjunct Professor, Feminist, Public Servant.
And there we have it, people, for that is it.
And that in turn brings us to a Daily Caller article titled “Massive Energy Corporation Says Up To 30% Of Its Wind Turbines Could Be Malfunctioning” by Will Kessler on 23 June 2023, where we have a dose of the reality that eludes “Climate Crisis fighter” Jeanne Fox, to wit:
Siemens Energy announced Thursday that it will be undergoing a technical review after it was found that up to 30% of its wind turbines could have faulty components, according to statements made by the company.
Siemens Energy, an international energy company that seeks to “decarbonize global energy systems,” announced that it is withdrawing its profit guidance for the year after subsidiary Siemens Gamesa found that there was a “substantial increase in failure rates of wind turbine components.”
The company believes that between 15% and 30% of its installed fleets are suffering from component failures, Jochen Eickholt, CEO of Siemens Gamesa, said during a Friday morning analyst call.
“The fact that we have identified more quality problems marks a significant setback for us.”
“These quality problems go beyond what we were previously aware of, and they are directly linked to selective components at a few but important suppliers,” Christian Bruch, President and CEO of Siemens Energy, said during the call.
“At this point in time, we believe that the costs are likely to be in excess of 1 billion euros.”
Siemens Energy stock fell 36% as of Friday morning after the announcement, according to MarketWatch.
The use of wind energy has received criticism as operations grow in size, incurring more maintenance costs and environmental concerns.
Newer, larger turbines designed to generate enough power to fuel renewable energy desires suffer from a greater rate of component failure, resulting in higher maintenance costs, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Some environmentalists also claim that wind farms harm animals, including birds, through habitat destruction and obstructing air travel.
end quotes
So, people, ask yourself this important question here – who do we believe?
Should we take the word of self-professed and self-acclaimed “Climate Crisis fighter” Jeanne Fox who is parroting the Biden line, here, telling us “Offshore wind will lessen the need to burn more fossil fuels?”
Or should we perhaps go with reality as it exists, instead?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815425
Re: Time to fight Offshore Wind Projects
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR JUNE 28, 2023 AT 8:52 PM
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
And what an arrogant title that is that this Jeanne Fox claims for herself as a “climate crisis fighter,” which makes one wonder what she has armed herself with to fight the climate crisis, whether an AR-15 modified to fire on full automatic, or “rock and roll” as we VEET NAM grunts termed it, or is she armed with something more lethal like a Stinger missile.
But my goodness, enough about her, since this is about windmills, as opposed to how a real “climate crisis fighter” like Jeanne Fox actually goes about fighting the so-called “climate crisis,” and that brings us back to the real world the majority of us who are not “climate crisis fighters” like Jeanne Fox live in, which takes us to an article from the Brit publication The Telegraph titled “Britain’s green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans” by Capell Aris on 11 June 2023, where we have as follows on the subject of windmills, to wit:
Last year, the Biden administration set an ambitious new goal for the USA: to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by the year 2030, increasing US offshore capacity more than seven hundred times over.
end quote
And as we who live in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy world Joe Biden and his windmill crowd spend their time in, know, that should be the clueless, short-sighted, shallow-thinking Biden administration has set an ambitious new goal for the USA: to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by the year 2030, increasing US offshore capacity more than seven hundred times over, which takes us back to the reality “climate crisis fighters” like Jeanne Fox are totally unaware of in their delusionl state, to wit:
The UK already has 15 GW of offshore wind, more than 300 times as much as the USA: and our experience should be a terrible warning to Americans.
end quote
But it won’t be, because we are stupid and we are terrified that unless Joe Biden can save us with all his windmills, we are going to die in twelve or less years from global warming, which is going to kill us, sure as anything, if we don’t die of something else beforehand, like getting burned to death in an exploding E-car, which again takes us back to the story, to wit:
The UK’s electricity prices are the highest since records began in 1920 and are now amongst the highest in all Europe.
One reason for this is obvious: slightly less than half our electricity comes from gas-burning Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs) and gas now costs £90 per megawatt-hour (MWh), nearly five times higher than normal.
In normal times they would generate electricity at a total cost of £40 per MWh.
That’s now risen to nearly £150/MWh, thanks to Vladimir Putin and his impact on the gas market.
But that’s not the whole story.
The other reason why British electricity is so expensive is because we have so much wind power: particularly, so much offshore wind power.
Bad though the current situation is, we would be an even worse state if we had built even more offshore wind, as the British government plans to.
As an example, the offshore wind farms Hornsea Two and Moray East were completed in 2022 with capital costs of £2.77 billion per GW and £2.75bn/GW, more than four times the cost of CCGT capacity.
They’re expensive to maintain, which is not surprising since offshore windfarms have all their many generators mounted at the top of 200-metre tall masts far away from land.
Estimates of maintenance costs are as high as £200m per GW installed, per annum.
The nominal cost of offshore wind generation is £170/MWh – noticeably higher than that for CCGTs, even in these dire times of high gas prices.
The other factor to bear in mind is that not only is wind capacity extremely expensive to build, wind farms do not deliver anything like their rated capacity over time.
This is bad news for the customer, because the higher the capacity factor – that is, the higher the percentage of the rated capacity the powerplant actually delivers over time – the cheaper the energy.
In 2022 the UK’s onshore and offshore windfarms operated with a capacity factor of 33 per cent.
In 2021 it was only 29 per cent.
It gets worse.
Like most other renewable generation technologies, wind power is unpredictably intermittent and highly variable.
Also, since wind turbines are not synchronously connected to the grid, they provide no “grid inertia” – more on that shortly.
Wind turbines cannot be asked to deliver energy when it is required, and their output changes rapidly.
These failings must be mitigated and costed, and users have to pay for these costs on top of the price of the electricity.
In 2021 the UK annual grid balancing costs reached £4.19 billion, £150 per household.
For context, back in 1995 when we didn’t have much wind power the balancing cost for the grid was a mere £250 million per annum.
A large, and growing, contribution to these costs is constraint management, as when a wind farm producing electricity which isn’t wanted – perhaps when it is windy in the middle of the night – is paid not to put that electricity into the grid.
The problems and costs don’t stop there.
Our transmission grid system was originally designed to link generation centres close to sources of fuel (coal, gas) and load centres such as cities.
Now our generation sites are moving further away from load centres.
Our grid transmission system has to be expanded to connect the new renewable generators, which is bad enough when they are on a remote hilltop and worse still when they are out at sea.
The National Grid estimates that on current plans this work will cost £46 billion – £1,533 per household – to 2030.
Then there’s grid inertia.
The British grid is termed an island grid, which means that we are solely responsible for controlling the grid frequency between tight limits so that things plugged into the grid will work as expected.
Frequency control becomes easier as the inertia of the grid system increases.
Grid system inertia is a key measure of how resilient the system is in response to transient changes.
Inertia is the sum of the energy stored within the rotating mass of the machines (generators and motors) connected directly to the system.
Low system inertia increases the risk of rapid system changes, which may then lead to disconnection of load or generation and then system instability.
Apart from tree-burning biomass stations and hydro generation, renewables plants bring no inertia to the grid: as the proportion of renewables rises, system inertia falls and the risk of major problems such as blackouts increases.
We have attempted to reduce the issue of intermittency by expanding our connections to the European electricity grid – the hope being that the wind will be blowing somewhere else even if it is not blowing here – but we’re still exposed to periods when wind generation across the whole of Europe falls near to nothing.
And these connections do not help with inertia and stability either because few of the connections to the continent are synchronous connections.
In 1995 the problem of grid frequency stability required provision of rapidly responding generators capable of changing their combined output at a rate of 0.13 GW per second in order to deal with fluctuations.
With the arrival of so much unpredictable wind power, that figure has now increased almost tenfold to 1.15 GW per second!
Extra services like very rapid response gas generators, required in order to make it possible to connect renewables to the grid, add between £30/MWh and £50/MWh to renewables’ cost.
Thus the true cost to the customer of offshore wind generators is actually between £200/MWh and £220/MWh, much more than CCGTs even in these times of ruinously high gas prices.
Phasing out CCGT production will therefore increase domestic electricity prices painfully.
But it seems that CCGTs will be phased out much sooner than planned.
The government has proposed an expansion to 60 GW of offshore wind by 2030 (capital expenditure £122 billion) and solar to 70 GW by 2035 (capital expenditure to 2030 £30 billion).
This is extremely unwise: we still have no way of storing electricity at scale and the planned transitions of home heating and transport to electrical power are progressing weakly and may yet stall completely.
Creating such a large solar generation fleet raises the nightmare scenario of early summer mornings, with little demand and the vast majority of generation being solar with zero inertia: massive grid collapses would be all but a certainty.
Vast amounts of energy will be generated only to be expensively constrained off and probably wasted, and the scenario of unmet demand – with attendant blackouts – will become unavoidable.
The UK grid is simply not able to cope with the proposed amounts of renewables.
And we simply cannot afford all this.
If we add the costs of an even more extended National Grid, this programme of wind and solar generation expansion will cost £232 billion – more than £8,000 per household this decade – all to be paid for by the suffering energy user.
It should be emphasised that these figures do not include the costs of the huge energy storage industry which will also be necessary, whatever that may turn out to be: hydrogen or ammonia or something even more dangerous and expensive.
Heat pumps and switching to electric vehicles could lift total costs above £1 trillion.
Truly, Americans should look at the British renewables disaster and give thanks that today they have hardly any offshore wind.
And they might, looking at the UK, recoil with horror from the plans of the Biden administration: especially as most US offshore wind will need to be floating offshore wind rather than built on the seabed, and so even more expensive.
Dr Capell Aris PhD has spent his career in the electricity generation sector. He is a former Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815874
Paul Plante, NYSPE says:
And what an arrogant title that is that this Jeanne Fox claims for herself as a “climate crisis fighter,” which makes one wonder what she has armed herself with to fight the climate crisis, whether an AR-15 modified to fire on full automatic, or “rock and roll” as we VEET NAM grunts termed it, or is she armed with something more lethal like a Stinger missile.
But my goodness, enough about her, since this is about windmills, as opposed to how a real “climate crisis fighter” like Jeanne Fox actually goes about fighting the so-called “climate crisis,” and that brings us back to the real world the majority of us who are not “climate crisis fighters” like Jeanne Fox live in, which takes us to an article from the Brit publication The Telegraph titled “Britain’s green energy disaster should be an awful warning to Americans” by Capell Aris on 11 June 2023, where we have as follows on the subject of windmills, to wit:
Last year, the Biden administration set an ambitious new goal for the USA: to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by the year 2030, increasing US offshore capacity more than seven hundred times over.
end quote
And as we who live in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy world Joe Biden and his windmill crowd spend their time in, know, that should be the clueless, short-sighted, shallow-thinking Biden administration has set an ambitious new goal for the USA: to deploy 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind capacity by the year 2030, increasing US offshore capacity more than seven hundred times over, which takes us back to the reality “climate crisis fighters” like Jeanne Fox are totally unaware of in their delusionl state, to wit:
The UK already has 15 GW of offshore wind, more than 300 times as much as the USA: and our experience should be a terrible warning to Americans.
end quote
But it won’t be, because we are stupid and we are terrified that unless Joe Biden can save us with all his windmills, we are going to die in twelve or less years from global warming, which is going to kill us, sure as anything, if we don’t die of something else beforehand, like getting burned to death in an exploding E-car, which again takes us back to the story, to wit:
The UK’s electricity prices are the highest since records began in 1920 and are now amongst the highest in all Europe.
One reason for this is obvious: slightly less than half our electricity comes from gas-burning Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGTs) and gas now costs £90 per megawatt-hour (MWh), nearly five times higher than normal.
In normal times they would generate electricity at a total cost of £40 per MWh.
That’s now risen to nearly £150/MWh, thanks to Vladimir Putin and his impact on the gas market.
But that’s not the whole story.
The other reason why British electricity is so expensive is because we have so much wind power: particularly, so much offshore wind power.
Bad though the current situation is, we would be an even worse state if we had built even more offshore wind, as the British government plans to.
As an example, the offshore wind farms Hornsea Two and Moray East were completed in 2022 with capital costs of £2.77 billion per GW and £2.75bn/GW, more than four times the cost of CCGT capacity.
They’re expensive to maintain, which is not surprising since offshore windfarms have all their many generators mounted at the top of 200-metre tall masts far away from land.
Estimates of maintenance costs are as high as £200m per GW installed, per annum.
The nominal cost of offshore wind generation is £170/MWh – noticeably higher than that for CCGTs, even in these dire times of high gas prices.
The other factor to bear in mind is that not only is wind capacity extremely expensive to build, wind farms do not deliver anything like their rated capacity over time.
This is bad news for the customer, because the higher the capacity factor – that is, the higher the percentage of the rated capacity the powerplant actually delivers over time – the cheaper the energy.
In 2022 the UK’s onshore and offshore windfarms operated with a capacity factor of 33 per cent.
In 2021 it was only 29 per cent.
It gets worse.
Like most other renewable generation technologies, wind power is unpredictably intermittent and highly variable.
Also, since wind turbines are not synchronously connected to the grid, they provide no “grid inertia” – more on that shortly.
Wind turbines cannot be asked to deliver energy when it is required, and their output changes rapidly.
These failings must be mitigated and costed, and users have to pay for these costs on top of the price of the electricity.
In 2021 the UK annual grid balancing costs reached £4.19 billion, £150 per household.
For context, back in 1995 when we didn’t have much wind power the balancing cost for the grid was a mere £250 million per annum.
A large, and growing, contribution to these costs is constraint management, as when a wind farm producing electricity which isn’t wanted – perhaps when it is windy in the middle of the night – is paid not to put that electricity into the grid.
The problems and costs don’t stop there.
Our transmission grid system was originally designed to link generation centres close to sources of fuel (coal, gas) and load centres such as cities.
Now our generation sites are moving further away from load centres.
Our grid transmission system has to be expanded to connect the new renewable generators, which is bad enough when they are on a remote hilltop and worse still when they are out at sea.
The National Grid estimates that on current plans this work will cost £46 billion – £1,533 per household – to 2030.
Then there’s grid inertia.
The British grid is termed an island grid, which means that we are solely responsible for controlling the grid frequency between tight limits so that things plugged into the grid will work as expected.
Frequency control becomes easier as the inertia of the grid system increases.
Grid system inertia is a key measure of how resilient the system is in response to transient changes.
Inertia is the sum of the energy stored within the rotating mass of the machines (generators and motors) connected directly to the system.
Low system inertia increases the risk of rapid system changes, which may then lead to disconnection of load or generation and then system instability.
Apart from tree-burning biomass stations and hydro generation, renewables plants bring no inertia to the grid: as the proportion of renewables rises, system inertia falls and the risk of major problems such as blackouts increases.
We have attempted to reduce the issue of intermittency by expanding our connections to the European electricity grid – the hope being that the wind will be blowing somewhere else even if it is not blowing here – but we’re still exposed to periods when wind generation across the whole of Europe falls near to nothing.
And these connections do not help with inertia and stability either because few of the connections to the continent are synchronous connections.
In 1995 the problem of grid frequency stability required provision of rapidly responding generators capable of changing their combined output at a rate of 0.13 GW per second in order to deal with fluctuations.
With the arrival of so much unpredictable wind power, that figure has now increased almost tenfold to 1.15 GW per second!
Extra services like very rapid response gas generators, required in order to make it possible to connect renewables to the grid, add between £30/MWh and £50/MWh to renewables’ cost.
Thus the true cost to the customer of offshore wind generators is actually between £200/MWh and £220/MWh, much more than CCGTs even in these times of ruinously high gas prices.
Phasing out CCGT production will therefore increase domestic electricity prices painfully.
But it seems that CCGTs will be phased out much sooner than planned.
The government has proposed an expansion to 60 GW of offshore wind by 2030 (capital expenditure £122 billion) and solar to 70 GW by 2035 (capital expenditure to 2030 £30 billion).
This is extremely unwise: we still have no way of storing electricity at scale and the planned transitions of home heating and transport to electrical power are progressing weakly and may yet stall completely.
Creating such a large solar generation fleet raises the nightmare scenario of early summer mornings, with little demand and the vast majority of generation being solar with zero inertia: massive grid collapses would be all but a certainty.
Vast amounts of energy will be generated only to be expensively constrained off and probably wasted, and the scenario of unmet demand – with attendant blackouts – will become unavoidable.
The UK grid is simply not able to cope with the proposed amounts of renewables.
And we simply cannot afford all this.
If we add the costs of an even more extended National Grid, this programme of wind and solar generation expansion will cost £232 billion – more than £8,000 per household this decade – all to be paid for by the suffering energy user.
It should be emphasised that these figures do not include the costs of the huge energy storage industry which will also be necessary, whatever that may turn out to be: hydrogen or ammonia or something even more dangerous and expensive.
Heat pumps and switching to electric vehicles could lift total costs above £1 trillion.
Truly, Americans should look at the British renewables disaster and give thanks that today they have hardly any offshore wind.
And they might, looking at the UK, recoil with horror from the plans of the Biden administration: especially as most US offshore wind will need to be floating offshore wind rather than built on the seabed, and so even more expensive.
Dr Capell Aris PhD has spent his career in the electricity generation sector. He is a former Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/time-t ... ent-815874