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back to article The fast-growing energy source set to replace oil: Yes, it's coal

The emergence of renewable power has had essentially no effect on the amount of carbon emissions involved in energy generation, according to a new report. The new analysis is from the International Energy Agency. According to the IEA: The Energy Sector Carbon Intensity Index (ESCII) shows how much carbon dioxide is emitted, …

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Holmes

          Re: REminds me of a report...@Graham Dawson

          "it's safe to assume that there have been improvements in the meantime."

          I think you assume the improvement will be greater than they are. Take our own Drax, which is a 1970's build, and is about 40% thermally efficient. Now take Datteln Unit 4, in Germany, which is an absolute state of the art hard coal plant (not yet commissioned even) and will be about 45% thermally efficient. That's hardly a breathtaking improvement for forty years, you'd agree?

          Moreover, I doubt that India has the money or inclination to build coal plant to the latest EU & German standards, in which case there probably has been next to no improvement in the efficiency of Indian coal fired power plant.

          If you want to improve the thermal efficiency of coal plant, then things like fluidised bed grates and higher pressure steam circuits only help so far, the real easy, easy win is to recover the heat for district heating (something we won't do in the UK, but could nearly double the thermal efficiency of any coal power station near an urban area). In India obviously there's little or no demand for heating, so they will always be stuck with at absolute best 45% efficiency.

          Logically coal burning should be discouraged in tropical and sub tropical climates (encourage them to use gas), and at higher latitudes we should use coal with heat recovery for winter power, and gas for summer, and forget about window dressing like solar PV and wind.

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          1. Sammy Smalls
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            Mushroom

            Re: REminds me of a report...@Ledswinger

            'something we won't do in the UK' - Is there a reason for this? Has this been debated and rejected? A genuine question, as it sounds like a good idea.

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            1. Anonymous Coward
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              Unhappy

              Re: REminds me of a report...@Sammy Smalls & PlacidCasual

              "'something we won't do in the UK' - Is there a reason for this? Has this been debated and rejected? A genuine question, as it sounds like a good idea."

              It has been debated a bit, but has no enthusiastic supporters and very low profile. The electricity industry is deeply conservative, but more importantly there's no support and ecounragement, with DECC continuing their mad policies of pushing "renewables" at any cost. The economics of retrofit district heating are marginal on raw commercial terms, but compared to the economics of renewables they are excellent, and a far better and cheaper way of reducing CO2 emissions. As a rough guide, a 2GWe coal fired station wastes 2-3GW thermal through its cooling towers, and that's about the heat demand of a city of a million people. Obviously you'd need to fluff some up the cooling towers if running in summer, but summer demand is less anyway, so you could downrate the coal plant over the summer (coal plant is problematic to completely mothball, although it can be done).

              PlacidCasual's comment about housing stock not being suitable seems logical, but isn't entirely correct. In southern Sweden I know that the district heating system is being built out as a retrofit to urban areas already supplied by gas, so it can be done and is done, in similar climate zones to the UK. Admittedly you're displacing relatively clean gas, but that's still unnecessary gas. Part of the lack of enthusiasm is for power stations really in the middle of nowhere (although the Danes have got some 20km+ district heating transmission lines, proving it can be done), and because of the sh!theaded EU plans to close so much UK thermal plant down. You'd be a nutter to develop district heating for something you're going to be forced to shut in a couple of years.

              Notwithstanding that, there's no reason that the plants continuing to operate post 2015 shouldn't be encouraged to develop CHP, although DECC's idiot policy of a carbon floor price is intended to put these stations out of business by the early 2020s. And DECC are also busy developing yet another subsidy for us all to pay through our 'leccy bills, the Renewable Heat Incentive; You can be sure that will exclude CHP from large coal plant. It's part of their "any idea as long as it isn't sensible, low cost, and practical" scheme.

              The pity is that modernised coal plant with CHP could potentially run at 75% thermal efficiency, even for 1970's plant, and that's a lot better than even state of the art combined cycle gas turbines.

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          2. Richard Wharram
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            @Ledswinger

            When I was a student they had tomato-growing-greenhouses next to Drax that used the excess heat. Bloody warm in there it was :)

            Also, congrats again Ledswinger for being the most consistently sensible poster on energy on The Reg.

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          3. Dave 15
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            Re: REminds me of a report...@Graham Dawson

            Didcot power station was built to provide waste heat to Didcot town... unfortunately they didn't actually provide it - probably to do with losing out on the ability to charge tax on it all - so instead the waste heat goes up the cooling towers without even being used with a stirling engine to get a little extra energy... but hey ho, still rather see us using that power station than trying to rely on the wind blowing at the right time.

            In the end all the government here and the EU are doing is nailing the coffin lid down on all our industry, office and other jobs, hiking the costs for the ever dwindling number of workers and making sure they return the whole continent (literally) to the dark ages while China and India just do what the hell they like.

            If CO2 were a real problem we'd do something about stopping imports from there... but it isn't so we won't.

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          4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
            Reply Icon
            Holmes

            Re: REminds me of a report...@Graham Dawson

            "Now take Datteln Unit 4, in Germany, which is an absolute state of the art hard coal plant (not yet commissioned even) and will be about 45% thermally efficient. That's hardly a breathtaking improvement for forty years, you'd agree?"

            An increase by 1/8 I'd suggest is pretty good. It might not be on a par with the potential MPG of modern cars but that's because the CEGB had some incentive to build efficient power stations in the first place. Were Drax built today that 5% rise would have it put out an extra 496 MW of power. That's the size of a couple of gas stations on its own.

            "Moreover, I doubt that India has the money or inclination to build coal plant to the latest EU & German standards, in which case there probably has been next to no improvement in the efficiency of Indian coal fired power plant.to begin with."

            Latest in terms of pollution control, perhaps not. But why not build for maximum efficiency? The technology baseline moves over time. How many people would still insulate the boilers with Asbestos anywhere in the world?

            "If you want to improve the thermal efficiency of coal plant, then things like fluidised bed grates and higher pressure steam circuits only help so far, the real easy, easy win is to recover the heat for district heating"

            True. It's surprising at least a few UK gas stations have not even looked at supplying district heating. IIRC they have tended to be much closer to their customers than the huge old CEGB stations.

            For India and other countries where this makes no sense I could see that process heat would be an option. I think restrictions on citing a chemical works or an oil refinery nearby are not that great (although they'd probably run the station on oil to begin with).

            "and at higher latitudes we should use coal with heat recovery for winter power, and gas for summer,"

            That's not really a choice. Note gas is popular in the UK because the market more or less forces it to go that way. This is not an intrinsic> feature it is a feature of the UK market.

            "and forget about window dressing like solar PV and wind."

            They are exceptionally bad for the UK, but there are much better renewable and carbon neutral sources, some nearly unique to the UK (such as down hole heat exchangers providing a minimum of 500Kw from every borehole, productive or dry, in the North Sea, of which there are around 4100 at last count).

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          5. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Go

            Re: REminds me of a report...@Graham Dawson

            However, in India you could recover the waste heat from a thermal power plant to provide district CHILLING using evaporative chillers and cold-water pumping. Not sure how additionally efficient it would be, but you would be using waste heat and it would certainly be a service that India could use.

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        2. Tom 13
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          @Graham Dawson: I think the why

          isn't 'why assume the technology exists?' it is 'why assume the Chinese have built it?'

          Usually the increased efficiency comes at the cost of higher price. So China gets to ramp up more quickly if they build dirtier plants. Given what we've heard about their air quality, I would bet they are opting for the faster ramp up. Whether that's because they figure they can re-invest in cleaner plants later using their increased industrial capacity, or they just don't care if the kill of a few hundred thousand people from their couple billion population is left as an exercise for the reader.

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      2. BristolBachelor Gold badge
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        Re: REminds me of a report in the 1970's "Coal Bridge to the Future."

        " I do expect it to burn a lot less coal for the same leccy that such a station built in say the 1970's would have."

        Why?

        Well, it's not just for the sake of being efficient. The Chinese need a lot of power (to cover all our off-shoring), and their production of coal can't really keep up.

        The last presentation I saw said that they were heating the water to ~600°C at ~600 bar to increase the efficiency of the plant. They then flash convert to steam at the point they generate the electricity. And this presentation was a fair time ago, comparing generation technologies before the final site of ITAR was chosen. The suggestion was that Chinese projects were leading the world in efficiency (out of necessity), and that some of that tech was going to come back to Europe later (A number of Euro companies were involved in the projects).

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        1. PlacidCasual
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          Re: REminds me of a report in the 1970's "Coal Bridge to the Future."

          I don't think anyone is looking at 600 bar steam cycles yet, I'd be very surprised if they were. 700°C and 250bar is the current acheiveable envelope with current materials. Even then you're only looking to push the 50% efficiency envelope.

          Earlier comments about district heating are not really applicable in the UK. Our housing stock is too old and disordered. In the Soviet Union it was a common solution but they had large apartment blocks relatively near the heat sources. The capital cost of district heating really demands high denisty housing near the source. This might be achievable with a distributed co-gen strategy but you would have to re-ordeer society to achieve it.

          Whilst I'm no fan of nationalisation I really think the only way to achieve a rational energy policy is for generation and gas supply to be regulated absolute monopolies at the very least. The planning and investment decisions can then be taken without the great uncertainty of market trends and political intereference.

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    2. Dave 15
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      Re: REminds me of a report in the 1970's "Coal Bridge to the Future."

      Why do you think a modern Indian station burns less coal per Mwh than a '70's station? My 'super efficient' modern car burns just as much petrol a mile as my '80's petrol guzzling sports car. EXACTLY the same. And a good deal MORE than my old Morris Minor.

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  2. LarsG
    Meh

    If this is the case, why is the Government consistently shoving renewables down out throats and charging us for the privilege under the guise that it will make for a cleaner world.

    If anything this just goes to prove that we are being taken along for the ride. We must be mugs to put up with it.

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    1. Paul Westerman
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      Unhappy

      A fart in a hurricane

      It seems rather pointless us spending years agonizing over a single windmill or hydro project when China are knocking out a new power station every week. I speak as a former 'green' who frankly can see no point and has given up.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: A fart in a hurricane

        "It seems rather pointless us spending years agonizing over a single windmill "

        But we're not. The UK has spent or committed something of the order of £20bn on crappy windmills, for stuff all output. There may be isolated examples of windpower being held up (usually onshore developments which should anyway be banned for their low load factor), but broadly speaking the programme is the one your former greeny mates have advocated, of building wind turbines pell mell, regardless of cost of consequence, and the ridiculous subsidy supported roll out of solar PV largely to middle class tossers.

        As for hydro, what hydro? All the good sites in the Uk are already in use, pumped storage is a waste of money (expensive and inefficient, still no good locations).

        I don't follow why any greens are downhearted. They've got exactly the energy policy they want - huge build out of renewables, all paid for by vast subsidies unwilling taken from electricity bill payers. They've got Kyoto, they've got the EU ETS, they've got a UK carbon floor price, and soon they'll have a post industrial Europe with a completely ruined economy.

        Cheer up, this is what you wanted.

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        1. Paul Westerman
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          Re: A fart in a hurricane

          Thanks! And I agree completely. I'd rather see those vast subsidies going into some of the interesting new reactor technologies I read about on The Reg.

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        2. Dave 15
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          Re: A fart in a hurricane

          Stupidly not all the decent hydro sites are in use. Mildenhall used to have a mill generating leccy for the town and nearby village. The machinery is actually still in the mill building - and the river etc etc are all still there. However the mill has been converted to flats and the machinery painted pretty and decommissioned.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Meh

            Re: A fart in a hurricane@Dave 15

            "Stupidly not all the decent hydro sites are in use. Mildenhall used to have a mill generating leccy for the town and nearby village."

            Mildenhall? In flat as a pancake Suffolk? The problem you have there is that low head hydro generates utterly pathetic amounts of power. Hydro power is flow times head in metres, and in most scenarios like Mildehall you'll have both low flows and low head. That's why hydro dams are tall, or use aqueducts to have turbines at much lower levels. You certainly could generate some power from a mill race, but in the grand scheme such little power that it really won't make any difference. As usual the EU have already tried to throw money at this one, I forget the name of it, but it was an attempt to subsidise power generation from low head hydro and within drinking water distribution back in the mid 1990s. It didn't result in any useful outcome.

            For a couple of houses or as a green hobby project it could be quite nice, but unfortunately it simply won't make much difference even if you stuck a hydro unit in every former mill race, and made as many again.

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      2. TeeCee Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        Re: A fart in a hurricane

        I thought the best illustration of the problem I've seen was as follows:

        If Europe were to remove every single fossil-fuelled vehicle from its roads overnight, it would take Chinese growth somewhere around two weeks to make up the difference in CO2 emissions.

        So yes. Everything we're doing in Europe has all the impact of a wet fart in a hurricane.

        My view is we'd be far better off spending the cash on infrastructure to mitigate the effects of a warmer climate in the future than we are pissing it up the wall in a grandiose "King Cnut" exercise, ensuring we'll be truly fucked when it bites.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A fart in a hurricane

          However, if we in Europe develop electric cars and other technology for reducing CO2 emissions then China might adopt some of that technology in due course, so there are other, indirect benefits from doing the right thing in Europe, even if we can't stop the rest of the world from wrecking the climate so we should prepare ourselves for rising sea levels, tropical diseases sweeping across Europe and killing everyone who hasn't drowned, etc.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: A fart in a hurricane

            "However, if we in Europe develop electric cars and other technology for reducing CO2 emissions ..."

            Except that we aren't. Turbines on every suitable windfarm site plus solar PV across all suitable areas of Europe won't provide anywhere near our existing electricity demand (sunny, breezy summer weekends excepted), and electric vehicles have the potential to double electricity demand. The only way that EV's would reduce emissions would be if you had a mass nuclear build out, replacing all winter baseload with nuclear, and (because of the enhanced demand for EV charging) doubling that. In wax crayon numbers, winter baseload is 40GW in the UK, your EV charging demand would be about the same, so that's 80GW of new nuclear. Assuming £2bn per GW that's £160bn of spend on 25-40 odd new nuclear power stations, which would take thirty years to do (supply & skills constraints more of a problem than the money).

            The lights are at risk of going out in Europe, and the only medium term solution is gas - cheap to build, cheap to run, relatively quick to build (albeit not as quick as government believe), and capable of running off imported Russian gas, Middle Eastern LNG, or Europe's vast shale gas reserves, if the will existed.

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    2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      "If this is the case, why is the Government consistently shoving renewables down out throats and charging us for the privilege under the guise that it will make for a cleaner world."

      The legally binding commitment Tony Blair signed up to make 30% of all UK energy come from renewable energy resources by something like 2030 despite knowing that while that might be possible for electricity it would be bloody near impossible quite challenging for all energy usage.

      Or as I like to think of it

      "here's-a-little-going-away-present-to-you-Mad-Eye-now-get-out-of-that-you-c**t"

      (signed) Tony.

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  3. Esskay

    "Despite their high profile and burdensome expense, however, newer renewable technologies (wind, solar and biofuel) are still not making any significant impact as they don't produce very much energy."

    I don't really see how this is a surprise - newer technologies are usually more expensive than mature ones, until they themselves mature.

    And undoubtedly China, being both massive and developing, have the biggest bearing on CO2 production of any individual country - particularly since they still burn copious amounts of coal.

    What would be interesting to see is how much CO2 China produces today compared to 1990....

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    1. NomNomNom
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      http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/prc.html

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    2. itzman
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      @esskay

      sadly renewable technology prices are rising just as fastas teh price of the oil and coal and gas used to make, install and service it, is.

      Which is utterly consistent with the fact that certainly windmills are massively MATURE technology. Having been around (and discarded) hundreds of years ago.

      Solar PV is not exactly brand new either.

      And none of the storage technologies that are being considered to act in conjunction are new, either. The innovation one finds is in the minds of those creating a glossy picture of spanking new technology, rather than in the actual technology itself.

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      1. Wilco 1
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        Re: @esskay

        Renewable technology has become far far cheaper in the last few decades due to increased volume and efficiencies. For example solar PV panels are now just £1/W in the UK! That's becoming cheap enough that they pay for themselves through reduced electricity bills even without any subsidies. And it appears the relentless downward curve has no sign of stopping any soon. Efficiencies are constantly increasing and new discoveries (even thinner films) are being made regularly .

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @esskay

          @Wilco 1

          So remove all the subsidies and market manipulation which isnt just bringing down the cost/W for solar but also increasing all our energy bills insanely to bring you that low low price (of more expensive). Would it still pay for itself? Would it have any hope of competing with the grid?

          Do the same with wind and again we have cheap energy. Replace the wind/solar with power generating sources (ones that work) and we have cheap plentiful energy!

          However such sense will not happen. So we face an energy shortage. Increased bills. Expensive infrastructure to carry the little power to the grid. Market manipulation pushing people into fuel poverty. And then some little greenies who are happy to see the heavily subsidised and barely working technology save the world. Someone please save it from the greenies.

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          1. Wilco 1
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            Facepalm

            Re: @esskay

            Yes, without any subsidies solar PV would become competitive eventually, but it would take much longer that way. If you dislike renewable subsidies, do you also dislike all the oil, gas, coal and nuclear subsidies? The tax payer will be paying countless billions just for the cleanup of the current nuclear generation...

            What source of energy can generate cheap and plentiful energy? Certainly not nuclear (not cheap, and we never got the promised "too cheap to meter"). What else? Fusion is still at least 50 years off...

            We're going to face increased bills no matter what. Coal, gas, oil are all becoming scarcer and more expensive. You can't blame increased bills on renewable energy when Russia decides to charge twice as much on the gas we use.

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  4. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge
    FAIL

    Keep the fight going...

    ...The emergence of renewable power has had essentially no effect on the amount of carbon emissions involved in energy generation...

    It does seem important to point out that we shouldn't be caring about the amount of CO2 being emitted. CO2 emissions are NOT a problem - they don't cause any environmental damage, in fact they help plants.

    There has now been a 17-year pause in global temperature rise (It's actually gone slightly down), while at the same time we have been continuing to pour CO2 out. All the models which said we would be in danger have been comprehensively proven wrong. But I am sure that the government will still try to tax us on CO2 emissions on the grounds that they might be harmful, but we haven't quite found out how just yet...

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    1. quarky
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Keep the fight going...

      Has someone been reading the Daily Mail again?

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      1. itzman
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Keep the fight going...

        No, looking at the actual DATA I would imagine. When Global temperatures are below EVERY SINGLE MODEL that considers CO2 multiplied by feedback to be a significant driver of climate, it is time for people who are prepared to let facts refute a model, rather than adjust the model constantly to fit the facts to reconsider the whole proposition.

        When the argument swings from 'this or that weather event proves global warming' to 'this or that event is ONLY WEATHER and WEATHER is NOT CLIMATE', uttered by the exact same group of people, even the thickest non scientist starts to smell a decaying rodent.

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        1. Wilco 1
          Reply Icon
          Facepalm

          Re: Keep the fight going...

          Look at the actual DATA then, can you seriously claim it has been cooling? All the key climate indicators point to unabated warming at an accelerating speed (and that includes temperature):

          http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators/

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        2. Tom 13
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          @itzman

          Don't worry, all they have to do to correct the model is add another epicycle right over there...

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    2. Wilco 1
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: Keep the fight going...

      There has not been any pause in warming. All the measurements show the temperature increase is accelerating in the last 3 decades. Temperatures haven't gone down either - every decade has been consistently warmer than the previous decade. And all other climate indicators show steady loss of land and sea ice, retreating glaciers, increasing sea levels and lower pH levels. See for example: http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators/

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  5. PyLETS
    Flame

    Old news and naked lobbyists

    The fact that the limit on coal is based on how much of it you can afford to burn as opposed to how much is in the ground has been known well enough for a couple of decades now. The cost of different energy sources of course includes externalities - e.g. your and my increased insurance bill to cover losses resulting from weird weather and losses of those who can't afford insurance, (unless you're still in denial over the weird weather).

    Yes there are externalities from other energy sources for example Mr Trump claiming the views from his newly acquired Scottish golf course will be spoiled by turbines several miles away, or the risk of living in the valley below a badly constructed hydro dam built in an earthquake zone, or the lifecycle management cost of nuclear waste.

    Bring on a level playing field, but I doubt we all agree what that means, and I for one don't want all my energy eggs in one basket. I'm also sure Mr Trump can pay for more effective lobbyists to have the the wool pulled over our eyes than can a Chinese farmer living under the shadow of a new coal-fired power station to prevent us comparing like for like.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Old news and naked lobbyists

      "unless you're still in denial over the weird weather"

      ROFL

      That is all ;-)

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      1. Tom 13
        Reply Icon

        @AC re:ROFL

        Yep. It's always amusing when the tree huggers confuse weather with climate after accusing "denialists" of making the same mistake.

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  6. Shasta McNasty
    WTF?

    False Prophet

    Renewable energy (wind, solar etc) is heralded as the solution to all our future energy needs as its both "cheap" and "available".

    Sadly, its neither of these. Renewable energy based power-stations are too bloody expensive to build and don't produce anywhere near as much energy as an coal/oil/nuclear power station of a similar size. Your typical householder is having to foot additional costs to their existing high energy bills to supplement renewable development, which means they're being properly shafted.

    China, India & the US will not agree to reducing their use of fossil fuels, so anything we do is just like pissing in the wind.

    If we had a government with any balls, they'd admit that we need more power stations that actually produce the energy required not more windmills producing 0.000001% of it. We need more nuclear power stations and given we now have a design that is safer, relatively cheap to build and runs on the waste we have already produced and buried, what the hell are we waiting for?

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    1. itzman
      Reply Icon

      Re: False Prophet

      Exactly.

      http://ukip.org/media/policies/energy.pdf

      For the ONLY sensible energy policy around. The Liberal Democrats (now in charge at DECC) don't even HAVE an energy policy.

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    2. Wilco 1
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      Re: False Prophet

      Actually nuclear is more expensive than wind power. The £14B new nuclear power station Hinkley C to be built in the UK will produce power that is twice as expensive as the market price, more expensive than on-shore wind power and similar priced as off-shore. Yes, modern, efficient off-shore windfarms like Greater Gabbard (40% capacity factor) are cost competitive with nuclear power. That's the hard reality.

      Note wind turbines have been producing over 10% of total UK electricity over the last week: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: False Prophet

        @Wilco 1

        However the nuclear plant will be reliable, consistent and produce more power. The cost may be comparable to wind but the service far exceeds wind. Nuclear has the advantage of reliability. We know the power will be there as we need it. It doesnt require a power plant backing it up incase the wind doesnt blow.

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        1. Wilco 1
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          Re: False Prophet

          Nuclear plants have their downtime as well. It can take many months to refuel for example and during that time you must have a backup.The exact same argument applies to all power generation, all have downtime for expected maintenance and unexpected failures, so you always have to have some kind of backup.

          As one adds more windpower to the grid and more interconnects, it becomes more reliable - it is typically always windy somewhere!

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          1. Richard Wharram
            Reply Icon

            Re: False Prophet

            Utter tossflesh.

            Nuclear power plants are orders of magnitude more reliable at generation than wind plants. Planned downtime is scheduled to not clash with planned downtime in other plants months in advance. Hence you need to provide backup generation only for about 10% of your total. For wind you need 100%.

            It is not always windy somewhere in the UK or even Europe. Do the costs you are giving include huge interconnects from Kazakhstan or New Zealand?

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            1. Wilco 1
              Reply Icon

              Re: False Prophet

              You're wrong there, wind power is very reliable (it's unlikely wind is suddenly going to disappear forever is, it?), and quite predictable days and weeks in advance. Yes you cannot 100% guarantee it is windy all the time, but a recent study showed that just placing wind farms all around the UK reduced intermittency significantly.

              Interconnects will play an increasing role in the future, and they don't need to be very far either. Connecting to Iceland would open up a large amount of geothermal power, Sweden/Norway/Finland gives you hydro and pumped storage.

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      2. Shasta McNasty
        Reply Icon

        Re: False Prophet

        How much does it produce when there isn't much wind and how much is stored when production exceeds consumption?

        Plus there are about 40 times as many UK wind farms as UK Nuclear plants (which produced 22% of last week's energy).

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        1. Wilco 1
          Reply Icon

          Re: False Prophet

          When there isn't much wind obviously production is low. At the moment every GWh produced is consumed immediately, basically no storage is required unless capacity is larger than consumption (and we're a long way off reaching that). For storage solar thermal looks like a better option, but it's not really feasible in the UK climate.

          In what way is the number of wind farms vs other plants relevant? Wind farms are typically smaller, even the largest is currently 0.5GW.

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          1. Shasta McNasty
            Reply Icon

            Re: False Prophet

            "In what way is the number of wind farms vs other plants relevant? Wind farms are typically smaller, even the largest is currently 0.5GW."

            In the way that you have to have far more wind farms than nuclear power plants to produce anywhere near the same amount of energy...

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            1. Wilco 1
              Reply Icon
              Facepalm

              Re: False Prophet

              Again, in what way does it matter? Building a nuclear power plant costs far more as well. In the end what matters is the cost of the electricity produced. And nuclear costs more than on-shore and is similar with off shore.

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      3. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Boffin

        Re: False Prophet

        "Actually nuclear is more expensive than wind power"

        Only in the wild imaginings of the wind power weenies. Not only is wind cash-subsidised through multiple mechanisms, it also has a bizarre "must run" status. The merit curve that normally ensures our most efficient plant runs first to meet demand is thus turned on its head, and we run our most expensive plant at the random convenience of the wind (and if there's no demand, we still pay the operators anyway).

        Nobody has put a figure on this absurdity, but as we'd rarely run wind turbines at all if the merit curve were properly applied, you can infer that the value of the subsidy is about £140/MWh multiplied by total output, divided by the output wind would generate if run on merit. At a guess we're talking about wind's effective subsidy being one or two orders of magnitude greater than the nominal £140 MWh.

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        1. Wilco 1
          Reply Icon
          Boffin

          Re: False Prophet

          No, it's a fact. Wind power costs are coming down, nuclear costs seem to only go up. As I already mentioned, the electricity price EDF wants for nuclear power is twice that of the market rate - higher than on-shore wind power. And if you are going to mention subsidies, what about all the nuclear subsidies, cleanup and storage costs? Nuclear subsidies are an order of magnitude higher and have been going on for many decades.

          Wind power and nuclear power are actually fairly similar in the way they work. Both are expensive to build but have low "fuel" costs compared to gas and coal. As a result, both want to sell as much electricity as they can generate. That's logical, if you think it is bizarre for wind power, do you also believe it is bizarre for nuclear?

          The fact is that with modern generation, your "merit curve" no longer applies. It only works for fuel based generation.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            FAIL

            Re: False Prophet @ Wilco1

            "No, it's a fact. Wind power costs are coming down, nuclear costs seem to only go up"

            Well, if you build enough of anything you get the unit costs down, and that applies to nuclear as much as wind. But as noted, wind is NOT competitive on the grid without subsidy, and even with vast subsidies it still doesn't make it onto the grid unless forced. Unlike nice dependable nuclear, wind of course requires thermal assets in hot reserve to cover its unpredictability, a cost which (like so many others) it doesn't have to pay.

            As for your ignorant, ill informed comments on the merit curve, of course it bloody works, with any power source, to give the optimal outcome for the bill payers. Just because the eco-twerps have knobbled it to try and justify their useless toys doesn't make it "no longer apply". Your reasoning is akin to claiming that if a car is driven up hill, the laws of gravity no longer apply.

            But, don't worry. Notwithstanding the fact that you clearly speak from the commanding heights of ignorance, and that I merely work for one of the world's largest power companies, that my company operate a vast renewables fleet (farming the subsidies), that we are a major nuclear operator, that we have a large CCGT fleet, a significant coal fleet, interests in CHP, hydro and the rest, no, we''ll come and listen to you when the lights start going out.

            Or maybe not.

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