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back to article Stand by for more big, windfarm-driven 'leccy price rises

The National Grid has released a report into the way things are headed for the UK's electricity supplies in the coming decade, and it's not good news for anyone who finds their 'leccy bill to be a noticeable expense. No matter what happens to fossil fuel prices, British electricity is going to cost a lot, lot more in the near …

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  1. John Stirling

    evening out windpower

    A bloody great big flywheel at the bottom of every windmill (or group of windmills). The mills power it up, the grid draws off power at a steady regular pace - even out the supply from 'anywhere between nothing and loads' to somewhere in the middle.

    Quote this as prior art if you like when someone patents it.

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  2. nederlander
    Thumb Up

    Wholeheartedly agree.

    That's right Lewis, lets all save money on electricity, we can spend it after we are extinct.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "rivers have to keep running at night,"

    Rivers have to keep running at night, although valves can sometimes be closed if required.

    Nukes have to keep running at night too, and there are no practical cost-effective valves to close.

    Nukes can't follow the daily demand cycle, either because it's physically impossible because of reactor physics or because it becomes uneconomic because of reduced lifetime output and increased thermo-mechanical stresses in non-repairable structural stuff.

    So in order to match the varying daily demand (between roughly 20GW min and 50GW max in the UK) and the unvarying nuclear output, nukes need "backup" and storage and interconnects and all the stuff that Lewis and friends are trying to tell you are only needed by wind. They're lying (or at best, ignorant).

    I'd be a lot keener on nuclear if its supporters weren't so obviously misleading so much of the time.

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    1. Robert Sneddon
      Reply Icon

      Demand following

      The French nuclear operators have worked out how to modify the output of their modern nuclear plants to allow for reduced demand; last reports I saw said they could swing the output of some stations between 70% and 100% in 30 minutes at the cost of fuel burning efficiency -- given the low cost of nuclear fuel that is less of a consideration than a carbon-burning station.

      With more of their neighbours such as Spain and Germany commmitting themselves to being dependent on renewables the French may not need to do this much as they will be able to sell excess nuclear baseload across their borders to prevent brownouts and blackouts in such countries. As an aside, Britain has been buying about 2GW of French nuclear power pretty much continuously since a cross-Channel HV DC power connector was installed back in the 90s.

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    2. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      RE: "rivers have to keep running at night,"

      Which all avoids the other issues you greens squeal on and on and ON about - cars! When we switch to EVs (the only really practical replacement for the internal combustion engine) we will be driving the majority of them during the day and recharging them at night, which means we will likely see massive electricity demand at night too in the future. If anything, we may even have to store during the day to meet the demand for night charging!

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  4. nigglec
    Flame

    Just a bit of common sense....please?

    Just got back from the soon to be “nuclear free” Germany. Considering the huge numbers of wind turbines all over the place and the fact that they are going to have to start importing leccy from nuclear France why can’t they just build one or two conventional power plants. If the nimbys think that new nuclear is so unsafe, they should realise that if a new nuke plant went up like Chernobyl (Impossible!) in France it would still make them glow in the dark.

    Reliable renewables are few and far between. How much more hydro could we realistically build in this country? And we know that the environmentalists would go “nuclear” if you started talking Severn barrage tidal generation.

    I believe electricity should be either government or not for profit owned. We should have a far greater energy efficiency policy and increase micro generation as much as possible. New build housing should by default have photovoltaic or thermal panels installed. Buying leccy from other countries is just lazy and costly, but is politically an easier thing to sell than the harsh reality of new nuclear/coal /gas power plants.

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    1. Robert Sneddon
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Digging deeper

      Germany is commissioning 6GW of new coal-burning power stations this year, with more to come. They've got hundreds of years of surface-mined brown coal they can dig up and burn to supplement their renewables. It's filthy, polluting and extracting it destroys the countryside but it's cheap and nobody cares enough to put a stop to it they way they do about nuclear power.

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  5. Magani
    Flame

    'Sir' is a title

    "The cost of constraining wind will become increasingly significant."

    The potential for fart jokes seems to have been missed by the El Reg constituency so far.

    Wazzup? Lost the urge for a double entendre?

    Icon = Fart + ignition

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Where will the LibDems be when the lights go out?

    Sack Huhne now, before it's too late

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  7. simoncm
    Flame

    Microturbine anyone

    My last bill put gas at about 3p / kWh and electricity at 12p / kWh. Not sure we have the technology yet, but if you could make a micro-gas-turbine (assumed efficiency 50%) and a bank of batteries work (smoothing and all that) you'd be looking at £200 per year in "savings".

    Obviously the "savings" would go towards the equipment costs, but you'd still break even on £1000 worth of kit over 5 years (not unreasonable).

    And that assumes electricity prices (relative to gas) are staying the same, if they go up then...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      already being done

      quite popular in japan, apparently.

      although it costs a lot more than a grand to Do It Right.

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  8. Annakan

    Did you forget already

    "Fukushima scaremongers becoming increasingly desperate"

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/25/fukushima_scaremongering_debunk/

    biased beyond redemption

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    1. Mostor Astrakan
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      That particular article...

      That particular run of articles was a welcome balance to all the ones that said, basically, "O My God We're All Going To Die."

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  9. scatter

    Big numbers. What does it work out as per kWh?

    Taking the worst case additional costs as £286m + £945m gives you £1.231bn

    (and I imagine that operating reserve requirement isn't the marginal cost so it's probably going to be less than this).

    According to DUKES, in 2009 we consumed 322,417GWh in the UK.

    I make that 0.38p/kWh or about 3% of current retail prices.

    I hope you'll understand if I don't worry too much about this.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    @French demand following

    OK Robert, maybe they've sorted the physics, now all they have to worry about is the increased thermo-mechanical stresses and resulting shortened safe lifetimes and the resultant increase in the price of their (taxpayer-funded?) electricity. These bits of irradiated plumbing aren't exactly easy to replace once they've reached the end of their design lifetimes. Yes you can probably use even more exotic alloys than are currently in use today to give the next generation a longer lifetime. These new alloys will take time to find and develop and test and certify, and will likely cost more, obviously.

    "Britain has been buying about 2GW of French nuclear power pretty much continuously since a cross-Channel HV DC power connector was installed back in the 90s."

    Careful with your words please.

    If by "continuously" you mean "for peak lopping most days", then fair enough. If by "continuously" you mean 24x7, the facts disagree; the interconnector is used for both importing and exporting.

    For example, as I write this, the UK is exporting ~ 200MW to France (ie France's nuclear reactors aren't yet fully capable of demand following).

    Source: http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/Demand8.htm

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    1. Robert Sneddon
      Reply Icon

      Stresses and strains

      Why would swinging a nuclear power plant's output put much thermomechanical stress on the core and vessel structures? The temperatures stay very much the same, it's the heat energy output that's reduced so the amount of coolant (which is also the moderator, one factor that makes this operation non-trivial) flow is reduced. This means a smaller amount of secondary-loop steam is generated hence less torque at the generator turbine blades and less electromotive power in the generator set. It's not optimally efficient and it helps if the genset and secondary loop systems are built from the outset to cope with variable output, not an option in older existing designs.

      There are other problems such as neutron poisoning when swinging a reactor's output but I don't know the details of how the French are able to deal with those particular issues.

      As for replacing the sparkly bits, the new EP-1000 design is actually capable of allowing this to be done. The reactor building is constructed before the reactor vessel itself is installed rather than the usual technique of building the structure and containment around the vessel in-situ. In the case of a fault developing or the vessel wearing out it could be removed and replaced without knocking down the building to get at it. This capability is really there to allow for cheaper end-of-life decommissioning of the reactor rather than allowing running repairs though.

      At the time I'm writing this (late evening 16th June) we're taking 800MW from the French pool according to your link. It swings through the day but as I understand it most of the time the link feeds power to us from the French side. Wintertime might have a higher load on the link for us rather than this period of near-arctic long summer daylight with lower demand peaks.

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  11. Tom Reg

    Look to Denmark - 'the leaders'

    They already have really expensive electricity. They also have the highest wind percentage (about 20%). The result is among the dirtiest electricity in Europe. The reason is of course that 90%+ of their electricity comes from coal + nat gas. Much of the wind is exported to Norway for free. If instead of all the wind madness, they had just switched to 100% nat gas, then they would have cut carbon emissions much much more. But they don't want to be at the mercy of the people on the other end of the gas pipe. So they choose pollution and super expensive, almost worthless wind power. Keeps the voters in the cities happy.

    Here in Ontario (peak demand 30GW) with only 800 turbines, we already get many nights where the spot price for electricity goes from the typical $0.03 to MINUS $0.30! We are paying people to ship the stuff away. They want to install 4500 turbines! Madness. We pay $0.15/kwh for wind with the contract - about 5 times what its worth. We also have things like Niagara Falls, etc to handle load variance, but it is not enough.

    My analysis shows that in basically every juristiction where wind has been installed, simply turning all wind permantly off would reduce price (even after allowing for payout to the wind turhines) and create stability in the system.

    The companies who transmit electricity also love these things - they get to raise rates to build lots of transmission that is hardy every used.

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    1. scatter
      Reply Icon

      Can you

      link to the analysis?

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Eh?

      You need to re-write that. I think you're trying to say something interesting but your percentages add up to more than 100. Why is the wind power being given away free? That sounds unlikely.

      It still seems obvious that the key problem here is storage, not the generation. Instead of paying people to take the lecy away, put the money into building a hydro-electric buffer.

      Aside from anything, paying people to take away something that can just be turned off is simply moronic. Perhaps you need to stop voting morons in to power?

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Register has a funny position on renewables

    If you want to scream and shout about 'oh how expensive it all is' get the facts right, these are global figures:

    $312 billion — the cost of consumption subsidies to fossil fuels in 2009.

    $57 billion — the cost of support given to renewable energy in 2009.

    $36 billion per year — the cost of ending global energy poverty by 2030.(EIA)

    Suddenly puts it all into perspective doesn't it?

    The UK who led the world into the industrial revolution needs to lead the way out of this greenhouse gas mess.

    Wind alone is not the solution but part of a portfolio of green energies, which removes a lot of the variability issues.

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    1. James Micallef Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Megaphone

      Global figures don't tell the whole story

      The vast majority of the $312 billion subsidies to fossil fuels are paid in the OPEC countries. For citizens of these countries it is either too expensive to buy oil at market price, or politically unacceptable to pay loads for oil when they're swimming in it. So the governments of these countries pay to subsidise their oil so it's dirt-cheap, even while it gets really expensive elsewhere.

      In western Europe on the other hand there are AFAIK no oil subsidies, and maybe minor ones for coal / gas. The vast majority of the $57 billion on renewables subsidies is paid in Europe,

      Wind can contribute something of course - given production vs consumption figures it can produce between 1-5 % of a countries' requirements depending on geography and climate. Not to be sniffed at, but not a mainstay of generation. Once the optimal sites have been taken, there's no point building more wind farms on non-optimal sites, getting less and less efficiency and output

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Greenhouse Gases are a global issue

    The vast majority of green subsidies being paid in Europe means that Europe is taking a lead and responsibility in a global issue. This has got to be a good thing, not a bad thing?

    So lets talk about the UK. Other reports indicate that the UK can generate 20% of power from wind. As another post indicates, in the bigger scheme of things the renewables subsidies are only a small percentage of total energy bills. No one knows the true cost of the externality due to GHG emissions... if weird weather patterns cause damage, then this is potentially billions of dollars...... hypothetical of course, but I think the article is too narrowly focussed on a specific nat grid report, so maybe I am going the other extreme in the bigger picture to try and counterbalance that viewpoint.

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  14. M7S

    this might help, new user of powers to shut windfarms down

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8579747/Wind-farm-forced-to-close-after-complaints-over-the-noise.html

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  15. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    @Robert re demand following physics

    OK, let's for a moment assume hypothetically there are no physics issues in following the demand cycle. Whether or not your theory is correct, it has to be hypothetical because no one's really done it yet, certainly not for long enough to see if it does or doesn't affect lifetimes.

    So now let's look at the economics as well.

    Over a given number of years, a reactor constantly maxed out will generate a given amount of electricity.

    Over the same number of years a reactor cycling up and down following the demand curve on a daily basis will generate significantly less electricity overall, but the costs (operating costs and finance costs) will be much the same as they were for the maxed-out one (the fuel costs are negligible).

    The electricity it does generate (at peak times only) will therefore be substantially more expensive per "unit" than the maxed out one, and the lifetime income will therefore be less, and there will therefore be less profit in it (if it's profitable at all). Does that matter?

    If it is significantly more expensive and if it does matter, where does it leave the future of demand following for nukes?

    Unmanageable wind power has trouble matching current-magnitude daily demand cycles without storage and interconnects and...

    Inflexible nuclear power has **the same** trouble matching matching current-magnitude daily demand cycles without storage and interconnects and...

    Today's grid survives an unplanned loss of a few GW of nuke for weeks on end, and will have to be built to do so tomorrow. Tomorrow's grid will therefore also be able to survive losing a few GW of wind for a few days on the occasions when we're becalmed.

    See what I'm getting at?

    And all that's before we even think about the time it takes to build a nuclear station (not to mention the waiting time before construction actually starts).

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    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      The problems are very different

      The Grid doesn't really care how much anything costs to build etc. From their point of view:

      Nuclear's problem is that it's "best" to run the nuke at approx. 90% max rated output continuously. Thus you need to shunt their 'spare' power into something else when demand is low and pull it back later in the day when demand is high.

      Wind's problem is that it will very often flip from 'high output' to 'zero output' without warning.

      Thus when wind is producing the most, the 'spinning reserve' also has to be at the maximum just in case wind tips over the top and shuts down.

      So you see the issue? It is relatively easy to trim your nuclear so it can sit producing the daily mean, with pumped storage handling the variation. The spot price will bounce in exactly the way pumped storage needs (nuclear station might be paying them to take it away at times).

      For wind, we need to have enough spinning reserve* to cover the entire wind generation capacity - and we are only expecting to actually use those warm spares for 38 days each year. That's going to make those spares extremely expensive!

      *The spinning reserve would have to hold the grid up until some warm spares could sync, so wouldn't necessarily have to be able to handle the expected >5-day wind blackouts. However the full controllable capacity has to be there as otherwise we go down the rolling blackout** route, which would greatly increase the sales of diesel generators.

      **Brownouts are not an option anymore. Gone are the days when the demand was primarily resistive, it's now mostly constant-power so reducing voltage actually increases demand due to increased cable/transformer losses.

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  16. Anonymous Coward
    Headmaster

    @Richard 12

    Voltage reductions are indeed now a pointless exercise. Even with resistive loads, if there's a thermostat or similar control mechanism in the picture, all that happens is the equipment spends more time switched on (e.g. electric heating for water and rooms and processes) so there is no worthwhile reduction in demand.

    I take your point also about adjusting nuclear capacity to match mean demand and using pumped storage to match, but in practice UK demand varies between (say) 20GW and 50GW and currently that's not practical to do with pumped storage. If you do build lots more storage (directly or via interconnectors) so that nuclear's inflexible output can match the plus or minus 15GW of demand, that storage can also be used for wind, no? Not to cover a few days, mind you, but that leads back to my previous comment which I don't see your reply addressing: "Today's grid survives an unplanned loss of a few GW of nuke for weeks on end, and will have to be built to do so tomorrow. Tomorrow's grid will therefore also be able to survive losing a few GW of wind for a few days on the occasions when we're becalmed."

    Which bit of that don't you agree with? Unless you are claiming some miracle increase in reliability of nuclear stations and significant changes in the operating regime, then the grid has to be able to handle the simultaneous unplanned zero-notice loss of all nuclear stations of the same design in the case of a safety incident. Note that the proposed UK nuclear regime is pretty much an "all eggs, one (or two) basket" plan - if there is a shutdown due to the risk of a common design fault, as has historically happened from time to time, then we lose a lot of GW of nuclear.

    Surely it doesn't matter whether that loss of generation is handled by spinning reserve or by demand management (interruptible contracts already, smart meters maybe, rolling blackouts inevitably) or a mix of the two; what matters is that if it can be done for a few GW of nuclear going offline for a few weeks, it can be done for a few GW of wind going offline for a few days?

    NB I'm not particularly a fan of wind but I don't like misrepresentation either.

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    1. Richard 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      There's a big difference in scale

      The biggest single site steam plant in the UK is Drax, at 3.9GW.

      On the current plans with >30GW of installed wind, National Grid think that we are likely to lose 15GW over a two hour period, relatively often.

      In other words, they think that we could be losing nearly 3.8 Draxes over a couple of hours, several times a year.

      Now, that's scary.

      Not to mention that Drax can't fail that fast anyway because it's not a single generator - there are six complete independent generating sets.

      All large steam plants (Coal/Oil/Gas/Nuclear) are built the same way.

      So in fact, right now if we lost the whole of Drax, we'd get a blackout. We don't think it's likely that we'll lose Drax, but we might lose one or two of its generating sets, and we can cope with that.

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  17. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    "All large steam plants ... are built the same way"

    They may be built the same way on the steam+electric side but afaik there is one major difference in the operating regime between nuclear and conventional.

    While conventional plants do hiccup occasionally, it is unusual for multiple identical conventional plants to be offline at the same time for extended periods, whereas there have been (and will likely continue to be) times when all the UK nuclear plants of the same design are shut down for weeks on end because of some safety related incident or other which has the appearance of being a design related issue. So the operating regime says, shut all the similar ones down till we know what's what. Which surely seems fair, right? Same goes for conventional too, I assume, but I can't recall any notable instances of multiple identical plants being taken out of service in this way, for safety reasons.

    "with >30GW of installed wind, National Grid think that we are likely to lose 15GW over a two hour period, relatively often" [citation welcome]

    Wind's unpredictability is inconvenient (to put it politely) but if we can cope with occasionally losing tens of GW of nuclear capacity at short notice, potentially for weeks on end, why can't we cope with losing tens of GW of wind capacity at similar notice, for no more than a few days?

    "We don't think it's likely that we'll [completely] lose Drax, " [1]

    Maybe not, but a few people with angle grinders who know which pylons are important could achieve the same result, in minutes not hours, for Drax or any equivalent. Then what? Is bigger really better?

    [1] Who's "we" here? Does it matter?

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