back to article Solar, wind, landfill to make cheapest power by 2030

Solar and wind technologies will be the cheapest way to make electricity by 2030, according to a new Australian Energy Technology Assessment from the Australia’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics. The report, penned with help from consultancy WorleyParsons and the CSIRO, considered 40 different generation technologies …

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  1. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

    Gas?

    I thought this was very interesting. From p54:

    "Recent and future advances in fracturing technology offer the potential for step change reductions in per-well and therefore – due to the major capital cost of wells – electricity generation costs. Fracturing technologies stand to benefit from the major R&D expenditures in development of vast US and Canadian (and other worldwide) shale gas resources. Improvements in resource exploration and assessment methods will also reduce costs."

    So gas will be the cheapest power. But that's the only mention there is. As Simon wrote, factoring in cheap gas wouldn't give the answer the politicians and bureaucrats are looking for. In other words, Aussie energy bureaucrats have done exactly what our energy bureaucrats have done in the UK. If you think your country should cut its carbon emissions, gas is the cheapest way to do it.

    I can't help thinking how lucky Aussies are - Western Australia has some of the largest shale resources in the world, you'll be exporting gas, and you've got all that sun. That should be enough to get you through those freezing cold winters.

    1. JetSetJim

      Re: Gas?

      Nuclear also comes out cheap, although I'm a bit suspicious about this paragraph:

      "As noted in Section 2, decommissioning costs have not been included for any of the technologies in the calculation of LCOE. While there is an expectation that decommissioning for nuclear plants will be higher per MW installed capacity than many other technologies, there is very little current experience of actual plant decommissioning. In addition, given the operating timeframes of new build plants, the decommissioning cost will be incurred well

      outside the modelled period."

      i.e. "our grandchildren will have to pay for it so we don't care".

      I agree that there's no current experience of decommissioning outside of disasters, so it's difficult to put a price tag on it, but it's misleading to the overall results to at least not try to factor it in.

      Still, it's the sort of research that needs to be done - namely what is the true cost of implementing a particular technology for power generation. I hate to use the buzzphrase "Total Cost of Ownership", but it's something that applies here.

      1. David Pollard

        Re: Gas?

        "I'm a bit suspicious about [decommissioning]."

        They put the cost of storage of spent fuel at $1 per MWh (p. 56) and note that existing Gen III and III+ is proven technology which can consume long-lived actinides and which is likely to be in use commercially within a decade or so.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gas? @JetSetJim

        "I agree that there's no current experience of decommissioning outside of disasters, so it's difficult to put a price tag on it, but it's misleading to the overall results to at least not try to factor it in."

        There might be no Australian decomissioning experience, but actually there'a a wealth of global experience in decommissioning nuclear power plants. UK's NDA are doing a sterling job getting to grip with the old British nukes albeit very,very slowly, Germany's already getting rid of its older plants (pre-dating the nuclear exit decision), Italy likewise, but in particular the Americans have a whole host of nukes in decommissioning, with a number of these now back to greenfield status with completion costs for all but ongoing long term waste storage.

        One of the interesting things (courtesy of Wikipedia) is that the US Yankee Rowe and Maine Yankee reactors were taken back to greenfield in only 8-11 years and for around USD 600m each, and the Fort St Vrain plant looks to have been even quicker and cheaper. Convention elsewhere is to leave the reactor in situ to cool down for up to 40 years, which (from the commanding heights of ignorance) seems unreasonably slow and expensive to me. Ballpark numbers of around €3.5bn per reactor are being quoted by EdF. UK NDA figures are between the Yankee and EdF numbers, but there's a suggestion that the NDA are leaving the sites for so long before site clearance that economic discounting is a bigger contributor to the final cost than the engineering. You do of course have long term spent fuel storage/disposal, but that's just the very long term cost of puting it in a pit and keeping people out.

        You do have to ask why the Americans can have a site returned to greenfield eight yeras after generation finished, but the UK NDA will be decommissioning the Wlfa plant that ceased generation this year, and expect to finish site clearance in 2101 (yes, twenty one oh one).

        1. JetSetJim
          Thumb Up

          Re: Gas? @JetSetJim @ Ledswinger

          Thanks for the research (<-thumbs up!)

          IANANuclearEngineer, so have no idea as to the reasons for the differences in price - aren't there lots of different plant designs which may influence the decommissioning cost? Not sure how much variation (time and $/£/€) that may cover, though.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Gas? @JetSetJim

          Magnox opted for a long decommissioning period so as to allow radiation levels to fall sufficiently that people will enter the reactor containment and perform the dismantling. The alternative was a 25 year process but that would have required them to design and build robots to perform the dismantling.

          There are also big issues with the Magnox stations (and the AGRs when they reach EOL) about how to safely store the huge amounts of highly flammable and radioactive graphite from the cores/

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Gas? @Mike Richards

            "The alternative was a 25 year process but that would have required them to design and build robots to perform the dismantling."

            Fair point. It appears that the Germans have been using robots on their decommissioning programmes. Comparing our programme to the US examples, is it just hindsight that we built reactors that were a right pain to decommission, and the American examples happened to be of a flavour that was very easy to dismantle? Didn't the Magnox constructing engineers give any thought to EOL?

        3. umacf24
          Happy

          Slow decommissioning

          Decommissioning is the best advertisment for compound interest.

          If you wait,

          1) You get richer as your invested sinking fund compounds (assuming you haven't destroyed economic growth by insisting on high-priced solar and wind power)

          2) The problem gets smaller -- at a compound rate -- as neutron-capture activation and any left-over fission product in the structure decays.

          And there's a last point:

          3) Your robots and remote handling equipment get better and cheaper. (But technology improvement is much less exponential, alas.)

          Win-win-win. Sixty years is a thousand-fold reduction in some tricky nuclides. Definitely no hurry in decommissioning.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Slow decommissioning

            "You get richer as your invested sinking fund compounds (assuming you haven't destroyed economic growth by insisting on high-priced solar and wind power)"

            You think that they've put aside "real" money into a fund?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gas?

        Nuclear decommissioning is double the cost of building. Nuclear power is not cheap because of it, its already much more expensive than solar for instance.

        1. MeRp

          Re: Gas?

          The only Nuclear decommissioning I've any personal experience with is the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant in Oregon. It's decommissioning cost is estimated to be roughly $230 million (they still have some non-nuclear related buildings to remove, and of course the spent fuel to continue to store). Construction costs were roughly $500 million.

          It seems that your rough estimate is inverted in this case; decommission costs roughly half of construction.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: Gas?

      and you've got all that sun

      I wonder what we could do with that. If only there was some kind of panel available that converted sunlight into usable power. Still, nukes, eh?

      1. Denarius
        FAIL

        Re: Gas?

        and if only the sun shone at night when we need the light

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Gas?

          and if only the sun shone at night when we need the light

          If only we had some kind of device to store electricity. Still, nukes, eh?

          1. dwieske

            Re: Gas?

            yep if we had storage, it would be an option, unfortunately we don't have storage, no matter how much you try to troll

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Gas?

          "and if only the sun shone at night when we need the light"

          Well its does, but on the other-side of the world. Fortunately we invented wire to transmit it (ok, HVDC)

    3. Ben Tasker

      Re: Gas?

      Yeah the sentence Brown coal would remain cheaper than wind by 2030 – with an LCOE of AUD$92 – were it not for Australia’s carbon tax did remind me a little of the article that ran yesterday. Translation: the current methods will still be cheaper, except that we're going to price it out of the market (in our case by taxing and reducing supply, in the Aussie's by taxing).

      As a society, we need to decide what matters. Given that everything relies on leccy, I'd say we need to be looking at ensuring that we can generate enough of it cheaply. Having people hit the point where they don't use the heating in winter is not a good thing. Yes, it'd be very nice not to ruin the planet, but let's see some hard, scientific (i.e. properly reviewed, properly documented with all datapoints available) evidence before we fuck everything up to save a bit of carbon.

      In fact, let's give the green's rifles and have them shoot cows. Methane's not exactly good for the atmosphere, so why not start small and work up eh?

      1. PyLETS
        Alert

        @Ben Tasker: Externalities

        Yes, it'd be very nice not to ruin the planet, but let's see some hard, scientific (i.e. properly reviewed, properly documented with all datapoints available) evidence before we fuck everything up to save a bit of carbon.

        It would be very nice not to ruin the planet. In other words we know we need a carbon tax to establish a level playing field between energy sources, we just don't yet know exactly how high it should be. It also makes the cost of researching climate change small in the scale of things, given how much we need to know the extent and costs of this more accurately than we do now. Making carbon taxes contribute to bringing down property insurance, increased due to weirder weather might be a start. Add to that the cost of better sea and flood defences, and compensation for losses suffered by those who can't afford house insurance.

        Victorian chemical factory owners were forced to stop polluting drinking water supplies and destroying fisheries so long ago that we forget that restricting their emissions was equally "controversial" at the time, because big money said it was then as now. Carbon taxes are a more appropriate response than banning emissions, to the more complex economic externalities of fossil fuel use, given that some C02 is neccessary for life, there are very many producers of it, and there are many bad effects of too much of it, not all of these yet fully understood, and also because it takes some time to develop sustainable alternative supply sources.

        1. staplethat

          Re: @Ben Tasker: Externalities

          It is encouraging that you have learned something of the benefits of carbon dioxide and I would be interested in knowing what evidence you have found for "the many bad effects of too much of it". After extensive research all I have been able to find are reports issued by the controversial IPCC and its supporters. Of course I've also found credible challenges to those reports. The claim that carbon dioxide causes weird weather is something that insurance companies would surely latch onto because it is their business to make money and higher insurance premiums mean higher profits. So I'm wondering how what you call a carbon tax to bring down insurance costs would work. Would insurance companies pay the tax? Or would governments tax you and me (because we exhale carbon dioxide on our property) and then use the tax to subsidize insurance companies? Would that be sustainable?

        2. Thorne
          Flame

          Re: @Ben Tasker: Externalities

          "In other words we know we need a carbon tax to establish a level playing field between energy sources,"

          What crap!

          A tax just means the companies get milked by the government and in turn then milk us. It does squat for the environment. A carbon trading scheme on the other hand means carbon positive industries buy credit off carbon negative industries.

          Solar and wind are not the saviours everyone thinks they are. They might be neutral producing electricity but their poitive in the manufacturing. Solar cells involves mining rare earths and such as well as being transported around the world. How much energy do you get from a solar cell verses how much energy to make and transport it?

          The carbon tax does for the environment what the cigarette tax does for smoking. All it does it make it so expensive you can't light or heat your homes, drive vehicles or manufacture stuff. At least a carbon trading scheme would create some jobs.

      2. Thorne

        Re: Gas?

        "In fact, let's give the green's rifles and have them shoot cows. Methane's not exactly good for the atmosphere, so why not start small and work up eh?"

        Greenies put out methane too (all those lentials and tofu) Could shoot them too?

    4. Graham Wilson
      Unhappy

      @Andrew Orlowski -- Re: Gas? - - And Australia's technological future.

      I'm old enough to have seen reports by governments and others about future projections and directions of certain technologies then to have lived through the time-span covered to know that such projections rarely turn out as predicted. More often than not, something--usually technological developments (the Internet for instance)--throws even the best researched projections way off course.

      And it's especially true here in Australia where the culture mitigates--actively conspires--against the Nation's commitment to long-term plans and strategies, and it's especially so with large projects that are in the national interest--those in which government has a say. One could dwell a long time considering why it's so, suffice to say that finding a scientist or engineer amongst the hordes of lawyers, accountants and economists in the gaggle of Australian state and federal parliamentarians is like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

      Australia's energy plans are about as fickle as the weather and without a solid local engineering /scientific culture* to underpin, drive and sustain big projects then they'll be at the whim of all sorts of short-term political and commercial forces. Australia will continue to make decisions based on emotion, fashion, short-term economic considerations and now notional 'green' values based on idealism rather than on proven engineering practices and sound economics. Given past Australia's history, factoring 'green' parameters into this mix will be highly emotional, divisive and political; and most likely, arguments will be based in popular notions of the day rather than those of sound reason. (Australia has and has had great engineers and scientists but they've usually had little sophisticated technical and commercial infrastructure to support them. The common story is that tall poppies get cut down to size and local developments are picked up by outsiders and developed overseas.)

      " So gas will be the cheapest power. But that's the only mention there is." Andrew therein lays a significant part of the reason. Moreover, gas contains carbon--and irrespective of its cleaner credentials than coal, to the Chattering Classes (those who've political influence)--the Periodic Table's Element 6 is truly on the nose in the same way as is Element 17 and especially so Element 80--elements that dare not speak their name in this profoundly scientifically illiterate milieu. It's a society whose understanding now comes from more a faith or belief than from any true hands-on understanding of science. [If you want a quintessential illustration of how the public's attitude to science has changed since the 1950s then view this: http://archive.org/details/WhyStudy1955_2 (12 mins).]

      What I've said is not new or radical, Australia has a history of screwing up energy and other engineering and scientific policies to the disadvantage of its citizens. I'll cite an example but first some background.

      For those outside Australia, you need to know that the country has huge and abundant energy reserves--enough for many hundreds if not thousands of years at the present rate of consumption. For instance, Sydney, NSW is sited somewhat near the centre of a huge geological saucer-shaped basin several hundred kilometres in diameter (part on land, part under the sea). Almost everywhere under this basin are coal and oil shale deposits of high quality--dig deep enough almost anywhere within this vast area and you'll almost certainly find a high quality coal seam that's several metres (~6') thick. (We owe this remarkable carboniferous seam to the vast Glossopteris forests that once covered this part of Gondwana before the Permian–Triassic extinction, about 252 Ma.)

      Thus, coal has been mined in vast quantities for several hundred years since the earliest days of Sydney's settlement; until recently, it provided all energy needs: gas, heating, power, energy for steel making etc. (it's now supplemented with natural gas). Essentially, coal was and still is the backbone of Australia's development. (Nowadays, coal, although still so essential, is out of favour with so many, even though switching completely to alternative energies is still many years away.)

      For ease of mining, coal and oil shale (torbanite) are extracted mainly at the edge of the Sydney basin where these minerals are close to the surface. NSW towns such as Lithgow, Wollongong and Newcastle, which are on the periphery of the basin, owe their existence to coal mining.

      Glen Davis, a small town about 100km crows-fly from Sydney, located on shallow oil shale deposits, was of great strategic importance during WWII in that it produced petroleum products for the war effort and continued thereafter to do so until the early 1950s when the then conservative [Liberal] Government of R.G. Menzies closed the plant down. The pretext was that the plant was uneconomic as well as being a bed of union discontent. The real reason, however, was pressure on the Government from the big international oil companies that wanted a competition-free environment for imported oil from the Arabian Peninsular.

      Not only did the Government close down Glen Davis oil production completely but also they deliberately dynamited much of the plant so that it could not be reopened (see photos). Even in the immediate hindsight of WWII, the government did not consider the strategic implications of having a local oil industry as important, moreover, the concept of modernising or expanding the plant to other oil shale fields to make it more competitive with imported oil was not even on the horizon.

      Given the enormous reserves throughout Sydney basin and elsewhere across Australia, it would have made sense to develop an indigenous petrochemical industry, and Australia would have surely benefited had it done so during the Oil Crisis of the early 1970s. Only last week, oil multinational, Caltex, made the decision to close its Sydney refinery at Kurnell, and this closure follows close on the heels of Shell's decision close its Sydney refinery at Clyde (it being the only other refinery in NSW).

      Strategically, Australia now stands at the precipice of having no refining capability at all in a few years time, it'll not only be an importer of refined petroleum products but also it'll have essentially no petrochemical industry at all. For those who know their chemistry, this is a disaster in the making--this industry is at the very heart of modern industrial chemistry, not only does it provide fuel but also thousands of other products from plastics to drugs. A petrochemical industry is strategic in not only the usual economic and military sense but also that it has an expert workforce who understands the chemistry and allied fields--these skills and its associated knowledgebase diffuse out across the nation adding significantly to the intellectual and commercial capital of the whole country. Either our political leaders are blind to this or they're are incapable of doing anything about it; irrespective, Australia suffers.

      Australia has changed in many ways since the 1950s but when it comes to industrial and scientific nous it remains a backwater--one that's all too often taken advantage of by bigger international players. Until Australia seriously faces the situation and takes industry and the training of a local industrial workforce seriously (instead of being a service economy for mostly overseas interests), it will continue to remain an industrial backwater.

      Whilst the current political and cultural climate remains, it’s hard to take any predictions as outlined in this story seriously.

      * In the wake of war, there was glimmer of a scientific culture developing in Australia between WWII and the early 1960s but it became dormant in the '70s and essentially was dead by the 1980s--too detailed to discuss here.

      ___

      For those interested in a background on Glen Davis here's a few links:

      http://www.glendavispress.com/glendavis.html (before destruction - open 'photo gallery')

      http://web.aanet.com.au/bayling/glendavis.html (after destruction by Govt.)

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/27031546 (newspaper article)

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18231951 (newspaper article)

      http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/40377331 (newspaper article)

      1. Thorne

        Re: @Andrew Orlowski -- Gas? - - And Australia's technological future.

        "And it's especially true here in Australia where the culture mitigates--actively conspires--against the Nation's commitment to long-term plans and strategies"

        Lets be realistic here. The Australian government cannot and will not plan past the next election. Lets not talk about long term planning cause it doesn't exist.

    5. Mips
      Childcatcher

      Re: Gas?

      "freezing cold winters" ?

      Hey. This is Australia we are talking about.

  2. RegGuy1 Silver badge

    Britain won't achieve it

    Not if those pesky landowners have their way. They won't let us build windmills on the tops of hills (which is generally believed to be the best place to put them). And when it is suggested we put them out as sea they say we can't put them their, either (coz they can still see them).

    (But they are quite happy crowding more people into towns and demanding the use of brownfield sites). Just don't ruin their lovely green views.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Britain won't achieve it

      On the contrary, Britain's landowners really like the idea of wind turbines. They like them because they get a guaranteed revenue stream from the taxpayer, so they can make more money from wind turbines than they can out of farming. The people who object to wind turbines are the poor souls who have to live near them.

      I suppose that if you tax coal to buggery, then other sources of electricity will be 'cheaper', at least for the people who haven't died from cold because they can't afford their heating bills.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Britain won't achieve it

      But they are quite happy crowding more people into towns and demanding the use of brownfield sites). Just don't ruin their lovely green views

      That's right, why build on a 10,000 hectare disused factory site (which as you may notice these days we have little use for), with road infrasturcture, electricity, water and possibly gas, when you can rip up a grean field site, build new road, lay new infrastructure and all the associated services.

      Some of us enjoy the piece and quiet of the countryside, without choking to to death on the fumes and listening to asshole blasting out their music at 3am.

      You live in a town or city, you take the downsides as well as the upsides. The same goes for country living.

      ]

      Don't like it? Then f**king move.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Britain won't achieve it

      "the tops of hills (which is generally believed to be the best place to put them"

      Actually, land based wind turbines are rubbish wherever you build them, because the onshore windspeeds are half of those prevailing offshore, and you have significant diurnal variation in output. So arguably all the billions wasted by DECC on land based turbines have done nothing but ruin the view.

      Regarding the "landed gentry" argument, I think you'll find most of the ruined views are in Wales, much of the land was publicly owned, or by small farmers, and most of the beneficiaries are big utilities and banks.

  3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    Vertical turbines?

    I know all the for/against arguments about wind in general, but I do wonder why we don't see more use made of vertical turbines, i.e. ones which rotate about a vertical axis, where turbines in general are viable.

    They would be less unsightly, no big windmill-style blades. The generators would be at ground level where maintenance is easier, so there's no need for a big heavy supporting mast, nor of rotary transformers or other gadgetry to allow the turbine head to swivel. They'll work no matter what direction the wind blows from.

    Perhaps not useful offshore, but onshore they would seem to have promise. It's a genuine question, can anyone tell me what the downsides are?

    1. vulcan

      Re: Vertical turbines?

      So why are there no vertical wind turbines?

      I agree with all the points Phil raises.

    2. David Pollard

      Re: Vertical turbines? the downsides

      The main problem is the same as with horizontal turbines: most of the time the wind isn't strong enough. So for 70% to 75% of the time an alternative source is needed. There isn't anything like enough pumped hydro- to cover the calm periods of a week or two, which occur quite frequently, so backup has to be provided. This has a significant cost both financially and environmentally.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Vertical turbines?

      I think you'll find that the efficiency of vertical axis is generally lower, and that your assumption about them being less unsightly is wrong:

      http://www.eolecapchat.com/e_index.html

      For any given power output, at broadly similar efficiencies, then the blade area will need to be similar, so there's not much physical advantage (plus a vertical axis will have blades nearer the ground that are affected by lower wind speeds). Regarding the control of direction, that;s not very significant - modern wind turbines are huge and complex machines, and pointing them in the right direction is a minimal overhead.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Poor old Heron of Alexandria

    When he invented the first windmill I wonder if he had to deal with the NIMBYs. And did the Dutch, the people of Norfolk and Kent all whinge when windmills arrived in their areas?

    I hope that tidal power generation gets going in a realistic way. Cloud cover and still air aren't a problem and tides are predictable to the minute for centuries ahead.

    1. Denarius
      FAIL

      Re: Poor old Heron of Alexandria

      if you don't mind killing off all the wild birds when their migration feeding sites are flooded, buggering up fish spawning and high maintenance. Also very few of those sites exist. I can guarantee the greenies and local NIMBYs will scream if tidal barrages are built in 5% of wild places.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Tidal barrages

        I wasn't thinking of tidal barrages but rather those floaty things that bob up and down in the sea. They surely can't screw the oceans up any more than they are already.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Tidal barrages @Mahatma Coat

          "those floaty things that bob up and down in the sea"

          Those are wave power, not tidal (do a Google on Pelamis as the main example). They sound good, but the energy output is relatively low, mooring and power transmission can be expensive, and the operating environment is very hostile which impacts costs and reliability. As yet, despite the relatively simple principles, nobody has made a commercially viable wave powered system that will scale up. This is one of those technologies that has been "promising" for a long time, and always appears to be on the cusp of series production, yet seems to be passed from investor to investor without making the breakthrough.

          Also, waves are mostly driven by wind. So although the dynamics are different, the same issues of dependability arise as with wind power, and usually at similar times. If there's no wind, the sea is usually calm. If you want renewables, then you may as well go with monster offshore wind turbines, which will be cheaper, less risky and more productive.

          It would be nice to be more positive on this as a British innovation, but at the moment this still seems a jam tomorrow project.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Those are wave power

            Maybe I should have made myself clearer. These are definitely tidal power. You have these floaty things, that bob about on the surface and slide up and down a vertical pole (for want of a better word) with the tide. There was a prototype being tested in a location with a large tidal range (off the Scottish coast?) a couple of years ago and it featured in a TV doco.

            The point of this thing is that it's tidal and not reliant on the vagaries of wind.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Those are wave power@ Mahatma Coat

              Potential energy in tidal rise and fall is vast, when you've got vast volumes of water involved. But within the scale of the float on a pole device you'd get no useful output at all, even if the float is the size of an ISO shipping container. I can't be @rsed to repeat the maths, but the the potential energy of a mass under gravity is quite underwhelming when talking about modest masses over small displacements, and when you throw in your conversion losses then the economics get rather sad.

              If you want tidal power of any useful output then you need an estuarial barrage, and they tend to be big, wildly expensive, and unpopular with everybody except civil engineers, and the only sensible UK location is the Severn. Nominally that could produce "up to" 5% of UK demand, but even then, any output in the small hours is useless if you've got efficient thermal/nuke baseload (so losing 20% of potential output), and because the tide times vary day on day you would still need to have 100% of maximum demand + reserve covered by fossil fuel.

    2. itzman

      Re: Poor old Heron of Alexandria

      Predictability does not solve intermittency.

      Nor does it solve very low power density.

      The two combine to give you a power generator whose material inputs are very large for the power out, that takes up vast ears of the planets surface, and made still larger by the fact that they operate on average at far less than they could.

      Finally the problem is that intermittency means co-generation with another (stored) energy source which operates sub optimally, if you want a constant output. Adding further to the cost and nullifying any putative carbon gains.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Tidal power

        Predictability does not solve intermittency.

        When was the last time the tide failed to turn up for work?

        that takes up vast ears

        Prince Charles will approve.

        1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Re: When was the last time the tide failed to turn up for work?

          Probably more recent than the last time you looked in a dictionary.

          "Predictability does not solve intermittency."

          It's still true, even if you don't know what the words mean.

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            1. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    A small question

    When the wind does not blow (and in Europe that can be for *weeks*) and the sun goes down.

    What then?

    I think geothermal has a very big capability (million year heat source) but sadly it's only major promoter seems to be one alternative healer called George.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: A small question

      When the wind blows hard you make hydrogen and oxygen. That can be used to drive cars - so local hydrogen/oxygen storage makes sense and (in theory) the costs fall due to the large number of installations.

      Keeping the oxygen means that higher thermal efficiencies can be achieved when burning the hydrogen.

      General cost can be reduced enormously by taking away subsidies. This would mean designs that require mass production would be considered and once this takes effect the price of wind power would fall drastically - it should be possible to put relatively inefficient power on every house/building in the country. Inefficient perhaps but more importantly cheap - 2p per unit should be achievable on mass produced units that the user can install themselves. With payback times of less than five years only a fool or a listed building would be without one and we should be able to overproduce for most of the year and then use hydrogen backup.

      I cannot however see any current power supplier touching this with a barge pole - and hence our government.

      1. Why Not?
        Stop

        Re: A small question

        When the wind blows hard you pay the generator a subsidy to switch off the windmills, its the wrong type of wind.

        Never understood the love affair with wind, its proved too unpredictable to harness.

        Its sunny there lets use solar, cheap & safe.

        http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=741

        in fact why not do it everywhere?

        http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

        Plus of course with Solar thermal & voltaic on new builds plus hydrogen stockpiling they could close all the power stations shortly with little cost.

        1. PyLETS
          Boffin

          @Why Not? Re: A small question

          Wind electricity is predictable and cheap enough to make a big enough dent in the coal burning electricity market to make it worth doing. As others have said, it can be stored and combined with hydro and gas in various ways, made more effective with continental grid connections.

          Of course people will put solar panels on their roofs almost anywhere if the subsidy is high enough. But if you want to maximise solar electric output based on a given spend you have to put these in very large arrays where they are maintained professionally in hot and sunny deserts. Also worth doing to an extent, but those deserts which have enough sun in our dark winters are too far from more northerly climes where most electricity is used. In practice you can't afford to put all your eggs in one basket, and you are likely to get the best of all available energy sources by diversifying supplies, so you don't become overreliant upon one single source. Both solar and wind are needed here, and they should not be seen as being in competition with each other.

          1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
            Meh

            Re: @Why Not? A small question

            "Wind electricity is predictable and cheap enough to make a big enough dent in the coal burning electricity market to make it worth doing."

            That sentence should end "when there is a big enough subsidy available (or the generators are allowed to pass on the cost to the consumer) "

            "In practice you can't afford to put all your eggs in one basket, "

            Sadly 1 (or at best 2) basket is about all UK energy bureaucrats seem to understand

            "and you are likely to get the best of all available energy sources by diversifying supplies, so you don't become overreliant upon one single source. "

            That is a beautiful and wonderful thought.

            You have truly touched my inner hippie.

            Now explain that to the bureaucrats who formulate the UK so-called energy policy. The last generation were nuclear at *any* cost.

            "Both solar and wind are needed here, and they should not be seen as being in competition with each other."

            Indeed not.

            They are equally useless in the UK.

            Intermittent, inconsistent and unpredictable power sources need *huge* storage reservoirs or *very* large numbers of small "buffers" in the network to cope.

            Otherwise get used to a life where you day starts at sun up and ends at sun down.

          2. dwieske

            Re: @Why Not? A small question

            do you have ANY idea on the scale of the needed storage? clearly not...the capacity has to be 80-100% of the windpower BUT it needs to last for days.....prepare to give up 10% of your countries surfface area JUST for energy storage......stop believing the eco-jihadi please, their are destroying the environment with their irrational hatred for foreigners....oops nuclear power

            1. Why Not?
              Thumb Up

              Re: @Why Not? A small question

              It needs to last for days? You mean like natural gas storage?

              If you store each day's wind & solar generation and then use it with fast start up hydrogen power stations to cover peaks you avoid running stations on standby at 15% of natural gas usage. If you don't have any wind or solar expected for the next few days you can run up an old natural gas station once reserves are below 10%.

              With automation you can pump create the hydrogen gas to storage stations local to usage and reduce transmission losses. That saves another 7% - oh look we have 22% natural gas savings to play with.

              Hydrogen Gas, Coal, Oil all fuels that need to be stored. I doubt the amount of storage and handling areas areas going to be vastly different. You can only stack coal so high before it becomes unstable.

              Liquid Hydrogen has 5 times the energy density of coal. So it only takes 1/5 of the volume. It has the 2 1/2 times the energy density of petrol/diesel. so it would take less room to store. Its just more technically difficult to store.

      2. Denarius
        Thumb Down

        Re: A small question

        tried storing hydrogen safely in a car with crashworthy requirements ? I thought not. I may be wrong about this in the future as the hydride systems have had some improvements, but gone very quiet lately.

        The question you miss is : Does the wind ever blow long and hard enough to produce a significant surplus ?

        The only report I have ever seen states an effectiveness of 5% of rated power from windmills.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A small question

          That's the problem - wind is unpredictable which is not good for the grid stability. It's estimated that a wind farm generates around 30% of it's rated capacity but when you factor in generation vs. requirement you find it generates much at the wrong time of day. So the overall 'useful' generation (without using storage systems) is much lower.

          1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
            Unhappy

            Re: A small question

            "It's estimated that a wind farm generates around 30% "

            No

            The *target* level of generation is 30% for *offshore* installations only is 30%

            Onshore IIRC it's 20% or 25% of the time.

            There appears to be *no* quality control inthe UK on site placement which is why 6% has been recorded.

            Still you can trade the resulting output to generating companies and they can offset their carbon emissions from their coal oil and gas stations (which *can* run 24/7 and cover the other 70-94% gaps in generating coverage).

        2. Wilco 1

          Re: A small question

          Forget about hydrogen indeed, it's never going to be efficient, even if we find a good way to store it - the inefficiency is in making the hydrogen in the first place.

          For wind turbines on good sites efficiency is usually above 20% and for offshore it can be close to 30%. That is the average over a year, so it includes days when there is little or no wind or days when there is too much wind. By using multiple sites (eg. all around the UK, both on and off shore), the chance of all of them having little or no wind becomes exceedingly small.

          1. Tom 7

            Re: A small question

            So the > 80% conversion ratios achieved in the early 1990's are inefficient?

            You could be really stupid and generate h2 and then put that in a fuel cell and use that to charge your electric car and still be twice as 'efficient' as diesel.

            I would imagine a big gas tank at your local garage would be a lot more cost effective than the equivalent battery bank to store the excess wind energy we can easily and cheaply over generate and then you can charge batteries that can quickly swapped over for electric cars or generate mains power when the (local) wind gets low.

            Wind power is outrageously expensive at the moment - a good 10* the price mass production could achieve.

            Solar panels in this country cost over 4* the price they do in India for lower returns and even those outprice the grossly inefficient panels of the 1980's - I could cover my whole roof with those and it would probably work out cheaper than tiles are now if they were still making them.

            1. Wilco 1
              FAIL

              Hydrogen is not efficient at all

              The efficiency of generating hydrogen is about 50%. And fuel cell efficiency is around 60% for existing cells (90% has been achieved in research). So overall efficiency achieveable today is 30%, lower than some diesel engines.

              A battery powered car would get ~90% efficiency. So hydrogen simply makes no sense at all.

              Oh btw, wind power is at grid parity - that means it is not outrageously expensive at all. Solar power isn't quite there yet, but it may well be in the next 5 years or so.

              1. Thorne

                Re: Hydrogen is not efficient at all

                "So hydrogen simply makes no sense at all"

                Hydrogen makes sense because you can store it. Effeciency is not as important as storage. Wind and solar is not reliable but if you can store the power, it becomes viable as a base load power source.

                Battery cars are not viable due to recharge times. Hydrogen you can fill up and drive off in minutes.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: A small question@Tom 7

              "Wind power is outrageously expensive at the moment - a good 10* the price mass production could achieve."

              I think you'll find that the production of wind turbines is as mass produced as is appropriate for the demand and complexity. You certainly couldn't reduce the capital cost by a factor of ten by churning out more of them. If you doubled the production of wind turbines you'd reduce the total installed cost by a whopping 15%, and if you doubled production again you'd see a smaller reduction.

              Current trends are for larger and larger turbines, and its worth having a look at the 6MW Haliade turbine developed by Alsthom. With a hub height of 100 metres, and a blade length of 74m, that's an imperial 570 feet high. The blades have a lot in common with a powered aircraft wing, and you'll have noticed that aircraft aren't cheap, even if you do order a relative load of them.

          2. Albert Stienstra

            Re: A small question

            Just check out regularly http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ and you will see that for days on end ALL of the UK windfarms, on- and offshore, generate less than 5% of their maximum capacity. Currently wind is less than 5% of the UK demand, but if you continue to install more and get above 15% of demand, to prevent power outage you would need 100% backup for the windfarms (OCGT gas for rapid ramping up and down). When you have 100% backup planned, you might just as well do away with the windmills and run CCGT plant; cheaper and the same or less CO2 emission.

        3. Why Not?
          Megaphone

          Re: A small question

          why store it in a car? You use Green electricity during the day to stockpile hydrogen then burn it to heat the kettles when Eastenders ends.

          Cars could use electric, charged overnight by hydrogen power stations.

          no didn't miss it, see second paragraph.

        4. Thorne

          Re: A small question

          "tried storing hydrogen safely in a car with crashworthy requirements ? I thought not. I may be wrong about this in the future as the hydride systems have had some improvements, but gone very quiet lately."

          The problem with hydrogen is not the storage. The tanks are a lot stronger than petrol tanks.

          The problem is infrastructure. People don't buy hydrogen cars cause they can't get hydrogen. Fuel stations don't put in hydrogen cause people don't have hydrogen cars. companies don't build hydrogen plants cause there is no cars or filling stations. It's catch 22 ( or catch 33 ).

      3. Vic

        Re: A small question

        [Disclosure: one of my customers is a large wind turbine manufacturer]

        > When the wind blows hard you make hydrogen and oxygen.

        Actually, when the wind blows hard, you shut down.

        Wind turbines have a range over which they are useful - too little wind, and they don't turn. Too much, and you risk mechanical failure. Only inbetween these extremes is the tubine at all viable.

        But even if you're in the right windspeed range - how are you going to *store* that hydrogen? It takes a fair amount of power to run a cryo setup (which would need to run whether the turbine is operational or not), and a compressor - although simpler to operate - is unlikely to be a sufficiently reliable and effective means of energy storage. Hydrogen just isn't that good as a long-term storage medium. It's unlikely that you'll end up with a net energy contribution outside of a spreadsheet model...

        > Keeping the oxygen means that higher thermal efficiencies can be achieved when burning the hydrogen.

        Burning it *in what*?

        Raising Th for the same Tc will always improve the peak thermodynamic efficiency - but you still need a combustion chamber that will function at such temperatures. Have you seen a NASA launch?

        > General cost can be reduced enormously by taking away subsidies

        That is probably true of the wind energy market: take away the subsidy, and the market would vanish. The cost is dramatically reduced (to zero) - but this doesn't actually help at all.

        > With payback times of less than five years

        Such payback times are possible only because of the way the FIT is structured. This takes money from those that cannot afford generation systems and passes it to those that can. If the FITs were abolished tomorrow[1], you can wave goodbye to that payback period...

        Vic.

        [1] Yes, I know there are "guarantees" that they won't be. But they've already been halved once.

        1. Tom 7

          Re: A small question

          Large combustion chambers allow most of the action to take place at high temperatures ensuring high thermal efficiency without burning the cooled container. And the added benefit of 0 emissions!

          As for wind payback times of 5 years - that’s on a bad day. Something that generates 100W on average that will pay for itself in 5 years at 10p unit would have to cost <£438 fitted. That is easily achievable in mass production - unless someone patents Wednesday.

    2. Stuart 22

      Re: A small question

      It is a bit difficult in this country - but not for some others. I believe Denmark (lots of windpower) and Norway (lots of hydro) have an exchange agreement. When there is wind Denmark can export it and save Norway's water reserves. When the wind doesn't blow that saved water can generate extra power in return. Seemingly more efficient than pumping water uphill as an effecive electricity storage system.

      The nice thing about gas powered generators is that they don't consume gas when not required and the fuel cost is a higher percentage of the total cost (ie capital costs are lower). So in a perfect world they and realtime demand management can cover non-fossil shortfalls. Trouble is a market where each individual generator is trying to maximise their income - the system result may be suboptimal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Exchange agreements

        I believe Denmark (lots of windpower) and Norway (lots of hydro) have an exchange agreement.

        The UK has similar arrangements with France and Russia. They give the UK nuke power and oil and the UK gives them vast piles of money.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A small question @Stuart 22

        "The nice thing about gas powered generators is that they don't consume gas when not required "

        Not true, unfortunately. A CCGT takes an hour (sometimes more) to come on line from cold start. That's an eternity when the system always has has to respond to instantaneous events (eg grid failure, generator failure, wind stops blowing, you turning your kettle on without gtving a week's notice in writing etc etc). You might argue that wind power is in part predictable, but in terms of second by second output it isn't. And you'd have to be very confident in your forecast to turn off your backup gas plant, because if you can't meet instantaneous demand then the system starts moving towards brown-out.

        When gas turbines are held as spinning reserve (ie hot, fuel input to keep it running, but no load) then you can almost instantly release power if the sun goes in or the wind slows, but the CCGT gas usage is around 15% of full load. OCGT's used for peak loads are simpler, start in fifteen minutes or so, but are less efficient when running under load, and also use proportionately more fuel when in spinning reserve. Combined with the lower run times for OCGT make for higher cost per kWh and higher emissions.

        At the moment renewables get a free ride on the costs and emissions of their fossil fuel back up.

      3. dwieske

        Re: A small question

        important detail: denmark has some of the highest energy prices and carbon generation....read the article "danish fairytales" at bravenewclimate.com for the details.....gas powered, non bareload generation is HORRIBLY inefficient vs baseload gas due to the design difference... so many issues, who don't matter untill we stop looking at the energy problem through extremist ideological goggles (if we had a pragmatic look we'd all be building GE prisms, and producing cheap, clean and RELIABLE energy with our current nuclear waste)

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A small question

      Whilst there's a huge amount of geothermal power available, individual sites have limited lifetimes of about 20-50 years before their heat reservoir is depleted - rocks hold a lot of heat, but are lousy conductors. A good geothermal prospect not only needs hot rocks, but it needs expansion room to drill new boreholes when the older ones become less productive.

      Australia's geothermal potential is mostly deep (4km) wells sunk into dry, ancient granites that are hot because of radioactive decay of high concentrations of uranium. If they can get it to work they will be exploiting the same sort of rocks as found in West Cornwall.

      The Rosemanowes Quarry experiments in the 1980s produced large amounts of hot water but couldn't overcome huge losses of water between the injection and extraction wells. Modern fracking and horizontal drilling technologies might make this possible again. A 10MWe/50MWh pilot has been planned at Union Downs for Redruth for some time now and drilling should begin later this year. A second plant has also been approved at Eden.

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Boffin

        Re: A small question

        "Whilst there's a huge amount of geothermal power available, individual sites have limited lifetimes of about 20-50 years before their heat reservoir is depleted - rocks hold a lot of heat, but are lousy conductors"

        This depends on what assumptions you make on the sites you're dealing with.

        Sites are depleted when the heat energy extracted from the borehole > heat energy coming in from surroundings. So you need a good model of the rock layers between boreholes and their thermal properties.

        Dry rocks. Can be handled by injection of water or other fluids *or* by use of "thermal grout" IE a viscous but highly thermally conductive gunge that improves the thermal coupling between the rocks and borehole heat exchanger (assuming you're using a single borehole rather than the "2 hole" method US oil companies use to get electricity from their dry and/or played out oil wells) but stays put.

        Put simply you get depletion when you exceed the natural extraction rate of the hole and/or put them too close together. Avoid these and their life should be *indefinite* IE the heat source will last as long as the underlying radioactive decay keeps the temperature up (several *million* years).

  6. James 51

    With that much sunshine and coastline, the economics for renewables in Australia are probably very different than for most of the EU.

    @John Smith 19. In the EU at least the French will be able to sell all their nuke generated electricity to everyone.

    1. Denarius
      Trollface

      but wildness is precious, my precious

      lots of sun. Yeah, and some greenie has already complained solar farms would cause Climate Change (tm) because the continental heat flow would not be natural. Not to mention land rights, NIMBies and so on. Tide power ? It is hard to use 15km of coastline in 1500km for a port, let alone drowning small sections of the Kimberlies where they have adequate tides. So far, in the far fetched dodgy economics mandated by the doom, gloom and burn greenies, no-one has mentioned the tide races of Torres Strait. A place where the Pacific leaks into the Indian and 6 knot currents run for hours and in places hit 9 knots. Badu to Moa for instance. Have a look at Hammond Rock in Google earth sometime. Fun place in a speed boat. But then, all that sediment load would not make it to the Arafura Sea, stopping the crayfish egg dispursal. I suggest coal burning is just less stressful because the locals still support it, there is lots of coal and it is known to burn without subsidies, taxes and voodoo science.

      France, the next Saudi Arabia.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: renewables in Australia

      the economics for renewables in Australia are probably very different than for most of the EU.

      My in-laws installed solar photovoltaic last year and expect payback within five years. You can sell your excess back to the grid for 22c per Kw (although the scumbags that recently got elected have reduced that to 8c.).

      If anyone wants to see what people are getting from the PV systems just have a wander around here.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: renewables in Australia

        "You can sell your excess back to the grid for 22c per Kw (although the scumbags that recently got elected have reduced that to 8c.)."

        Well, most of that 22c was coming out of other electricity buyers pockets as a tax. Sadly tax doesn't trump economics, it just means that somebody else gets forced to foot the bill for your in laws eco-bling. And your inl;aws might see a five year payback, but Australia overall didn't because the required subsidy got taken off of somebody. After allowing for the market distortions that FIT invariably create, chances are that the PV might just cover its costs in the next twenty years.

        Much as the PV FIT schemes have operated elsewhere in the world.

        1. Martin Budden Silver badge
          Boffin

          Re: Re: renewables in Australia

          I installed solar PV a few months ago and I expect to get payback in less than a decade, and I have a one-to-one feed in rate (ie at my meter 1kWh coming in is worth the same money as 1kWh going out). Yes I have taken into account the extra mortgage interest I'm paying because of the re-draw to pay for the panels, and even with that, payback is less than a decade. Shop around and do the sums, you may be surprised at what you find.

  7. David Pollard

    Solar thermal with/without storage

    The report shows solar thermal with storage as slightly less expensive than without storage (Figs. 4.21-4.24). This is despite the capital cost when storage is included being almost double.

    Can this really be correct? Or has there been some sleight of hand? The capital cost of solar thermal without storage has been estimated as 55% of the cost with storage (p. 37). And the capacity factor is estimated at 22-24% as opposed to 42% with storage (p. 38).

    1. PyLETS

      Re: Solar thermal with/without storage

      With storage solar thermal will need smaller panels than without. Without storage, solar thermal is only useful when you need hot water at the same time that the sun is shining, and then you'll need engough capacity to be able to heat your water in real time.

  8. itzman
    FAIL

    One more report that claims renewable energy will be as cheap as fiossil

    ..by taxing fossil to make it as expensive as renewables. ignoring the holistic costs of renewables, and stamping on nuclear by requiring that to operate to standards that are totally unrealistic.

    Its the summer renewables lobby offensive beginning. Tinfoil hats chaps.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Deaths per TWh is interesting and often forgotten - it's over 100 deaths for coal, 36 for oil, 4 for gas, 0.44 for solar (yes people falling off rooftops etc.), 0.15 for wind and 0.04 for nuclear. So what is a life worth??

  10. Richard Wharram

    Cheapest?

    So the renewables are cheaper as long as there's a big tax on coal and we just ignore gas.

    Is this a new meaning of the word 'cheaper' that I hadn't been made aware of?

    1. Wilco 1

      Re: Cheapest?

      The tax is necessary to account for the pollution. Coal not only creates a huge amount of CO2 but is also the most polluting, environmentally damaging and dangerous form of energy. Such costs are not currently included, but paid for by deaths of miners, deaths due to lung deseases, destruction of the countryside, and of course global warming effects.

      Nuclear power could also be made really cheap if you didn't mind having a Chernobyl disaster every year or so.

      1. Richard Wharram

        Re: Cheapest?

        That may all be true but it doesn't make it the 'cheapest'. You can't just redefine words to what you would prefer them to mean.

        1. Wilco 1

          Re: Cheapest?

          It's not a redefinition - it's taking the external costs on society (pollution, deaths, destruction and global warming) and internalizing them as a cost. It's exactly the same thing as making companies pay to recycle their waste responsibly rather than allowing them to pollute at will (as was often done in the past). Sure it makes things more expensive, but that is hardly a burden compared to the alternative.

          1. Richard Wharram

            Re: Cheapest?

            But they aren't doing that. They are counting the dollar costs, not social ones, and adding in the carbon-tax. Nothing like what you described.

            'External costs' are all well and good but you are the one bringing them to the table.

            1. Wilco 1

              Re: Cheapest?

              In what way is adding a carbon tax not the cost of pollution? Coal, being the most dirty, will attract the largest tax - just like it should. What is wrong with it according to you?

              1. Richard Wharram

                Re: Cheapest?

                Because you are arguing that cheapest should take into account 'external costs' but the carbox tax only takes into account one external cost and ignores any others. Therefore it neither meets your definition of cheapest nor the common everyday definition.

                1. Wilco 1

                  Re: Cheapest?

                  The carbon tax is a reasonable proxy for the external costs - it doesn't include everything but more polluting/dangerous energy sources do have higher carbon tax, just like they should. So for fossil based fuels I think the definition is fine. For nuclear I'd agree we should include the decommissioning costs as those can be far higher than the cost of building a nuclear power station (UK decommissioning costs for old plants is over £70B and only rising - guess who is paying for that?).

                  The exact definition of cheapest doesn't matter much, the fact is that coal and nuclear are most definitely not the cheapest options.

                  1. Richard Wharram

                    Re: Cheapest?

                    The definition does matter. If not then why start the debate in the first place? Which is the cheapest will depend entirely on your definition of cheapest. What you are saying is that you are happy with whatever definition ends up with renewables being cheaper than coal and nuclear. Creating evidence to support your opinions is a valued skill. You should work for the government and/or the last government (depending on your individual biases.)

                    1. Wilco 1

                      Re: Cheapest?

                      The definition is clear to me - you have to include external costs. How you do that exactly doesn't matter much. A carbon tax, while not perfect, shows the true cost of coal. It is fact that coal has huge external costs, so that's not fabricating evidence at all. Ignoring the external costs is equivalent to sticking your head in the sand and hoping everything (pollution, GW, sea level rise etc) will magically go away.

                    2. PyLETS
                      Boffin

                      Re: Cheapest?

                      The cheapest of all is cleary hydroelectric. But relatively little new hydro capacity can be installed in the UK due to most of the best sites already being in use for this purpose. In practice many existing sites will have to be uprated to store more water behind dams when wind is plentiful and generate more electricity when it isn't.

                      Arguing that external costs off the polluters balance sheet are not relevant ignores the existence of governments and emissions regulations contstraining the ability of polluters to pollute at other people's expense, a factor which has quite traditionally and consistently brought the costs of their activities back onto the balance sheets of ex polluters. So what's the cost of dumping poisons in a river and having to fit extra equipment and controls to prevent this from happening ? That's always been partly a political and partly a technical question and the same principle applies here.

              2. Vic

                Re: Cheapest?

                > In what way is adding a carbon tax not the cost of pollution?

                It ignores the fact that most of these renewable sources can only provide what is needed if they have a fossil-fuel backup. Thus you actually need a hybrid system to cover variation in output, so the tax should be spread across both elements of the hybrid.

                Once you do that, renewables often don't look nearly as cheap :-(

                Vic.

                1. Richard Wharram

                  Re: Cheapest?

                  Good point Vic. If you are insistent that cheapest must mean, 'cheapest after all external costs are taken into account', then surely backup generation and/or energy storage must be taken into account for solar/wind power. Otherwise you can pick or ignore whichever costs you like and the compairson is meaningless.

                  1. Wilco 1

                    Re: Cheapest?

                    Backup plants already exist today even with mostly fossil fuel plants in use. Similarly storage in the form of pumped hydro already exists. You need a backup for any power plant, so you also have to add the cost of backup and storage to all plants, not just to renewables.

                    And before you say with solar/wind you need more backup/storage, it has been shown that if you spread installations around a country and have connections with Europe the variability reduces significantly - it's always windy somewhere. There have been previous articles on here showing that up to about 50% electricity generation from windpower would be feasible for the UK without increasing backup.

                    1. dwieske

                      Re: Cheapest?

                      very good demagoguery....the storage that exists is a tiny, tiny fraction of what is needed for unreliable(renewable some people seem to call it), your claim about supergrids have been proved not technically feasable NOR affordable.... supergrid = current price X20 and shitloads of outages......there have been studies showing the anunaki will visit us on 12/12/2012.....they are about as acurate as the claims you seem to make (which contradict pretty much every study I've read that's NOT from an ideological extremist source).......we're all going tits up energywise due to this continuation of lies on nuclear, and renewable....for nuclear nonsense disproven decades ago STILL is the primary argument (no solution for waste >> solved in 1963, supergrids and storage are feasable > see bravenewclimate.com for proper scientific studies on what it really means)

                      1. Wilco 1

                        Re: Cheapest?

                        You only need a small amount of storage to deal with fluctuations in generation and demand, and this doesn't change much when you add renewables up to 50%. Wind and sun are predictable days in advance and when spread around a country become even more predictable, so calling them unreliable is just a lie. We already have plenty of links with other countries, so you could say we already have a supergrid. I haven't noticed prices becoming 20x as a result or any outages. So that's just more lies.

                        Well since you have all the solutions for nuclear, why don't you tell us the secret? We are spending over £70 Billion on decommissioning our existing nuclear power plants. Sellafield has been a total failure - reprocessing costs are 2-4 times as much as using new uranium and waste storage. I'm all for cheap nuclear power if it is actually feasible (AP1000 seems like a step in the right direction) but not if it means cheating by making taxpayers pay for the enormous waste and decommisioning costs.

                    2. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: Cheapest? @Wilco 1

                      "spread installations around a country and have connections with Europe ....it's always windy somewhere"

                      If you knew anything about the topic you were pontificating on, you'd also know that winter high pressure zones over Europe can be be stable, large, and have low pressure gradients. Which, to put it in simple terms for the hard of thinking, means that you have little or no wind for days, sometimes weeks across an area larger than Australia. And those winter anticyclones are always associated with Europe's coldest weather, meaning high energy demand, when there's little or no solar output (for what little that is worth).

                      So despite your earnest beliefs, it doesn' matter how many wind turbines you build, nor how interconnected your grid, the reality is that we do need fossil back up. Unless a lot of people like you will put your hand up for interruptible power, and are willing to sit and shiver in the dark.

                      1. Wilco 1

                        Re: Cheapest? @Ledswinger

                        Please read this paper: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/publications/downloads/sinden06-windresource.pdf

                        So low winds across at most 50% of the UK occur for less than 100 hours per year, and at 92% for less than 1 hour per year! Also, crucially, low wind conditions typically occur during low demand hours, and less during high demand hours. So all in all, talk of weeks of no wind is just rubbish.

                        Of course you always need backup as any power station could go offline due to an emergency. Backup is currently primarily used to fill in differences in demand, but can equally be used to fill gaps in supply. The key is that this backup already exists and unless you aim for an insane amount of wind energy, you don't need any new backup.

                        1. Anonymous Coward
                          Anonymous Coward

                          Re: Cheapest? @Wilco1

                          And I've read many of the various papers on wind potential, and they're generally much of a muchness - unvarnished optimism, reflecting the interests of their sponsors.

                          On the meteorological side of things, it is an established fact that high pressure zones can and do create extensive areas of stable, calm weather. Working for one of the world's largest operators of wind power, I think I am in a position to be able to say that, and my employers have released public data showing this. If you have a look at DECC data, you'll see that (for example) national wind output in Q2 2010 was a miserable 14% of capacity for on shore wind, and barely much better 21% for offshore - and that's for three months. Obviously that isn't a steady 14% of capacity, so there's lots of non-generation, lots of low generation, and a few good days. If you have very high wind then the output drops again because the turbines can't cope and are feathered or furled (and if you can't then they disintegrate).

                          On the power side of things, supply and demand need to be matched all of the time (this appears to be why one tenth of the globe's population were subject to power cuts recently, because the Indian grid shut down due to excess demand). And what you're missing is that backup isn't a one size fits all facility that can substitute vast volumes of ugly, expensive wind. It needs to be built, and paid for, whether used or not, and with wind it needs to be running for instant dispatch.

                          At the moment our plant mix does cover demand variation, but the problem with most renewables is that they need additional backup - reserve capacity isn't unlimited, and what we have at the moment is based on highly reliable fossil fuel plant, not on highly unpredictable wind. At present the UK has plate capacity of around 7 GW of wind power, which may be generating anything between 0 and 100% of capacity. So that means having potentially nine mid size CCGT, costing around twelve billion quid to build, just because wind is intermittent.

                          Whether you like it or not, wind is an expensive source of power for a society that want (if not always getting) six nines power, and it should be forced to 'fess up to its backup plant costs and emissions. Even if C)2 were the great Satan, there are better and cheaper ways of reducing that - for example, we could have replaced all the UK's old oil and coal plants with brand new high efficienct CCGT's for the same amount of money as we've wasted on wind turbines that have retired nothing.

                    3. John Smith 19 Gold badge

                      Re: Cheapest?

                      " You need a backup for any power plant"

                      No you do not.

                      Firstly AFAIK UK generators are no longer *obligated* to maintain supply (a little concession they got from privatization IIRC) and part of the reason they have made limited upgrades to capacity using *only* the cheapest generating options (gas) when they did so. So *if* you have to do maintenance on a station you simply have some of your normally peak load stations run to cover it.

                      But *all* conventional stations can manage 90%+ up time (more like 95-98%) anyway. That's not some aspiration, it's a fact. Not the (maybe) 30% of offshore wind, which can be as low as 6% in the case of one on shore turbine IE 94% of t he time that capacity had to be filled somewhere else.

                      The UK has multiple renewable options, most of which it's govt has pursued *very* poorly.

                      I'd suggest this will change when the UK electricity market is *seriously* reformed.

                      I'll also note we have a figure for a "Carbon tax" for the UK and it's c£87/ton of CO2 a generator emits. Anything more is not a "Carbon tax," it's just a tax to get money out companies and consumers.

    2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: a new meaning of the word cheaper

      It pains me to say it, but I think this has been the standard definition of cheaper in political circles since the dawn of time. That, more than any technical problem that people have raised here, is the reason we're all fucked.

      As and when the politicians agree what their actual requirements are (e.g., cheap power, reliable power, carbon-free power, it matters not which you choose, just choose one and stick to it) the actual engineering to make it happen is not going to be difficult.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: a new meaning of the word cheaper

        As and when the politicians agree what their actual requirements are (e.g., cheap power, reliable power, carbon-free power, it matters not which you choose, just choose one and stick to it) the actual engineering to make it happen is not going to be difficult.

        UK politicians across the parties have agreed that they need more than one of these: cheap enough that people can afford it, reliable enough that you don't experience many power cuts and involving specified targets for reducing carbon levels. Sorry if this is too complicated for you, but that's the reality of the choices being made.

  11. dwieske

    GE PRISM is the only way to lower pollution/carbon, guarantee energy thats cheap

    the storage issue will not be solved by that time, so it will still be the most expensive as it is currently...the only REALISTIC, technically feasable solution that guarantees cheap, clean, dependable energy (which solar/wind still can not) is building GE PRISM nuclear reactors....

    I don't really care how much people make on their PV installations as it's a scam, and you steal that money for those less fortunate...it acts like a revers-robinhood tax where renter/people with bad finances have to cope with 15-20% -yearly pricehikes to pay for the redicilous feedback tarifs......the extra cost needed to adapt the grid to support an extremely variable and unreliable energy source like solar/wind is also carried by those least fortunate.....the current renawable energy scam going on in europe is nothing less but a re-establishment of a class based society where the poor get plundered by the not so poor......the fact the greens support this makes them anti-social, the fact that everywhere they get their way (germany, belgium, denmark) the 1ste result is new fossil fuel plants being built makes them dangerous hypocrites.... Greenpeace is one of the biggest enemies of the environment, their actions mainly benefit fossil fuel giants...

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  13. General Pance

    Grubby business tactics

    This is like bragging your team is unbeatable when you've had your thug mates kneecap the opposition and hold their families at gunpoint.

  14. John A Blackley

    The math is simple

    It has to be. Politicians are doing it.

    It goes something like this: My brother in law's wind energy company can produce leccy for X per megawatt. Every other source produces it for Xx0.5 per megawatt. So let's tax the hell out of every other source so their cost is 2X per megawatt and, hey presto! Wind power is the cheapest source of energy!

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