Cyprus-Forum.com

[cyprusgrump]

Here is an interesting article about how subsidies distort the energy market...

But the subtler and even less tractable issue is the unforeseen impact of large amounts of 'must take' wind- and solar-power, financed by whopping subsidies. (The electricity doesn't even need to be generated - the producer merely needs to install the plant. There are many windfarms in northern Germany that are completed but not connected to the grid - the system cannot accommodate them, and they lie idle - getting paid anyway.)

Key to the situation is that the marginal cost of wind- and solar-power is close to zero. Unsurprisingly, at times of the day when large quantities of zero-cost power are being fed into the grid (foisted on utilities who must take it, irrespective of its market value), the impact on the wholesale market price is to reduce it substantially - not just to zero, it sometimes actually goes negative, so that people are being paid to take power off the system

The timing of wind generation is notoriously unpredictable, but solar is straightforward: it peaks around noon. In Germany (though not in all countries) this at least coincides with peak demand. The impact on wholesale prices is clear.

One cannot fail to notice (a) demand rising to maximum at midday ('Volume' on the chart) which would 'normally' coincide with the highest hourly prices: but (b) a midday collapse in hourly price, which at 1pm is lower than at midnight ! The market price for 'peak' electricity as defined in the German/Austrian market (9 am to 8 pm) is now barely greater than for baseload (24-hour), meaning inter alia that no-one will see any incentive to build or run a plant designed to offer flexibility. In particular, it fundamentally undermines the economics of flexible gas-fired plant, which - since no subsidies are on offer to fossil fuels - needs a 'normal', undistorted day-time price to pay its way. And yet that is the very plant needed to balance the vagaries of wind generation !

[supporttheunderdog]

Oy! Grump - Been to Devon in the past few days?

http://grist.org/news/toppled-u-k-wind-turbines-likely-an-act-of-sabotage/

[CBBB]

Oy! Grump - Been to Devon in the past few days?

http://grist.org/news/toppled-u-k-wind-turbines-likely-an-act-of-sabotage/

How did the pigeons hold the tools to remove the bolts?

[kurupetos]

Oy! Grump - Been to Devon in the past few days?

http://grist.org/news/toppled-u-k-wind-turbines-likely-an-act-of-sabotage/

How did the pigeons hold the tools to remove the bolts?

These birds are getting smarter every day...

[cyprusgrump]

Oy! Grump - Been to Devon in the past few days?

http://grist.org/news/toppled-u-k-wind-turbines-likely-an-act-of-sabotage/

[supporttheunderdog]

and the latest,,,,

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9889882/Wind-farms-will-create-more-carbon-dioxide-say-scientists.html

[cyprusgrump]

and the latest,,,,

Wind farms will create more carbon dioxide, say scientists - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9889882/Wind-farms-will-create-more-carbon-dioxide-say-scientists.html

And it will be ignored like all the other evidence about what a poor power source wind is...

Meanwhile Germany builds coal-fired power stations as fast as she can....

We must be stupid...

How infuriating it is being stupid.

I don’t understand global how warming will make sea levels rise, for a start. I remember well my antediluvian physics lessons in which we were told water expands as it freezes. And geography lessons in which we were told that nine tenths of an iceberg was below the water. Why then if ice-bergs are melting will the sea-water not become lower (Especially as more heat would mean more evaporation)?

But my imbecility doesn’t stop there. I wonder why carbon dioxide is the devil when the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour? Then methane. And carbon dioxide makes up 0.033 per cent of the atmosphere. And man-made CO2 is 0.03 per cent of the total.

And I don’t understand how wind turbines could ever power an industrial nation. I sail a boat. The wind comes, it goes, it blows too hard, it doesn’t blow hard enough. Denmark is covered in wind turbines and hasn’t decommissioned one conventional power station. Remember sailing ships? And how long it took them to sail around the world? And think of an oil-powered cargo ship carrying fifty times the load? So why doesn’t that power discrepancy occur when it comes to creating electricity?

Stupid me. Don’t understand.

I don’t understand why buses are greener than cars. Given they put out thirty-four times the emissions, and given they keep trundling up and down their routes regardless of how many people are on them.

...

Clicky...

[kurupetos]

Solar energy is bad for your health...

[cyprusgrump]

Solar energy is bad for your health...

[cyprusgrump]

Are global wind power resource estimates overstated?

A new paper by Amanda Adams and David Keith reports that once deployed on a large scale wind farms may generate even less power than previously thought.

Estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 TW. Most estimates have implicitly assumed that extraction of wind energy does not alter large-scale winds enough to significantly limit wind power production. Estimates that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2–4 W/m2 can be sustained over large areas. New results from a mesoscale model suggest that wind power production is limited to about 1 W/m2 at wind farm scales larger than about 100 km2.

David Mackay, the chief scientist at DECC, has this to say about the UK's onshore wind resource:

...if we covered the windiest 10% of the country with windmills (delivering 2 W/m2), we would be able to generate 20 kWh/d per person, which is half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 km per day.

If the true figure is 1 W/m2, we could cover half the country with windmills and still not get enough energy for the average daily commute.

Wind power isn't looking any more sensible is it?

Clicky...