Comment by ZeroGravitas
3 years ago
The article says we pay three times, curtail wind and then burn gas. Which is bad.
But all the solutions are aimed at reducing the curtailment of wind. Rather than reducing the gas burnt.
If the money saved by building more wind (or solar) and not having to burn gas saves more money then who cares if more wind is "wasted"?
It would be nice to use every last drop, but I dont want to actually spend money to achieve that goal when it could be used to e.g. build yet more wind, and burn even less gas.
Again, that's not what the article is about. If more wind power gets built in Scotland to serve needs in England, then increasingly more of that output will have to be curtailed because we simply can't move the energy to where it needs to be, to the point where the only thing adding more wind farms would do is to provide a tad bit more energy when there's hardly any wind to distribute. In all other scenarios, having more capacity will not translate into not burning gas!
The article describes an entirely different problem than "oh no, it's very windy/sunny and we don't know how to use all of this energy" which is not solved with better distribution, but with storage and demand regulation.
And actually, the article is in complete agreement with you that we needn't be overly worried: curtailment isn't the end of the world, but we can solve it and it turns out that some of those solutions are cheaper than just building more farms, or would incentivize building those farms closer to where the energy is needed.
The article leaves an impression that curtailment is a problem that is costing us money. See most other comments here as evidence of that.
I'm explicitly calling for more curtailment, because it isn't a problem and doesn't need to be solved.
Burning fossil fuels is a problem to be solved. High electricity prices are a problem to be solved.
Both of those problems can be solved by building more wind power, which almost inevitably increases the amount of wind curtailed.
To repeat, curtailment is not a problem and does not need to be solved. It's a normal part of running a renewable grid. Any low cost renewable plan will have some predicted degree of curtailment, because it's the cheapest way to meet our energy needs.
See:
"Reframing Curtailment: Why Too Much of a Good Thing Is Still a Good Thing"
https://www.nrel.gov/news/program/2022/reframing-curtailment...
> Video Explains How Having More than Enough Renewable Energy Capacity Can Make the Grid More Flexible
> The article leaves an impression that curtailment is a problem that is costing us money.
That’s because curtailment does cost us money. Someone’s paying those wind operators to turn off the farms. We literally pay money to wind farms to explicitly make them produce nothing.
How do you reconcile these two statements?
> High electricity prices are a problem to be solved.
> I'm explicitly calling for more curtailment, because it isn't a problem and doesn't need to be solved.
Curtailment cost money, you still need pay the wind operators to the energy you told them not to produce, plus pay someone else to produce the energy that’s now not being produced by wind. That cost ultimately ends driving up the price of electricity.
You want to reduce the cost of electricity, a good start would be not paying people for electricity that can’t be used.
> Both of those problems can be solved by building more wind power, which almost inevitably increases the amount of wind curtailed.
Only if you can transport the energy. Otherwise you’re just building turbines that can’t be used, and paying for the privilege of not using them.
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The video you link is about that second scenario: intermittent high availability of renewable resources that can't be used, which is fine for the very same reason that when you're putting solar panels on your own roof you design for what you think it'll net on average, or even what you want to get out of it in fall winter and spring, not for peak power at noon on a cloudless summer day, which would be irrelevant and to call that "oversizing" would be something of a misnomer, it's well thought out dimensioning and hooray for curtailment!
The original article is about just being able to move any amount of energy whatsoever to where it is needed. If you don't improve distribution then you hit the saturation point much faster and more often than in an intermittent peak power scenario. Seeing that the original article links to multiple pages by the energy regulator/distributor about this very issue should maybe give us a hint that they, the actual experts, do think this is important enough to merit attention?
I upvoted your original post when you said that "it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about" negative prices and curtailing, but I'm starting to wonder whether you may be the common factor in some of those unconstructive conversations you've had in the past :-) Respectfully, it's not helpful to contribute to the discussion with a robotic pattern matched "curtailment is great actually!" whenever the topic is mentioned, without engaging with the arguments that are put forth.
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How would building 100 times as much wind power in Scotland reduce gas usage in England/wales without building more north/south interconnects?
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Curtailment of wind wouldn't be a problem if it's just because too much wind, but that's not the case, there isn't enough transmission, and we are having to use gas, that is a problem
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> To repeat, curtailment is not a problem and does not need to be solved.
Agree 95%. The only valid question involving curtailment is how much must occur at each individual turbine or farm to make it a bad investment.
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I really feel like you misunderstood the article. Perhaps you went into it with a different assumption of what it was going to say.
The article is saying that if we built more transmission lines, or increased storage capacity, or had localized pricing, that more of the power generated would get used, and we wouldn't need to turn on the fossil-powered plants as much.
More wind wasted is precisely equal to more fossil fuel burnt right now.
Further, the article described why simply building more production doesn't solve things, because most of it would be built in Scotland, and we wouldn't be able to bring in any more power into the grid where it's needed then we do now.
The thing is that some of those options (especially building more storage) might actually be more expensive and less practical than just building even more wind and letting a lot of the power from it be "wasted".
That assumes the problem of building wind far away from usage changes, right now most new wind is still being built in Scotland, and the problem will get worse not better without also investing in transmission
The article is saying that more transmission lines were needed to avoid wasting 9b pounds of electricity last year. An already approved grid upgrade will cost 4b pounds, and would mostly be adequate.
Something had to get built first, and I guess they picked the wind turbines. This seems like everything working as intended to me.
> The article says we pay three times
It isn't true, though, is it?
The curtailment payment is instead of the regular payment, not in addition to it. Possibly also instead of some tax breaks the wind turbines got contingent on being operational - but that's only shifting costs from the taxpayers to the electricity consumers, who in the large are the same people.
Paying twice is still not as nice as paying once, but it makes me wonder what other sleight of hand the author is employing in his argument.
The Drax report they link to (which has some nice photos of the Star Wars set from the recent Andor series) suggests when you net off the avoided support payments, that you save between 1/3 and 2/3 thirds of the cost when you curtail wind, rather than pay twice for it:
https://www.drax.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Drax-LCP-Ren...
I think that on a holistic level if you reduce curtailment then in the end you get side effects (in the geometrical sense) that can cascade.
If we store more wind power to reduce curtailment, then that power can be used later. I end up getting a larger fraction of my overall power through wind, so my neighbor can have more access to alternative sources of power that I am not using. Their neighbors now have access to more power as well, because my neighbor is pulling more from my now unused infrastructure.
The gas burnt at peak might not change! But out of peak the balance can change (at least until, say, Scotland is running 100% on wind I guess). The nice thing with storage (especially hydro storage, which sidesteps everyone's universal answer of "batteries are expensive") is that you get to actually hold onto the energy and be "smarter".