Comment by avianlyric
3 years ago
> 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.
> Curtailment cost money, you still need pay the wind operators to the energy you told them not to produce
Why? What are the real costs? Isn't it just a simple disconnect switch? Why do the wind operators get paid for not delivering power? Is it a contractual issue?
Because the wind providers have already sold that electricity in an energy auction. So the grid has to pay them for electricity, even if they can’t use it.
One of the big points in the article is that there’s a single energy market in the UK that doesn't consider location. So it’s possible for wind providers to sell energy from locations where it can’t be used. An obvious fix is to introduce multiple energy markets for different locations, so the price of electricity drops in areas where there’s excessive production, and not enough transfer capability.
This isn't a real economic loss. Claiming it is, is tantamount to saying that if you don't need to go to hospital while on vacation, you have wasted money on travel insurance.
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Contract. They have to pay for the the bank for the wind turbines even if not used. They have to pay the land owners (or the bank for the land, and government taxes). You also need to pay various employees. Thus you don't open a wind farm without some form of contract.
On top of the above you want to make a profit.
Nothing to do with any of the above. Purely a function of how the energy markets in the UK work. There’s no contract providing you with a long term guarantee that the current situation will continue, and the grid doesn’t care if you go bust.
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Consider reading the article.
Because when they built a wind turbine they assumed all the time it's windy they would be making and selling electricity and that's all part of the calculation that made it a worthwhile investment.