saveasteading Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 he said, adding that it was “absolutely outrageous... [that] at the times we are turning the wind farms off in Scotland, we are importing electricity from Norway This is crazy and seemingly is easily sorted.. Too much power so they turn them off. Meanwhile charging users as if it was gas. Article here BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj509yg9n3qo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 Nice soundbites from Greg, but he does not say how you get customers to use energy when he wants. Nor does he mention local grid reinforcements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 27 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: he does not say how you get customers to use energy when he wants. I don’t think it’s about using electricity when he wants it’s more about if it’s free/cheap because it’s windy 28 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Nor does he mention local grid reinforcements. No, if the grid worked better surely wind farms in Scotland could power the SE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMo Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 They are adding more and more wind in Scotland - why because the big plan is hydrogen - using excess wind power to make it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 There is no joined up thinking. We are building the wind farms where there is no more grid capacity, before the grid is upgraded to cope. 4 more are planned near here, soon there won't be a hilltop without a wind farm on it. The planned additional 400KV overhead north / south line is barely passed planning stage after nearly 10 years, yet to start construction. There is a hydrolyser plant about to be built. Being built to use the surplus power the grid can't take to make hydrogen to be trucked by tanker (hydrogen powered I hope) to feed local distileries. The hydrolyser needs water, a lot of it, so a new 15 mile pipeline is being built to pump it from a local river. Now my little brain says 2 things, surely it would be easier just to build a local distribution network to feed the distileries directly with electricity rather than have the losses making then transporting then burning hydrogen? And if you are going to build it, surely it would be easier to build it near the river and transport the electricity to the hydrolyser with a new cable, rather than lay a new pipe and pump the water up hill? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 6 minutes ago, ProDave said: The planned additional 400KV overhead north / south line is barely passed planning stage after nearly 10 years, Hopefully this new gov will fast track this sort of thing. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saveasteading Posted July 11 Author Share Posted July 11 30 minutes ago, joe90 said: If the grid worked better surely wind farms in Scotland could power the SE. There are plans in progress to put in more overhead lines heading south from the Highlands. The cost though will be borne by the locals who's power will be sent away, and are already paying as if in London. I would hope, but haven't researched, that spare power is aready being used to pump up into the hydro pumped storage systems....that must be quite a pump. Perhaps they need to time this to aid the problem discussed. Please charge your cars tonight and it will be free. Please turn your ovens on and turn the air source heating off for 2 hours? It reminds me of a remote house with a generator. If you turned a light on, the generator kicked in, and it was essential immediately to turn on a powerful electric fire or the generator would fail. I never understood the science of this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottishjohn Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 apart from grid problems the main problem is that someone does not know how to do a deal --how can it be sense to pay the turbine company when they turn them off,because of too much wind or over production and pay them for the electric they are not producing needs to be put on a real commercial basis they make it and the grid pays for what they get --nothing more pumped storage is good -but again all that should be fully paid for by wind farms and not grants etc smooths out the electricity daily requirement If it don,t stack up that way --then it nots worth doing theo ne sure supply is tidal -- but too much investment at start to get the private commercail companies to go for it 2 tides a day --every day for ever when i bought my land part of it was very suitable for solar we talked about a deal -- all was well till they realised they would have to pay to upgrade the local substation cos it could not ake 3.3 mega watts form the site deal never went any further 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 On 11/07/2024 at 09:12, saveasteading said: The cost though will be borne by the locals Is this true. I thought it was the “ National Grid “ Transmission costs. The costs of operating the National Grid System are recouped by National Grid Electricity System Operator (NGESO) through levying of Transmission Network Use of System (TNUoS) charges on the users of the system. The costs are split between the generators and the users of electricity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 49 minutes ago, scottishjohn said: how can it be sense to pay the turbine company when they turn them off,because of too much wind or over production and pay them for the electric they are not producing Because it is cheaper to turn of a few MW of wind generation than shut down and restart a large gas powered generator (which also gets paid for non generation). It is all do do with the Balancing Mechanism Auctions. They have proved to be the cheapest way to deliver power. The alternative is to constantly over or under generate, and disconnect or incentives consumers (what Octopus is playing with). There are very clever engineers, statisticians, economists, accountants etc that work on keeping the UK powered, they will know if any deal you think up is viable or not. I think what you are actually after is a good deal for yourself, not for the nations energy grid. Take your idea of a 3.3 MW (installed capacity) solar farm, in the scheme of things it is tiny, but say it went ahead and you entered the market as a generation company (so either guaranteeing a fixed supply, or bidding in the day ahead auction). Two simple scenarios. You oversupply on a rare sunny day and are asked to disconnect You undersupply and you are asked to fill in the gap What sort of commercial deal you willing to do? (You can look up the prices on the web) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scottishjohn Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 2 hours ago, SteamyTea said: Because it is cheaper to turn of a few MW of wind generation than shut down and restart a large gas powered generator (which also gets paid for non generation) and thats wrong as well there is little incetive for them to be competitive with deals like that another rip off by the money men Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 30 minutes ago, scottishjohn said: and thats wrong as well Why is it wrong? Or is that just your opinion? Worth looking up Game Theory and John Nash. Spend a few hours down this rabbit hole. https://www.nationalgrideso.com/what-we-do/electricity-national-control-centre/what-balancing-mechanism Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said: Spend a few hours down this rabbit hole. Just looked at that but didn’t understand this…. Today, balancing services regularly exceed 50% of national demand. i thought the idea of balancing was to align supply with demand so how can it exceed 50% of national demand (unless it goes into storage..? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 13 Share Posted July 13 (edited) 31 minutes ago, joe90 said: Just looked at that but didn’t understand this From memory, and it is a fair few years since I was involved, and terminology changes, it is to do with the amount of overall capacity and the number of participants joining the auctions. So say on a typical day, in November, you have 500 people joining the action to either sell their generation, or buy a slot they hope to fill, and compare that to a really sunny June day when PV generation may be high, so there is capacity to dump (sell) but not many slots to fill (buy) as overall capacity needs to be lower, that day may have 1000 people entering the auction. Over the year, it therefore means that 50% of the buy, or sell, bids fail. Another way to think of it is as a sealed bid auction. some houses may get 100 bids, another 1 bid, with the overall average say being 30 bids per house. If there is lots of cheap money, the average number of bids per house may go up to 45 (50% higher). This would give a quirk that could be seen as excess demand (more bids at higher prices), but if you look at the supply side (and you have to with electrical generation), the number of houses for sale may be the same, or lower. That's is basically what Game Theory does in a public auction, it is not a case of the winner takes all, more a case of more people spreading the total load (I think in the movies, Beautiful Mind, the most desirable girl, that all the boys lusted after, did not get taken home, but everyone else were matched up, so one loser but many people still satisfied). So the most competitive may not always win, as the auctioneer needs to keep a number of players in the market, or a monopoly, duopoly, oligarchy or other limited number of suppliers can arise, and that is not good for reliability, prices, environmental considerations, bulk power transportation (which is possibly why they turn of some of the capacity) and other reasons. Edited July 13 by SteamyTea 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saveasteading Posted July 13 Author Share Posted July 13 The investments made by SSEN – that £20 billion - are ultimately paid for by electricity consumers across Great Britain "Ultimately" . Does that mean locals pay now and it gradually gets paid back? I hadn't realised that power could go all the way from Aberdeen to Lincolnshire in one go. There should really be a levy, to benefit Aberdeen: it is a resource. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan Ambrose Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 >>> how can it be sense to pay the turbine company when they turn them off because of too much wind or over production and pay them for the electric they are not producing I’m hoping this policy will be extended and someone will pay me for not building a house. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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