Wind Farms, Yes or No?

gandy said:
I saw an interesting comment from one of the windfarm consultants. According to his figures which were dated from June 2008 if you add up all wind power in service (3,625MW), under construction (850MW) and consented (3,067MW) then that comes to 5% of the UK demand (assuming 30% return). Elsewhere the document suggested that you could contribute up to 10% without too many problems in the grid.

I wonder what that figures would be now? A lot of turbines have gone up since then, and a lot more entered planning. It seems likely that we could soon be hitting that 10%.
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Currently 4GW installed and another 8GW in construction or with planning permission. All that should be on-stream in two years or so.

From memory, we use about 400TWh per annum. Assuming the usual 35% output factor, 4GW is 12.8TWh (3.2%) and 12GW is 36.8TWh (9.2%).

There is about 1.5GW of installed capacity in large scale hydro power, so with the 35% factor wind is level pegging at the moment and should soon be well ahead.

As I write this, by the way, UK electricity demand is 34.8GW, so if it's nice and windy (but not too windy) out there we could be running on about 11.5% wind generated as it is.


References:

http://www.bwea.com/media/news/articles/pr20091020.html

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/Demand60.htm
 
orbister said:
There is about 1.5GW of installed capacity in large scale hydro power, so with the 35% factor wind is level pegging at the moment and should soon be well ahead ..... we could be running on about 11.5% wind generated as it is.
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The load factor you quote must be based on 100% utilisation? What is being claimed, over a year in ROC subsidy, currently 5p per kwhr which means twice the cost from fossil/nuclear generated power, indicates a load factor below 30% for all farms, inland and offshore. As offshore farms increase and they are the only ones being built because of higher load factor, then load factor will increase; perhaps to the level achieved by the best (Caithness) of 33%. The data for ROC subsidy will reflect utilisation.

There is a paper written by Hugh Sharman and presented 4 years ago to the CE Institute which purports to show that the limit for wind power generation in the UK is 10GW. Beyond that, wind farms will have to shut down. The grid can not cope. Most folk think that because Denmark can cope, so can we. But Denmark exports most of its wind power to hydro storage schemes in Norway and Sweden and "gets it back" when it needs it (at substantially greater price than it sold it for). There are a preponderance of wind farms being built in Scotland because of higher load factor which means Scotland will run into grid capacity problems quite soon but there is not the political will or the money, from either side of the border, to build a connector.

Furthermore, the centre of UK consumption is halfway between Birmingham and London and the losses getting power there are considerable, >5% from distant sources. A windfarm several hundred miles away gets paid at the point of production.
 
Orbister's figures are based on 35% as he says, I've just done a quick calc - 100% of 4GW capacity, 24 hours per day and 365 days per year would be 35TWh/year.

I agree that 35% looks high, although I've seen Glens of Foudland reported at 37%. By contrast Boyndie was only returning 26%.

Where did you get your load figures from? Those I've quoted came from quite an old report, based on ROC claims but sufficiently old that possibly Boyndie wasn't fully commissioned at the time. However I now can't remember where on earth I found them, nor can I remember the reports for any wind farms other than those two local one.

1/2 hour or so we're off to a meeting about yet another proposal on our doorstep. This time only for a single 800KW machine.
 
gandy said:
Where did you get your load figures from? Those I've quoted came from quite an old report, based on ROC claims but sufficiently old that possibly Boyndie wasn't fully commissioned at the time. However I now can't remember where on earth I found them, nor can I remember the reports for any wind farms other than those two local one.
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Boyndie had in 2008 a 34% load factor; up from 32.6% in 2007.

The Renewable Energy Foundation is a charitable trust who, amongst other things, have sorted and tabulated Ofgem's data since 2002.
ref.org.uk Look for Issue 9 of their annual windfarm report.
 
gandy said:
1/2 hour or so we're off to a meeting about yet another proposal on our doorstep. This time only for a single 800KW machine.
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Interesting meeting in that the developer has given a bit more publicity rather then trying to sneak the application onto the system quietly this time. He's recently had three applications rejected as too close to houses, so I'm not sure why he's so confident about this one that has 13 households affected by the one turbine. A lot of grief for only a very small energy contribution, however this developer is well known for "trying it on". It'll be interesting to see the detail of his Environmental Statement. His last application had plenty of blatant errors and omissions.
 
Mrs Sea Mist II said:
Ok, point taken.
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I hope my comment didn't come over as too abrasive.

There's a lot of heat round here about these things, and it sometimes seems that both developers and planners put a lot more work into assessing what they call "landscape impact", ie the views from afar, than on the more local impacts. In fact the local impacts are sometimes shockingly neglected. A recent nearby proposal for example had 9 households completely omitted from their noise and shadow flicker assessments.
 
Scotty_Twister said:
If we could have channelled all the billions or is it trillions that had been wasted by the bankers recently, we could probably have funded a huge barrage with locks and turbines accross the Bristol channel to harness the huge amount of free 'tidal power' going to waste there every day!
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Yes, but what about the waders & other tree huggers?
 
Just watched a prog about Victorian farming. The wheat was ground in a windmill. Apparently there used to be thousands of them dotted around, now only relatively few are left. I'll bet there were people in the mid 19th century saying "Damn things are eyesores, and frighten the horses. I won't let them build one here."
 
Twister_Ken said:
Just watched a prog about Victorian farming. The wheat was ground in a windmill. Apparently there used to be thousands of them dotted around, now only relatively few are left. I'll bet there were people in the mid 19th century saying "Damn things are eyesores, and frighten the horses. I won't let them build one here."
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1. Most mills were watermills.

2. Windmills were modest in size.

3. Windmills were built with local materials

4. Windmills were not glaring white monsters of enormous size, utterly alien to rural locations.

5. I suspect it would now be difficult to obtain planning permission to build a new windmill and miller's house in a prominent rural position. The planning authority would quite rightly say that our valuable landscape should be protected.
 
1450_05_9---Windmill--Holland-The-Netherlands_web.jpg


A Blight on the Landscape 1

WINDMILL-2.jpg


A Blight on the Landscape 2
 
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