Actually it's mostly just a fairy tale, because what we really pay for wind is either market price + ROCs and REGOs, or CFD strike price plus REGOs. There is no way that the weighted average strike price plus all the ROC stuff will come down anywhere close to their fantasy prices.
I have noted that LCCC seem to have revised down a number of strike prices since end June - the latest being lopping almot £10/MWh off Triton Knoll. I will write and ask them about this.
Thank you for commenting. It is clear that we are not on the same side of the argument.
I accept that the world has warmed and that we are partly responsible. But I don't share your pessimism about hydrocarbons, nor do I accept they are causing death and destruction, well not on the scale you imply.
I do think that the West should try and reduce hydrocarbon consumption, but because of geology and geopolitics, not climate. Nuclear has a far smaller environmental footprint than just about all other sources. Explained here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-everywhere-all-at-once
"...radioactive storage waste and the potential for extreme catastrophe..."
Just making that statement has destroyed all of your credibility. Do you know anything about nuclear waste or its storage? It's never killed anyone and likely never will kill anyone. That is just a Greenie talking point that has been debunked a million times, but they will still keep repeating it nonetheless.
Amazing on one hand, you claiming ACC is a catastrophe waiting to happen, and the one real solution you don't embrace, namely nuclear energy, because of the trivial risk of nuclear waste. Just ridiculous.
And I know a lot about Hydrogen. It is a nutty scam from almost every angle. In a entirely non-fossil economy you might use locally produced nuclear hydrogen for Methanol production and process heat for certain industries like cement kilns or steel making. That's about it. A crazy way to store energy. An even crazier way to transport energy.
And there is Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, Patrick Moore, Steve Koonin, Alex Epstein and Judith Curry.
When a subject is controversial, as the effects of ACC are on our Civilization, you want to be cautious about taking drastic actions that could kill billions of people. As most assuredly, forcing a change to energy scams: wind, solar, agrofuels, hydrogen, utility battery storage, ITER, CCS will do.
The exact same people who have been spreading Fear Porn over Climate Change are the same bunch who successfully have blockaded Nuclear power expansion which is the only viable substitute for fossil fuels. Mostly they use Fear Porn to stifle their arch-enemy Nuclear Power as well. Thanks to these wealthy Greenie fanatics Nuclear power development was largely stopped circa 1980. By 1974 the USA was completing one NPP per month, at that rate the US would be 100% clean electricity supply by 2000.
Were it not for the nuclear blockade coal power plants would already have been replaced with zero emissions nuclear. When is Germany based Greenpeace International, the rabidly anti-nuclear ENGO (Environmental No-Good Organizations), going to finally fess up and tell us where they get their incredible $350M/yr in funding from. Similar incredible levels of funding to many other staunchly anti-nuclear ENGOs.
In 1999 Germany was 31% clean, zero emissions Nuclear electricity, 170TWh/yr. At that time they started their program to replace Nuclear with Wind & Solar, buffered with Russian gas. Now after having spent over $500B on wind and solar since then they are now at 28.8% wind + solar, 165TWh/yr. Zero achievement after $500B down the sewer. If Germany has spent $230B on Nuclear power they would now be 100% clean Nuclear electricity. 3X the results at <1/2 the cost. And now most of Germany's wind & solar will have to be replaced over the next decade. And of course they would now be much more resilient to Putin's natural gas pipeline blackmail.
Listen to Nuclear Engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin explain it to you, listen and learn:
Nuclear Energy, Space and Humanity's Future | Robert Zubrin | The Human Progress Podcast Ep. 30:
And of course capitalist investors are throwing money into wind & solar. 100% due to unheard-of-ever, incredible subsidies, mandates and exemptions. Even Warren Buffet admitted the only reason he invests in Wind farms is due to the giant tax credits. For a mostly useless form of energy. $5T down the sewer and zero results.
There is a simple way to gauge the cost of Weather-Dependent "Renewables". Take comparative costs say from the US EIA and divide them by the productivity they achieve. That gives you a true comparative cost of providing a unit of power to the grid.
The simple sums which are optimistic for "Renewables" are shown here
These Govt Green Energy activists will stop at nothing to promote their pet beliefs. I've been in construction for 30+yrs and I don't care what major infrastructure project you are tackling the cost savings being predicted are ridiculous. Everyone in the UK has experienced massive increases to their energy costs and it all coincides with expanding renewables Final thought to ponder... when was the last time the Govt was able to estimate the costs of infrastructure work to any degree of moderate accuracy? Answer - NEVER. Great piece of work David.
The only ones possible would be less maintenance downtime and benefits of less wind shear, or greater efficiency of a design for the expected winds. This is part of an excellent tutorial on wind (although it dates from earlier times when turbines were smaller):
OTOH increased rotor diameter leads to increased differentials in wind speed and loading on the hub between the top and bottom positions of a blade, increasing the stresses - and the need for maintenance as we go large! This is perhaps behind the problems that Siemens have been acknowledging with their turbines recently. These problems have been more obvious with tidal turbines because water is much denser than air, increasing the stresses - and limiting the practical size of turbines because larger ones are soon wrecked.
Efficiency depends on blade design, feathering regime, frictional losses and generator size relative to to the rotor. The maximum theoretical efficiency is 16/27ths, given by Betz' Law (proof at the above site - see the last menu item). Different designs have different efficiencies at different wind speeds. Efficiency starts very low at the cut in speed, increases towards the design sweet spot, and then falls off when the generator maximum output becomes the limiting factor. This is a typical efficiency curve
You will see it peaks at around 45% of the energy in the wind, which is about 75% of the theoretical Betz limit maximum: few designs do any better, and most that do are trying to make the best of a lower wind speed resource. Designs are fine tuned around expected wind speed distributions among other factors. The sweet spot can be shifted to higher or lower wind speeds.
Beyond that it's about Hopium in terms of the weather. Perhaps they should point to where the IPCC is forecasting even zephyrs due to climate change.
It should be noted that the Hywind floating wind farm runs at the highest capacity factors in the UK fleet (just over 50%), with the site having been carefully selected and not constrained by bottom depth. However, it comes at a massive cost premium: it earns 3.5ROCs/MWh, now worth well over £200/MWh of subsidy on top of market price. Is it worth it?
To put the calculations about the Gas energy generation in practical terms. In the electricity bill of a UK customer, what fraction of the bill is carbon tax?
If you believe the government's own analysis it is about £60/MWh on gas generation. If you look at the forecast proceeds for UKA carbon allowances, most of which fall on the electricity sector (though some on steel etc.), it's about £8bn a year. Recent auctions have dropped in value because there is now an expectation that electricity demand will suffer, reducing the need for allowances. Also, coal that had been expected to run next winter when the allowance rations were set now won't. There are of course other taxes that should qualify, including Climate Change Levy which is about £2bn. Arguably, also windfall tax on oil and gas.
They have taken a big tumble just recently to £40/tonne CO2.
The OBR include forecasts in Annex Table 5: their March forecast had already reflected some of the drop so show ~£6bn, which now looks optimistic. I was remembering figures I had seen back in October, I suspect. Last year allowances touched £100/tonne CO2 when we were burning extra gas and coal to keep the Continent in electricity.
Very useful analysis, but surely this is not gaslighting, its just distortion deliberate or otherwise. Gaslighting is specifically to manipulate another person into doubting their own perceptions, experiences or understanding of events.
I would say it is gaslighting. Manipulating us into believing our high energy bills are down to Putin, when in reality it's their obsession with renewables.
For the last couple of years, renewable enthusiasts have been trumpeting that the levelized cost of electricity is now competitive, and sometimes lower for renewables compared to fossil fuel generation. This completely misses the elephant in the room: intermittency.
Interruptible (such as renewable) utilities are typically worth 1/2 or less of dispatchable, on-demand service. I.e., LCOE for renewable generation may be about the same as for dispatchable fossil generation, but it needs to be MUCH lower to be truly competitive.
Alternatively, LCOE for intermittent sources such as renewables should also incorporate the full carrying cost of the dispatchable facilities required to back them up. Then LCOE would be a reasonable basis for comparison.
According to the CFD Auction timetable, today, August 8th:
Delivery Body issues a ‘Notice of Auction’ inviting qualified applicants to submit sealed bids
The ‘Notice of Auction’ will specify that an auction is to be held and the deadline for the submission of sealed bids
There has been no such notice publicised. That means that there are insufficient potential bids to merit an auction. All applicants will therefore get the full Administrative Strike Price for their technology. This is likely to mean very small volumes of expensive tidal (£270/MWh in today’s money) and floating wind (£155/MWh in today’s money), and perhaps a few solar projects if they can get a grid connection, but even these must be in doubt. It increases the probability that there are no bids at all for ordinary offshore wind.
I see that the Delivery Body has issued a notice a day late. It smacks of a cover up, so I have written to them challenging them for an explanation, and pointing out that the whole AR5 process has been an exercise in procrastination in the face of clear messages from the renewables industry that Administrative Strike Prices are inadequate. I expect they will plead purdah.
The costs would be even lower for conventional generation if the subsidies were taken away from RE Wind. It's the protective subsidies that "artificially" reduce the true costs. It is designed to mislead and is a fraud.
Excellent piece of analysis and hopefully will help fuel the groundswell of opinion and spark a debate about how much we want to pay to achieve net zero or if we even want to go there. Im pretty sure the lauded goals of 50GW offshore wind by 2030 and net zero power generation are now dead and we will see them quietly disappearing. It wont happen overnight as politicians having committed themselves to net zero have to slowly wind back from it even Caroline Lucas is targeting energy usage now as she knows unreliables are never going to be cost effective.
"Several companies, including the UK's largest renewables generator SSE, have ruled themselves out of the auction, with one source saying the number of potential bidders was "between two and zero, with expectations at the lower end of that range".
So not only was it not cheap before this, its rapidly getting more expensive rather rapidly.
Actually it's mostly just a fairy tale, because what we really pay for wind is either market price + ROCs and REGOs, or CFD strike price plus REGOs. There is no way that the weighted average strike price plus all the ROC stuff will come down anywhere close to their fantasy prices.
I have noted that LCCC seem to have revised down a number of strike prices since end June - the latest being lopping almot £10/MWh off Triton Knoll. I will write and ask them about this.
That will be same alarmists that no, non, niet to new transmission lines and windmills when their in their backyard.
Thank you for commenting. It is clear that we are not on the same side of the argument.
I accept that the world has warmed and that we are partly responsible. But I don't share your pessimism about hydrocarbons, nor do I accept they are causing death and destruction, well not on the scale you imply.
Explained here [edited, wrong link]: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/pillars-supporting-net-zero-crumbling
I do think that the West should try and reduce hydrocarbon consumption, but because of geology and geopolitics, not climate. Nuclear has a far smaller environmental footprint than just about all other sources. Explained here: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-everywhere-all-at-once
I have also explained why renewables can never be a solution to our energy needs. In short, EROEI matters: https://davidturver.substack.com/p/why-eroei-matters
We can have a further discussion after you have digested those articles.
Please send me a link to your article when available. I did cover the issue of nuclear waste in one of my articles.
"...radioactive storage waste and the potential for extreme catastrophe..."
Just making that statement has destroyed all of your credibility. Do you know anything about nuclear waste or its storage? It's never killed anyone and likely never will kill anyone. That is just a Greenie talking point that has been debunked a million times, but they will still keep repeating it nonetheless.
Amazing on one hand, you claiming ACC is a catastrophe waiting to happen, and the one real solution you don't embrace, namely nuclear energy, because of the trivial risk of nuclear waste. Just ridiculous.
And I know a lot about Hydrogen. It is a nutty scam from almost every angle. In a entirely non-fossil economy you might use locally produced nuclear hydrogen for Methanol production and process heat for certain industries like cement kilns or steel making. That's about it. A crazy way to store energy. An even crazier way to transport energy.
Roger Pielke is one example of a Climate Scientist who uses the IPCC's ACTUAL data to show Climate Change Alarmism is unwarranted:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/
And there is Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, Patrick Moore, Steve Koonin, Alex Epstein and Judith Curry.
When a subject is controversial, as the effects of ACC are on our Civilization, you want to be cautious about taking drastic actions that could kill billions of people. As most assuredly, forcing a change to energy scams: wind, solar, agrofuels, hydrogen, utility battery storage, ITER, CCS will do.
"more than a year or two" - let's check in 2025, shall we?
The exact same people who have been spreading Fear Porn over Climate Change are the same bunch who successfully have blockaded Nuclear power expansion which is the only viable substitute for fossil fuels. Mostly they use Fear Porn to stifle their arch-enemy Nuclear Power as well. Thanks to these wealthy Greenie fanatics Nuclear power development was largely stopped circa 1980. By 1974 the USA was completing one NPP per month, at that rate the US would be 100% clean electricity supply by 2000.
Were it not for the nuclear blockade coal power plants would already have been replaced with zero emissions nuclear. When is Germany based Greenpeace International, the rabidly anti-nuclear ENGO (Environmental No-Good Organizations), going to finally fess up and tell us where they get their incredible $350M/yr in funding from. Similar incredible levels of funding to many other staunchly anti-nuclear ENGOs.
In 1999 Germany was 31% clean, zero emissions Nuclear electricity, 170TWh/yr. At that time they started their program to replace Nuclear with Wind & Solar, buffered with Russian gas. Now after having spent over $500B on wind and solar since then they are now at 28.8% wind + solar, 165TWh/yr. Zero achievement after $500B down the sewer. If Germany has spent $230B on Nuclear power they would now be 100% clean Nuclear electricity. 3X the results at <1/2 the cost. And now most of Germany's wind & solar will have to be replaced over the next decade. And of course they would now be much more resilient to Putin's natural gas pipeline blackmail.
Listen to Nuclear Engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin explain it to you, listen and learn:
Nuclear Energy, Space and Humanity's Future | Robert Zubrin | The Human Progress Podcast Ep. 30:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMfdtyTpPhU
https://www.humanprogress.org/robert-zubrin-the-human-progress-podcast-ep-30-transcript/
How to liberate nuclear energy, with Robert Zubrin, Alex Epstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQtgkT8nqgc
And of course capitalist investors are throwing money into wind & solar. 100% due to unheard-of-ever, incredible subsidies, mandates and exemptions. Even Warren Buffet admitted the only reason he invests in Wind farms is due to the giant tax credits. For a mostly useless form of energy. $5T down the sewer and zero results.
There is a simple way to gauge the cost of Weather-Dependent "Renewables". Take comparative costs say from the US EIA and divide them by the productivity they achieve. That gives you a true comparative cost of providing a unit of power to the grid.
The simple sums which are optimistic for "Renewables" are shown here
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-comparative-costing-model-for-power-generation-technologies/
and here
https://edmhdotme.wpcomstaging.com/a-few-graphs-say-it-all-for-renewables/
These Govt Green Energy activists will stop at nothing to promote their pet beliefs. I've been in construction for 30+yrs and I don't care what major infrastructure project you are tackling the cost savings being predicted are ridiculous. Everyone in the UK has experienced massive increases to their energy costs and it all coincides with expanding renewables Final thought to ponder... when was the last time the Govt was able to estimate the costs of infrastructure work to any degree of moderate accuracy? Answer - NEVER. Great piece of work David.
Excellent analysis as usual. Thank you. Eigenvalues has become my go to website for the latest info on the Net Zero scam.
Is there any justification given for the increase in load factor? 🤨
😅
The only ones possible would be less maintenance downtime and benefits of less wind shear, or greater efficiency of a design for the expected winds. This is part of an excellent tutorial on wind (although it dates from earlier times when turbines were smaller):
http://drømstørre.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/wres/shear.htm
Remember that power in the wind scales with the cube of wind speed, so a higher hub height in theory gives stronger winds. But:
http://drømstørre.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/wres/offshore.htm
OTOH increased rotor diameter leads to increased differentials in wind speed and loading on the hub between the top and bottom positions of a blade, increasing the stresses - and the need for maintenance as we go large! This is perhaps behind the problems that Siemens have been acknowledging with their turbines recently. These problems have been more obvious with tidal turbines because water is much denser than air, increasing the stresses - and limiting the practical size of turbines because larger ones are soon wrecked.
Efficiency depends on blade design, feathering regime, frictional losses and generator size relative to to the rotor. The maximum theoretical efficiency is 16/27ths, given by Betz' Law (proof at the above site - see the last menu item). Different designs have different efficiencies at different wind speeds. Efficiency starts very low at the cut in speed, increases towards the design sweet spot, and then falls off when the generator maximum output becomes the limiting factor. This is a typical efficiency curve
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/GqyyC/1/
You will see it peaks at around 45% of the energy in the wind, which is about 75% of the theoretical Betz limit maximum: few designs do any better, and most that do are trying to make the best of a lower wind speed resource. Designs are fine tuned around expected wind speed distributions among other factors. The sweet spot can be shifted to higher or lower wind speeds.
http://drømstørre.dk/wp-content/wind/miller/windpower%20web/en/tour/design/optim.htm
Beyond that it's about Hopium in terms of the weather. Perhaps they should point to where the IPCC is forecasting even zephyrs due to climate change.
It should be noted that the Hywind floating wind farm runs at the highest capacity factors in the UK fleet (just over 50%), with the site having been carefully selected and not constrained by bottom depth. However, it comes at a massive cost premium: it earns 3.5ROCs/MWh, now worth well over £200/MWh of subsidy on top of market price. Is it worth it?
A fine analysis
To put the calculations about the Gas energy generation in practical terms. In the electricity bill of a UK customer, what fraction of the bill is carbon tax?
I haven't done that calculation.
If you believe the government's own analysis it is about £60/MWh on gas generation. If you look at the forecast proceeds for UKA carbon allowances, most of which fall on the electricity sector (though some on steel etc.), it's about £8bn a year. Recent auctions have dropped in value because there is now an expectation that electricity demand will suffer, reducing the need for allowances. Also, coal that had been expected to run next winter when the allowance rations were set now won't. There are of course other taxes that should qualify, including Climate Change Levy which is about £2bn. Arguably, also windfall tax on oil and gas.
Hi do you have a link to the reference for the £8bn cost of the UK carbon allowances?
You can find the historical auction results here, going back to May 2019 when they first ran:
https://www.ice.com/marketdata/reports/278
You can find futures prices here (including historical charts):
https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/CMZ23
They have taken a big tumble just recently to £40/tonne CO2.
The OBR include forecasts in Annex Table 5: their March forecast had already reflected some of the drop so show ~£6bn, which now looks optimistic. I was remembering figures I had seen back in October, I suspect. Last year allowances touched £100/tonne CO2 when we were burning extra gas and coal to keep the Continent in electricity.
https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-march-2023/#annex-a
Thank you.
Very useful analysis, but surely this is not gaslighting, its just distortion deliberate or otherwise. Gaslighting is specifically to manipulate another person into doubting their own perceptions, experiences or understanding of events.
I would say it is gaslighting. Manipulating us into believing our high energy bills are down to Putin, when in reality it's their obsession with renewables.
Have a look at LCOE values for offshore wind in the U.S. It’s much higher than onshore and for good reason--higher construction costs.
For the last couple of years, renewable enthusiasts have been trumpeting that the levelized cost of electricity is now competitive, and sometimes lower for renewables compared to fossil fuel generation. This completely misses the elephant in the room: intermittency.
Interruptible (such as renewable) utilities are typically worth 1/2 or less of dispatchable, on-demand service. I.e., LCOE for renewable generation may be about the same as for dispatchable fossil generation, but it needs to be MUCH lower to be truly competitive.
Alternatively, LCOE for intermittent sources such as renewables should also incorporate the full carrying cost of the dispatchable facilities required to back them up. Then LCOE would be a reasonable basis for comparison.
The dog that didn’t bark in the night.
According to the CFD Auction timetable, today, August 8th:
Delivery Body issues a ‘Notice of Auction’ inviting qualified applicants to submit sealed bids
The ‘Notice of Auction’ will specify that an auction is to be held and the deadline for the submission of sealed bids
There has been no such notice publicised. That means that there are insufficient potential bids to merit an auction. All applicants will therefore get the full Administrative Strike Price for their technology. This is likely to mean very small volumes of expensive tidal (£270/MWh in today’s money) and floating wind (£155/MWh in today’s money), and perhaps a few solar projects if they can get a grid connection, but even these must be in doubt. It increases the probability that there are no bids at all for ordinary offshore wind.
I see that the Delivery Body has issued a notice a day late. It smacks of a cover up, so I have written to them challenging them for an explanation, and pointing out that the whole AR5 process has been an exercise in procrastination in the face of clear messages from the renewables industry that Administrative Strike Prices are inadequate. I expect they will plead purdah.
And If I may?
The costs would be even lower for conventional generation if the subsidies were taken away from RE Wind. It's the protective subsidies that "artificially" reduce the true costs. It is designed to mislead and is a fraud.
Excellent piece of analysis and hopefully will help fuel the groundswell of opinion and spark a debate about how much we want to pay to achieve net zero or if we even want to go there. Im pretty sure the lauded goals of 50GW offshore wind by 2030 and net zero power generation are now dead and we will see them quietly disappearing. It wont happen overnight as politicians having committed themselves to net zero have to slowly wind back from it even Caroline Lucas is targeting energy usage now as she knows unreliables are never going to be cost effective.
You have to laugh, wind is now so cheap, that no one bid in the government's CfD auction.
https://news.sky.com/story/offshore-wind-power-warning-as-government-auction-flops-12956522
"Several companies, including the UK's largest renewables generator SSE, have ruled themselves out of the auction, with one source saying the number of potential bidders was "between two and zero, with expectations at the lower end of that range".
So not only was it not cheap before this, its rapidly getting more expensive rather rapidly.