Does Capacity Reduction mean that the prospective generator (of wind, solar etc) has voluntarily decided or realised that they will never achieve the originally intended output target?
Turning to renewables construction, the combination of ‘unbuilt’ plus ‘unwanted’ generating capacity looks very large. Is it reasonable to extrapolate these trends out to 2030 and make some judgments about the achievability of Mr Miliband’s plans – which already looked hugely ambitious by any measure? RLW
The offshore wind disposition chart biggest bars, AR3 and AR4, have serious errors. And surely you need to distinguish between projects which have started construction and those which haven't!
AR3
----
There have been NO AR3 cancellations or reductions in capacity. Some delays because of Ukraine.
Seagreen (1.1 GW) is fully live. Only 454 MW of that was bid into the CfD process, but you surely have to include all 1.1 GW in AR3 as the other 650 MW does not fit anywhere else. So the total in the chart should be around 6.1 GW, rather than 5.5 GW.
Sofia is under construction. There should be colour coding specifically for this status, surely. Physical construction start is a significant milestone
All the 3 x Dogger Bank (A, B and C) are through FID and onshore construction is in progress on all (A, B and C). Offshore construction is underway at A and B.
Aren't you going to update the online version of that chart? There's no point in confusing everyone.
"hundreds of projects have been granted planning permission only for the consent to lapse before construction begins"
There is no point in totting up very old cancelled projects as delays. Cameron as PM was pretty successful in sabotaging solar and onshore wind in the mid 2010s time frame, which is why many projects were canned. His decision ended up costing UK consumers and taxpayers roughly half of the additional £80bn in extra energy costs from the mid 2021 to mid 2023 time frame, including the extra bills paid by everyone and the additional payments to those on benefits who would not otherwise have been able to afford them.
But the projects are gone, to be replaced with a list of much more recent others.
If you want to include historical cancellations in a wind, solar and nuclear comparison, then surely you should include all the cancelled plans for large nuclear plants at Wylfa Newydd (2,760? MW), Moorside (3,600 MW), Oldbury B (2,760 MW), Bradwell B (2,230 MW). Maybe Sizewell C too (3,200 MW) which, if it goes ahead, will be well over 20 years from 2012 "statement of consultation" to operation (not likely before 2032 as the second HPC reactor may only just have been completed by then).
AR4
----
"More than half of the offshore wind capacity that won contracts in AR4 has either reduced capacity or been cancelled."
1.5 GW was the 25% allowed to be rebid at higher prices in AR6, so could count as delayed but isn't any sort of reduction. In any case, this capacity will be delivered as part of the 75% of capacity in the same wind farms not rebid.
The remaining roughly 4.1 GW is going ahead. So more than half is going ahead unchanged. Your maths is just wrong.
So the numbers just don't support your statement.
"It is rather odd that most of the commentators report breathlessly on the results of the auction, but hardly a word is uttered when they do not fulfil their obligations. "
That is because most of the offshore wind projects are fulfilling their obligations, albeit they have been significantly affected by materials and supply chain issues caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which cost UK taxpayers and consumers £80 billion, of course.
Thank you for your comment. You are at least partly right about Seagreen, there was a glitch in my spreadsheet that I have now fixed and updated the chart. I can only fit into the chart the data that the Government provides. I don't know what happens to the remaining capacity.
The status values given in the LCCC contract portfolio status are LIve-Post FIC, Live pre-FIC, pre-MDD, pre-Start Date and Terminated.
Sofia is listed as "pre-start date" as are all the Dogger Bank projects.
Again, look at the contract portfolio status. Norfolk Boreas is listed as terminated. Moray West is down 73.5MW, Hornsea 3 706MW, EA3 318MW and Inch cape 270MW from the original contract awards. Yes, some have been re-bid as I said in the article, but of course, at higher prices than the original award. So, the original terms of the contract are not being met.
David, you should be feeding these fantasy bullet points to an MP or two who would be happy to skewer Milliband or Starmer during parliamentary questions.
Richard Tice likes to ask the awkward technical questions that most MPs wouldn't touch for fear of being embarrassed. The other vehicle maybe to target MPs on the DENZ who haven't been brainwashed as i tried direct to committee a few years back and was told to go through a committee member.
Very interesting way of looking at it. It seems that 10 years to complete a nuclear project is no worse than the time for wind or solar. And in the US, I think under the new administration, gas and nuclear power plants' time of going online will become much shorter than 10 years - Yea!
Take Sizewell C. The first consultation plan was in 2012, and there is no contract yet. The second HPC reactor won't go live until after 2030, and it is thus unlikely that the first Sizewell C reactor will beat 2032. That is a minimum of 20 years of project timescale, always assuming Sizewell C does go ahead. HPC second reactor is almost 20 years too.
And these timescales are with about the best degree of government support that could be expected.
Which is embarrassment for governments, regulators, environmentalists and everyone contributing to the delays IMHO. Nothing inherent in technology if it was possible to build on time on budget in Japan still in the early 2000s with modern, large scale BWRs(not small, not especially modular, perfectly safe enough). It seems that we lost ability to build large stuff with long term benefits for people/environment in Europe/US(airports, train stations, NPPs and other large infrastructure).
History will show how foolish the western world has been on economic and industrial policy since about the 1980s on many fronts. We have allowed woke driven thinking to destroy our western citizen wealth and allowed it to be either drained away with waste or transferred to the rest using poor trade, energy and immigration policies. So called renewables versus a solid nuclear solution to solve our energy needs is a good example. It has nothing to do with facts and more about virtue signaling and UN based scare politics to support the new world order.. its time to say enough!
Well put. I'm familiar with the foolishness of energy and immigration policies, but I don't know too much about trade policies. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
Well…. I wrote a book on that.. more at my Substack at Take Back Manufacturing | Nigel Southway | Substack https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/
Take Back Manufacturing: An Imperative for Western Economies. eBook : Southway, Nigel: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store
The quick response is that we allowed uncontrolled globalization to transfer our wealth to others.
The Trump policies will reset that with massive reshoring in North America and it wont be easy but highly necessary. The EU and UK will have an even harder time without natural resources but we in the west need strong localized trade blocs or forget prosperity.
Very good analysis. Of course, the companies that get these projects through the pre-construction phase need staff to do so. Staff that are probably paid from various government subsidies I.e taxpayer funded. They have no incentive to get them up and running. I have worked on two wind farm projects in Hawaii and the cost of actual construction was horrendous. At the end of it all, there was no transmission line to connect to!
Like politicians building a bridge to nowhere. Lobbyists to bring tax dollars to their district, to get voters, whether the project makes sense or not.
As always with government data it isn't completely reliable. The Crown Estate published its own version of the data for offshore wind at the end of September. It includes handy links to project websites.
From this we see that Seagreen is fully operational (since late last year). However, it has not commenced its CFD, worth only £54.64/MWh. Indeed each of its 3 phases has the following comnent on its register record at the LCCC:
Following the conclusion of the Judicial Review that was impacting all AR3 contracts, this contract was afforded a 6 month extension to the CFD milestones of Milestone Delivery Date, end of Target Commissioning Window and Longstop Date.
This means that the expected date for CFD commencement is variously between March 2026 and March 2028. In the mean time it gets market prices for its output, and benefits handsomely from constraint payments, having been constrained on 2.4TWh of output so far this year.
There is an extension that the Crown Estate believes is going ahead.
Axle energy has a running log of wind farm curtailment https://wind.axle.energy/ Also you can see individual windmills on this site https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5/54.05/0.3 although there are a few missing not Seagreen though top windmill producer currently!! NESO also publish levels of constraints monthly and you can look at individual BMU data off Elexon but be prepared for vast amounts of data which im not skilled enough to manipulate.
The levels are eyewatering on target for 2B this year but to be fair to the windmills thats not down to them but OFGEM who has frustrated NG/SSE/SP for nearly decade to increase power transfer from North Scotland to England so they have to be constrained off. This wont be reduced until the Eastern Green Links are commissioned in 29/30.
Very heartening news. It’s always been obvious that planning and logistical constraints meant that Miliband’s 2030 fantasies/lies could never be achieved.
On a negative note, the Neart Na Gaoithe monstrosity off the Fife coast is only about 10 miles from the outstanding Isle of May nature reserve and not that far from the Bass Rock off North Berwick, home to over 150,000 gannets.
More hearty thanks David. I lead a sheltered life but this is the first time I've seen the facts of construction time addressed. The degree to which UK governments are detached from real, practical considerations of energy generation becomes even more disturbing.
There’s a handy guide to offshore wind development from Iberdrola
How long does it take to build an offshore wind farm?
While the construction of an onshore wind farm can take between 4 and 8 years, taking into account all phases of the process, the construction of an offshore wind farm is estimated to take between 7 and 11 years. Three to five years are dedicated to the development phase, one to three to the pre-construction phase and two to four years to construction.
"The target of a decarbonised grid by 2030 is just a flat out lie."
While your timescales for the construction of offshore wind farms don't seem unreasonable, you don't take into account that there is a pipeline of such offshore wind projects, so UK isn't starting with a blank canvas. For instance, there were 30 GW of "Scotwind" Scottish offshore wind leases contracted in 2022. See https://www.crownestatescotland.com/scotlands-property/offshore-wind/scotwind-leasing-round .
The link says that "30 GW of offshore wind will be installed over the next 10 years" , and the implied date of that statement is 2022. UK already has 15 GW of installed offshore wind. The ongoing AR4 contracts are for 5.6 GW and Dogger Bank A + B + C is another 3.6 GW, plus 2 GW of AR6 new contracts. That is a total of 11 GW, so 26 GW of known offshore wind projects in total with dates up to "2027/28". With 30 GW of "Scotwind" leases that comes to well over 50 GW. So the projects are there if they can be approved in AR7 and AR8 and built in parallel. Many of them should hit 2030, and the others shouldn't be later than 2032.
Further, the NESO has redefined "net zero" as "clear power" which they define as no more than 5% unabated gas generation for the long duration gaps in wind and solar. The implication is you don't need green hydrogen long duration storage with its low 45% round trip efficiency. So likely you can hit the NESO "clean power" with much less than 50 GW of offshore wind.
Then there is quite a bit of onshore wind and solar to help out, even if the capacity factors are lower, because they can generally be installed within a couple of years of winning a CfD contract.
Likely increased demand won't figure hugely by 2030. Heat pumps aren't going in thick and fast yet, and even 100% sales of BEVs by 2030 would cause only another 13% of demand. Most of that would likely be balanced off by the continual 1% per year reduction in traditional UK demand caused by improved lighting and appliance efficiency and industrial energy efficiency.
I agree it will all be tight, but 2030 is a reasonable target date (at least for "clean power", even if the UK grid ends up with "clear power" in 2032 instead and true "net zero" power in 2035.
Most of us would count such a timescale as "success", as it always looked like a messy process.
Though it would be a shame to be beaten by South Australia, which is already on 75% wind and solar power!!! SA is likely to hit net zero before 2030, the way things are going.
The delay to bringing on stream the reactors at the Korean built Barakah project in the UAE was caused by waiting for operators to be trained. Construction clearly beat the anticipated schedule. We would of course probably need to train a new generation of operators were we to adopt more nuclear.
David, thanks – very interesting.
Does Capacity Reduction mean that the prospective generator (of wind, solar etc) has voluntarily decided or realised that they will never achieve the originally intended output target?
Turning to renewables construction, the combination of ‘unbuilt’ plus ‘unwanted’ generating capacity looks very large. Is it reasonable to extrapolate these trends out to 2030 and make some judgments about the achievability of Mr Miliband’s plans – which already looked hugely ambitious by any measure? RLW
The offshore wind disposition chart biggest bars, AR3 and AR4, have serious errors. And surely you need to distinguish between projects which have started construction and those which haven't!
AR3
----
There have been NO AR3 cancellations or reductions in capacity. Some delays because of Ukraine.
Seagreen (1.1 GW) is fully live. Only 454 MW of that was bid into the CfD process, but you surely have to include all 1.1 GW in AR3 as the other 650 MW does not fit anywhere else. So the total in the chart should be around 6.1 GW, rather than 5.5 GW.
Sofia is under construction. There should be colour coding specifically for this status, surely. Physical construction start is a significant milestone
All the 3 x Dogger Bank (A, B and C) are through FID and onshore construction is in progress on all (A, B and C). Offshore construction is underway at A and B.
Aren't you going to update the online version of that chart? There's no point in confusing everyone.
"hundreds of projects have been granted planning permission only for the consent to lapse before construction begins"
There is no point in totting up very old cancelled projects as delays. Cameron as PM was pretty successful in sabotaging solar and onshore wind in the mid 2010s time frame, which is why many projects were canned. His decision ended up costing UK consumers and taxpayers roughly half of the additional £80bn in extra energy costs from the mid 2021 to mid 2023 time frame, including the extra bills paid by everyone and the additional payments to those on benefits who would not otherwise have been able to afford them.
But the projects are gone, to be replaced with a list of much more recent others.
If you want to include historical cancellations in a wind, solar and nuclear comparison, then surely you should include all the cancelled plans for large nuclear plants at Wylfa Newydd (2,760? MW), Moorside (3,600 MW), Oldbury B (2,760 MW), Bradwell B (2,230 MW). Maybe Sizewell C too (3,200 MW) which, if it goes ahead, will be well over 20 years from 2012 "statement of consultation" to operation (not likely before 2032 as the second HPC reactor may only just have been completed by then).
AR4
----
"More than half of the offshore wind capacity that won contracts in AR4 has either reduced capacity or been cancelled."
See https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65b1463d160765000d18f834/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-4-results.pdf for the definitive AR4 projects. 7 GW of offshore wind was bid in AR4. 1.4 GW Norfolk Boreas was paused and sold (so can reasonably count as a cancellation, but is likely to be just a significant delay).
1.5 GW was the 25% allowed to be rebid at higher prices in AR6, so could count as delayed but isn't any sort of reduction. In any case, this capacity will be delivered as part of the 75% of capacity in the same wind farms not rebid.
The remaining roughly 4.1 GW is going ahead. So more than half is going ahead unchanged. Your maths is just wrong.
So the numbers just don't support your statement.
"It is rather odd that most of the commentators report breathlessly on the results of the auction, but hardly a word is uttered when they do not fulfil their obligations. "
That is because most of the offshore wind projects are fulfilling their obligations, albeit they have been significantly affected by materials and supply chain issues caused by Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which cost UK taxpayers and consumers £80 billion, of course.
Thank you for your comment. You are at least partly right about Seagreen, there was a glitch in my spreadsheet that I have now fixed and updated the chart. I can only fit into the chart the data that the Government provides. I don't know what happens to the remaining capacity.
The status values given in the LCCC contract portfolio status are LIve-Post FIC, Live pre-FIC, pre-MDD, pre-Start Date and Terminated.
Sofia is listed as "pre-start date" as are all the Dogger Bank projects.
Again, look at the contract portfolio status. Norfolk Boreas is listed as terminated. Moray West is down 73.5MW, Hornsea 3 706MW, EA3 318MW and Inch cape 270MW from the original contract awards. Yes, some have been re-bid as I said in the article, but of course, at higher prices than the original award. So, the original terms of the contract are not being met.
David, you should be feeding these fantasy bullet points to an MP or two who would be happy to skewer Milliband or Starmer during parliamentary questions.
Richard Tice likes to ask the awkward technical questions that most MPs wouldn't touch for fear of being embarrassed. The other vehicle maybe to target MPs on the DENZ who haven't been brainwashed as i tried direct to committee a few years back and was told to go through a committee member.
Very interesting way of looking at it. It seems that 10 years to complete a nuclear project is no worse than the time for wind or solar. And in the US, I think under the new administration, gas and nuclear power plants' time of going online will become much shorter than 10 years - Yea!
Take Sizewell C. The first consultation plan was in 2012, and there is no contract yet. The second HPC reactor won't go live until after 2030, and it is thus unlikely that the first Sizewell C reactor will beat 2032. That is a minimum of 20 years of project timescale, always assuming Sizewell C does go ahead. HPC second reactor is almost 20 years too.
And these timescales are with about the best degree of government support that could be expected.
Which is embarrassment for governments, regulators, environmentalists and everyone contributing to the delays IMHO. Nothing inherent in technology if it was possible to build on time on budget in Japan still in the early 2000s with modern, large scale BWRs(not small, not especially modular, perfectly safe enough). It seems that we lost ability to build large stuff with long term benefits for people/environment in Europe/US(airports, train stations, NPPs and other large infrastructure).
OK, I’m not familiar with UK reactor projects. Thanks for the info.
History will show how foolish the western world has been on economic and industrial policy since about the 1980s on many fronts. We have allowed woke driven thinking to destroy our western citizen wealth and allowed it to be either drained away with waste or transferred to the rest using poor trade, energy and immigration policies. So called renewables versus a solid nuclear solution to solve our energy needs is a good example. It has nothing to do with facts and more about virtue signaling and UN based scare politics to support the new world order.. its time to say enough!
Well put. I'm familiar with the foolishness of energy and immigration policies, but I don't know too much about trade policies. Could you elaborate a bit on that?
Well…. I wrote a book on that.. more at my Substack at Take Back Manufacturing | Nigel Southway | Substack https://nigelsouthway.substack.com/
Take Back Manufacturing: An Imperative for Western Economies. eBook : Southway, Nigel: Amazon.ca: Kindle Store
The quick response is that we allowed uncontrolled globalization to transfer our wealth to others.
The Trump policies will reset that with massive reshoring in North America and it wont be easy but highly necessary. The EU and UK will have an even harder time without natural resources but we in the west need strong localized trade blocs or forget prosperity.
Thanks - I didn’t know about your substack or book until today…
Wont be possible for us to reshore we've terminated our core industry of steelmaking
Yep.. its used to be strong.. never say never eh!
Very good analysis. Of course, the companies that get these projects through the pre-construction phase need staff to do so. Staff that are probably paid from various government subsidies I.e taxpayer funded. They have no incentive to get them up and running. I have worked on two wind farm projects in Hawaii and the cost of actual construction was horrendous. At the end of it all, there was no transmission line to connect to!
Like politicians building a bridge to nowhere. Lobbyists to bring tax dollars to their district, to get voters, whether the project makes sense or not.
As always with government data it isn't completely reliable. The Crown Estate published its own version of the data for offshore wind at the end of September. It includes handy links to project websites.
https://www.datocms-assets.com/136653/1729510974-owprojectlisting-sept2024.pdf
From this we see that Seagreen is fully operational (since late last year). However, it has not commenced its CFD, worth only £54.64/MWh. Indeed each of its 3 phases has the following comnent on its register record at the LCCC:
Following the conclusion of the Judicial Review that was impacting all AR3 contracts, this contract was afforded a 6 month extension to the CFD milestones of Milestone Delivery Date, end of Target Commissioning Window and Longstop Date.
This means that the expected date for CFD commencement is variously between March 2026 and March 2028. In the mean time it gets market prices for its output, and benefits handsomely from constraint payments, having been constrained on 2.4TWh of output so far this year.
There is an extension that the Crown Estate believes is going ahead.
Thanks for that. Article updated.
May I ask where you source the data on curtailment by generator. I think there's a story lurking in that data if I can find it.
Axle energy has a running log of wind farm curtailment https://wind.axle.energy/ Also you can see individual windmills on this site https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#5/54.05/0.3 although there are a few missing not Seagreen though top windmill producer currently!! NESO also publish levels of constraints monthly and you can look at individual BMU data off Elexon but be prepared for vast amounts of data which im not skilled enough to manipulate.
The levels are eyewatering on target for 2B this year but to be fair to the windmills thats not down to them but OFGEM who has frustrated NG/SSE/SP for nearly decade to increase power transfer from North Scotland to England so they have to be constrained off. This wont be reduced until the Eastern Green Links are commissioned in 29/30.
Very heartening news. It’s always been obvious that planning and logistical constraints meant that Miliband’s 2030 fantasies/lies could never be achieved.
On a negative note, the Neart Na Gaoithe monstrosity off the Fife coast is only about 10 miles from the outstanding Isle of May nature reserve and not that far from the Bass Rock off North Berwick, home to over 150,000 gannets.
That doesn't matter. Plenty of chopped gannet for the fish......
Tha lack of joined up thinking in the "Green" lobby never ceases to amaze me....
More hearty thanks David. I lead a sheltered life but this is the first time I've seen the facts of construction time addressed. The degree to which UK governments are detached from real, practical considerations of energy generation becomes even more disturbing.
According to https://visualizingenergy.org/global-nuclear-reactor-construction-starts-and-duration-1949-2023/ global nuclear construction times are not way adrift from those you show for wind and solar, and I believe the South Koreans and Chinese have demonstrated that times can be brought down. I presume this is done by standardisation and a methodical and determined approach.
Correct, and also the streamlining of regulation and permitting speeds up nuclear construction.
And as importantly, brings down costs on an LCOE basis. Time is money as they say.
There’s a handy guide to offshore wind development from Iberdrola
How long does it take to build an offshore wind farm?
While the construction of an onshore wind farm can take between 4 and 8 years, taking into account all phases of the process, the construction of an offshore wind farm is estimated to take between 7 and 11 years. Three to five years are dedicated to the development phase, one to three to the pre-construction phase and two to four years to construction.
https://www.iberdrola.com/about-us/our-activity/offshore-wind-energy/offshore-wind-park-construction
There is virtually nothing the government can do to accelerate this process. The target of a decarbonised grid by 2030 is just a flat out lie.
The PM’s speech at COP29 mentioned nuclear a total of zero times.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-remarks-at-cop29-12-november-2024
"The target of a decarbonised grid by 2030 is just a flat out lie."
While your timescales for the construction of offshore wind farms don't seem unreasonable, you don't take into account that there is a pipeline of such offshore wind projects, so UK isn't starting with a blank canvas. For instance, there were 30 GW of "Scotwind" Scottish offshore wind leases contracted in 2022. See https://www.crownestatescotland.com/scotlands-property/offshore-wind/scotwind-leasing-round .
The link says that "30 GW of offshore wind will be installed over the next 10 years" , and the implied date of that statement is 2022. UK already has 15 GW of installed offshore wind. The ongoing AR4 contracts are for 5.6 GW and Dogger Bank A + B + C is another 3.6 GW, plus 2 GW of AR6 new contracts. That is a total of 11 GW, so 26 GW of known offshore wind projects in total with dates up to "2027/28". With 30 GW of "Scotwind" leases that comes to well over 50 GW. So the projects are there if they can be approved in AR7 and AR8 and built in parallel. Many of them should hit 2030, and the others shouldn't be later than 2032.
Further, the NESO has redefined "net zero" as "clear power" which they define as no more than 5% unabated gas generation for the long duration gaps in wind and solar. The implication is you don't need green hydrogen long duration storage with its low 45% round trip efficiency. So likely you can hit the NESO "clean power" with much less than 50 GW of offshore wind.
Then there is quite a bit of onshore wind and solar to help out, even if the capacity factors are lower, because they can generally be installed within a couple of years of winning a CfD contract.
Likely increased demand won't figure hugely by 2030. Heat pumps aren't going in thick and fast yet, and even 100% sales of BEVs by 2030 would cause only another 13% of demand. Most of that would likely be balanced off by the continual 1% per year reduction in traditional UK demand caused by improved lighting and appliance efficiency and industrial energy efficiency.
I agree it will all be tight, but 2030 is a reasonable target date (at least for "clean power", even if the UK grid ends up with "clear power" in 2032 instead and true "net zero" power in 2035.
Most of us would count such a timescale as "success", as it always looked like a messy process.
Though it would be a shame to be beaten by South Australia, which is already on 75% wind and solar power!!! SA is likely to hit net zero before 2030, the way things are going.
The delay to bringing on stream the reactors at the Korean built Barakah project in the UAE was caused by waiting for operators to be trained. Construction clearly beat the anticipated schedule. We would of course probably need to train a new generation of operators were we to adopt more nuclear.
Good point. A work force trained in nuclear is needed.