On Wind Power and a Sustainable approach to Carrot Crunching
Submitted by JMB on 17 April, 2008 - 01:00
There is windy talk taking place in that big building by College Green. No, not the Cathedral, I mean the Council House. Under discussion: a proposal to build two wind turbines at Avonmouth for the purpose of generating electricity.
This is a fantastically bad idea. Supremely Bad. Short of building a BRT route along a cycle path I can't think of a worse idea (note: That's me off the fence then. More to follow on my research into BRT economics). Let's suspend disbelief for a moment and try to follow the chain of reasoning that leads to a local council building turbines:
- The council needs electricity
- Wind Turbines generate electricity
- The council should build some Wind Turbines
This can't be the reason behind this decision, since Wind Turbines are a very inefficient and unpredictable way of generating electricity. Over at the Burning Our Money blog, Wat Tyler discussed the Danish example. Although the official statistics for the Danes are that they get 16% of their national power from Wind, it would be more accurate to say that they offload their wind power onto their neighbours, and import a more predictable supply from foreign fossil or nuclear sources.
Good Intentions
A quick skim through the council's websites provides the intentions behind this idea:
- prevent the release of many thousands of tonnes of CO2 per year.
- control an element of its own power supply stream. That is, the council can sell the power the turbines generate to their own buildings at a lower price than if bought in the open market.
- lower energy costs for our city's local public services.
- generate its own ‘green’ electricity, as at present demand for renewable electricity far outstrips supply.
- reduce its carbon footprint and help meet government targets.
- be provided with ‘green’ energy for the life of the turbines (i.e. 20 to 25 years).
- actively promote a sustainable energy future for Bristol and its communities.
Of these seven intentions, six are politically driven, and will be paid for by our Council Tax regardless of their underlying economic viability. "Lower Energy Costs" is at least mentioned, but is not exactly getting top billing. And it's an unlikely outcome given the implicit unreliability of Wind Power. There's not a lot else to be said about the carbon footprint arguments - either you believe the sky is falling or you don't. The goal that really puzzles me is "to control an element of its own power supply stream"Are the council worried that the National Grid will declare war and cut off strategic supplies? Or perhaps they fear an Anschluss if w're overreliant on Scottish Power. I can't see the point in seeking energy Isolationism.
After all, why stop at Energy? Consider that Bristol as a city in inextricably dependent on others for our food and water. Damn the Merchant Venturers - let's plough up the Downs and plant carrots; let's turn Cabot Circus into a water tank. With a planned & sustainable diet of fresh vegetables and a handful of mud, Bristolians could relax safe in the knowledge that they were living the traditional lifestyle of their ancestors, free for the vagaries of international financiers, globalised food markets and fickle foreign producers (i.e. Somerset). Until Winter of course, when we all die of thirst, starvation and malnutrition. Or choke on a piece of Queen Anne's lace.
Clearly we're not going down the self-sufficiency route for food and water, for very good reasons. Therefore it is reasonable to be sceptical about similar arguments about the need for independence in power, particularly if the generation system is intrinsically unreliable (i.e. Wind) and under the management of public sector managers. Local government officers are career bureaucrats - which is no insult; bureaucracy has its place. But their historic performance in market oriented endeavours where there is exposure to risk is not good. Examples? Take your pick, but locally the school building programme - particularly Redland Green School - is a good starting point.
Following the Money
Other than allowing the city to purchase the third millenium's answer to the Papal Indulgence (The Carbon Credit) and giving the Energy Management Unit a new toy to play with - which I suppose would distract them from signing any more declarations on our behalf - would this policy make much of a difference to the council's 'leccy bill, and therefore to Council Tax?
There's no Budget Book from the Council for 2008/09 yet, so for a quick back of a fag packet (only smoked outdoors) calculation we can use some figures from the odious Carbon Reduction Strategy 2007. In that year, the city spent just over £7,000,000 on "building energy". Let's keep the numbers simple and say the Council spends the same ever year and pays 0.10 pence per kWh on the wholesale market, which gives a total energy usage of 70,000 MWh every year, or an average of 190MWh every day.
The proposal is for two turbines rated at up to 3MW. "Up To" is the key bit of the sentence, as wind turbines average out at around 25% of their top capacity, since the wind doesn't always blow. So a more reasonable figure for the wind farm is 1.5 MW of generating capacity, with an output of 36MWh ever day, or about 19% of the Council's energy needs which - using our original assumption - would cost £1.3 million to buy.
The going rate for capital purchase of a Wind Turbines is somewhere around £1,000,000 per MW, so the full price would be around £6,000,000. So early in the fifth year of operation, the turbines break even and the next twenty years are just gravy.
But all the averaging hides the problem that even if the wind does blow, it doesn't necessarily blow at exactly the same time you need power. The purveyors of wind power would rather you didn't know this: you can't run a power grid using wind unless you've got a much larger traditional source of generating capacity to smooth out the supply. And we haven't discussed maintenance, spares and other running costs.
The Personal and the National
There's no way in hell that wind can deliver anything close to the predictable 350 TeraWatt Hours of electricty the United Kingdom needs every year.
Now I don't care about the spurious economics of Carbon Footprints, but I'm always keen to lower my electricity bill. UK households have an average annual domestic consumption of around 5 MWh of power (Bristol's figure is somewhere around 4,200-4,600 kWh annually), but if you want to find out your figure you could sit in front of the meter with a paper and pencil and do some sums. Or, like me, you could buy an Owl Wireless Electricity Meter:
Stick the sensor around your incoming power cable, and you can find out in excruciating detail exactly how much you're spending on electricity.
Alternatives to Alternative Energy?
"Alternative" tends to be used as a negating modifier: "Alternative Medicine" doesn't make you healthier, "Alternative Investment" doesn't make you richer, and of course "Alternative Energy" doesn't generally increase available power.
But there is some cause for interest in the sector: have a look at Bristol's own Marine Current Turbines, who are building a 1.2 MW tidal power generation system off the coast of Northern Ireland, and have plans for a Canadian installation generating nearly 4MW of power. Another local research team in the tidal power sector trade as Tidal Generation Limited.
It's still early days. Another decade of work is needed before this technology is genuinely commercially viable (for example the MCT Northern Irish project required a significant government grant). But tidal power generation is worth watching.
The Party Political Bit
David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, is famously an advocate of Wind Power. This is not his fault - he is, after all, a product of the British education system and is thus woefully unprepared for dealing with any matter of public policy involving science or engineering.
Say what you like about the French - and I do - but at least they've got the sense to put the Engineers in charge rather than the Classicists .
Hmmmph
You seem to display an evangelical dislike of renewables, and the whole climate change thing, almost as much as I have an evangelical like of it.
It seems to me that the case for the council to make a limited entry into the renewables market is both right and proper.
First off, councils are likely to be required to cut their emissions and local emissions following the introduction of the climate change bill.
Second, the point in having them in Avonmouth is because there is a good wind supply (blowing in off the estruary)
The turbines are large scale - and this is of benefit because the power generated increases with the square of the diameter of the turbine (well, I assume the turbines are large scale).
The wind-not-being-there-at-the right time argument doesn't really do it for me. It suggests either developing some sort of storage technology - to store the power once generated - or to have so many renewables of different types that you can be sure of enough power of a given type.
The problem with any non-renewable source of power is that - with the possible exception of fusion (should it ever be developed), it will run out. It is a finite resource. Renewables will last - well, in this case, as long as we have wind.
Your make a point about needing an alternative supply in case the wind drops. Actually, you need back up anyway - to cater for fluctuations in demand (cup of tea after Morecambe and Wise Christmas show syndrome) - and this amount will far exceed the tiny contribution currently made by the wind power market share.
As to whether local government should be involved in power generation at all - hmm, go back far enough and you will find all sorts of things run by local government - power, hospitals - all sorts.
Use your own money then, Charlie
If you can show me a renewable technology that makes sense without a massive subsidy, then let me assure you I will be very evangelical. Testify!
If you want to make an entry into the renewable energy market, why not do it with your own money? You could register "Bolton Renewables Ltd." online, put up a web-site and then make an Initial Public Offering and sell shares to green-minded consumers. But don't tell me it's right and proper for the taxpayer to carry the risk associated with local politicians' [and unelected officials']vanity projects.
You're rather making my point for me with your comments about "backup" power - wind is a parasitical technology. If we didn't have coal, gas and nuclear stations then wind turbines would be completely pointless. Unless the entire nation were to reform into little villages clustered around turbines and only cook dinner and do the washing when the wind was blowing.
But I'll do you a deal - If you'd like to pop off and develop a new technology for storing electricity, then I'll persuade the Conservative group to support building the turbines. As a starting point, have a look at something I wrote last year about the Hydrogen Economy
You're point about local government historically having a wider remit is reasonable. But thinking about it, go back far enough and you will find all sorts of things run by the church. So maybe you should give the Bishop of Bristol a ring and see if he'll fund the turbines out of the collection plate.
JMB
JMB
When the wind blows...
You are right - the way we run the grid at the moment is wrong - thanks for bringing that up. It is incredably inefficient to have a centralised power supply. Your idea of having villages clustered around 'their own' renewable energy supplies is genius - turn the grid on it's head - personal generation and supply coupled with energy efficiency, smart metering and sensible usage patterns, backed up by community based generation (bigger wind), backed up further by regional supply (even bigger wind) and finally a backup of national supply from multiple sources would be an ideal way forward!
In terms of storage - a nation of electric cars would actually be a great energy storage buffer - especially if the vehicles are charged off-peak. Then there is the concept of compressed air storage...
Here is a choice for you - would you rather have a nuclear power station less than 20 miles from your home (and temporary storage of waste) or some windmills? You seem to be good at figures - maybe you could work our what the changes you suggest regarding decentralised power would equate to in terms of the fewer number of nuclear reactors that would need to be built to meet our supply (by foreign companies of course). In my humble opinion - one less french/german/japanese (insert country of choice) owned nuclear plant in the UK is worth the effort...
PS - why not go onto Zerocarbonista and have a discussion with Dale about this ? Would make an interesting discussion...
Back to the fields
Genius, eh? Well that's very kind of you to....wait a minute, that's sarcasm isn't it?
This is such a great comment that I'm going to write a new post about it. I'll try to do it quickly before the wind over your village stops blowing and your internet connection conks out.
I've got plenty of debates to get involved with at the minute, but if the guy from ZeroCarbonista wants to send traffic my way, he's more than welcome to.
P.S. The InterTubes tell me that the Nommo are "a race of Beings that takes the physical forms of dolphins, whales, mermaids/mermen. Their home world is a planet in the Sirius star system that is mostly warm aqua-blue water." In which case: welcome to Earth.
JMB
Ahh you earth people...
You are right - I am just passing through... your waters are getting a little icky for us intergalactic mer-people... it's all the carbon sludge in there you see... plus there's no fish left
I look forward to the new post - here's a link or two to help you write it:
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/efficiencity/
http://www.rebeccawillis.co.uk/grid2.html
I take it you won't be toeing the party line on decentralised power in your new post?
The irony is that I started this thought process when my very expensive, and high powered PC was destroyed by a power surge from the national grid, and I started to think about UPS in order to store some clean energy in my house to stop a surge hitting my equipment from the dirty and inefficient grid or ready for the next power cut (we have plenty in my little village)....
Oh and it sounds like you would get on really well with the guy from the future cities project - I keep hearing him on the radio waffling about paving the earth or something... where's a fish going to swim?
The Party Line
As I always tell people:
Socialists have a party line. Conservatives have a philosophy.
JMB
JMB
Your irrational dislike
[quote]There's no way in hell that wind can deliver anything close to the predictable 350 TeraWatt Hours of electricty the United Kingdom needs every year.[/quote]
Is this your idea of sensible discussion or did you get carried away? Has anyone ever claimed it could?
You could make the same statement about ANY energy creation technology. Ever heard of diversity though or do you only do two dimensional thinking?
Your kind of diatribist is more interested in showing off than actually addressing a problem we all have to live with. Your Ingham like splutterings about wind generation are both familiar and silly. Wind already contributes to energy production and will continue to increase in percentage. As will PV, gas from waste, tidal, heat exchange, river power, energy crops and coal until it's finally exhausted, plus, alas, nuclear which will never contribute more than 20% despite the most horrendous cost which would be better spent supporting non polluting technologies.
Then there's improvements in insulation, power efficiency, abandoning of standby mode on all electrical equipment and just plain energy consciousness on the part of everyone who has a stake in humanity's future. Don't you?
350 TWh from coal or nuclear - no problem
Ingham-like splutterings? I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds fun. Who's Ingham?
If I may pick apart all the different arguments you're conflating, these are the two core points:
Nuclear energy currently provides 20% of UK generation capacity, down from 28% a few years ago. The drop is due to the huge increase in power generated from natural gas, which is a good reason to look a bit deeper than percentages. Getting up to French levels of Nuclear power usage - 80% - is just a matter of building more capacity. The costs would be high, but not that much higher than any other large-scale generation plant, and the waste products are small in volume and manageable.
So really, if there's any irrationality here, it's your own artificial distinction between two groups of energy generation technology; one might call them Good-Think Energy (wind, PV, gas from waste, tidal, etc.) and Bad-Think Energy (Fossil Fuels, Nuclear).
Of the Good-Think technologies you suggested, energy crops (or biofuels) are already causing a net loss to the world economy (although there are other forms such as Willow that are more compelling). Tidal is an interesting one, but still experimental; gas from waste is definitely a goer, but I thought this was Bad-Think as you've got to landfill the rubbish to get the gas; power from waste/biomass is marginal, but probably a better bet than wind power with our current technology.
None of this has anything to do with demand-side measures, which have been discussed by others in the comments on the post. It certainly makes sense to turn off older generation equipment which draws high power when on standby (although this is not really a big deal on home electronics produced in the last ten years).
And that's all irrelevant to the viability of wind generation, which - to repeat my original point - is a parasitical technology. It's pointless unless you've got something else to generate a much larger predictable base load. Things may change: one line of research is the use of hydrogen fuel cells to smooth the output of turbines. But it's not viable just yet.
I do have a stake in Humanity's future - a somewhat tautological statement - which is why I would like our species to have one that doesn't involve a lot of time spent sitting in the dark and waiting for the wind to blow. In the interim if you want to to build a big turbine-topped totem pole, and dance naked around it whilst singing songs of praise to Gaia then crack on, chum.
JMB
Not believing for a
Not believing for a nano-second that you don't worship at the genitals of this old fool, here, nonetheless is who I mean http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bernard_Ingham
You know for a fact that standby use is 'not really a big deal on home electronics produced in the last ten years' do you? My information suggests that it accounts for 5-7% of annual electricity consumption in developed countries - so a third of the energy supplied by nuclear in the UK. You might find this helpful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standby_power
Energy crops I was talking about were willow, wood waste, elephant grass etc. burned in clean power stations, and carbon neutral - in fact, with carbon sequestration at the exhaust point, they could be used to EXTRACT carbon from the atmosphere. Not oilseed production in the Amazon to run cars, we were, after all, talking about electricity production.
You seem to think that the fact that wind blows some times and not others is a major problem, in fact, I would say you seem obsessed with it, and consider it the overriding argument against wind generation. It isn't. This island is very windy being stuck out in the Atlantic as it is, and any one time the wind will be harvestable in many places in the UK while others are calm. This means that wind, taken over the whole country, will be contributing an almost steady average of energy to the grid as well as the many standalone sites. And of course it wouldn't be used on its own, why would anyone think that was a good idea? Do you erect these paper tigers in order to set fire to them and feel powerful?
Then there's storage which can take many forms, and doubtless others will be discovered in the future:
Compressed air together with turbines.
Pumped water again with turbines, hydroelectric in other words, heard of that?
Batteries, getting a lot more sophisticated and dependable. You might find this assists your understanding http://alfin2300.blogspot.com/2007/07/better-large-scale-battery-storage...
and this http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2007-07-04-sodium-batter... is also interesting.
Electric vehicles which would charge offpeak and run at peak, thus storing offpeak energy to reduce demand. A million electric cars/vans could store a considerable amount of energy.
A stake in Humanity's future - is not a 'somewhat tautological statement', you might have a stake in nuclear from investments, you could have a stake in fossil fuels and just want to get richer.
I can assure you that if we don't get our act together pretty fast, sitting in the dark is what the few survivors are going to be doing, and they might be waiting for the heat to die down to go out to hunt. But you won't be one of them.
Tidal power, which according to you is experimental [you mean apart from the 2.5MW wave farm off the Portuguese coast? or the SeaGen Tidal System at Strangford Lough in Co Down, Northern Ireland? Have a look here http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3694859.ece to refresh your memory.
'gas from waste is definitely a goer, but I thought this was Bad-Think as you've got to landfill the rubbish to get the gas' no, simplistic thinking again or were you scoring a sixth form point? Herefordshire and Worcester council already uses digesters for all non-recycled waste to produce gas [and there may be others]. There are farmers already supplying gas either to the grid or their local village from digesters using slurry from cattle. It's called anaerobic digestion not landfill. There's a European Anaerobic Digestion Network http://www.adnett.org/ and you can buy one here http://www.anaerobic-digestion.com/.
If you're going to join in this debate sonny, you'd better keep up to date. You don't appear to know the half of it.
Keep on spluttering Bernard.
Do you actually read this blog?
Where to start?
Let's talk about Standby Power first:
Wikipedia is pretty good, by and large, although their article on standby power seems to be struggling with NPOV. The trade off that doesn't get discussed is between the shortening of component life due to thermal cycling and the power used in operation. To make things really fiddly, I believe some classes of device can experience a shortening of life when left on standby, particularly if the associated domestic supply is unreliable. In general, if a device has a standby mode, I would expect the engineering team of the manufacturer to have done the calculations on my behalf to make the trade-off between MTBF and TCO.
But you can always double-check their figures: buy a device such as this one from Maplin to find out the different operating costs of your particular bits of electrical equipment in different states. With modern consumer electronics equipment, the draw during standby tends to be very low. I'll post some figures on some of the equipment I own when I get the chance. Years ago, when I replaced a VCR with a DVD player, it was clear that the newer device didn't draw as much power when in a non-operational state. I recall my older CRT TV drew a reasonable chunk of power when in Standby (I didn't need a meter for that as it was warm to the touch) but my new(less old) CRT does not. I'm told that LCD TVs draw even less. Computers - not just laptops and desktops but also custom platforms like Personal Video Recorders such V+ and Sky+ boxes - draw a lot of power, but generally less overall than kitchen appliances, heating and lighting.
Matthew Parris of the Times wrote a good article about this a couple of years ago.
Now do you actually read my blog?
Anaerobic Digestion in Herefordshire
Herefordshire Council - which took over the functions of Hereford-Worcester County Council in 1998 - was planning an Anaerobic digestor for many years, although I think those plans are now defunct. Anaerobic Digestion is generally used to refer to technologies that break down organic waste into a filler material suitable for agricultural use and methane (biogas). The capital costs are significant - although certainly not as high as a nuclear plant - but this is by no means an "easy" way to get methane. Here is a good document about small-scale single farm operations. A firm in Bristol planning a similar endeavour - Compact Power - collapsed recently despite the availability of a large PFI subsidy from central government.
I'm glad to see you've found a supplier of Anaerobic Digesters. No doubt you have a busines plan and a strategy to resolve the issues identified. I look forward to the opportunity to consider purchasing shares in "Fool on The Hill Waste Management plc." at your Initial Public Offering.
The collection of Land Fill Gas (LFG) on the other hand is already an operational technology in this country, and UK landfill operators are generating something in the region of 400-600MW of electricity annually. In the future, we may even crack the methane molecules to produce Hydrogen for fuel cells. But we're not there yet.
Other than a desire to climb the waste management hierarchy for ideological reasons, and the artificially high price of land fill space due to EU Directive 99/31/EC, I can't see any sense in building digesters. But, if you can make a profitable business out of it without a big subsidy from the government, then do it.
Bernard Ingham?
I'm not quite sure what he's got to do with all this, although looking at his Sourcewatch page I agree with some of his points. Maybe you should start a Sourcewatch page for me.
Frankly, your epithets are off by a generation, and you'll have to tone-down the homophobia if you want to stay on-message with the green movement. But I do like your mixed metaphors. "Setting fire to paper tigers" is a good one. Much better than "Setting up a strawman".
My underlying point stands - wind generation in its current form is a parasitical technology; it's ideologically sound but functionally useless. New developments in technology will no doubt change that, but we're not there yet. So be patient and wait for the entrepreneurs and engineers to work their magic before running off to build lots of turbines with taxpayers' money.
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