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In the strange but true compartment we have….

A government push for a new generation of onshore wind farms could make Britain even more reliant on gas, campaigners have claimed.

A report by Net Zero Watch, which scrutinises climate policies, stated that turbines deliver “only an illusion” of energy security because they require more reliable sources of power to act as a back-up for when there is insufficient wind to generate electricity.

“In reality, the grid is entirely reliant for its security on the only thermodynamically superior fuel remaining, namely natural gas,” the paper said.

26 thoughts on “In the strange but true compartment we have….”

  1. Well yes but. When the wind is blowing the gas isn’t burning. So less gas is consumed. So I am asking: More dependent compared to what?

  2. In other news shock revelations about Pope’s religion.

    The only nway that politicians cam be turned away from the insanity 9f Net Zero is some major conflict, possibly a war, involving main suppliers of fossil fuels, fertilisers and foodstuffs….

  3. We’d need the same number of gas power stations, and a lot more gas storage capacity; but less actual gas would be consumed. All that infrastructure isn’t free though.

  4. Windmills are utterly and totally useless and this manifest truth has to be denied, which becomes more and more difficult as more of them are built.

    “More dependent compared to what?”

    Compared to a proper, reliable electricity grid – like the one we used to have.

  5. When the wind doesn’t blow, big turbines consume energy. The rotors are so heavy that they have to be kept turning. Otherwise, the roller bearings carrying the weight would be squashed (slightly) flat.

  6. @Mark in Mayenne – March 27, 2022 at 7:41 am

    Well yes but. When the wind is blowing the gas isn’t burning.

    That’s where you’re wrong… It’s not possible to cycle a CCGT up from “cold” to generating speed sufficiently quickly to make good fluctuations in wind and solar generation, you can’t even do it with an OCGT. So, they have to be kept running in “standby” mode – ie turning but not under load – which is inefficient, wasteful and doesn’t do the heat-exchangers any favours either. I would hazard a guess that the amount of gas “saved” by wind and solar is relatively small.

    IMHO we’d be far better off abandoning wind and solar farms entirely and switching the standby generation capacity back to full-load.

  7. Net metering is very popular here – solar panels on the roof and the government gives you ‘free’ units of electricity for every unit generated.

    I’ve been saying for years that it isn’t sustainable and now the government is trying to limit the amount of ‘free’ units that you can have. Obviously this is not popular with people that have spent €€€€€€€s installing PVs all over their property…

  8. When the wind doesn’t blow, big turbines consume energy. The rotors are so heavy that they have to be kept turning. Otherwise, the roller bearings carrying the weight would be squashed (slightly) flat.

    And the shaft of the turbine would bend slightly under its own weight.
    Imagine turning that on with a slight imbalance in the system…

    Is gas the only thermodynamically superior fuel? I assume they didn’t include nuclear, for reasons.

    Have we started fracking yet?

  9. @ Andrew M
    All that infrastructure isn’t free though

    Not only is it very expensive, if we had a lot more wind power there would be less operating time to recover the capital and maintenance costs of the gas generation plant so the electricity produced would be incredibly expensive. The claims would then be made that gas is “X” times more expensive than wind, which isn’t really true as that is just the incremental cost of providing reliable power.

    The solution perhaps is that the wind power producers must be contractually obliged to pay for the reliably produced electricity supplying the grid when they are failing to do so due to lack of wind. They should also be required to have the financial resources set aside to do so for a prolonged period of time, to allow for those spells of weeks when the wind is at insignificant levels.

  10. Imagine turning that on with a slight imbalance in the system…

    We don’t have to imagine, we regularly see the results of a bird mincer undergoing rapid unscheduled disassembly.

  11. “The solution perhaps is that the wind power producers must be contractually obliged to pay for the reliably produced electricity supplying the grid when they are failing to do so due to lack of wind. They should also be required to have the financial resources set aside to do so for a prolonged period of time, to allow for those spells of weeks when the wind is at insignificant levels.”

    Agree completely. And in a manner of speaking they do. Trouble is, those financial resources come out of my pocket and yours, thanks to the Government.

  12. @decnine why don’t they just spec higher rated bearings? Any proof? Or citations? Just seems either a strange engineering flaw or some dumb meme like needing to recharge plasma tvs.

  13. Père: Cost. More expensive to overdesign it for the static loads. It’s cheaper to keep it rotating slowly when not doing its job.

  14. @Your father

    Because its far easier to turn the rotor when necessary than designing bearings which can sit stationary, for a period which would have to be months (as a worst case , high pressure can sit stationary in an area for weeks and in extreme cases months at a time, and all eventualities need to be covered).

    I’m not sure how long the bearings on real white elephants can be left stationary, but I wouldn’t have thought it’s that long. There are a few near me that always seem to be turning, irrespective of the wind (I drive past and the leaves of trees show zero movement but the windmills are turning).

    As as for windmills using power, don’t forget the high pressure oil system associated with these bearings, and also the heating/dehumidifying needed inside the nacelle (not a small space). Then there is the mechanisms to turn the windmill itself and to vary the pitch/feather the blades when required. And de-icing. Can’t have them being unbalanced or throwing huge chunks of ice off when the weather is inclement.

  15. Your Father, it’s called Brinelling and is why on some windless days you will still see the blades on wind turbines turning slowly they are being driven by electricity and as Tractor said, it’s cheaper to do that. Not free though and not a cost many people know about (possibly not factored into the ‘renewables are cheaper’ bullshit either?)…..
    p.s. Mark, all that stuff in your last paragraph – does any of that require fossil fuels by any chance?

  16. Since electricity grids were first introduced they have operated on the principle that as demand increased, supply should increase to match it. This isn’t possible in the brave new world of intermittent energy generators so as these take over the grid, demand must be matched to supply.

    Hence smart meters. When supply can’t meet demand, demand will be curtailed. Thus your EV will stop charging and start discharging, your freezer will be switched off, your heating will be turned down and factories will stop producing.

    All in the name off Net Zero. A non solution to a non problem which will destroy our economy and with it our society.

    Incidentally, all those windmills are currently producing 0.81GW, or 2.7% of the demand so good luck cooking your Sunday lunch when we rely on them.

  17. @Bloke in Cyprus
    I’ve been saying for years that it isn’t sustainable and now the government is trying to limit the amount of ‘free’ units that you can have. Obviously this is not popular with people that have spent €€€€€€€s installing PVs all over their property…

    At least in Cyprus PVs might actually reduce global CO2 emissions. At more temperate latitudes, they struggle to generate enough electricity during their working life to recoup what’s expended in their manufacture (mostly in China, mostly coal-powered). And that’s assuming they’re optimally sited, rarely the case for rooftop units.

  18. @Addolff

    Well it has to come from somewhere and if no power is being generated that would have to be the rest of the grid (unless each has some sort of internal back diesel genset or something).

    Windmills are not just things that turn and drive a generator, they have internal power needs, and they need much of this power whether the blades are turning or not. It comes to the rating of a windmill and how much of its rated output actually goes to the grid.

    I believe (anybody, feel free to shoot me down in flames here) that FOI requests in the states asking these sort of question – how much of the generated power does a windmill use itself and what are the power requirements if the blades aren’t actually turning – do not get ready answers (if any answers at all).

    Its just something else that is never spoken about. Thousands of windmills represent an absolutely enormous infrastructure requiring massive resources, huge amounts of maintenance and very considerable environmental damage (I’m not sure solar is much better, if at all).

    Something less “green” it really is difficult to imagine, and I for one need convincing that it makes any realistic contribution to the grid at all.

  19. “I’m not sure how long the bearings on real white elephants can be left stationary, ”
    Normally, the bearing will be turning in a film of lubricant. So the bearing doesn’t actually touch the race. Lubricants are long chain molecules. They’re quite delicate, so where they’re between the bearing & the race they get chopped up. It’s why oil in an engine goes thin & needs changing.
    A bearing sitting stationary on a race, stationary, the contact point is tiny. Think of a ball bearing sitting on a glass table. The pressure at the contact point is in tons per square inch. There’s a slight flattening of the bottom of the bearing & a dent in the glass. If you look at the two surfaces under a microscope, they’re not even flat. At that scale they’re a mass of hills & valleys. So if you sit one piece of metal on another, the pressure welds them together. Result of atomic forces aided by magnetically induced currents. Then if you rotate the bearing, you tear the weld. Keep doing that is producing wear on the bearing. Much quicker than if it was kept rotating.

  20. @decnine why don’t they just spec higher rated bearings? Any proof? Or citations? Just seems either a strange engineering flaw or some dumb meme like needing to recharge plasma tvs.

    Because these things are massive.
    For example, for a powerstation gas turbine, you could use the Mitsubishi M701J gas turbine.
    https://power.mhi.com/products/gasturbines/lineup/m701j

    Generating an impressive 700MW, it weighs in at 550tons and is approx 17m long.
    But, all the weight of the turbine shaft and blades is supported by just two bearings, one at each end.

    And don’t forget that part of the mass of the bearing is turning as well, which requires energy. Energy that, if you’re using to turn the bearings and overcome losses, isn’t being used to make power.
    Bigger bearings = bigger losses (more surface area = greater friction, more mass to overcome, yada yada).
    So since you don’t want to stop your turbine when its going, use smaller bearings.

    In theory you could design bearings to be able to be stopped on a regular basis, but that’s just going to be more expensive, more material (more environmentally unfriendly) and then you also have the energy cost of starting up all the time, which isn’t quick (30 min start up for the above example) and takes fuel which isn’t then being used to generate power.
    All so we can use some bird choppers to make ourselves feel better. *skeptical face*

  21. These are interesting concerns and I guess the useful opex financials on these issues is somewhat proprietary. Which is probably why I couldn’t find the requirement for the Mitsubishi turbine to be constantly rotating or the maintenance impact of start stop( @Chernyy Drakon – let me know if you have the link for it).

    I just wish there was less confusion, more transparency and better public data. Even in this forum half the commentators seem to think @decnine was talking about wind turbine bearings.

  22. @Your Father
    Just to clarify, it doesn’t have to be constantly turning as in it never stops – it will be stopped occasionally for maintenance. Blades need to be checked, for fatigue and wear etc.

    If you want some bed time reading
    https://www.ge.com/content/dam/gepower-new/global/en_US/downloads/gas-new-site/resources/reference/ger-3620p-heavy-duty-gas-turbine-operating-and-maintenance-considerations.pdf

    This is GE rather than MHI, but it mentions about bow and how to deal with it after shutdowns on p15

    Of course, shutdowns for maintenance may take a few days, and the bow gradually occurs, it isn’t instant. But if all your power is being generated by bird choppers and solar, then the turbine might be sat for quite a while.

    This doc also discusses the various effects of varying the cycle and stop-starts on the life of teh turbine. It’s actually quite interesting reading (if you’re a geeky engineer like me)

  23. Bloke in North Dorset

    How long will it be before our own environmentalists show they have no shame:

    German energy new site Blackout News here reports how one of the country’s leading nature and biodiversity conservation groups Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) no longer wants wind turbines in forests. Recently the group criticized the planned siting of wind turbines in forests, which we recently reported on here. In the past, NABU was an especially active proponent of wind energy.
    https://notrickszone.com/2022/03/26/leading-environmental-group-nabu-now-vigorously-opposes-wind-parks-in-german-forests/

  24. Fascinating link. In my experience the Greens are mainly non-engineering ‘feelie’ types who don’t have a clue. Those that believe because of propaganda can be persuaded but the bar is set so high by the media they shut down on each near insoluble problem and simply say ‘but something has to be done’.

  25. “Reliant” – in which respect?
    The wind turbines do generate more electricity than they consume overall so in volume terms we are less reliant on natural gas. OTOH, their inherent unreliability makes us more dependent for security of supply on natural gas.
    It is appalling that journalists who *should be* wordsmiths are so careless with their use of words (I assume that it is incompetence instead of the usual malice in this case, as I cannot see any reason for it to be malice).
    The wind-power advocates need to understand the back-up and storage problem – if we built all the potential pumped storage generators in the UK that would still not be enough to manage without brown-outs the variation in wind-and-solar-power (although it would help significantly) but the storage problem over October-March is measured in hundreds (or, at the best, scores) of Terrawatt-hours. We do not yet have the technology to build that much storage safely and efficiently.

  26. @Chris Miller
    At least in Cyprus PVs might actually reduce global CO2 emissions.

    We get plenty of sunshine for sure!

    However, I can see how dumping all that power onto the grid during the daytime actually saves anything… Even assuming it makes its way across the grid to somebody that can actually use it, the main (oil burning) power station would have to wind down its output which would reduce its efficiency.

    The double whammy is that users of these systems use more electricity than they would otherwise to use up their ‘free’ unts – switching heating to electricity for instance.

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