17 thoughts on “Wow Mr! Your wind farm is soooo big!”
Tractor Gent
And Ørsted have just abandoned a project to build a windfarm off the Delaware coast citing ‘Macroeconomic factors’, i.e. it’s now too expensive to build given the expected ROI. Apparently Ørsted are contemplating $billions in writeoffs as a result.
jgh
Planning Permission is a Presidential function is it? I thought the USA was a federation.
Starfish
Which Will Power 600+ Homes about 40% of the time…… FTFY
@jgh I assume that as the farm will be within the US EEZ it’s a federal issue
Mohave Greenie
One way to slow this down is to only allow new generation to connect to the grid if it can produce nameplate power for two weeks continuously. That should make most green energy sources uncompetitive. Also any production above the nameplate rating is half the going price. This is necessary for grid stability. Power production needs to be dispatchable or it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
KJP
OK, the 600+ is a bit of a typo; 600,000.
But in the text the project will, “employ about 900 people during construction and 1,100 after its opening.”
Construction can take a lot of manpower but 1,100 after? On one installation? If that is true. those well paying union jobs are going to make the electricity very expensive.
dearieme
“I thought the USA was a federation.” The Civil War established that that was true only up to a point. Having freely entered the federation states could not freely leave.
However nasty the southern states’ economic system was they undoubtedly had the right to leave.
You could argue – and I hereby do – that the two principal nation-building manoeuvres of the USA were plain unconstitutional i.e. the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War. Which only goes to show that even such a fine document as the Constitution is bound to be fundamentally flawed because fallible humans cannot anticipate all the existential situations a nation will face.
philip
I worked as a subbie for Orsted in the days when they were DONG. (Danish Oil and Natural Gas)
All thick as mince so far as I could see. They laid a 60 mile pipeline using Sicilian steel before they took another look and found the steel was defective.
Still, they got Lloyds to pay for a new one.
This may still be their SOP. Hornsea doesn’t work? Get the gummint to pay for the FU.
Steve
Was there a rival, or possibly affiliate, company called DING?
Chester Draws
You could argue – and I hereby do – that the two principal nation-building manoeuvres of the USA were plain unconstitutional.
Followed by stealing a massive amount off another country in a brazen war of annexation.
bobby b
“I thought the USA was a federation.”
20 miles offshore, so fed jurisdiction, plus EPA regs preempt state regs.
Andrew C
“Steve
Was there a rival, or possibly affiliate, company called DING?”
It was a group structure, with a subsidiary called Thewitchisdead.
Anon
@MG
“One way to slow this down is to only allow new generation to connect to the grid if it can produce nameplate power for two weeks continuously.”
But why does ALL generation have to be dispatchable? There’s no economic reason to go that far. If you did have a very cheap (both to build and to run) but non-dispatchable source, clearly it would be rational to incorporate at least some generation from that source into the grid, if the current grid also involves burning expensive fuel. You could make a substantial saving by, at certain times when the alternative is available, not burning so much fuel. So it’s not true as a matter of principle that a source incapable of two weeks of steady generation is useless and uneconomic.
Yes you need to account for the fact you still need dispatchable capacity available, yes renewables are not in fact cheap to build even if their marginal cost of electricity is low once they’re running (no fuel to burn), yes you need to worry about frequency containment and what costs that requires you to bear, but those are the kinds of factors that would go into a rational economic calculation of whether something is worth adding to the grid and in what quantity. And the calculation looks different if comparing to baseload nuclear, which also has low marginal costs. But that’s the calculation that needs to be done, not pulling a two week period of constant generation out of nowhere as some kind of trump card.
You could pass the two-week test and make the power entirely dispatchable just by batching a new wind development together with a couple of combined cycle gas turbines. Run the gas power stations if needs be, but if the wind is working well then you can stop burning (so much) fuel. But if the gas turbines are already there in your generating network, what’s the point of jumping through this intellectual and paperwork hoop? (Though there are actually integrated solar combined cycle plants that integrate solar thermal – the array of ray-concentrating mirrors – as an alternative heat source for what’s otherwise a fossil fuel powered turbine. When the sun’s out, you don’t need to burn so much fuel. So if you really want to, there are ways to integrate both renwables and fossil fuels into one plant to get a dispatchable output.)
Mohave Greenie
@Anon
There was a solar thermal plant at Kramer Junction that did exactly as you described. It was built atop a major gas pipeline so it could do the combined cycle. It eventually went bust, probably because of maintenance costs.
I just don’t see the economic advantage of building two plants to get the output of one.
The CAISO does a pretty good job of predicting demand at least a day ahead. The problem is when the dispatchable power doesn’t meet the demand. A dispatchable power generator can’t run one day out of a hundred economically. In that case, the dispatchable power won’t be there when you need it. Pretty soon you get to third world power reliability, and everyone starts getting diesel generators.
Tractor Gent
Pretty soon you get to third world power reliability, and everyone starts getting diesel generators
Increasingly I can see this in our future.
Jim
“Pretty soon you get to third world power reliability, and everyone starts getting diesel generators.”
Already got mine….
Boganboy
Congratulations on your good sense Jim.
asiaseen
it was a group structure, with a subsidiary called Thewitchisdead.
And Ørsted have just abandoned a project to build a windfarm off the Delaware coast citing ‘Macroeconomic factors’, i.e. it’s now too expensive to build given the expected ROI. Apparently Ørsted are contemplating $billions in writeoffs as a result.
Planning Permission is a Presidential function is it? I thought the USA was a federation.
Which Will Power 600+ Homes about 40% of the time…… FTFY
@jgh I assume that as the farm will be within the US EEZ it’s a federal issue
One way to slow this down is to only allow new generation to connect to the grid if it can produce nameplate power for two weeks continuously. That should make most green energy sources uncompetitive. Also any production above the nameplate rating is half the going price. This is necessary for grid stability. Power production needs to be dispatchable or it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
OK, the 600+ is a bit of a typo; 600,000.
But in the text the project will, “employ about 900 people during construction and 1,100 after its opening.”
Construction can take a lot of manpower but 1,100 after? On one installation? If that is true. those well paying union jobs are going to make the electricity very expensive.
“I thought the USA was a federation.” The Civil War established that that was true only up to a point. Having freely entered the federation states could not freely leave.
However nasty the southern states’ economic system was they undoubtedly had the right to leave.
You could argue – and I hereby do – that the two principal nation-building manoeuvres of the USA were plain unconstitutional i.e. the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War. Which only goes to show that even such a fine document as the Constitution is bound to be fundamentally flawed because fallible humans cannot anticipate all the existential situations a nation will face.
I worked as a subbie for Orsted in the days when they were DONG. (Danish Oil and Natural Gas)
All thick as mince so far as I could see. They laid a 60 mile pipeline using Sicilian steel before they took another look and found the steel was defective.
Still, they got Lloyds to pay for a new one.
This may still be their SOP. Hornsea doesn’t work? Get the gummint to pay for the FU.
Was there a rival, or possibly affiliate, company called DING?
You could argue – and I hereby do – that the two principal nation-building manoeuvres of the USA were plain unconstitutional.
Followed by stealing a massive amount off another country in a brazen war of annexation.
“I thought the USA was a federation.”
20 miles offshore, so fed jurisdiction, plus EPA regs preempt state regs.
“Steve
Was there a rival, or possibly affiliate, company called DING?”
It was a group structure, with a subsidiary called Thewitchisdead.
@MG
“One way to slow this down is to only allow new generation to connect to the grid if it can produce nameplate power for two weeks continuously.”
But why does ALL generation have to be dispatchable? There’s no economic reason to go that far. If you did have a very cheap (both to build and to run) but non-dispatchable source, clearly it would be rational to incorporate at least some generation from that source into the grid, if the current grid also involves burning expensive fuel. You could make a substantial saving by, at certain times when the alternative is available, not burning so much fuel. So it’s not true as a matter of principle that a source incapable of two weeks of steady generation is useless and uneconomic.
Yes you need to account for the fact you still need dispatchable capacity available, yes renewables are not in fact cheap to build even if their marginal cost of electricity is low once they’re running (no fuel to burn), yes you need to worry about frequency containment and what costs that requires you to bear, but those are the kinds of factors that would go into a rational economic calculation of whether something is worth adding to the grid and in what quantity. And the calculation looks different if comparing to baseload nuclear, which also has low marginal costs. But that’s the calculation that needs to be done, not pulling a two week period of constant generation out of nowhere as some kind of trump card.
You could pass the two-week test and make the power entirely dispatchable just by batching a new wind development together with a couple of combined cycle gas turbines. Run the gas power stations if needs be, but if the wind is working well then you can stop burning (so much) fuel. But if the gas turbines are already there in your generating network, what’s the point of jumping through this intellectual and paperwork hoop? (Though there are actually integrated solar combined cycle plants that integrate solar thermal – the array of ray-concentrating mirrors – as an alternative heat source for what’s otherwise a fossil fuel powered turbine. When the sun’s out, you don’t need to burn so much fuel. So if you really want to, there are ways to integrate both renwables and fossil fuels into one plant to get a dispatchable output.)
@Anon
There was a solar thermal plant at Kramer Junction that did exactly as you described. It was built atop a major gas pipeline so it could do the combined cycle. It eventually went bust, probably because of maintenance costs.
I just don’t see the economic advantage of building two plants to get the output of one.
The CAISO does a pretty good job of predicting demand at least a day ahead. The problem is when the dispatchable power doesn’t meet the demand. A dispatchable power generator can’t run one day out of a hundred economically. In that case, the dispatchable power won’t be there when you need it. Pretty soon you get to third world power reliability, and everyone starts getting diesel generators.
Increasingly I can see this in our future.
“Pretty soon you get to third world power reliability, and everyone starts getting diesel generators.”
Already got mine….
Congratulations on your good sense Jim.
it was a group structure, with a subsidiary called Thewitchisdead.
And another one, Avon Calling…