Coal keeps lights on at COP26 as low wind strikes again
…yesterday, 3 November, saw a new record for the total daily cost of balancing the GB electricity grid. The previous record of £38 million, twenty times the current daily average, was smashed by a margin of £6 million, with the new record standing at £44.7m.
The causes are easy to identify from the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service’s own chart of the Transmission System fuel mix. Wind power, the dark blue bars, was extremely low for most of the day, with a minimum of only 1 GW, under 5% of its capacity.
Minimum wind generation coincided neatly with peak demand, and as a result system prices reached stunning levels, with a maximum of just over £4,000 a megawatt hour, nearly 100 times the wholesale price normal before the current crisis started, as can be seen in this BMRS chart…
These prices brought coal and gas back on to the system to save the day, but emergency measures are expensive, and the cost to consumers and the wider economy was little short of horrifying.
h/t Adrian
Jeebers! $6 (give or take) per KWH????? And here I thought that $0.25 per KWH was steep.
We’ll be hearing “À la lanterne!!!” rather regularly if this keeps up.
They need to install a million lunar panels that work by moonlight to balance the load.
So what happens during a dark moon?
It is never cloudy in la la land.
“So what happens during a dark moon?”
You silly! The stars will take over.
Maybe not. They’re nuclear powered & the Progs just hate nuc… Wait just a minute! Solar panels are nuclear powered!!! Hypocrites!
Low winds – a symptom of climate change, we’re told. Why did they build wind powered generators then? Because when they built them, wind speeds were higher.
They didn’t see wind speed drop coming, but they will tell you it’s a dead certainty that temperatures will rise 3 degrees in the next century.
Give us a 5 year stretch of abnormally cold weather and these buffoons will pipe down as they have in the past.
They will just say the cold is irrefutable evidence of anthropogenic global warming. Their cheat sheet is thus:
Cold weather AGW
Hot weather AGW
High winds AGW
No wind AGW
Rain AGW
Drought AGW
Storms AGW
Chronic halitosis AGW
Climate change can do ANYthing!
‘And More !’ 110% correct.
They will never pipe down.
It’s not about climate for these people.
It’s about destroying capitalism.
“Climate” is just the vehicle they are using.
Nonsense. Winds are not uniform across the planet. In fact there are relatively few “wind corridors” where topographic, and atmospheric conditions combine to produce relatively constant winds.
Therefore, by definition, every new wind tower array is built on a slightly less suitable site than the one that came before it. Wind power is subject to dramatic reductions in efficiency with each succeeding wind array. But this fact has been conveniently BURIED until now. Now that so many of these inefficient wind sites have been built … they are NOT spinning at the rates predicted in all the FAKE preplanning “science and data” … it must be Global Warming that is slowing the wind. Nonsense. This increasing inefficiency with each new wind tower array could have been predicted by every country boy working and playing outside (not tethered to a video screen).
It’s common sense … something keenly lacking in government and all the “Green” NGO’s.
Yup, well I licked my thumb and held it up to the lack of wind today and was grateful for central heating, while also glad not to see turbines marring my majestic view.
Hope that abides.
Maybe they could try yet another alternative fuel like … Zyklon B?
The Marxist’s goal is the destruction of western civilization.
The dumber and more destructive it is the happier they are.
The fact that their policies are insanely destructive is why they choose them.
Power will always be more expensive with the use of wind and solar in the grid. Electricity on a large scale can not be stored for future use. The power created must match the power consumed at the moment both are done. This was less complicated when there was a predictable reliable source of power that is fully under the control of the plants making it. These sources of power would include coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear. With wind and solar the power producers must also compensate for a grid where power generation is unstable. This takes more complicated control systems and back up generators that can be started with shorter start up time. Both are expensive. Power must also be kept in phase, phase is when the peak voltage and peak current occurs at the same moment in time. The more motors that are on the grid the more this pushes the power out of phase. This must be compensated for with the use of capacitors or synchronous motors.
The power grid might be one of the most complicated systems created by humans and it is being tampered with by politicians with no idea how it works. It is no wonder that their mandates cause large scale instability in such a system. The politicians and bureaucrats make demands that they don’t understand and don’t need to live with.
…….And just like all the other woke leftist ‘idiocy’, climate change IS ABOUT DESTROYING the west and those that inhabit the WEST FROM WITHIN.
IMPLEMENT bullshit RENEWABLES, prohibitive taxation on fossil fuels, unreachable emission standards, Total bans on new exploration/pipelines alongside the evisceration of Nuclear Energy….So as to be seen as doing something (virtue signalling) , that you KNOW goddamned well could never replace fossil/nuclear fuels for capability, efficiency & cost All in the name of GRETA the Goddess of Climate Wokeridiocy …. because, those with portfolios of $250 million USD + THEY will never have to worry about Cost or Supply as they work to reduce OUR numbers via starvation & Bio Weaponry.
WE are at WAR…and 90+ % have zero clue….
Meanwhile in Scotland, a local highland inhabitant mutters: “By the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”