1. Intermittency - the Elephant in The Corner

2. Power investor threatens to pull plug on green revolution

3. Charter for nimbys?

4. Electric shock in store

5. National Grid wants better forecasts to help it cope with the vagaries of the wind

6. Lack of wind raises fears for future of green energy

 

1. Intermittency - the Elephant in The Corner

 

From early on in its existence Country Guardian had the benefit of the experience of a retired power station manager, Geoffrey Ratcliffe, who knew that the intermittent nature of wind made it an unsuitable power source for electicity generation. If the amount of wind fed in is small, it can be accommodated within the margins which have to provided for all sorts of planned and non-planned downtime. As of May 2010, 4,131MW are available from 2,860 turbines, which is about 1% of peak demand.

But the increase envisaged for the UK by 2030 is in the range 35-45 GW. Electricity has to have a balance between various types of source, ranging from base-load,which is available all the time, to wind which is available on average 27% of the time. The fact is that the intermittency of wind is a fatal flaw which means that it has no long-term future as source of energy. Because of the vast amounts of public money that are poured into this bottomless pit, the wind energy world is in denial. It just does not want to know.

 

The Poyry Report - the Impact of Intermittency

Last year the Poyry Report was published. To get the background and an idea of the resources put into it, read the item below.

 

"Pöyry Energy Consulting Study Gives First In Depth View Of Future Electricity Market


A ground-breaking study by leading global energy analysts Pöyry Energy Consulting has revealed for the
first time how the electricity markets will be profoundly affected by the growth of wind energy.
The report, called ‘Impact of Intermittency’, provides a unique insight into how the electricity sector in the
UK and Republic of Ireland could look by 2030.
Both countries have set ambitious targets to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 2020, and wind
energy is expected to be the greatest contributor. But the impact of the dramatic amounts of wind
generation capacity needed to meet the challenge has largely remained uncertain.
This new study highlights the potential hurdles and opportunities facing operators and investors in the
energy sector.
Encompassing more than 20,000 hours of work and a budget of almost £1million, the year-long project
used an unprecedented quantity of data. Hourly statistics for each of the years from 2000 to 2007 were
taken from observations in 36 locations, totalling more than 2.5 million pieces of data.
Pöyry’s findings have now been presented to relevant government organisations including the
Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) as well as a number of high profile energy
companies.
James Cox, Principal Consultant at Pöyry Energy Consulting, said: “At the outset we believed that it was
vital to inform the debate about the importance of wind in decarbonising the electricity supply, by
informed, quantitative analysis.
“This has proved to be a major challenge but the richness of the information has surprised even the
project team. And, while the answers we now have are often complex, we believe that any debate on the
role of wind can now be properly informed.”
Estimates of the amount of wind needed to meet the carbon reduction targets range from 6-8GW for the
Irish electricity market and 35-45GW for the British electricity market by 2030"

 

The following article is a summary by James Cox, who led the research.

Renewables and future electricity markets - Implications of intermittency.

By James Cox, Poyry, Oxford, UK
Publication: Modern Power System
Date: Wednesday, January 13 2010 

Across Europe, the future of electricity markets is being deliberated and redesigned. Starting from the Renewable Energy Directive in April this year, which has set Europe on a path to dramatically increase its renewable generation to 20% of final energy supply by 2020, governments are gearing up to change the generation fleet in Europe at the fastest rate ever seen.

 

In the UK, the challenges are greatest of any European country, with a seven-fold increase in renewables required. The Renewable Energy Strategy, published by the government in mid-July, confirms the UK's renewable targets for 2020, with an ambitious goal of 15% of final energy use (covering heat, transport and electricity) sourced from renewables. This could mean that over 30% of electricity generation will have to be met by renewable energy, with the government anticipating the majority of that coming from wind. As a result, there could be as much as 35 GW of wind on line in the GB system by 2020 (33% of total installed capacity), compared with a current installed capacity of about 3.5 GW. The long-term reduction of 80% of CO2 emissions by 2050 and a carbon intensity target of 70 gCO2/kWh by 2030 suggested by the Committee on Climate Change may lead to over 45 GW of wind and marine installed by 2030.

This flood of new renewables will transform the shape of electricity markets. However, it is not only wind generation that has the potential to change the shape of the electricity market. Much of the new generation that could be deployed in GB in the next 20 years will be fundamentally different from existing generation in four main ways:

- Price insensitive. Most new generation planned for a future low carbon world, such as nuclear, coal, CCS and biomass, is price insensitive. This means that the amount of plant that varies its generation in response to price and/or varying demand will decrease significantly.

- Intermittent (not always available when needed). Wind and marine technologies are highly variable in their output, with swings of 80% possible within a day.

- Unpredictable. Wind and wave generation are both difficult to predict accurately - and the error in a forecast of wind generation increases dramatically as the time interval increases, in the same manner as any weather forecast. (Tidal generation, on the other hand, is extremely predictable - we know the time of high tides accurately for the next thousand years or so.)

- Subsidised. In the UK, from an electricity system where about 5% of generation is subsidised, the proposals from the government will lead to over 30% of generation receiving government support. It is a similar situation across much of Europe.

A major multi-client study has been recently completed by Poyry, looking specifically at how electricity markets will change in response to the challenges of renewable deployment and decarbonisation. In this year-long project, Poyry investigated how the future GB electricity market may look in 2020 and 2030, which required assembling an unprecedented quantity of wind data, building completely new electricity market models, and has entailed more than 20,000 hours of effort.

Many of the effects of large amounts of wind on the system are illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2 below. Figure 1 shows what might happen in January 2010 if the weather patterns of January 2000 repeated themselves. In this simulation, nuclear baseloads throughout the month, with coal largely running at full generation with small reductions at weekends. The CCGT plants provide most of the within-day and weekend flexibility, with some units running at baseload, and many others two-shifting - running for 16 hours during the day and turning off or down to minimum stable generation over night.

The wind generation has been separated out, but it is clear that it has a very marginal effect on the system as the volumes are so small. Overall the system runs in a predictable fashion, with variations only introduced through higher or lower demand due to weather, or outages and unavailable plant. This stable and relatively predictable market has existed in GB for the last 20 years, and is typical of most mature electricity markets in Europe.

However, if we now roll the clock forwards 20 years to 2030, the picture looks very different, as shown in Figure 2. Now wind is contributing 35% of generation during the year, with a peak installed capacity of 43 GW. Wind generation is highly variable, frequently rising to high levels and falling back again to low levels. During the month, wind peaks at 40 GW six times, typically falling back to 10-20 GW afterwards.

As a result of this, the entire thermal system must flex in response to the wind generation. The nuclear plant continues to run primarily at baseload, although there are four periods during the month when it is curtailed to allow wind to generate. At times when the wind is blowing strongly across the entire UK, all of the thermal generation is taken off the system. Firstly the CCGTs are turned off, then coal plant, then biomass and industrial CHP plant (assuming back-up boilers).

Thus the electricity system in 2030 is fundamentally different from what we have now. Large amounts of wind generation will change markets comprehensively, and new rules, regulations and designs will be required to meet the challenges that present themselves.

Effect on thermal plant

With large amounts of wind generation on the system, along with increasing nuclear, biomass and CHP, load factors of conventional thermal plant are strongly impacted, as shown in Figure 3. In GB by 2020, load factors of older, 1990s, CCGTs are below 10%, and those of newer CCGTs are under 60% whilst coal is at 50%. The main reason for this is the reduced 'space' for these plant to operate in - with rising volumes of baseload nuclear, CCS coal and biomass plant, and increasing volumes of low-cost intermittent generation, the running patterns of conventional plant by 2020 are increasingly the inverse of wind generation.

The reducing load factors of the new CCGTs means that the number of starts carried out will change. Older CCGTs will move from starting around 140 times a year and being on for 14 hours, to around starting 20 times a year and being on for 10 hours, as they drop rapidly from mid-merit operation to peaking operation. The newest plant, and those least flexible, may see starts rising from around 50 starts per year and being on for three days to over 120 by 2030 and being on for 24 hours.

However, these average figures disguise a dramatic change in the start pattern of plant. Although the number of starts is not greater than many CCGTs currently cope with, the distribution over time will be significantly different.

Currently, during winter, a CCGT might start five times a week (once every morning) and not generate over the weekend. This two-shift pattern is regular and predictable.

However, the pattern of starting in 2030, with 43 GW of wind on the system, will be highly irregular. A plant might two-shift for three days, and then not generate for two weeks, followed by a few days of continuous generation. It is inherently a world of less predictability.

This will inevitably have an effect on maintenance of the plant, both increasing its cost, and reducing the life of plant. Furthermore, the likelihood of unexpected outages will increase. One side effect of increasing intermittency may be a need for more reliable plant. With a more unpredictable market, prices are likely to become much more volatile, with prices peaking over £1000/MWh and dropping to below zero. As a result, reliability of plant will become increasingly important. If a plant has an unforeseen outage when prices are over £1000/MWh, and imbalance prices are even higher, it would have a dramatic effect on its profitability.

Effect on nuclear

Current government policy and market expectations suggest that a few new nuclear power stations will be operational by 2020, and after that a significant new build programme of nuclear, perhaps as much as one plant per year, may be required as part of wider decarbonisation of the electricity sector. However, at first sight the combination of baseload nuclear power stations and intermittent wind do not appear to be ideally suited.

The requirement for the thermal plant on the system to flex in response to wind suggests that all new built plant must be flexible, and it is not yet clear the extent to which new nuclear plant may be able to operate flexibly - either from the engineering point of view or the commercial standpoint. Although new nuclear designs may allow plant to drop to a minimum stable generation of 25% overnight on a regular basis, it is not clear if the commercial rationale will exist to do so. Operating a brand-new extremely high-cost nuclear plant for anything other than baseload may be difficult to justify. However, flexible nuclear plant do exist - for example the French system has coped with over 75% nuclear generation which is partly achieved by having some nuclear units that are sufficiently flexible to switch off (or down to a low minimum stable generation) overnight.

So should wind switch off before nuclear? Currently in GB, along with most European markets, wind generation is subsidised on a per-MWh basis. As a result, if electricity prices drop below zero, wind generation will pay to generate - provided it pays less than the value of the subsidy. This means that if wind meets most demand in a given hour, it is likely to push prices below zero. Nuclear plant, on the other hand, has a marginal cost above zero, reflecting its cost of fuel. However, the start-up costs associated with turning down a nuclear plant to minimum stable generation or fully off may be quite significant, meaning that it is more efficient to curtail wind for a few hours rather than nuclear. In this case, market prices would typically remain negative for a number of hours.

Interestingly, the study strongly suggests that nuclear and wind can co-exist, belying the frequently held view that the choice of a future generation system is either nuclear or renewable - not both.

Since wind generation has a variable cost of zero, it could be expected to depress electricity prices, which would reduce the profitability of nuclear generation. This would effect nuclear in particular as it is directly exposed to wholesale prices, as opposed to CCGTs and coal plant which are exposed to spark- and dark-spreads respectively. However, the requirement of other plant on the system to make a return means that market prices must remain high enough to incentivise new plant or keep existing plant running, in turn creating favourable prices for nuclear.

Overall, the major risk to developers of nuclear generation remains commodity prices as these have a large effect on wholesale prices - high oil and carbon prices are good, low oil and carbon prices are bad.

In sum, a world where the conditions are ripe for renewable generation - high carbon prices and high fossil fuel prices - is a world where nuclear also thrives.

Role of peaking plant

A market with large amounts of baseload nuclear and variable wind generation appears to lend itself to cheap peaking generation. The low capital cost and low efficiency of peaking generation makes it ideal to operate at low load factors to balance the intermittency of wind.

However, the market design is critical to determining if peaking generation is viable. In the GB market, peaking plant has two main sources of revenue - first when it is generating from the wholesale market price, and secondly from the ancillary services market.

Since peaking generation runs at such low load factors, the revenue from the wholesale market - even if prices are very high, is quite small. In GB, the combination of ancillary services revenue and energy-only revenue is not sufficient to make building peaking plant viable. Additionally, from the point of view of a developer, investing in peaking generation is a high-risk affair, with much greater uncertainty over future revenue than is the case for a conventional baseload plant.

In the Irish market (the Single Electricity Market or SEM), there is a capacity payment which remunerates generation for being available. As a result, new build of peaking generation in the SEM is economic.

The differences between the market designs are emphasised by the generation queue in both countries. In GB, there is around 50 GW of thermal plant awaiting connection by 2023, of which 30 GW is CCGT with no OCGTs at all. In the SEM, the figure is around 6.4 GW, of which 2 GW is peaking plant.

Rest of Europe

Although the study undertaken by Poyry was focused on GB and Ireland solely, the lessons are relevant for a wide range of markets - particularly in Europe. With a renewable energy target of 20% across Europe as a whole, significant wind generation is likely to be built in the next 10 years, and the impact of intermittency is likely to be faced across many European countries.

There are a number of countries where the impact of wind generation is likely to be particularly great, eg, Spain and Denmark.

In Spain, wind penetration has already reached 16 GW, with a target of about 37 GW by 2020. Given the low interconnection between Spain and France it remains a relatively isolated system, which means it is likely to experience many of the problems associated with variable wind. However, Spain does have significant installed hydro capacity, 14 GW at present, which provides a natural balance to wind generation and helps mitigate many of the effects. Although, in a low hydro year, such as 2005, this natural balance will be absent.

Denmark has been leading the wind revolution, with a current wind penetration of around 25%, 4 GW in total. However, Denmark is a very small country in comparison to its neighbours, and as a result can export much of the 'excess wind' to Germany and Norway. It also has access to Scandinavian hydro, which provides large amounts of flexibility.

Thus, although countries across Europe will be affected, each generation system is unique, with varying geographic size, interconnection, installed plant and market arrangements. As a result, the impact of intermittency across European countries will be different for each country.

Winds of change

There can be no doubt that the ambitious targets for renewable generation in GB are going to transform the wholesale market, and with it how the system operates. In particular, the need for fossil fired plants to flex in response to wind generation will create a highly different market from that which exists currently, and plant will have increasingly unpredictable operational patterns. Nuclear will be another growth area, and can co-exist with wind generation, although some flexibility may be required if nuclear penetration increases substantially. The market design is critical to ensure that despatch of plant is efficient, and that the correct type of generation is built.

It is unclear to what extent the other European markets will be affected by wind generation, but the changes in the UK and Ireland are likely to be the most dramatic given their isolated nature. However, intermittency will undoubtedly impact European energy markets and in the coming years, policy makers and market participants will have to address these winds of change.

 

“If significant wind energy is achieved, along the lines required by the 2020 renewable
targets, we predict power stations which are built now will face much more uncertain revenues in the
future. For example, any generation built before 2016 to cover closure, under emission regulations, of
existing coal-fired power stations, would face a volatile future, uncertain to the point that plant may only
operate for a few hours one year and then hundreds of hours the next year.”
And with the level of wind energy envisaged on the system by 2030, the variation in prices will be
extreme. There will be periods of negative prices and very short periods with prices at almost
£8000/MWh."

 

The full Press Release can be found at :

http://www.ilexenergy.com/pages/documents/reports/renewables/Poyry%20Wind%20Study%20Press%20Release.pdf

 

  

 

2. Power investor threatens to pull plug on green revolution

20 Jul 2010 The Times Robin Pagnamenta Energy Editor

One of the energy industry’s biggest shareholders has threatened to block all new investments in British renewables unless the Government increases the returns available to investors and gives greater certainty over its future policy.

Neil Woodford, the head of investment at Invesco Perpetual — which holds more than £4.5 billion of shares in energy companies including National Grid, Centrica, United Utilities, SSE, Drax and International Power — fired a warning shot at coalition plans for a green energy revolution.

He accused officials of a fundamental lack of understanding of the challenges facing the sector.

In a letter to the chairman of the energy regulator Ofgem, Mr Woodford said: “Unless reforms to the electricity market are appropriately structured and give greater clarity and incentives around renewable investment, we will not support this incremental investment . . . and will seek to achieve our desired returns from rising prices in an increasingly constrained supply market.”

The letter to Lord Mogg, dated July 14, emphasises that domestic energy companies would not be able to deliver the £200 billion investment needed for Britain to hit ambitious targets to generate 35 per cent of the country’s electricity from renewables by 2020 while they were being forced to accept lower returns under the stringent price controls imposed by Ofgem and Ofwat, its counterpart in the water industry.

“We have to shoulder an increasingly anti-equity culture at Ofgem and Ofwat, whose public stance along with that of the Government seems to be predicated on the achievement of the impossible ‘more investment with lower prices’,” Mr Woodford wrote.

He said that investors’ views were being brushed aside, even as they were being asked to pour vast sums into Britain’s infrastructure over the next decade. “We are left to conclude that there is an unbridgeable gap between the regulators’ perception of what is a fair return on equity and what we require on incremental investment.”

Mr Woodford said that Invesco Perpetual could not justify providing the capital for projects such as the Government’s plan to build 33 gigawatts of offshore wind turbines without greater certainty that the money would deliver proper returns. He concludes: “Utility returns must compete with those available to investors in other inudstries . . .If regulators and the Government fail to recognise this, then the vital infrastructure investment this economy needs will not be built.”

Mark Wiltshire, an Ofgem spokesman, said the regulator agreed with Mr Woodford that reforms of the system were necessary. “We aim to build on this record of looking to build on UK confidence in UK regulation,” he said.

The Department for Energy and Climate Change said: “The scale of energy investment required in the UK demands long-term certainty and that is what ministers have been clear they aim to bring to the electricity market.”

Printed and distributed by NewpaperDirect | www.newspaperdirect.com, US/Can: 1.877.980.4040, Intern: 800.6364.6364 | Copyright and protected by applicable law.

 

 

 

 

3. A charter for nimbys?

| The Sunday Times 8 August 2010

A new age of localism, backed by the coalition government, could make Britain’s ambitious renewable-energy targets virtually impossible to achieve

Danny Fortson Published: 8 August 2010

 

At a council meeting in Maldon, Essex, last month a councillor stood up and read a letter from Eric Pickles. The newly appointed communities and local government secretary had sent the missive to every planner in England to announce an end to what he called Soviet-style targets for regional housing and energy development projects.

No law had been passed to make it official, but Pickles urged councillors to “consider [the letter] a material planning consideration in any decisions they are currently taking”.

The Maldon planning committee duly voted down the proposed Middlewick wind farm, near

Southminster. The councillors’ decision went against the recommendation of their planning officers and the local chamber of commerce.

Energy executives said the decision is a taste of things to come. They are alarmed at the coalition government’s “go local” approach to planning, saying it amounts to state-sanctioned nimbyism. They believe the devolution of decision-making will consign new projects to years in the planning wilderness and make Britain’s ambitious renewable-energy targets virtually impossible to achieve. “The government talks about creating a green economy and community-based projects but they are proposing planning changes that make it likely that those goals won’t be achieved,” said Tom Murley, head of renewable investing at HG Capital, the private equity firm.

 

The coalition planning shake-up will hit big projects as well as smaller local schemes, such as the 20MW Middlewick wind farm. In June, Pickles scrapped the Infrastructure Planning Commission, a Labour quango set up to fast track projects of “national importance”, such as nuclear power stations and offshore wind farms. The energy secretary will now have the final say on any project bigger than 50MW — which means utility-scale power plants plus some smaller ones. “The beauty of what Labour did was that it took politics out of these decisions,” an energy company executive said. “The coalition government has injected them back in.”

When considering Britain’s pollution reduction goals, that’s a problem. By 2020 the government wants 30% of electricity to be generated from renewable sources — a sixfold

increase on current levels. Last month it submitted its blueprint for achieving the target to the European Union. The detail is revealing. Ministers have set a target of 13 gigawatts from offshore wind farms, equal to a fifth of Britain’s overall capacity, by the end of the decade. It’s a big figure but only about half of the 33GW goal that was originally set, with great fanfare, by Labour in 2007.

 

No form of renewable power can match the scale possible at sea. It’s an important point. Over the next decade, 23 nuclear and coal-fired power stations, representing a quarter of the country’s generating capacity, will be shut down. The most readily available alternative is nuclear. The coalition has given mixed messages on this power source — the Tories are fervent supporters while most Liberal Democrats have been vociferous

opponents. The expectation is that a new generation of reactors will be built. Yet given the difficulty of getting planning approval and the long construction schedules, the reactors will struggle to come on stream fast enough to replace plants that are being decommissioned.

There is doubt that the first new nuclear plant, developed by EDF Energy, will be ready by its 2017 target date. An array of smaller projects is set to fill the void, including waste-to-energy plants, onshore wind turbines and fields of solar panels. But Pickles’s drive to put “town halls back in charge of local affairs” — and to add more green belt protection — seems likely to make these schemes more difficult to build.


 

Tom Foulkes, director-general of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), said: “The development of infrastructure needed for a secure, low-carbon energy supply throws up challenges that will need to be addressed beyond the boundaries of individual local authorities. Failure to provide clarity will erode confidence, damaging our ability to secure the huge investment needed in nuclear, renewables and other energy infrastructure.”

ICE was one of nearly 30 organisations that signed a letter sent to Pickles by the Royal Town Planning Institute last week, condemning his cancellation of regional strategies.

Under the government’s proposals, schemes will be approved or rejected based on whether they comply with development master plans drawn up by local councils. Appeal powers will be reduced. Gaynor Hartnell, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Association, said: “A lot of the middle-sized projects were getting through on appeal because of what was said in the regional spatial plans. If those are repealed, that’s bad news. Developers need more consistency and predictability.”

 

A typical wind farm takes six or seven years to get planning approval, yet the government wants to triple the amount of power produced from this source in just a decade.

Marjorie Neasham, managing director at Ridge Wind, backer of the Middlewick project, said: “Pickles’s letter to planning authorities certainly emboldens the antis. There appears to be a disconnect between what the government wants as a country and what they want to do locally.”

 

Coalition comes round to nuclear option

On the island of Anglesey, two German power companies are pushing ahead with plans for a new nuclear power plant. Horizon, a joint venture between RWE and Eon, last week awarded contracts to France’s Areva and Westinghouse of Japan, to work out how their designs would fit in alongside Anglesey’s existing plant at Wylfa.

Horizon’s move shows a confidence in Britain that not everyone in the nuclear industry shares. Under Labour, nuclear was a cornerstone of energy policy, with bold plans for a fleet of new reactors from 2017.The creation of the coalition, however, has let doubt creep in. Liberal Democrats, including Chris Huhne, the new energy secretary, have opposed nuclear energy. In 2007, Huhne hailed the progress being made on wind power, saying it “highlights the nuclear lie”. The coalition agreement included new atomic plants, however, and Huhne has since given public assurances about his commitment. “Nuclear power will play an important part in our future energy mix,” he said last week. Industry executives say there are two crucial tests looming that will show the coalition’s resolve. First is a decision on “regulatory justification” — in essence the government saying it has complied with European

requirements on new plants. Second is the long-awaited go-ahead for a reform of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

Most industry experts believe the coalition will brush aside the concerns of some Lib Dem MPs. “My judgment is that the coalition will proceed ... I think the government accepts that we must have nuclear as part of the future energy mix,” said Lady Judge, former chairwoman of the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

 

 

The Sunday Times   8 August 2010


4 InGear letter

Electric shock in store

I hate to agree with Jeremy Clarkson about anything, but on electric cars he is absolutely right (“Sizzling sandals, this is one hot eco-chariot”, last week). An electric car is only viable from an emissions viewpoint if the electricity that it uses is generated by renewable sources. In Britain this is not the case.

Unlike France, which has embraced nuclear power, Britain’s electricity is largely generated from fossil fuels. Worse, from 2015
we shall be suffering brownouts and blackouts, in the style of Heath’s three-day week, because the lunatics who ran our national asylum from 1997 to 2010 did not have the intelligence or moral courage to order a single power station of any kind, nuclear or fossil.

If we become dependent on electric cars we will have no personal transport as well as no light, no heat and no refrigeration. Citizens are well advised to fit solar panels on their roofs as soon as possible, not only to benefit from the generous feed-in tariff (which could easily be withdrawn by a cash-strapped government) but also to give themselves light and heat in the self-inflicted national power catastrophe that will hit us soon.

Professor Peter Wadhams,
Department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, Cambridge University

 

 

 

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5.National Grid wants better forecasts to help it cope with the vagaries of the wind

Ben Webster Environment Editor
January 3 2011 12:01AM

Concern over huge fluctuations in the supply of electricity from Britain’s 3,000 wind turbines has prompted National Grid to begin detailed forecasts of wind strength.

The turbines have delivered well below their usual output this winter and in the 24 hours to 5pm yesterday contributed only 0.5 per cent of the country’s power. Parts of the day were so still that wind power’s contribution fell below 0.2 per cent.

On the windiest days, the turbines deliver about 8 per cent. A record of 10 per cent over a 24-hour period was set on September 6 last year.

But since the beginning of December, turbines have been operating at only 20 per cent of their maximum capacity compared with an annual average of about 30 per cent.

National Grid, which operates Britain’s high voltage electricity network, is concerned by the amount of energy being wasted by keeping extra coal and gas plants partly running in case the wind drops unexpectedly.

It wants a step change in the accuracy of wind forecasts to cope with the far more challenging fluctuations that will result from the Government’s plan to source up to a third of electricity from wind by 2020.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change wants to subsidise at least 3,000 more onshore turbines and 6,000 giant offshore ones, with a sweep bigger than the London Eye, to help to meet Britain’s legally binding carbon reduction targets.

Utilyx, an energy consultancy, said Britain’s increasing reliance on wind could force it to pay dearly for imported gas during prolonged winter cold spells when there was high pressure over the UK and therefore very little wind.

Andrew Horstead, risk analyst at Utilyx, said the low output from wind turbines came at a time of very high demand for electricity and was “a stark reminder of how reliant we are on imported gas”.

He added: “The UK’s existing wind generation has provided less than 1 per cent of our total requirements, when we need it most, which is clearly not enough to sustain a green Britain during a white winter. The Government must recognise the need to draw from a diverse energy mix, including clean coal and nuclear builds.”

6.

 

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6. Lack of wind raises fears for future of green energy

 

On December 30, Britain's 3,000 operational wind farms produced
just 0.04 per cent of the country's power. Andrew Milligan/PA


Robert Lea          Industrial Editor


Last updated February 2 2011 12:01AM

Britain’s leading renewable energy company has reported a 20 per fall in the amount of electricity produced by its wind turbines.

The news came as official figures revealed that on December 30, an exceptionally still day, Britain’s 3,000 operational wind turbines produced only 0.04 per cent of the country’s power.

The Energy Minister Charles Hendry told The Times that the figures proved the urgency with which other forms of low-carbon generation needed to be developed.

SSE, the company that trades as Southern Electric and Scottish Hydro, yesterday reported for the first time detailed information on the performance of its renewable power-generating facilities. It admitted that it revealed the figures under pressure from anxious investors.

SSE’s figures show a 30 per cent decline in output from its nine hydroelectric schemes. The company blamed that on dry periods early last year and the amount of unthawed snow this winter. SSE said that such significant swings in hydroelectric output were not unknown in the industry.

The 20 per cent fall in wind turbine output is potentially more worrying. The fleet of turbines, onshore and off the coast, are thought to be capable of producing 4 per cent of Britain’s electricity needs.

Data obtained by The Times from the National Grid’s Elexon unit reveal that for long periods in the summer wind farms produced less than 1 per cent of the country’s electricity. That was repeated again in November and December. The amount of electricity produced on December 30 was a seventy-fifth of the amount of power produced on the windiest day of the quarter on November 2.

SSE revealed the figures after investors demanded to know detailed information after an admission three months ago of falling renewable energy output. “We had not been explicit in our previous statements and investors have been asking the question about reduced output,” a spokesman said.

SSE does not know the extent to which last year was historically unwindy. “It is important enough to highlight to our investors — but just how exceptional it is, we simply do not know,” the spokesman said. “We have to look at this over a 20 to 25-year time frame.” The figures have not put SSE off the wind market. It is spending £1 billion on three big projects, including the Clyde onshore wind farm in South Lanarkshire, which will be the largest in Europe.

Mr Hendry said the data underlined what his department was trying to achieve in its electricity market reforms, which will be contained in a White Paper in the spring.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
”The figures have not put SSE off the wind market. It is spending £1 billion on three big projects, including the Clyde onshore wind farm in South Lanarkshire, which will be the largest in Europe.”

AK) Note - it has not put them off the onshore wind market !  Ever since the opportunity for offshore was made available the developers have rushed to get as many more onshore as possible.  One developer, seeking to erect a wind farm onshore in Scotland
some years ago, even explained in a newspaper that “. . .offshore is not as lucrative.” !