Comments on: Policy confusion on nuclear and wind http://www.carboncommentary.com/2008/03/10/79 A critical appraisal of issues in the move to a low-carbon economy Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:47:53 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: PJ http://www.carboncommentary.com/2008/03/10/79#comment-482 PJ Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:13:29 +0000 http://www.carboncommentary.com/2008/03/10/79#comment-482 Nukes vs wind? Nonsense. Nuclear and wind are complementary for the simple reason that wind CANNOT be a lage baseload source of power. its not reliable/stable enough! You cannot make wind more than 20% of your generation without burdening the transmission infrastructure terribly. "Expanding the amount of wind power will then mean the grid will have to deal with this disconnection event plus any rapid changes in power output that could arise from wind power changes on a large farm of say +1GW." Correct. So make nuclear 70%, wind 15% and peak natural gas 15% and you have a stable system. shortchanging nuclear will not give you more wind, it will keep you stuckwith coal. Nukes vs wind? Nonsense. Nuclear and wind are complementary for the simple reason that wind CANNOT be a lage baseload source of power. its not reliable/stable enough!
You cannot make wind more than 20% of your generation without burdening the transmission infrastructure terribly.

“Expanding the amount of wind power will then mean the grid will have to deal with this disconnection event plus any rapid changes in power output that could arise from wind power changes on a large farm of say +1GW.”

Correct. So make nuclear 70%, wind 15% and peak natural gas 15% and you have a stable system. shortchanging nuclear will not give you more wind, it will keep you stuckwith coal.

]]> By: Andy Railton http://www.carboncommentary.com/2008/03/10/79#comment-467 Andy Railton Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:28:50 +0000 http://www.carboncommentary.com/2008/03/10/79#comment-467 Slightly off message but one thing that is not usually thought about with wind power is the likely increase in instability that connecting significant amounts of wind power to the grid. It is important to understand that this is not an issue of unavailability. The current UK transmission grid is designed to withstand loosing a certain amount of loss of power at any one instant in time, I think it is about 1250MW, but perhaps someone could correct me on this. Expanding the amount of wind power will then mean the grid will have to deal with this disconnection event plus any rapid changes in power output that could arise from wind power changes on a large farm of say +1GW. Also some designs of the turbines have a habit of shutting down when there is a fluctuation on the grid, this can be designed around to a certain extent but is an extra cost. In short even with strengthening the grid at key locations and laying cables to supply extra capacity it is very unlikely that the grid could be operated with wind power supplying at levels of 25GW particuarly at periods of minimum demand. The one country in Europe that does have very high percentage of wind power is Denmark but they have a good connection across to Sweden/Norway to deal with over/under supply. As you recognise to cope with a very large wind power output we would need to build a lot of pumped storage schemes. The magnitude of that task however, is easily illustrated by considering our largest pumped storage scheme at Dinorwig in Snowdonia. Its maximum output is 1.7GW for about 7 hours, our about 12GWhr. From your graph above considering the minimum power requirement of about 32GW, this will supply the UK requirements for just over 22 minutes. These arguments apply regardless of what is used to supply the baseload; nuclear, coal or gas. Slightly off message but one thing that is not usually thought about with wind power is the likely increase in instability that connecting significant amounts of wind power to the grid. It is important to understand that this is not an issue of unavailability. The current UK transmission grid is designed to withstand loosing a certain amount of loss of power at any one instant in time, I think it is about 1250MW, but perhaps someone could correct me on this. Expanding the amount of wind power will then mean the grid will have to deal with this disconnection event plus any rapid changes in power output that could arise from wind power changes on a large farm of say +1GW. Also some designs of the turbines have a habit of shutting down when there is a fluctuation on the grid, this can be designed around to a certain extent but is an extra cost. In short even with strengthening the grid at key locations and laying cables to supply extra capacity it is very unlikely that the grid could be operated with wind power supplying at levels of 25GW particuarly at periods of minimum demand. The one country in Europe that does have very high percentage of wind power is Denmark but they have a good connection across to Sweden/Norway to deal with over/under supply. As you recognise to cope with a very large wind power output we would need to build a lot of pumped storage schemes. The magnitude of that task however, is easily illustrated by considering our largest pumped storage scheme at Dinorwig in Snowdonia. Its maximum output is 1.7GW for about 7 hours, our about 12GWhr. From your graph above considering the minimum power requirement of about 32GW, this will supply the UK requirements for just over 22 minutes. These arguments apply regardless of what is used to supply the baseload; nuclear, coal or gas.

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