The next focusIR Investor Webinar takes places on 14th May with guest speakers from Blue Whale Growth Fund, Taseko Mines, Kavango Resources and CQS Natural Resources fund. Please register here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
good article Alfa .. very similar to many sets that reduce volatility as scale goes up. Portfolio theory is partly based on the maths derived after the 1929 crash and is used by scoundrels in pin stripped suits quaffing Bolly to tell unsuspecting PI's how good they are
Zebediah - you yourself explained that wind turbines convert back down to DC - this is precisely so that the wind turbine rotation can be entirely decoupled from the grid's 50 Hz operational frequency and the turbines operate at optimal efficiency. Gosh there would be an outcry if that happened, but nobody mentions the simple fact that more than 50% of the energy contained in the coal and gas that we burn to make electricity is dumped out as useless heat.
Once you start thinking about more than just a single wind farm you discover that for short term fluctuations (i.e. those with the fastest changes in time) the effects of separate windfarms become uncorrelated at relatively small distances https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/044004 (i.e. they behave like a uncorrelated randomised generators whose sum can be modelled by very simple brownian motion style statistics) - this means that as you increase the number of windfarms, eg by a factor or N, the variations in the sum only increase by a factor of root N.
Thus the percentage variability of the wind generation actually falls by a factor of root N (N divided by root N). This is the same as why the variation in heights of 12 years across the UK (eg from year to year) is less than the variation in heights of 12 year olds in a single school class (eg from year to year).
alfa: very true , but they have always had constant speed generators. Traditionally steam turbines used load governors to adjust the supply of steam when load fluctuates. Dumping it to resistors would be a fall back solution.
the problem is compounded with wind turbines. To extract the maximum amount of energy from wind, the turbine speed will fluctuate with the wind speed. The national grid is managing of course but it is showing signs of instability
I wonder how they manage demand to Supermarkets . is there a freezer kill switch for Sainsbury at a grid dispatch centre?
Just turn everything off and get paid :)
sell them your negawatts.
http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/resources/Getting_more_from_less.pdf
Zebediah - the grid has always had difficulty in balancing demand and generation - in the distant past they simply made more energy than they needed and then discarded it in load banks (big resistors) - then they found pumped hydro energy storage and discovered that they could do something more useful with the excess energy - namely store it for later use. However peaker plants have never been fully offset by pumped hydro storage and so we have had peaker plants from day one of electricity generation.
These 'last minute contracts' you mention are simply the primary and secondary firm frequency response services that they have previously negotiated with various suppliers, some of which are operated by batteries - you can find out more about primary and secondary frequency regulation in this article :- https://www.thebushveldperspective.com/blog/public-articles-1/post/energy-storage-europe-2019-414 and the contained reference https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf483/node/705 , if you want to find out more about the National Grid FFR contracts they are described here:- https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services/frequency-response-services/firm-frequency-response-ffr
alfacomp: please read up on the national grid. They are having a difficulty in balancing generation and are managing it somehow with quick startup generators and controlling demand. Denmark is a smaller country and probably exporting its windpower generation when it produces in excess.
see for example
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/12/three-blackout-near-misses-in-three-months-says-national-grid
National Grid 'had three blackout near-misses in three months
The Guardian understands that in every month since May there has been a severe dip in the grid’s frequency from its normal range around 50Hz. Industry sources have confirmed that the grid’s frequency has fallen below 49.6Hz on three different occasions in recent months, the deepest falls seen on the UK grid since 2015. On Friday the blackout was triggered when the frequency slumped to 48.88Hz.
In June, the frequency of the grid plummeted to within a whisker of National Grid’s legal limit of 49.5Hz after all three units of EDF Energy’s West Burton gas-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire tripped offline without warning.
National Grid has managed to avoid wide scale blackouts by triggering last-minute contracts to help it stabilise the grid and avoid breaching the crucial 49.5Hz limit set by the regulator.
It contracts energy suppliers to ramp up their output from generators and batteries to make up for an outage, and offers contracts to companies such as factories and supermarkets, which can temporarily cut their energy demand to help stabilise the frequency of the grid.
But many of the companies tasked with supplying the “safety net services” – such as batteries and diesel farms, which are banks of small-scale generators – have warned that National Grid is not doing enough to safeguard the system against blackouts.
The UK’s booming renewable energy output can make it more difficult for National Grid to balance the frequency of the grid, which was originally built to accommodate fossil fuel power plants, which generate more intensive energy.
GWPF Bunch of climate change denialists set up by Nigel Lawson. In the 21st Century? Unbelievable attitude.
Not all Telegraph writers take this approach. Evans-Pritchard, who can be a real Cassandra about some things, has picked up on the huge falls in the cost of electricity from wind/PV and tends to think the North Sea is ideal for wind. He also didn’t get hysterical about the ‘legacy’ idea of carbon zero by 2050 seeing it as more of an opportunity instead. I don’t think I’ve seen him mention batteries yet though.
Good old torygraph eh!
dumaskullanga - he is also the author of the 2014 Adam Smith Institute (self confessed neoliberal think tank) "Solar Power in Britain: The impossible dream"
dubmaskullanga - I find this one easier to read:- https://gridwatch.co.uk/demand/percent
Yellow is PV, Cyan is wind, currently supplying 39% of UK electricity.
Just another advertorial for the nuclear industry:
"In an analysis co-written by Dr Capell Aris, a former grid engineer, Mr Gibson states that..."
Dr Capell Aris, the same one who writes for the global warming policy foundation!
Look at the fluctuations in wind for the last week:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Zebediah - I'm afraid that you seem a bit wide of the mark on windpower. Yesterday windpower accounted for 30% of UK electricity generation and I did not notice any power cuts.
Windpower has accounted for more than 43% of Denmark's electricity generation since 2017, with plans to increase this to over 80% by 2035.
the Telegraph are describing a moment of truth. Windpower is unstable , but a small amount of it can be tolerated by the grid, say 5-10%. If the percentage share of windpower generation increases, then then you have to consider how to deal with fluctuations in windpower output. Once method of course is battery storage
We've been getting this kind of stuff from the telegraph for years. Fortunately it makes no difference to reality.