Advice about converting to diesel

[Alan de Enfield]

5 minutes ago, Neil2 said:

 

Yes how ridiculous that's like paying people to not go to work.

 

Oh, hang on....

 

 

Not only do we pay them the 'lost generation value' but we pay compensation ON TOP of around £45 per MWh

 

When the system is constrained, Grid selects which plant to pay to turn off by asking them to submit bids at the lowest cost they would be prepared to do so.

The power plant that switches off still gets paid the power price it would have received from selling the electricity, but can seek compensation over and above that.

When wind farms switch off, they miss out on the subsidies - about £45 per megawatt hour (MWh) for onshore turbines - that they would have been able to claim in addition to the price of power. The prices wind farms were paid to switch off averaged more than £80/MWh in 2014 - far in excess of that lost subsidy income.

[Tony Brooks]

16 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

It makes you wonder about the logic of telling the electricty companies to tun off their 'windy-mills' and paying them the 'estimated output they 'would have generated'if they hadn't turned them off.

 

Why are we paying them not to produce 'leccy ?

£9 million in one day's non-use ?

 

Wind farms across England and Scotland were handed £9.3 million to switch off their turbines on Friday, to balance supply and demand and stabilise the grid.

 

National Grid made constraint payments to more than 80 wind farms, compelling them to switch off so supply didn’t outpace demand on the windy, sunny weekend. That includes £6.9 million handed to 66 Scottish wind projects and £1.9 million paid to 14 offshore wind plants in England.

The total constraint payments for the day was more than double the previous record—£4.8 million paid to windfarm operators on 8 October 2018, when it was too windy. Last year, 86 windfarms were paid £136 million in constraint payments.

 

Wind Farms Paid £9.3 Million to Disconnect from Grid - Simply Switch

 

 

Scotland’s wind farm operators have been handed more than £230million to shut down their turbines.

The record windfall for 2020, funded by energy bill-payers, is up from £130million in 2019 – an increase of nearly 81 per cent in a year.

Experts estimate the amount of discarded energy is equivalent to about 14 per cent of total annual electricity consumption north of the Border.

The cash given to power giants is known as ‘constraint payments’, made when it is too windy for turbines to operate – or when the supply of energy outstrips demand and the National Grid cannot absorb their output.

Last night, Scottish Tory energy spokesman Alexander Burnett said: ‘This significant increase in payment shows that the SNP’s strategy is simply not delivering value for money.

‘The public are being short-changed at having to shell out so much for these turbines to be switched off.

‘SNP ministers must use these figures as a wake-up call.’

Figures showing that £235million was paid out in constraints last year were produced by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), the UK charity that first drew attention to the payments and now publishes the data on a daily basis.

 

 

 

I have long though that the storage infrastructure needed to be put in place before intermittent generating capacity like wind. OK, so the environmentalists may be up in arms, but a few more pumped storage schemes would not go amiss and some could be tidal barrages in less sensitive areas. At least they are less likely to catch fire or explode. At present, we seem to be waiting for the storage to catch up with the generation.