Archive for Renewables
Get into the Groove with Tekes
Posted by: | CommentsFew businessmen, entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists outside of Finland will have heard of Tekes.
It is a public agency working under Finland’s Ministry of Employment and the Economy – and is the main public funding organisation for research and development (R&D) in Finland. Tekes has an annual budget of approximately 600 million euros and has 360 staff located in Finland and in several overseas offices. Read More→
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Today, The Times has claimed that Britain’s potential renewable resources are insufficient to meet demand, and therefore that Britain needs new nuclear plants. This is reported as having been stated by the new Chief Scientific Advisor to DECC, Professor David MacKay FRS, the author of the free online book: Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air – though it appears that The Times invented this quote. Nevertheless, the claim that Britain cannot live on its own renewables, is also made in his book.
However, the claim is not true.
On the professor’s own (underestimated) calculation of Britain’s renewable potential, it is possible for Britain to power itself from wind and solar. Current energy demand (heat, transport & electricity), is 98kWh per person per day (245GW), and the professor’s book identifies 68kWh/d (170GW) of wind onshore and offshore, and 55kWh/d (137.5GW) from photovoltaics, which together gives 123kWh/d (307.5GW). That means that even ignoring wave, tidal, geothermal and biomass, Britain’s renewable potential supply just from solar and wind substantially exceeds our energy demand.
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Andrew Smith of London Analytics disputes statement that renewables are hugely expensive
Posted by: | CommentsPaul McClory claimed:
> The hugely expensive side shows of wind, solar, biomass and other
> renewables, will contribute no significant reductions of CO2 for another 30
> years or so – if then
Last year 27GW of new wind came online, as did about 5.5GW of new PV,
21GWth of new solar-thermal, 2GW of new biomass [1].
Whereas total nuclear production *dropped* from 2608 to 2601 TWh [2].
The growth in renewables accelerates, whereas the “nuclear renaissance”
is withering away, as costs escalate (FPL, Canada, Finland). What makes
the outlook even gloomier for nuclear is that short circuits, fires [3],
and warm rivers have been closing plants [4]; and even without those
problems, nuclear declines in reliability: the British nuclear
load-factor was 69.3% in 2006, 59.6% in 2007, and 49.4% in 2008 [5]. So
much for nuclear being reliable baseload. Read More→
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This article originally appeared in the Daily Telegraph, Thursday, July 16th, page 5
ANALYSIS – By Dave Andrews
Wind farms as is well know only work when the wind blows. This means that a turbine will on average, produce electricity on only one day out of three. However, this is not of itself an overwhelming disadvantage – as is often claimed.
Wind farms can still compete with other forms of electricity generation because although turbines are expensive to build, they have very low running costs.
The other argument against turbines is that they require back up when the wind is not blowing. This, too, is true. However, again it is not really a problem, since the power stations needed to provide backup have already been built, and are cheap to keep on standby. Wind farms just make sure we use less of the fossil fuel than we would otherwise, therefore cutting emissions. Read More→
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Proposed presentation of benefits and costs of European Supergrid by Dr Gregor Czisch
Dear Dave,
Thanks very much for sending this correspondence.
A couple of points about CSP and wind power:
Wind power has been supported for much longer than CSP and is much further down its cost-reduction curve than CSP. The TRANS-CSP report from the DLR calculates that CSP imports will be amongst the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, and that is allowing for transmission costs.
There is great potential for wind power in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as CSP.
As you say, the issue is something of a red herring. The important thing is to build a large-scale transmission grid spanning the whole of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. There is something about costs, benefits and affordability in Supergrid costs and benefits (PDF, 49 KB) and Interstate transmission superhighways: paving the way to a low-carbon future (PDF, 239 KB) and answers to possible worries about the security of supplies in DESERTEC: security of energy supplies (PDF, 40 KB). Also relevant is Clean power from deserts: what governments can do (PDF, 68 KB) and Kick-start and upgrade (PDF, 128 KB).
Regards,
Gerry
–
Dr Gerry Wolff PhD CEng
Coordinator of DESERTEC-UK
gerrywolff65@gmail.com, +44 (0)1248 712962, www.trec-uk.org.uk
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To Don Foster, MP
Thanks Don,
We are aware of the CSP proposals – several of its protagonists are Claverton members and they have given several presentations to the Claverton group already .
Czisch’s work runs a linear optimisation model on all candidate renewables and shows that at the moment, by far the cheapest means of providing renewable energy is wind energy, land based. ie he has explicitly looked at CSP and his model shows a only modest fraction is economic compared to wind
Dr Mark Barrett has of UCL also modelled CSP costs and come to the same conclusion.
However to an extent this is a red herring – the important things is to get European co operation to get an HVDC grid underway, because whatever way the power generating technology goes – Wind, CSP, nuclear, super critical coal, coal plus ccs, will benefit enormously from greater interconnection, due to the pooling of reserve plant, the reduction of plant cycling, using hte most economic plant at all times, and so on.
An HVDC supergrid could take about 10 years to construct, mainly due to way leaves and permitting issues, whereas wind turbines, CSP, large new coal plant can be constructed much more quickly.
The key then to a low carbon future is to get on with the supergrid – we can argue about what to populate it with in parallel.
To that extent then, I think it worth have Czisch talk, because we can then use it to draw the wider benefits to the attention of politicians and civil servants, and the need for urgent action.
With kind regards
Dave Andrews
Claverton Energy Group
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