Wind power is an expensive, forever subsidised dud without unaffordable & unsourceable storage and will never better, or even match the efficiency, reliability or affordability of coal, gas or nuclear generated electricity
1) blaming EDF for the European energy crisis is misleading and wrong. The energy sector is a very complicated market and saying one thing caused a crisis is overlooking what renewables and the Ukraine War did.
2) fossil fuels are expensive because of the EUs over reliance on Russian gas . Natural gas is at all time lows here in the US.
The European energy crisis was self inflicted Trying to supply electricity with unreliable and intermittent sources is a ludicrous idea.
I was aware of the corrosion issues that forced the shutdown of several EDF reactors that were of the generation affected by the piping design problem.
Germany and the UK are pursuing a rapid expansion of renewables and their electricity prices are the highest in Europe.
Spot market prices just hit 1000 euros per kWh. Norway minister? called it a “shit” situation.,
Germany is losing their industrial production because of energy prices.
The German chancellor just got a vote of no confidence
Germany is in major trouble because of their green energy policies.
Temporary price spikes are just that, temporary - they are the mechanism that brings about the "peakers" and other capacity that is rarely used and thus needs to be paid handsomely when it is actually needed. This summer people were complaining about negative prices. But both are normal things in the power spot markets, meant to ensure that supply-demand is efficiently met at all times.
Europe is a net energy importer, it is dependent on nasty suppliers and the vagaries of geopolitics. Moving to renewables is smart in that context, but it's only halfway done. It helped save money in 2022-23 (the energy price increases would have been worse) but this was overshadowed by the French nuclear problems coming on top of the gas cuts.
Germany is not in trouble because of their green policies - it is the one bright spot right now for their future well being
Germany is de-industrializing right before your eyes. Electricity generation is dropping due to less demand. Electricity Prices in Germany are the highest in Europe. If you think that’s a bright spot, you’ve been brainwashed.
1) Of course the energy market is complex, but in the power sector in 2022 the biggest problem was the 100 TWh of generation missing over the year from EDF's nuclear fleet. A lot of it was bad luck (regular maintenance delayed due to covid, plus the unexpected maintenance for the corrosion issues) and the timing could not have been worse. I don't see how you can blame renewables for what happened in 2022; as to the Ukraine war, it led to much higher gas prices, and these translated into higher power prices because gas was the marginal producer more often than usual (due to the missing nuclear TWh)
2) fossil fuels are expensive in Europe because we don't have any, and need to import most of it, whether by pipe from Russia, Algeria or by LNG tankers. European governments (France in particular) have long entered into State-to-State contracts to secure such supplies as much as is possible, and to diversify suppliers. The EU push to deregulate gas markets and to impose spor contracts rather than long term contracts went against these strategic efforts. But Europe's dependency on imported energy is what it is, you can only mitigate it. Energy has been more expensive in Europe (and also more taxed), and the continent is generally more energy-efficient than the US. I'm not sure how you could ever get cheap gas in Europe (Russian gas was never cheap - just look at European prices before 2020, they were always significantly higher than in the US)
Offshore wind farms are typically financed with an assumption of a 35-year operating life. No data has come to contradict this. If anything, O&M costs have turned out to be lower than initially budgeted.
"an industry with 30- or 40-year assets" - 1st I've heard that. I thought wind, and especially offshore wind, was not expected to have a lifetime longer than 20 years, even with continual maintenance and replacement of moving parts.
Good article. But I think there is a fundamental set of assumptions that also undermine many of the decisions in the energy sector, particularly wind.
The first assumption is that energy generation should be designed to feed into a national grid. This was/is legitimate in a time of nuclear power (as in France still) and an electrified rail network (again France). But not so much in Britain, where the wind assets are so far from the users of that power that the infrastructure costs, maintenance and power losses are huge, and the grid system is actually connecting many smaller electricity producers that are or could be more local to users.
I would suggest that Britain is better suited to distributed power, such as for every new commercial building having a solar roof, and grants to retrofit all current industrial and commercial building with solar roofs, and grants for communities to fund one or more local wind turbine(s) and a battery storage system, than more investments in very large, distant wind farms and solar farms.
There is another compelling reason: Recent climate research increasingly proposes that AMOC will shut down within the investment and energy production life of new and existing offshore wind turbines, fixed or floating. On one hand, such a disparity between cold seas and hotter land masses in Europe would likely generate stronger and more frequent storms and higher wind speeds that could, in theory, generate more wind power. But it would also cause more damage and more maintenance in more difficult conditions. I also presume that the design criteria for existing installations hasn't taken such future conditions into account, not least because we really have little idea just how powerful such weather conditions might become, or how quickly.
I understand that the current energy financing model requires billing customers for an energy supply via the national grid, however costly and inefficient, and that all energy suppliers are scared that distributed and local power systems may well end their monopolies. But in resilience, efficiency and future-proofing terms, surely it is time for more serious consideration?
Not sure I understand your first point. We have a national grid, and it works, and it is needed (and large grids are much better are managing imbalances, which can more easily be offset against each other at scale than if you need to have perfect local balance everywhere). what is true is that with new generation sources in new locations, the movement of electrons in the existing system changes. Decentralized power like onshore wind and solar actually help the grid in general; large plants like offshore wind may create the need for new connections from that generation to the backbone lines, but that is part of what gets built whenever a large plant is brought online.
I can't comment on AMOC but can tell you that storms in the North Sea are already as violent as it gets, and turbines are also designed to withstand typhoons in Taiwan, so strong winds is something that can and will be managed.
National grids are not costly and inefficient, they are the exact opposite, actually
Maybe the British Government can help de-risk the sector through Great British Energy, though we shall have to wait for that. Maybe also some of us in Aberdeen can drop into the new office and ask!
Wind power is an expensive, forever subsidised dud without unaffordable & unsourceable storage and will never better, or even match the efficiency, reliability or affordability of coal, gas or nuclear generated electricity
Two comments
1) blaming EDF for the European energy crisis is misleading and wrong. The energy sector is a very complicated market and saying one thing caused a crisis is overlooking what renewables and the Ukraine War did.
2) fossil fuels are expensive because of the EUs over reliance on Russian gas . Natural gas is at all time lows here in the US.
The European energy crisis was self inflicted Trying to supply electricity with unreliable and intermittent sources is a ludicrous idea.
Thanks for the response.
I was aware of the corrosion issues that forced the shutdown of several EDF reactors that were of the generation affected by the piping design problem.
Germany and the UK are pursuing a rapid expansion of renewables and their electricity prices are the highest in Europe.
Spot market prices just hit 1000 euros per kWh. Norway minister? called it a “shit” situation.,
Germany is losing their industrial production because of energy prices.
The German chancellor just got a vote of no confidence
Germany is in major trouble because of their green energy policies.
Temporary price spikes are just that, temporary - they are the mechanism that brings about the "peakers" and other capacity that is rarely used and thus needs to be paid handsomely when it is actually needed. This summer people were complaining about negative prices. But both are normal things in the power spot markets, meant to ensure that supply-demand is efficiently met at all times.
Europe is a net energy importer, it is dependent on nasty suppliers and the vagaries of geopolitics. Moving to renewables is smart in that context, but it's only halfway done. It helped save money in 2022-23 (the energy price increases would have been worse) but this was overshadowed by the French nuclear problems coming on top of the gas cuts.
Germany is not in trouble because of their green policies - it is the one bright spot right now for their future well being
One bright spot!?
Germany is de-industrializing right before your eyes. Electricity generation is dropping due to less demand. Electricity Prices in Germany are the highest in Europe. If you think that’s a bright spot, you’ve been brainwashed.
Thanks for your comment.
1) Of course the energy market is complex, but in the power sector in 2022 the biggest problem was the 100 TWh of generation missing over the year from EDF's nuclear fleet. A lot of it was bad luck (regular maintenance delayed due to covid, plus the unexpected maintenance for the corrosion issues) and the timing could not have been worse. I don't see how you can blame renewables for what happened in 2022; as to the Ukraine war, it led to much higher gas prices, and these translated into higher power prices because gas was the marginal producer more often than usual (due to the missing nuclear TWh)
2) fossil fuels are expensive in Europe because we don't have any, and need to import most of it, whether by pipe from Russia, Algeria or by LNG tankers. European governments (France in particular) have long entered into State-to-State contracts to secure such supplies as much as is possible, and to diversify suppliers. The EU push to deregulate gas markets and to impose spor contracts rather than long term contracts went against these strategic efforts. But Europe's dependency on imported energy is what it is, you can only mitigate it. Energy has been more expensive in Europe (and also more taxed), and the continent is generally more energy-efficient than the US. I'm not sure how you could ever get cheap gas in Europe (Russian gas was never cheap - just look at European prices before 2020, they were always significantly higher than in the US)
Offshore wind farms are typically financed with an assumption of a 35-year operating life. No data has come to contradict this. If anything, O&M costs have turned out to be lower than initially budgeted.
"an industry with 30- or 40-year assets" - 1st I've heard that. I thought wind, and especially offshore wind, was not expected to have a lifetime longer than 20 years, even with continual maintenance and replacement of moving parts.
Good article. But I think there is a fundamental set of assumptions that also undermine many of the decisions in the energy sector, particularly wind.
The first assumption is that energy generation should be designed to feed into a national grid. This was/is legitimate in a time of nuclear power (as in France still) and an electrified rail network (again France). But not so much in Britain, where the wind assets are so far from the users of that power that the infrastructure costs, maintenance and power losses are huge, and the grid system is actually connecting many smaller electricity producers that are or could be more local to users.
I would suggest that Britain is better suited to distributed power, such as for every new commercial building having a solar roof, and grants to retrofit all current industrial and commercial building with solar roofs, and grants for communities to fund one or more local wind turbine(s) and a battery storage system, than more investments in very large, distant wind farms and solar farms.
There is another compelling reason: Recent climate research increasingly proposes that AMOC will shut down within the investment and energy production life of new and existing offshore wind turbines, fixed or floating. On one hand, such a disparity between cold seas and hotter land masses in Europe would likely generate stronger and more frequent storms and higher wind speeds that could, in theory, generate more wind power. But it would also cause more damage and more maintenance in more difficult conditions. I also presume that the design criteria for existing installations hasn't taken such future conditions into account, not least because we really have little idea just how powerful such weather conditions might become, or how quickly.
I understand that the current energy financing model requires billing customers for an energy supply via the national grid, however costly and inefficient, and that all energy suppliers are scared that distributed and local power systems may well end their monopolies. But in resilience, efficiency and future-proofing terms, surely it is time for more serious consideration?
Not sure I understand your first point. We have a national grid, and it works, and it is needed (and large grids are much better are managing imbalances, which can more easily be offset against each other at scale than if you need to have perfect local balance everywhere). what is true is that with new generation sources in new locations, the movement of electrons in the existing system changes. Decentralized power like onshore wind and solar actually help the grid in general; large plants like offshore wind may create the need for new connections from that generation to the backbone lines, but that is part of what gets built whenever a large plant is brought online.
I can't comment on AMOC but can tell you that storms in the North Sea are already as violent as it gets, and turbines are also designed to withstand typhoons in Taiwan, so strong winds is something that can and will be managed.
National grids are not costly and inefficient, they are the exact opposite, actually
A very good article.
Maybe the British Government can help de-risk the sector through Great British Energy, though we shall have to wait for that. Maybe also some of us in Aberdeen can drop into the new office and ask!