ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION and Green Fantasies

[aubrey]

Dialysis units do have backup; the power went out a couple of times while I was at Guy's, but the machines didn't stop. (Though when the water went we all had to go to a place in New Cross; I'd already been needled, but they had to come out and be redone when we'd found the new place - which actually took some time as none of us had been there before).

We had a power cut here a couple of weeks ago.

Did you like that video, though?

I have a picture somewhere of an evil-looking wind farm from the Daily Mail. I'll try and find it later.

[marchesarosa]

I watched the YouTube clip, aubrey. Interesting. Were they supposed to be latter-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

Tonight the wind turbines are really rolling! 9.8% of the UK's electricity generation!

I guess the grid has shut down some of the efficient thermal production to make room for this rare and intermittent glut of wind! No wonder the thermal operators and potential thermal operators are unwilling to invest in more capacity when they to have to ramp their production inefficiently up and down just to facilate this wind fad.

After all, capitalism IS about efficient production if it's about anything at all. Take efficiency out of the equation and why would anyone want to play ball with ideological green nut-cases prating around with wind at massively subsidised expense and for no good reason?

[aubrey]

Not Don Quixote and Sancho, Panza, no; German soldiers pointlessly guarding a small base in Greece at the end of the war.

Why is it only Green policies that are idealogical? Of course, they are; but so are all other energy policies.

Capitalism might be about efficient production, but it is not very efficient otherwise.

[marchesarosa]

I think you are showing yourself to be unable to juggle intellectually the REAL problems of grid energy distribution from wind and the REAL impact it has on our energy security and general well-being with the putative, over-hyped problems of CO2 which are increasingly being scaled down by sensible scientists who understand the fundamentals.

Sometimes you just have to make a decision, stop ideologising, and say THIS REAL problem is more pressing than THAT PREDICTED one. Unfortunately Greens are not known for their mental flexibility nor their prioritising capacity. They are one trick ponies and things are more complicated than this type of animal can cope with.

If anything is "ideological" or self-serving, it is the way big business, big banking and big landowners have jumped on the highly subsidised wind gravy train of the West urged on by unaccountable, undemocratic NGOs like Greenpeace and WWF who have worked their way into government and the IPCC.

Wind is not a technology sector that could exist without massive public subsidy because it does not deliver the goods that the world population needs. Shunt it into the siding of scientific history where it belongs like the mighty developing economies of the world are doing with their dash for coal, nuclear and gas.

Why do you think everyone but the Greens are wrong in reading the future, aubrey? Being "caring" does not make you right.

[marchesarosa]

Wind is now producing 10.8% of UK electricity. Coal and gas have been ramped down to accommodate it.

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Reliabe, cheap, efficient coal and gas power has been turned off to make space on the grid for this expensive, inefficient Green dream of "free" power.

[aubrey]

Gas and coal are not that reliable, or cheap, are they?

And who elected the oil companies' paid lobbyists?

The point is, you can't accuse everyone who doesn't agree with you of being idealogical motivated without acknowledging the ideology on your own side: just because someone doesn't agree with you does not mean that they're wilfully wrong.

[marchesarosa]

The world is awash with coal, oil and gas reserves, Aubrey. Especially as new technologies make accessing them easier.

Not heard of Norway's reserves under the North Sea? What planet are you living on?

3000 billion tons of coal off Norway's coastline
www.resilience.org/stories/2005-12-28/3000-billion-tons-coal-norways-coastline

[marchesarosa]

Bjorn Lombord opines on Earth Hour this weekend

NEW YORK – On the evening of March 23, 1.3 billion people will go without light at 8:30, and at 9:30, and at 10:30, and for the rest of the night – just like every other night of the year. With no access to electricity, darkness after sunset is a constant reality for these people.

On the same evening, another billion will participate in the environmental event “Earth Hour” by turning off their lights from 8:30-9:30.

The organizers say that they are providing a way to demonstrate one’s desire to “do something” about global warming. But the stark reality is that Earth Hour teaches all the wrong lessons, and actually increases CO2 emissions. It may inspire virtuous feelings, but its vain symbolism reveals exactly what is wrong with today’s feel-good environmentalism.
CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphEarth Hour teaches us that tackling global warming is easy. Yet, by switching off the lights, all we are doing is making it harder to see.

Notice that you have not been asked to switch off anything really inconvenient, like your heating or air conditioning, television, computer, mobile phone, or any of the myriad technologies that depend on affordable, plentiful energy electricity and make modern life possible. If switching off the lights for one hour per year really were beneficial, why would we not do it for the other 8,759?

Hypothetically, switching off the lights for an hour would cut CO2 emissions from power plants around the world. But, even if everyone in the entire world cut all residential lighting, and this translated entirely into CO2 reduction, it would be the equivalent of China pausing its CO2 emissions for less than four minutes. In fact, Earth Hour will cause emissions to increase.

As the United Kingdom’s National Grid operators have found, a small decline in electricity consumption does not translate into less energy being pumped into the grid, and therefore will not reduce emissions. Moreover, during Earth Hour, any significant drop in electricity demand will entail a reduction in CO2 emissions during the hour, but it will be offset by the surge from firing up coal or gas stations to restore electricity supplies afterwards.

And the cozy candles that many participants will light, which seem so natural and environmentally friendly, are still fossil fuels – and almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Using one candle for each switched-off bulb cancels out even the theoretical CO2 reduction; using two candles means that you emit more CO2.

Electricity has given humanity huge benefits. Almost three billion people still burn dung, twigs, and other traditional fuels indoors to cook and keep warm, generating noxious fumes that kill an estimated two million people each year, mostly women and children. Likewise, just a hundred years ago, the average American family spent six hours each week during cold months shoveling six tons of coal into the furnace (not to mention cleaning the coal dust from carpets, furniture, curtains, and bedclothes). In the developed world today, electric stoves and heaters have banished indoor air pollution.

Similarly, electricity has allowed us to mechanize much of our world, ending most backbreaking work. The washing machine liberated women from spending endless hours carrying water and beating clothing on scrub boards. The refrigerator made it possible for almost everyone to eat more fruits and vegetables, and simply to stop eating rotten food, which is the main reason why the most prevalent cancer for men in the United States in 1930, stomach cancer, is the least prevalent now.

Electricity has allowed us to irrigate fields and synthesize fertilizer from air. The light that it powers has enabled us to have active, productive lives past sunset. The electricity that people in rich countries consume is, on average, equivalent to the energy of 56 servants helping them. Even people in Sub-Saharan Africa have electricity equivalent to about three servants. They need more of it, not less.

This is relevant not only for the world’s poor. Because of rising energy prices from green subsidies, 800,000 German households can no longer pay their electricity bills. In the UK, there are now over five million fuel-poor people, and the country’s electricity regulator now publicly worries that environmental targets could lead to blackouts in less than nine months.

Today, we produce only a small fraction of the energy that we need from solar and wind – 0.7% from wind and just 0.1% from solar. These technologies currently are too expensive. They are also unreliable (we still have no idea what to do when the wind is not blowing). Even with optimistic assumptions, the International Energy Agency estimates that, by 2035, we will produce just 2.4% of our energy from wind and 0.8% from solar.

To green the world’s energy, we should abandon the old-fashioned policy of subsidizing unreliable solar and wind – a policy that has failed for 20 years, and that will fail for the next 22. Instead, we should focus on inventing new, more efficient green technologies to outcompete fossil fuels.

If we really want a sustainable future for all of humanity and our planet, we shouldn’t plunge ourselves back into darkness. Tackling climate change by turning off the lights and eating dinner by candlelight smacks of the “let them eat cake” approach to the world’s problems that appeals only to well-electrified, comfortable elites.

Focusing on green R&D might not feel as good as participating in a global gabfest with flashlights and good intentions, but it is a much brighter idea.

Read more at www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/earth-hour-s-counterproductive-symbolism-by-bj-rn-lomborg#jprYiWvMdzHFPAoY.99

[marchesarosa]

Not Don Quixote and Sancho, Panza, no

I think you missed the allusion to Don Quixote tilting at windmills when the younger soldier started firing off his gun wildly when he was taken by surprise at the array of windmills. Made of timber and fabric, presumably to pump water, they are a far cry from modern turbines.

[marchesarosa]

Britain faces gas supply crisis as storage runs dry




By Henning Gloystein
LONDON | Thu Mar 21, 2013 4:17pm GMT

(Reuters) - Britain is grappling with a potential gas supply crisis as a late blast of winter depletes stored reserves, coal power plants close and pending maintenance in Norway threatens to further squeeze supply.

The country risks running out of stored gas by April 8 based on the fall in its reserves seen since the cold hit at the beginning of March, Reuters calculations show. (see chart)

Gas storage sites have been depleted by 90 percent, with the equivalent of less than two days' consumption remaining, data from Gas Infrastructure Europe shows.

If the cold persists, as is forecast, the UK may need to cut gas supplies to some big industrial customers, as it did in 2010 at a time of severe gas shortages.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said it was monitoring the situation closely.

"Our market has spare import capacity built in. However, we take gas security and the risk of harmful price spikes seriously and monitor price and supply developments working closely with National Grid," said Emily Towers, DECC's spokeswoman responsible for energy supply and emergency planning.

"We are working with (the regulator) Ofgem to review our market arrangements ...At the same time, we are diversifying our energy mix to reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels and putting in place policies to cut energy demand."

The rapid depletion of gas storage sites has prompted operator Centrica, Britain's biggest power and gas provider, to restrict withdrawals owing to falling reservoir pressure, in a sign of the growing strain on the system.

NORWAY MAINTENANCE

Centrica took action this week, restricting withdrawals from its Rough storage site, Britain's largest, to 37 million cubic metres per day (mcm) from 42 mcm.

Traders expect further withdrawal restrictions over the coming days but said this may not be sufficient to stop the depletion if the cold persists.

Supplier Norway expects to idle around 40 mcm of its offshore gas infrastructure for maintenance from April 1, piling further pressure on Britain's gas market.

A core problem is that Britain has far less gas storage capacity than its peers - 15 days' worth of demand when full versus more than 100 days' worth in France and Germany.

"The lack of incentives for storage investment appears indicative of the UK's wider gas sector, where investors currently see regulatory risk as an insurmountable hurdle," said Roderick Bruce, analyst at IHS Global Insight.

UK PLANTS CLOSING

There has also been a shortage in investment in power generation, and ageing British coal plants that have exhausted their operating lives are being closed, further constraining energy supply.

Scottish Power's 1,200 megawatt (MW) Cockenzie power station near Edinburgh stopped operating after 45 years of service this month.

The British subsidiary of Germany's RWE will shut its 2,000-MW Didcot facility for good this month as well.

There is also little relief seen in the weather forecast, with temperatures to remain below seasonal norms until at least mid-April, weather analysts at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon said. (see chart)

Britain's Met Office has warned of "cold or very cold" weather into next week, while northern Britain "may possibly experience colder than average conditions during April with a risk of overnight frosts and perhaps further snowfall".

PRICE SPIKES

Wholesale gas prices in Britain have spiked to near-record highs in March as traders fear supply disruptions.

"We are already importing at record levels from Norway and continental Europe, and there is not a lot of LNG that could fill the gap in the short-term," one UK-based gas trader said.

While the high gas prices could attract additional shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG), ships from Qatar, the world's top LNG exporter, take around two weeks to reach Britain.

Two LNG tankers are scheduled to arrive in Britain by the end of the month, but traders said more would be needed.

"We need more gas, it's that simple, but any Qatari supplies sent now would come too late to address the current shortage," another gas trader said. "The only hope is to receive re-exports from somewhere in Europe where gas demand is not currently so high."

Spanish and Italian LNG terminals have previously re-exported LNG cargoes, but temperatures in Spain and Italy are unusually low there, too.

(Additional reporting by Oleg Vukmanovic; editing by Jason Neely)

[marchesarosa]

"Efficiency" is 99% of the game when you are talking about keeping the planet warm, housed and fed, aubrey. Don't knock it.

[aubrey]

Mar 22, 2013 11:56:49 GMT marchesarosa said:

Not Don Quixote and Sancho, Panza, no

I think you missed the allusion to Don Quixote tilting at windmills when the younger soldier started firing off his gun wildly when he was taken by surprise at the array of windmills. Made of timber and fabric, presumably to pump water, they are a far cry from modern turbines.

I knew what you meant, and I knew what the windmills were for. I expect there were people complaining about how they looked bad, as well.

So, we'll have to buy coal and gas from off of the Norwegians and Russians, then. I can't see anything going wrong with that. Those Russian mafia types especially are very trustworthy.

Efficiency in fuel production is very important for the producers' profits; they're not especially interested in whether some people can pay for the fuel or not, or in keeping up a steady supply. And you know, don't you, that paying for renewables only accounts for a small proportion of the the recent rise in power costs?

Still, it's nice to see people like Joe suddenly becoming concerned about how people on benefits are going to be able to pay their heating bills; for the last 5 years at least he's been saying how we are paid far too much, and shouldn't even get an inflation rise. I expect he'll go back to that once he's not on this subject again. A bit of consistency from him and people like him would be nice.

[marchesarosa]

The Russians supply about 5% of our gas at the moment but I don't see why they should supply any when we can produce our own!

Thing is, we both import and export gas. Seems mad, doesn't it? That's capitalism!

"After spending most of the previous 25 years as a net exporter of energy the UK became a net importer in 2004. The gap between imports and exports has increased since 2004 and this looks set to continue to increase in the future...

There have been increases in demand [for coal] in some recent years when high gas prices have resulted in more coal being used to generate electricity. However, these increases are generally short-lived. Net coal imports made up 9.8% of UK primary energy supply in 2011...

In 2011 the UK’s largest single sources of coal/solid fuel imports were Russia (38%), Columbia (25%) and the US (19%). The major change since 2000 has been in imports from Russia which went from 0.2 to 21 million tonnes in 2008, before falling back to around 12 million tonnes in 2011. UK coal exports are very small in comparisons. Ireland and Germany have been the main markets in recent years...

The main direct source of UK gas imports is from Norway. In 2011 41% of the UK's gas imports came via the pipelines to Norway or connections with the Norwegian gas fields. The opening of the Langeled pipeline in late 2006 has contributed to increases in the volume of gas from Norway. Imports from this source more than doubled between 2006 and 2008. The BBL pipeline to the Netherlands also opened in late 2006 and imports from the Netherlands reached 23% of the total in 2008, before falling back to 16% in 2009 and 12% in 2011. Imports from Norway fell in 2009 and 2011 as LNG sources became much more important. LNG imports from Qatar reached 40% of all imports in 2011. "

Energy imports and exports - Parliament
www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04046.pdf

Useful source of data.

[marchesarosa]

Demand for electricity has dropped markedly (by about a quarter) since yesterday! I wonder why? Perhaps the temperature has risen a bit? It doesn't feel like that here. I have been hugging a hot water bottle for the last week! Maybe the figure is just plain wrong!

The part of the demand met by windmills has also dropped by more than 50% since yesterday. Windmills are currently, this snowy morning, providing 7% of our UK electricity demand. (2.53 GW out of 35.77GW.

I hope you are getting the idea from these bulletins I am supplying (courtesy of this website www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ ) about the unholyvariability in the absolute amount and proportion of electricity production from windmills! The disruption of grid operation to make space for highly variable wind is making the operation of power stations fuelled by gas and coal LESS economical and LESS efficient than they otherwise would be. It is madness. Allied to the failure properly to provide for our gas needs it amounts to a criminally lax energy policy being pursued by the state.

[marchesarosa]

Windmills, this snowy morning, producing 4.2% of our electricity (1.97 GW out of 47.08 GW)