zlacker

>>RobinL+(OP)
Curtailment, like negative prices, seems like something that it is hard for people to have constructive conversations about.

Probably the cheapest and best option is to build more wind and not care too much if it increases curtailment.

Yes, all the things mentioned should be looked into and done when it makes financial sense but "wasting wind" is much less a thing to worry about than "burning gas", and I'd rather waste wind than waste money.

>>ZeroGr+k8
Balancing a nationwide power grid is very complex. Some energy sources can be started and stopped instantly, but are limited - water. Others are plentiful, but unpredictable - wind. Others are predictable, but take a long time to start and stop - gas, coal(several hours), nuclear(1 day to start, fast to stop, but very expensive). A balanced grid will need all of them, will need them in quantities which can cover faults in the big producers(a nuclear reactor makes 700-800 MW). They will need them built in the right place, because while more power cables can be built, you can't transfer a lot of power on very long distances, for cost and grid stability reasons.

>>redlea+ud
> but take a long time to start and stop - gas

Despite the insistence that Closed Cycle Gas Turbines can't react quickly, because they're by far the largest component that we could start and stop the UK does in fact very quickly increase and decrease output from the CCGTs. For example this morning 2.79GW at 0600 to 3.89 at 0700.

There are much faster options, batteries, import, even the pumped storage is seconds instead of minutes - if available, but CCGT is just not that slow to change compared to the weather. In that same period the wind power went from 10.9GW to 11.4GW. 500MW is a lot of power but it's not more than 1.1GW

>>tialar+yi
An interesting complicating factor here is that much of the UK's installed base of CCTG stations were built during the 90s with the intention of replacing many of the smaller coal-fired stations, which would typically be doing 2-shift operations (i.e., day and evening). Now, those CCGT stations are increasingly used to counterbalance renewables, and (as you point out) are now running on much shorter cycles than they were designed for.

A report from a few years back (which I'm afraid I've utterly forgotten the source) examined the data on this, and argued that as a result of this changed pattern of use, these CCGT stations were now not achieving nearly the kind of efficiency figures they were designed for, which from a carbon point of view is not good news - we might still be emitting lots of the stuff, but just not getting as much practical benefit from it as we used to.

Now, I'm not meaning to suggest that this is a disaster, or that is somehow invalidates the entire of concept of renewables, but it does point to the need to be careful about what we take to be a useful measure of progress - and that merely the quantity of supply to the grid in GWH isn't necessarily it.

And the article under discussion here is of course picking away at another strand of this same idea - when we connect these generators together, it gives rise to system-level effects, and we need to be thinking about the outcomes, both beneficial and harmful, in system-level terms as well.

(Edited for spelling.)