Pensioners forum LetsChat

Matt Ridley has written an excellent article in this week's Spectator about the bizarre rebellion within the Conservative Parliamentary Party whereby various prominent MPs, including Boris Johnson, Theresa May and Michael Gove, are demanding an end to the ban on on-shore wind farms on the grounds that it is a reliable source of sustainable energy that is cheap and getting cheaper. This is particularly urgent, the rebels argue, given the impact of the war in Ukraine on gas prices.

Why is the rebellion bizarre? Let Matt count the ways.

There is no ban on wind farms – it is actually a bog-standard planning requirement that they be confined to areas designated for that purpose and with community support. Nor do they offer a cheap solution: the costs are high and rising. In fact, relying on the wind for power would guarantee that electricity is expensive for ever, because wind's unreliability poisons the market, driving up the price of gas-fired power too.

This week the prices offered to anybody – anybody! – who could guarantee to supply power on the chilly, windless evening of 29 November shot up briefly to about £1,100 per megawatt-hour (MWh), more than ten times the normal rate. Demand was forecast to peak at 41.2 gigawatts, supply at 40.7. In the words of Mr Micawber: result, misery. At such a price, enough supply did indeed come out of the woodwork, but not from the wind industry, which can't just turn on the wind when it wants. Growing reliance on unreliable wind has left Britain paying sky-high prices on still, cold days. Remember when the secretary of state for business used to pose for the cameras while blowing up old coal power stations? They would be handy this winter.

The Ukraine war has driven gas prices higher, but, says Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch, it would be daft to assume that this is a permanent state of affairs and design a policy on the assumption that wind will be cheaper than gas in the future.

Claims that onshore wind is cheap come thick and fast from politicians in thrall to the most well oiled of crony-capitalist industries, the wind merchants. The claims are not supported by the accounts of onshore wind farms, which indicate a breakeven cost of around £80/MWh for the very cheapest farms. And this, note, is for the efficient wind farms with 200-metre turbines (twice the typical height), located in the windiest sites and spaced at least 1,200 metres apart so they don't they steal each other's wind. The cost estimate doesn't even count the need to carefully manage backup power generation for those times and places where the wind is not blowing hard enough, or blowing too hard. Nor does it count the cost of building and running transmission lines from remote wind farms to places where people actually live.

Wind farm accounts also show that this cost is rising, not falling, presumably due to such grid constraints, the fact that the best sites have gone, and the rising costs of steel, concrete, copper and neodymium making new machines pricier. Yet even £80/MWh is nearly double the cost of gas-fired power at the long-term average price of gas.

But that is if gas is allowed to supply electricity continuously without much interruption. If you keep telling gas power stations to switch off because the wind is blowing, as we do, then they will have to (and do) charge more to cover the inefficiency of heating up and cooling down the gas turbines. The more wind we add, the higher the price of gas-fired power. In this way, wind locks in high electricity prices, hastening the deindustrialisation of Britain, or what's left of it.

Full story (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-tories-wind-power-delusion/)

This is becoming a situation where you either believe or you don't. I must admit I was under the impression that gas fired power stations used steam turbines and they have to keep the boilers hot. There are some local power stations that burn used cooking oil in marine engines but their capacity is small and is mostly used for a particular scheme.

From the grid watch page


Obviously energy is used to warm them up and during that time there is no electricity produced

Thanks that's cleared that one up.

Now it's brass monkey weather again and the wind is dropping. Because of government policy we are more and more dependent on gas. If we thought we  could run on wind and sunshine we have to think again. Although there are several practical ways of storing energy, many people believe that we could build a chemical battery to cover calm nights. Apparently the largest battery in the world is in Australia and holds enough charge for the relatively small scheme there for 3 hours.

No matter how electricity is stored it first has to be generated.

No need to worry about power. Rishi has authorised more of them to be built onshore. They mentioned there was low hanging fruit of sites that will generate 2.65GW (iirc).

Contracts are of course sweetened by still paying the owners when either the wind doesn't blow so they produce nothing or when their surplus can't be used so they get shut down.

The numbers suggest we have maybe 45GW peak demand and 35% of that or 15GW wind capacity at full tilt. The other day wind was providing less than 1% of demand. Perhaps the new onshore turbines mean we will be able to get a full 1% of demand when the wind don't blow. Reassuring.

Not sure what the word for this type of policy is, but here is an extremely expensive machine which clearly isn't fit for purpose, so not only do we keep the ones we already have but build more. maybe it is a sign of madness.

it's called 'there's no good reason, it's just our policy'

The a big overlooked problem with wind turbines is they have to be shut down when it's too windy, so combined with low / no wind speed the availability of wind turbines to actually generate electricity is very limited.  

The other amusing garbage they trot out is that it gets cheaper all the time to produce wind energy. Maybe it does but the buyers (us) don't benefit as the price they contractually charge is based on the market price of gas.

This is all one huge con designed to enrich the companies that run the bloody things. I'm unsure why the greenies are so keen on them considering they chomp up bats and birds of prey by the thousand.

I've just checked and as it's a rather cold dull calm day, wind farms are providing 2% and solar farms are providing another 2% of demand, which is understandably quite high for a Sunday but the peak demand usually comes around 6 pm after the sun has long gone down.

And now that the sun has gone down demand has reached almost 44GW and the windmills are hardly making 1%. They are quite likely to freeze up if they stand still now.

All we need is 100 times the number. Well until the delivered power drops further I guess. Perhaps we could set up a load of diesel engines with propellers to boost the wind...

That sounds like a plan. In this cold weather the windmills will need heating. Can they generate enough power to keep themselves warm, i wonder.

We could do that by burning oil in big barrels. Like they did to disperse fog in WW2

dead calm, minus 8C forecast for this evening - Before it got dark I could see the windmills on the hills a few miles away - absolutely stationary

Interesting to see that demand dropped significantly yesterday between 1800 and 1900 so people did sit in the dark to save the grid.

(https://i.postimg.cc/3wNLMNQ4/2022-12-12-Grid.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)

December 13, 2022, 07:40:22 AM
Mind you it wasn't our grid that was saved, as all they did was reduce direct imports.

Quote from: Ashy on December 13, 2022, 07:27:52 AMInteresting to see that demand dropped significantly yesterday between 1800 and 1900 so people did sit in the dark to save the grid.

(https://i.postimg.cc/3wNLMNQ4/2022-12-12-Grid.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)

December 13, 2022, 07:40:22 AM
Mind you it wasn't our grid that was saved, as all they did was reduce direct imports.

Apparently we were sat in the dark to help the French grid that was having a supply issue.

December 13, 2022, 08:43:58 AM

Quote from: klondike on December 11, 2022, 06:04:11 PMAll we need is 100 times the number. Well until the delivered power drops further I guess. Perhaps we could set up a load of diesel engines with propellers to boost the wind...

Excellent idea, stick diesel engines in the wind turbine nacelles.

The tree-huggers will see the blades rotating & will be none the wiser.

The offer was from 1700 to 1900 from Octopus last night.

I put internet kit on my UPS, turn off fridge, cctv, CH (save the pump) during bribe periods plus only use one wall light. It saves next to nothing and earns me next to nothing. I only do it to get their results of how many joined and what the total saving was. I use either a tablet or chromebook or listen to an audiobook on my phone during the time which I may well have done anyway.

There is nothing to stop you opting in and doing nothing.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for being part of our Saving Sessions last week. Here's a quick look at the difference your efforts made:

You saved 0.399kWh on 30th November, and 0.372kWh on 1st December. That's earned you 1392 OctoPoints – worth £1.74.
Together, Octopus customers saved 443MWh of electricity. That's like all the homes in Leicester and Brighton going off-grid for an hour, saving around 111,122kg of CO2 emissions.
Go to Saving Session results
With many more Saving Sessions to come this Winter, you'll have plenty more chances to earn rewards and help make energy cheaper and greener for everyone.

We'll add your OctoPoints to your dashboard shortly, and soon after that, you'll be able to redeem them for energy credit in pounds and pence.

Super Saver Bonuses

Did you opt in to the last Session as well? If so, you're on a streak! You'll earn 100 extra OctoPoints for every Session you streak in. They'll be on your OctoPoints page really soon.

A streak also earns you eight more entries in the draw to win our £500 spot prize (your extra entries roll over for as long as you keep your streak up, so keep opting in for loads of chances to win). Speaking of which...

Congratulations to Geoff in Liverpool and Ian in Lancashire who won our spot prizes in Sessions #3 and #4: 400,000 OctoPoints — a cool £500 — just for opting in!

There's more results on your Saving Sessions dashboard, and for information on how we calculated all this, head to our FAQs.

That's all for now: stay tuned for your next Saving Session.   

Love and power,

Pete Miller

Head of Customer Experience

Octopus Energy

all that to save £1.74? No thanks

It amuses me and it is hardly any effort - just a few switches. No real inconvenience either come to that. I am waiting to see how long it is before nobody bothers. I doubt they would admit that though. The first email mentioned numbers. That one doesn't.

well, if I tuned my heating off for two hours I would be a very unhappy bunny. Incidentally, I have a feeling that the voltage is down - I'm sure my heaters aren't throwing out as much heat as usual

I doubt that the voltage is down. I have a plug in meter that checks consumption etc and that has never showed the voltage down. It's more likely the fact it's a lot colder outside than usual that you think the power is low.

If I felt cold I'd turn the CH back on. The pump won't use much anyway. All of the trials apart from the one yesterday were one hour. I didn't start on yesterday's til about 5:30 anyway thanks to the useless NHS. I had a a hospital appointment for 2o'clock and got called in at a quarter to five  :nooo:

Well don't spend all your £1.74 at once, save some for a rainy day. Can I also tell you how much CCO2 you lot saved? None, see the graph, nothing changed here.

I haven't noticed any change in electrical power where I am but this could probably vary from one  place to another. It's usually supplied at 240V but described as 230V and the permissible variation is something like +23 -13.8 volts without looking it up as per eu standard. It's also their stupid idea to have brown and blue wires.

Oh they are very keen to rabbit on about CO2 savings in the emails. I couldn't give a rats fart about that. I'm just keen to see when everybody gives up on this saving nonsense and I have to at least subscribe to it to get the info. I could just not bother with doing anything to save usage but I thought I'd show willing.

They pay £2.25 per kwh saved which is 6.8 times the capped charge. Farage said that yesterday at peak they were paying one of the gas generators £6,000 per megawatt hour (£6 per kwh) so they can potentially make a handsome profit on those customer reductions at the rate they pay.

Mine comes in at 240v give or take.

I bunged that meter in and in fact it has been all over the place during the day. I thought before it always showed 240 or thereabouts but today I've seen numbers between 230 and 245. I doubt that the big generators vary much in their voltage delivery so I'm guessing it must be voltage drops across the various cables at different levels depending on a varying local load. 

Not sure if it actually did that before as I've never taken that much of an interest.

I have caved and put the heating on the auto setting untill this freezing snap has passed. I turned them down from 3 bars to 2 bars in the hope It will save a wee bit but the radiators don't feel any cooler to touch.  :hmm:

this is the sixth day in succession with hardly a breath of wind and temperatures below freezing. Can't see the windmills yet - still dark - but I doubt they will be doing anything.

Monday's graph from Gridwatch showed a definite notch around 6 pm but yesterday's showed nothing similar so maybe everyone has given up already.

Relatively warm weather forecast for next week with some rain. Must be winter.

Quote from: Ashy on December 16, 2022, 08:16:19 AMMonday's graph from Gridwatch showed a definite notch around 6 pm but yesterday's showed nothing similar so maybe everyone has given up already.

Relatively warm weather forecast for next week with some rain. Must be winter.

Bring it on  !!!

Quote from: Ashy on December 16, 2022, 08:16:19 AMMonday's graph from Gridwatch showed a definite notch around 6 pm but yesterday's showed nothing similar so maybe everyone has given up already.

They don't run the self sacrifice every day. There have been 5 so far 4 of an hour each and one of two hours. I'm not even sure how many providers are running them. If they ran it every day there would be no savings to be made so no tiny bribe as you are measured against your previous 10 day average. Joining makes no economic sense. It is only greenies, the very hard up and weird sods like me who want to get the results data easily that participate.

It's Saturday 17th December and the forecast for the next few days is much more wind, in fact you can hardly see the British Isles for isobars on the pressure chart. But if we check out Spain and Italy we see no isobars across the whole country. Surely they haven't bought into this delusion?

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/surface-pressure/

Wikipedia has a page on this. It also mentions us and UK offshore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_European_Union


United Kingdom
By the beginning of March 2022, the UK had 11,091 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of over 24.6 gigawatts (GW): 14.1 GW of onshore capacity and 10.4 GW of offshore capacity,[34] the sixth largest capacity of any country in 2019.[35]

1.8 GW of new wind power capacity was brought online during 2012, a 30% increase of the total UK installed capacity. 2012 was a significant year for the offshore wind industry with 4 large wind farms becoming operational with over 1.1 GW of generating capability coming on stream.[36]

Through the Renewables Obligation, British electricity suppliers are now required by law to provide a proportion of their sales from renewable sources such as wind power or pay a penalty fee. The supplier then receives a Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROC) for each MW·h of electricity they have purchased.[37] Within the United Kingdom, wind power is the second largest source of renewable energy after biomass.[38]

Wind power is expected to continue growing in the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future – RenewableUK estimated in 2010 that more than 2,000 MW of capacity would be deployed per year for the next five years.[39] By 2020, the United Kingdom is expected to have more than 28,000 MW of wind capacity.[40] By 2050, UK government plans to cut carbon emissions to zero by using wind power.[41]

2021
EU-28/27        188,892
Germany 64,040
Spain  28,196
France  19,081
Sweden  12,097
Italy  11,108
Netherlands    8,165
Denmark 7,178
Poland  7,116
Portugal        5,612
Belgium 5,002
Greece  4,452
Ireland 4,405
Finland 3,328
Austria 3,300
Romania 3,029
Croatia 990
Bulgaria        707
Lithuania      668
Czech Republic  337
Hungary 329
Estonia 320
Luxembourg      168
Cyprus  158
Latvia  66
Slovenia        3
Slovakia        3
Malta  0

EU-28/27 Offshore      15,588
UK      26,812
Turkey  10,750
Norway  4,655
Russia  2,043
Ukraine 1,673
Serbia  374
Kosovo  137
Bosnia and Herzegovina  135
Montenegro      118
Switzerland    87
North Macedonia 37
Faroe Islands
Belarus
Iceland
Europe Offshore 28,333
Europe  235,712

It includes a section on Public Opinion. Not sure how much this will change as the bills come in and if the lights go off later. It seems the failure of renewable has been ridden this time so maybe we will be  lucky

Public opinion
Recent public opinion surveys about wind power at both the EU and the country level shows that wind energy, being a clean and renewable energy source, is traditionally linked to very strong and stable levels of public support. About 80 per cent of EU citizens support wind power.[6] Despite overwhelming popular support in the abstract, wind farm projects at times raise local opposition, especially in locations closer to populations or to woodland wildlife. For instance, a wind project in Ripfjallet, Sweden in 2020 has been opposed by a group of local residents who wish to maintain the historical landscape. They succeeded in arranging a local referendum scheduled for 22 June 2020 to determine the future of the project. In Germany, a government agency found that there were 325 active lawsuits against wind projects as of January 2020, often on the basis of protecting ecology and wildlife.[46]

(https://i.postimg.cc/sxWnQKdc/poll.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)

I see from gridwatch that we have coal up and running again. 
1.37GW 3.2% right now
The just stop oil crew will have to change their name.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

If we could only make the wind blow when we need electricity all would be well.
Politicians like it because we can have as much as we want when we don't need it.
:upvote: Interesting article

There's enough hot air coming from this bloody government to power up a few.  :waiting:

Now today the wind is blowing a hoolie and making electricity - for the next couple of days anyway.

Aren't Gov surveys fun, just look how they never show any opposition ever to HMG opinion on anything, anywhere. I wonder why? :lipsrsealed:

Quote from: Alex on December 18, 2022, 01:05:14 PMThere's enough hot air coming from this bloody government to power up a few.  :waiting:

Quote from: Ashy on December 18, 2022, 02:04:05 PMNow today the wind is blowing a hoolie and making electricity - for the next couple of days anyway.

Then they have to turn them off as there's too much generated energy and it can't be stored. Meanwhile the wind farm owners get paid for it anyway and instead of switching off they divert what the Grid can't take to 'private buyers' and undercut the grid, with the money they pay them! Real live 'Boris Bollocks'.

https://news.stv.tv/scotland/electricity-customers-paid-windfarms-1bn-to-switch-off-turbines (https://news.stv.tv/scotland/electricity-customers-paid-windfarms-1bn-to-switch-off-turbines)

Quote from: Ashy on December 18, 2022, 02:04:05 PMNow today the wind is blowing a hoolie and making electricity - for the next couple of days anyway.

Still not as much as gas though....

Well! Today, and for the next couple of days, the wind is quite strong and demand is relatively light, so wind is making 16GW which is more than half the demand. That will save some gas. That's probably the best way to store energy as we have very limited means of storing electricity; in any case we still consumed twice as much as the wind allowed us.

But the forecast for early January shows the wind dropping again, and we still can't make it blow just because we want a bit more, which, of course, we shall do.

Gridwatch shows no solar production at all, which figure I think is unreliable while the universities are closed due to the way they are compiled.

Tonight the wind is dropping and the air's getting cold. I do hope they've paid the gas bill. I've heard we're going to ship Russian gas in from India now.

Quote from: klondike on December 17, 2022, 01:21:07 PMI see from gridwatch that we have coal up and running again.
1.37GW 3.2% right now
The just stop oil crew will have to change their name.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

OK, that's back a few weeks, but I expect that the proportion of CCGT supply is probably very similar today.
As I have said many times, we have millions of coal under our feet, so why not use it?  Other countries do, even our close neighbour, Germany.
It is high time that this 'net zero' con-game is finally accepted as being nonsense.
The protesters would be far better employed going to China to try to persuade them!

It's not a new issue, it's centuries old.

Sailing ships could become becalmed for hours, days or weeks when the wind dropped, hence the verse that goes "When the wind didn't blow & the ship wouldn't go, they'd get Carter the farter to start her".

Millenia old...

(https://www.1999.co.jp/itbig58/10583650.jpg)

Quote from: klondike on January 16, 2023, 10:03:38 AMMillenia old...

(https://www.1999.co.jp/itbig58/10583650.jpg)

Yep, even then they realised that they needed other forms of energy.

I thought they used women, & then I realised they used oars & not whores.

:grin:

 :grin:  :grin:  :grin:

Anything that Boris Johnson promotes "make the UK the Saudi Arabia of wind" is bound to be redolent of falsehood and schematic lying, cos thats all he does ...

Relying on wind turbines to produce our electricity is a nonsense.
They could cover the entire country in windmills in the hope of producing ever more electricity even in excess of our total needs.  However, if the wind isn't blowing that potential electricity production would be lost for the simple reason that we can't store electricity, at least in meaningful amounts.

In my opinion, the only long-term solution is either to build many more nuclear power stations (possibly SMRs for the simple reason that we apparently no longer know how to build traditional full-sized ones), or forget our nonsensical 'green' incentives and begin using coal, gas, or oil again, all of which we have in abundance under our feet.

The latter option is perfectly viable and could have been begun years ago but for Greta the Goblin and her idiotic followers, not to mention our naive politicians who have been stupid enough to fall for it.

Perhaps we should fit them up with treadmills and make the illegals earn their keep?

If that became rule over here I'd have everything on 24/7 ...

Quote from: Ashy on January 15, 2023, 04:03:54 PMTonight the wind is dropping and the air's getting cold. I do hope they've paid the gas bill. I've heard we're going to ship Russian gas in from India now.

Why on earth would we ship Russian gas from India who bought gas during the time every other country was boycotting it?

Oh, hang on, I forgot, our PM's an ethnic Indian.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/14/india-offers-russian-oil-back-door-britain/

Yes and there's plenty of Tory Ministers who are experienced tracker's up the back passage as well of course!  Suits everyone and particularly those whose heads can turn through 180 degrees.

No doubt 'factored' by 'Tonto's father in law to get his relative and 'psycho' through the wall next door off the 'Cap' they're wanting to dump first chance, by getting cheaper gas and diesel fuel!

Volt´e face or what - pathetic. Of course the Wokes and the BBC will see it off from their ideological pulpits of virtue anyway and we don't want to upset Mr 'squeaky' clean Zelenskyy either of course - oh dear no!

So can we expect energy prices not to increase in April? 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/16/ftse-100-markets-live-news-energy-house-prices-uk-debt/

Quote from: Diasi on January 16, 2023, 10:22:25 PMSo can we expect energy prices not to increase in April?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/16/ftse-100-markets-live-news-energy-house-prices-uk-debt/

Not a chance, through the roof I expect, especially if the wind don't blow over there?

I see that now it is cold again and the wind is falling... 

Demand is up 
Gas is providing close to 50% (something they always shout about if the wind manages it) 
They have fired up the coal power stations again.

There was a wind fanatic on last nights's Farage. He struck me as being a bug eyed loon but I guess I'm biased. I reckon there will be a roaring trade in new gas boilers in 7 years time - remember to book yours early.

Quote from: Diasi on January 16, 2023, 07:54:44 PMWhy on earth would we ship Russian gas from India who bought gas during the time every other country was boycotting it?

Oh, hang on, I forgot, our PM's an ethnic Indian.

It's the equivalent of money laundering. Might even be money laundering. We can honestly say that we did not buy gas from Russia. Not that I care very much where it came from, it came out of a gas pipe as far as I am concerned.

Quote from: klondike on January 17, 2023, 09:49:37 AMI see that now it is cold again and the wind is falling...

Demand is up
Gas is providing close to 50% (something they always shout about if the wind manages it)
They have fired up the coal power stations again.

There was a wind fanatic on last nights's Farage. He struck me as being a bug eyed loon but I guess I'm biased. I reckon there will be a roaring trade in new gas boilers in 7 years time - remember to book yours early.

Good.
A shame that they only manage to do this when things become desperate.
Why don't we use coal regularly, just as they do in Germany.  Strange how German coal-fired power stations don't seem to be damaging our atmosphere.
Oh yes.  The Chinese ones don't seem to be making much of an effect here either.

Its nothing to do with saving the planet. The globalists want control by fear and ration to satiate their need for power, which they will get as only a small percentage of the world population perceive the threat. Covid was a trial, an exercise in fright and it's still working for them. Glad I'm sitting nearer the exit than when I came in!