To return to a familiar theme, the reality of intermittency (the wind doesn’t always blow) and the reality that we have yet to develop a scalable technology that can get around that problem means that wind power is an energy resource that is not yet ready for prime time.
Unpalatable reality is something that central planners don’t like to deal with, and so billions continue to be spent on new wind turbines.
This tweet by Bloomberg’s Javier Blas suggests that this may not be the wisest allocation of capital:
Over the last 40 hours, the UK wind power industry has swung from producing 16.4 GW to generating 0.4 GW
The drop in electricity production is equal to, give or take, switching off 14 nuclear power stations. That’s the reason why UK power markets are tight today.
UK network operator National Grid Plc stood down a call on some households to cut energy use as it tries to plug the gap left by a decline in wind generation.
Power prices surged with some hourly contracts for Tuesday almost quadrupling compared to a week ago on Epex Spot SE as wind generation is set to fall away to almost nothing. The tight supply situation brought National Grid to the cusp of needing a new tool that pays some homes to reduce consumption…
National Grid also issued a warning that its buffer of spare capacity will narrow this evening, flagging that the grid is struggling to match demand with enough supply. The warning was quickly canceled but shows the problem the UK has when the wind isn’t blowing.
Prices climbed above £1,200 ($1,445.92) a megawatt-hour for 5-6 p.m. on Tuesday while the day-ahead auction cleared at £384 a megawatt-hour, the highest since Aug. 31. The contract for 7-7:30 p.m. on Monday traded at £721.80 on Epex Spot.
The UK will need to fire up more gas stations to fill the gap left by the drop in wind. Generation is forecast to be as low as 677 megawatts around 6 p.m. on Monday, a peak time for demand. Wind levels won’t perk up until Thursday, Bloomberg’s model shows.
Britain, Morison writes, “is the second-biggest market for offshore wind in the world.”
Great, just great.