On 1 November 2012 Caroline Lucas and James Delingpole appeared for a brief debate about wind power during the last 5 minutes of the Daily Politics.
A transcript is on carbonbrief.org and just in case the link stops working here’s a copy of the transcript.
At one point Caroline Lucas said it doesn’t matter if wind is not blowing over UK as we can get electricity from continental Europe via interconnectors, let’s have a look
| Delingpole | I’m really surprised that Caroline’s defending wind farms. I mean you couldn’t get anything more anti-green than a wind turbine. They kill birds and bats, they drive up energy prices, they’re incredibly inefficient, and they don’t even save CO2. They actually increase CO2. They’re so unreliable – wind being wind, that they require 100% backup by fossil fuel power on spinning reserve. What you get is two forms of electricity being generated at the same time. It’s a disaster. |
| Lucas | That’s a perfect case in point of what i’m saying. James is very entertaining but completely lacking in any factual grounding whatsoever. First of all, you don’t need 100 per cent back up. Second of all, all energy generation needs some back up. Third, if we had interconnectors as we’re now beginning to do to the rest of europe, it means that when it’s not windy in Britain we can make the most of when it is windy in other parts of europe. What’s really driving… |
| Neil | But that’s a big job though, that’s a huge investment – these interconnectors… |
| Lucas | Well it’s a lot less investment than a massive new fleet of nuclear power stations. I mean what James doesn’t say is the kind of energy that he does want… |
Did you spot it?
Caroline Lucas, live on television, stated that there will be times when wind farms don’t work and we have to get our electricity from elsewhere.
Caroline also states that the cost of interconnectors are a lot less than nuclear power stations.
I wonder how she knows?
And I’ve got news for you Caroline
After you’ve built an interconnector it is exactly no use unless you also build some thing to generate electricity to shove down the interconnector – how about a nice French nuclear power station!
The Logic of Caroline Lucas’ Arguement
is that not only do we have to build enough windmills to generate electricity for the UK
but we also have to have enough to supply the rest of Europe when the wind’s not blowing there.
Fairs fair – if we expect them to supply us with electricity when the wind is not blowing here we have to return the favour when then wind isn’t blowing there.
Time for some numbers
gridwatch.templar.co.uk is an absolutely spiffing website which shows
- current and historical UK electricity demand
- how much electricity is generated by coal, nuclear, wind, and gas
- how much electricity is passing over interconnectors.
Peak UK demand is about 60GW with demand usually around 40 GW but this varies during the day and during the week (ie less at weekends). Wind can supply about 4GW but less when the wind isn’t blowing. At the time of writing (12:30pm on Monday 1 April 2013 wind is supplying 2.71GW but at 7:10 on Saturday 31 March 2013 wind was only supplying 0.6GW – don’t know why two of dials went missing)
Here we can see there are currently 4 interconnectors capable of supplying about 4GW of power
- French Interconnector. This is a 2GW bidirectional connector.
- Dutch Interconnector. This is a 1GW bidirectional connector.
- Moyle Interconnector. This is a 500MW bidirectional connector from Scotland to N Ireland.
- East-West Interconnector. This is a 500MW bidirectional connector from Wales to the Irish Republic.
But only 3GW of capacity is linked to Europe, the other 1GW being linked to Northern Ireland and Eire.
So in order to supply peak UK demand someone would need to build 15 times more interconnectors than there currently are AND to make sure there is enough spare generating capacity at the other end of the interconnector.
Even to cope with 40 GW of demand over an easter weekend would require 10 times more capacity than there is at the moment. And that assumes there is a spare 40GW in Europe to send our way.
Coincidentally windmills can also supply 4GW of electricity, so to meet peak demand there would need to be 15 times more than there are currently, 10 times to meet weekend demand.
I wonder how much that will cost?
And if there’s too little wind, or too much, or if it’s too cold windmills don’t/can’t produce electricity.
So the solution is to have all the conventional generation capacity as well – just in case.
But There’s More
John Etherington has written a great book “The WindFarm Scam”
..
He reveals one dirty little secret about wind power,
windmills needs to be synchronised with the electricity grid
and with each other
The UK electricity grid supplies alternating current at 50hz
This means 50 times a second the voltage switches between positive and negative something like this
If 2 windmills which are not synchronised the worst case is they will be in exactly opposite stages in their cycles like this
If you attempt to connect windmills that are not exactly in phase there would be a “spark” on connection – a surge of current which at best would trip-out connected equipment or, at worst, cause such serious overload that damage would be done either to the electrical or mechanical part of the generating transmission system.
Why Are We Doing This Anyway?
Well we need to decarbonise to avoid the dangers of climate change.
And the dangers of climate change are?
Rising temperatures caused by increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
There’s just one thing, temperatures haven’t been rising for at least the last 17 years despite the increasing levels of CO2.
So why don’t we just burn coal, which the UK has in abundance?
One Response to Wind Power On The Daily Politics – What Happens When Wind Doesnt Blow