Wind Energy | Claverton Group

Senior Electrical Engineer questions political risk of Czisch type supergrid

Bernard is a senior electrical engineer and has sat on many generation industry committees. He writes:

“I unfortunately missed the House of Commons presentation. I think we all agree the we could overcome technical problems at a price. However how do we overcome the political risk ? In the coal, nuclear, oil and gas areas this is dealt with by storage and multi sourcing. I don’t know how we factor in the cost of occupying a country while alternative supplies are built – even if it were possible. Any comments”

Admin writes:

Regarding political risk.

All turbines can be in EU not in dodgy foreign countries.

First of all, lets be clear, the Czisch concept / proposition is not built solely on the assumption that supplies coming from Egypt, Kazakhstan and so on as many people in this group seem to wrongly assume. The key point is that a supergrid be built linking up the EU states including Iceland and Norway. This has enormous technical and economic benefits for all power generation (but not the companies owning them – it introduces a free market which I am in full support of, but they are not), and will make the whole thing more efficient, by allowing plants to run smoothly, and lead to the obsolescing of numerous inefficient existing stations which will no longer be needed and a massive reduction in expensive spinning reserve and hot standby (- this is the key reason why there is no support form the big players – it will strand many of their assets and make it unnecessary to build a lot of the new coal plant they want to, irrespective of any renewables. Just as building the UK supergrid in 1930 made a lot of UK power stations redundant, and forced a lot of those local monopolies out of business.) However putting a lot of wind farms in far flung places is the cheapest way of getting power – but that is only one option!. If we don’t do it, and put all the turbines within EU proper, it costs a bit more, but not a lot. (Mark Barrett has already shown this

National Grid's views on 36% wind in UK power generation mix

Dear all, Regarding the concerns expressed in this dialogue (on the claverton mailing list – ed) regarding the intermittency of wind and the risk to the transmission network of having a large percentage of wind generation on the network. The National Grid has in the last year established what it calls its “Gone […]

Talk by Dr Gregor Czisch at the 5th Claverton Energy Conference, House of Commons June 19th 2009

Dr. Czisch gave a very interesting presentation the contents of which is summarised here, Rather than publish a paper on this set, Gregor has given us these links to his site where the varous papers can be studied.

The most relevant one for English speakers is probably this one:

“Low Cost but Totally Renewable Electricity Supply”

How CERN is encouraged to not do atom or quark smashing, during periods of high demand and low power station availablity, by means of the EJP tarrif

CERN This page is extracted from the official CERN newsletters, shows that even CERN obeys the economic imperatives of the French EJP tariff, designed to force customers to use less power during high demand periods / unavailability of nuclear reactors – lin other words they turn the giant quark smasher off during the unavailablity of […]

Claverton Energy Group view on European Supergrid HVDC interconnector

A significant number of Claverton Energy Group members acknowledge Britain could have energy security and a fully sustainable clean supply of affordable electricity within 30 years (15 years with a crash program) by embracing the European Supergrid (akin to the UK national grid but on a larger scale, linking up Europe, Scandinavia, Iceland, Central Europe, the Ukraine, and north Africa). However, the group is worried that UK energy companies acting without government instruction will be unable and even reluctant to implement it. The 250 strong independent group of energy experts, including a number who wish to remain anonymous because of their positions within the big 6 energy companies, is calling on the government to intervene now to avoid an unregulated energy industry making the kinds of mistakes that were made by an unregulated banking industry.

"Europe's green energy vision puts UK in dark Times" – Robin Pagnamenta – article on Supergrid

It is a dazzling vision of a clean energy future. An entire continent powered by solar panels, wind and wave turbines, geothermal and hydroelectric power stations — and all stitched together by a European “supergrid’ stretching from the sunbaked deserts of the south to the windswept North Sea, from the volcanoes of Iceland to the lakes of Finland.

Are nuclear energy and wind energy fundamentally incompatible in large penetrations due to the intermittency of one and the inflexibility of the other?

Dear P I made a mistake,….. it was EDF and E.ON who made the submission. Not E.ON and National Power (who are now owned by RWE). Effectively they are saying exactly what was pointed out in the “Briefing Note” that was published in the Inst of Civils Energy Journal two years ago. I attach a […]

ADRECS – How To Rapidly Convert The Central Deserts Of China To Agricultural Regions Producing Huge Amounts Of Renewable Energy For Europe

This article describes a novel concept using existing technology to very quickly a) control the desertification and sand drifts b) enable the establishment of plant species c) the construction of wind farms or CSP connected to Europe by either a lengthy HVDC transmission system, or the local production of ammonia which can readily be transported to eg Europe / USA and easily used as a vehicle fuel d) the construction of a vast area of seawater greenhouses using sea water pumped thousands of miles to be desalinated by solar energy to allow the production of food and or energy crops. (Contrary to what some ill-informed people claim this does not use a huge amount of energy compared to other national uses) e) unlocks the massive potential for carbon sequestration via organic matter in soil

A very significant admission by the US FERC chairman that the issue of integrating variable sources of power is not such a big issue

Wind Power and Reliability: The Roles of Baseload and Variable Resources Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Jon Wellinghoff has stated that “baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism” and that no new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States. Quote from Press Release: “1. This fact sheet explains […]

BWEA Wave & Tidal 09

BWEA’s sixth annual, and the world’s largest, event dedicated to wave and tidal stream energy, will take place on 30th April 2009 in Bath, sponsored by the South West RDA. Over 400 government and industry professionals will attend and over 30 companies will be on display at the accompanying exhibition, which has been extended due […]