Seven reasons why the Government’s ideas on balancing renewables don’t make sense. In its latest call for evidence on how to balance renewable energy, the Government wants to make windfarms and solar farms be responsible for assuring power delivery all the time. This is something that is not even required of fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. Apparently fixated on this notion, and also that of ending the current system of incentivising renewables through giving the long term contracts guaranteeing to pay them set electricity prices, the Government ignores the most practical options for balancing fluctuating renewables. Under the title ‘Enabling a High Renewable, Net Zero Electricity System‘, the Government has set down a series of loaded questions encouraging solutions that involve removing the most successful incentives for renewable energy and making wind and solar plant guarantee continuous delivery of power. Our research, based on modeling of Scottish grid constraints, implies that for every TWh of inflexible nuclear generation, an extra 120 GWh of renewable energy generation (the equivalent of 12 percent of the nuclear generation) will be forced off the grid. This is in a system dominated mostly by renewable and nuclear generation. Clearly, the Government could help balance renewables much better by scrapping plans to give more extremely expensive (and wasteful in terms of its impact on renewable generation) contracts to nuclear power plant and instead spending some of the savings on measures which genuinely help balance renewables. Amongst the techniques necessary for balancing renewables that the Government ignores in their call for evidence are: encouraging energy suppliers to bring in half-hour pricing tariffs for all consumers; this can help shape demand to suit the availability of power supplies; giving requirements and ambitious targets to Distribution Companies to hold ‘flexibility auctions’ whereby regional distribution networks hold competitive auctions to enable a range of players to offer demand reductions when needed, so helping balance renewables. These already exist on an experimental level, as illustrated by Western Power Distribution Company; setting up markets, some of them niche development markets, to deliver storage for short, medium terms and long term balancing purposes; Encouraging thermal as well as other types of storage both at the level of the individual building (hot water tanks) and also through district heating systems served by large scale heat pumps with large long term hot water stores.

100% Renewables 27th Feb 2021 read more »

Lowestoft is at the heart of a bid for a greener future, according to a project director who claims its windfarm has brought in more than £140 million to the local economy. The East Anglia ONE windfarm was completed 43km off the Lowestoft coast during the first national lockdown in 2020, with all 102 turbines now operational. It was a major milestone for operator ScottishPower Renewables (SPR), with the £2.5 billion installation set to produce 714 megawatts of clean energy a year – enough to power more than 630,000 homes, the equivalent of the majority of houses in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Eastern Daily Press 27th Feb 2021 read more »

A Suffolk MP says a single ‘connection point’ for new power projects off the county’s coast would avoid “spaghetti-like cabling” wrecking some of its most beautiful areas. Therese Coffey says proposals for a huge 30-acre electricity substation at Friston and the associated cabling corridor from Thorpeness for two new windfarms, if approved, would have a “devastating impact” on the area including elements of the Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Campaigners says 9km trenches at 60 metres wide would be gouged through the Suffolk Coastal Path, the Suffolk Sandlings, the AONB, and lead to the destruction of mature woodland and swathes of Grade 2 and 3 agricultural land.

East Anglian Daily Times 27th Feb 2021 read more »

When a small community just west of Oxford watched as the Thames destroyed their houses in a dramatic flood, they realised just how powerful the river was. Now, they have harnessed that force and protected their homes by using their little stretch for hydroelectric renewable energy. The people of Osney Lock are just one of the communities which hope to be the first to go truly “off grid” under plans to allow local people to buy renewable energy which is generated nearby. At the moment, when a community buys a group of solar panels, or starts a hydroelectric dam, they are forced to sell the energy back to the grid. Under a new proposed Local Energy Bill, neighbourhoods could club together to become their own energy suppliers, breaking free from the big utility companies and creating green, cheap energy. Ministers heartily support the plans, with one telling The Sunday Telegraph: “These ideas bring out the Conservative in me. The government should send the signal, create incentives and remove red tape – this then lets 1,000 flowers bloom.”

Telegraph 27th Feb 2021 read more »