According to Eirgrid's East West Interconnector brochure, one of the benefits of the interconnector to UK is that it "facilitates growth in renewable energy". What is not often mentioned is that sometimes we in Ireland are actually exporting fossil fuel power through the interconnector. During the recent summer, when there was little or no wind, the interconnector was doing just this most of the time - exporting fossil fuel electricity generated in Ireland to the UK :
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| The period of low wind this summer |
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| https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ |
Anything for a quick buck!
ReplyDeleteThose who produce coal and oil for sale do so free of carbon fines, those who produce food for sale are subject to carbon fines. Those who consume the food do so with no carbon fines. The criteria is how soft a touch the country is.
ReplyDeleteFrom the 1st January 2018 to the 24th May 2018 we can set the factor for Irelands wind farms ar a generous 26% That’s for 143 days.
ReplyDeleteFrom the 25th May to the 25th September we can set the factor at 4% at best. 123 days
Assuming this last few days continue as us, we can set the factor from the 26th Sept to 31st December 2018 @ 17% EirGrid Group plc - Smart Grid Dashboard 96 days.
So 26 X 143 = 3718
4 X 123 = 492
17 X 96 = 1632
Total 5842 / 365 = 16%
I would add a generous 1% to be on the safe side, but account must be taken of the degradation with age which I did not cater for in my calculations.
Wind farm accounts show that 18.2 % is needed to pay the ordinary expenses. 16% will mean our wind farm companies will not be able to pay their ordinary operating expenses, their interest liability of loans or any repayment on capital loans (or the cost of buying 2nd hand wind farms)
SEAI's annual 2018 Energy in Ireland Report states that renewable wind generated electricity was 84% of the overall 30.1% RES-E in 2017 therefore the amount of renewable wind generated electricity that penetrated the national grid was 25.3%.
DeleteNote that wind generation in 2017 according to SEAI increased by 21.1% due to increased wind levels that year and the installation of an additional 532 megawatts of wind turbines in 2017.
'The level of wind generation increased by 21.1% (2017) compared to the previous year (2016). The increase was mostly due to more turbines and more wind. This was because less wind blew in 2016. 532 MW of wind turbines were installed in 2017, the most in any year.' https://www.seai.ie/resources/seai-statistics/key-publications/energy-in-ireland/
So the percentage of renewable wind generated electricity has gone from 20.9% in 2016 (low wind year) to 25.3% in 2017 and now according to Val Martin's calculations has plummeted by a whopping 36.7% to 16% in 2018 (another low wind year) even though an additional 532 megawatts of wind turbines were installed throughout 2017 or an additional 580MW were installed since April 2017 to date totalling 3458MW installed in the Republic of Ireland according to IWEA's current facts and statistics https://www.iwea.com/about-wind/facts-stats
So it now appears that the current renewable wind generated electricity capacity factor has fallen to about half of what it was in 2015 even though the amount of installed wind turbines has significantly increased. This is in direct contradiction to the following statement in the CRU/CER report..... 'Over the years the wind capacity factor has also increased: it was 32.3% in 2015, 28.5% in 2014 and 30.6% in 2013.' (n.b. for All-Ireland) https://www.cru.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/CER16246-Fuel-Mix-Disclosure-and-CO2-Emission-2015-FINAL.pdf
So we are now seeing what many of us have long calculated, that as, national energy demand increases due mainly to the increased installation of high energy demand data centres in Ireland that the renewable electricity targets achieved to date would start to run in reverse and that installing additional wind turbines would at best only be as good as running in order to stand still. But did anyone in authority listen?! Instead planning permission has been granted for several Big Corporate Data Centres. Add to the mix the lower annual wind speeds, all the relatively new wind farms sited in generally poor wind speed areas and the general ageing of wind turbines with subsequent reduced output capacity and the requirement for increased and costly wind turbine maintenance and one is left with a recipe for a total renewable wind energy disaster.
UK Onshore wind turbines loose loose half of their capacity factor every 6 years.Probably because in the UK more larger multi megawatts are used . Up until recently the Danes still operated a lot of very small capacity wind turbines . They had a much slower rate of decline in capacity factor. Published in a 2012 report.Which according 2017 data have since been commissioned. Danish offshore wind turbines have a decrease in capacity factor from just under 40% at commissioning to 15% capacity factor in 10 years. Given these facts arrived by Dr .Gordon Hughes and essentially confirmed by Dr. Fred Udo it is not too surprising that synchronous generation is being exported to the U.K. It is also difficult to see why the Irish Government continues to damage the Health of its citizens by continuing this insane wind program.Also given the fact, as observed in wind farm accounts, that wind farms will never recover the investment costs. It is in the countries interest that no wind farm be given planning per mission until the promoter proves that it is financially sustainable and actually reduces co2.Figure quoted by the S.E.A.I. should be discounted. Until they adjust their their claimed co2 reduction to take into account the impact real life capacity factor drop and the impact of their financial losses on likely solvency. The dramatic drop in Danish offshore capacity factor kills off any proposal that moving off shore can solve the problems caused by on shore wind farms.
ReplyDeleteThe dark arts of propaganda appear to have been applied recently to the Eirgrid plots of wind power, which can now display NEGATIVE amounts, presumably to make zero amounts less obvious. Here is a recent snapshot of 30-day history, with zero shown more clearly than on the Eirgrid website:
ReplyDeletehttps://climanrecon.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/Eirgrid_wind_dec2018_v3.jpg