What has been the
benefit to date from our expenditure?
By Pat Swords BE CEng FIChemE CEnv MIEMA
Ireland's Renewable
Energy Action Plan (NREAP) was prepared in 2010 without any proper
assessment of costs and impacts. Table 10 of the NREAP provides us
with the bottom line on electricity generation, namely by 2020 the
installation of 4,094 MW of onshore wind and 555 MW of offshore wind.
For wind energy installed in Ireland, where project costs are higher
than elsewhere, approximately €2 million per MW is the installed cost for
onshore installations and at least €3 million per MW for offshore
installations. This then gives a total cost for installed wind energy
of almost €10 billion.
Additional electricity
infrastructure is required in transmission to facilitate wind energy,
already we have had the investment in the East West Interconnector to
Wales at €0.6 billion, with more and even longer interconnectors to
come to the UK and France – as described on page 79 of the NREAP.
As a result the total cost of such interconnectors will
conservatively come to another €3 billion.
In the Republic of
Ireland there is the roll out of Grid 25 to expand the high voltage
grid, for which an accurate cost is not known, but it is reported as
some €4 billion and will undoubtedly rise, as the Energy White
Paper of 2007 stated:
Not only is there over
800 km of new high voltage lines to be constructed in Grid 25, but as
the All Island Grid Study demonstrated, there is an additional 5,000
km of medium voltage grid connections required to connect all these
wind farms to the high voltage grid. For instance, in November 2011,
the European Investment Bank, i.e. the EU’s bank, lent the ESB some
€235 million for network expansions to facilitate increased
deployment of wind energy. Further similar loans totaling €300
million followed in 2013 and 2014. Their total loans to the ESB to
facilitate network expansions for wind farms in Ireland have by the
end of 2014 totaled €1 billion.
So between high voltage
and medium voltage grid expansions, plus interconnectors, there is a
bill of some €8 billion, for which if we add the turbines, the
total now reaches €18 billion. However, we are not done yet, as the
electricity grid is now, with all this wind energy, in an unstable
state. As a result it is necessary to roll out so called ‘smart
meters’ to regulate consumers and their demand habits. These smart
meters are described on page 77 of the NREAP and for their funding;
we can throw in another billion or two into the financial pot.
However, this won’t
‘cure’ the fundamental problem the grid will experience, as more
and more highly intermittent wind energy is installed and given
priority access over conventional thermal power generation. As the
former Green Party leader and Minister for Environment John Gormley's
stated in his ‘Carbon Budget’ of October 2008:
In essence we will have
to mothball our current base load Combined Cycle Gas Turbines
(CCGTs), which although they cannot rapidly respond to changing
loads, have efficiencies over 55% and greater. New open cycle fast
response gas turbines, which are at best only 40% efficient, will
have to be built to replace these CCGTs:
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Efficiency
curve for an aero-derived gas turbine, LM2500+, which is typical of
the technology, which is used for open cycle gas turbines
Equally as bad as the poor efficiency obtained with these open cycle gas turbine, is how their emissions start to rise significantly at lower loads:
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Emissions
profile for a LM2500+ gas turbine
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So given that a the UK
authorities report that the installed cost of a CCGT is £0.9 million
per MW and the installed cost of an open cycle plant (OCGT) about
£0.6 million per MW, and we will require at least 1,000 MW of fast
response power to balance the grid fluctuations, there is going to be
no change out of another billion Euro in terms of investment in new
plant and premature write offs of CCGTs.
So all in all over €20
billion plus was committed in capital investment alone as a
consequences of the NREAP. By 2015 we have already installed 2,100 MW
of wind energy, plus the East West Interconnector and network
upgrades as previously highlighted, so we have spent quite
conservatively €6 billion already. To that you have to add the
operating costs, profit for the wind investors and the costs of inefficient operation
of the grid. So it is not surprising that in their 2014 submission to
the Irish Green Energy Paper, the Irish Academy of Engineering
pointed out:
Without wind
generation, Ireland’s electricity generation costs in the period
2005 to 2013 would have increased by 1.2 cents per kWh due to the
increased cost of imported fossil fuels. But over the same period,
Ireland’s business electricity prices actually increased by 4.0
cents per kWh and household electricity prices increased by 8.85
cents per kWh. This clearly shows that increased fossil fuel import
costs were not the cause of electricity price increases in Ireland
but rather government policies which did not place appropriate
emphasis on price competitiveness.
Considering that the
Irish domestic electricity rate is between 19 and 20 cents per kWh,
to which additional levies are applied, clearly without wind energy,
the rate would be a third less, around 12.5 cent per kWh. This is not
an isolated issue; the Union of the Electricity Industry –
Eurelectric had a report produced by Accenture in 2014, which
provides the rather sobering graphic of how costs to the consumer are
soaring, in particular due to Renewable Energy Sources (RES):
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Graphic
from Eurelectric report
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It is also worthwhile
reflecting some more as to the so called reason and what we got for
this in terms of environmental protection. If we consider Ireland’s
first application for State Aid to establish the first phase of the
REFIT scheme for supporting 1,450 MW of almost exclusively wind
energy, then the 2007 clarification documentation with the EU
Commission, in respect of what environmental results were anticipated
and over what period, stated:
Table A
Emissions
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Annual
savings per 100 MWs installed
Tonnes
of oxide
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Carbon Dioxide
|
0.19
ml
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Sulphur Dioxide
|
4k
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Nitrogen Oxides
|
1.3k
|
|
Ml =
millions
k = thousands
|
It was therefore
claimed back in 2007, as basis for the 'environmental protection' to
justify the State Aid funding that for each 1,000 MWs of installed
wind energy capacity, 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 savings
would result. So what did we actually get for our money?
If we go to the
National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP) progress reports to the
EU, we can see that the Irish report dated February 2014 claims 1,763
MW of wind energy were installed by 2012 and 2,738,072 tonnes of CO2
savings occurred that year. If we look at Table 1 b of the same
progress report, then wind energy was responsible for (4,247 / 5,659)
or 75% of the renewable electricity, therefore 2.05 million tonnes of
CO2 savings.
This is equivalent to
2.05 / 1.763 = 1.17 million tonnes of CO2 savings per
1,000 MW of installed capacity – certainly not what was claimed for
in the REFIT documentation.
However, we do know
this ‘saving’ documented in the NREAP progress report is also
completely inaccurate, as the calculation method is false. Namely,
the calculation method does not allow for the considerable
inefficiencies induced on the grid, by this intermittent input of
wind energy, which requires the power stations to operate in a stop
start variable manner, i.e. increased balancing. As page 29 of the
Irish NREAP progress report clarifies:
Note: Open cycle gas
turbines are at best 40% efficient as compared to Combined Cycle Gas
Turbines (CCGT), which are 55% efficient.
As the Sustainable
Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has been criticised for inaccurate
claims, they produced another report quantifying fuel and emissions
savings, this time where they claimed their modelling output allows
for inefficiencies on the grid. The conclusion of this revised report
was that for 2012, wind energy saved 1.5 million tonnes of CO2.
Therefore with this
more in-depth assessment methodology the claimed savings are now at
1.5 / 1.783 = 0.85 million tonnes of CO2 savings per 1,000
MW of installed wind capacity. Sadly, this is actually less than half
(45%) of what they claimed would occur when REFIT was initiated back
in 2007 to fund the building of this infrastructure in the first
place.
Furthermore, it has to
be said that the SEAI report above is highly suspect, in that it is
based on computer models, which concluded that increased ramping up
and down of gas plants occurred, for the situation where there was no
wind installed on the grid. Yet it is well known that power plant
operators are complaining that the degree of ramping is now greater
to compensate for the increased wind energy input. Indeed, the whole
grid is being redesigned, not with the goal of fuel efficient
generation, but instead to prioritise fast response, as recent
documentation from the Irish grid regulator on this subject
demonstrates.
Not only are the 1.5
million tonnes of CO2 savings for 2012 somewhat
exaggerated, but these savings are not going to get a whole lot
better as the NREAP progresses. In 2004, Eirgrid produced a report
on the “Impact of Wind Power Generation in Ireland on the Operation
of Conventional Plant and the Economic Implications”, which
clarified:
In other words, it is a
case of diminishing returns as more wind energy is installed to
comply with the trajectory of the NREAP. For Ireland total
greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 were 58 million tonnes, while
electricity generation amounted to less than 11 million tonnes. So
these savings on a national basis are extremely poor when compared
with the reckless enthusiasm by decision-makers for renewable energy
and their disregard for both the resulting financial and
environmental costs. Plus, these alleged savings from Irish wind
energy are only 0.004% of global annual emissions of carbon dioxide,
which given that there has been no increase in global temperatures
since 1998, is the classic case in terms of effectiveness of ‘a
drop in the ocean’.