The energy regulator, in a recent Oireachtas Committee meeting, explains that what this blog has consistently warned for many years would happen has now come to fruition - that power stations have become less reliable as a result of excessive ramping up and down to back up wind :
Coming into the past winter, winter 2020-21, we had our seasonal update with EirGrid. We have a winter outlook and a summer outlook. That involves EirGrid, ourselves and the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. In this we identify short-term challenges. These included an uptick and increase in demand from a range of sectors, which would have included data centres and the economy recovering or starting to recover post Covid. Separately, we noticed a reduction in the reliability of the existing fleet. Some of those pieces of the fleet that are of medium to older age are being asked to turn up and turn down more frequently as they balance the wind. They are being asked to do things they were not designed for, so the reliability of some of the existing fleet has decreased a little.
This was something that was not factored in to any of the assessments of wind energy. But reality doesn't change by ignoring it.
The blades are being stressed in changing pressure and temperature so they break and bend. when you bend metal it work hardens and eventually breaks off. This is how we sever a piece of wire by bending it back and forth. It gets warm before it breaks. Ireland came near to blackouts yesterday. An other amber alert was issued.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile our ageing and aged non-wind Power-gen is becoming incapable of handling the load at times when Wind Farm Turbines shut down, either through too much or too little wind or damage to blades. Our Energy Policy is a shambles. Why are we spending so much time and money on Wind when we have a perfectly reliable energy source with our available Wave-energy? Particularly when so many of the planned Offshore Wind Energy Installations are to be situated in the middle of some of the most important (and sensitive) Fish Spawning and Nursery Grounds in the Northern Hemisphere! Those Spawning and Nursery Grounds are capable of being wiped out by the Seismic Blasting that has been and will continue to be deployed prior to the construction of the foundations of even one of the Anchors for any of these monstrosities while the Pile-driving required in order to construct those Anchors on the sea-floor will scatter Nursing and Breeding Fish Stocks to the far corners of Irish Waters where they will not survive. More hare-brained Central Planning from Brussels and Dublin.
ReplyDeleteWave energy is even less reliable than wind, and there’s no good way of harvesting it at scale.
ReplyDeleteWe need an LNG terminal to be built and we need to row back on all of the daft EU targets for renewables that we signed up to.
The only renewable energy that works is river hydro.
ReplyDeleteThese last few days were windy with high wind farm output. Now RTE reports that three power stations are out of action. I wonder would it be that the turbine blades of steam turbines at power stations were damaged by the battering of the wind component. https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2021/1029/1256736-power-stations/
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