Fossil Fuel–based Power Stations Unnecessary To Back Up Wind

June 13th, 2013 by Joshua S Hill

An incidental note at the bottom of a wildlife article covering the culling of badgers in the UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph could have explosive results for the energy industry.

According to the addendum, a measly four paragraphs in length, the National Grid — the country’s electric grid operator — has reported that wind energy produced 23,700 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of power, requiring only 22 GWh of power from fossil fueled stations to fill the gaps: that is less than a thousandth of wind’s output, and ironically, less than a tenth of what was needed to back up conventional fossil fueled power stations.

Image Credit: UK onshore wind turbines via Shutterstock

The figures were similarly impressive when looking at emissions. According to the National Grid, wind saved nearly 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide over the period accounted for (April 2011 through to September 2012) and required only 8,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions to be released as backup, measuring in at only 0.081%.

There is no easy information available on the National Grid website to confirm these figures referenced in the Daily Telegraph article, and furthermore the paper’s final sentence — “Not surprisingly, given these figures, no new fossil‑fuel power station has been built to provide back‑up for wind farms, and none is in prospect” — seems to be in direct contradiction to a BBC News story published this week, reporting that two diesel power stations are planned to compensate for fluctuations in green energy.

According to the article, Green Frog Power received planning permission last year to build its diesel power station in Plymouth, while Fulcrum Power has made an application for a similar power station in Plymouth, as well. Unsurprisingly, given the current climate surrounding the energy industry, both companies said that they support renewable energy.

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Tags: backup, clean energy backup power, clean energy fossil fuels, Daily Telegraph, fossil fuel backup, UK, UK Wind Energy

About the Author

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

Otis11

“reporting that two diesel power stations are planned to compensate for fluctuations in green energy”

Both reports could be true – the first states that FFs aren’t needed to back up wind, the second states that they will use diesel to back up renewables. These are two different things, and are actually fairly likely if there is high solar penetration and low storage. This occurs because solar cuts out the day time peak, removing an opportunity for slow-ramping thermal plants to get up to speed and fill this gap. This means the evening peak appears rather rapidly. This can either be served by ramping up thermal plants early and wasting electricity or by using peaking plants – normally NG or Diesel.

The take away – this grid either needs more storage, or more interconnects to surrounding grids. (Smart grid tech would help as well, but probably not fully solve the issue)
Altair IV

Let us not forget that nobody expects wind power alone to carry the whole grid anyway; rather it’s just one part of a much larger integrated energy network. Solar is there to add to the supply as well, often peaking when wind is low, and vice versa. Not to mention geothermal, tidal and other renewable sources that can join into the mix as available. Add in long-distance transmission lines for shifting supply over space, and batteries and other storage for shifting supply over time, and you’ll have a very stable system indeed.

Once it all comes together, the weaknesses of each individual element will be safely balanced out by the strengths of others, and there should be no more need for back-up from traditional generators at all.
- agelbert
  
  Well said.
- Ross
  
  The fossil fuel people are in denial about the above.
Ivor O’Connor

It’s sad nobody knows what data should be used and what the data really means! Can somebody clear up this mess?
- Kevin_ORourke_AWEA
  
  Even without examining the data, real-world experience demonstrates that large quantities of wind energy can reliably integrated into the grid. Wind now generates over 10 percent of the electricity in nine states, and over 20 percent in Iowa and South Dakota.
  
  That’s because while occasionally the wind may suddenly slow down at one location and cause the output from a single turbine to decrease, regions with high penetrations of wind energy tend to have hundreds or even thousands of turbines spread over hundreds of miles.
  
  As a result, it typically takes many minutes or even hours for the total wind energy output of a region to change significantly. This makes it relatively easy for utility system operators to accommodate these changes without relying on reserves. This task can be made even easier with the use of wind energy forecasting, which allows system operators to predict changes in wind output hours or even days in advance with a high degree of accuracy.
  
  Moreover, changes in aggregate wind generation often cancel out opposite changes in electricity demand, so the increase in total variability caused by adding wind to the system is often very low. As a result, it is usually possible to add a significant amount of wind energy without causing a significant increase in the use of reserves.
  
  To learn more about why wind power doesn’t require added backup power, please visit:
  http://www.awea.org/learnabout/publications/upload/Backup_Power.pdf
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    I agree with much of what you are saying. Unfortunately there are situations where the wind dies over hundreds of miles for the winter months. In these situations it’s obvious you must have backup power. I’m all for increasing the coverage, putting in HVDC lines, solar pv, and solar-thermal, until things are covered 100% even in the worst conditions. However my point above was that I did not understand the article and apparently not even the author of the article understood what he was writing about. Somebody needs to step in and clean up these papers.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  When I read what seems to be the source paper I come away with this…
  
  From October 2011 to September 2012 wind farms in the Great Britain generated 23,707 GWh of electricity.
  
  Had they not generated that power it would have come from fossil fuel plants. Wind generation avoided 10,900,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
  
  This is a slightly high number. Due to the variability of wind, gas plants have to cycle on and off in order to fill in for wind. Gas plants are not as efficient when they start up as when they are running steadily. A bit more CO2 is released per kWh during ramp up phase.
  
  Calculating the CO2 created by the cycling inefficiency reduced the avoided CO2 from 10,900,000 tonnes to 10,891,200 tonnes. A total of 8,800 tonnes was added back in due to gas cycling.
  
  The wind farms only avoided 99.919% as much CO2 as first reported.
  - Ivor O’Connor
    
    Quoting: The application by Fulcrum Power is for a 20 megawatt (MW) Stor (Short Term Operating Reserve) power station on the former Toshiba plant at Ernesettle Lane, which company bosses said would cost “several million pounds”.
    Its 52 generators will consume more than 1.1m litres of diesel a year, or about one tanker a week.
    Merlin Hyman, of Regen SW, said: “There is going to be a need
    for back-up generation, whether it’s for nuclear power, coal power or renewables.
    
    So very confusing. I can see the need for stor due to the variability of wind if the data showed this were the case. Which it doesn’t. And then they say it is needed for planned nuclear sites too? It seems like politics might be involved here and have nothing to do with reality.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      I don’t know about the specific case, but if a utility needs to add additional supply to their grid they would also have to figure out how to fill in for that new supply when the primary source goes down.
      
      All generation is off line at times. If you add 10 MW of wind or coal or nuclear because your grid is going to have to supply that power for upcoming needs you’ve got to be able to fill in or have times you don’t serve those new needs/customers.
      
      When the San Onofre reactors went off line last year at least one “retired” gas plant was dusted off and put back into service to take up some of the slack.
JamesWimberley

The trouble is that you still need quite a lot of capacity to meet a quite small total demand in the holes. It will be rarely used, so won’t earn its keep. Germany is already thinking about capacity payments for dispatchables.
- JonathanMaddox
  
  This is a good point, but “won’t earn its keep” is probably not justified. The way spot electricity markets work, when additional dispatchable power is required, prices are high. Perhaps in some regulatory regimes price caps are too low and should be removed — meaning alternative controls to prevent Enron-style gaming may need to be imposed, but this is not an intractable problem.
- Matt
  
  Germany might be better to support demand “movement” instead. For example, AC which user super chiller during off peak to store cold; that can then be used during the day. If you add a little “grid feedback” you can get them to run at the correct time. This technology is already proven, saw these in museums at least 30 years ago. Heat has had less experience but also around a while. By converting a large portion of the demand to “dispatchable”, the “holes” are filled by increasing the green power instead and using it when it is available.
andereandre

According to this http://carboncounter.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/do-wind-farms-need-fossil-fuel-back-up/ the Telegraph article is using the wrong set of numbers.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  There’s a problem with your carboncounter source. He bases his argument on the output from a single wind farm. With multiple wind farms on the grid variability drops significantly.
  
  The scottish source, if I’m reading it correctly, states that during the period studied wind reduced CO2 emissions by 10,900,000 tonnes. That’s the amount of CO2 which would have been created by “always on” fossil fuel generation. But due to the variability of wind it was necessary to use faster ramping/less efficient gas turbines and this decreased the CO2 savings by 8,800 tonnes or 0.081%.
  
  In other words, wind was only 99.919% as good at reducing CO2 as first suspected.
  - andereandre
    
    Joshua already sounded skeptical about this and said that he did not have the link from the National Grid. I provided the link.
    The Daily Telegraph didn’t understand the report. It was about the short term reserve, they interpreted it as being about overall reserve.
    We win by getting the facts out there and the hard science. Lets leave the sloppy reporting to the dark side.