Grid Integration – WIND WORKS

A new analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) has calculated that in 2024 UK wholesale electricity prices would have been over 30 per cent higher if there had been no wind power generated in the UK. In practice in 2024 the wholesale power price averaged at around £75 per MWh. But without any wind power the price would, according to the ECIU, have been around £99 MWh. This difference has a significant impact on average (retail) energy consumer bills. It reduces them by an average of roughly £65 a year based on a typical household consumption as estimated by Ofgem.

Last spring, tens of millions of people lost electricity across Spain, Portugal and part of France. Trains stopped in their tracks, and people were stuck in elevators, as southwestern Europe went without power for — in some cases — more than ten hours.

Immediately, the finger-pointing began. Many people blamed solar and wind energy. Spain, one of Europe’s front runners in renewable energy, gets about 46% of its power from solar and wind, according to the think tank Ember— sometimes more than 70%.

With the rise of low-cost wind and solar power, this baseload paradigm has come under strain. Utilities and regulators interested in keeping electricity prices low are starting to introduce variable renewables like wind and solar at scale instead: since the latter have zero marginal costs, they typically get dispatched first, making them by default the new foundation of the power system. In the process, other generating units are having to ramp and flex around them.

Brattle’s analysis found that the battery output made a visible dent in statewide grid load, when the power is needed most. “Performance was consistent across the event, without major fluctuations or any attrition,” said Ryan Hledik, a principal at The Brattle Group. He called it “dependable, planning-grade performance at scale.”

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This combination created atypically low wholesale electricity prices, with significant amounts of renewable energy being curtailed, but the blackout was not a renewable-energy-driven event.

Rather, it was the result of multiple layers of insufficient planning, inadequate voltage management, and poorly managed grid dynamics. 50% of the allocation of responsibility was to human failures in planning, 30% to legacy generation not performing as it was designed to do, and 20% to renewables exiting the system because they weren’t configured to deal with the scenario, once again a human failure more than a technology failure.

Citing a market participant, Jenkins noted on Twitter that roughly 26 gigawatts of thermal energy is offline because natural gas is being diverted to provide heat instead of power. Only about 4 gigawatts of wind is offline because of icing, Jenkins noted.

Further confirmation of Bernard Chabot’s “Silent Revolution” in large wind turbine design.

Contrary to the ideas promulgated by some opponents of wind generation, most of the substantial investment in wind farms in South Australia is not being paid for by taxpayers or electricity consumers in South Australia, but was and is being built under the nationwide Large Renewable Energy Target.

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At the heart of the problem has been governments’ trust in market solutions without a sharp eye on the shortfalls in market performance and without adequate leadership on the long term outcome the market should be tasked to achieve.

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It is a meaningless concept at the least and dangerous at its worst. The term “baseload” was coined over a hundred years ago. When the electricity grid was first built, large, inflexible fossil fuel generators dominated and played a critical role in the Industrial Revolution. But much like many other aging technologies and approaches, baseload generation is no longer the best tool for the job.