One relevant story for the political developments anticipated this year is that the Conservative party in the UK banned onshore wind for a decade in England at a time when it was the cheapest energy source available and that fact has been entirely memory holed from the conversation.
I saw a cool dataviz from an energy company the other day which very, very clearly shows no wind power being generated onshore in England while turbines on all sides are spinning.
Amazingly the story was "wind power being wasted, we need more transmission to England".
This is all during an energy crisis and talk of people being priced out of heating their homes and it simply doesn't get mentioned. I saw one nerdy blog post on the 22 Billion cost of it:
In some sense it's on the spectrum of dysfunction and superstition politics. In one extreme you have things like AIDS denial or looking at horoscopes for large strategic decisions. The countries with the most rational values end up being the best places to run businesses or live in the long term.
Yes that's my point, the stories you have read probably said something like:
Wind curtailment payments cost 1 billion a year (boo hiss renewables bad and expensive! even though, just like you they make no attempt to even argue that non-renewables would be cheaper, possibly because they know that's not true. Instead random big scary numbers get thrown around with no context)
A better story would be that 1/3rd of that was money spent on curtailment going to the wind turbines as if their output was used and 2/3rds was spent on gas to generate the same power closer to the demand. Because gas costs more than wind.
An even better story would point out that the UK has a single zone of pricing, so you can't sell the wind cheaper in Scotland so it gets used but only offer it on the single marketplace and when it gets bought in England, then supply it with gas at great cost and curtail in Scotland.
Aside 1: This can get so absurd that France can buy Scottish wind power and then get it delivered by gas generators from England.
Aside 2: If Scotland had its own pricing zone it would have the cheapest electricity in Europe due to its wind power, even including UK taxes and levies.
A great story would point out that the reason there is wind being generated in Scotland, but not England and the root cause of all that extra cost and curtailment is that the conservatives banned onshore wind for a decade in England. But that's never stated.
Apparently we can talk about building more transmission (at a cost to bill payers, boo hiss renewables are bad and expensive! Again, this is cheaper than gas.) and even zonal reform which would indirectly encourage more renewables being built in England, since the new government loosened the build restrictions but not directly address the elephant in the room.
And to bring it round to my original point, any cost or really just any large number that can be associated with renewables in the US will be used to write scary stories but I fully expect the financial impacts of this current act of self-sabotage to never be mentioned again.
Off grid for a long time here, solar pv is solid state electrical generation, that is also robust, and surprisingly damage tolerant.....ooopsy....like wow, smashed glass and still making power after years.
Wind , is great fun, if you like gears and wheels, and "things that go around", and if done very carefully, will work...but its work
vs solar pv ,that once installed, is more boring than watching paint dry, as paint at least changes
its coulor as it drys, but solar is relentlessly inert.....except for watching the readouts of power bieng generated, and seeing corelations with edge of cloud effect, and unexpected output in the worst conditions.
So no surprise here.....solar just works.
Yep wind absolutely sucks ass for off grid, expensive, high maintenance, low output, unless you live super far north (or south) or literally on a boat there is no reason to opt for wind over solar: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-pu...
Five square meters of solar panel (~1kWp) will beat any small scale windmill for <10% of the price anywhere in the US and Europe south of Denmark
One relevant story for the political developments anticipated this year is that the Conservative party in the UK banned onshore wind for a decade in England at a time when it was the cheapest energy source available and that fact has been entirely memory holed from the conversation.
I saw a cool dataviz from an energy company the other day which very, very clearly shows no wind power being generated onshore in England while turbines on all sides are spinning.
https://bsky.app/profile/robhawkes.bsky.social/post/3liowjqe...
Amazingly the story was "wind power being wasted, we need more transmission to England".
This is all during an energy crisis and talk of people being priced out of heating their homes and it simply doesn't get mentioned. I saw one nerdy blog post on the 22 Billion cost of it:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-cutting-the-green-crap-...
So I have no faith that in the even worse political climate of the US that any economic damage done to the US will be acknowledged.
In some sense it's on the spectrum of dysfunction and superstition politics. In one extreme you have things like AIDS denial or looking at horoscopes for large strategic decisions. The countries with the most rational values end up being the best places to run businesses or live in the long term.
isn't uk already spending some multibillions on cfd/feedin, transmission and curtailment of existing deployments?
Yes that's my point, the stories you have read probably said something like:
Wind curtailment payments cost 1 billion a year (boo hiss renewables bad and expensive! even though, just like you they make no attempt to even argue that non-renewables would be cheaper, possibly because they know that's not true. Instead random big scary numbers get thrown around with no context)
A better story would be that 1/3rd of that was money spent on curtailment going to the wind turbines as if their output was used and 2/3rds was spent on gas to generate the same power closer to the demand. Because gas costs more than wind.
An even better story would point out that the UK has a single zone of pricing, so you can't sell the wind cheaper in Scotland so it gets used but only offer it on the single marketplace and when it gets bought in England, then supply it with gas at great cost and curtail in Scotland.
Aside 1: This can get so absurd that France can buy Scottish wind power and then get it delivered by gas generators from England.
Aside 2: If Scotland had its own pricing zone it would have the cheapest electricity in Europe due to its wind power, even including UK taxes and levies.
A great story would point out that the reason there is wind being generated in Scotland, but not England and the root cause of all that extra cost and curtailment is that the conservatives banned onshore wind for a decade in England. But that's never stated.
Apparently we can talk about building more transmission (at a cost to bill payers, boo hiss renewables are bad and expensive! Again, this is cheaper than gas.) and even zonal reform which would indirectly encourage more renewables being built in England, since the new government loosened the build restrictions but not directly address the elephant in the room.
And to bring it round to my original point, any cost or really just any large number that can be associated with renewables in the US will be used to write scary stories but I fully expect the financial impacts of this current act of self-sabotage to never be mentioned again.
Off grid for a long time here, solar pv is solid state electrical generation, that is also robust, and surprisingly damage tolerant.....ooopsy....like wow, smashed glass and still making power after years. Wind , is great fun, if you like gears and wheels, and "things that go around", and if done very carefully, will work...but its work vs solar pv ,that once installed, is more boring than watching paint dry, as paint at least changes its coulor as it drys, but solar is relentlessly inert.....except for watching the readouts of power bieng generated, and seeing corelations with edge of cloud effect, and unexpected output in the worst conditions. So no surprise here.....solar just works.
Yep wind absolutely sucks ass for off grid, expensive, high maintenance, low output, unless you live super far north (or south) or literally on a boat there is no reason to opt for wind over solar: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-pu...
Five square meters of solar panel (~1kWp) will beat any small scale windmill for <10% of the price anywhere in the US and Europe south of Denmark