Renewables 101

What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?

Superficially, wind energy makes sense. You can easily see why politicians so readily latched on to it as an idea. What’s not to like about locally sourced, abundant energy? But there are two problems. It’s not local (in the sense of being where people live), and it turns out that wind is not all that abundant. Moreover, the National Grid was never designed for diffuse, intermittent energy.

That’s something of a problem for grid engineers. Keeping the lights on is a delicate balancing act that depends on predictability - and the wind industry has never been able to adequately answer the question of what happens when the wind doesn’t blow. 

You would like to think that the powers that be might have asked that question before committing us to sourcing all of our energy from renewables, but the renewable energy lobby has our politicians hypnotised. We are not blessed with cerebral politicians.

The problems with wind energy were evident long before now. The industry advertised the theoretical output of wind turbines knowing that they would never actually produce their rated output. Most onshore turbines would struggle to reach thirty percent of their rated capacity and offshore turbines average around forty percent. But supposing we could build enough turbines to meet demand, there’s still the question of backup, since wind can drop off for weeks at a time.

Because wind can drop off at a moment’s notice, there is only really one way to plug capacity gaps at scale, and that’s to have gas-powered generation plant on standby. Typically, this happens in the dead of winter when gas is at peak demand and at peak prices. Though wind means we notionally use less gas, gas is considerably more expensive when we do need it. Not forgetting that the cost per MWh for gas generation is greatly increased by forcing gas plant to power down when the wind is blowing.

This, though, does not trouble wind advocates. The ideological root command is to use less gas. Affordability and reliability are of no concern, so long as the primary objective of reducing gas consumption is achieved. They don’t care if that means heavy industry is forced to power down and we must spend a fortune buying heating for low-income households in winter. This is more a religious crusade than an energy policy.

Still, though, our politicians press on with this failed policy because they’ve bought the line that wind energy is cheap. But wind was only ever cheap on paper by ignoring whole system costs (grid balancing and long-distance transmission lines) - and by lobbying efforts to make gas and other forms of energy more expensive. Even at peak gas prices, gas would still be competitive were it not for the green taxes and carbon costs.

Ultimately, there’s no such thing as ‘cheap renewables’. Politicians have made it the case that wind farms aren’t liable for the costs of grid connection, grid balancing, and backup. They have fiddled the figures and fiddled them again, using the Ukraine gas price shock as the benchmark by which to compare costs. In any other industry, they’d be found guilty of false advertising and fraud.

But even with every market distortion in their favour, the wind industry still can’t survive without vast subsidies. This year construction costs have rocketed by forty percent, causing big operators to scrap new offshore windfarms. They’re also waking up to the fact that wind turbines out at sea aren’t living up to their expected lifespan. Thus, there is zero chance of hitting the government’s targets for renewable generation.

Offshore turbines, in the highly aggressive environment of our coastal waters, have a lifespan of 20-25 years, after which they are no longer safely functional and even that lifespan estimate may be optimistic. Within each early-model turbine, there exist thousands of components and parts that have worn down, been replaced and fixed without estimates on their installation time frame. These are already nearing the end of their life expectancy.

From a study led by the University of Kent published in February of 2021, it was estimated that the UK must decommission approximately 300 and 1600 early-model offshore wind turbines by 2025 and 2030 respectively. From the fleet of 2292 turbines, therefore, the majority will need replacement by 2030.

Furthermore, as the turbines exceed their safety remit, the sector is also set to lose the unique skillset of the engineers that originally installed and maintained these early models, as they are now approaching retirement. With a combination of these factors, it is anticipated that the additional requirement could significantly slow the growth of the renewable energy sector.

In short, that means there is no possibility of meeting Net Zero targets. But more importantly, having closed much of our nuclear and coal fleet, we’re going to struggle to keep the lights on if we have an especially cold winter. Presently we’re entirely dependent on interconnectors from France and Norway, and the Grid is exploring options to disconnect heavy industry in a cold snap. We have just enough gas plants to keep the basics functioning, but global instability means we may face more gas price shocks when the nation can least afford it.

Sceptics have long warned that reliance on intermittent and expensive renewable energy would lead to blackouts. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened yet, and there’s just enough juice left in the system to stop the grid from falling over, but it’s going to cost serious money and it’s going to seriously damage our international competitiveness. It is somewhat ironic that start-up giga-factories have abandoned Britain and Europe citing unsustainable energy costs. It turns out those ‘green jobs’ don’t exist. In truth, Net Zero is destroying jobs and entire industries. 

That said, the writing has been on the wall for Net Zero for some time. Politicians are starting to realise that once the true costs of Net Zero are known, voter sentiment turns sour very quickly. Voters are not nearly so keen on EVs and heat pumps as the politicians, and nobody sane would push to electrify heating and road transport when capacity margins are so thin.

As we count the cost of the Covid lockdowns, the war in Ukraine, and now instability in the Middle East, we’re seeing an awakening. We can no longer afford green ideology. We must tap into our domestic reserves and urgently exploit our own resources.

In an ideal world we’d be bringing new nuclear plant on stream, but decades of policy neglect and procrastination now means we have no choice but to use gas in the interim. Though small modular reactors are in the pipeline, they’re held up by planning red tape and legacy EU regulation.

The green lobby would have it that wind can be made viable by way of battery backup, but even the National Grid doesn’t see battery storage as anything other than short duration for maintaining grid frequency. Batteries may iron out momentary grid instability, but they cannot serve as baseload when the wind doesn’t blow. Not forgetting, of course, the astronomical costs of grid scale batteries.

But what about solar, they say? Solar fares even worse than wind for output. Solar in the UK has a load factor of just eleven percent. It uses up vast land resources to produce very little energy. It may have a role for off-grid properties, but it’s in the winter evenings where Britain needs the additional capacity - when the sun is, quite famously, not shining.

The green lobby says the solution is to simply use less energy. Though there is an argument for demand side management to reduce waste, the grid should be designed around the needs of the economy rather than designing the economy around the needs of the grid. That, fundamentally, is where Net Zero falls over. It is a transition to mineral intensive economy (which is not by any means greener), but it is also a transition to a command-and-control economy.

Quite hilariously, though, Net Zero is even losing the support of green ideologues as they realise that the green transition would require a vast increase in mineral mining, and sea bed mineral extraction which is far worse for ecosystems than coal mining or fracking. Elsewhere, wildlife campaigners are starting to notice the impact of wind turbines on seabirds and marine wildlife.

Ultimately, Net Zero is little to do with the environment. For the energy companies, it’s a very tidy subsidy grift. Politicians, however, see it as an industrial revolution, even though it’s driving heavy industry and manufacturing out of business. But more importantly, it’s a way to assume more control over individuals and private industry. Everything connected to the smart grid can be monitored and rationed. Saving the planet is really just the pretext.