"Green" policies are destroying this country

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056045#Comment_120056045

Where's the 6.5GW of wind?

Coolcormack1979

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120055880#Comment_120055880

More delusional stuff from the most delusional politician in Ireland.looking forward to all them empty buses driving around in the arse hole of Ireland hoping some poor auld lad might want to go to town for a loaf of bread

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056148#Comment_120056148

I have the option of getting the new bus in county Sligo when I need to get into town, which is 3 or 4 times a week. But I do not intend to inconvenience myself for a moment, for a supposed good cause, when I see the car park that is the M50. Others in my neighbourhood are not considering the bus either. Was in Dublin a few weeks ago and couldn’t believe the volume of M50 traffic, both directions, on a Saturday afternoon. Everyone in my county could ditch their cars, get that new bus, and would make absolutely no difference whatsoever except for making things more difficult for us

Ryan thinks we don’t know how percentages work. That level of increase in rural bus use can only be achieved with very low numbers. And a high percentage increase of a very low number is still a very low number.

he’s better off focussing his energy on Dublin

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120055143#Comment_120055143

Wind is predictable.

Since you've predicted a steady red line you will need to explain how Germany's 12GW wasn't anything like a straight line. Multiple times with half or even 2/3rd's of the power gone. The sort of grid that could handle an unpredictable automatic reactor shutdown would find it trivia to handle the predictable nature of wind.

It's up to you to disprove the claim that wind is predictable, show us the largest discrepancies between predicted and actual wind and how long they lasted and then compare that to the fact that ~10% of all nuclear reactors have been offline for over 10 years. ( if you include them then the actual 77% capacity factor of nuclear drops further )

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120055981#Comment_120055981

Renewables do not "compete" with gas or any other fossil fuel. Renewables get first bite at the cherry under the marginal pricing policy and get paid the same as the most expensive fossil fuel in the mix. As regards Ireland, The consumer is paying the same rate for renewables as they are paying for gas. The only reduction is from the other fossil fuels in the mix that are cheaper, coal and oil.

The demand for gas, and the subsequent price drop, was due to others in Europe, unlike Ireland having stocks of LNG. The marginal pricing policy has not, nor never will, reduce the price of electricity.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120055686#Comment_120055686

Tokyo has set a new target for nuclear to provide up to 22% of its electricity supply by 2030. They are only planning on restarting some of the idle undamaged reactors. They had 54 reactors. In addition to the 10 re-opened they may re-open another 7.

https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2022-08-24/japan-considering-development-of-new-nuclear-reactors

Japanese utilities have since set more than 20 reactors for decommissioning largely because of the high cost of safety measures. Of the 33 workable reactors, 25 have been screened for safety checks by the Nuclear Safety Authority. Seventeen have been approved so far, but only 10 have restarted after gaining consent from local communities, including three currently off line for regular safety inspections.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056276#Comment_120056276

This is untrue. The price paid by consumers is not really related to the wholesale price over the last few months. The vertically integrated companies have been subsidizing the supply customers with profited from renewables.

The RESS contracts don’t allow wind and solar generators to benefit from high gas prices at all. Any premium over the strike price goes back to consumers.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056001#Comment_120056001

Eirgrid confirmed that those two plants going offline within seconds of each other resulted in a loss of 840 MW, not 540 MW after 9pm. on Monday the 21st. November 2021. That 840 MW, (why are you persisting with this 1,4 GW for nuclear when you know there are reactors that have a smaller capacity. even a 1.1 GW reactor at 93% is 1.02GW) was 20% of the demand at the time so where does that leave your 10% causing grid meltdown ?

As I said, I find it endlessly amusing that those who profess to be experts in the field who back a wind+hydrogen plan of providing 100% of our requirements at all times are such experts on nuclear, yet when asked the financial cost on an untested theory for grid scale that no other country is even dreaming of going anywhere near, cannot provide a single figure for any stage of this "plan". So with your expertise why don`t you tell us how much it would cost ?

I do not know how it works with electrical engineering, but for any other branch of engineering if you can not provide costings then it is not a plan. It`s known as wishful thinking.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056276#Comment_120056276

Ok, i'll explain it to you like I would to a child

If there are 2 people trying to buy 10 apples, from an apple seller who only has 8 apples, the seller can increase their prices until some people don't want all the apples anymore.

If those 2 people are given 2 apples each from a different source, they only need to buy 6 apples, and now the buyers can negotiate a lower price for those apples and the seller won't be able to sell all of their stock.

When there is a shortage of apples, the buyers bid the price up, when there is a shortage of apples, the seller offers lower prices to clear their stock.

How much did the buyers pay for the 4 apples they were given at the start? It doesn't matter to the apple seller, what matters is the existience of those 4 apples meant that the buyers no longer needed 10 apples, or even 8 apples.

What happens to the 2 spare apples? maybe the buyers decide to buy them and put them away for future needs.

Could they have done this if they didn't already have 6 apples? No, their shortage of apples would only have increased because the seller didn't have enough apples to go around, so somebody had to do without some of those apples that they needed.

In case you're not able to figure it out, the apples are electricity from fossil fuel sources, and the 4 apples given to both buyers is renewable energy.

(I can't believe I feel the need to explain it at this level)

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056289#Comment_120056289

I really do not see what your point is. They Nuclear Safety Authority has approved 17 so far with 10 restarted. I presume that of the remaining 16 if they get approval Japan will restart those as well.

Along with Japan announcing it is planning to build next-generation reactors it seems Japan is quite happy to increase it`s present level of generation from nuclear.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056447#Comment_120056447

You could just save yourself time and effort by rather that attempting to be a poor comedian, just admit that the price of those renewable apples is determined by the marginal pricing policy where they receive the same price as gas.

Renewables have not reduced the price of electricity by as much as a red cent, and never will under that policy. Your only fooling yourself believing otherwise.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056488#Comment_120056488

What sets the gas price? .It's a commodity Supply versus demand.

Reduce demand through adding an alternative supply, then then what happens to the price of gas?

You'd be the very first person to say shutting down nuclear power plants increases the price of gas.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056367#Comment_120056367

I presume these vertically integrated companies are renewable which receive the same price per unit as gas. Are they keeping the wholesale price down due to their own generosity ?

RESS contracts are basically determined by the costs of the suppliers and the tender bids they submit. The accepted bids here for the last round of RESS was 30% higher than the previous RESS auction just 22 months earlier. So on that basis why don`t you provide the cost of this Wind+Hydrogen dream child and we could then have a stab at the strike price. A strike price for the consumer that would actually be doubled due to 50% of the electricity generated being for hydrogen plus all the associated costs with hydrogen added on top.

If the U.K. is an example those premiums over the strike price will be few and far between. Renewable companies there recently just shut down when when the price went above the strike price.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056529#Comment_120056529

It may not remove, but does it reduce demand for gas?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056439#Comment_120056439

The main reactor closures were in August 2011 or December 2021. So should have been stable then.

You claimed that nuclear provide steady power. I've show that that claim is utter garbage. Nuclear absolutely relies on spinning reserve and backup because it can go offline at any time.

Global capacity factor of nuclear (excluding plants cancelled, delayed and those decommissioned early) is 77%.

For example the new reactor in Finland is 14 years late. It can't possibly have a capacity factor of 75% until 2065 at the earliest.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056460#Comment_120056460

That's less than one restart a year since 2011. They are 44 reactors short of what they had back then. And restarting a mothballed plant is cheaper and more predictable than building a new one, for starters you know that it actually exists and has worked. Not a given with new plants as so many don't get completed never mind on time or on budget.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056517#Comment_120056517

Why are you in denial ?

You know as well as anybody that the price is determined by the most expensive component in the generation mix. If gas only made up 5% of the mix and renewables 95%, under the marginal pricing policy the price is 100% at the price of gas.

If you seriously wish to see prices lowered then you should be looking for the marginal pricing policy removed if renewables are as cheap as we are being told.

You may have missed it, but just last week the E.U. rather than do anything about the marginal pricing policy went ahead with a policy on capping gas prices. The largest supplier in the EEA warned them a few months ago about attempting that, and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) which regulates global future exchanges and over-the counter markets through a globally distributed electronic platform in OTC contracts covering a broad range of energy-related products and contract types, also warned the E.U. recently that they would have no interest in taking part in that scheme. ICE OTC market participants include many of the worlds largest energy companies, leading financial institutes and proprietary trading firms as well as gas distribution companies and utilities. Best of luck to the E.U. filling those storage tanks before next Winter if they proceed with that policy.

Maybe spend a while at that wall yourself and see if any of thatit gets through to you.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056498#Comment_120056498

QFT - Sweden also closed down reactors prematurely going from one of the greenest, cheapest and 100% self sufficient countries to one with highest costs and emissions in Europe,

Meanwhile :

As you can see Sweden is exporting more power than they are getting from thermal.

On the other hand Finland who opted for nuclear is the main importer of power.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056677#Comment_120056677

I still do not see what your point is. Japan is re-opening nuclear plants, not shutting them down and are planning on building new-generation reactors as well. And I bet they know what the costs will be as well, unlike those here that cannot put a figure on their alternative wish list.

They seem happy enough with nuclear so I don`t see why it`s a problem for you.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056498#Comment_120056498

The same Sweden that 2022 were Europe`s largest exporter of electricity replacing France who had held that distinction for years.

Now if we could only see some comparison between both Sweden and France in electricity generation that enabled them to do that, maybe we could actually learn something.😀

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056564#Comment_120056564

You are just regurgitating some sort of script, not addressing the issues. maybe you just want to go off on tangents.

You are saying the wholesale market (with marginal pricing) is the same or highly correlated to the retail market (what punters actually pay). This is untrue.

Re the auction prices the auction result has nothing to do with the general principle: renewables operators don’t benefit from marginal pricing.

at the moment, the wholesale prices are almost always above the strike prices.

You are saying the renewables companies stopped generating because the price went above the strike price? That sounds very unlikely. Was this not more likely something to do with the price falling below zero for a short period?

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120057287#Comment_120057287

The strike price is the guaranteed price for the duration of the contract. If the wholesale price is cheaper than the strike price, the government pays the renewables company the difference. If the wholesale price is greater than the strike price then the company pays back the difference. If the wholesale price minus the strike price is greater than the company believe they can generate the electricity for then to continue supplying is going to cost them money so the will do, as some recently did in the U.K., they will just stop supplying until they can again make a profit.

Not much help to reducing wholesale prices when they are high now is it!

The wholesale electricity price is the price at which suppliers buy the electricity they use to supply to end consumers. Under the marginal pricing policy renewables get first shot at filling the demand without having to quote a price. Next the cheapest quoted fossil fuel gets to fill the demand and so on until the demand is filled. The price for renewables is then paid based on the most expensive fossil fuel in the mix regardless of the percentage that fossil fuel is contributing. Here that is natural gas so renewables have not and never will reduce the of electricity prices under the marginal pricing policy. Other than coal and oil, which under this policy are cheaper than renewables on wholesale price, we might as well be using 100% gas as far as wholesale prices are concerned.

Now how about you explaining how France can regularly supply 70% of it`s needs via nuclear, and two plants tripping out here on a Monday night after 9 p.M. with a loss of 20% of demand, have not resulted in either grid not collapsing having exceeded that 10% you believe would result in.

Or even with your expertise in the field why not tell us how much this wind+hydrogen 30GW offshore plane will cost and what the strike price will be. Bearing in mind that the strike price will be in reality double plus all the hydrogen add-ons on top. With all your apparent knowledge on nuclear that you and some others here appear to be experts on, I find it incongruous that you, or anyone else who supports this so called offshore plan, cannot put a price on it.

antoinolachtnai

Your two paragraph makes no sense at all. If there is a CfD as you describe it doesn’t make any difference to the generator what the wholesale price is. Your second paragraph doesn’t resemble what goes on in the market and takes no account of the CfD mechanism described in your first paragraph.

I don’t know why you can’t accept the IAEA’s advice. Have you got any reason why that advice should be rejected?

How am I supposed to know what the price of anything will be in 2050? Strike prices are determined by the market, not by me.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120057889#Comment_120057889

Do you even understand what a cfd/strike price is. If the wholesale price is less than the cfd/strike price then the generators are guaranteed the wholesale price + the difference between the wholesale price and the strike price. The second paragraph represents what happened in the U.K just a few days ago and was posted here where under cfd the generators would have been losing money to keep submitting their wind generated power and shut down until the price was in their favor.

You are the one who brought up this 10% as being gospel if our grid carried more than 10% nuclear energy where our grid would go into meltdown if that 10% went offline suddenly. I am simply pointing out to you that France regularly has it`s grid carrying 70% nuclear and that a drop of 20% percent of demand here after 9 p.m on a November Monday in 2021 due to two gas plants tripping out at the same time, has not fried the French grid, and the 20% sudden drop off, (double your 10%) didn`t fry our grid either. So why not if your 10% is as gospel as you believe it to be. ?

I wasn`t asking you for for the price of anything in 2050. I was asking you for the price of this so called plan based on wind+hydrogen guaranteeing us 100% of our needs at any given time that you favor. Surely with all your expertise on a plan you favor you can at least put a price on it. ?

The strike price bids are determined by the the Capex and OpEx costs. Tell us what they are for the electricity generation part of the plan and we could have a fair idea of what the price would be. As that strike price would be double to the consumer, + all the associated hydrogen costs on top, then we would know the wholesale electricity price of that plan. Ergo whether this so called plan is financially viable or not.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056787#Comment_120056787

In case you missed it there's a big column on the right hand side with the numbers already added up.

Denmark has nett exports of 790MW just possibly from wind. Norway has oodles of hydro.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056807#Comment_120056807

Is it that both France and Sweden are producing over 11GW of hydro today ?

Sweden is producing nearly TWICE as much electricity from Hydro than from nuclear.

And you'll have to show me if France ever exported enough power to dip into it's nuclear baseload. Exported spinning reserve overhead is not the same as exporting nuclear power.

https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/

https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#

Larbre34

This thread has descended from a discussion on policy matters into a game of engineering top trumps.

Can we please stop with the minutiae of daily energy production ffs?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120056778#Comment_120056778

Nuclear isn't reliable. That's a huge problem. For a grid like Ireland's it a show stopper , unless you have the sort of reserves that make adding renewables trivial.

And nuclear is expensive and late and there's a good chance the project will be abandoned like 50% of the new reactors in the USA started since 1990 (so average cost per reactor will be $20bn because they are still being delayed). But if you already have the plants and they were working then at least you don't have to worry about those aspects.

I've posted before about the 28 nuclear power countries that between them have started AND completed ONE reactor in the last 30 years. And it won't be fully operational till March at the earliest.

The new flywheel going into Moneypoint is covered in this episode of Just Have a Think which goes through the tech in general

https://youtu.be/MT3xfppte3Y

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120058267#Comment_120058267

Ah ffs you are calling nuclear unreliable where you are supporting a plan of wind+hydrogen providing 100% of our needs at any given time,where generation from wind dropped from 42% in 2020 to 35% in 2021 and going by the percentage at the end of November, will be lucky to make 34% this year even with more nameplate capacity than 2020. You really need to look up what the word unreliable means.

Not a single green can even give a cost for what this plan would cost, but I can give you a hand out in that regard from our next door neighbours. They just awarded their first CFD for floating offshore expected to come online in 2027 at £87.30/MWh. I`m surprised you ddn`t mention that when you were giving your back of the envelope price for wind+hydrogen. A back of the envelope calculation we have yet to see as to how you came up with a strike price figure. Even though it did leave, (with that figure having to be doubled due to half the electricity generated under this so called plan for hydrogen production), more expensive than the strike price you gave for nuclear.

So on the unlikely basis that we will even equal the U.K. price for floating offshore, why don`t you take that U.K. strike price, double it and add all the associated costs of hydrogen and let us know what you come up with. Personally I cannot see it being anywhere under €250/MWh.

If you are tempted to again post your line that offshore is going to become cheaper I and other posters have pointed out to you on several occasions that is not going to happen. The end of year financial reports from major wind turbine manufacturers show that they are currently selling them below cost, and that is not going to continue unless they all, like Gamesa Siemens, intent to go bust.