Hornsea One will definitely produce some power, but like all wind farms, how much and how efficiently is open to question.
There are around 9800 wind turbines in the UK, with a potential generating capacity of around 20.1GW.
If you look at the live tracker Gridwatch
https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ then you can see that rarely does wind generate more than around 10GW.
Wind also has a nasty habit of not being around when it’s needed. When we had that really cold spell a few weeks ago then wind and solar together produced 0.170GW combined.....not enough to run the pumps in a conventional power station. It got even worse at night.
Accepted that was relatively extreme, but it does happen more often than you would think, and always at a bad time. Our weather gets cold when high pressure dominates, which means no wind, so little generation, at the point of highest electrical demand.
The other problem with wind and solar is that they are both intermittent in nature, obviously reacting to gusts of wind, clouds passing over the sun etc.
That can be negated somewhat by having lots of them around, but spread over the country rather than in one place. Even so, there still needs to be what I call ‘hard generation’ on the grid capable of responding to both load fluctuations and the variable output of the wind and solar generators.
This has to be done to keep the frequency within very tight tolerances around the nominal 50hz mark.
The hard generation comes from traditional power stations, either nuclear, coal or gas. Those sources create issues too.
Nuclear is basically a base load provider. The generating equipment is typically exactly the same on a nuclear as it is in a coal or oil station. The only bit that is different is the kettle making the steam.
Nuclear reactors are just not capable of varying output to meet grid demands, they can’t react quick enough, so we can’t use those to support wind and solar.
Gas could very easily do the balancing, but, away from their design peak loading, their efficiency falls away alarmingly making them expensive to operate (gas is expensive). They also suffer a bit thermally too, so many operators don’t like to be use them like that because of the maintenance issues they create.
Which brings us back to coal. Providing the support to allow wind and solar to operate effectively is relatively easy for these stations. They respond quickly and accurately to load changes without necessarily suffering a huge drop off in efficiency. Coal is also cheap.
Personally I would like to see the ‘German’ model be used regarding wind generation. Instead of having huge farms in out of way places, they stick up smaller single units close to towns and villages, and set them up to provide local power. This maximizes the potential output from the turbines, and also minimizes transmission losses.
As for the Nuclear......well we all know that two of the proposed new stations have been cancelled, and Hinkley C is not currently moving forward. That design has never been successfully built in Europe anyway, and even if we did do it, it’s a least a decade away at least It will only replace decommissioned nuclear plants anyway.
Nuclear died in the UK when the government abandoned the British AGR (Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor) design in the 1980’s and sucked up to the Americans Westinghouse PWR (Pressureised Water Reactor) system. As always we had Concorde but settled for a Cessna.
The way forward for me is to develop a smart grid system, with wind and solar at its heart, supported by proper energy storage systems systems and smaller more localised ‘hard generation’. The current ‘batteries’ like ORF’s Australian Tesla, can provide full power for 15 minutes........
The hard generation can be from multiple sources, but trash burners like those provided by Nexterra and Outotec are ideal, extremely clean burning and dispose of waste that would normally end up in landfill. (Landfill is a huge source of one of the more potent greenhouse gases methane). They are also relatively small units no bigger than a large supermarket, but capable of providing enough power for a sizable town.
Where trash is not available, then make the most of our natural resources. We have an abundance of coal, gasify it in the seams, extract the gas, a pump the waste straight back down where it came from. It’s a 100 year old process, we are not learning anything new.
It can be combined with the Allam Cycle Power Stations too, a very efficient carbon neutral process that is now commercially ready.
Replace the nuclear with tidal barrages, natural, clean and entirely predictable. Done correctly they will have minimal effect on the environment.
To achieve this would probably take 15 years, so in the meantime, maintain what we have, convert the coal to Biomass burning, or at least co fired with coal, and carbon capture. That could all be completed in 2-3 years, (CC about 5 years) and would give us the breathing space to get the smart grid in place.
And stop bloody fracking.....it’s never going to provide enough gas to meet demand. Use what we have more wisely.
It’s never going to happen of course.......the Government is involved!!