I read the article but it's still unclear what argument the anti-wind groups use to say _why_ "wind is bad for environment/our children/the economy/greater good"?
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Of course, the same folks have no objections whatsoever to offshore drilling.
e.g.
- Often wind typically need to be subsidised heavily by the government and are not cost effective over its lifetime.
- Typically wind needs to be backed up by fossil fuel or nuclear power generators as it is unreliable or you need to buy capacity from elsewhere.
I won't pretend to know enough to state whether they are valid arguments or not. But they are potentially much stronger arguments against wind power than the others frequently made.
Firming argument is valid, but UK deploys nuclear/gas anyway. You can start feeling real challenges past ~70% ren generation - firming becomes more expensive due to opex but you still need it and gas opex is smaller vs nuclear in this low utilization area. So now you are in a moral dilema- ditch nuclear and build gas firming or reorganize capacity market so that nuclear has some CFD or is compensated for firming&grid stabilization (not all nuclear can operate in island mode so that's another factor)
Germany choose the path of gas expansion if you read Fraunhofer. UK is still in a mix. Nordics are lucky with hydro so they can expand basically all low carbon tech
For now they have sufficient power, but considering nuclear timelines, you better start now
Enhanced geothermal could play a role here, but for now it's debatable.
Demand response is basically - please don't use power because we don't have enough or because it's expensive. That's not an appealing option.
Smart grid management is good but it'll take years to reach good condition - you need to expand/upgrade transmission and distribution systems with proper equipment.
Germany has it's own path that's more or less stable for a long time- coal+gas firming, tons of ren and major transmission expenses, to the point govt will start subsidizing them
It's a strange double standard. As is the building of expensive pumped hydro storage for use with nuclear.
THE UK gets 30% of its electricity from wind and another 5% from solar; Denmark gets 70% from renewables, mostly wind. Iowa gets 65% of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38%, mainly from solar.
But some lobbyists are trying to kill momentum, especially those who see nuclear as a silver bullet. It is not.
what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it
Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements
Take cars, for instance. When someone buys an EV rather than ICE, do you think the EV uses the same amount of energy than the ICE car?
> what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it
Sure, what do you think that needs to be done when there is a limited resource such as electricity? Yes, more production, but until then, what should the grid do if the demand is growing?
> Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements
It is two different models, one is centralized (nuclear) and the other is distributed (solar). The planning is essentially different.
Yes, you need vastly more transmission for a distributed ren grid. Both for deployment and for avoiding curtailment
Solar panels in rooftops can decrease the saturation of the grid, so more transmission is not necessarily needed.