Green Building Forum - More gas powered generators

Green Building Forum - More gas powered generators - honestly! Tue, 19 May 2026 17:50:08 +0100 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/ Lussumo Vanilla 1.0.3 More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306458#Comment_306458 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306458#Comment_306458 Thu, 15 Aug 2024 11:11:57 +0100 borpin Posted By: fostertomIs that what the nukes are for then? For when renewables stop completely? Does that actually happen - windless winter North Sea -for how long?Quite difficult to ramp up traditional Nuclear power. It is designed for baseload (and export in France's case). SMRs may be different (and UK has blown the headstart they had on that technology as usual). Gas Generators will be needed for the forseeable future; very flexible and can be wound up and down very quickly. However, you have to pay for them sitting idle (as you do for renewables).]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306459#Comment_306459 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306459#Comment_306459 Thu, 15 Aug 2024 16:08:20 +0100 djh More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306488#Comment_306488 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306488#Comment_306488 Sun, 18 Aug 2024 22:36:22 +0100 wookey It still seems short-sighted that no UK Government has put any serious cash into developing the UK's huge tidal resources.

They did put tidal (stream) into the last CfD auction and we got 11 projects generating 50MW, which is a £12million budget. I don't know if that counts as 'serious' cash in your books, but it's certainly helpful, and given that the CfD price was £198/MWh (i.e a lot more expensive than Hinkley, but significantly cheaper than the last round of tidal stream at £350 odd), that is demonstrating significant govt subsidy to help get this nascent tech to a point where it's cheap enough to compete. https://www.offshore-energy.biz/uk-supports-11-tidal-energy-projects-with-record-capacity-of-50mw-in-latest-cfd-scheme/

I was aware of Orbital Marine and SIMEC Atlantis ( and have invested in both companies in the past). But HydroWing and the Spanish Magallanes Renovables (and MOR Energy and Vdant Isles) are new to me. Magallanes ATIR boat with a massive turbine-pair on the bottom looks quite inconvenient to launch, or at least it needs a deep port. The one they've got has been running for 6 years it seems, so I guess it works. Hydrowings liftable wing is quite clever as it solves the servicing problem (at the cost of a special barge). It will be interesting to see who winds out of Orbital and Hydrowing on cost (I don't think the 'needs a 70-tonne crane to service' underwater designs are ever going to be cheap enough, BICBW).]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306492#Comment_306492 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306492#Comment_306492 Mon, 19 Aug 2024 07:42:33 +0100 borpin Posted By: djhIs there an explanation (for dummies :) somewhere of how the constraint & generation payments work?Short answer, no. I've found a few on Twitter that are still pretty complex. Ultimately it is heads they win, tails we lose. They either get paid way above the Gas Generation rate (strike price) or get paid not to send power to the grid.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306493#Comment_306493 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306493#Comment_306493 Mon, 19 Aug 2024 08:52:31 +0100 owlman Incomplete re your original question and you may have read this already?

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-explained/how-do-we-balance-grid/what-are-constraints-payments#:~:text=When%20there%20are%20physical%20constraints%20on%20the%20network,Generators%20are%20then%20compensated]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306500#Comment_306500 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306500#Comment_306500 Mon, 19 Aug 2024 17:01:13 +0100 Mike1 Posted By: wookeyThey did put tidal (stream) into the last CfD auction and we got 11 projects generating 50MW, which is a £12million budget. I don't know if that counts as 'serious' cash in your books, but it's certainly helpfulI missed that, and it is certainly a shuffle in the right direction, but it's still not serious investment.

For example, it would buy:
- less than 1 km of the St Austell to A30 link road: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cornwall-61673099
- less than 3 London New Year's Eve firework displays: https://www.london.gov.uk/who-we-are/governance-and-spending/sharing-our-information/foi-disclosure-log/foi-new-years-fireworks-2023-jan-2023

I'd say that was a bit bigger than peanuts. Walnuts maybe?]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306543#Comment_306543 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306543#Comment_306543 Thu, 22 Aug 2024 21:25:47 +0100 WillInAberdeen
Overnight, the strong winds meant we had the cheapest power in Europe, therefore we exported much of our excess wind power to our neighbours and curtailed the rest.

There is an emerging problem in Europe that PV owners are not reducing production as they theoretically should in response to low/negative prices (did anyone here switch off PV today?). PV is embedded, so difficult for the transmission operators to curtail.

Today, they paid other countries (including us) to absorb their excess PV by curtailing more of our wind. But we are all building more PV so that strategy might not work much longer.

For consumers, many of us had another free electricity day today on Agile and other variable tariffs. Only a couple of years ago, free electricity was noteworthy and only happened at weekends, but I've lost count how many free electricity days there have been this year (a dozen perhaps, anyone keeping count?).

Throughout all this, a small amount of gas and biomass power kept running, presumably paid by the grid to stay on for stability (as the electricity prices weren't covering their fuel bills).]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306548#Comment_306548 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306548#Comment_306548 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 00:20:02 +0100 Mike1 Posted By: WillInAberdeenOvernight, the strong winds meant we had the cheapest power in Europe, therefore we exported much of our excess wind power to our neighbours and curtailed the rest.A very different profile to France, where it was 81% nuclear, 12% hydro, 3% wind, 2% biomass, 1% gas (+1% rounding error), and some of that was exported too.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306553#Comment_306553 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306553#Comment_306553 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 09:53:45 +0100 Doubting_Thomas Posted By: WillInAberdeenFor consumers, many of us had another free electricity day today on Agile and other variable tariffs.

We had a free electricity hour on Octopus - encouraged to use more than we would normally between 1-2pm. We turned everything on that we could (dishwasher, washing machine, induction hob, electric car charger) and the result was we used 3.75kWh instead of the typical 0.06kWh at this time of day. This amounted to a whopping 86p rebate.

I realise this is summer time and we may not be a typical household (although I'd argue those loads are fairly common), but I'm genuinely curious - how much of a problem is surplus power at the moment?

Is it just a financial problem due to price instability, or an actual physical problem as we have to put it 'somewhere'?

Could we be using it to power more pumped storage (like Dinorwig) or is that not 'useful' storage because it is instantaneous backup rather than base load?]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306554#Comment_306554 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306554#Comment_306554 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 10:40:01 +0100 revor Posted By: Doubting_ThomasWe had a free electricity hour on Octopus

We could not make use of it as the way our system is set up with a battery the usage would have come from solar and battery. Newer inverters to ours are more programmable.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306555#Comment_306555 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306555#Comment_306555 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 12:12:56 +0100 djh Posted By: WillInAberdeenThere is an emerging problem in Europe that PV owners are not reducing production as they theoretically should in response to low/negative prices (did anyone here switch off PV today?). PV is embedded, so difficult for the transmission operators to curtail.In this country AIUI PV isn't contracted to be curtailed because (a) history and (b) lots of small distributed generators. I don't know what the situation is in any other European countries.

But it seems to me that large solar farms could be curtailed just like wind farms. Output from domestic installations is constrained by law, so there's always the possibility of changing the law if required to prevent problems getting worse. So I don't see any fundamental problem, just the usual slow-moving legislatures. Am I wrong?]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306556#Comment_306556 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306556#Comment_306556 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 15:31:39 +0100 Doubting_Thomas Posted By: djhBut it seems to me that large solar farms could be curtailed just like wind farms.

But *why* do they need to be curtailed? Other than wear and tear is there any fundamental issue with generating an excess whilst the weather is favourable?

Could we not use the power to BitCoin mine or something like these guys (only greener):

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/feb/18/bitcoin-miners-revive-fossil-fuel-plant-co2-emissions-soared]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306557#Comment_306557 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306557#Comment_306557 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 16:23:41 +0100 WillInAberdeen
The solar (including the multi MW farms) is connected into the Distribution networks, not the Transmission networks, who are separate companies. The Transmission operator has to balance the grid but has no contract or relationship with the solar farms or with households. So they cannot enforce them to shut down on sunny days, they don't even know who's producing, or how much. Some windfarms are bigger (GW) so are connected to the Transmission system and can be curtailed.

On top of that, German PV owners get attractive historic FITs they don't want to turn off, and many don't even have smart meters, let alone smart inverters allowing remote control by the TNO.

We're only a few years behind, and our pricing is getting interconnected by HVDC. We have about 2GW of pumped storage to absorb oversupply, but it's much slower to build more of that than PV.
My understanding is secondhand from analysts over there, read back previous posts in blogs such as
https://gemenergyanalytics.substack.com/p/the-reasons-for-negative-prices
https://de.linkedin.com/posts/lionhirth_negative-preise-ungeregelte-solaranlagen-activity-7232716336383098880-0KcC

Oversupply is as serious a technical problem as undersupply, both will trigger blackouts for safety. In theory the market should solve this, by negative price incentives for suppliers to cease oversupply, but seems to be a bit difficult in practice.

In an effort to help, I had 12 hours free electricity yesterday and ran the tumble dryer and dehumidifier continuously on the clothes it was too rainy to hang out... Octopus also gave me a free takeaway coffee so it's not all bad!]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306558#Comment_306558 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306558#Comment_306558 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 17:26:04 +0100 djh Posted By: Doubting_ThomasBut *why* do they need to be curtailed? Other than wear and tear is there any fundamental issue with generating an excess whilst the weather is favourable?They need to be curtailed when there is a transmission constraint (i.e. when the user is distant from the producer). So if you can find an application that can be placed locally to a generator, and whose economics allow for intermittent operation only when there is spare local electricity then that's a good solution. But most applications require their capital equipment is used most of the time in order to make their economics work, so they just make transmission problems worse. Batteries or other storage facilities would seem to be a good candidate, but even they generally need more regular guaranteed usage to be cost effective.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306559#Comment_306559 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306559#Comment_306559 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 17:30:48 +0100 djh Posted By: WillInAberdeenAIUI the issue in Germany is they have 90GWp of panels but the country only uses 50GW of power, so they swing from oversupply by day to undersupply at night, with big accompanying price swings, negative then pricey. They're building another 10GW of panels each year.The obvious question is why? Why continue making their problem worse?

The Transmission operator has to balance the grid but has no contract or relationship with the solar farms or with households.

But they could have - it's just a matter of changing the law.

On top of that, German PV owners get attractive historic FITs they don't want to turn off, and many don't even have smart meters, let alone smart inverters allowing remote control by the TNO.

Are domestic systems causing oversupply or is it large solar farms?]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306561#Comment_306561 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306561#Comment_306561 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 18:01:13 +0100 WillInAberdeen
Don't think you can just change a law to break up existing contracts between companies and impose new ones with different companies, politically or legally. What would a compulsory roll-out of remotely-controlled inverters look like?

Different google hits suggest about half their PV is domestic.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306562#Comment_306562 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306562#Comment_306562 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 18:34:51 +0100 djh Posted By: WillInAberdeenWhy continue building? They want to get to net zero all year round, not just in summer, so that will need a lot of panels (200 GW+ planned). Most of that production will need to be curtailed in summer. We are doing the same with wind and PV.Wind tends to generate more in winter than summer, so it sounds like they should be prioritising wind and restricting solar.

Don't think you can just change a law to break up existing contracts between companies and impose new ones with different companies, politically or legally. What would a compulsory roll-out of remotely-controlled inverters look like?

Well no, that's not how politics works. You have to buy off vested interests, at least to the point that you carry a majority of votes. When you say 'remotely-controlled inverters' do you mean for solar farms or domestic? And for domestic do you mean for new installs or existing ones? The answers are obviously different for each case. Indeed there's likely different answers for existing and new solar farms, but there's just money involved there and not many votes. But basically the government can do what it wants if it really sets its mind to something when it comes to contracts.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306567#Comment_306567 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306567#Comment_306567 Fri, 23 Aug 2024 22:50:06 +0100 philedge
Ref our renewable generation yesterday. Are we sure the free electricity was due to excess UK renewables and not contractual constraints/obligations? I've just looked at gridwatches figures for yesterday and at 12 lunchtime we were importing over 10% of our electricity. Hard to see that we had excess renewables with that much coming in over interconnections????]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306570#Comment_306570 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306570#Comment_306570 Sat, 24 Aug 2024 09:33:36 +0100 WillInAberdeen
This happens when EU imports are very negative price (so we are being paid to import by our neighbours, to help manage their excess). It's better economics for us to accept their excess power, even if we have to pay for curtailment of our own windfarms.

UK are planning to triple our PV and wind capacity in the next five years to 110GWp, vs our summer demand 25GW.

This is a really great problem to have! Brilliant news.

We should see batteries and electrolysis built, to store some excess, but a) we cant build them as fast as PV and b) their capital cost means they won't build just to run at summer lunchtimes. So we should still have excess power and zero/negative prices sometimes.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306596#Comment_306596 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306596#Comment_306596 Mon, 26 Aug 2024 20:17:13 +0100 philedge More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306615#Comment_306615 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=306615#Comment_306615 Wed, 28 Aug 2024 11:55:53 +0100 WillInAberdeen https://wind-curtailment-app-ahq7fucdyq-lz.a.run.app/

From here, it's a hobby website but seems ok.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307452#Comment_307452 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307452#Comment_307452 Sat, 07 Dec 2024 23:08:42 +0000 WillInAberdeen https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-02/aemo-demands-emergency-backstop-to-switch-off-solar/104670332

Similar to the PV situation in Germany:
The growth of rooftop PV in Australia is fantastic, but there's sometimes more solar energy than can be consumed. Homeowners don't respond to price signals and turn off their PV themselves on low-price days. But the grid operator can't remotely turn off the excess PV from people's roofs.

Grid operator is looking for permission to spike up the voltage when needed, to deliberately trip out home PV inverters. In last resort, after asking nicely first, etc etc

Seems like there would be technical and political problems with this kind of brute force approach. (But not sure what else they could do.)

UK is a few years behind Germany and Australia on this so maybe we should plan ahead - make new PV face east/west not south, make home inverters remotely controllable, more batteries...

Full report here
https://aemo.com.au/-/media/files/initiatives/der/managing-minimum-system-load/2024-minimum-demand-and-emergency-backstop.pdf?la=en]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307457#Comment_307457 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307457#Comment_307457 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 10:58:26 +0000 djh
Or require all domestic generators to fit supply interrupters that can be remotely controlled by some means less drastic than taking the mains supply out of spec. Or some subset of generators?

(haven't read the report yet, so maybe it answers this)]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307461#Comment_307461 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307461#Comment_307461 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 12:35:54 +0000 WillInAberdeen
They are building 3GW more rooftop PV each year but can't build storage that fast.

Seems we (UK) should start building storage before we have too much rooftop PV, not after ( includes the PV we are interconnected with in Germany and NL)

Apparently some Australian states did introduce laws that domestic inverters should be set up to be remotely controllable, but turned out compliance was around 30%.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307463#Comment_307463 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307463#Comment_307463 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 12:41:46 +0000 WillInAberdeen More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307470#Comment_307470 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307470#Comment_307470 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 16:32:26 +0000 djh
ISTR there was a case of Tesla putting a large battery online extremely quickly in Aus, so I'm not sure why it would take to long?

Posted By: WillInAberdeen( includes the PV we are interconnected with in Germany and NL)

Hmm, seems to me if you have instability caused by too much generation then if the generation is in another country then shutting down or limiting the interconnector is going to cause a lot less grief than spiking domestic mains!

I do agree that we should be building more storage, especially long-duration storage such as the aforementioned hydrogen in caverns. And increasing transmission capability etc etc.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307473#Comment_307473 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307473#Comment_307473 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 18:53:51 +0000 owlman More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307475#Comment_307475 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307475#Comment_307475 Sun, 08 Dec 2024 20:43:42 +0000 djh Posted By: owlmanIf it looks like being an issue then isn't the DNO the ultimate arbiter for grid tied installs.Yes, in this country, but their hands are probably tied unless the law is changed. I have no idea how many PV systems there are here that put out more than 3.6 kW and haven't got the proper paperwork to do it. I don't suppose there are many that have installed a system without registering it though, since everybody wants to get paid for generation and/or export.]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307477#Comment_307477 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307477#Comment_307477 Mon, 09 Dec 2024 08:00:00 +0000 philedge
When we applied to double our export a few years ago, our DNO had no record of the professionally installed MCS system installed in 2015! I hope their record keeping has improved!]]> More gas powered generators - honestly! https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307478#Comment_307478 https://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=18166&Focus=307478#Comment_307478 Mon, 09 Dec 2024 09:53:21 +0000 WillInAberdeen
The grid would rather that people imported from the grid when grid is oversupplied (free electricity). Rather than fill up these loads with self-generated PV, which doesn't respond to grid balancing instructions or price signals.

But they still need PV to export in the shoulder periods (morning, evening, autumn) when the grid is not overloaded, so they can't just ban people from connecting any more home PV.]]>