Lack Of ‘Base-Load Power’ Causing Massive Energy Price Increases
Copenhagen Consensus President Bjorn Lomborg says the world tried to introduce renewables to the grid without having enough base-load power to support it.
Europe’s renewable energy push has made power prices increasingly high with the nations retiring too much base-load generation, mainly coal, and pushing too hard on boosting renewable energy.
“We hear a lot about heat deaths and that’s a real problem, what we don’t hear is many more people all across the world die from the cold,” Mr. Lomborg told Sky News host Chris Kenny.
“Now if the prices go through the roof, it’s very likely people won’t be able to heat their homes as well and that will mean many more people dying from the cold.”
WATCH:
h/t Joe O.
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Bill
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“base-Load”
I think “spinning reserve” is more apt. Solar and wind need a much larger fleet of fast-start reserve units that the industry calls spinning reserve, or reserve capacity. Typically simple cycle gas turbines. Though fast start large diesel IC units are gaining traction in some areas, mainly in the EU, 50hz.
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Alan
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That is one of the issues but spinning reserve is a concept that relates to a power system that is not limited by the energy available. It is designed to deal with unexpected power system failures and they were predictable before we built ridiculous renewable energy supplies. No amount of spinning reserve can cover for no wind.
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Kevin Doyle
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In engineering school, we learned some basics of ’cause and effect’.
Apparently, politicians don’t understand this simple concept.
Here is a factual example. Near my home in Rhode Island, USA is a small offshore wind farm. It was designed to provide 30 megawatt of power for an offshore island, Block Island. In reality it rarely produces half of the required power for the small island. Instead, the people there rely upon a massive underwater cable to bring electricity to them from the mainland.
Economics:. The going rate for electricity from a power plant to the electric utility, and ultimately consumer, is $0.04/kw-h. However, in order to make the wind turbine business viable,hour State Legislature and Governor are forcing the utility company to pay an increasing scale from $0.10-0.40/kw-h over the next decade.
That is TEN times the normal market rate to support offshore wind turbines which work about 1/3 of the time.
Enjoy your clean, inexpensive, reliable energy!
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