What no one mentioned is that uk electricity price is tied to the price of natural gas so even with more renewables the price doesn’t automatically drop
@@gregorymalchuk272nuclear does require natural gas peaker plants, actually. Nuclear is good for base load only and is very difficult to turn up and down.
@@GregHassler France uses their nuclear reactors in load-following mode negating the need for natural gas peaking. Nuclear power generating units can slew 80% of their output in 30 seconds, faster than just about any other source, and way faster than coal or gas.
@@gregorymalchuk272Ramping down the output from a nuclear reactor has always been quick and easy (you can take them to 0% in the blink of an eye), it is ramping them up that takes many hours because removing control rods does not have the immediate effect that inserting them does, so technicians have to raise output slowly step by step.
Because natural gas is our biggest source of energy, that's why it's tied to it. It accounts for about 60% of the energy produced in the uk. Wind power is less than 2%
She mentioned 14% wind? - I don't know where she got that number from but Imperial college, London said 32.4% of the UK's electricity came from Wind in the first quarter of 2023 which was more than Gas for the first time!
@@alexjn5460 no, I did read it back and she did say off shore, but I just fell this is a disingenuous answer, as it made it sound like we don't have that much wind power here🤔
Wind works. Today it has been extra windy here in Denmark, it meant our Wind turbines delivered something like 120% of the total electricity demand of our nation causing prices to even dipped below 0 (surplus means exporting and this not always possible). For the first six months of 2023 wind and solar stood for 68% of the electricity used here, so while good we still must improve. Financially wind makes sense in all sorts of ways, not only is it cheap it also means not having to import fossil fuel or being able to use that elsewhere if needed (or better yet, just leave the dirty stuff in the ground).
What timing on Orsted. We've got them setting up on our port in the NE USA Coast. Looking forward for the green electricity in our neck of the world. Wishing I was younger so I could work on those turbines.
@@liberatumplox625which is why you also need plenty of storage. Pumped hydro is very good. It can be done off river so it doesn't disrupt river ecosystems. It is wise to keep existing gas plants available for emergency backup too. If they get used a few days per year the emissions won't be too much.
@@arrell1xyz I really love Octopus Energy. Up until recently, when I moved to a new house, I was using Octopus Energy in two different houses and they were a great provider. Not only for giving clear information about where they got their energy from, but also really good fast customer service, which I really appreciated.
What they didn't mention is how much higher their power bills would have gone without the wind turbines. Wind and solar power have pulled power prices down, or kept them from soaring, and have mostly eliminated black and brownouts we used to see all the time. Solar, wind + batteries, and EV's are the obvious and welcomed future.
California would like to differ. We're a frontrunner on wind and solar and have consistent brownouts each summer and among the highest energy prices in the nation.
I am an actual solar panel owner and to be honest it was a terrible decision. My monthly payments are higher for the solar panels then paying for electricity that I may be getting from nuclear power or natural gas(Dade county/Miami). I also have to pay for extra electricity because during the spring, summer, and fall I have the A/C going because it’s hot 95-98% of the year. In 15 years I was told I will have to replace them because they will not be as efficient as they are now which is also when my payments will be done which was a 15 year plan on the ones I have now. I pay $170 every month on average and is the lowest depending on usage but the price only goes up if I need extra power from the grid for solar panels for the month. I was paying anywhere from $80-$190 a month using FP&L’s power(Florida Power and Lighting)… my next project is looking up which politicians/how many are invested in these “green energy” companies because as of now I don’t see the cost savings or the environmental savings.
Aside from the fact that they're turbines NOT windmills. They draw power to start them and keep them running in cold weather when there's no wind. As for you saying that they're pulling prices down, that's conjecture. The price to build and operate them though isn't, and it's astronomical. As of yet they're not cost effective, as anyone who scratches beneath the PR B💩 knows.
@@robertlee8805 "How does this industry find them and encourage towns and cities to encourage them for this?" Because the company offers structured training at a local college combined with on the job work experience - with a well paid job at the end of it - and there are, on average, 3 locals chasing every job in the town. The new energy systems are going to need appropriate skills in many different fields - from young ladies like Bridi to guys fitting heat pumps in peoples' houses. Trained specialists are going to be the bottleneck with many of these new technologies that are being rolled out - so governments (both local and national) need to identify them and start training in numbers.
At what cost to the environment? The Greenies never account for embedded energy in their culture religion of climate change. They are just part of CCP marketing.
Complete rubbish... they may produce that much but ONLY during optimal times... when that wind isn't too strong or too weak... blind people everywhere it seems.
You always hear about how "expensive" renewables is to build, as if every other energy transition in our history has been cheap. The transition to gas and oil was absolutely not cheap and neither was the infrastructure that followed. Building massive rigs, drilling, fracking, moving from rail to building sprawling highways and roads and the numerous costs associated with the climate impact. Every major transition came at a cost, the aim is to be more cost beneficial and less disruptive than the last and this is a good place to start. There is no one size fits all solution
It's like how the nuclear lobby loves to complain about the difficulty of recycling wind turbine blades, but they never ask themselves how many decommissioned nuclear power plants have ever been recycled? Answer: *Zero.* Wind turbine blades are inert so you can safely bury them just like rocks, and the support structure and nacelles at the top are mostly clean metal which gets recycled after decommissioning.
You always hear about how "expensive" renewables are because that's the message that the deep-pocketed fossil fuel industries are pumping out. And if they can label renewables as "liberal", that makes the message all the more effective for them.
The electricity cost is set by the peaker plants and those are fossil fueled. This deserves a more in depth report. Also we should be doing this in the US.
that's where utility scale batteries (mega packs, as deployed successfully in Australia and many other places now) and more importantly, VPPs (Virtual power plants, made up of thousands of home battery backups networked together) come in.
Also: When fossils drive the up the energy price, green suppliers rake in the money which draws in more green investment. Also: More green energy means less demand for fossils, which lowers their price.
I’m American and work on Hornsea wind farm. I’ll be back in the US soon to work on the offshore wind farms Orsted is currently building. Offshore wind will be big business in the US in coming years.
@@xiaoka- And Tesla Energy is leading in this area and growing fast, they just announced another Megapack production line is going to be put in at the Lathrop, CA Megapack factory. When completed next year the factory will be producing about 10,000 Megapacks a yr.
@@xiaokaBatteries are not within an order of magnitude of a competitive price, and the price can't go down much further due to the commodity materials cost making up 70% of the cost.
Oh hell yes. I was an aircraft mechanic and considered going into this in the US because the skills transfer but went into aerospace manufacturing, which took me around the world in austere locations for rocket launch. Now I sit behind a desk and look at this with envy. Miss the adventure when I was a younger man.
most people do. when they say "people find them unsightly" they're talking about a super minority of people and usually those people have ulterior motives anyway.
Comments are amazing... its clear few (of those making comments) may not have much prior knowledge of windpower, let alone in Great Britain and the North Sea. Norway & the Dutch have been pioneers in windpower for decades. And Great Britain... no one on this forum seems to realize that the waters around the British Isles is the domain of the British Monarchy, who not only lease the use of these waters for windpower, but also collect a fraction of the power generation and were the greatest advocates of this renewable energy. Despite what this news story says, the UK policy was set in stone by the British Monarchy and its influence long long ago, decades ago.
It was not made clear that people's electricity prices had increased due to the higher price of Gas used to make electricity, due to the war in Ukraine and NOT due the cost of renewables like Wind - they would have known this and chose to leave it out!
Exactly, the wholesale price of a particular power producer and the retail price a local utility charges that buys from multiple producers are two different things.
I look forward to retirement so I can be like those two old guys sitting on the dock being grumpy and disagreeable. I'll spend my days complaining and moaning about everything that's new.
These are a fantastic solution to solidify our energy security. With most oil producers being our adversaries and supporters of terrorism, it's a crime to continue importing any oil at all. It's unpatriotic to support oil imports.
Times constantly change. While they bemoan the loss of the fisheries boom they enjoyed for decades, they omit the fact that it was based on exploiting the resources of another country - the boom was based on mindlessly exploiting the fishing grounds of Iceland. That eventually ended. I am glad Grimsby is finally enjoying a revival by using a resource closer to home. I sincerely wish them all the best.
@@archmad, the wind offshore can only be considered VERY renewable, so I see no problem. Also, the area allocated is heir own resource that is not used for much else, and wind farms do not impede fishing.
Yes, rather ironic. Their boom period was based on the theft of Icelands natural resouces continuing the exploitation by the British Empire had done elsewhere for centuries.
Our energy prices here in the UK have gone up because the price is set from fosssil fuels and has always has! We only got 4% of gas from Russia but the prices are set on the global market! As soon as we un tether energy prices from gas we will all pay 80% less! Unfortunately our GOV have shares in oil and gas and go out of their way to frustrate green energy to their own ends! The UK supports green energy our robbing political party’s benefit from our dependance on oil they profit from! (All party’s past and present since the 90’s )
When you have enough renewables to displace gas peaker plants electricity prices will drop like a stone. The UK is getting there with over 60% of electricity coming from renewables for three hours on a weekday last week and the build of the new world's biggest wind farm, the Dogger Bank wind farm, started last week.
That's NOT how current renewable energy technologies work. For the long foreseeable future, peaker plants using natural gas is the primary technology. If you don't understand why, find a Mechanical Engineer friend to explain how various power generation technologies work (assuming his degree was worth far more than the paper it's printed on).
@@wingman31k That is _exactly_ how it works though, Denmark is the proof. If you generate more power than you can use at peak then peaker plants become obsolete. When Denmark has excess generation it either sells the excess or it disconnects wind turbines from the grid.
The truth is, regardless of what you think of offshore wind, we NEED it to keep our global emissions in check. This is the price we pay for generations of unchecked pollution and carelessness.
"There's no public cost exposures to build off-shore wind". That is an out right LIE. Tax money are paying for infrastructure and subsidies to off-shore wind. Since the business is very material intensive, it's costs has risen sharply for the last couple of years and is not by any measures "cheap".
"Simple elegant visuals" are you 12 lol how about facts and logical reasoning ? Not one wind farm anywhere around the world has generated even close to the amount of energy it required to build /upkeep them and they keep saying oh in 2035.. how do you think electric charging stations get power? It's not electric 😕
Wind farms are like city skylines. They can be beautiful even majestic. The old first generation of windmills with their gray lattice framework structures were truly hideous. However, the new sleek white tubular designs are elegant. Anyone who says modern wind turbines are ugly has an ugly hurtful soul.
I'm with you on that, I charge my Tesla site that has wind turbine right next door and it's a great feeling knowing I'm topping my car up on clean electricity generated on these majestic beautiful machines. Theres something soothing about watching massive blades spin slowly around
More off shore wind turbines actually drive the cost of electricity down. Denmark has the highest coverage of electricity produced by off shore wind farms ind the world. At the moment there are 112 % green energy (solar and wind) in the danish grid. 99% coming from wind. The spot cost pr. kwh is around 2 cents. This is how ever a windy day, which drives down the cost. On average in July 2023 the cost has been 8 cents to the kwh. before transmission cost and taxes. This is comparable to the cheapest US states like Texas and considerably below expensive states like New York.
@@rayshepherd2479 Private households pay very high taxes on electricity in Denmark which put the kwh. prices at top 3 in Europe. If you look at the prices paid by businesses who does not pay the same taxes it's around the european average. The transmission cost is still pretty high at electricity demand is growing fast due to increased demand for transportation, heavy industry production and heating. The grid needs to be beefed up and this is paid for by transmission cost. If you look at the bare price of producing electricity the danish base price at hovering around the third lowest in the EU.
@HenrikRewes So transmission costs are high. Is the reason because wind is variable so you need something to back it up when the wind doesn't blow? Here in California it's probably why the cost of electricity is so high compared to other states. Price is not only high but power shutdowns are fairly frequent compared to the past.
What most people don’t realise is they use SF6 gas in wind turbines which is worse than CO2. Thorium or molten salt reactors or geo thermal is the way to go
I like many others support wind farms both at sea and on land. I believe the future has to be electric and that’s why in my small way I’m trying to do my bit with solar panels a battery and an EV. I’m not so keen on nuclear because of the risks however small they might be, unless of course the scientists come up with nuclear fission. At the moment we 🇬🇧 are leaders in wind technology I just hope it remains that way.
@@fastertove The UK had the most offshore wind generation in the world but in the last 12 months China has over taken us. China has in the last year created more renewable energy generation, than the rest of the world combined
Correct... Great Britain is the leader in offshore wind. Texas is the leader (by a factor of at least 3 times) in onshore wind in the US, likely the world.
I love how he says "we have a terrible energy cricis in Europe at the moment, and in Brittan at the moment. Tells me that the EU doesn't miss the brits at all.
It's likely he has got used to answering "In the UK, and Europe" to humour brexit supporters because the folks who voted for Brexit genuinely think that the UK is not in Europe. Either they can't tell the difference between the continent and the EU or they are just stupid, voting to leave the biggest economic bloc on Earth makes me think the latter.
He mentions how once political consensus was reached, then private investment finally happened. This is all just a euphemistic way of saying moral hazard was finally created. Offshore wind is not actually a good investment in an of itself - but when you know that the government will bail you out once that becomes obvious, then it is a good investment
If wind is only 14% I'm not sure what kind of reduction they would expect to see in bills at that point, especially not with oil prices still going up. Even if you aren't seeing a reduction, the one thing you can say with certainty is that your bill is going up because of gas and oil so why would you want to keep using it. We can't become shortsighted because we want instant gratification.
Tesla already makes large scale energy storage called "Megapacks," that can store huge amounts of energy from a wind farm like this when the wind is not blowing. Plus the more Megapack facilities you have the fewer peaker plants you need, which seriously jack up the cost of electricity. The west coast of the US is perfect for tons of these wind farms because of the shallow ocean topography offshore. We have not even began to discover ways to harness the potential energy from the ocean through moving water and temp. differences..
11:42 Cost of residential electricity doubled. That is typical for grid electricity rates when they start paying for wind farm electric generators. In the USA electric rates have always gone up when onshore wind farm costs start to be included. Offshore wind farms are about double the cost per MW as onshore wind farms.
The price of wind generated electricity in the UK is pegged to the price of gas generated power. This has been government policy for decades and is a legacy from the infancy of the Wind Power industry over 20 years ago. In the early days wind energy was far more costly than fossil fuel generated power. The government paid subsidies to enable the nascent wind power industry to grow. With economies of scale and improvements in technology the levelised cost of wind energy is now significantly lower than that from gas power stations. This led to the absurd situation over the winter 2022/23 when gas prices went up by ten times and the government had to step in to subsidise consumer bills by spending billions of pounds. Most of this money went as massive profits to both the gas producers and the wind power generation industry. The UK government has been talking about reforming the energy market for years but nothing has happened. Gas power station owners don't want to be undercut by wind power and the wind industry are quite happy about taking increasing profits, so things are stuck with no benefit to the consumer. Currently the UK derives about 40% of it's electricity from renewable sources. It is a complicated issue. While we still consume 33% gas generated power there has to be an incentive to the gas industry to invest in gas power . With increasing renewable generation , at some point this policy has to change. So no, currently the only people with reduced bills are those with their own windmills/solar panels.
In the meantime the UK imports ""Biofuel"" from the USA. The green biofuel is from the millions of trees the USA kills to make little wood pellets (7 million metric tons) to ship to the UK and EU for their power plants to burn. Yea killing trees that suck in CO2 and produce O2 so it can be burned is very good for the earth. Besides burning wood doesn't pollute or make CO2 plus all of those ships to move the stuff are green as well right?
We do have one last coal generation plant that runs on biomass imported from the US but that wont last forever. It was planned for closure 2024 but thats been put back due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
@@stevehayward1854 That "one" just happens to be one of the biggest power plants on the planet though 🤣 And Drax's hunger can see it get through an entire ship of pellets in two days.
No, use these windmills to pump sea water to turn an electrical generator on land. A Huge electrical generator safe from Hurricanes and more . . . . . think.
Better than going down in a hole to dig coal, or breathing the fumes from the refinery, or skimming the oil off of our water. Solar wind farms are cleaner than just the energy they produce.
The fisherman can't see the advantages of wind farms because there is no oil slick or air pollution. Oil has destroyed the fishing industry in more than one place. You know about the Exxon Valdez and the Deepwater Horizon platform in the gulf. Oil is a disaster. The easiest is not always the best. Laziness will destroy life on Earth.
Especially in offshore wind farms, the turbines seem widely spaced. No doubt, if too close together, they would interfere with each other's windstream. What determines the minimum spacing? And, why does it seem the offshore turbines have wider spacing? I certainly am not in the crowd who feels wind farms are ugly! Quite the opposite, it's about time.
Wind is stronger and more reliable offshore. No hills or buildings to get in the way. Also, the size of the blades makes transport across land a challenge.
@@jools2323 I know about the stronger wind on see but I thought that the cost / benefit on land is still favorable compared to sea. Maintenance on land is easier.
The eastern coast of the US doesn't have good wind onshore and many parts are highly populated, so offshore wind does make sense. It is mostly a failure of public policy why offshore wind has failed. Rules like the Jones Act make if very difficult.
People are worried about the environmental impact of wind farms? Really; they should get their priorities right and worry a bit more about the environmental impact of oil, gas and coal!
it's easy to recycle them into energy in a generating plant that burns refuse. otherwise they are just inert landfill. i don't see why people have this thing about recycling everything. the blades are like 50% glass anyway and they won't melt or pollute anything. it's just a bunch of but people who always need to say " but what about ....." negative nancy's
And you will get cancer as well, isn't that also part of the Trump lies. For starters it is nothing like as bad as some make it out to be, plus just what do you think burning stuff does to the atmosphere? Just like us humans wildlife also suffers due to air pollution, in fact it is way more harmful only more distributed and in a way slower. Here is a quote from a EU study "Studies show that ash from coal power plants contains significant quantities of arsenic, lead, thallium, mercury, uranium and thorium. To generate the same amount of electricity, a coal power plant gives off at least ten times more radiation than a nuclear power plant." - does that sound good to you?
US fisheries and wildlife figures show that the biggest killer of birds are domestic cats at 2.4 billion, windows cause the deaths of 599,000,000 birds per year, collision with electricity lines kills 25,500,000 birds and onshore wind turbines is 242,000.
To generate a megawatt it would take about 1,000 pounds of coal, 20 gallons of oil or 30 MINUTES of the average wind turbine spinning at 11 mph. Its clear that wind is effective.
you might have wanted to add another 30 sec-minute of copy for the viewer about why the local electricity costs didn't go down. yes, that's another story, but it felt like a hole here.
Power for 2 million homes? Yes, when the wind is over 12m/s, when it drops to half the speed 6m/s, approx. 20% eq. 400,000 homes, and when there is no wind, then 0 homes.
For domestic electricify prices, I think it is more useful to look to how UK has controlled the market rather than the economics of the offshore wind farm Yanis Varoufakis has an enlightening explanation
How about looking into geothermal energy systems. I know that there are new systems that can be set up anywhere in the world. I'd like to know how close they are to going commercial.
The reason why bills haven't come down is because the government has imposed price controls though an energy cap. Unfortunately the energy cap is acting like a energy price floor. The wholesale energy prices have been near normal since January. The energy companies are just ripping off the UK energy consumer currently.
So here is a problem with the reporting. The question about "has your bill gone down", the reporter did not mention the time interval over which the cost change question applied. Neither did she compare that cost to inflation or ask what the increase would have been had the wind farm not been built. Now this is 60 min, supposedly a premium production, and yet the resulting information lacks any real thought. How disappointing.
Critics are 100% correct! 20 million dollars is the average cost of an offshore wind turbine, much more for floating turbines. in the UK: Gas, currently £60 per MWH Solar, £85 per MWH Onshore wind, £89 per MWH Offshore wind, £102 pr MWH Floating offshore wind, £246 per MWH Windfarms, no matter how large don`t even generate enough electricity to pay for their own mining of materials, manufacturing, installation, servicing, upkeep and decommissioning of the outdated windmills down the line. The blades need replacing regularly as the salt spray corrodes them and sends them out of balance. They aren`t recyclable so they go into landfill. This movie needs to be shown in every school on earth. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Zk11vI-7czE.html
@@bordersw1239 True, even w near 30 GW of UK wind turbines installed. It will remain true in UK, no matter how many windy days occur by chance, because, since wind is a matter of chance, days, even a week will occur w little wind. Elect prices are not tied to gas in high nuclear France, nor high nuclear Sweden.
Which is why offshore wind farms down the east coast of the US combined with enormous energy storage facilities on shore should be a no-brainer for Americans. Building hurricane-proof turbines is the only problem, wind turbines don't like high speeds but there has to be a way to design a turbine that can use it's gearbox in moderate winds but bypass the gearbox for heavy winds.
This project is luckily hard to see from shores, but most aren't. Remember those quaint old days when environmentalists weren't promoting massive construction projects that blight nature on land & sea? So-called clean energy, which couldn't exist without fossil fuels at every step, is just a fancified continuum of urban sprawl. Modern nuclear power should be the main focus for anyone who cares about aesthetics and reliable electricity. And wants safe skies for birds, bats & insects.
