Another week, another networking event. My wife is not happy at the amount of time I’ve been spending out after hours this week.
But as I keep saying, I have to be at these networking events, the wine, beer and nibbles, are just things I have to force myself to have when I’m there.
So this time around it was the BWEA connect event in Buckingham Gate. My colleague and I went along to talk shop with the who’s who of the British wind energy industry.
What struck me most that evening was one issue that I didn’t know much about until a kind gentleman from POYRY need to say what/who this is, explained it to me.
The problem in the UK is that the wind energy resources are primarily based in Scotland; the energy is needed around London.
This means the energy flow in the UK is very much a North to South flow.
The transmission and distribution lines that do this were never designed to handle these kinds of variable energy loads. They prefer predictable steady flows.
So now add in the factor that it’s not working 100% effectively at the minute and the 2020 requirements mean that Scotland will expect to receive several hundred MW’s of installed wind (and other marine based) energy over the next decade.
Can anyone see the problem yet?
What’s on the horizon to sort this out? Well not much but certainly there are plans being made as I write this.
The UK could see several pockets of development in offshore grids in areas in say East Anglia, Humberside and Teesside.
This might then provide additional incentives to build a wind farm in those regions, creating competition and perhaps bringing the price of generated electricity down.
But it’s not all bad news. There are rumours that the UK could move to a set price for wind feed in tariffs. Wouldn’t that be something.
No more looking at Germany and Ireland and dreaming “what if?”.
It would bring the risk of projects down in the eyes of the banks and money could be made more freely available.
At some point I think that this is the kind of decision the government has to make and support if they are serious about replicating the success that the oil and gas industry had in the 1970’s and 80’s.
We can lead this world in wind here, given how much wind we have in the UK. We just need the right leadership to provide the best incentives. Here’s to hoping…
Glad you enjoyed our event last week. However, I disagree strongly with your desire for a feed-in tariff in the UK. The issues preventing delivery in the UK are to do with planning and (as you rightly point to) grid - though to call the work of the Electricity Networks Strategy Group 'not much' in this regard I think is misleading. There is plenty of desire to fund projects in the UK; the Renewables Obligation is NOT a problem. What would be a problem is for the UK to go through further policy instability when we need to be getting on with building the capacity which is finally coming to the market. The RO is not broken, don't fix it.
Regards,
Gordon Edge
Director of Economics & Markets,
BWEA