Published in 2003 by Hugh Sharman, this paper examines the Danish experience of large scale wind turbine deployment and what lessons the UK could learn from this.

Conclusions

1. The present UK Government is convinced that present policies will encourage the construction of sufficient new, renewable power capacity to provide 20% of all generated kW in 2020. Based on Danish experience, it is unrealistic to believe that much more than a small fraction of this can be met from biomass. Other new methods (waves, ocean currents, tidal barriers, etc.) are all either at the earliest stages of technical development or themselves carry enormous environmental implications. Against the evidence, it believes that this demand can be supplied by about 27 GWe of new, wind capacity. The evidence of West Denmark suggests the 20% target requires up to 42 GWe of new wind capacity. This is equivalent to 21,000 giant, 2 MWe turbines. The foreseen investment shortfall for generation only is up to £15 billion.
2. It follows that the UK has not properly estimated the technical realities, visual implications and financial cost of tying this large, new capacity, mostly to be built on the Western fringe of the UK, to the bulk of electricity consumers in England’s South East and Midlands.
3. Even if built, this huge investment is unlikely to provide any firm capacity. Each kWe of wind energy will require a kWe of firm, conventional capacity to be built. The costs of doing this do not seem to be accounted for in the Country’s plans.
4. If built, the absence of adequate interconnectors to other industrial countries, 42 GWe of new wind capacity will pose enormous challenges to the existing thermal and nuclear generators, for which there is no obvious solution.
5. The extra wind available in Western areas of the UK is as likely as not to result in sudden shut-downs as in extra production, posing additional challenges to the transmission system and the operators of conventional generation equipment.
6. 42 GWe of prioritized, subsidized, wind power will impose deep uncertainties into a power trading system that is already bankrupting many generators, unable to cope with relatively conventional challenges.
7. Despite the subsidies, many investors and their banks are likely to lose money as the generators produce many fewer MWh than their forecasters are telling them.
   

The 20% renewables target for 2020 is seen as a milepost towards a much more ambitious, 2050 scenario, where the even more widespread use of renewables should result in a 60% reduction of CO2 emissions. The experience of West Denmark seems to suggest that it may be timely to review all such figures against the most likely realities, only a few of which have been raised in this article.

Not mentioned in this article is the disillusion felt by many Danes with the tiny benefits brought by wind against the irreparable desecration of a landscape of dunes, heath and heather, at enormous, un-retrievable cost. Where is there space in the UK to build 21,000 monsters where that space must also be in a “premium” wind site? What happens beyond 2020?

Would it not be cheaper and practically more feasible to legislate for saving power? Power is essential for tasks like lighting and machinery use, but huge savings are technically possible in this area already. Is it not old fashioned to use electricity for space and water heating? Saving power consumption for vital tasks would lower the awesome investment targets for 2010 and 2020, while reducing CO2 emissions simultaneously.

Should there not be legislation to encourage investment in energy storage systems? If these existed on a Nation-wide scale, wind surges and the like, highlighted by West Denmark’s current experience could be absorbed without damaging market price.

Even with a reduction in wind targets, a crash programme of interconnecting, sea cables with France, Netherlands, Germany and the Nordic countries needs to be implemented, so as to improve whole system reliability while allowing more flexibility in an island system where intermittent wind surges could otherwise impose irresolvable problems for the thermal (read reliable) sector.

The writer is no enthusiast for nuclear power but no serious research of this technology has taken place in the UK during recent years. Despite their problems, the investment in working nuclear reactors is sunk capital and these supply 25% of today’s MW, with hardly any emissions of CO2. It is unwise in the extreme to jettison this technology for the foolish reasons advanced by many “environmentalists”.

In short, before much more damage can be done to the UK landscape, old fashioned, British pragmatism should take over from the fevered debate taking place. There is an energy crisis ahead for the UK. But facile chat about how renewable energy can address this will make this, when it arrives, much, much worse, not better.

Click the PDF icon to download the full paper