Hysterical nonsense from Christopher Booker in the Daily Mail
We published this on the Ecotricity website today, but in light of the fact that the Daily Mail didn’t publish my response to this collection of misinformation by Christopher Booker in a timely fashion - I thought I would reconstruct my comments here, where the editorial policy is slightly more balanced. Note to Christopher - feel free to comment here! 
This is a piece of hysterical nonsense from Christopher Booker. It’s hard to know where to start.
Did the planning inspector really throw out all planning rules when he approved that turbine near where Christopher lives - just so we can meet EU targets?
Of course not.
Read his report and you’ll see he discarded the spurious reasons for refusal of the local council and actually upheld planning policy.
And do we really need to build new conventional generators to back up new wind generators as we build them? Simple intelligence should tell us not. As new wind generators get built they replace conventional sources (when the wind blows) and those conventional sources become the stand-by that wind needs (for when the wind does not blow).
Pretty simple really.
And that 90% figure is rubbish. I won’t go on. This piece by Christopher Booker is personal prejudice masquerading as journalism. Too often that seems to be the definition of tabloid articles….
Absolute madness! if it wasn’t so worrying, just how many people that ‘article’ might deceive, it would be more amusing.
Comment by Sam — June 26, 2008 @ 3:51 pm
Comment by Martin — June 26, 2008 @ 6:23 pm
Comment by nommo — June 27, 2008 @ 8:40 am
The people that read said paper will only ever want their points of view reaffirmed and not questioned.
The truth is they already have and will continue to have the false concerns and propaganda, regardless of what ever logic you wish to show them.
Our/your job is to reach the reachable and convince them, Daily Mail readers are lost to us. Time to move on.
Comment by Paul F — June 27, 2008 @ 11:31 am
Comment by Dave Angel — June 27, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Rgds
Damon
Comment by Damon Hart-Davis — June 30, 2008 @ 7:47 am
it is our duty to educate the millions of people in the uk who take the daily mail as gospel purely because it is a well read newspaper..if they did a small amount of research themselves about *any* story published in it, they would soon realise what a waste of time and paper the daily mail is!!!
ok, rant over
Comment by doobz — June 30, 2008 @ 1:27 pm
Comment by zed — July 1, 2008 @ 3:01 pm
Comment by Paul F — July 1, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
Love
God
xxx
PS: Yes, Christopher Booker is a git. I will be striking him down with lightning shortly and he will be spending eternity agonising in the fiery pits of hell.
PPS: Mwaaa ha ha ha ha
Comment by God — July 2, 2008 @ 9:45 am
Think this says everything we need to know about the daily mail
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
As for Christopher, probably the worst thing for him would be if a situation arose that forced him to let go of his dearly cherished predjudices. Lets hope for all our sakes it doesn’t get that far…
Comment by Harridan — July 3, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
This is directed more at the people who have commented, although also partly at the vehemence that Dale uses in his article, which is counter-productive at best.
Whilst I am in no way a Daily Mail reader, nor do I subscribe to the majority of political opinion it contains, I cannot condone dismissing a complete swathe of society simply because the views typically expressed on this blog are not compatible with the Mail’s. To do so is to become as narrow minded as you consider the Daily Mail reader.
Over 2 million copies of the Daily Mail are sold each day which if we assume that this is 1 copy per household is roughly 6600 GWh of electricity demand which is approximately 825MW of generation, not a proportion to be simply dismissed as Paul F suggests.
What you say, Dale, about the need for new conventional generators is correct from one point of view. However, what Chrisopher Booker says is also true in that for every MW of WEC generation capacity you also a MW of backup generation capacity. It may be that this is where pumped storage hydro comes in if we are to create a zero carbon economy, otherwise until we can store solar/ wave/ tidal/ wind genarated energy then conventional generation remains, by default, the only option since coal and gas stations can be brought online and taken off line at the virtual drop of a hat. Since electricity demand in the UK is rising while generation capacity is falling we are left with a “generation gap”, which must be filled. It could be filled by wind generation, but as I said earlier, to ensure continuous supply to meet demand you need 1MW of alternative, reliable generation for every 1MW of unreliable wind generation that exists, which means that, given the current lack of alternatives, new conventional power stations will have to be built as backups, but not until wind generation capacity equals conventional generation capacity.
There will also be a need for new conventional generation if we want to replace some of the ageing power stations with newer, cleaner backup stations.
The problem with all of this is that keeping a station on standby just in case the wind stops blowing is financially unviable. It costs huge amounts of money to start and stop a gas station, and only slightly less with a coal station. This pushes the potential cost/MW of a wind based generation infrastructure up to the point where it is uneconomical. This is why developing storage technologies should be first and foremost on peoples’ minds.
Additionally Christopher Booker is right about the sheer scale of the task ahead in achieving the RO targets on time, given that these calculations use current <2MW WECs rather than assuming the majority of WECs may be E-126 6MW machines. Still, however, a garagntuan task.
As to the 90% figure being rubbish I think that if you really, really thought it through you would see that the figure is closer to 100% as the aforementioned arguments demonstrate. If they have not then consider this:
If you have a 2 MW WEC that supplies a few thousand homes then when the wind stops blowing you need to have 2 MW of generation coming from somewhere else. To think otherwise is just ridiculous.
You may counter that by saying that it is unlikely that the wind will stop blowing all over the country at the same time and, therefore, this problem can be overcome by locational diversity….but nonetheless to assume that this will NEVER happen is inviting disaster and therefore 90% is quite a realistic, if not conservative figure.
I fully believe in the vision of a zero carbon future but I also believe in practicality and understand that some transition period will be necessary until we have the technology to have an economically viable solution, if we are to continue in a society based around economic gain.
So, let’s respect one another’s views and even accept that some of what Christopher Booker says might actually be right rather than engage in puerile mud slinging.
Comment by MoebiusDick — August 1, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
I was just thinking: when you say the Daily Mail didn’t publish your response in a “timely fashion”, did they publish your response at all?
Just wondering
Comment by Jeff — August 3, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
Cheers.
Comment by dale — August 5, 2008 @ 8:39 am
You’re right to describe my tone as Vehement though, absolutely so - and I stand by it. Christopher Booker wrote an awfully biased, twisted piece, masquerading as journalism. That gets my goat and I’m not afraid to show it.
But my passion in this is not blind. The central argument you take up here appears to be the claim (Bookers claim) that we will need to build 1MW of conventional power for each MW of wind energy we build - as back up. That is a ridiculous claim to make, and I don’t think it harsh (or puerile) to describe it as a stupid thing to say.
You say he is right, and you set out why - but you add a very important rider to his claim - You say that we will only need to build this back up once ‘wind energy capacity equals existing conventional capacity’. Now that’s NOT something Booker says or acknowledges in any way. In defending him and justifying his claims here, you’ve added something vitally important.
Booker is wrong 100% and you are wrong to say he is right. Have another read of his piece and see for yourself. He does not say what you say.
My point is exactly this - when the wind blows, existing power stations turn down their output, when the wind doesn’t they turn back up - and this will work without new build conventional plant until we have 99 times more wind energy than we currently have - roughly speaking of course. I think that’s a few decades away…:)
Booker promotes hysterical nonsense and he sucks well meaning people in with it, such as yourself.
Cheers.
Comment by dale — August 22, 2008 @ 9:29 am
The majority of comments on this topic have been from people patting one another on the back about how ridiculous Daily Mail readers are, or how stupid they must be to accept any piece of journalism like this and it is this that I find puerile and I do not feel I have let myself or anyone else down by making this comment.
For example “I did submit a question asking whether he’d passed any maths, physics or logical reasoning exams on his home planet, but I’ve not seen any response yet.” By Damon- this comment is petty and rude and has no place in adult conversation, and is similar to many of the other comments. If you condone this and the like then I’m afraid your arguments become diluted and lose meaning.
If you will also note that nowhere in my comment do I agree with Christopher Booker’s claim that we need to build scores of new power stations at this time or even that we need to build 1MW of new back up generation for every 1MW of new wind built (which as you correctly say is an erroneous statement) - I do not proclaim to be supporting anything specific within his piece, however, there are some general ideas that, if developed, are correct, whether you or anyone else agrees or not.
You cannot deny that for every MW of wind capacity you must have 1MW of alternative generation capacity as backup- be that fossil fueled or some variation of current renewable technology- that is a fact, not a debate.
There WIL be a need to build new alternative generation (to clarify by alternative I mean anything other than wind that can provide reliable, consistent generation) IF we wish to replace some of the older, dirtier plants with cleaner forms of generation. Also as national demand rises so must the capacity of alternative back up as well as (but at a much slower rate) than renewable generation capacity.
In figures:
Assuming that all renewable generation is from wind for the purpose of this debate.
If national demand this year is 100MW then the country needs at least 100MW of wind capacity AND 100MW of alternative back up capacity. If next year national demand rises to 105MW then, logically and actually, the country would need to build 5MW of new wind capacity (to maintain total supply from wind rather than just upping the amount of alternative generation used) AND also 5MW of alternative back up generation to ensure complete energy security.
Currently lets assume we have 1MW of wind capacity compared to a national demand of 100MW- of which, on a windy day 99MW is from alternative generation. However, on a non-windy day 100MW must be from alternative generation.
If we factor into this that currently about 20% of the country’s generation is from ageing nuclear reactors. Translating this to the example this equates to 20MW of alternative generation. Therefore, this leaves 1MW of wind generation and 80MW of alternative generation- on a windy day a maximum of 81MW of capacity, 80MW on a non-windy day, or 19-20MW short of national demand. If we build another 20MW of wind capacity then on a windy day we would have 101MW of capacity but on a non-windy day we would still only have 80MW of alternative capacity. Therefore, in order to mitigate the risk of it not being windy it is necessary to build an additional 20MW of alternative capacity to maintain the ability to match the 100MW national demand even when it isn’t windy.
This is indisputable- but as you rightly say, this is not specifically what Booker says.
Your assumption, however, has been that there will be no need to replace the current alternative capacity, which I believe is a flawed one, particularly given the increasing frequency that British Energy suffers reactor outages these days.
Statistically it is unlikely that the wind wouldn’t be blowing all over the country at any one time, and I suspect that it is in these statistics that you refute the 90% figure. But then again sometimes against all probability the 100-1 shot comes in, so to ignore the possibility of having to rely solely on alternative back ups would be perilous.
Additionally you say that Booker is 100% wrong despite having acknowledged that we DO need alternative back up generation for wind generation. These two statements are mutually incompatible.
However, I agree that Booker does not say what I say nor did I ever intend what I said to mirror what he said. I merely intended to point out that to blindly and by that fact alone it is clear that I have not been “sucked in” by anything he says, merely that I present a more practical and balanced view that incorporates both sides of this argument in which neither side is 100% right.
Comment by MoebiusDick — August 22, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
Unfortunately that is NOT a fact, and I can deny it.
It would only be a fact if at least both of the below were both true, to pluck two from the air as it were:
* IF (peak) demand arrives when there is no wind power at all. In fact dispersed wind generation can be counted on as baseload for a good percentage of its average output (which in turn is typically a third of its maximum/nameplate capacity). You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of half hours per decade where all UK wind sites would have no power at all; decades of past data have been thoroughly analysed. This is the opinion of the National Grid (go and look at their SYS reports Chapter 5 IIRC) who would have to manage the balancing and stability of the system. They do this stuff every second of every day and know a fact when they see it.
* IF there is no way of controlling/reducing demand when wind drops. Actually industrial customers already can get nice fat discounts for being prepared to have their power turned off at short or no notice (or automatically) for example. So in the extreme case as you don’t need backup generation for any load that you can shed, for example. And never mind technologies such as dynamic demand which by my analysis so far mean that for short to medium outages simply giving all wet/white domestic appliances some simple smarts could probably suppress demand enough to eliminate the need for much of that excess backup over ‘normal’ thermal plant such as Sizewell. I’m still checking figures with various bits of government, etc, but that’s how it seems so far.
So, please don’t confuse fact with appealing intuition. The difference is important IMHO.
I think that I’m allowed to get annoyed with someone who airily dismisses the actual science and maths and engineering involved because though he wants his lights to stay on he’s not even prepared to *think* carefully, never mind tolerate anything at all in his back yard to contribute (BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Rgds
Damon
Comment by Damon Hart-Davis — August 22, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
It’s not to be taken too seriously I think.
On a simple reading your piece supports Booker in his MW for MW claim - your version of that claim has the very important (once wind exceeds current total grid capacity) rider on it - and his does not. We’re agreed on that. On that basis I say he’s 100% wrong - you can’t (in my opinion) say there’s some truth in what he says - if you add a dozen or so vital missing words. He’s absolutely wrong because he missed those words off, either deliberately or through ignorance (the non pejorative kind… :).
Being a journalist he’s allowed to be totally wrong, there’s no censure from anybody - witness the recent OFCOM ruling on Channel Four’s disastrous Climate Change program - “it was based on false evidence, but it’s TV people don’t expect it to be factual” I paraphrase but not much.
I don’t dispute that backup is needed for renewables. But it doesn’t need building until renewables matches total grid capacity and that’s decades away if we’re lucky. The exact amount required ( 90%, 100% or some other) is a red herring. We’re so far away from the reality, even with the retiring nuclear fleet, that we’re in danger of making a big mistake discussing it in these terms.
The mistake is this - Judging the future on the basis of what can be done today. So much will change on the demand management side of the grid, on energy efficiency (demand reduction) and on grid scale energy storage - all of these things will reduce or even remove the need for backup for renewables.
In a way you’re right when you say every MW of wind over our total national generation capacity, would need some back up - 90%, 100% whatever - but that’s today. This would be like saying, at the turn of last century, we’ll never fly to the moon with Victorian technology, it just can’t be done. Quite true, axiomatic even, but quite pointless too.
The world is changing very fast, technologies for large scale energy storage are emerging rapidly, as they are in demand side management. So many things will come to be, before we reach the day that renewables equals or exceeds the conventional generation fleet - to worry about it in terms of today’s technology is a mistake.
To misquote Churchill - “Those who build the future in the image of today will miss the mark entirely”
Cheers.
Comment by dale — September 5, 2008 @ 9:15 am