CCC Wind Power Plans Ignore The NAO
By Paul Homewood
John Cullen left this comment yesterday, on the post about energy storage:
I fear that even Net Zero Watch (NZW) have underestimated the problem of wind droughts. Think, for example, of the year 1976 in the UK when there was a 16 week dry spell / heat wave due to a high pressure area dominating most of Europe during the summer months. Such high-pressure areas are typically associated with light winds (dunkelflauten).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_British_Isles_heatwave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_European_heatwaveAs an electrical engineer I would use, in an area of imperfect knowledge, a safety factor of at least 50%. However, in a safety critical case such as the electricity grid, my initial plan would be to use a safety factor of 100%. Thus if we have already had 16 week wind droughts in the relatively recent past then I would be looking for reliable storage capacity of roughly 2 x 16 weeks i.e. about 30 weeks’ storage based upon data from a single very bad year …
However, Lamb [Ref. 1] has shown that, exactly as NZW claim, dunkelflauten can occur in adjacent years thereby significantly exacerbating the size of the energy storage problem. Furthermore, reference 1 shows that the number of days of the UK’s prevailing Westerly winds are very variable in their annual frequency, varying from about 50 to 120 days per year.
Clearly analysis that relies on a single year’s data woefully underestimates the energy storage problem, as will any analysis that does not consider trends in long-term wind variability.
Reference
1. H. H. Lamb, “”Climate, History and the Modern World”, Routledge, 2nd ed., 1995, at pages 53 and 269.
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John is spot on.
We obviously need plenty of hydrogen storage to see us through potentially weeks of light winds during winter.
But the other side of the coin is the need to have enough surplus wind power during the rest of the year, to produce the hydrogen needed to replenish that store. And as John points out, there are years when average wind speeds are much lower than others. Even in summer, when demand is low and there is usually a surplus or power, that surplus may not be big enough when we get a long heatwave.
The HH Lamb reference from John is actually very scary as far as our energy situation is concerned:
Lamb of course only plots westerly winds, but it is generally the case that these are on average stronger than winds from the south and east, ie from the continent.
Although his chart only runs up to 1979, when he was writing his book, we know that winds have returned to the levels seen in the 1920s to 50s. What Lamb records is closely related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This measures the difference in pressure between Icelandic lows and Azores highs. When the difference is greater than normal, it is called a positive NAO. The Met Office describe this:
Winds from the west dominate, bringing with them warm air, while the position of the jet stream enables stronger and more frequent storms to travel across the Atlantic
These support mild, stormy and wet winter conditions in northern Europe and eastern US. Conversely, northern Canada, Greenland and southern Europe are prone to cold and dry winter conditions
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/atmosphere/north-atlantic-oscillation
The NOAO in winter has been largely in positive phase since 1980, but the 1960s and 70s were dominated by negative NAOs. This obviously coincides with Lamb’s charts:
https://meteo.plus/nao-index.php
Negative NAOs in winter tend to lead to cold weather as well, so we have a double whammy here- less wind and greater demand. Add in a summer like 1975 and 1976, and we will be in big trouble
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The U.N. has a big new machine with several climate and weather control dials.
The future head of the U.N. will have your best interest in mind and will adjust those to ensure your wellbeing. Relax.
Toby Arnott at Our Energy Future carried out useful analysis on lulls & durations, “taking a wind lull as when wind is supplying less than 5% of demand”
https://our-energy-future.com/News_Articles/News-2022-01-07-01
https://our-energy-future.com/News_Articles/News-2022-07-12-01
I think we need to give up esoteric calculations about wind speeds and windmills. It’s quite clear that even if UK was to follow COP28 instructions and triple our windmill faceplate (god, the cost, the wires, the grid) three times say ten per cent of demand. (Often seen today) doesn’t cut it. So where is the hydrogen for storage to come from? Numbers please. Excess windmill capacity? Ha ha ha ha. Storage in caves? Under pressure? How piped? How distributed? Insurance? Ha ha ha ha. Nowhere near my hindenburg thanks very much. Makes one weep.
It has always been obvious that wind is not going to work, so the continued reliance must be a conspiracy.
Never rule out stupidity.
A small quibble: “dunkelflaute” is best translated as “dark doldrums” – periods of calm when there is also little or no sun.
Damned Germans!!
And Kalte Dunkelflaute “Cold dark doldrums” German winter lull with little solar generation. 😉
As I pointed out at Jaime Jessop’s article https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/the-wind-drought-years-which-the on this topic we have an “Exxon knew” so far as the Royal Society is concerned:
From the Supplementary Appendices to the Royal Society study:
Thornton et al15 noted that it is possible that even a 40-year period is not long enough to sample a representative range of possible changes in wind availability. The Met Office has compared the period 1980-2016 studied here with large simulations using the UNSEEN methodology16 and historical data back to 1871. It was found17 that in each winter there is a 1% chance of the mean wind speed in December, January or February being lower than the minimum experienced in any of these months in the period 1980-2016, i.e. there is approximately a 10% chance/decade of a winter month with wind speeds lower than in the period 1980-2016 considered in modelling here.
More needs to be known about the persistence and other characteristics of periods of low wind, which are very likely correlated temporally, as is the case for periods with low temperatures (Kolstad et.al.18 have shown that temperature anomalies of ‘at least one standard deviation above or below climatology’ in March were found to be about 20%–120% more likely than normal if the preceding February was anomalous by 0.5–1.5 standard deviations). It turns out that wind speeds were lower in 1960-80 than in 1980-2016, as a result of atmospheric blocking associated with the negative phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation19, when low wind months such as those seen in the UNSEEN simulation were observed (phases of the oscillation last for about a month up to about a year and a half: the positive phases were relatively less frequent and had a smaller amplitude in the years 1960-1980 than in later years20). If/when weather data for that period have been converted into ersatz wind and solar output, it will be possible to quantify their effects.
15 Thornton H, Scaife A, Hoskins B, Brayshaw D. 2017 The relationship between wind power, electricity demand and winter weather patterns in Great Britain. Environmental Research Letters, 12.
16 Thompson V et al. 2017 High risk of unprecedented UK rainfall in the current climate. Nat Commun 8, 107. (doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00275-3).
17 Gillian Kay, Anna Maidens, Hazel Thornton, Nick Dunstone, Adam Scaife, Doug Smith (Unpublished, private communication, December 2020). Preliminary assessment of low winter winds over the North Sea,
18 E. W. Kolstad, S. P. Sobolowski, A. A. Scaife Intraseasonal Persistence of European Surface Temperatures, Journal of Climate, 28, 5365 2015
19 Climate Variability: North Atlantic Oscillation | NOAA Climate.gov
20 https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-variability-north-atlanticoscillation
So they knew, but failed to do anything about including it.
I relate the “Hydrogen Storage fiasco” to my local Water companies biggest reservoir. Because of demand (they tell us) Roadford reservoir has crept from 67% capacity ib October, to its present 88%. This despite months and months of incessant rain, If we equate the dearth of wind and the need for lots of Hydrogen storage, plus usage against replenishment, I can see the situation where storage will never be replenished. The charges however, like South West Water, will be sky-high!
because summer is a time of lower demand, power plant operaters schedule their maintenance shut downs then, so there may not be as much surplus power available as you might think?
When everybody has BEVs and is charging them for the Summer holiday trips, and when everyone has reversible heat pumps to cool their globally warmed houses, there will not be periods of lower demand, and particularly night time in Winter, just periods of low/no supply.
I fear that John Cullen and others are labouring under the misapprehension that they care about supplying 100% of us with energy for 100% of the time.
When clearly the idea is to impose “demand management”, a less negative way of saying “rationing”.
That is A way, bot. Killing of 90% of the people is another.
The question, then, is “Do we kill off 90% of the people to achieve Net Zero, or do we achieve Net Zero, which kills off 90% of the people?”
Everyone is assuming that the National Grid has to maintain continuous availability and use. In the era of smart meters if you are going to use more than your allotted quota then your supply will be terminated. Since electricity has to run continuously to produce green steel and hydrogen I’ll let you guess whose supply is terminated first.