Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NigeWick wrote: »

There are those who think that in a few years roof top solar and battery storage will cheaper than distribution cost per kWh. Remind me, why do we need Hinkley Point C?

I'm in the same camp as Z, I think time and changing energy use and generation has given HPC a kicking, but playing Devil's Advocate:-

PV even with batts will fall short in the winter, though the counter argument is that PV is just one tool in the RE toolbox.

HPC is a first of a kind, so future reactors will be cheaper, but in reality it's EDF's 3rd go at building out the EPR design, with massive cost over runs and delays in Flamanville (France) and (Olkiluoto) Finland.

Investing in the UK nuclear industry will bring other designs and cheaper reactors. But Toshiba is in desperate financial problems due to its Westinghouse arm which is going bankrupt, yet is supposed to bring us the Moorside reactors.

Nuclear doesn't need back up capacity like RE, for when the wind doesn't blow, or the sun doesn't shine. But each individual nuclear reactor is so powerful (500MW to 1.6GW) that an unplanned outage would cause serious grid disruption ...... so back up is needed.

Nuclear doesn't need storage, unlike RE when supply is high and demand is low. But nuclear is inflexible, and ramping down supply to 60% (RE can be capped to zero if necessary) means loss of revenue, preventing nuclear capacity from exceeding minimum leccy demands (during the night), without deploying storage, and as wind capacity increases, the margin for uncapped nuclear and uncapped wind will get smaller, so storage seems unavoidable, with or without nuclear.

TBF, if nuclear was cheap, quick to roll out and safe, then it would be an excellent part of a low carbon generation mix. But sadly, it doesn't seem to be able to tick those boxes, and the 2010's have been exceptionally cruel to nuclear with far faster reductions in RE costs than most expected, and now the potential for cheaper (if not cheap) storage from small demand side, right up to vast supply side.

Exiled_Tyke wrote: »

I would argue that the inflexibility of nuclear means that storage is needed to use up the excess supply when demand is low. I suppose I would go even further and suggest whatever method of electricity production storage is becoming increasingly necessary to cope with the fluctuations in demand.

Whilst nuclear is more predictable than PV or wind, it doesn't solve the problem of matching supply and demand effectively.

Yep, and Doh! Forgot to point that out, will go back and update.

It's also important to think through where nuclear comes in the supply chain. For instance if we have a very sunny day, and PV gen goes way up, and needs some sort of capping is it PV's fault, or should we look to the 10GW or so of nuclear chugging away as 'baseload'.

If nuclear was more flexible, then presumably the grid would treat it like other sources and ask it to dial back as cheaper leccy is available, but of course nuclear needs (and will get) guaranteed supply status.

This might seem picky, but just because nuclear is always on (ish) does that necessarily make it indespensible baseload at the expense of cheaper intermittent sources. I'm not actually sure what is, or isn't fair here.

And more on German wind (so to speak):

Dong zero sum game off Germany

Dong Energy filed subsidy-free bids for the 240MW OWP West and 240MW Borkum Riffgrund West 2 wind farms in Germany’s first competitive auction, meaning the projects will not receive nothing on top of the wholesale power price.

Hmm, not receive nothing, should we be suspicioussss?

BTW, 7MW, 8MW, even 9MW turbines are OMG gigantic, so I can only imagine what these beauts will look like:

Dong is basing the bids on turbines of 13MW to 15MW. It said the sites feature scale, high quality wind speeds and extended lifetimes of up to 30 years.

michaels wrote: »

Does this make sense?

Yes, but would it make financial sense?

YES - based on the emergence of these Australian business models linking 1,000's of households together, and then negotiating a market rate for the leccy supply at high peak demand times. An example (going back) had households being paid $1/kWh (equivalent to $1,000/MWh) when spot prices had spiked to $1,400/MWh. At 61p/kWh, I'm sure many of us would be happy to 'help', though in reality prices would be lower in the UK, and possibly opportunities less frequent, but it still works.

In your example if just 1m households just drew 3kW from the car batts, 1kW for self usage, and 2kW for export, that would reduce peak supply needs by 3GW, or a whole HPC!

BTW, I watched a video review yesterday of an American checking out the Chevy Bolt. He showed the charging screen, and how to configure it. It started with a charge immediately option, or delay charging. The delay charging option allowed him to enter all of his leccy supply information, such as start/end times of cheap leccy etc etc. So these cars seem to already be set up to work with (not against) you.

I assume that the addition of discharge options, particularly a minimum battery level, would be the simplest of additions to these 'rules'.