Solar PV Feed In Tariffs - Good or Bad?

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi
There are a number of possible ways around that issue, however, the muted 'lagoon' barrage system would be quite limited in scope and capacity due to the relative elevation of the water levels, the only really likely solution would be to vastly increase the UK pumped storage capacity by flooding a good proportion of the high valleys in Wales .... (sorry Martyn, I know they're on your doorstep .. ) .... Norwegan pumped storage ?, well you'd need to talk to another country on that as they have Hydro, but not much to spare in dry years and the important thing is that there's no/not much pumped Hydro so it'll need them/us to invest heavily ... best put it in Wales then, sorry Martyn, but it could be quite good for the economy if you go for independence too ...

HTH
Z

Z - Don't get em excited about independence, it's bad enough having double road signs for everything, let alone border patrols, and barbed wire!

I think, even in Wales, expanding hydro is tricky. Scotland is already looking to modify quite a bit of their rainfall hydro to pumped storage, but slow and expensive.

Norway is interesting, because their resources are so vast, that they pretty much only use rainfall hydro, so they would have a considerable potential export industry, by expanding into 'batteries' (pumped storage). In fact the barrage could work within that role, but we are looking further and further away, with more and more money.

Another approach would be to use the approx 3GW of current pumped storage that gets filled by UK and French off-peak nuclear. Perhaps via off-peak wind, but we'll need a lot more wind (getting there slowly), and of course would be subject to the vagaries of the weather.

After that comes bio-mass, and personally I think we should look to Germany in this regard, as they are (annoyingly) well ahead in this area too.

I'll try to find a paper I read recently about conversions to pumped storage, but if I remember correctly, none came close to the sheer head of Dinorwig.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Lost the paper setting out the Scottich pumped storage under consideration. Top of head, I think the proposals totalled 600MW.

Here's a few bits on pumped storage, and also Norwegian interconnectors.

http://www.norwaynews.com/en/~view.php?72Vaa54CQ84828z285Fnf844WL3889WC76IAn353Kbt8

and

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/10/worldwide-pumped-storage-activity

Happy reading.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Sorry me again,

DECC have confirmed that they have today laid a draft of the new Standard Licence Conditions before Parliament.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/fits_jan12upd/fits_jan12upd.aspx

21p for installations from 3rd March.

Systems installed between now and then will get 43.3p if DECC lose their court case or 21p if they win.

Mart.

albyota

We couldn't do this.......

http://www.pv-magazine.com/news/details/beitrag/austrian-smart-grid-project-to-see-120-new-pv-systems-installed_100004909/

don0301

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Sorry me again,

DECC have confirmed that they have today laid a draft of the new Standard Licence Conditions before Parliament.

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/fits_jan12upd/fits_jan12upd.aspx

21p for installations from 3rd March.

Systems installed between now and then will get 43.3p if DECC lose their court case or 21p if they win.

Mart.

wonder how many will take the risk

rogerblack

Martyn1981 wrote: »

21p for installations from 3rd March.

Systems installed between now and then will get 43.3p if DECC lose their court case or 21p if they win.

Thanks.
I wonder if they will address in the consultation response the fact that their stated desired target return of 5% is significantly exceeded by current systems.

For your return to hit 5% in the south of the country, on a well situated south-facing installation with optimal slope, you'd need to be paying 16413.
I've seen pop-up ads boasting prices closer to 6K, and more serious offers of 8K.

zeupater

grahamc2003 wrote: »

My word Z, you're a much braver man than me! (unless you like running the risk of being attacked by a pack of salivating demented rottweilers).


Regarding pumped storage, there are very few places where it's even possible to build more stations (in England and Wales). There are several in Scotland and probably plenty of suitable topography, but with the N-S tranmission lines usually at capacity, the grid couldn't import more generation from there at peak times even if it wanted.

Dinorwig wasn't built to store enery at cheap times and release it at peak times (as Wiki will probably tell you). It was designed to supply reserve for frequency support. When the probability of its reserve capacity being called upon reduces during the day, and it's potential generation is sufficiently cheaper than competing generation, then Dinorwig will release it's energy, usually around the peak. It appears to store cheap energy and sell it at peak times, but that is very much it's secondary purpose after its primary reserve duty.

Hi

Not talking about Dinorwig, but something similar is possible on a larger scale, both in generating capacity and stored water volume, which could be used for generation over a period of days ..... a system comprising somewhere around 100,000 megalitres of high/low capacity with around 150m between the two levels would do for a start with a massive increase in volume of flow compensating for the loss of elevation differential available at Dinorwig, but to place that volume in context, we'd be talking about a pumped system which would be equal in scale to the Elan valley reservoirs .... we're talking massive numbers for the Severn barrage, massive numbers for windpower, massive numbers for nuclear, massive numbers for gas-fired plant, so if we need to create a hydroelectric 'battery' (or series of batteries) to smooth generation to demand, then we'll need to spend massive numbers on that too, it might just mean that less generating capacity duplication will be necessary elsewhere ....

HTH
Z

albyota

Thanks Ze, but why are we always thinking we have to build Effin large plant.......far far away from any towns / cities ......transmission losses etc....whats wrong with many, many, local micro hydro, micro solar plant / storage nearer to towns and villages first....

rogerblack

albyota wrote: »

Thanks Ze, but why are we always thinking we have to build Effin large plant.......far far away from any towns / cities ......transmission losses etc....whats wrong with many, many, local micro hydro, micro solar plant / storage nearer to towns and villages first....

For pumped hydro, the regrettable fact is big is required.
A 'micro' storage system might have 5m head, and a pond 25m in diameter, and 2m deep.

This contains 2000 tons of water.
This is a lot, right?

The energy stored is:
2 million Kg * 9.8m/s (gravity) * 5m = one hundred million joules.
Or 27kWh.

In a crowded urban environment, finding even space for this tiny scheme is going to be hard, and it's only enough to store enough energy to run one flats heating overnight.

If you multiply the size by 10 - 250m diameter, and 20 meters deep, 50m drop then you get a thousand times more storage. 27MWh.

Eyeballing yesterdays graph at http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/demand24.htm - to flatten out the peaks and troughs needs of the order of 30 gigawatt-hours of storage.

This is (with 5 meter drop) an area of water that needs to be put into micro hydro reservoir (2m deep) of about six times the area of the UK.

Even if you can go to 100m deep, and 100m drop, that still means you need to have .6% of the UKs land area as pumped storage hydro.
This is about the area of North London.

HalloweenJack

grahamc2003 wrote: »

As to stupidity, well it's well recoginsed by (almost) everyone that abuse is initiated by the intellectually challenged.

so you spout !!!! and give !!!! poor advice , proved wrong , yet want to pretend your nothing more than a troll with an agenda.... pure comedy , pass me that popcorn!