Solar ... In the news

silverwhistle

Martyn1981 wrote: »

The Guardian ran a similar article, which on day one received a huge number of posts from individuals speaking out against HPC. But by day two, the usual 5-10 (nuclear at any price) posters then flooded the comments with mis-information and spin against renewables, Anyone else?

Yetpu, Raykalon, Quokka.....

Martyn1981

silverwhistle wrote: »

Yetpu, Raykalon, Quokka.....

...... Riveness, ChapStewie, ComfortablyPlumb* ....

small number, but prolific amount of posts ..... even I can't compete and get trolled out on almost every positive RE post now, as they don't like me very much ..... Moi, Shirley not! :whistle:

* 1,000's of posts, all anti-RE spin especially against PV, to which he's entitled to an opinion, no law against being an idiot, but all the time claims to support RE 100% ........ cough-TROLL-cough

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I thought perhaps I should post a bit more on this, as cheap storage is the game changer for renewables, and the $160/kWh product is very good today, but taking orders at $95/kWh for 2022 delivery is staggering.

That means we don't have to make predictions, nor argue optimistically about the large scale storage future, as we now have solid numbers to fall back on.

These prices really are game changers, not only because they are fulfilling the promise of cheap storage, but because they give confidence on investing in renewables going forward, and the ability of a storage backed grid to help with intermittency issues as and when we start to reach limits/problems.

Here are some articles on it:

Extract from weekly Carbon Commentary newsletter:



Storage fit for the distributed energy future

Eos Energy Storage drives down costs on battery systems to below $100 per kWh

Eos Energy Storage Now Taking Orders at $95/kWh for the Eos Aurora® DC Battery System

Is there not still a need to factor in some cost for gas/diesel generation capacity backup for those windless autumn/winter weeks even if it is virtually never used?

Analogy: we have an electric car that does 95% of our miles but for the very occasional longer journey or when we need two cars we have a second car. What matters when costing this car are capital tied up, depreciation and relaibility given usage pattern - mpg is pretty much unimportant as it does less than 1000 miles per year. Our overall carbon footprint remains low from the EV miles. When working out our overall cost per mile we have to include the costs for this second car as the EV alone will not meet all our needs.

michaels

Talking of storage there was an interesting article on the bbc on using formic acid as a hydrogen storage medium for fuel cell buses. Seems it could be combined with CCS as it needs a source of CO2 somewhere in the process. No idea what the efficiencies are but potentiallty another method of storing energy from times of excess generation to be used when needed - obviously the capacity of the storage depends only on how big a tank is available and indeed the 'energy' could be transported say from a solar factory in the sahara to anywhere that needed it.

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Is there not still a need to factor in some cost for gas/diesel generation capacity backup for those windless autumn/winter weeks even if it is virtually never used?

Yes there is, and it's only fair to do so. These costs are generally referred to as 'intermittency costs', the additional costs that a 'grid' has to bear to accommodate the intermittent generation.

They are actually difficult to pin down. You'd think that capacity factor would be the main concern, and as PV in the UK has a cf of about 11% that should mean the highest intermittency costs, since on-shore wind has a cf of about 25-30% and off-shore wind is about 40-50%, whilst HPC will be around 92% if run continuously apart from refueling, approx 2 months every two years.

But, nothing is simple. The costs also depend on when the generation occurs, and PV generating during the day when demand is high, and in the summer when wind and hydro are at their lowest, has a beneficial advantage, plus renewables tend to pull down spot prices making the average price of leccy lower.

CP (mentioned in my previous post) often claims that the intermittency cost of PV is approx £50/MWh, however the latest analysis suggests it's £1.30/MWh today, with a possible max of £6.80/MWh if we have about 3x as much PV in the future, but would actually drop to minus £3.70/MWh if we have 8GW+ of storage on the UK grid.

So pretty positive news going forward with PV (and on-shore wind) heading for £50/MWh. Adding on those intermittency costs for PV takes it's actual cost to between £46.30 - £56.80/MWh.

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Tand indeed the 'energy' could be transported say from a solar factory in the sahara to anywhere that needed it.

I read a similar story about Australia. Whilst hydrogen gas (produced from excess PV) is a pain to transport due to the costs of cooling and compressing, they've found that making liquid ammonia from it, gives a very dense product that can be shipped around, potentially to other countries, effectively selling sunlight .... cool.

I've no idea how practical these ideas are, but as we already import LNG, I can certainly imagine a time when the UK imports 'sunlight' from the Sahara (using the H2 to produce leccy (fuel cells) or methane).

Fun times ahead.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Interesting idea here, it's basically offering a PPA (power purchase agreement) to housing association properties to lower their energy bills.

If it scales up it could potentially double the current UK PV rollout, which is really poor.

Solarplicity readies significant low-subsidy housing association solar model

Update on this story with the formal launch of the scheme:

Solarplicity offers £200 million in savings with social housing solar model

It is expected that the scheme will reach 50,000 households in the next twelve months and 800,000 homes within five years, at which stage these tenants are forecast to save up to £200 million a year through the scheme.

Cardew

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I've no idea how practical these ideas are, but as we already import LNG, I can certainly imagine a time when the UK imports 'sunlight' from the Sahara (using the H2 to produce leccy (fuel cells) or methane).

I believe that idea(PV farms in the Sahara) was muted some years ago, and dismissed on security grounds; and that was before ISIS became a bigger threat than Al Queda.

ed110220

Cardew wrote: »

I believe that idea(PV farms in the Sahara) was muted some years ago, and dismissed on security grounds; and that was before ISIS became a bigger threat than Al Queda.

Another reason would be that the rapidly falling cost of PV renders the need to put it in the Sahara obsolete. For example the south of Spain would produce roughly 20% less electricity from the same PV as areas in the Sahara. It hasn't taken long for PV costs to fall by 20%.

Why put the PV in a risky place with higher transmission costs when a year or two of falling prices would give the same kWh/£ nearer and safer?

Ed

Martyn1981

ed110220 wrote: »

Why put the PV in a risky place with higher transmission costs when a year or two of falling prices would give the same kWh/£ nearer and safer?

Ed

Hiya, the idea with Australia and hydrogen, is that they could sell sunshine to say Japan, which may have an energy shortage due to relative populations and land area.

Whether the hydrogen is then used for fuel directly, or to produce leccy via fuel cells, gives some choice, but the difference between this idea and simply HVDC transmission, is that the leccy is already in a dense form of storage for later use, rather than real time.

Found the article if you're interested.

How Australia can use hydrogen to export its solar power around the world

Some extracts:-

“The ability of hydrogen is it does not emit carbon dioxide when it is burned,” says Prof Dongke Zhang, director of the University of Western Australia’s energy centre. Therefore, if hydrogen can be produced using only energy from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, or hydro, then we don’t have to worry about carbon dioxide production at all.

Hydrogen-fuelled cars have the added advantage of potentially taking a far shorter time to refuel – as little as five minutes with compressed high pressure gas – compared with an electric vehicle, which might need six to eight hours to recharge, he says.

Andrews also sees hydrogen being used to store excess electricity at the grid, or even the individual household, level. “So you have excess electricity fed into an electrolyser, produce hydrogen, compress it or store it in some way and then when you want to get the energy back you put it into a fuel cell and then back to the grid.”

But there is still the challenge of getting the hydrogen to Japan. One option is to compress it into liquid form, but this requires the gas to be cooled to around -250C, which is energy intensive.

Another option is to combine the hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. It’s a technique that is well-established, and has been done on an industrial scale for nearly a century, Dolan says. Ammonia can be compressed into a liquid at much more moderate temperatures, and is relatively easy to transport. Indeed in January 2017, Australia and Japan announced safety standards for shipping liquid hydrogen in bulk for the first time.

So rather than Australia selling coal to India and China, a market that is currently collapsing, they could install massive PV farms, and sell energy to Japan.

Sounds like fun.