Solar ... In the news

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

OK....what about increasing wind & solar production & then using the surplus energy to make hydrogen. This can then be used to generate electricity & power your electric boilers.

In addition, a small amount of hydrogen could be added to the ng supply without the need to modify any boilers?

A hydrogen distribution network would speed up the adoption of fuel cell vehicles as well.

Batteries are great for smoothing the peaks & troughs of renewable energy generation, but they don’t have the capacity for sustained discharge at grid level demand. Hydrogen could do that.

It depends if costs matter to you or not

A rich individual could do it, for instance they could fit significant amounts of solar on their property and convert it to hydrogen and then store that in tanks to then burn that in the winter

The costs would be massive.
You can buy natural gas for 4p a unit, an industrial user can buy it for 2p a unit
To generate your own hydrogen for storage is likely going to cost a magnitude/s more

Also to store the stuff is not easy.
For a start it has 1/3rd the energy volumetric density of natural gas so your storage tanks or cavity only hold 1/3rd as much energy. Plus hydrogen is just more difficult to handle


It is like the argument of going off grid for electricity
It can be done. You can do that today
You just over install solar so that a winter day solar production is still the same as a winter day electricity needs for your home. And have perhaps a 100KWh battery.
So can a house go off grid today? Sure but it will cost significantly more than paying £400-500 to get their electric from the grid. Probably looking at £100k plus to make a off grid house with solar and batteries only.

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

OK....what about increasing wind & solar production & then using the surplus energy to make hydrogen.

Well by definition it is then not 'surplus energy' but energy created to run those things.

The problem is also with solar you need to produce the stuff all in the summer and discharge the hydrogen in the winter. This is bad news its 6 months of storage. Plus your chemical plant is only running at the solar CF of about 11% in the UK so you build huge infrastructure and hire lots of chemical engineers to have them only work 11% of hours in the year

If this was to be done, it would be done with wind power likely higher CF wind power.
So an offshore wind powered hydrogen plant could run closer to 40% CF or maybe even 50%+ CF if fed by distributed wind over a larger area. Plus the storage would have to be less as its not all summer to winter storage

This can then be used to generate electricity & power your electric boilers.

In addition, a small amount of hydrogen could be added to the ng supply without the need to modify any boilers?

A hydrogen distribution network would speed up the adoption of fuel cell vehicles as well.

ermmmm no

Batteries are great for smoothing the peaks & troughs of renewable energy generation, but they don’t have the capacity for sustained discharge at grid level demand. Hydrogen could do that.

Just because it could, does not mean it is like.

We could use bio liquids like veg oil as a storage medium, But probably wont
We could use nuclear, but probably wont
We could use biomass burnt to generate electricity for the winter (unlikely but possible if the world goes crazy and wants negative CO2)
We could use mountain sized batteries for seasonal storage, but we probably wont
We could build pumped storage out in the sea, but probably wont
We could use fossil fuels with CCS (This might happen)

michaels

WE might build interconnectors to Norway and use their hydropower as pumped storage....

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

WE might build interconnectors to Norway and use their hydropower as pumped storage....

One is currently being built 1.4 GW capacity and probably at least one more should/will be built

More important to the current energy story though is the 5.4 GW of links to France that will come online in the next 5 years (3.4GW currently under construction and due in the next 1-3 years)

https://energifaktanorge.no/en/norsk-energiforsyning/forsyningssikkerhet/

Nationwide installed capacity of hydropower amounted to 33.8 GW in 2015. The maximum working volume of hydrologic storage power plants is 85 TWh, whereas the average seasonal cycle is 42 terawatt-hours (TWh). In 2015, hydroelectricity generated 144 TWh and accounted for 95.8% of the national electricity demand.

Currently they have maybe as much as 10GW they could send out and about 10GW they could absorb in the winter months (less in the summer) Using them as pumped storage is not necessity easy or even possible in some cases.

Most dams in the world have downward limits on how much water they can discharge. For instance china could not double the three gorges dam capacity and use it as pumped storage because discharging twice as much water would flood the capacity of the downstream river

But anyway lets assume that in Norway they could convert their dams to increase their capacity by 60GW so their dams could be used as 60GW of storage up or down (this means each dam is 3 x the capacity as now and the max flow rate of water 3 x higher and there is no guarantee this is possible but whatever lets assume it is)

That is very significant a huge amount but the peak winter demand of just the EU nations when transport and heating is electrified is going to be about 10 x that figure if not more

So while helpful (if it can be done to such a scale) it only limits thermal backup by 10%

So you will still need 500+ GW of thermal capacity in the EU
If the EU closes its nukes which will probably happen as old ones retire and new ones are not built, that means 500+ GW of biomass or FF stations to guarantee supply


as always, to the nit pickers, the exact numbers dont matter it is the scale and scope that is being pointed out

silverwhistle

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

... tell me about it! - our HP has been soaking up our microgeneration quite a lot over the past couple of weeks ... and this is supposed to be flaming June? ... :cool:

I'm deeply embarrassed to say that my pristine, clean wood burner, waiting for the sweep (who normally has a look and says "no need") was lit last night and I also shoved a bit of surplus PV into an oil-filled rad today!


Anyway, it should be pointed out that with the current life of gas boilers they're a bit like cars and will tend to need replacing after a period, so it's not like there's going to be a need to rip out functioning equipment.


As some on these boards have noted there can be some very cheap rates if you can be flexible (Agile/Octopus I believe) and the increase in RE, particularly in wind power could well be mopped up by people using this option before any need to convert the surplus to hydrogen etc.



More wind and PV, bigger immersion tanks, ASHP, batteries (including grid scale), pumped storage, process heat, are all going to mop up the next stage of increased RE. Once that has settled a bit lessons learnt and we can proceed to the next stage, by which time technology will have moved on even more.

GreatApe

The only thing the nuclear cheerleaders have is the fact that it would work there is no question about it, no need for mass interconnectors, no need for mass hydrogen plants, no need for mass storage, no need to rely on norway, no need for CCGT or biomass backup and usage

Something like 120 GW capacity of nuclear would cover electrifying transport heating and electricity needs or about 90 GW if you use heat pumps rather than electrical heating

Would definitely work there is no question if we had 90-120GW of nuclear it would be sufficient for our needs to electrify everything

Having said that, its too late we are down the windy road which is not yet clear it can get to as deep a decarb as the above alternative reality but it can still go far. We could go as far as 70%/30% wind/NG which is probably good enough maybe even a little higher. But there is no clear path to 100% wind/pv & close to zero fossil fuel usage which is why people desperately dream up replacing the oil and gas industry with a different chemicals industry

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

... and supply/demand curtailment of windpower! ... why pay for turbines to remain static when the energy generated is essentially free & would therefore make complete economic sense to divert to a form of storage, whether it's chemical or potential energy and whatever efficiencies are involved, the economics of doing something trump those of doing nothing!

HTH
Z

Plus, if I'm understanding the usual nonsense correctly, the gas v's leccy argument yet again ignores the COP, which most likely makes the leccy option cheaper than the gas one, and far cheaper if low rate E7 and a small PV top up are also taken into account.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Plus, if I'm understanding the usual nonsense correctly, the gas v's leccy argument yet again ignores the COP, which most likely makes the leccy option cheaper than the gas one, and far cheaper if low rate E7 and a small PV top up are also taken into account.

Why dont they use heat pumps extensively in Norway/Sweden? They are mostly electrical resistant heated. The sane assumption is that they realize the power saving is more than outweighed by the cost of buying and maintaining a heat pump system

silverwhistle

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Plus, if I'm understanding the usual nonsense correctly, the gas v's leccy argument yet again ignores the COP, which most likely makes the leccy option cheaper than the gas one, and far cheaper if low rate E7 and a small PV top up are also taken into account.

It's all a bit complicated when you start to look at personal circumstances (I have PV and a wood-burning stove). Consider my gas usage of 1000kWh a year (it's a less arithmetically convenient 1100 actually..). On a nominal standing charge of £60 that's an extra 6p per unit, with Bulb it would be nearly 7.5p and with SSE 11.3p a unit ON TOP of the unit rates! So my point in another thread that standing charges are regressive..


Now I have obviously used my gas boiler a bit over the year, but if it went U/S would it be the only course of action to repair or replace when I'm only using 1000kWh p.a?



At current prices an ASHP as a retrofit to my terrace doesn't seem worthwhile either. It then perhaps makes more sense to go for one of the variable electricity tariffs, which would certainly cover any short fall in spare PV for water heating during the 4 months of the year when I need to top up. At 3/4/5p a unit it would also make sense to use direct electric heating, to at least keep the fabric of the building warm even if it weren't available at peak times.



When my car goes bang (or rusts to bits) there's yet another calculation to be made as I'd like an EV. If battery technology costs drop rapidly yet another decision. Shall I get some W facing PV when I replace my shed roof?


Longer term who knows? At least I've got three seasons of wood stored at the bottom of the garden!

pile-o-stone

ASavvyBuyer wrote: »

Unfortunately, because of continuous requoting of such text, I have ended up with another person on my ignore list!

I think you'll regret that as Z posts a ton of really interesting, informative and on-topic posts that you'll now miss out on.

I also subscribe to Z's comment about relatively new people on this forum unsuspectingly getting dragged into conversations with the troll. I once defended the person Z was referring to. I thought it was useful to have opposing views to prevent this place from becoming an echo chamber. However, after reading some of the posts I saw that they were nearly always off-topic, nearly always anti-renewables and there were also some nasty attacks against fellow posters. I therefore put that person on ignore and I'm positive I've not missed out by not seeing those posts.

People on here have disagreements, I was having a discussion on increasing the unit price of electricity and having fixed standing charges to pay for the grid with Martyn. We don't agree and probably never will, but the debate has been carried out in a reasonable way and it's all about renewables and sustainability. You can't really say that about the contributions from the poster Z mentioned.

*steps off soapbox*