Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

I'm not sure I quite understand what this article is about, and whether it reflects energy and storage costs in the US, but it does seem very promising, both the low costs per MWh, but also the significant reduction in costs.

‘Incredible’ low prices for renewables-plus-storage in Xcel’s solicitation

Median bids received by US utility Xcel Energy in a solicitation for energy resources for energy storage paired with solar came in at US$9 per megawatt lower than the previously observed record.

Wind with battery storage: 11 bids were received, representing 5,700MW across eight projects, for a total 5,097MW minus duplicate bids. Bids were priced at US$21 per MWh.

Wind and solar with battery storage: 7 bids were received, with 4,048MW, with a corresponding number of projects and megawatts. Bids were priced at US$30.60 per MWh.

Solar PV with battery storage: 87 bids, for 16,725MW, for a total 59 projects and 10,813MW minus duplicates. Bids were priced at US$36 per MWh.

Martyn1981

New York City plans to divest $5bn from fossil fuels and sue oil companies

New York City is seeking to lead the assault on both climate change and the Trump administration with a plan to divest $5bn from fossil fuels and sue the world’s most powerful oil companies over their contribution to dangerous global warming.

City officials have set a goal of divesting New York’s $189bn pension funds from fossil fuel companies within five years in what they say would be “among the most significant divestment efforts in the world to date”. Currently, New York City’s five pension funds have about $5bn in fossil fuel investments. New York state has already announced it is exploring how to divest from fossil fuels.

“New York City is standing up for future generations by becoming the first major US city to divest our pension funds from fossil fuels,” said Bill de Blasio, New York’s mayor.

“At the same time, we’re bringing the fight against climate change straight to the fossil fuel companies that knew about its effects and intentionally misled the public to protect their profits. As climate change continues to worsen, it’s up to the fossil fuel companies whose greed put us in this position to shoulder the cost of making New York safer and more resilient.”

Martyn1981

Looks like the Welsh Government is giving the Swansea tidal lagoon a push. It's an expensive project (per MWh) but could open the door to far cheaper/larger lagoons. The Q&A (link in article) is particularly informative.

Swansea tidal lagoon: 'Substantial' offer from Carwyn Jones

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm not sure I quite understand what this article is about, and whether it reflects energy and storage costs in the US, but it does seem very promising, both the low costs per MWh, but also the significant reduction in costs.

‘Incredible’ low prices for renewables-plus-storage in Xcel’s solicitation

More on this, and the prices appear to be correct, that is, insanely cheap, possibly explained by the fact it's for 2023 and costs of RE and storage are falling fast.

Note that by storage they mean 4-10hrs, but even at just 4hrs, that's the whole evening peak period in the UK.

Wind & Solar + Storage Prices Smash Records

Ben84

Thinking about energy storage, I remember reading years ago about cars in India which run on compressed air. Basically, instead of filling up with petrol, you use a compressor to fill a tank. In terms of energy storage, maybe they're on to something. Even moving a lightweight car a moderate distance would require a a decent amount of potential energy, and unlike batteries these tanks and compressors don't require any rare minerals/metals, shouldn't reduce capacity with cycles, and potentially if well made could last a long time. I'd like to know some numbers, but I imagine a plant storing energy could work on some principle of compressing a gas.

Martyn1981

Ben84 wrote: »

Thinking about energy storage, I remember reading years ago about cars in India which run on compressed air. Basically, instead of filling up with petrol, you use a compressor to fill a tank. In terms of energy storage, maybe they're on to something. Even moving a lightweight car a moderate distance would require a a decent amount of potential energy, and unlike batteries these tanks and compressors don't require any rare minerals/metals, shouldn't reduce capacity with cycles, and potentially if well made could last a long time. I'd like to know some numbers, but I imagine a plant storing energy could work on some principle of compressing a gas.

Hiya Ben, you're not wrong. There are two forms of storage as you describe, CAES and LAES, compressed air energy storage and liquid air energy storage.

Compressed air can be used to 'supercharge' a gas generation plant, lifting its efficiency, or just to turn turbines. The same for LAES, but this means even greater storage (per tank) and if combined with a waste heat stream, when releasing the air, can actually exceed 100% efficiency. These ideas also use off the shelf kit/tech from the industrial chemical industry.

There is also an interesting idea to use mountains for CAES. You make a hole, add air locks, then pump it up. This recently got a boost when 'they' found a way to remove and store the heat, as pressure builds, then return it as the air is needed for generation. ALACAES

The LAES idea is explained here (Highview Power) with scaleable plants of 200MW/1,200MWh.

This is my idea, so I don't know if it's viable, but if you sited a gas generation plant, alongside CAES & LAES and ideally a bio-gas plant such as those described by Ecotricity, or a power to gas (P2G) storage system that uses excess leccy to produce hydrogen / methane, then you'd have a lot of on-site storage, plus RE generation on demand when demand is high and or supply is low.

I'm not convinced that we (or any country) will need seasonal storage, as even FF gas used say 10% will be acceptable for CO2 targets, but gas storage (again ideally bio-gas) would allow storage of days, even weeks, v's hours for most forms of storage.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

More on this, and the prices appear to be correct, that is, insanely cheap, possibly explained by the fact it's for 2023 and costs of RE and storage are falling fast.

Note that by storage they mean 4-10hrs, but even at just 4hrs, that's the whole evening peak period in the UK.

Wind & Solar + Storage Prices Smash Records

Further to this again, two very interesting articles from Cleantechnica.

Firstly IRENA and their ever cheaper RE price reports

IRENA Proclaims Onshore Wind Now As Affordable As Any Other Technology, Solar To Halve By 2020

But more importantly, an explanation that may stop me pulling out my hair, as to why reported costs for RE always seem to be far, far higher than the cost of new schemes being rolled out. I'd suggest this article is required reading as it pretty much shows that 'the fight' is over, and RE won - what can compete with wind and storage (4hrs) at $21/MWh, or PV + storage at $36/MWh?

Renewable Energy Grid Parity Confusion, Old Data, & Media Errors

michaels

Ben84 wrote: »

Thinking about energy storage, I remember reading years ago about cars in India which run on compressed air. Basically, instead of filling up with petrol, you use a compressor to fill a tank. In terms of energy storage, maybe they're on to something. Even moving a lightweight car a moderate distance would require a a decent amount of potential energy, and unlike batteries these tanks and compressors don't require any rare minerals/metals, shouldn't reduce capacity with cycles, and potentially if well made could last a long time. I'd like to know some numbers, but I imagine a plant storing energy could work on some principle of compressing a gas.

I believe Peugeot group about 2 years ago suggested they would use this technology for stop-start energy recovery in the same way Toyota use a small battery in the prius. I suspect it may now have been superseded by battery/electric but worth a google.

Martyn1981

Wind (as at time of post) is hitting 12.7GW or metered wind at 9.77GW on Gridwatch, nudging the dial limit of 10GW!

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Wind (as at time of post) is hitting 12.7GW or metered wind at 9.77GW on Gridwatch, nudging the dial limit of 10GW!

Well, well, wind went 'off the dial' on Gridwatch last night, hitting 10.4GW. And the 'owner' of this site just said that he'll need to change his 13GW dial as that's been 'hit' too.

[Edit - As at 8am it's off the dial again on Gridwatch with 10.2GW. That won't make the author of the site happy, as he doesn't like RE. M.]