Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

California to get a big battery to replace gas peaker plants. It's rather large.

100 MW/400 MWh Fluence Energy Storage Project For Long Beach — World’s Largest Li-Ion Battery Storage Project

Martyn1981

This is being touted as an interconnector to move RE leccy around. No idea if that's true, but good to hear that Europe's ability to share is increasing, and that that ability is being taken seriously.

EU grants €578m for France-Spain renewable energy transmission link

Current capacity exchange between France and Spain is 2.8 GW. The completed cable will increase this to 5 GW and allow Spain to edge closer to its 10% interconnection target, which stands at 6% currently.

zeupater

Martyn1981 wrote: »

This is being touted as an interconnector to move RE leccy around. No idea if that's true, but good to hear that Europe's ability to share is increasing, and that that ability is being taken seriously.

EU grants €578m for France-Spain renewable energy transmission link

Amazing what projects the high net €contributors will be contributing those € towards during certain transition periods ... without having any say or veto! ...

Martyn1981

I think this is interesting, but might just be me!

The US will get roughly the same amount of leccy from wind this year as hydro, and the bulk of that wind generation has been installed in the last 10yrs.

Also, generation from each is about 250-300TWh (not the GWh that the EIA graph states) so roughly equal to all UK leccy demand of about 300TWh net pa.

EIA Expects Wind Energy To Surpass Hydro In 2019

Martyn1981

Renewable Energy Is Much Faster To Install & More Scalable Than Nuclear Power

This article is part of our “CleanTechnica Answer Box” collection. For some reason, there are certain anti-cleantech talking points that get thrown around over and over again that are absolute bunk. We got tired of dealing with the same myths repeatedly and also saw that many other people could use some support responding to these untruths — in discussions on CleanTechnica and elsewhere. So, at the suggestion of a reader, we created this resource in the same vein as Skeptical Science’s responses to global warming & climate change myths.

Martyn1981

Finally it's being said out loud:-

Natural gas killed coal – now renewables and batteries are taking over

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Finally it's being said out loud:-

Natural gas killed coal – now renewables and batteries are taking over

Interesting argument that abundant cheap gas (especially in the US) has actually set back renewable take up by keeping electricity prices lower than they would have been if still relying on coal.

I wonder if the same may be true of nuclear, that the way the Hinckley C subsidy works may mean much less renewable deployment than otherwise and higher costs overall.

Exiled_Tyke

michaels wrote: »

Interesting argument that abundant cheap gas (especially in the US) has actually set back renewable take up by keeping electricity prices lower than they would have been if still relying on coal.

I wonder if the same may be true of nuclear, that the way the Hinckley C subsidy works may mean much less renewable deployment than otherwise and higher costs overall.

Isn't it also likely that renewables will have become so much cheaper (and the accepted norm for electricity) than nuclear by the (vast amount of) time Hinkley C takes to be completed that it will end up costing us all a fortune (as already predicted) or if we are lucky being abandoned along the way?

Martyn1981

Exiled_Tyke wrote: »

Isn't it also likely that renewables will have become so much cheaper (and the accepted norm for electricity) than nuclear by the (vast amount of) time Hinkley C takes to be completed that it will end up costing us all a fortune (as already predicted) or if we are lucky being abandoned along the way?

Yep, that's why I'm passionate about trying to make sure that any discussion/debate on renewables subsidies has context. The delivery time for nuclear effectively 'kills' nuclear.

HPC might start generating in 2027 at $140/MWh, but contracts for wind and storage for 2023 in the US are $21/MWh, and solar + storage at $36/MWh.

I appreciate that Colorado has better sun than us, and probably cheaper land for wind turbine deployment, but even so, the cost differentials between nuclear and RE (with storage) are incredible.

Even allowing for the fact that those Colorado quotes are probably for about 4hrs storage (enough for the UK peak period), we can also look to the paragraph further down, where Lazard's suggest (see quote below) a 2017 cost of PV + storage (10hrs) at $82/MWh. Let's assume the PV element costs twice as much in the UK (for relative PV generation), but also consider that both PV and storage costs will halve again by 2027.

The financial advisory firm Lazard issues a much-watched analysis each year of the “levelized cost of energy (LCOE),” a measure that purports to directly compare energy sources based on total costs. Its 2017 analysis estimated that solar+batteries has an LCOE of $82/MWh. You might notice that the median Xcel bid for solar+storage is less than half that. (Important caveats: The Lazard LCOE is for solar with 10 hours of storage, but we do not yet know how much storage is involved in the Xcel bids; Lazard estimates unsubsidized costs, while Xcel projects will benefit from federal tax credits; Lazard’s estimate is for 2017, while developers are effectively bidding 2023 costs. Direct comparisons are difficult. Point is, the number is vaulting down.)

I always believed that RE + storage would beat nuclear and gas, I just didn't think we'd see these sort of numbers quite so soon.

Exiled_Tyke

This also suggests that if wholesale electricity generation prices fall dramatically and large scale storage costs fall similarly, then any domestic investment in storage may be futile. Then again as electricity prices fall, and ASHP and of course GSHP become more popular (and cheaper) heating by electricity could conceivably over take gas and we will become more dependent on efficient electric generation and storage. And so domestic investment in RE and storage becomes again more attractive and my brain just melted.