Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

NigeWick

silverwhistle wrote: »

I presume, as a PV user, that you had a suitably brief shower.:D

Nope. My "well proportioned" body takes quite a bit of water. Don't forget I get 5kW from the battery as well as any solar available.

I am looking towards recycling showers when they eventually arrive on our shores.

mmmmikey

As a PV user I have long, hot luxurious and free showers in the summer, and.... well lets just say my friends don't seem to want to come round as much in the winter.


Which loops nicely back round to Martyn's last post. You would have instinctively have thought that a Carribean island with lots of sun and little wind would have prioritised solar investment over wind, but in fact it's the other way round and only now are they ramping up solar investment to keep their mega-batteries charged. This "time of generation / time of demand mismatch" really highlights a big limitation of solar.



Although I'm loathed to say it, I can't help thinking that until battery costs come down, putting the brakes on subsiding solar via FIT payments does seem to make some sense, although possibly more generous FIT payments for systems with batteries would be the way to go.



By the way, my experience of Carribean sunshine is limited to what I've seen on TV, although, not one to brag of course, I did go to Skegness for a day last summer which I'm lead to believe is pretty much the same.....

Martyn1981

mmmmikey wrote: »

Which loops nicely back round to Martyn's last post. You would have instinctively have thought that a Carribean island with lots of sun and little wind would have prioritised solar investment over wind, but in fact it's the other way round and only now are they ramping up solar investment to keep their mega-batteries charged. This "time of generation / time of demand mismatch" really highlights a big limitation of solar.

Do bear in mind though that 'economic' PV is actually a very new thing, less than 5yrs, whereas wind has been OK (not necessarily cheap) for a couple of decades, and hence why the off-gridders have it, but are now singing the praises of PV - cheap, easy to install, low maintenance, easily controlled in cases of oversupply, etc etc..

But, as you say, batts are important to this mix, and a current use of diesel gen too, as that gives the flexibility, but also something to displace. Hawaii is seeing some great impacts from PV + storage, not only displacing diesel gen, but often with the PV + storage price (important to note that fact, not PV, but PV + storage) at around half the cost of existing diesel leccy supply.

For island nations, PV is going to get so cheap, that oversupply and curtailment/spill will/are becoming cheaper options than shipping fuel. Brilliant.

Martyn1981

Just to say NemoLink is up and running, so the UK now has another (1GW) interconnector to the mainland, in this case Belgium.

Nemo Link power cable from Britain to Belgium starts operations

Martyn1981

Here's a very big battery for RE storage, but it's sodium, not Li-ion. Also it can handle 4,500 cycles, which I suspect are 100% DoD. No idea on cost, but assume it is cheap(ish) by comparison.

Sodium Sulfur Battery In Abu Dhabi Is World’s Largest Storage Device

Martyn1981

Another good argument for ramping up UK RE deployment - our existing nuclear fleet is showing its age, and struggling.

If I'm right (open to much debate) about nuclear v's RE + storage costs, plus we have only 12yrs left of worldwide carbon budget, then perhaps rolling out cheap RE today (6 months to 5yrs to deploy depending on tech) is better than 10-15yrs to deploy expensive nuclear?

Fate of UK’s nuclear plants in doubt over ageing infrastructure

Britain’s nuclear power stations recorded a 12% decline in their contributions to the country’s energy system over the past month, as outages raised concerns over how long the ageing plants will be able to keep operating.

A temporary closure of two of the country’s eight nuclear plants resulted in a double-digit drop in nuclear generation in January, compared to the same period last year.

Prospects for new nuclear projects have commanded headlines and government attention in recent weeks, with Hitachi and Toshiba scrapping their plans for major new plants.

But the fate of the existing plants, which usually provide about a fifth of the UK’s electricity supplies, has been pulled into focus by outages due to safety checks and engineering works running over schedule. Nuclear outages also push up carbon emissions because any capacity shortfall will typically be replaced by fossil fuel power stations.

Just to be clear, I'm suggesting that RE deployments be increased by enough to displace new nuclear and old nuclear (some cross-over in there).

We've managed about 30% from RE in 10yrs, no reason to suggest we couldn't do the same again, or more in the next decade, in order to maintain the steady reduction in FF generation ...... then just that pesky storage to deal with!

Martyn1981

Massive increase in storage deployment predicted by BNEF, who tend to be a bit conservative in their estimates, with overly linear estimates going forward.

Energy Storage: Next Game Changer

Everybody agrees that storage is turning into big business, and soon, but exactly how big and how soon? According to a report released in Nov 2018 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) the global energy-storage market will surge to a cumulative 942 GW by 2040 requiring a hefty investment of $620 billion. Sharply falling battery costs is a key driver of the projected boom, as is the pressing need to smooth out the output of renewable generation. BNEF says the capital cost of utility-scale lithium-ion storage systems is likely to fall another 52% by 2030.

ed110220

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Just to say NemoLink is up and running, so the UK now has another (1GW) interconnector to the mainland, in this case Belgium.

Nemo Link power cable from Britain to Belgium starts operations

I find it interesting that flows through the three interconnectors with mainland Europe are quite often in different directions which seems counter-intuitive. Eg right at the moment we are importing from France and exporting to the Netherlands. Does this suggest that the transmission infrastructure between France, Belgium and the Netherlands isn't coping, and so flows are going the long way round via Britain?

mmmmikey

Yes interesting. My best guess (and that's all it is) is that it is something to do with the timings around how and when power is bought and sold, which may well be different for different countries. That is, at some stage someone said "we're going to run out - lets buy some power from France" and commited to it. Then we got nearer the time and something changed (maybe the wind started blowing) and someone else said "we've got some spare power - lets sell it to the Netherlands". Guessing again, I suspect that 3 interconnected national grids is not quite the same thing as 1 big grid which would have an impact on the flows.

Martyn1981

ed110220 wrote: »

I find it interesting that flows through the three interconnectors with mainland Europe are quite often in different directions which seems counter-intuitive. Eg right at the moment we are importing from France and exporting to the Netherlands. Does this suggest that the transmission infrastructure between France, Belgium and the Netherlands isn't coping, and so flows are going the long way round via Britain?

You might be right. I suppose if we can get a good deal on the leccy coming in, then we'll buy it based on spot prices, and at the same time, if another country likes the look of our sell price, they may buy off us, so as you suggest, perhaps the inter-country links are running at max, so another route is found.

Certainly shows, or suggests what might be possible if enough interconnectors between countries, and across countries are built - an 'ickle' connector from Spain to N. African PV, making it's way to the UK via internal grids and the French/UK connectors, perhaps?