Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

kevin6666 wrote: »

As I said it will not happen.

Apologies again, but I still can't find the link to this new news?

Mart.

Exiled_Tyke

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya ET, do you want some more pumped hydro info?

Well, you know I said the UK had around 30GWh at the moment, how's about an extra 6,800GWh, equivalent to about 8 days full leccy demand in the UK. Able to supply between 159GW and 255GW of leccy - the UK peak demand is around 55GW in the winter evenings.

This scheme will never be built, but it's an interesting idea and read, nonetheless:

World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?

Mart.

Wow! Thanks. Very fascinating. It may never be built but even speculation of this nature gives us hope that one day we may have genuinely sustainable green energy without reliance on fossil or nasty nuclear.

theboylard

Interesting piece on wind North of the border:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36187324

Martyn1981

Scottish Labour promises 50% renewable energy use by 2030

The Scottish Labour party has pledged to generate half of the country’s electricity, heat and transport demand from renewables by 2030 as part of its manifesto for this week’s Scottish Parliament election.

Launched a week after Nicola Sturgeon outlined her party’s re-election pledges, Kezia Dugdale’s party said the goal of 50% clean energy use underlined Scottish Labour’s “ambition to green our energy use”.

The manifesto also committed the party to pursue a major drive for energy efficiency and remove the carbon from Scotland’s electricity needs.

Very ambitious target. No idea if it's possible, but if you don't try!

Mart.

Martyn1981

Gamesa combines PV, wind, diesel and storage in off-grid system

Gamesa has installed a prototype of its 2 MW off-grid system, combining solar, wind, diesel-fueled power generation and energy storage batteries, in La Muela municipality, Spain.

A prototype of the new system was inaugurated yesterday in La Muela municipality, Spain. The system is comprised of 816 PV modules, with a total capacity of 245 kW, a 850 kW wind turbine and three diesel generators, 222 kW each.

Within the next couple of month, the company will add a 500 kW battery to the system. The prototype is expected to generate enough power to meet the needs of 400 households.

The company highlights that its new solution is the first in the market to enable flexible combination of three different power sources, with the goal to generate more clean electricity and minimize diesel consumption.

I assume there's a reason why the windturbine appears to be to the south of the PV?

Mart.

Martyn1981

Interesting article in the Independent.

It sets out some interesting numbers on nuclear v's renewables, and suggests that the government policy to remove support for PV and on-shore wind is designed to try to disguise the subsidy impact of Hinkley.

The Government should scrap its costly Hinkley Point deal and accept renewables can keep the lights on

[Some extracts but really needs reading in full.]

Will the UK need continuous power in 2025?

Not if renewable installations continue to expand, even at a lower rate than recent years. Flexible, not continuous, power generation is needed to back up wind and photovoltaic (PV) power. The German Kombikraftwerk project, led by Kaspar Knorr a co-author on our Nature Materials article, showed how the electricity demand on a national grid like Germany, or the UK, can be supplied 24/7 all year by 80% wind and PV power. Only about 15% of flexible bio-electric power and 5% storage power back-up are needed. Many bio-electricity generators are capable of flexible operation. The government should be aiming its flexible capacity subsidies at new electricity generators fuelled by AD biomethane rather than polluting fossil fuel generators as at present.

Did the government make the cuts to protect new nuclear?

This seems likely from the future scenarios that DECC published last November. All their scenarios show renewable power, which expanded 10 times in 9 years, not even doubling in the next 20 years. Amber Rudd explained in November that most of the small renewable expansion in the 2020s would be from offshore wind. Hence, a Tory government has intervened in two highly successful, exponentially expanding markets, PV and onshore wind, aiming to reduce their expansion to zero by 2020 so as not to threaten their top priorities: higher carbon and more expensive nuclear and natural gas electricity.

Will the government succeed in halting the expansion of onshore wind and PV?

This is unlikely, if one looks at the worst performances of the renewable markets over the past decade. Let’s consider a “no-subsidy” scenario that assumes PV and onshore wind expand at half the rate they achieved in their worst performing year of the last decade. Rudd indicated that offshore wind might receive some future subsidies, so assume offshore wind expands with its worst year-on-year increase. In this case, UK wind and PV will total around 88 GW in 2025. This is similar to the 87 GW we estimate Germany had installed by 2015. Hence the wholesale price of UK electricity in 2025 should be around the 2.4 p/kWh (@ 0.77 £/Euro) that Germany achieved in 2015. This should be compared with the current 4 p/kWh in the UK (APX Group UK). On this scenario, should Hinkley start in 2025, Britain’s “hard-working bill payers” will be funding around 7 p/kWh of the guaranteed 9.25 p/kWh nuclear price.

Mart.

Martyn1981

Gridwatch at 3pm

UK coal generation ............. zero! [This time last year 5GW to 10GW.]

And the grid hasn't collapsed.

Mart.

warrenb

It has been zero all day so far

legoman62

Checked it several times today.....like you do;)

Thought it had gone down, but it's reading now (0.27GW):D

Martyn1981

UK energy from coal hits zero for first time in over 100 years

Coal-generation hit historic low several times last week in what experts say are the only occasions since the first coal-fired generator opened in London in 1882

On Thursday, there was no electricity from coal for more than 12 and a half hours, more than half the day, with it making no contribution to the UK’s power supplies late at night when demand was low and for a period in the day, the data shows.

Estimates of the power now being generated from solar panels, from household arrays to large scale farms, also show it is regularly outstripping coal during the day, reaching 6.8 gigawatts (GW) at a midday peak this week compared to a high of 3GW output from coal.

Solar is limited to generating power during the day, but analysis from Carbon Brief found that over the course of a week, the clean technology produced more power last week than coal.

Mart.