Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

I'd genuinely be interested in any numbers you can come up with. I'm not even sure where to start, since the OPEX and income parts are moving targets - will the leccy cost a little, or nothing, or even be negatively priced? What will it sell for, which in turn depends on what alternatives will switch on, and at what price?
I suppose we might be able to work out the CAPEX of a LAES plant from Highview, and guess our way from there. In terms of need, it'll Shirley be multiple days of sizeable support. Currently we use about 1TWh per day, so even at 50% support that's 1TWh/day (assuming demand doubles), then that means multiples of TWh's, which would seem to move us into levels of storage that perhaps only gas storage can provide. That might mean more of those enormous gas tanks, or salt cavern use, or a return to that North Sea thingie we used to use for nat gas? 

Regarding short term solutions, again aren't you describing exactly what is happening today, with FF gas acting as the demand follower, being burnt in existing capital cheap generators, in fact they may by now have fully amortized their CAPEX. This approach is allowing us to roll out RE faster, but as Tony Seba suggests, RE + storage (or SWB (solar wind and batteries)) will eventually undercut that too, perhaps 2030 onwards. But not necessarily bad news for the gas plants, since if we produce enormous volumes of H2 slowly, as one of our long term storage solutions, then existing gas plants would allow us to generate leccy quickly, when needed.

As to 'sky high prices', and 'granny sitting in the cold' and wind energy eating its own lunch with prices going to zero every time the wind blows ....... interesting, very interesting.

Apologies, it did sound a bit emotive looking back but then look at the US and health insurance - the market solution is not always socially desirable and I don't think it is controversial to suggest the govt might use rules/incentives to ensure continuity of supply?

Looking at those numbers it seems we might need to store of order 10 Twh - lets assume that the price going in is zero and the price going out is £150 per Gwh (net of operating costs) and the total throughput is 50Twh per annum.

Now lets assume we want a 5% return on investment that lasts say 50 years.  This would give us an order of magnitude estimate of the capital expenditure levels that might be supported.

Martyn1981

It's not so much the emotive element, I just find those arguments so, so tiring. I didn't agree with them when cells first posted them on the Energy board about 5yrs ago, and I've said as much each time you've repeated them on here.
I just don't understand why they get said, or how someone can both claim that prices will go sky high, and fall to zero at the same time, in the very same post, then throw in the 'cold granny' too. Aren't we passed that stage yet of suggesting hysterical negative extremes when high penetration of RE and the rollout of storage is discussed.

The sky will fall claims have been said about RE penetration for as long as I can remember, the only difference is that the max percentage of RE possible gets increased to stay just ahead of the actual rollout of RE. At one point it was about 20-30% RE, then 40%, then 50%. More recently Team Denial suggested it was 90%, but when asked for supporting evidence it was revised to 90-99%, and when asked again, was revised to around 95% and 'just a belief' for the UK, but other countries could go 100%. What a shame it will be if we really have to play this game all the way up to 100%,

Anyways, how did this all start, oh yes, multiple sources have suggested that new nuclear is no longer needed, as RE can do the job cheaper and faster, even when the cost of storage is added. That storage will also act as a price stabilizer, adding demand, or supply as needed.
Some folk don't agree with these assessments, because we have to have nuclear ...... because.

Another way to look at the absolute need for new nuclear is a tad 'odd' but works for me, and that's to consider the impact on the UK supply of perfectly reliable and consistent nuclear generation - as that's the best it can get.

So, let's take current demand, that's around 40GW average, with lows of about 20GW in the early hours of the summer, and ~55GW at evening peak in the winter. Now I'm going to assume a 50% increase in demand by the time 16GW of nuclear could be built (92% capacity factor makes it 14.72GW). I'll also assume that the biggest increase is in the nighttime demand due to BEV charging and heat pumps. So an average of 60GW, with a low of 40GW and a high of 70GW. This only works, so we are told, because nuclear is in the mix.

Now we subtract the 'essential' 15GW of 24/7 nuclear, and that effectively makes us equal to a non nuclear country with an average demand of 45GW, a low of 25GW and a high of 55GW (somewhat similar to the UK today).
At this point would it be fair to assume that a nuclear fan would look at this new non-nuclear country profile, and explain/argue that it's not possible to 'do that' without nuclear ...... rinse and repeat.

To be even sillier, we can now just remove the ~6GW of new nuclear that the Gov has been advised to scale back to, at most, and it gets ever harder to understand why the future of UK leccy supply balance hinges entirely on whether or not we get that new nuclear.

Martyn1981

Talking of batteries, were we, I've lost track .... hmmm ...... anyway, Gov consent for a UK biggie has been given:

BEIS green light for biggest battery in the UK

The 320MW/640 megawatt-hour DP World London Gateway project could ultimately deliver 1.3GWh of power, the company said.

InterGen chief executive Jim Lightfoot said: “We are delighted to have been granted consent by BEIS for the Gateway project.
“Our mission is to deliver the flexible electricity solutions that everyone relies on in a low-carbon world, and this project is a major statement of intent.

Martyn1981

Just a quickie on India, haven't mentioned them for ages. They have big targets but these get hit by economics a lot, as India does suffer a lot when the World economy struggles:

India aims for 220GW of renewables by 2022

The Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi has said the country aims to increase its renewables capacity to 220GW by 2022, up from a previous goal of 175GW.

silverwhistle

Exiled_Tyke said:

Good points raised on storage. Thanks for the 'debate'.   Are we considering all forms of storage here?  Did I hear a rumour that another Dinorwig type project was planned in Scotland? Personally I like the sound of dropping heavy weights down mine shafts although I'm guessing round trip losses for that would be quite sizeable.

Yes, Coire Glas has consent, it's now down to the money side I believe.

michaels

In an unfettered electricity market large swings in prices would constrain demand when supply was tight reducing the amount of guaranteed minimum capacity required and the govt is likely to intervene to 'distort' the pure market outcome - hopefully not emotive?

This will impact on the amount of storage needed in a renewables + (renewables and storage) solution.

Beyond that I was trying to get some ballpark idea of the cost of providing this minimum using different methods - obviously there are potentially two very different low carbon solutions - one is sufficient long term storage and 'excess' renewables to top up the storage, the other is to have a nuclear fleet again covering a certain baseline (assuming we dismiss the option of fossil fuels plus some form of offsetting / CCS to cover the 'storage' requirement).

Because they plug the gap in such different ways working out the relative economics is very complicated - in reality the value of the nuclear output when the wind is blowing is minimal, the value of the output when it is not windy depends on how much storage costs.

I want renewables plus storage to be the answer but I don't see that not even thinking about how the costing might work will help anyone's understanding.  For example if there are lots of relevant accessible articles there is no harm in reposting the links for the umpteenth time.

silverwhistle

The 'money side' I mentioned in my comment referred to the issue of how paying for the investment in building the pumped storage (PS) would be paid. It's an issue that goes beyond any one generation method, although it hits those which are not regularly used like PS, coal fired stations, gas turbines, batteries.. Even nuclear is not exempt as who wants to pay for expensive nuclear when a surplus of wind is available, and although the plants can load follow a bit these days they can's simply shut down. Where coal or gas plant is already amortised the saving is in fuel, but new investment now needs a mechanism to justify its build.

Martyn1981

Carbon Commentary newsletter time:

1, Steel-making. Swedish miner LKAB said it would shift from selling ore to producing pig iron made using hydrogen in a process known as ‘direct reduction’. This will avoid the need for its customers to smelt the ore in blast furnaces using coal. This is a brave decision but the scale of the challenge became clear in the company’s presentation. It will require electricity supplies equivalent to about one third of Sweden’s current usage to make the transition to electrolysis. Over the next 20 years the company will have to invest up to $2bn a year. Pig iron is a very substantially more valuable product than iron ore but LKAB will have to fund this investment on the basis of current yearly sales of about $3bn. The smelting of LKAB’s ore is currently responsible for of about 1.5% of all steel industry CO2, implying that the world manufacturers may need to invest well over $100bn a year just to switch to direct reduction of iron ore. But there probably isn’t any alternative.
 
3, German hydrogen trains. Siemens and Deutsche Bahn announced the trial of a 2 carriage hydrogen train capable of travelling 600 km without refuelling and reaching 160 km/hour. Although the train will not be working before 2024, this new trial brings a new competitor into hydrogen trains. Alstom, its main rival, sold more hydrogen trains to Italy this week, on top of a recent sale in Austria.
  
5, Low carbon urban delivery. A London bicycle delivery company produced a neat assessment of the performance of its bikes compared to vans. It showed that travel speeds were greater in the centre of the city, but slightly slower in outer areas. Perhaps as importantly, it suggested that reduced difficulty finding parking places for bicycles markedly increased the advantage in the dense centre. Routes were also slightly shorter - because bikes can take shortcuts vans cannot – and this increased the gap between bikes and vans. Separately, The Times newspaper (paywall) carried a long article on the world’s first zero-carbon commercial laundry, which also uses bikes to collect and distribute around central London and two other cities. Oxwash powers its laundries using solar panels and washes using smaller quantities of lower temperature water and non-polluting cleaning agents. (Disclosure: I am an angel investor in Oxwash).
6, Clothes recycling. Recent newsletters have featured several stories from northern European companies about advances in textile recycling. It’s about time; clothing is one of the most ecologically damaging industries. Another large consortium announced EU funding to develop a fully circular textile recycling route, based around cellulose. (Cotton is a nearly pure form of cellulose). The partnership is centred on Finnish biochemical company Infinited Fiber, which has technology to take shredded cotton, and other types of cellulose-based products, such as paper, and turn it into fibre of better quality than the original clothing. Large material manufacturers in countries such as Turkey are also involved in the group and if this route works, it should be possible to maintain employment in the main textile exporting countries. Adidas and H&M will design and sell the merchandise.
 
7, Direct air capture at nuclear power stations. Developer EdF asked for expressions of interest to run experiments to prove that the waste heat from a proposed new nuclear power station at Sizewell on the east coast of the UK could provide much of the energy needed to for Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2. Nuclear power stations use steam turbines to actually generate electricity and are only about 40% efficient. In almost all cases, the waste heat is lost so DAC could be a useful adjunct to the operations of a nuclear plant. According to one company in the industry, roughly 80% of the energy needs of DAC - which dominate the cost - can be provided in the form of water at around 100 degrees so this is potentially extremely important experiment. EdF also said it was looking at routes to making hydrogen at the new Sizewell plant. This could offer a way of making the power station a more flexible participant in the UK electricity market. Although it is far from clear that Sizewell will ever go ahead, the lessons from the experiments could be applied at other thermal power stations around the world.
 
8, Transition by the oil majors. Spanish oil company Repsol, perhaps the earliest oil major to publicly commit to a full transition, confirmed it would start to harvest its existing oil fields and move away from further exploration. It has previously indicated that it is already spending more on renewables than on fossil fuel capital expenditures. It made specific commitments on hydrogen, saying it would develop three routes to manufacture: electrolysis, steam reforming from biomethane and the nascent ‘photo-electrolysis’ approach, which directly produces hydrogen from water using sunlight. Repsol said that hydrogen from biomethane is considerably cheaper than electrolysis. However, the quantities of biomethane available globally will be a small fraction of that necessary to satisfy the need for hydrogen.
  
10, Hydrogen ships. A group of Danish companies announced a proposal to build what I think may be the largest hydrogen fuel cell ship. Shipper DFDS wants a freight and passenger ferry running between Oslo and Copenhagen to be completed by 2027. The crucial challenge facing the project is how to scale up the size of fuel cells. The biggest cells today are less than 5 MW, and the world’s largest onshore installations have a total capacity of little more than 10 MW. But a ship the size and speed of the proposed DFDS ferry requires 23 MW. The largest ocean-going container ship might need nearly 100 MW. Interestingly, one of the partners in the project is offshore wind giant Ørsted, which would supply the hydrogen in Copenhagen. The company is spreading as fast as it can into the largest potential markets for hydrogen from wind. 

EVandPV

Just came across this, first I've heard about it even though it's only a few miles from us .....

Fife town will be first in world to heat and cook using zero carbon hydrogen

https://www.fifetoday.co.uk/business/fife-town-will-be-first-world-heat-and-cook-using-zero-carbon-hydrogen-3051735

michaels

Another question - as well as using h2 as a storage medium, could it be used as a distribution medium to domestic fuel cells?  How would the efficiency of domestic fuel cells (perhaps driving heat pumps) compare to using the hydrogen for combustion in domestic boilers or using it for power station generation and then distributing the power?