Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

gefnew

Wind farm in Scotland
Bid for major Orkney offshore wind project announced - BBC News

Martyn1981

Ever bigger batteries being deployed. Now an order for 2GW / 6GWh, though the timescale is not given.


Tesla (TSLA) secures massive order of 2 GW/6 GWh of Megapack batteries from Arevon

Tesla and Arevon have announced that they came to an agreement for the former to supply a massive 2 GW/6 GWh of Megapack batteries to the latter.

Over the last year, Tesla has been securing some large orders for the Megapack, which has quickly become the preferred battery system for large-scale energy storage systems. But now the company has secured an order on a whole new level.

Edit - I've changed the article to one that I think is a bit better laid out. M.

Martyn1981

Here's another energy storage idea, which will use excess leccy generation to heat up and melt aluminium, thereby taking advantage of the energy needed for a phase change (like ice to water, or Sunamp's products). When energy is needed, water is heated to produce steam for conventional steam turbines.

And here's the extra clever part, the idea is to use this energy storage as a direct replacement for coal boilers in existing/mothballed coal generation plants. So you have the powerplant, grid connection etc etc, you 'simply' change the way the water is heated. Also the storage is modular, so it can be sized to match any powerstation.

Don't seem to be figures on efficiency for generation, round trip losses etc, yet, but the leccy to heat storage part is close to 100%, so as a total guess from me, if coal, nat-gas, H2 are around 40%, 50%, 60% respectively, then perhaps this is also around 60%(?). But crucially, another (I've now lost count) potential storage method.

The vid below from 'Just Have a Think', is as always, fun and interesting, but I've added a link to the company if a quick read is preferred.

New energy storage tech breathing life and jobs back into disused coal power plants

E2S Power will offer a cost-effective and easy to operate solution for transforming fossil fuel power stations into thermal storage systems for renewable energy.

Baxter100

Martyn1981 said:

Article focusing on the CO2 emissions of domestic gas consumption for space heating, and the local air pollution caused by the NO2 emissions.

Obviously moving over to heat pumps is going to be an enormous task, but other countries are way ahead of us, and it goes to show just how much investment is needed in the UK to raise the quality of our housing stock, and properly insulate most of it.

UK’s home gas boilers emit twice as much CO2 as all power stations – study

The millions of gas boilers in the UK’s homes produce twice as much climate-heating carbon emissions as all the nation’s gas-fired power stations combined, according to an analysis.

The finding highlighted the urgent need for a strong government policy to rapidly introduce low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, the researchers said.

The data also shows that home gas boilers collectively produce eight times as much nitrogen dioxide as the power plants. NO2 is an air pollutant linked to tens of thousands of early deaths a year in the UK.

A second analysis has found that high gas prices mean the energy bills of people living in poorly insulated homes will rise by up to £246 a year. The UK has the oldest housing stock in western Europe but the rates of home insulation installation plunged by 95% between 2012 and 2019. A recent government energy efficiency scheme collapsed after six months, with the National Audit Office blaming ministers for the “botched” policy.

Neil Jones, at the climate charity Possible, which produced the analysis of gas boilers with the social enterprise Scene, said: “Amid a frightening gas price crisis, and a decade of opportunity wasted by the government to insulate our homes, supporting households to begin switching to clean heat pumps has come suddenly into focus.

“It’s high time the government finally gave us all the tools we need to modernise our homes, and ensure a safer, cleaner future.”

The UK is lagging behind most European countries in terms of heat pump installations.

Most of the lofts and cavity walls have been done. Solid wall insulation and floor insulation are prohibitively expensive (and require a large amount of upheaval as well as expertise). So what exactly is he referring to?

Baxter100

Martyn1981 said:

Article focusing on the CO2 emissions of domestic gas consumption for space heating, and the local air pollution caused by the NO2 emissions.

Obviously moving over to heat pumps is going to be an enormous task, but other countries are way ahead of us, and it goes to show just how much investment is needed in the UK to raise the quality of our housing stock, and properly insulate most of it.

UK’s home gas boilers emit twice as much CO2 as all power stations – study

The millions of gas boilers in the UK’s homes produce twice as much climate-heating carbon emissions as all the nation’s gas-fired power stations combined, according to an analysis.

The finding highlighted the urgent need for a strong government policy to rapidly introduce low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, the researchers said.

The data also shows that home gas boilers collectively produce eight times as much nitrogen dioxide as the power plants. NO2 is an air pollutant linked to tens of thousands of early deaths a year in the UK.

A second analysis has found that high gas prices mean the energy bills of people living in poorly insulated homes will rise by up to £246 a year. The UK has the oldest housing stock in western Europe but the rates of home insulation installation plunged by 95% between 2012 and 2019. A recent government energy efficiency scheme collapsed after six months, with the National Audit Office blaming ministers for the “botched” policy.

Neil Jones, at the climate charity Possible, which produced the analysis of gas boilers with the social enterprise Scene, said: “Amid a frightening gas price crisis, and a decade of opportunity wasted by the government to insulate our homes, supporting households to begin switching to clean heat pumps has come suddenly into focus.

“It’s high time the government finally gave us all the tools we need to modernise our homes, and ensure a safer, cleaner future.”

The UK is lagging behind most European countries in terms of heat pump installations.

From that article:

"The government grants to cover installation costs for heat pumps should be offered at a level which aims to make the upfront costs of installing a heat pump and complementary energy efficiency measures the same as replacing a gas boiler, with subsidies reducing over time as costs fall. The entire cost should be covered by the grants for low-income households.

This will require new public investment of £4.76 billion from the Chancellor at the Spending Review, in order to leverage private investment, accelerate heat pump installation, down the cost curve, and be fair to low income households. A further £7 billion of public investment is required at the Spending Review for energy efficiency measures, such as insulation and double glazing, in order to sufficiently cut emissions from housing."

If we generously assume the cost of a heat pump installation to be £6,000 (in all likelihood much higher especially once the 'complementary energy efficiency measures' have been factored in) and the cost of a replacement gas boiler to be £2,000, they are suggesting giving a grant of £4,000 to each household to cover the cost difference between the two.

With around 22 million gas boilers currently in the UK, this would amount to total government grants of:

22 million x £4,000 = £88 billion

Martyn1981

Crikey! So you're saying that for not a lot more than the subsidy for HPC alone (£60bn-£70bn) we could up the heating efficiency of most UK homes (not just the low-income households mentioned in your quote), cheers, that's good news.

Baxter100

Well fine, just don't lie about it.

Baxter100

In fact, looking at the document which Greenpeace link from:

https://www.raponline.org/knowledge-center/getting-track-net-zero-policy-package-heat-pump-mass-market-uk/

"We assume the average cost of an air source heat pump to be £10,000"

So we can comfortably double that figure from £88 billion to more like £180 billion.

Cardew

Baxter100 said:

In fact, looking at the document which Greenpeace link from:

https://www.raponline.org/knowledge-center/getting-track-net-zero-policy-package-heat-pump-mass-market-uk/

"We assume the average cost of an air source heat pump to be £10,000"

So we can comfortably double that figure from £88 billion to more like £180 billion.

Input from many posters on this forum, who have fitted Heat pumps, indicate costs are considerably in excess of £10k.

In many cases additional or larger radiators need to be fitted to enable Heat Pumps to run at the lower water temp required for efficiency.

Trials of heat pumps indicate a system COP of 3.0 is better than average. Unless the differential between gas and electricity prices is considerably reduced, running costs will be much higher. -  current prices gas around 4p/kWh, electricity around 20p/kWh.

Martyn1981

Except, your own quoted section mentions falling costs over time, and grants for low income households, so in reality, probably less than the subsidy cost of HPC alone. So again, thanks, it doesn't look bad at all, in context.

And of course that'll reduce our heating energy input by about two thirds, remove the enormous CO2 contribution from space heating, reduce those massive NO2 emissions, and encourage the faster deployment of RE generation. Great news all round.