Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

shinytop said:

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

What would be the cost of a SWB capability comparable to a nuclear power station?  I'm thinking about the RE generation plus enough battery back up (maybe the Tesla megapacks or similar) to give the same reliability/certainty as the nuclear plant.  I'm sure somebody has worked it out.    

A couple of months ago I threw some numbers down for a sensible-sized* battery storage system:

(Just thinking out loud, a 20' shipping container full of batteries contains 800kWh. A modern container ship holds 20,000 containers so a single vessel would make a 16GWh battery. That's the size of array you're looking at to make a "battery storage power station" worthy of the name. At current battery prices of $100/kWh it would cost £1.6Bn.)

Hinkley B is rated at 3.2GWe so a 16GWh battery would match its output for 5 hours. say 5x that size for 24h of backup.

* - for some values of "sensible"!

I think its easy enough to work out if the numbers are available. If a nuclear PS can supply 3.2 GWe ar 99% (or whatever the predicted number is) reliability, how much RE + battery would be required to match that, taking into account the UK's likely weather patterns?

Some statistics and probability with some simulations would be needed but nothing too complicated.  My instinct is that 24h of battery backup might not be enough.  Weren't there quite a few calm cloudy days recently?  

H2 storage would help but that's not available at scale yet. 

That is my feeling, battery plus RE can do intra day but you would need to keep online enough gas /other to meet demand for may be a month or more to do inter-seasonal supply - this 'reserve' perhaps only being run for 10% of the year on average which makes the economics difficult although there would be enough total RE generation but a longer term store 'much cheaper batteries' would be needed for the excess RE to support the inter seasonal demand.

Martyn1981

shinytop said:

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

What would be the cost of a SWB capability comparable to a nuclear power station?  I'm thinking about the RE generation plus enough battery back up (maybe the Tesla megapacks or similar) to give the same reliability/certainty as the nuclear plant.  I'm sure somebody has worked it out.    

A couple of months ago I threw some numbers down for a sensible-sized* battery storage system:

(Just thinking out loud, a 20' shipping container full of batteries contains 800kWh. A modern container ship holds 20,000 containers so a single vessel would make a 16GWh battery. That's the size of array you're looking at to make a "battery storage power station" worthy of the name. At current battery prices of $100/kWh it would cost £1.6Bn.)

Hinkley B is rated at 3.2GWe so a 16GWh battery would match its output for 5 hours. say 5x that size for 24h of backup.

* - for some values of "sensible"!

I think its easy enough to work out if the numbers are available. If a nuclear PS can supply 3.2 GWe ar 99% (or whatever the predicted number is) reliability, how much RE + battery would be required to match that, taking into account the UK's likely weather patterns?

Some statistics and probability with some simulations would be needed but nothing too complicated.  My instinct is that 24h of battery backup might not be enough.  Weren't there quite a few calm cloudy days recently?  

H2 storage would help but that's not available at scale yet. 

Personally, I think the battery backup would be in the region of 10-12hrs, then the longer term storage would probably be somewhere in the 3-5 days range. It will depend on what the minimums of the variable RE generation are, and how much predictable generation there is (such as hydro, bio-energy, tidal etc) and also how well the European grid can work together since this year our interconnector count has gone up from 5GW to 7.4GW (though part of IFA1 is down after the recent fire) and an additional 8.5GW is scheduled to come on line between now and 2025, taking us to 15.9GW, and a further 'pipeline' of plans taking the total to ~22GW.

Most of the 100% RE scenarios go with overcapacity, in fact overcapacity tends to be the cheapest option all round, as you'd never start to use storage till there is enough excess to make economic use of, hence why there's a storage lag, and we can expect, with the best will in the world, to always see an element of spill/waste/curtailment.

For longer term storage there seems to be an ever growing number of technologies in the 50-80% efficiency range, such as flow batteries, CAES, LAES, H2, PHS, compressed CO2, recent posting about thermal storage, and so on.

With all these measures the crucial issue seems to be the cost of building and operating them, but not so much the cost of the energy (in) since they will mop up the excess leccy left after all the simple and smaller solutions such as batteries, have been maxed out. At that point the leccy in will have a very low value, and money can be made on the difference selling it at higher priced peak periods, leccy out. So perhaps buy at 2MWh @  £10/MWh each, then sell 1MWh (after efficiency losses) at £100/MWh, giving an arbitrage gross profit of £80 towards the cost of the storage facility.

Energy storage of course isn't new, we use many types today, from simple mounds of coal, or gas tanks at power stations, to crude and refined fuel at refineries, even to petrol station and car tanks (bit topical I admit, of late). So we probably already store several days worth of energy, just not as leccy, yet.

Also important to remember when considering storage costs that we don't need to add these to all RE generation. We'll probably find in the future we are consuming (on average) more than 50% of generation when it's being generated, so, naturally, only the stored leccy will incur storage costs.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

shinytop said:

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

What would be the cost of a SWB capability comparable to a nuclear power station?  I'm thinking about the RE generation plus enough battery back up (maybe the Tesla megapacks or similar) to give the same reliability/certainty as the nuclear plant.  I'm sure somebody has worked it out.    

A couple of months ago I threw some numbers down for a sensible-sized* battery storage system:

(Just thinking out loud, a 20' shipping container full of batteries contains 800kWh. A modern container ship holds 20,000 containers so a single vessel would make a 16GWh battery. That's the size of array you're looking at to make a "battery storage power station" worthy of the name. At current battery prices of $100/kWh it would cost £1.6Bn.)

Hinkley B is rated at 3.2GWe so a 16GWh battery would match its output for 5 hours. say 5x that size for 24h of backup.

* - for some values of "sensible"!

I think its easy enough to work out if the numbers are available. If a nuclear PS can supply 3.2 GWe ar 99% (or whatever the predicted number is) reliability, how much RE + battery would be required to match that, taking into account the UK's likely weather patterns?

Some statistics and probability with some simulations would be needed but nothing too complicated.  My instinct is that 24h of battery backup might not be enough.  Weren't there quite a few calm cloudy days recently?  

H2 storage would help but that's not available at scale yet. 

That is my feeling, battery plus RE can do intra day but you would need to keep online enough gas /other to meet demand for may be a month or more to do inter-seasonal supply - this 'reserve' perhaps only being run for 10% of the year on average which makes the economics difficult although there would be enough total RE generation but a longer term store 'much cheaper batteries' would be needed for the excess RE to support the inter seasonal demand.

Apologies for being a bit pedantic, and I used to use the term 'inter-seasonal', but that may now be a bit misleading since it gives the impression we may be trying to 'store and move' vast amounts of wind wind generation to provide summer leccy, or summer PV to the winter.

The actual aim would be to roll out an appropriate mix of RE, which in the UK would heavily favour wind, since it's stronger in the winter, and that's when demand is higher too, to meet average needs+. So you'd look at the average demand at any time, and also the average generation that the technologies will deliver at any given time, then build out to an appropriate level of overcapacity* to allow for average fluctuations, so low gen could typically meet demand via intraday storage, but then longer term storage will take up the slack during more extreme periods.

*At a guess, this could be 120%, but it will be something we move to naturally, as we start to push FF's off the grid completely, and the cost of RE falls, so that the marginal cost of additional capacity is quite low.

We could still be talking about 'bad weeks' where the shortfall over that period could require several average full days worth of storage, but it's really about averaging out the larger peaks and troughs at any given time, rather than trying to store energy from one season to another.

Again, I know this sounds a bit petty/pedantic, but I thought it was worth clarifying.

Martyn1981

Speaking of interconnectors and balancing demand/supply, the Norway link (which has been undergoing testing) went live today:

World's longest under-sea power cables switched on - and they're bringing hydropower from Norway

The world's longest under-sea power cables, stretching from Norway to Northumberland, should reduce the UK's carbon emissions as well as customer bills, according to experts.

The 450-mile-long North Sea Link connects the UK to Norway's power grid, which is almost entirely sourced from clean hydro-electricity.

From today, two parallel cables will carry 700 megawatts - increasing to 1,400 megawatts over the next three months. When they reach full capacity they'll provide enough electricity to power 1.4 million UK households.

Its steep valleys and abundant rainfall are perfect for hydro-electricity. Water collected in huge reservoirs is fed through pipes that plunge downhill, turning powerful turbines.

But Thor Anders, the director of the Norwegian side of the project, said occasional dry years reduce the amount of water available for electricity generation.

"The match between hydropower and wind power is intriguing," he told Sky News.

"When the UK has a challenge with too little wind, we can support you with hydropower.

"And when you have excess wind, we can import it and we don't have to use up the water in our reservoirs. We can save it.

"It's a match that's good already and it's going to get even better as renewables develop in future."

gefnew

BAD NEWS
Wylfa nuclear plans being examined, says Boris Johnson - BBC News

QrizB

gefnew said:

BAD NEWS
Wylfa nuclear plans being examined, says Boris Johnson - BBC News

Bad news because it might get built? Bad news because it might not get built? Or just bad news because the PM has taken an interest in it and he has a reverse Midas touch?

silverwhistle

I think the important word is 'says'..

Exiled_Tyke

From the headline this doesn't look like a particularly interesting article but it has a useful case study on how wind generation has scaled up in the last 20-30 years.    

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58542905

EVandPV

Nice clean grid today, plenty wind and solar ......

gefnew

This may help the uk.

Full power ahead for UK to Norway under-sea power cable - BBC News