Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

QrizB

shinytop said:

I'm all for RE but in the UK (not sure if the US is different) I worry about times with no wind and sun.  Apart from undefined and unpriced 'storage', what are the serious, proven domestically produced zero emission options to ff and nuclear?     

Tidal is reliable, it happens on a regular frequency and can be predicted for months ahead. And we have some of the biggest/strongest tidal streams in Europe.

France has had a tidal barrage since 1966. I saw it on a school trip in the 80s, it's quite impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station

Swan_Valley

Hornsea 2 generates first power

Orsted’s 1400MW Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea has started generating first power.

This milestone for the site was achieved after its offshore substation, the world's largest offshore AC substation, and reactive compensation station were installed in late October 2021.

The project itself, located 89 km off the UK's east coast, features 165 8MW Siemens Gamesa wind turbines and constitutes the world's largest operating offshore wind farm, a title previously held by its sister project the 1.2GW Hornsea 1.

Together, the two projects will be capable of providing enough power for well over 2.3 million homes.

Swan_Valley

RES gains approval for 90MW Welsh wind

RES senior development project manager Chris Jackson said: “Llanbrynmair wind farm will play an important role in helping Wales to meet its target of 70% of electricity to come from renewables by 2030, a key action as a country in our mission to limit global warming.”

QrizB

Swan_Valley said:

Hornsea 2 generates first power

Orsted’s 1400MW Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm in the UK North Sea has started generating first power.

Good news!

And I guess I should mention that the Hornsea 2 strike price is £68.55/MWh.

Martyn1981

Not sure about this idea - battery ships to work with offshore wind to reduce the need for cables, sounds theoretically possible, but the practicalities and economics might get interesting. But it's a serious idea, so worth a quite skim.

Seagoing Energy Storage Ship Meets The Offshore Wind Transmission Challenge

The Japanese startup PowerX launched in March 2021 with the ambitious idea of offloading electricity from offshore wind turbines, without having to lay new undersea cables. All you need is a boat with some giant batteries to collect the clean kilowatts and ship them back to shore. The devil is in the details, but PowerX aims for its new Power Ark vessel to hit the waves within the next three years.

shinytop

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

I'm all for RE but in the UK (not sure if the US is different) I worry about times with no wind and sun.  Apart from undefined and unpriced 'storage', what are the serious, proven domestically produced zero emission options to ff and nuclear?     

Tidal is reliable, it happens on a regular frequency and can be predicted for months ahead. And we have some of the biggest/strongest tidal streams in Europe.

France has had a tidal barrage since 1966. I saw it on a school trip in the 80s, it's quite impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station

Tide is reliable but it's not really proven at scale.  The installation in France is impressive but has a few environmental issues.  The slightly bigger project in S Korea also has problems

https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/south-koreas-plans-for-tidal-power-when-a-green-solution-creates-more-problems/

Is there really nothing else?  

ABrass

shinytop said:

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

I'm all for RE but in the UK (not sure if the US is different) I worry about times with no wind and sun.  Apart from undefined and unpriced 'storage', what are the serious, proven domestically produced zero emission options to ff and nuclear?     

Tidal is reliable, it happens on a regular frequency and can be predicted for months ahead. And we have some of the biggest/strongest tidal streams in Europe.

France has had a tidal barrage since 1966. I saw it on a school trip in the 80s, it's quite impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station

Tide is reliable but it's not really proven at scale.  The installation in France is impressive but has a few environmental issues.  The slightly bigger project in S Korea also has problems

https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/south-koreas-plans-for-tidal-power-when-a-green-solution-creates-more-problems/

Is there really nothing else?  

Until proven, demonstrated and installed medium term green storage is available then that will have to be fossil fuels. And that's ok.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

shinytop said:

QrizB said:

shinytop said:

I'm all for RE but in the UK (not sure if the US is different) I worry about times with no wind and sun.  Apart from undefined and unpriced 'storage', what are the serious, proven domestically produced zero emission options to ff and nuclear?     

Tidal is reliable, it happens on a regular frequency and can be predicted for months ahead. And we have some of the biggest/strongest tidal streams in Europe.

France has had a tidal barrage since 1966. I saw it on a school trip in the 80s, it's quite impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station

Tide is reliable but it's not really proven at scale.  The installation in France is impressive but has a few environmental issues.  The slightly bigger project in S Korea also has problems

https://nautilus.org/napsnet/napsnet-special-reports/south-koreas-plans-for-tidal-power-when-a-green-solution-creates-more-problems/

Is there really nothing else?  

Until proven, demonstrated and installed medium term green storage is available then that will have to be fossil fuels. And that's ok.

Yep, at this stage it's really about rolling out RE as fast as possible, thus reducing the amount of FF's burnt annually, even if that means gas helping out 'big time' on occassions, like today when wind is low.

Cheapest option to start off with is overbuild / overcapacity of RE, with batteries taking up the role of fast frequency response, displacing peakers, and then offering intraday storage, perhaps the bulk coming from V2G? Coupled with bio-energy and interconnectors (up from 5GW to 7.4GW this year, and planned expansion to ~17GW by 2025), we will hopefully continue to displace FF's with RE (approx 35% shift in the last decade), and then need to consider larger scale storage, such as CAES, LAES, H2, bio-methane, PHS, gravity systems, flow batts and all the others we've been discussing for years.

Speaking off all those interconnectors, whilst they don't exactly line up well with offshore wind generation today, so we'll need to re-wire the country, so to speak, that would give 'windy Britain' the potential to be net-zero, by exporting more RE generation when in excess, than the FF leccy we generate and import. Net zero of course isn't as good as zero, but it would be an incredible milestone nonetheless, and help other parts of Europe balance their grids too, to reach a higher RE percentage.

QrizB

Hmm, thought I'd replied here earlier. Must've been lost in the Matrix.

shinytop said:

Is there really nothing else?  

Geothermal works but our hot rocks are relatively deep (compared to, eg. Iceland or parts of the US). Various technology demonstrators have shown that it works but they've never made it into large-scale operations.

Here's one that promises to generate 20MW (a drop in the ocean of the UK's 40GW electricity demand):

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-55529264

Coastalwatch

While it would seem the focus is on removing CO2 from the atmoshere this is the second instance of carbon being utilised as conduit for energy storage. While the first surrounded compression of the gas and then released to drive turbines for energy generation the instance below involves energy output from batteries. While it is more efficient than Hydrogen energy storage systems produced from renewables, no figures for cost or likely scale options were offered.

Carbon-air batteries vs hydrogen storage

Researchers from Tokyo Tech have developed an alternative to hydrogen energy storage which is smaller in size and more efficient. The system utilizes carbon as an energy source and demonstrates superior power density and charge-discharge efficiency of 38% over 10 cycles.

........researchers from Japan’s Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) are proposing an alternative system: a “carbon/air secondary battery” (CASB) that uses a carbon/carbon-dioxide redox reaction with potentially higher volumetric energy density and system efficiency than those of the hydrogen energy storage systems.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/12/21/carbon-air-batteries-vs-hydrogen-storage/