Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

NigeWick 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?     

I believe the answer is over production and storage. It isn't very often that the wind isn't blowing somewhere around the country or coast. Tidal can be part of the renewable mix too. And solar on every roof in the land would add quite a bit even on winter days if it's sunny. The amount of money HMGov want to spend of our taxes on nuclear generation would pay for a lot more wind & storage far quicker than nuclear could offer. When our storage is full and production more than required, we can sell the rest abroad.

That's my thought too, and ~25GW of interconnector is a massive amount of supply we can lean on, from our European friends.

This is just a thought/theory of mine - let's say we need about 1 week of storage, to make good a shortfall over 2 or 3 weeks, is that a vast amount of storage, yes, is it doable, sounds tough to me, so I tried to think it through in context:-

Let's say we electrify everything, then how does that future storage compare to todays storage? Well for transportation we probably currently have about 3 weeks worth of storage, I'm guessing 1 weeks worth in our tanks, and the petrol stations, then another 2 weeks worth at the refineries, with crude oil storage, oil processing, and refined fuel storage. For gas heating, we have a small storage by European standards, just 3 or 4 days, but other countries have more. And for leccy we have some gas storage, but used to have huge amounts of coal storage (on-site), which may be mirrorred partially by bio-energy, particularly bio-mass, though of course controversial.

So, I'm not trying to trivialise the issue at all, but it seems to me that we've managed to roll out significant storage in the past to meet our varying needs, so whilst a large amount of storage for the grid is new, the scale of storage isn't. Assuming we will be using FF gas, at our ~25GW of gas generation for at least another 10yrs (though less annually), then until we mostly push that FF gas off the grid, we only need intraday storage, and can develop larger scale, longer term storage over the next two decades.

Hope this makes sense, I'm simply trying to say that we've done this before, so whilst the scale is large, the problem may not be, it's 'just' a matter of building a lot of it. [Lots of 'its' being tried, trialled and tested around the World already, but I'm not sure what the winners will be yet.]

Cardew

Exiled_Tyke said:

So does that mean we need a week's worth of storage facility  in the UK, we need to the solar field project in West Africa (now!), or are ever going to be dependent on gas and nuclear (I really hope not!) ? 

I doubt if import of solar electricity will ever happen because of the security issues.

'Africa is a key location to developing the project due to the many advantages the region presents. Its geographical location is close to Europe, thus the distance the energy will travel is not considered an impediment, the Sahara has virtually no population and will therefore not affect the lives of people who depend on living from agriculture and furthermore the region presents more sunlight to harness.

While the project seems to be hopeful for importing solar energy into the UK, the competition at home is skeptical about the plan, due to several reasons such as the issues of energy security. Others are warning that the political instability in the region is likely to disrupt the project as well as the factor of increased cost compared to the methods which are used in Europe.'

EVandPV

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

Yup, tidal just seems like a no-brainer to me. 
Guaranteed power 365 days a year, no blot on the landscape.
Imagine if we could roll out tidal turbines at the scale/speed we already have with wind turbines.
Hopefully, it'll play a big part in the solution once we get the economics right.

shinytop

ABrass said:

shinytop said:

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.

Well it's what we do now so it will definitely work.  The first convincing solution I've seen here. 

EDIT - Ah, maybe not.  Another record high

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/12/20/russia-cuts-gas-supplies-to-europe-as-temperatures-drop-a75881

No one ever said fossil fuels are the cheapest source of power.

Oh, hang on, they did. Sorry.

I certainly didn't.  Anyway, it's not so much the price I'm worried about, it's the cutting off. 

shinytop

NigeWick 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?     

I believe the answer is over production and storage. It isn't very often that the wind isn't blowing somewhere around the country or coast. Tidal can be part of the renewable mix too. And solar on every roof in the land would add quite a bit even on winter days if it's sunny. The amount of money HMGov want to spend of our taxes on nuclear generation would pay for a lot more wind & storage far quicker than nuclear could offer. When our storage is full and production more than required, we can sell the rest abroad.

Maybe, but I've yet to see any practical, detailed solutions, e.g. what is 'storage' and what does it cost?

QrizB

shinytop said:

NigeWick 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?     

I believe the answer is over production and storage. It isn't very often that the wind isn't blowing somewhere around the country or coast. Tidal can be part of the renewable mix too. And solar on every roof in the land would add quite a bit even on winter days if it's sunny. The amount of money HMGov want to spend of our taxes on nuclear generation would pay for a lot more wind & storage far quicker than nuclear could offer. When our storage is full and production more than required, we can sell the rest abroad.

Maybe, but I've yet to see any practical, detailed solutions, e.g. what is 'storage' and what does it cost?

Here's a post of mine from July:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/78489255/#Comment_78489255

20,000 shipping containers of lithium batteries (a ship this size full) would hold 16GWh.

The batteries would cost around £1.6Bn. So for the £20Bn price of HPC we could buy a battery that would store 200GWh, roughly equal to two-and-a-half days of HPCs output (or meet the 40GW entire UK demand for five hours).

I'm not recommending this, just giving an idea of the price and volume required.

Edit to add: Or for the ~£100Bn price of HS2 we could supply the whole UK from battery, for a day.

michaels

QrizB said:

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.

Bet they are regretting signing up to sell power at £68.55 per megewatt hour rather than somewhere between £324 and £895....

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2021-12-22&&_k=fjmofo

Spies

Whoever is responsible for V2G needs to get their finger out, that's a huge amount of potential storage just being sat there. 

QrizB

michaels said:

QrizB said:

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.

Bet they are regretting signing up to sell power at £68.55 per megewatt hour rather than somewhere between £324 and £895....
https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2021-12-22&&_k=fjmofo

The great thing about CFDs is they work both ways. If Hornsea 2 sells a megawatt-hour into the grid for £400, they will give £331.45 of that back to the LCCC who will in turn eventually refund it to consumers. The "green levy" for the current period could easily end up being negative:

https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/dashboards/cfd/levy-dashboards/interim-levy-rate-and-total-reserve-amount

Coastalwatch

Spies said:

Whoever is responsible for V2G needs to get their finger out, that's a huge amount of potential storage just being sat there. 

Agree with you there, I bought our Leaf three years ago for that very purpose and still nothing on the horizon in spite of repeated enquiries! Out of frustration I've just ordered a couple of storage batteries to fill the void!