Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

2nd_time_buyer

The transition to renewable energy over the last 10 years can (almost) entirely be explained by the graph above. 

The current silly gas prices are the sympton of an exceptional situation (Russia plus COVID). Fossil fuel companies and countries will do what they can to instill the belief that they will stay high into the future. This could be self-fulfilling. Partly because RE and FF are competing for the same investment, any money spent on FF reduces the investment in RE. But also because high energy prices increase geo-poilitcal tension. In combination they could keep the gas bubble inflated a little longer.

I am strongly of the belief that the answer is simply to accelerate RE investment.

Martyn1981

Verdigris said:

Fascinating document. I'm much obliged to m'learned friend.

Some interesting little trends like the traffic on the French interconnector not being a one-way import any more. I gather the Gallic Great Idea of going majority nuclear is going a bit runny, of late.

Yep, we seem to export, often whilst burning coal, to keep France going during peak cold weather demand. They also get a lot of leccy from Germany too. Probably not helped by having about 1/5th of the reactors down for maintenance.

Regarding UK coal, I admit that it's always a shame to see it on the grid, but it is down to about 2% of annual generation now, and due to be banned completely in 2024 (not sure which end). This is not a defence of coal, but in the past we would see generation from coal and gas fluctuating alongside international prices, so that probably helped to stabilise prices a bit, but we have been where we are now, about 15yrs ago (I think).

Talking of storage, now that's a funny thing. I love the idea, and you've probably noticed I go on and on about it at any opportunity, but I'm not sure we need medium scale storage yet. I may be completely wrong, but we don't seem to be pushing gas low enough, and often enough yet, to make that storage viable. Investors will want a rate of return, so it will need to operate enough times, and at a high enough level of arbitrage to be profitable. Perhaps we're not there yet, and hence the lack of movement so far?

Ironically, it might well achieve profitability in today's freak market, but presumably shorter term storage can be deployed faster to take advantage of that.

We don't have good enough internal transmission to move enough peak RE generation around the country yet, so perhaps that might be the opening for medium scale storage? I don't know the numbers, nor the economics, but we often see Scottish wind generation having to curtail to some degree, so maybe there's a viable market there?

I'm partly dodging subsidies and support too, as I'd hope the storage market could be viable on it's own, and I don't know how much support it would need today, since high support, might mean monies would be better spent on more RE, even if it does for now mean more spill?

I may be wrong, or wrong soon, but I suspect that the cheapest decarbonization today is still expanding RE generation to minimise gas gen at any point in time.

Hope this doesn't sound negative, it's just my thoughts and opinions, and I really do want to see storage (beyond batts) asap. If anyone spots any papers or articles on this, then please post them, I will do the same. Presumably, someone, somewhere is tracking all the numbers and doing some cals to work out when we need to go beyond batts.

[Note - I got bored writing medium scale storage, and wondered if 'beyond batts' was a decent descriptor of the next stage in the RE + storage journey?]

Martyn1981

Duplication error.

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

We don't have good enough internal transmission to move enough peak RE generation around the country yet, so perhaps that might be the opening for medium scale storage? I don't know the numbers, nor the economics, but we often see Scottish wind generation having to curtail to some degree, so maybe there's a viable market there?

... and we've got a decent national natural gas network, so you might not need "storage" in the near- to medium-term if you can instead blend hydrogen into the methane.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Verdigris said:

Fascinating document. I'm much obliged to m'learned friend.

Some interesting little trends like the traffic on the French interconnector not being a one-way import any more. I gather the Gallic Great Idea of going majority nuclear is going a bit runny, of late.

Yep, we seem to export, often whilst burning coal, to keep France going during peak cold weather demand. They also get a lot of leccy from Germany too. Probably not helped by having about 1/5th of the reactors down for maintenance.

Regarding UK coal, I admit that it's always a shame to see it on the grid, but it is down to about 2% of annual generation now, and due to be banned completely in 2024 (not sure which end). This is not a defence of coal, but in the past we would see generation from coal and gas fluctuating alongside international prices, so that probably helped to stabilise prices a bit, but we have been where we are now, about 15yrs ago (I think).

Talking of storage, now that's a funny thing. I love the idea, and you've probably noticed I go on and on about it at any opportunity, but I'm not sure we need medium scale storage yet. I may be completely wrong, but we don't seem to be pushing gas low enough, and often enough yet, to make that storage viable. Investors will want a rate of return, so it will need to operate enough times, and at a high enough level of arbitrage to be profitable. Perhaps we're not there yet, and hence the lack of movement so far?

Ironically, it might well achieve profitability in today's freak market, but presumably shorter term storage can be deployed faster to take advantage of that.

We don't have good enough internal transmission to move enough peak RE generation around the country yet, so perhaps that might be the opening for medium scale storage? I don't know the numbers, nor the economics, but we often see Scottish wind generation having to curtail to some degree, so maybe there's a viable market there?

I'm partly dodging subsidies and support too, as I'd hope the storage market could be viable on it's own, and I don't know how much support it would need today, since high support, might mean monies would be better spent on more RE, even if it does for now mean more spill?

I may be wrong, or wrong soon, but I suspect that the cheapest decarbonization today is still expanding RE generation to minimise gas gen at any point in time.

Hope this doesn't sound negative, it's just my thoughts and opinions, and I really do want to see storage (beyond batts) asap. If anyone spots any papers or articles on this, then please post them, I will do the same. Presumably, someone, somewhere is tracking all the numbers and doing some cals to work out when we need to go beyond batts.

[Note - I got bored writing medium scale storage, and wondered if 'beyond batts' was a decent descriptor of the next stage in the RE + storage journey?]

A decent proportion of our current gas consumption is fraked in the US where possibly the unintentional releases of methane that go along with the fraking actually make it as greenhouse bad as using coal - we are only just starting to get data on the scale of this problem from a new satellite.

2nd_time_buyer

Does anyone know of a website that has regularly updated figures of wind and solar capacity? 

Most of the things I have seen tend to be retrospective. It would be quite uplifting to see things as they come online.

Martyn1981

This is more of a ponder than news, but I saw an article on REnews, leading me to this article which has a bit more info, stating that Rampion still hit its generation target for 2021 despite it being a poor wind year:

Rampion Wind Farm Hits Wind and Energy Targets Again

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm team is celebrating achieving their power generation target in 20211, producing enough clean, green energy during the year to power the equivalent of 350,0002 homes.

“Despite a year in which we had less wind than normal, we were able to ensure that Rampion generated our target energy supply and reduced carbon emissions by approximately 600,000 tonnes3,” said Richard Crowhurst, General Manager, Rampion Offshore Wind Farm.

And found this article for 2020:

Rampion beats its offshore wind power target by 15% – Redaily.org

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm has beaten its power generation target in 2020 by 15%, generating over 1600GWh during the year.

So it looks like offshore wind is still outperforming their expected cfs (capacity factors), which might help to explain the lower bid prices for the 2019 CfD auction as developers revised up their expected annual generation? I say this because the 2017 price reductions seemed to reflect the much higher than expected cfs of the early off-shore wind farms.

Reminds me a bit of the SAP figures the PV industry had to quote us back in 2010/11 when 'selling' domestic PV. They were really poor, especially if you were south of Sheffield where they were based, and I believe included a high degradation rate averaged over the 25yr life/subsidy period. So actual generation was a big bonus.

ABrass

Martyn1981 said:

This is more of a ponder than news, but I saw an article on REnews, leading me to this article which has a bit more info, stating that Rampion still hit its generation target for 2021 despite it being a poor wind year:

Rampion Wind Farm Hits Wind and Energy Targets Again

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm team is celebrating achieving their power generation target in 20211, producing enough clean, green energy during the year to power the equivalent of 350,0002 homes.

“Despite a year in which we had less wind than normal, we were able to ensure that Rampion generated our target energy supply and reduced carbon emissions by approximately 600,000 tonnes3,” said Richard Crowhurst, General Manager, Rampion Offshore Wind Farm.

And found this article for 2020:

Rampion beats its offshore wind power target by 15% – Redaily.org

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm has beaten its power generation target in 2020 by 15%, generating over 1600GWh during the year.

So it looks like offshore wind is still outperforming their expected cfs (capacity factors), which might help to explain the lower bid prices for the 2019 CfD auction as developers revised up their expected annual generation? I say this because the 2017 price reductions seemed to reflect the much higher than expected cfs of the early off-shore wind farms.

Reminds me a bit of the SAP figures the PV industry had to quote us back in 2010/11 when 'selling' domestic PV. They were really poor, especially if you were south of Sheffield where they were based, and I believe included a high degradation rate averaged over the 25yr life/subsidy period. So actual generation was a big bonus.

For anyone wondering, the target was .39 capacity factor and 1,375GWh per annum (ish).

40% CF using dinky little 3.5MW turbines is pretty good.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

Martyn1981 said:

This is more of a ponder than news, but I saw an article on REnews, leading me to this article which has a bit more info, stating that Rampion still hit its generation target for 2021 despite it being a poor wind year:

Rampion Wind Farm Hits Wind and Energy Targets Again

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm team is celebrating achieving their power generation target in 20211, producing enough clean, green energy during the year to power the equivalent of 350,0002 homes.

“Despite a year in which we had less wind than normal, we were able to ensure that Rampion generated our target energy supply and reduced carbon emissions by approximately 600,000 tonnes3,” said Richard Crowhurst, General Manager, Rampion Offshore Wind Farm.

And found this article for 2020:

Rampion beats its offshore wind power target by 15% – Redaily.org

The Rampion Offshore Wind Farm has beaten its power generation target in 2020 by 15%, generating over 1600GWh during the year.

So it looks like offshore wind is still outperforming their expected cfs (capacity factors), which might help to explain the lower bid prices for the 2019 CfD auction as developers revised up their expected annual generation? I say this because the 2017 price reductions seemed to reflect the much higher than expected cfs of the early off-shore wind farms.

Reminds me a bit of the SAP figures the PV industry had to quote us back in 2010/11 when 'selling' domestic PV. They were really poor, especially if you were south of Sheffield where they were based, and I believe included a high degradation rate averaged over the 25yr life/subsidy period. So actual generation was a big bonus.

For anyone wondering, the target was .39 capacity factor and 1,375GWh per annum (ish).

40% CF using dinky little 3.5MW turbines is pretty good.

Thanks, great point, missed how dinky they were. In fact for a young offshore WF, Rampion is one of the less productive.

For anyone interested, this chart from Andrew Smith, who maintains the Energy Numbers website, shows the cf's for the UK fleet. It's nearly a year out of date, so I don't know if he's stopped maintaining it, or if it's due an update for the end of 2021.

Worth running your eye down the life capacity factor and age columns, which largely shows that the younger schemes have higher cf's, and the older ones lower cf's. Also shows how the fleet average will rise as the smaller older ones close (if they don't get reconditioned) and also rise due to larger (size and power) WF's being built.

UK offshore wind capacity factors

Exiled_Tyke

I thought someone would have posted this one up by now. So if I've missed it I apologise.  It doesn't tell us anything we don't know but it's good to have the mainstream media refuting the nonsense that renewable sceptics are pushing.   

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60489328