Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

2nd_time_buyer

Verdigris said:

Is the wholesale price ever likely to get down to 2p/kWh?

I can foresee a danger in Johnson's statement, today, that he's going to take a huge gamble on nuclear. As you can't readily switch nuclear on and off, will wind and solar be forced to constrain to maintain grid balance? On the other hand, nuclear will never be cheap (unless fusion happens) so I suppose that will tend to support renewable prices, as long as we have somewhere to utilise it.

Which brings us back to storage...

I suspect (hope) the nuclear stuff was put in largely to appease the anti-RE demographic AKA the "what happens if the wind does not blow?" brigade.

The small nuclear reactors he is taking about are a very minimum of 10 years away from generation. Renewables are already forecast to roughly double by the end of the decade. It is conceivable, with a kick up the backside, they could triple and that would be pretty much enough. Nuclear will be too late to the party! 

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 said:

Verdigris said:

I would have thought storage would be a no brainer for solar operators. Cream off the midday peak to sell at a premium price at teatime.

It would seem so, but until there is an excess of RE generation (not just generation) the mid day price will reflect the gas price, since it can demand follow. The same will apply at teatime where the price is going to reflect gas, or the gas that will be pushed off the grid by the stored PV.

So there might be little to no arbitrage in that situation to make up for the additional costs of the storage.

But in the future when RE pushes gas completely off the grid, let's say at midday, then the leccy price will fall as RE v's RE looks for a market. That (cheap) stored RE can then be sold at a higher price at teatime, especially if demand is high and RE gen is low, and ever more expensive gas generation (they won't all have the same generation costs) comes on line. [Obviously, the current geo-political issues, and gas prices make additional RE and storage viable today, if there was no chance of gas prices falling back down in the foreseeable future.]

But yes, I also think it will be a no-brainer. I don't know when RE will reach the right point in terms of generation cost, penetration, or storage cost, but I get the feeling it's not too far off now.

Just been watching a webinar reporting the annual results from Gresham House PLC who were one of the first into the storage market place and one of the larger players in this field in the UK. They had 0.4 MW in 2020, 1.5 GW now and predict this to grow to 15GW by 2025, although I cannot remember if this last figure was their anticipated share or that of the entire market.

While it may be obvious that there is a strong requirement for even more under the current crisis their forecasting has to be based upon a financial return under "normal" everyday circumstances where income is dependent entirely upon buying energy cheaply and selling back at a profit in a single market place which hasn't always offered a straightforward means of doing so and also where existing practices were in place to make the opportunity previously unviable.

In addition the planning processes that have to be negotiated in order to get approval often against local hostile nimbyism is something in dire need of addressing if renewables as a whole are to be built out at the pace required.

michaels

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Verdigris said:

I would have thought storage would be a no brainer for solar operators. Cream off the midday peak to sell at a premium price at teatime.

It would seem so, but until there is an excess of RE generation (not just generation) the mid day price will reflect the gas price, since it can demand follow. The same will apply at teatime where the price is going to reflect gas, or the gas that will be pushed off the grid by the stored PV.

So there might be little to no arbitrage in that situation to make up for the additional costs of the storage.

But in the future when RE pushes gas completely off the grid, let's say at midday, then the leccy price will fall as RE v's RE looks for a market. That (cheap) stored RE can then be sold at a higher price at teatime, especially if demand is high and RE gen is low, and ever more expensive gas generation (they won't all have the same generation costs) comes on line. [Obviously, the current geo-political issues, and gas prices make additional RE and storage viable today, if there was no chance of gas prices falling back down in the foreseeable future.]

But yes, I also think it will be a no-brainer. I don't know when RE will reach the right point in terms of generation cost, penetration, or storage cost, but I get the feeling it's not too far off now.

Just been watching a webinar reporting the annual results from Gresham House PLC who were one of the first into the storage market place and one of the larger players in this field in the UK. They had 0.4 MW in 2020, 1.5 GW now and predict this to grow to 15GW by 2025, although I cannot remember if this last figure was their anticipated share or that of the entire market.

While it may be obvious that there is a strong requirement for even more under the current crisis their forecasting has to be based upon a financial return under "normal" everyday circumstances where income is dependent entirely upon buying energy cheaply and selling back at a profit in a single market place which hasn't always offered a straightforward means of doing so and also where existing practices were in place to make the opportunity previously unviable.

In addition the planning processes that have to be negotiated in order to get approval often against local hostile nimbyism is something in dire need of addressing if renewables as a whole are to be built out at the pace required.

Doesn't the big tesla battery in Aus make a lot of money from supply 'grid services' eg rapid response.  I think currently we don't go below about 2.5gw of gas whether we need it or not for grid support reasons, perhaps batteries will soon be able to take over this role which will also improve the economics of time-shifting.

I still don't see how nuclear and renewables fit together rather than begin either/or options.  IF nuclear makes sense then it makes sense all the way up to the minimum daily demand and probably beyond if combined with storage.  If renewables plus storage are cheaper at any level of nuclear then by definition they are cheaper at every level.

Martyn1981

2nd_time_buyer said:

Verdigris said:

Is the wholesale price ever likely to get down to 2p/kWh?

I can foresee a danger in Johnson's statement, today, that he's going to take a huge gamble on nuclear. As you can't readily switch nuclear on and off, will wind and solar be forced to constrain to maintain grid balance? On the other hand, nuclear will never be cheap (unless fusion happens) so I suppose that will tend to support renewable prices, as long as we have somewhere to utilise it.

Which brings us back to storage...

I suspect (hope) the nuclear stuff was put in largely to appease the anti-RE demographic AKA the "what happens if the wind does not blow?" brigade.

The small nuclear reactors he is taking about are a very minimum of 10 years away from generation. Renewables are already forecast to roughly double by the end of the decade. It is conceivable, with a kick up the backside, they could triple and that would be pretty much enough. Nuclear will be too late to the party! 

That's my thinking too. He can push for SCZ, but the horrific cost of its sister EPR at HPC is making that hard, plus the long delays and cost overruns with the one at Flamanville, which now also requires a new reactor lid, and the recent announcement of the EPR in Finland finally coming on line, which is a timely reminder of the vast cost overrun and 13yr delay. So new large nuclear is economically dead, though politically ..... perhaps not quite yet.

The SMR's are the latest great hyped hope for nuclear, but I recall thinking the Rolls Royce proposal was virtually a joke, 4yrs or so back when I read the sales brochure they published. What stuck with me was (1) that they were 'hoping' for an eventual cost of £60/MWh, which back then RE was closing in on, and has now passed. Even if you ignore storage for nuclear, then that £60/MWh may have already been reached for RE and storage, which I tend to describe as (RE + (RE + storage)) to reflect the cost 'package'.

(2) The associated news articles and reports suggesting that 2-3GW of SMR's would need to be sold just to get the cost down to HPC price levels, before even starting to target that hoped for £60/MWh. Who is going to buy the early production, will they have to be sold at a huge loss, with the hope of making back the losses on later production. [Akin to spending a £bn building a car production line, but selling the first models at £30k or so, not £m's.]

(3) And the piece of info near the end of the brochure that blew my mind suggesting that the projected World market for SMR's by 2035 would be about 80GW (or something like that). That's pitifully small, unless they expect demand to grow by an order of magnitude immediately after for some strange reason. Back when I read that, World PV had reached about 500GWp, so roughly equal to the output of that entire 2035 demand projection. An amount of energy which could be generated by 3-5yrs of new PV, probably more like 3yrs rollout now, and by the end of this decade (not 2035) an amount of generation that annual PV rollout would be matching. It was that 85GW in context that made me realise how unlikely SMR's are to succeed or have any significant impact.

That said, the US SMR's of NuGen or NuScale (I can never remember which) seem to be doing better, but they still face regulatory hurdles, and whilst cheaper cost projections than RR, are still all ready higher than falling US costs for wind and solar.

Verdigris

I think currently we don't go below about 2.5gw of gas whether we need it or not for grid support reasons

Yes, "spinning reserve" of gas generators at low output that can be turned up quickly in the case of a nuke or large offshore windfarm going suddenly off-line, as happened a year or two back. (well the turning up of reserves didn't happen, so the chaos of area shut-downs took over)

thevilla

Spinning reserve or inertia?  Seems to  be good news on providing inertia without running so much gas or coal for the job.

https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-transmission/news/green-inertia-projects-and-world-first-tech-tell-british-energy-success-story

silverwhistle

michaels said:

 

Doesn't the big tesla battery in Aus make a lot of money from supply 'grid services' eg rapid response.  I think currently we don't go below about 2.5gw of gas whether we need it or not for grid support reasons, perhaps batteries will soon be able to take over this role which will also improve the economics of time-shifting.

I think the black start ability of the Coire Glas pumped storage scheme (1.5GW/30GWh storage) and it's grid support capabilities are what makes the scheme so attractive. It more than doubles the existing UK capacity. It's another 5 or 6 years of work but at least they've broken ground. It's actually got the capacity to sustain those services for days, not hours, and the project website is worth a nose: https://www.coireglas.com/

Disclaimer: I've a wodge of SSE shares..

Verdigris

I'm glad there's at least one major pumped storage scheme on the go. Dinorwig needs a friend, even if it is in another country.

We definitely need something non-FF to get us over those anti-cyclonic gloom fortnights, we seem to get most winters.

Martyn1981

As Churchill once said - "This is not the end, it's not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

This judgement in the US takes them one important step closer to finding the acts of the FF industry illegal not just immoral. It opens the door now to 'discovery' and hopefully revealing far more about what the industry new about the impacts of FF burning on the climate, v's what they claimed, campaigned for, and the misinformation they funded.

It's still important, even in 2022, to remember that many folk still deny science, and instead prefer to rely on faith and belief in their own opinions on the matter. Hopefully judgements against the industry will work as an additional catalyst to accelerate action to at least minimise the harm from the climate crisis.

Court Case In Hawaii Against Fossil Fuel Companies Passes Major Milestone

History was made in Hawaii recently when a state judge ruled that a lawsuit seeking damages from major oil and gas companies for their climate disinformation campaigns can move forward in state court. The ruling sets an important precedent that the fossil fuel industry has been fighting to prevent in similar cases across the country.

The case against ExxonMobil, Chevron, Sunoco, Shell Oil, and other companies argues that major oil and gas producers have worked for decades to deceive the public and policymakers about the devastating impacts of climate change. As a result, the lawsuit claims, communities in Hawaii are now facing increased flooding, more extreme weather events, and rising seas. Under the current emissions trajectory, the state is threatened by more than three feet of sea level rise within the century which could put more than $19.6 billion of land and infrastructure at risk. As the lawsuit charges, these impacts were not inevitable and were exacerbated by the fossil fuel companies’ deliberate decisions to hide findings and sow public mistrust in climate science to prevent action to address climate change.

UCS research has shown that scientists at major fossil fuel companies have understood the connection between their products and climate change for more than five decades. Instead of addressing the looming global crisis their companies were helping to create, decisionmakers at these major fossil fuel companies chose to actively downplay and distort the mounting evidence of climate change. These industry leaders mounted campaigns to block climate action. As UCS has detailed in the disinformation playbook, the fossil fuel industry and its industry trade groups have harassed scientists and manufactured uncertainty with no scientific basis. Unfortunately, many of these deceptive tactics by the fossil fuel industry continue today. Lawsuits such as the one brought in Hawaii seek to expose them and hold the companies accountable for their deception.

The importance of the Hawaii victory

What makes the Hawaiian ruling so notable is that it is the first climate disinformation case to move to the legal “discovery” phase in which the companies charged will be forced to disclose internal company documents and correspondence. In this case, lawyers for the fossil fuel companies pushed three separate motions to try to dismiss the lawsuit and failed all three times.

The ruling marks a major victory in the broader legal battle to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the costs of climate change. Dozens of similar cases in the United States are now pending that also seek to hold oil and gas companies accountable for their intentional decisions to  spread disinformation. The Hawaiian ruling marks an important precedent for them and could potentially reveal important truths about industry actions that could influence those cases as well.

I can't find a link, but I seem to recall that Exxon Mobile's attempt to claim protected right to free speech covers 'lying' has also failed. It was put forward in Texas, but even their supreme court wasn't convinced.

QrizB

Martyn1981 said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

Verdigris said:

Is the wholesale price ever likely to get down to 2p/kWh?

I can foresee a danger in Johnson's statement, today, that he's going to take a huge gamble on nuclear. As you can't readily switch nuclear on and off, will wind and solar be forced to constrain to maintain grid balance? On the other hand, nuclear will never be cheap (unless fusion happens) so I suppose that will tend to support renewable prices, as long as we have somewhere to utilise it.

Which brings us back to storage...

I suspect (hope) the nuclear stuff was put in largely to appease the anti-RE demographic AKA the "what happens if the wind does not blow?" brigade.

The small nuclear reactors he is taking about are a very minimum of 10 years away from generation. Renewables are already forecast to roughly double by the end of the decade. It is conceivable, with a kick up the backside, they could triple and that would be pretty much enough. Nuclear will be too late to the party! 

The SMR's are the latest great hyped hope for nuclear, but I recall thinking the Rolls Royce proposal was virtually a joke, 4yrs or so back when I read the sales brochure they published. What stuck with me was (1) that they were 'hoping' for an eventual cost of £60/MWh, which back then RE was closing in on, and has now passed. Even if you ignore storage for nuclear, then that £60/MWh may have already been reached for RE and storage, which I tend to describe as (RE + (RE + storage)) to reflect the cost 'package'.

I agree that it's just boosterism, promoting RR because they're a recognised British brand and making people think that we're in some way leading the world.

If they were serious about actually building SMRs they'd use one of the existing designs, eg. the Chinese pebble bed reactor. (Pebble bed has been around for decades, Germany had one then South Africa got part-way through developiing their own before running out of money and building coal plants instead.)