Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

shinytop said:

Martyn1981 said:

shinytop said:

We'd be in deep doo doo if we were relying on wind now.  Solar is OK - until about 6pm.

Whilst that chart is pretty, I think you also need to consider the bigger picture. Sometimes we get a lot of generation from wind, sometimes a lot from gas. On average we are steadily displacing FF generation with RE generation. Wind is low at the moment, wind was very high a few weeks back. 

Currently when RE is low, the existing gas generation ramps up, and can at times be generating the majority of leccy, that's the plan, and seems to be working well. But on a yearly average over the last decade FF generation has fallen from around 75% to about 40%, and probably will remain less pa now than RE going forward, as it continues to decline.

In the near future, once there is enough viable excess to be economic, some of the load that RE can't carry, will be supplied by storage (as well as FF gas). In fact, in the longer term, there's a chance that some of that storage will be in the form of green methane or H2, and be burnt at the existing fleet of CCGT's, displacing FF gas, but making great use of the existing generating infrastructure and grid connections.

Of course you can point to low wind generation times, but since we do not rely currently on wind alone, I'm not sure what that proves? Since we don't rely today, nor plan in the future, to rely on a singular source of generation, I'm not sure what that proves?

I appreciate that you seem far from convinced by RE and/or storage, but the direction of travel the last decade should be eye opening, setting out trends and technological advancements. Now we have an ever growing amount of economic data on which to lean too, and whilst I appreciate 'it's' not quite yet written in stone, I would say it sure looks like a safer bet putting our money into green and ethical RE, than FF's or nuclear, and I suspect the stone engraving is just about to start.



But ..... if we are just having a bit of fun, and cherry picking periods, then last month wasn't bad, with wind generation nearly twice that of gas, and thankfully helping to reduce leccy costs a bit. Clearly Mch won't be as good with the recent drop off in wind generation boosting gas consumption.

Wind generation as a proportion of the total mix rose to 39.7% in February from the January figure of 27.5%. At the same time, the electricity produced from gas power stations fell from 37.4% of the total in January to 21.8% in February.

This big swing towards wind generation across the month from gas saw the average zero carbon measurement in the energy mix rise from 47% in January to 60% in February.

National Grid - Great Britain's monthly electricity stats

All I'm saying is that it doesn't matter how much RE we have, that very thin greenish line will still be very thin from time to time.
I know we can all cherry pick good and bad days (like I have just done) but at the moment we are massively reliant on fossil fuels, over the year as a whole as well as bad RE days like today.  I can see how, in theory, different types of storage could fill the gaps but I still haven't see any priced up plans to deliver them.     

Yep, I totally understand what you are fearful of, and I appreciate that you have your doubts about RE and storage, as you've mentioned it before, but the proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes, and RE has successfully pushed half of the FF generation off the grid so far, and continues to steadily attack the remainder.

Ten years ago, there were folk on here explaining why we couldn't be where we are today, how the wind doesn't always blow, and the sun doesn't always shine, and how the Grid (itself) can't cope with penetrations of RE greater than 20% 30% 40% 50% ....... and how RE is so expensive and won't get cheap enough, but those claims have all been shown to be false.

So it's fine for you to have fears and doubts, but hopefully if you look at what is actually happening, it will help to address those concerns. I also hope that the NIC's recommendation to the Gov in 2018, to ramp down plans for nuclear generation as they expect RE and storage to be cheaper, would help with your concerns over storage. Also crucial to bear in mind that alongside the expanding rollout of storage, there is also the massive increase in interconnectors we are now seeing, and the economic viability of overcapacity when it comes to cheap RE generation, something that isn't really possible with nuclear (the alternative to G&E generation to displace FF's) since it costs so, so much to build, and can't be delivered on a timescale that will now help with decarbonisation.

So, dare I say, 'it's' working, and the options and solutions continue to expand, and the economics are still improving, faster than expected/hoped? So honestly, it's good news.

Martyn1981

Starting to get Gov targets now for generation. Not sure how the offshore wind and nuclear figures can be reached by 2030, perhaps it's about issuing contracts? Also can't help thinking we could have had 3x the PV already had it not felt the wrath of Cameron back in 2015, oh well.

UK aims to quadruple offshore wind power in renewable energy push

The UK government is aiming to triple the number of solar panels, more than quadruple offshore wind power and double onshore wind and nuclear energy by 2030, in a move that could lower bills for consumers and reduce the UK’s reliance on foreign energy suppliers such as Russia.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business minister, has put forward the targets as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s plans for inclusion in the upcoming energy security white paper.
The paper has faced delays because the cost of approving at least six nuclear power stations as part of an expansion of the UK’s renewable energy strategy has been debated at the Treasury.

BEIS’s targets include increasing solar power from its current capacity of 14GW to 50GW, offshore wind from 11GW to 50GW, onshore wind from 15GW to 30GW, and nuclear power from 7GW to 16GW, according to the Financial Times.

Solar power and onshore wind generation have, to date, not had official government growth targets.

michaels

So we are probably just reaching/just past the point where extra RE (especially wind) will produce some spill.  If we assume spill is worthless (I know, but this is a model) then this will effectively add to the cost of new wind rollout per unit.  If we could download the historic production mix figures that produce the pretty charts above we could probably fairly easily work out how much spill we would get for each extra percent of wind displacing FF and thus work out when new wind gets more expensive than HPC if each Twh of used (rather than spilled) output has the same value.

However we will then also need to think about side issues such as how the economics of the gas fleet work if we still need the same peak output but they are only running on average 5% of the time rather than 40% as the fixed costs become a larger and larger share of the total cost of generation.

My guess is that we could probably go to towards 80-90% RE before additional wind results in enough percent spill that it costs more per unit than HPC, subject to the proviso on gas fixed costs.  And of course once we start getting a lot of spill the economy will adjust to find uses for this 'free' energy such as storage, bit coin mining, export via inter connectors or whatever.

Solarchaser

When spill becomes H2 that's when things start becoming interesting. 
Because then, spill is actually storage.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

Starting to get Gov targets now for generation. Not sure how the offshore wind and nuclear figures can be reached by 2030, perhaps it's about issuing contracts? Also can't help thinking we could have had 3x the PV already had it not felt the wrath of Cameron back in 2015, oh well.

UK aims to quadruple offshore wind power in renewable energy push

The UK government is aiming to triple the number of solar panels, more than quadruple offshore wind power and double onshore wind and nuclear energy by 2030, in a move that could lower bills for consumers and reduce the UK’s reliance on foreign energy suppliers such as Russia.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the business minister, has put forward the targets as part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s plans for inclusion in the upcoming energy security white paper.
The paper has faced delays because the cost of approving at least six nuclear power stations as part of an expansion of the UK’s renewable energy strategy has been debated at the Treasury.

BEIS’s targets include increasing solar power from its current capacity of 14GW to 50GW, offshore wind from 11GW to 50GW, onshore wind from 15GW to 30GW, and nuclear power from 7GW to 16GW, according to the Financial Times.

Solar power and onshore wind generation have, to date, not had official government growth targets.

Back of an envelope, those levels of RE would give total RE output equal to 100% of our current electricity consumption? (Although obviously that is net 100% as it wouldn't generate when we necessarily need it)

Martyn1981

michaels said:

My guess is that we could probably go to towards 80-90% RE before additional wind results in enough percent spill that it costs more per unit than HPC, subject to the proviso on gas fixed costs.  And of course once we start getting a lot of spill the economy will adjust to find uses for this 'free' energy such as storage, bit coin mining, export via inter connectors or whatever.

Are you sure, could we ever get to that point? With wind costs under £50/MWh and HPC at £107 (and inflationary uplift due in April), then HPC will soon be around 2.5x more expensive than wind, so for wind costs to equal HPC, you'd have to be using 40% of generation and wasting the other 60%.

With a good mix of RE sources, and storage I wonder what level of generation we will need, perhaps 150% of annual demand to allow for some spill and storage losses, but 250% for wind seems a tad excessive.

But it's an interesting thought exercise, and crucially depends on the scale (and efficiency) of longer term storage, such as CAES, LAES, H2. We'll also have to see how the rest of Europe addresses the issue, as it would be great if we could export excess, and import shortfalls, helping to minimise store capacity and losses.

ed110220

Martyn1981 said:

shinytop said:

Martyn1981 said:

shinytop said:

We'd be in deep doo doo if we were relying on wind now.  Solar is OK - until about 6pm.

Whilst that chart is pretty, I think you also need to consider the bigger picture. Sometimes we get a lot of generation from wind, sometimes a lot from gas. On average we are steadily displacing FF generation with RE generation. Wind is low at the moment, wind was very high a few weeks back. 

Currently when RE is low, the existing gas generation ramps up, and can at times be generating the majority of leccy, that's the plan, and seems to be working well. But on a yearly average over the last decade FF generation has fallen from around 75% to about 40%, and probably will remain less pa now than RE going forward, as it continues to decline.

In the near future, once there is enough viable excess to be economic, some of the load that RE can't carry, will be supplied by storage (as well as FF gas). In fact, in the longer term, there's a chance that some of that storage will be in the form of green methane or H2, and be burnt at the existing fleet of CCGT's, displacing FF gas, but making great use of the existing generating infrastructure and grid connections.

Of course you can point to low wind generation times, but since we do not rely currently on wind alone, I'm not sure what that proves? Since we don't rely today, nor plan in the future, to rely on a singular source of generation, I'm not sure what that proves?

I appreciate that you seem far from convinced by RE and/or storage, but the direction of travel the last decade should be eye opening, setting out trends and technological advancements. Now we have an ever growing amount of economic data on which to lean too, and whilst I appreciate 'it's' not quite yet written in stone, I would say it sure looks like a safer bet putting our money into green and ethical RE, than FF's or nuclear, and I suspect the stone engraving is just about to start.



But ..... if we are just having a bit of fun, and cherry picking periods, then last month wasn't bad, with wind generation nearly twice that of gas, and thankfully helping to reduce leccy costs a bit. Clearly Mch won't be as good with the recent drop off in wind generation boosting gas consumption.

Wind generation as a proportion of the total mix rose to 39.7% in February from the January figure of 27.5%. At the same time, the electricity produced from gas power stations fell from 37.4% of the total in January to 21.8% in February.

This big swing towards wind generation across the month from gas saw the average zero carbon measurement in the energy mix rise from 47% in January to 60% in February.

National Grid - Great Britain's monthly electricity stats

All I'm saying is that it doesn't matter how much RE we have, that very thin greenish line will still be very thin from time to time.
I know we can all cherry pick good and bad days (like I have just done) but at the moment we are massively reliant on fossil fuels, over the year as a whole as well as bad RE days like today.  I can see how, in theory, different types of storage could fill the gaps but I still haven't see any priced up plans to deliver them.     

Yep, I totally understand what you are fearful of, and I appreciate that you have your doubts about RE and storage, as you've mentioned it before, but the proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes, and RE has successfully pushed half of the FF generation off the grid so far, and continues to steadily attack the remainder.

Ten years ago, there were folk on here explaining why we couldn't be where we are today, how the wind doesn't always blow, and the sun doesn't always shine, and how the Grid (itself) can't cope with penetrations of RE greater than 20% 30% 40% 50% ....... and how RE is so expensive and won't get cheap enough, but those claims have all been shown to be false.

So it's fine for you to have fears and doubts, but hopefully if you look at what is actually happening, it will help to address those concerns. I also hope that the NIC's recommendation to the Gov in 2018, to ramp down plans for nuclear generation as they expect RE and storage to be cheaper, would help with your concerns over storage. Also crucial to bear in mind that alongside the expanding rollout of storage, there is also the massive increase in interconnectors we are now seeing, and the economic viability of overcapacity when it comes to cheap RE generation, something that isn't really possible with nuclear (the alternative to G&E generation to displace FF's) since it costs so, so much to build, and can't be delivered on a timescale that will now help with decarbonisation.

So, dare I say, 'it's' working, and the options and solutions continue to expand, and the economics are still improving, faster than expected/hoped? So honestly, it's good news.

That's why fossil fuel pushers are falling back on the old straw man of demanding 100% purity ie falsely implying that there is no point if there are short periods when FF usage is still high. They treat it as a game of yah boo point scoring rather than looking at how much financially and environmentally costly FF use has been eliminated.

If we look at South Australia which is further along the renewables road, they've eliminated two thirds of fossil fuel electricity over the past 10-15 years, a harder task than here as they have no nuclear, biomass or hydro. Still there are times when FF accounts for the large majority of electricity supply. Yet two thirds eliminated is still two thirds gone, with the amount decreasing all the time while prices have gone down and there haven't been the blackouts shills predicted "when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow".

2nd_time_buyer

I put this in the Sunak thread but I thought I would add it here too. 

It seems that air to air heat pumps are now VAT free:

https://www.coolingpost.com/uk-news/industry-welcomes-vat-cut-on-heat-pumps/

This could trigger a much faster shift away from gas heating, as install costs are much lower than air-to-water and they can supplement existing gas system. In effect, this would mean that heat-pump installs would not just be restricted to new builds or replacing end of life systems.

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

michaels said:

My guess is that we could probably go to towards 80-90% RE before additional wind results in enough percent spill that it costs more per unit than HPC, subject to the proviso on gas fixed costs.  And of course once we start getting a lot of spill the economy will adjust to find uses for this 'free' energy such as storage, bit coin mining, export via inter connectors or whatever.

Are you sure, could we ever get to that point? With wind costs under £50/MWh and HPC at £107 (and inflationary uplift due in April), then HPC will soon be around 2.5x more expensive than wind, so for wind costs to equal HPC, you'd have to be using 40% of generation and wasting the other 60%.

With a good mix of RE sources, and storage I wonder what level of generation we will need, perhaps 150% of annual demand to allow for some spill and storage losses, but 250% for wind seems a tad excessive.

But it's an interesting thought exercise, and crucially depends on the scale (and efficiency) of longer term storage, such as CAES, LAES, H2. We'll also have to see how the rest of Europe addresses the issue, as it would be great if we could export excess, and import shortfalls, helping to minimise store capacity and losses.

Agree with your figures but I was suggesting 'marginal' new wind spilling 60% rather than average wind when RE penetration reaches 80-90% of overall generation - which is probably where we would be in 2030 if the govt targets for new RE are achieved.  I wonder if HPC will be generating by then?

paul991

although not a good idea to be relying on a individual country we are  now  part of  a international grid with more links being talked about ie  Iceland  north Africa this  will make it easier to import and  export capacity , hopefully its always  windy or sunny  somewhere.the main draw back being prices being  driven so low it  will make some sources  uneconomic