Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

gefnew wrote: »

hi all
Latest bids for off shore wind
Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a subsidy of £57.50 per megawatt hour. That compares with new nuclear plants at a subsidy of £92.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948
here is the full report.
Regards
gefnew

Hiya govt paper here with results:

Contracts for Difference Second Allocation Round Results

Off shore wind got:
£74.75 for 2021/22 - 860MW capacity
£57.50 for 2022/23 - 2,336MW capacity

Those results are simply mind blowing. They are in 2012 £'s, so compare to HPC's £97 today at roughly £78 & £60 respectively.

Edit - previously I said sub £70 Shirley not ...... so sub £60 ...... sometimes I love being wrong! It's like Xmas came early. M.

michaels

There is a discussion over in the arms if anyone can be bothered to head over and give the facts on intermitency costs.

michaels

So I am trying to understand intermittency.

Lets image a model with only 4 power sources, PV, Wind, instant high carbon energy (gas, diesel turbine) and storage.

Now we want to optimise with some trade off between minimising total cost and carbon production.

Demand mostly fluctuates on a daily cycle with some seasonality.

Solar in generally fluctuate on a daily cycle that doesn't quite match the demand fluctuations, has greater seasonality and that seasonality is inverse to demand.
Wind fluctuates randomly but with some seasonality that matches demand and in thus inverse to solar seasonality.
Storage and instant generation can follow net demand.

Storage, wind and solar are likely to have high capital cost but low per unit cost and low carbon.
On demand generation is likely to have low capital cost but high per unit cost.

SO in the model you draw the demand line then subtract the wind and solar production lines perhaps using as many years historical meterologoical data as you can get to give you the average gap and maximum gap.

Then you need enough storage and instant generation to cover the biggest shortfall recorded (plus a safety margin).

At this point depending on the cost of storage relative to instant generation you can decide what the mix between the two should be. In order to make the problem easier perhaps rather than considering carbon and cost separately you set a 'carbon price' so you can could a monetary value on the carbon produced both in capital and production.

SO that is my theoretical model. Does anyone have any good links to where these calcs have been done in reality?

silverwhistle

Can I complicate the issue and add tidal? :-)

It is actually a complicated issue dealing with intermittencies and getting the costings right. I'd also add that it appears that peaks are getting smaller. Efficiencies of appliances and lighting are one aspect, plus there is a small but increasing number of aware consumers, mainly due to the use of domestic solar panels. Commercial users on monthly demand tariffs have always been aware of the impact of peak usage and the related demand charges and what they could do to mitigate the cost - Pf correction, phased switching etc.. (Actually, one of my early jobs at the electricty board was explaining to some small monthly users why their bill was so large - perhaps not _all_ of them understood!).

Other commercial users have also had interruptible supplies, so the concept of balancing costs and gambling against potential downsides has always existed. So demand management and the costs to enable users to assess their own choices is another calculation to throw into the model.

silverwhistle

Incidentally I note in yesterday's article in The Grauniad:

If the guaranteed price of power is as low as £70 per MW hour – a level at the extreme end of what industry figures think is credible..

Martyn1981

silverwhistle wrote: »

Commercial users on monthly demand tariffs have always been aware of the impact of peak usage and the related demand charges and what they could do to mitigate the cost - Pf correction, phased switching etc.. (Actually, one of my early jobs at the electricty board was explaining to some small monthly users why their bill was so large - perhaps not _all_ of them understood!).

Other commercial users have also had interruptible supplies, so the concept of balancing costs and gambling against potential downsides has always existed. So demand management and the costs to enable users to assess their own choices is another calculation to throw into the model.

Hiya, I think this fits in with some of the issues you raise, it's storage designed to avoid peak pricing for commercial users. By storing PV or being charged from the mains at low demand periods, it too will help to smooth out supply/demand issues addressing peaks and intermittency .... I think?

Tesla battery joins 3.8MW rooftop solar to avoid peak charges, provide grid services

One of the largest rooftop solar installations in the UK is to add a Tesla battery in what is thought to be the first UK project to use a commercial PV array to charge an energy storage system to avoid grid charges and provide ancillary services.

The 500kW/950kWh Tesla system will be connected ‘behind-the-meter’ to the 3.8MWp solar array atop Lyreco’s distribution centre in Telford, where it will help the building supplies firm increase its self-consumption and avoid peak and Triad charges during winter periods.

Martyn1981

Another view / opinion on the UK's energy direction.

The U.K. Has Locked Itself Into Nuclear Power for 35 Years, but Wind Is Already Cheaper

The collapse in wind energy prices is due to a number of factors: the business is now more mature, so suppliers have gotten better at making specialized equipment like cables and platforms; banks are more familiar with the concept, and so are more willing to finance such projects; but the biggest single reason is scale. Whereas the first generation of offshore wind turbines stood no taller than Big Ben's 96 meters, current turbines stand up to 276 meters high and have a rotor diameter of up to 180 meters, generating up to 8 megawatts each. And, in the crowded U.K., only offshore sites can offer the kind of large sites readily available in Texas and elsewhere across the U.S. Midwest. Hornsea 2, some 60 miles off the coast of north-east England, has a nameplate capacity of 1,386 MW, capable of powering over 1.44 million homes.

Martyn1981

£8bn Cardiff tidal lagoon power deal 'agreed'

TLP said the Swansea project would cost £89.90 per mega-watt hour (MWh) of electricity delivered to the grid for its entire 90-year lifespan.

The Cardiff follow-up project costs would be £60-£70/MWh, as it benefits from lower supply-chain costs, it added.

Also worth pointing out that 'weighting' is required when comparing these costs. The Swansea scheme is relatively small, so less generation will receive that higher payment. The Cardiff scheme should generate approx 10x as much.

silverwhistle

goodfella321 wrote: »

It's a shame the environment has to suffer for your low heating costs.

Sorry, didn't mean to ignore you, this interweb thingy is a bit big!

It's a question of balance, I suppose. Do you run a diesel? Do you have many flights in a year? I have only one return flight a year and some years none, I keep the mileage down on my ammortised petrol car and use other transport where possible.

What I do try and do is burn efficiently. I've had three seasons and three visits from the sweep and only one sweep needed, and that was on the precautionary priciple. I don't live in a large urban area and am a scrounger of wood that would otherwise go to waste and rot down to CO2. Some of my neighbours know of the stove and point me in the direction of free wood too and I've had no complaints.

The figures in that article about needing 10 acres is for US conditions, not my little, efficient terrace which needs very little to keep it warm.

michaels

Isn't there a particulates issue with burning wood though which impacts local air quality? I guess a bit like diesel cars, do it in an irban environment and the impact on lungs is much more comcentrated.