Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

CfD round 4 results are out, and good news, 7GW* of offshore wind at slightly less than round 3 (£37.35, v's £39.65). These are 2012 baseline prices, so today, around £45, v's the round 3 price ~£48.

[*Edit - 7GW of offshore wind at a capacity factor of 50%, is roughly equal to 10% of current leccy demand, so a very significant figure considering the CfD's take place roughly every 2yrs. M.]

Bit disappointed with on-shore wind and PV at £42.47 (0.9GW) & £45.99 (2GW) (again 2012 baseline), hoped for 10%+ cheaper.


Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 4 results

Thanks Martyn.  Interesting that onshore wind needs more 'subsidy' than offshore.

Not sure what the volumes mean in context?

Current capacity of wind power is of order 25GW?  But we already have a pipeline of projects under previous CFD rounds?  Not sure how big or when for.  Plus google says there is an 88GW pipeline?

Are wind farms also being built without CFD support?

Just being lazy as I need to run, but for context, if we assume we are at about 50% RE this year*, and we need to get to 80% by 2030 to meet the UK target of 100%(net) low carbon generation**, then we need +30%. The round 3 offshore wind approvals of 5.5GW for 2023/24 would at a cf of 50% be equal to about 8% of demand, then we have this round at about 10%, so if we go slightly bigger in round 5 for 2028/29 delivery of 12%, then we have a total (admittedly made up by me) of +30%.

Of course we may see an increase in demand of 10-15% as we slowly transition to BEV's and heatpumps, but increased demand would lead to increased rollout, as generators and suppliers will want to sell us more leccy.

After that we need to expand to meet growing demand and ageing out nuclear, but that's just a demand and supply story like any other. Probably slowly doubling our leccy demand and supply from 2030 through 2050.

Hope that makes some sort of sense! Also, obviously I've only played with offshore wind here .... for now.


*I'm guessing because we got to about 40% in 2019, jumped up in 2020 but of course demand fell due to covid, then we had a bad wind year in 2021, so I'm not sure where we are exactly now, or if the rough +3.5%pa expansion is still true, as 3yrs of weirdness have impacted results.

**We have about 20% from nuclear, with I think 1/3rd ageing out this decade, so 7%, but hopefully HPC at 7% coming on line in 2028(ish).

ed110220

Exiled_Tyke said:

Martyn1981 said:

A big Berlin battery is getting closer to completion. It may be storing heat, not leccy, but at 2.6GWh(t), nothing to be sniffed at.

I really don't have an issue with energy being stored as heat as most of the extra winter energy we need is in the form of heat.  It does make me wonder whether heat pumps will be the future for heating or whether some other solution based on long term storage will become the solution in time. 

I think the answer will depend a lot on housing type and whether district heating systems are used. Where district heating is used, a thermal store makes sense. For individual homes, thermal stores are less likely, especially for longer term storage, and heat pumps much more suitable. I doubt there will be much retrofitting of district heating in existing British housing. 

It's also not always a question of one or the other. The latest district heating systems often use heat pumps to extract heat from a low temperature circulation system which means that the heat can be taken from a wider range of sources eg waste heat.

Exiled_Tyke

ed110220 said:

Exiled_Tyke said:

Martyn1981 said:

A big Berlin battery is getting closer to completion. It may be storing heat, not leccy, but at 2.6GWh(t), nothing to be sniffed at.

I really don't have an issue with energy being stored as heat as most of the extra winter energy we need is in the form of heat.  It does make me wonder whether heat pumps will be the future for heating or whether some other solution based on long term storage will become the solution in time. 

I think the answer will depend a lot on housing type and whether district heating systems are used. Where district heating is used, a thermal store makes sense. For individual homes, thermal stores are less likely, especially for longer term storage, and heat pumps much more suitable. I doubt there will be much retrofitting of district heating in existing British housing. 

It's also not always a question of one or the other. The latest district heating systems often use heat pumps to extract heat from a low temperature circulation system which means that the heat can be taken from a wider range of sources eg waste heat.

Absolutely agree with all this. I wasn't going as far as thinking about the different types of scheme and viability for different uses just the overall principle which I think is great. 

gefnew

Here we go again with the people who think they know wat to do.
Sizewell C: Decision on nuclear power plant delayed - BBC News

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

CfD round 4 results are out, and good news, 7GW* of offshore wind at slightly less than round 3 (£37.35, v's £39.65). These are 2012 baseline prices, so today, around £45, v's the round 3 price ~£48.

[*Edit - 7GW of offshore wind at a capacity factor of 50%, is roughly equal to 10% of current leccy demand, so a very significant figure considering the CfD's take place roughly every 2yrs. M.]

Bit disappointed with on-shore wind and PV at £42.47 (0.9GW) & £45.99 (2GW) (again 2012 baseline), hoped for 10%+ cheaper.


Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 4 results

Does anyone know why the BBC is quoting 23GW?

National Grid reveals £54bn wind power network upgrade plan - BBC News

QrizB

michaels said:

Does anyone know why the BBC is quoting 23GW?
National Grid reveals £54bn wind power network upgrade plan - BBC News

Inattentiveness? Yahoo Finance puts it differently:

National Grid said that these infrastructure projects facilitate the connection of 18 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 23 gigawatts, in order to meet the government's ambition of having 50 gigawatts of connected offshore wind by 2030.

michaels

QrizB said:

michaels said:

Does anyone know why the BBC is quoting 23GW?
National Grid reveals £54bn wind power network upgrade plan - BBC News

Inattentiveness? Yahoo Finance puts it differently:

National Grid said that these infrastructure projects facilitate the connection of 18 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 23 gigawatts, in order to meet the government's ambition of having 50 gigawatts of connected offshore wind by 2030.

Thanks for the explanation

So glad I am paying my licence fee for the BBC to mangle the facts.  It always worries me that for each one that is spotted, how many have I just accepted without question that were wrong.

thevilla

michaels said:

QrizB said:

michaels said:

Does anyone know why the BBC is quoting 23GW?
National Grid reveals £54bn wind power network upgrade plan - BBC News

Inattentiveness? Yahoo Finance puts it differently:

National Grid said that these infrastructure projects facilitate the connection of 18 offshore wind farms with a combined capacity of 23 gigawatts, in order to meet the government's ambition of having 50 gigawatts of connected offshore wind by 2030.

Thanks for the explanation

So glad I am paying my licence fee for the BBC to mangle the facts.  It always worries me that for each one that is spotted, how many have I just accepted without question that were wrong.

Well, if you reduce funding for a news organisation they sack journalists and this is what happens.  Strictly is still available though

Martyn1981

I won't say fun article, as I got bored halfway. But nice to see some numbers for the storage needed to meet targets. In this case a 2030 RE target needing 27GW/108GWh of storage.

India’s tenders mark beginning of an ‘energy storage revolution’

The country’s government has recognised the important role energy storage will play in its power sector. Targeting the deployment of 500GW of non-fossil fuel energy, including 450GW of new wind and solar capacity by 2030, batteries and other storage technologies have been identified as an enabler of the ambitious national goal.

Tenders for energy storage launched by various state-administered agencies are ushering in a new era, the report, co-authored by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) and JMK Analytics found.

India has already surpassed 150GW renewable energy capacity, as of the time of writing. Yet to arrive at its 2030 target without jeopardising stability of supply or power quality, the nation’s Central Electricity Authority has projected a need for 27GW/108GWh of grid-scale battery storage and about 10.1GW of pumped hydro energy storage (PHES).

Martyn1981

Bit of storage news. At first I read 'metal-hydrogen' battery as a type of 'solid hydrogen', such as the 'disks' that can be used as a dense storage medium, which give off hydrogen under a laser beam. But, If I've reading it correctly now it's 'just' another type of battery designation.

The good news is that it seems to be incredibly tough, with discharge rates from 12 min to 10hrs (5C to C10), and 30,000 cycles with no degradation.

Given that they are going into large scale production, I thought it worth mentioning.

[May have been mentioned before, and no details on costs that I can see, other than references to being cost competitive with Li-Ion 'on a net basis', which I can only guess means when you take into account the high cycles and lack of degradation? And the final para suggesting it may be able to beat Li-ion. Specs in the previous article.]

Metal-hydrogen battery going into high-volume production with 5GWh of customer orders

As noted in previous coverage on this site, the technology’s advantages include the ability to operate in ambient temperatures from -40°C to 60°C for a 30-year lifespan or roughly 30,000 cycles without degradation and at charge and discharge rates from C/10+ to 5C. It can also cost-effectively provide storage durations between 2 and 12 hours, Enervenue has claimed.

“On the commercial side, at this point, we have over 5GWh-worth of customer commitments, including those that we’ve announced publicly: the 2.4GWh announcement with Pine Gate Renewables and the 420MWh announcement with Grupo Sonnel in Puerto Rico,” the CEO said.
“There’s another 2.5GWh that we haven’t yet announced publicly that I can tell you is there. And then we have an enormous pipeline behind that of an additional 25GWh, just in North America.”

In the full interview with Jorg Heinemann, to be published on Energy-Storage.news in the coming days, the CEO explains the competitive edge that Enervenue believes it has and why it could even beat lithium-ion with the cost reduction roadmap it has implemented.