Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

zeupater

shinytop said:

zeupater said:

[ ... ]

HTH - Z (Bored today, can you tell!!) ..

Just use gas for the small delta required.  Or even coal.  We wouldn't need that much.  100% renewables is about as realistic as being 100% vegan.  

Hi

I think that's one of the further issues at hand ... if we rely on importing gas then there are the obvious issues regarding international politics & if anyone dares to mention fracking there are all of the issues related to the internal politics driven by various factions of under-informed zealots ...

I pretty much agree that gas can/could/should form a significant element of the UK's strategic energy reserve, particularly in the short to medium term, the problem is that someone with little grey matter & foresight got to the government well before anybody with an IQ greater than an average dogs age could and convinced them that strategic gas reserves weren't necessary. Depending on how this winter goes, I reckon that the strategic gas reserve off the east coast will be reviewed & reused until the results of fracking are known , however, it's likely that ultimate priority for a gas strategic reserve would be allocated to GCH with supply to keeping the lights on etc being heavily rationed when average wind speeds are low .... pretty much as everything operated in the '70s for a while ... time based rationing of electricity by area - the good old days when shops all closed before the lights went out and the tills stopped working and you went home and read a book by candlelight in the hope that the curtains didn't catch alight & the house wouldn't burn down ... nowadays there's probably not enough candle supplies, not many are bright enough to ensure that laptop batteries are in good condition (and charged!), books have mostly been donated to charity for luddites to read and only a few have sufficient stored electrons to maintain a post-industrial lifestyle ....

Anyway, 100% renewables .... just really needs some form of intelligence & realisation of where/what  technology weakness/downsides are for each solution at various times of year and it is actually possible, but it's not a single solution approach that's needed ... but getting most people to understand this would pretty much be a full-time job, especially so when pushing back against various industry self-interests too .... like your analogy, it'd be a little like convincing a Vegan restaurant that they should have a meat course available to be truly inclusive towards many groups of customers & their guests, after-all, it's generally expected to have vegan options in steakhouses! ... 

HTH - Z

ABrass

Or borderline stuff like Drax and wood pellets.

70sbudgie

The 2020 lockdown reduced electricity demand by ~15-20%. So modern technology (the ability for many to work from home) could enable somewhat less extreme measures than were experienced during the 70's. Rolling "curfews" instead of rolling blackouts? 4 day working weeks, but variety of which days are non working?

I think the biggest thing that will enable greater renewables utilisation is willing to change habits. So many habits that were forced on us during the pandemic, could also apply, not just working from home. Increased flexibility, time shifting habits to "flatten the curve". The difference with energy consumption is the time variables. Many people on here already do it to varying extents to either optimise domestic solar generation, or ToU tariffs. Renewables integration will need an extra layer of flexibility - keeping an EV topped up, so that it can be run for several days without being charged, for example. (Though this would probably also require flexibility in habits. I could possibly go up to 10 days without charging, but only if I didn't have to commute and only had to do short, school run type trips).

There are loads of people in western cultures that have "offgrid" energy. It is definitely possible, but will require compromises I don't believe enough people are willing to make, yet.

Edit to add: the phrae I see used wrt plastic reduction - don't need a few people doing a lot, needs lots of people doing a little.

gefnew

Then this starts to happen.
Renewable energy: Government plans for price cap is risky, firms warn - BBC News

Martyn1981

UK's Dogger Bank wind farm(s) could grow a 1/3rd bigger than originally planned.

The world’s largest offshore wind farm is going to get even larger

There are plans in place to develop the UK’s Dogger Bank offshore wind farm in three phases: A, B, and C. It will become the world’s largest offshore wind farm upon completion, with an installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW). And it looks likely that it will get a fourth phase, Dogger Bank D, making it even more massive.

If the fourth phase is carried out, the capacity of the world’s largest offshore wind farm would reach nearly 5 gigawatts.

70sbudgie

Some interesting information about what is happening at a transmission level. 
https://www.nationalgrid.com/electricity-transmission/connections/regional-customer-connections-update

Combined with a "capacity amnesty"...
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/industry-information/connections/tec-amnesty

zeupater

70sbudgie said:

The 2020 lockdown reduced electricity demand by ~15-20%. So modern technology (the ability for many to work from home) could enable somewhat less extreme measures than were experienced during the 70's. Rolling "curfews" instead of rolling blackouts? 4 day working weeks, but variety of which days are non working?

I think the biggest thing that will enable greater renewables utilisation is willing to change habits. So many habits that were forced on us during the pandemic, could also apply, not just working from home. Increased flexibility, time shifting habits to "flatten the curve". The difference with energy consumption is the time variables. Many people on here already do it to varying extents to either optimise domestic solar generation, or ToU tariffs. Renewables integration will need an extra layer of flexibility - keeping an EV topped up, so that it can be run for several days without being charged, for example. (Though this would probably also require flexibility in habits. I could possibly go up to 10 days without charging, but only if I didn't have to commute and only had to do short, school run type trips).

There are loads of people in western cultures that have "offgrid" energy. It is definitely possible, but will require compromises I don't believe enough people are willing to make, yet.

Edit to add: the phrae I see used wrt plastic reduction - don't need a few people doing a lot, needs lots of people doing a little.

Hi

Maybe 15-20% reduction in electricity demand is correct, but in what sector(s) ... industrial & commercial (60% of demand) or domestic (40%) .... the obvious would be to consider that the majority of shops & a considerable proportion of industry either closed down for a while or reduced their working hours .... does  anyone here seriously believe that the an overall 15-20% reduction came from the 40% proportion, if so who halved their own electricity consumption (note, that's consumption, not import!) over the lockdown period? ... I'd suspect that in being home more, with some using laptops etc, the average domestic consumption actually increased!

It's fine to accept what the media & politicians push regarding working from home etc, however what needs to be considered is that the majority of them have never worked in an industrial or commercial environment where business cannot be conducted remotely by phone or computer ... maybe they could actually lean something if they removed themselves from what is essentially the most 'white collar' of all 'white collar' environments and started to learn what drives the real world's economy to provide them with all of the 'goodies' they've become used to as well as the necessities, such as food, that they've become so detached from ... you can't run a farm remotely, you can't build cars remotely, you can't fly on holiday from an airport remotely, your bins can't be collected remotely ... yes, the proportion of people that could work remotely is significant, but not as significant as the erroneous media & politician types tend to convey.

Taking the above into consideration & applying it to the 15-20% reduction .... in working from home as opposed to attending a place of work, it's pretty logical to assume that there's a direct transfer of electrical energy consumption from the responsibility of the employer to employee, so from whatever relevant sector to domestic ... okay, there maybe an offsetting of total energy consumption through not travelling, but for most cases that's directly related to oil based fuels as opposed to typical domestic demand of generated electricity (appliances) & heating (gas) ... there's not enough synergy to consider 'energy' as being something which can be summarised into a single total for analysis ...

... so, what do we do? ... close down the economy when the wind doesn't blow for a couple of days, invest in serious amounts of seldom utilised strategic electricity storage for when the wind doesn't blow for a couple of days .... or .... be realistic and understand that the risks associated with focussing on wind generation have either been totally ignored or dismissed by those who should know better ... we not only need more wind, but a combination of other schedulable generation sources & what's more reliable to be available to schedule than tidal flow ... you can look-up the anticipated tides for the next decade with a degree of accuracy far greater than a weatherman can predict the wind-speed to be at the height of a turbine in your garden at this time tomorrow! ... that in itself describes a level of risk to energy supply stability which demands address & mitigation which is currently totally ignored by the, well let's simply say it .... intellectually ignorant, or even worse, intentionally ignorant.   

I agree that there's lot's that an individual can do, however, microgeneration and domestic storage can only go so far and deliver so much & it's far from likely that every household in the country could afford ~10 days of electricity storage, not at their own consumption levels, but when averaged across all domestic properties as well as requiring all other business sectors to invest in the same .... anyway, after 10 days a battery based strategic store is empty, most EVs and domestic storage are empty and everything needs charging at the same time from the (point in question) excess supply to demand generating capacity available overnight as identified for this potential strategic solution ... so how many months of further supply rationing & disruption would we expect from the 10 day outage before we're in a position to withstand the next extended calm wind period?? (my guess would be around 10x to 15x outage period, but depending on reasonably good generating conditions)  

So the answer's pretty simple, follow the rules applied to business continuity and mitigate risk though application of logic before unnecessarily throwing money at solutions which ultimately prove to be illogical

A stitch in time saves nine, and didn't the little Dutch boy use his finger to best advantage - both examples of application of logic saving unwelcome outcomes & unnecessary expenditure! ... or in forethought & planning terms ... he who fails to plan, plans to fail!...

HTH - Z

70sbudgie

Hmm, I'm thinking that I probably wasn't sufficiently clear. I didn't really mean that the energy savings would come from the domestic 40%, rather that behaviours demonstrated by this sector could potentially reap greater benefits if copied by the commercial 60%. Yes, I was also thinking predominantly of the white collar sector (don't know how much of the 60% they are).

Many years ago, in a previous job, I pulled together part of a business continuity plan for a large site that had a mixture of offices, labs and manufacturing. Security of electricity supply was a temporary issue, so the focus was on demand reduction. At the time I thought it was interesting how much demand could be reduced just by turning off the offices. And with some preparation, the effect of business continuity was minimal, because the staff in the offices were much more capable of wfh. They just needed enough notice to expect to wfh.

I can't help but wonder what sort of savings could be achieved if those that can work from home do so. All those offices full of bankers, lawyers, designers (add in any other office jobs you can think of), with high heating and lighting demand. Would wfh for only 2 days a week provide enough savings?

Or have I got it totally wrong and the 15-20% reduction in demand actually came from the retail sector? (I don't believe it did, but ???)

The other thing to remember is that "rolling blackouts" is actually just contingency planning for this winter. The ESO Winter Outlook identifies 6.3% margins (more electricity generation capacity than is expected to be required) https://www.nationalgrideso.com/research-publications/winter-outlook
(Apologies if the detail contradicts the exec summary, I've still to read the whole report)

An additional 1G wind capacity has come online in the last couple of months, but that won't help if this year is another low wind year. Battery storage may be the answer for the future, but if it isn't connected now, it won't help us this winter.  I am also very keen on tidal power, but again, it won't help us this winter. All sorts of other mitigations are being employed: coal fired power station given a new lease of life, wide scale demand side management. (Sorry, I've managed to lose the link, I will edit to add it when I find it again)

zeupater

Hi

One major issue in continuity planning (I too have a little experience in this field) is that the recovery period is so often overlooked ....

For every hour/week/month period of downtime/outage the corresponding recovery to normalised operation is a multiple of this - the multiple may differ by business sector, type & professionalism but it's always significant, so much that a large number of businesses without a comprehensive & fully tested plan actually never recover ...

It's my view that the lockdown was never considered to effectively have the impact of a large scale 'disaster' and that contingency measures weren't even fully thought through for mitigation & recovery purposes when lifting restrictions, but above all, the appreciation of the timescales to achieve 'normality' was totally overlooked ... after all, who in government or their support structures has even been closely involved in fully integrated contingency planning apart from the upper echelons of the military and this is likely true any country we could care to look at. It's just that the more developed an individual economy may be, the higher the impact is likely to have been, even if much of it isn't fully visible ... but we're definitely still suffering the repercussions of decision that were made years ago, and will likely do so for some time to come.

So, what has the lockdown got to do with wind-power & battery storage? ... well, quite a lot actually, but it can be summed up into one idea ... foresight ... it simply comes down to thinking along two related trains of thought, firstly ...  'if this happens now, what's the potential impact ?' ... followed closely by 'do we need to accept the situation because the risk & impact levels are considered acceptable, reduce the event likelihood, mitigate the impact, or both ?' ... the problem is that in not assessing for contingencies before investment, the ability to actually mitigate potential scenarios often becomes extremely embarrassing in financial terms, something which can usually & easily be avoided by reducing the potential likelihood & impact through up-front planning .... in the case of energy supply it's simply risk mitigation by staying away from an 'eggs in baskets' scenario rather than considering what steps to take when the basket's found to be empty! ....

HTH - Z

silverwhistle

I can mitigate the impact on myself as a private individual and indeed have done so, although as yet I have not organised a V2L lead for my car! I can slightly reduce the event likelihood by reducing my peak usage, but at the macro level we have idiots in charge who are actually hampering the efforts of the professionals.

When I read an article about the recent party conference and some local councillor is likening Boris Johnson to Mother Teresa I can only despair..