Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

70sbudgie

Martyn1981 said:

ABrass said:

60% CF would be amazing and it is what they are aiming for.

A bit of searching says that East Anglia One was built with 7MW turbines and they're averaging 46%. That's a hub height of 120m and diameter of 170m.

The new Vestas one has a diameter of 236m.
https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW

Hi, you may be interested in this site then. It's run by AZPS (Andrew Smith), the same bod who maintains the Energy Numbers live generation site.

It gets updated, but not regularly, and is about 6 months behind now. But it shows the cf's for the UK offshore farms, total averages, etc etc.

Not a golden rule, but in general you'll see that the younger farms have higher cf's, as they tend to have ever taller and more powerful WT's. Note that some are closed, demo's etc, so the average fleet cf will rise as older ones 'fall off' and newer ones are added.

Also scrolling down, you'll see the load duration curves. Most of the farms appear to generate around 90% of the time, and the fleet as a whole, about ~100% of the time. But obviously the power output at those upper percentiles is very low.

UK offshore wind capacity factors

Is this the right link? I was getting excited, ready to geek out on new data... but was just sent back to this post. 

Martyn1981

70sbudgie said:

Martyn1981 said:

ABrass said:

60% CF would be amazing and it is what they are aiming for.

A bit of searching says that East Anglia One was built with 7MW turbines and they're averaging 46%. That's a hub height of 120m and diameter of 170m.

The new Vestas one has a diameter of 236m.
https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW

Hi, you may be interested in this site then. It's run by AZPS (Andrew Smith), the same bod who maintains the Energy Numbers live generation site.

It gets updated, but not regularly, and is about 6 months behind now. But it shows the cf's for the UK offshore farms, total averages, etc etc.

Not a golden rule, but in general you'll see that the younger farms have higher cf's, as they tend to have ever taller and more powerful WT's. Note that some are closed, demo's etc, so the average fleet cf will rise as older ones 'fall off' and newer ones are added.

Also scrolling down, you'll see the load duration curves. Most of the farms appear to generate around 90% of the time, and the fleet as a whole, about ~100% of the time. But obviously the power output at those upper percentiles is very low.

UK offshore wind capacity factors

Is this the right link? I was getting excited, ready to geek out on new data... but was just sent back to this post. 

Apologies, I usually test links after posting, but not sure what I did here, I'll tidy it all up and try again ..... but yes, absolute geek fest.

UK offshore wind capacity factors

Edit - Think I got it that time, enjoy.

Martyn1981

Just a short summary of the biggest storage schemes in 2022, under various categories. I suspect even these will look like 'small potatoes' by mid decade.

Biggest projects, financing and offtake deals in the energy storage sector in 2022 (so far)

A roundup of the biggest projects, financing and offtake deals in the sector that Energy-Storage.news has reported on this year.

It’s been another landmark year for energy storage, part exemplified by the following news stories which marked the largest announcements of their kind over the course of 2022 (so far) and some of the largest ever in the energy storage sector.

Martyn1981

Given the recent posts about offshore wind and cf's, I thought this article might be of interest to some. It's a look at the Hywind Scotland floating offshore wind project after 5yrs. It points out that it reached a cf of 54% (2020 I think). Really impressive for 'small' 6MW WT's.

Looks like a good lessons learned exercise so far. I believe this scheme was around 3x the cost of fixed offshore wind at the time, with the aim of 'floaters' achieving subsidy free costs by the early 2030's.

Hywind Scotland reaches 5 years in operation

Equinor’s 30MW Hywind Scotland floating wind farm has passed five years in operation since its commissioning in 2017.

The project, located off the coast of Peterhead, is the world’s first floating offshore wind farm and has achieved a capacity factor of 54% with no loss time injuries during its operation.

It features five turbines and utilises the Hywind floating spar-substructure concept as well as Equinor’s proprietary floating wind turbine motion controller which improves capacity factor performance despite the added motion experienced by floating offshore wind substructures.

Hywind Scotland generates enough electricity to power the equivalent of 34,000 UK homes.

Coastalwatch

Thanks for posting both of those articles Mart as each conveys good news for their respective disciplines.

The first showing the rapid scaling and acceptance of battery energy storage while the second demonstrates that floating wind farm structures will withstand the rigours of stormy weather over a five year period coupled with an impressive capacity factor.

While each may require significant investment there is growing acceptance of the former at least to attract the necessary funding and all assisting in the scaling up of manufacture and hence cost reduction benefits too. Although with the demand seemingly so strong for BESS from both national grid and EV perspectives globally it will be interesting to see how long it will be before these cost savings percolate through to us the consumers.

But great news for the renewable energy sector in these otherwise difficult times.

Martyn1981

Thanks CW, and in response, I'll make you suffer some end of year thoughts and round ups.

Looks like UK offshore wind is now net subsidy free(ish). With the latest contracts having an index linked price of about £50/MWh now, so around the wholesale price before Putler invaded Ukraine.

My first thoughts on the floaters, is why the UK is going in so heavy (relatively), given their high price (around 3x more), but that's a silly thought, since offshore wind started with CfD contracts of £150/MWh (now at £175-£190 index linked) and look how that's gone.

2022's bad parts have actually driven RE deployments up faster in Europe, which are looking impressive, and PV is expanding rapidly all over the World, as it gets cheaper as it gets bigger, and bigger as it gets cheaper. Shame about current inflation and material cost rises, but the trend is positive.

Storage on an intraday basis is rolling out, dare I say everywhere, and whilst we will eventually need larger scale / longer term storage (such as the recent CAES scheme), it's fun to note that just intraday storage in the UK will need to be around 500GWh (2050(ish)), so not exactly small.

Speaking of which, 500GWh sounds a lot, but purely as a mental exercise I tried to imagine the scale of production needed. I noted that most BEV battery factories (announced in the news) seem to be on a scale of ~30GWh pa. For instance VWG suggested they would build 8 factories totaling ~240GWh.

So taking that figure for a single factory, then producing stationary batts, so LFP, which should last 17yrs+ before needing replacement, then just one such factory could hit 510GWh of storage over the next 17yrs, possibly in line with need/deployment. Not such a big 'problem' afterall.

I'm assuming that larger scale storage will remain small (ironic?) until such time as it's needed/economical. If both RE and short term storage costs fall enough, then as some studies have shown, it may be cheaper to simply overbuild them, but personally I love the idea/principle of being able to timeshift RE by a few days/weeks, it just seems like a great goal, though it may not be the most economical.

I'm really heartened to see the news on UK tidal energy. I hope it works out. I appreciate there are some environmental concerns, but I'd suggest AGW is far worse, and at say 10% of UK daily demand would be an excellent support to the intermittent RE toolbox. 

Speaking of AGW, I've noticed a subtle trend this year, with news/articles around the World, pointing out that RE is now cheaper than FF's, so it is now cheaper to fight AGW than not too.

Morocco .... what can I say, crazy big, absolute beaut of a scheme, and a great price (~£60/MWh including storage). Will it happen .... not a clue .... but the potential for MENA PV and wind (Middle East / N. Africa) being connected into the European grid has enormous potential.

I think heatpumps in their many versions have now broken through the UK negativity barrier. Yes we need better housing, but that's a necessity regardless, not because of HP's. So just the cost issue. Yes that's a joke (bad), but as several of us have found, and you are the shining example, A2A units have great potential, within a mixed package, and are cheaper and easier to install.

BEV's are looking fine, apart from the cost, and rising demand for materials which is currently behind the curve, but policy wise, looking fine. Canada has now joined the list of countries with strong policies (20% EV sales by 2026, 60% by 2030, 100% by 2035, with PHEV's earning lower fleet credits than BEV's). I don't know how many countries will see BEV sales reach 50% in 2025, but I suspect by that date, the writing will be on the wall for the disruption, regardless.

Sorry for this eclectic mix of wonderings, just trying to think through what is happening.

Will we (UK) reach a net 100% low carbon generation figure by 2030? I think it looks doable. We have around 35% from FF's to displace, and have been achieving ~3.5%pa for a decade, so 8yrs would suggest 28% 'easy', and the last couple of CfD auctions have been for larger amounts (at lower prices), so 5%pa seems reasonable (I mean actually on the cards). To reach that 'net' goal we will need to export ever more RE excess, which leads to the rapid expansion of the UK's interconnector's to about 16GW by mid decade, up from a quarter of that just a few years ago.


So, on paper it's all looking good. I appreciate that loads of problems will come along, but at the same time, progress has actually been accelerating, as cost/MWh has been falling, so I suspect (almost willing to say with confidence) that we will actually do more than planned, or do it faster. After all, there are no real issues with scaleability of RE, we have far more land/sea opportunities than we'll ever need to utilise, so it's just management (interconnectors and storage (and range of tools, such as tidal)) that needs to grow and adapt.

Here's looking forward to another year of good RE news.

michaels

I'm not sure that the £50 cfd means a £50 cost per mwh as it is also paid for any spill and as the size of the wind fleet increases the more likely it is that a proportion of output will be spill so the price per useful unit will be higher than the strike price

shinytop

I've seen comments on this board that nuclear, as a 'base' type capacity that is always on, is a poor mix with RE.  Isn't tidal the same? (a genuine question, not a troll!)

Coastalwatch

shinytop said:

I've seen comments on this board that nuclear, as a 'base' type capacity that is always on, is a poor mix with RE.  Isn't tidal the same? (a genuine question, not a troll!)

I don't know about a poor mix specifically in relation to RE but given it's toxicity over millenial I would imagine it to be a poor mix with anything!

ABrass

It doesn't compliment other Renewables as there is no ability to ramp it up if wind or Solar isnt producing as much as desired.

So either may allow us to reduce fossil fuel use, but they don't enable other forms of generation to be used more heavily as Biomass or Hydrogen could.