Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Ok, some great news, which fits really well with the UK's potential future, and also with regard to storage.

So, last year the UK was a net leccy exporter. It's important to remember that France's nuclear fleet has been extremely ill since ~Oct 2021, so they've been importing much more leccy, and exporting far less excess. But this is now slowly being fixed.

Also, the gas prices have messed things up, so 'to import or export' may depend simply on who has some cheaper gas at any given time.

But, putting those ponderings aside, it shows that the vastly increasing capacity of our interconnectors with Europe, means we can export a lot of RE excess. Whether this is the new normal, or a brief abnormality, I'm not sure, but eventually we should become net exporters on a permanent basis, and get to sell a tonne of offshore wind generation to mainland Europe.

Also of importance, which has had me pondering for months, is mentioned in the article - the increase in FF generation to support France, will impact our RE % for 2022, making it look a tad smaller than it otherwise would have been. But such is life.

[And the mention of storage - well, if we can export more excess, and ideally import shortfalls (of RE), then total storage capacity will be reduced, or spread over more nations. With the total sum, across Europe, being less than it would without better links.]


Britain is a net electricity exporter for first time in 44 years

Since 1978, Britain has always used these cables to import more electricity than it exported over a given year. Over the past decade, an average of 5% of the country’s electricity has been imported, helping to reduce the amount it needed to generate itself. However, net imports swung to net exports in 2022 for the first time in 44 years.

Looking at the individual interconnectors, it was the link to France that caused this significant change. In 2021, there were 14 terawatt-hours (TWh) of net imports from France whereas in 2022, there were 10 TWh to France. This is an enormous swing of 24 TWh from a single point of connection, and represents the largest annual change in a single electricity source since the shift from coal to gas in 2015/16. To put 24 TWh in context, this is broadly similar to the amount of electricity Scotland uses each year, or the annual output from Britain’s onshore wind generation.

So what happened?

Over the past year, French nuclear power stations had many maintenance problems which led to significant reductions in their output. In August, 57% of the country’s generation capacity was not being used. Despite a modest recovery, as of January 2023, 15 of its 56 reactors were closed for repairs. All this meant nuclear-reliant France had to import electricity from neighbouring countries.

This led to more electricity being generated in Britain than would otherwise have been the case, to satisfy the additional demand from France. So while Britain’s renewable generation was at a record level, its fossil fuel generation was also higher than in the previous year. Without the problems in France, 2022 could have been the first year that Britain’s wind, solar and hydro combined generated more electricity than its fossil fuels – a milestone that will happen anyway over the next couple of years.

Martyn1981

Slow down Scotland, you're making the rest of us look bad. 

Scotland Has 40+ GW of Offshore Wind in the Books; Draft Energy Strategy Votes Against Nuclear as Offshore Wind Proves to Be Cheaper

Scotland has 38 GW of offshore wind in its potential pipeline. When added to projects in operation, under construction and awaiting construction, this climbs to over 40 GW, the equivalent to producing enough electricity annually to power every home in Scotland for 17 years, or every home in the UK for over a year and a half.

In the draft strategy, the Scottish government sets a goal of an additional 20 GW of renewable electricity capacity and 5 GW hydrogen production, as well as substantial growth in marine and solar capacity by 2030.

By that time, the government aims for the total electricity produced in Scotland over the course of a year to allow for further export of electricity and opening up the opportunities of renewable hydrogen production for both domestic use and for export, which will contribute to economic growth, jobs and investment.

The overarching aim of the new energy plan is to make Scotland a renewable powerhouse, exporting renewable hydrogen and electricity to support decarbonisation in Europe as part of an integrated system with the rest of Europe, similar as the goals of the recently published ‘independence paper’, where offshore wind is also one of the key players in Scotland’s energy mix and economy.

Martyn1981

More CAES storage news:

First offtake deal signed for 500MW/4,000MWh advanced compressed air energy storage project in California

Advanced compressed air energy storage (A-CAES) company Hydrostor has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for one of its flagship large-scale projects in California.

Central Coast Community Energy, one of California’s several dozen Community Choice Aggregator (CCA) non-profit energy suppliers, has signed a 200MW/1,600MWh energy storage PPA with a 25-year term with Toronto-headquartered Hydrostor for its Willow Rock Energy Storage Center.

That’s just under half of the output and capacity of the planned 8-hour, long-duration energy storage (LDES) facility, which is designed to be 500MW/4,000MWh. This is its first offtake deal, but the company is in discussion for others to take the rest of the plant’s available resource.

Together with Willow Rock in Kern County, Hydrostor is developing the 400MW/3,200MWh Pechos Energy Storage Center in San Luis Obispo County, California, and the 200MW/1,500MWh Silver City Energy Storage Center in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia.

markin

Martyn1981 said:

Ok, some great news, which fits really well with the UK's potential future, and also with regard to storage.

So, last year the UK was a net leccy exporter. It's important to remember that France's nuclear fleet has been extremely ill since ~Oct 2021, so they've been importing much more leccy, and exporting far less excess. But this is now slowly being fixed.

Also, the gas prices have messed things up, so 'to import or export' may depend simply on who has some cheaper gas at any given time.

But, putting those ponderings aside, it shows that the vastly increasing capacity of our interconnectors with Europe, means we can export a lot of RE excess. Whether this is the new normal, or a brief abnormality, I'm not sure, but eventually we should become net exporters on a permanent basis, and get to sell a tonne of offshore wind generation to mainland Europe.

Also of importance, which has had me pondering for months, is mentioned in the article - the increase in FF generation to support France, will impact our RE % for 2022, making it look a tad smaller than it otherwise would have been. But such is life.

[And the mention of storage - well, if we can export more excess, and ideally import shortfalls (of RE), then total storage capacity will be reduced, or spread over more nations. With the total sum, across Europe, being less than it would without better links.]


Britain is a net electricity exporter for first time in 44 years

Since 1978, Britain has always used these cables to import more electricity than it exported over a given year. Over the past decade, an average of 5% of the country’s electricity has been imported, helping to reduce the amount it needed to generate itself. However, net imports swung to net exports in 2022 for the first time in 44 years.

Looking at the individual interconnectors, it was the link to France that caused this significant change. In 2021, there were 14 terawatt-hours (TWh) of net imports from France whereas in 2022, there were 10 TWh to France. This is an enormous swing of 24 TWh from a single point of connection, and represents the largest annual change in a single electricity source since the shift from coal to gas in 2015/16. To put 24 TWh in context, this is broadly similar to the amount of electricity Scotland uses each year, or the annual output from Britain’s onshore wind generation.

So what happened?

Over the past year, French nuclear power stations had many maintenance problems which led to significant reductions in their output. In August, 57% of the country’s generation capacity was not being used. Despite a modest recovery, as of January 2023, 15 of its 56 reactors were closed for repairs. All this meant nuclear-reliant France had to import electricity from neighbouring countries.

This led to more electricity being generated in Britain than would otherwise have been the case, to satisfy the additional demand from France. So while Britain’s renewable generation was at a record level, its fossil fuel generation was also higher than in the previous year. Without the problems in France, 2022 could have been the first year that Britain’s wind, solar and hydro combined generated more electricity than its fossil fuels – a milestone that will happen anyway over the next couple of years.

"Reforms are urgently needed here to decouple the price of low-carbon electricity from that of fossil fuels."

Chatting to someone in Norway they cant 'decouple the price' from their hydro because of EU regs and so they have to price cap at the bill to protect the people, The same must still apply to the UK if we want to sell power to the EU?

If we make wind cheap we cant reserve it or the price just for the uk it will get sold down the interconnects.

Hydropower is still the mainstay of the Norwegian electricity system. At the beginning of 2021, there were 1,681 hydropower plants in Norway, with a combined installed capasity of 33 055 MW. In a normal year, the Norwegian hydropower plants produce 136.4 TWh, which is 90 % of Norways total power production.

The total electricity production in 2021 in Norway was 157.1 TWh. Renewable sources of electricity amounted to 98.9 % of the national electricity production, where 7.5 % of the electricity produced came from wind power.

Martyn1981

Strange post, I'll admit, but bear with me. It's about longer term storage, so always nice to hear about new ideas. It also suggests that costs and efficiencies are better, for that category.

Very little info, and the company website has next to nothing, but it uses electricity to split CO2 into oxygen and carbon, then generates by recombining, when needed ..... simples?

But I thought the article itself was a decent read as it explains that there is little need for longer term storage today (seems fair), so yet another potential tech to pop in the back of your mind. But don't expect to find any numbers on efficiency nor cost at this time.

Noon Energy Raises $28 Million To Develop Carbon-Based Long Term Energy Storage

Noon Energy is a battery startup co-founded by Chris Graves, a former NASA engineer who was once involved in researching how to extract oxygen from carbon dioxide on Mars as part of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover program. As he delved into that assignment, Graves realized the process could be tweaked to store clean energy very cheaply for longer periods of time than is possible with today’s lithium-ion batteries, according to Canary Media.

Canary Media says Noon Energy’s technology will deliver a useful amount of capacity affordably for days on end without running out of power. The lithium-ion batteries used for grid storage today are unable to provide ultra long duration energy storage without becoming prohibitively expensive.

Noon also wanted cheap and abundant raw materials. It starts with carbon dioxide, which is then split using electricity into its components — carbon and oxygen. To discharge, it reverses the operation, oxidizing the powdery solid carbon. The active ingredients are so cheap that Noon pays more for the tanks to store them than it does for the materials themselves, Graves says. Energy Dome also has an energy storage system based on carbon dioxide.
Noon Energy has two attributes that few competitors can claim — high energy density and high round trip efficiency. Long duration technologies are usually less energy dense than lithium-ion batteries and need a lot of space, which makes them unsuitable for powering vehicles. Graves says his carbon-based storage technology is actually three times more energy dense than lithium-ion batteries. In theory, he says, it could one day power clean marine shipping or long distance trucking, two applications where even lithium-ion batteries don’t have enough energy density for the job.

Coastalwatch

Wow Mart, in the words of Just Have a Think that process looks like a complete gamechanger.

It's not April 1st just yet, is it!

Martyn1981

Coastalwatch said:

Wow Mart, in the words of Just Have a Think that process looks like a complete gamechanger.

It's not April 1st just yet, is it!

Could still be 1st of April, but nice to see another entrant. For medium term storage (somewhere in the 100hrs range) we now have H2, CAES, LAES, compressed CO2, flow batts and this idea (plus loads more in the works, I assume).

None of them seem to rely on any materials that are short in supply, so if just one works economically (cost and efficiency), then the next stage of electrify everything + RE generation will work fine.

Don't know if you've noticed the recent news on PV costs tumbling again in China, but with global deployment in 2022 of ~260GWp, and forecasts of 300GWp+ this year, then 1TWp pa may roll out in 2030. Assuming a capacity factor of just 15% (the UK is ~11%, US single axis trackers are 20%+), that's equal to 4x the UK's annual leccy demand. So 4 UK's pa being rolled out next decade.      And the UK's offshore wind combined with expanding European interconnectors is going great guns.

So maybe we have better storage coming in one direction, and cheaper overcapacity from the other?

Coastalwatch

That's really encouraging Mart, I'd seen the odd press release about certain PV panel materials reducing in price but hadn't appreciated that it was working it's way through the process to date. I guess transport costs are still going to impact to some degree even so.

In this glorious sunshine we're generating in excess of 4 kW's today and reckon much of the country is following suit as National Grid was showing Solar at over 4 GW's this morning so the potential is there if it's roll out can be accelerated.

From a purely personal outlook for this Jan our consumption to date is 900 kWh's, yes it's been a tad chilly hasn't it, generation from PV being 190 and wind at 423 kWh's totalling 613. So about two thirds of consumption. Next winter will see WT2 coming on stream so increasing our generation a little further.

As you say the outlook does appear as positive now as at any time previously. And while over on the west coast it's unusally calm it's still blowing well over here so presumably much of the wind generation currently is being provided from those turbines out in the North Sea!

Perhaps some kind soul can advise on that aspect!

Coastalwatch

One of Rosie's video's below giving an interesting twelve minutes worth comparing the relative costs of six energy sources taking into account the costs of manufacture, lifetime, fuel source and CF's etc. There is also a follow up vid produced about a week later explaining some of the number crunching and variables involved, this one being just over the hour long but lots of info all the same.

Are Renewables Actually the Cheaper Option?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quI_8xYSWYE

Martyn1981

Nice to see an article on Mark Jacobson (Stanford University). His team produce the studies giving breakdowns on the mix of RE needed by each country for a 100% RE grid (and 100% RE energy).

The key point is really simple, we already have the technologies to do this (well 95%), and rolling them out will improve effiviencies and costs. The last part is long distance air travel and shipping.

I think it's so important to point out that we can now do this, and that getting on with it, is actually the cheaper option ... now.

‘No miracles needed’: Prof Mark Jacobson on how wind, sun and water can power the world

Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security. Carbon capture and storage, biofuels, new nuclear and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues.

“Bill Gates said we have to put a lot of money into miracle technologies,” Jacobson says. “But we don’t – we have the technologies that we need. We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars. We have batteries, heat pumps, energy efficiency. We have 95% of the technologies right now that we need to solve the problem.” The missing 5% is for long-distance aircraft and ships, he says, for which hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be developed.

However, there are major barriers to a rapid rollout of a 100% renewable energy system, he says: “The No 1 barrier is that most people are not aware that it’s possible. My job is trying to educate the public about it. If people are actually comfortable that it’s possible to do, then they might actually do it.”