Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Drill baby, drill. What is the world coming too? 

Drilling for lithium in Texas! Both the rate of change as we transition away from FF's, and the level of irony, is, at least to me, breathtaking at times.

They’re Drilling For Liquid Gold in Texas, But This Time It Isn’t Oil — It’s Lithium!

So, if you see a tower and a drilling rig going up in Texas, it’s easy to assume that it must have something to do with oil and gas production. But, some drilling rigs in east Texas are doing something that would probably surprise people: help provide what clean technologies like electric cars and home energy storage need.

Standard Lithium recently heralded the news that, as part of its wide-scale resource enlargement activity in the East Texas Smackover region, it has tested, to the finest point it can ascertain, North America’s highest certified lithium grade brine at 634 mg/L lithium. From what Standard Lithium has encountered, the grade of lithium in brine used for Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) has a significant impact on both capital outlays and running costs related to the extraction procedure; generally speaking, a higher grade usually results in reduced overall costs.

What came next was really cool: the company was able to repurpose an old oil well to extract the lithium they found. By drilling another exploration borehole, they were able to find that lithium brine and pull a sample, further reducing the environmental cost of finding it.

“These very high-quality lithium brine resources, located in the heart of the Gulf Coast region, are close to, and highly complementary to, Standard Lithium’s existing lithium projects and have the potential to play a key role in future lithium production as part of the Company’s development and commercialization program,” said Robinson. “We look forward to working with the local communities and building our presence in East Texas, and we will be releasing further technical reports defining the project areas in the near future.”

Martyn1981

Not the most interesting article, talking about German storage installations, targets, and pipelines - but what jumped out at me was that domestic storage installs in 2021 were 1.27GWh, and 1.95GWh in 2022. That's a lot of demand management and PV time shifting. Looks like domestic storage will have a significant impact, and growth towards 2030. Popular in Aus too, co-located with PV.

Germany’s grid-scale BESS installs up 910% but still under half a gigawatt in 2022

The residential segment still dwarfs large-scale for market share however: in 2021, 145,000 household systems totalling 739MW/1,268MWh were installed, compared to 1,164MW/1,944MWh of new residential installations in 2022 across about 200,000 homes. That represents 52% growth year-on-year in energy terms and 60% growth in power output for residential, defined for the purpose of the study as projects below 30kWh capacity.  

Martyn1981

UK wind setting new records. Hopefully with the steady deployment of new RE under the CfD's, we will see such news each year or at least a trend line.

UK wind farms set record production in 2022

UK wind farms hit a new annual electricity generation record in 2022, according to statistics from the UK Government.

The figures, published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, reveal that wind generated 24.6%of the country’s electricity last year (80.2TWh), up from 21% (64.7TWh) in 2021 and an all-time annual high.

Offshore wind provided a record 13.8% (45TWh), up from 11.5% (35.5TWh) in 2021. Onshore wind also generated a record annual amount of electricity (35.1TWh), providing 10.8% of the UK’s power.

The growth in offshore wind generation was driven by the addition of 3193MW of new turbines in British waters last year, while just 318MW of new onshore wind was added, mainly due to planning barriers.

Martyn1981

Small move, but hopefully big news. The Eco Wave project in Israel has now been approved for grid connection. Whilst that's possibly a small issue, I thought it was good to know that the technology is at least technically viable.

Whether or not it's economically viable long term, I've no idea. But every extra tool in the RE toolbox, makes the total greater than the sum of its parts.

Eco Wave Power picks up Israeli PPA

Eco Wave Power has entered into an official PPA with the Israeli National Electric Company (IEC).

The agreement is based on the official Feed-in Tariff (FIT) which was set for the Company’s newly-installed wave energy EWP-EDF One Project at the Port of Jaffa in Tel Aviv, Israel, by Israel’s Electric Authority (IEA).

With the PPA in place, a private examiner has successfully approved  the technology’s grid synchronisation, in accordance with the accepted grid connection standards.

Next, the Israeli Electric Company (IEC) will perform its own synchronization test and then will officially connect the EWP-EDF One wave energy project to Israel’s energy grid.

Once connected, the EWP-EDF One Project will represent the first time in the country’s history that electricity produced by the power of waves will be transmitted to Israel’s national electric grid.

shinytop

I saw this on another forum and thought it was quite interesting.

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/#6.26/52.874/1.392/0/4

Martyn1981

Just an article on some small storage deployments, but these are 'non-lithium'. News like this interests me, as the more technologies tested, and deployed successfully, help to spread the material demand for storage across a wider base.

Non-lithium battery storage tech from Invinity, BASF deployed in new markets

Invinity Energy Systems and chemicals company BASF have announced the first deployments of their non-lithium battery storage technologies in Hungary and Australia respectively.

Anglo-American Invinity makes its own vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) energy storage systems, while BASF has the license to distribute the sodium-sulfur (NAS) battery storage technology developed by Japan’s NGK Insulators.

Both technologies are targeted at medium and long-duration energy storage (LDES) market segments, aiming to provide storage at discharge durations longer than the typical 4-hour upper limit at which lithium-ion is widely considered most economical.

Martyn1981

Can't remember how long ago, but I think there was a little chat on here about how storage on the distribution network could be beneficial. Allows the steady transmission of leccy across the transmission network, ready for later local demand spikes. Maybe, if at sub-station level, it would allow larger PV installs/exports(?) Also helps to spread costs and benefits across more interested parties.

Anyways, here's an article on actual grant funding for storage in Australia, aimed at the distribution network.

ARENA Announces $120 Million To Roll Out Community Batteries Across Australia

“Not everyone is able to install rooftop solar, but by storing electricity close to the point of consumer demand, we can reduce network costs and alleviate constraints in areas with high solar penetration. This will ultimately reduce electricity costs for all consumers.”

To get things going, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), on behalf of the Australian Government, has announced $120 million in funding that will be made available for Round 1 of the Community Batteries Funding Program. The program aims to support the deployment of community batteries across Australia to lower energy bills, cut emissions and reduce pressure on the electricity grid. ARENA is now seeking applications for up to $20 million funding to deploy a minimum of five community batteries.

To be eligible for ARENA funding, each community battery must be between 50 kW and 5 MW in size and connected to the distribution network.

Coastalwatch

I don't know if the article below originally formed part of the investigation Mart posted on 24th March entitled "No Miracles needed" but I could find no reference to it so post the piece below as it demonstrates the growing interest in CAES as a long term viable option. Lots of figures relating to wind and solar excesses from 50% to 100% of each with likely costs/kWh resulting. Admittedly these were for California so would require further study and analysis before applying to the UK but do highlight the possibility of what might be achieved.

‘Least-cost’ model for compressed air energy storage

Stanford University researchers have created a model to assess how much compressed air storage capacity might be needed for the deep decarbonization of power systems, while compensating for the variability of wind and solar-based power systems. They applied the model to California’s energy system and found that compressed air could be very competitive on a dollars-per-kilowatt-hour basis.

“CAES is very competitive and on a $/kWh basis,” Ashfaq concluded. “Pumped hydro storage) and CAES are the most cost-effective energy storage technologies, as they offer the lowest cost in $/kWh for long-term storage. For short-duration storage, however, lithium-ion performs best.”

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/04/05/least-cost-model-for-compressed-air-energy-storage/

Martyn1981

Hiya CW, and many thanks. Good point about the Stanford research, this storage option and cost may be within their study, but tbh, I don't know, and its news to me.

This paragraph jumped out at me, as it's similar to current UK leccy consumption at around 300-350TWh per year:

They also found that California's estimated annual demand of 277 TWh would need a CAES capacity of 3.83TWh at a cost of $0.175/kWh. The aforementioned fourth scenario with the highest penetration of wind and solar would result in a cost reduction of 14.1%, at a cost of $0.123/kWh) and a 7.4% reduction in CAES capacity.

So it's great to see some figures for the potential scale and cost. Obviously the mix of RE will differ across the World, but since we have relatively cheap and reliable offshore wind, I'd hope scale and costs would be similar.

michaels

I'm finding this very accessible

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2023/04/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf

Tesla estimates of what is needed to move to a sustainable energy economy.