Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Further to a news post I made a few days ago about grid scale storage, I think this one is really informative and helpful, and displays the estimated deployment by country in Europe. The UK has one of the highest predictions, rising from an annual amount of ~1.5GW pa to ~2GW pa as this decade progresses.

I delayed posting this article, as I found it a bit contradictory, and e-mailed them to clarify that the figures given are annual, not cumulative. But I haven't received a reply (yet?). The use of 'by' in the title suggests cumulative, and the statement of adding 1.9GW in 2022, not the 4GW+ shown in the graph, also suggest that. But the graph having some lower years, and also matching the 6GW that the article states will be installed 'during' 2023 seems to confim it's annual deployments. [Sorry for any confusion.]

As per previous speculation on my part, I assume that the UK having one of the highest annual deployments, probably reflects our masive rollout of off shore wind, and hopes of becoming a net exporter of RE leccy. This also ties in well with our expansion of interconnectors from 2.5GW as we entered the 2010's to ~20GW by 2030.

Europe reached 4.5GW of battery storage installed in 2022; could hit 95GW by 2050

The continent is expected to install at least another 6GW of battery storage in 2023, LCP Delta said in the seventh edition of the European Market Monitor on Energy Storage (EMMES), published in partnership with the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE).

By 2050, Europe is expected to install at least 95GW of grid-scale battery storage systems, according to separate figures from Aurora Energy Research. It says 5GW of grid-scale storage is online today.

It estimates that four-hour battery storage systems will make up 61% of total installed systems by that year, compared with 22% by 2025. The five most attractive markets for battery storage are Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland and Italy, Aurora said.

70sbudgie

I don't know what durations they are, but a bit of trawling through the various DNO ECRs (Embedded generation registers) suggests there are plenty of 100MW+ storage systems in the pipeline. I've not looked at the transmission register, which is where I'd expect schemes >200MW to be. (Plus some smaller ones) So those figures don't seem too far off to me.

Martyn1981

News on gravity based storage. The Energy Vault design, is the replacement to their original idea of having a central crane that builds a cylindrical tower of heavy blocks around itself.

Gravitricity and Energy Vault move forward with commercialising gravity energy storage

Gravitricity has partnered with firms in the US and Germany to deploy its gravity energy storage solution while Energy Vault has provided an update on its China project.

Gravitricity has signed an agreement with US firm IEA Infrastructure Construction to seek funds for projects in the US from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill which provided US$450 million for clean energy projects at mining sites. The company plans to fund up to five projects at current and former mines.

[Energy Vault] “When fully commissioned later this year, the 25 MW, 100 MWh EVx system will be integrated into China’s national energy grid to provide critical storage and delivery of clean renewable energy generated by the adjacent wind farm. This is a significant milestone that brings us one step closer to realising our mission of decarbonisation through the deployment of sustainable energy solutions in the largest energy consumption market in the world,” Piconi said.

Martyn1981

This has been mentioned before, but I was a bit surprised to find that contracts for ~2GWh of thermal storage are already progressing in Europe.

European utilities choose thermal energy storage solutions from Brenmiller and Kraftblock

Thermal energy storage solution firms Brenmiller and Kraftblock have agreed to deploy large-scale commercial projects for large European utilities, totalling 2GWh and 150MWh respectively.

Brenmiller Energy has signed a non-binding term sheet with an unnamed ‘Leading Global Clean Energy Utility Partner’ and developer Green Enesys Group for nine projects totalling 2GWh of thermal energy storage capacity.

The company’s solution, bGen, charges by heating rocks and discharges by releasing the accumulated heat to heat pressurised water and generate steam for electricity.

Under the agreement, Brenmiller’s bGen units will be produced at its gigawatt-scale production facility in Israel. Once the projects have been deployed the parties may join forces to build-out a manufacturing facility in Europe.

Exiled_Tyke

Most of us on hear are familiar with the concept of Morroco becoming a RE factory exporting to Europe. So there's not much new in hear although an interesting discussion on the potential economic impact and where the energy should be going to once the infrastructure is in place. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65415529

Martyn1981

As seems typical for the UK, we set decent targets, often for political gain, but don't necessarily aim to achieve them.

This is looking likely with off shore wind, where the CfD auctions simply aren't issuing enough capacity contracts each round to meet the UK's target of 50GW by 2030.

Quick background, the biennial auctions have grown in size, and the last one (2021, contracts issued in 2022) awarded 7GW of contracts to off shore wind. We are now switching to annual CfD contracts, and this years aims to issue 3GW of contracts.

Using the 2022 results as a guide, these have commissioning dates of 2026/27. So for installs to be commissioned 'by' 2030, only the auctions for 27/28 (2023 auction), 28/29 (2024 auction) and 29/30 (2025 auction) would count. Plus the 29/30 partially moves us into 'for' 2030 rather than 'by'.

There is some good news, as we've seen the cost of off shore wind contracts fall rapidly, so we can 'buy' more capacity/generation, for ever less subsidy support. The early contracts were issued at £150/MWh, whilst the last were just £37.35/MWh. [All prices are at the 2012 baseline for comparison, but are indexed link.]

For context, the 'missing' 23GW of offshore capacity, at a capacity factor of just 50%, would be equal to about 30% of the UK's current leccy consumption.

‘UK risks missing offshore wind target’

The upcoming Contracts for Difference (CfD) auction will fall well short of delivering the expansion of offshore wind needed to hit the government’s 2030 50GW target, according to industry body Energy UK.

The government has set a target for 50GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 and, at present, there is around 27GW in operation or in receipt of a CfD contract.

As future offshore wind developments will almost exclusively come through the scheme, that means forthcoming auctions will need to deliver another 23GW.

However, Energy UK analysis shows that, as it stands, the scheme will fall well short of achieving this.

The long lead-in times for such projects means the extra capacity will need to come from the next three annual auctions, working out at a record 8GW each round.

Yet the forthcoming (AR5) auction will, at best, bring forward 3.2GW of new capacity – 4.8GW short of the necessary amount and meaning the next round will have even further to catch up.

zeupater

Hi

The issue at the moment is that due to the way the electricity market works, however cheap the strike price is, the consumer doesn't benefit .... we either pay a subsidy through general taxation, or the 'negative subsidy' is wasted by the government through fund reallocation ....

It's high time that the electricity market is uncoupled from the inherent volatility of fossil fuel pricing .... it'd be easy to do, just base wholesale pricing on supply bid average pricing for a given period and the cfd system works as designed thus reducing consumer prices ... it's really down to Ofgem to pull up their socks and start doing the job they're paid to do, it's not that there aren't enough of them to allow their cumulative IQ to equal that of some nobody on the internet,  so why can't they come up with a such a fundamentally simple solution ... ?? ... Vested Interests?

HTH-Z

michaels

zeupater said:

Hi

The issue at the moment is that due to the way the electricity market works, however cheap the strike price is, the consumer doesn't benefit .... we either pay a subsidy through general taxation, or the 'negative subsidy' is wasted by the government through fund reallocation ....

It's high time that the electricity market is uncoupled from the inherent volatility of fossil fuel pricing .... it'd be easy to do, just base wholesale pricing on supply bid average pricing for a given period and the cfd system works as designed thus reducing consumer prices ... it's really down to Ofgem to pull up their socks and start doing the job they're paid to do, it's not that there aren't enough of them to allow their cumulative IQ to equal that of some nobody on the internet,  so why can't they come up with a such a fundamentally simple solution ... ?? ... Vested Interests?

HTH-Z

Every other market the consumer pays marginal cost for the last unit produced not average cost, average cost pricing how do you force the producers whose cost of production is higher than average cost to produce?  Some sort of transfer from low cost producers to high cost ones?  That is really going to encourage efficient production - not....

zeupater

michaels said:

zeupater said:

Hi

The issue at the moment is that due to the way the electricity market works, however cheap the strike price is, the consumer doesn't benefit .... we either pay a subsidy through general taxation, or the 'negative subsidy' is wasted by the government through fund reallocation ....

It's high time that the electricity market is uncoupled from the inherent volatility of fossil fuel pricing .... it'd be easy to do, just base wholesale pricing on supply bid average pricing for a given period and the cfd system works as designed thus reducing consumer prices ... it's really down to Ofgem to pull up their socks and start doing the job they're paid to do, it's not that there aren't enough of them to allow their cumulative IQ to equal that of some nobody on the internet,  so why can't they come up with a such a fundamentally simple solution ... ?? ... Vested Interests?

HTH-Z

Every other market the consumer pays marginal cost for the last unit produced not average cost, average cost pricing how do you force the producers whose cost of production is higher than average cost to produce?  Some sort of transfer from low cost producers to high cost ones?  That is really going to encourage efficient production - not....

Hi

The underlying issue is that the supply auction establishes a single price based on the highest included successful bid .... effectively, although the way that the marginality of wind against a strike price works for wind power producers and how the wind subsidy works for each tranche of generation allocation, the money paid for that energy on a wholesale basis which is ultimately passed through to consumers is based on gas generation, therefore directly influenced by gas market pricing because the market deems that gas should/must always be in the mix for 'commercial' reasons (ie profitability) ..... THIS IS NOT MARGINAL PRICING ... this is a form of marketplace fixing which is obviously & unfairly fully supported by the sector regulator, Ofgem, despite their underlying legislative requirement to prevent such things ....

You ask how high cost producers are encouraged to produce, well that's in your likely misreading and/or misunderstanding of what was written .... instead of paying all bidders based on highest successful bid, they could easily be paid according to their own successful bid thus setting an average wholesale price for the supply mix to each particular auction period, therefore immediately reducing supply pricing & allowing a more competitive market to develop organically ...

Of course, this would open up the ability to differentiate between spot pricing and forward buying in the market .... consider that supply to consumers by companies using forward contracting could easily bypass the averaging process and be dealt with directly .... wouldn't this act as a market force to encourage both lower consumer prices & investment in low cost generating sources, ultimately leading to lower fossil fuel price volatility ....

It's not that it costs more to produce gas when demand is high, it's simply a global supply & demand issue for which there are two possible UK specific major solutions ... develop UK gas reserves & decouple pricing for UK generation from world market pricing ..or.. reduce demand for gas generation to a purely 'standby' level and allow generators to operate on a well regulated truly marginal pricing basis ....

HTH-Z

Martyn1981

I do get a bit excited about the RE revolution (no .... really, I do  ), but it just seems like everything is starting to fall into place this decade. The 2010's laid the foundations, and brought costs down enough to scale up supply, but this decade has taken the ball, and run with it.

So, I found this article a fun and uplifting read. Actually quite brief, with bite size segments, and some simple statements. So important to keep reminding ourselves that the growth in greener, cleaner tech is not linear, it's exponential, and it is starting to really pop now.

The Energy Revolution In 5 Charts

1. The energy transition is a technology revolution.

At the heart of the energy transition lies the fact that renewable technologies are far superior to fossil fuels. The energy transition is a shift from a concentrated, expensive, polluting commodity-based system with no learning curve, to an efficient, manufactured, technology-driven system that offers continuously falling costs and is available everywhere. It is moving from heavy, fiery molecules to light, obedient electrons; from hunting fossil fuels to farming the sun.

Like past technology shifts, it is a transformation, not merely a substitution. As RethinkX notes, this is not a brown caterpillar to a green caterpillar, but rather a caterpillar to a butterfly, which means different economics, geographies, winners, and energy carriers. Just like past technology shifts, the falling costs of the new render the old obsolete.

4. This is the decade of change.

The 2020s are the disruption decade, where renewable technology sales race up the S-curve. If the energy transition were a novel, this decade would be its climax.

The energy system is one of stocks (the bathtub) and flows (the dirty tap and the clean tap). By the end of the decade the clean tap will be on full and the dirty tap will be drying up. Heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar, and wind will all be near the top of their sales S-curves. Once the flow from the tap is clean, the drain (or natural retirement rates) will flush away the fossil system in succeeding decades.

By 2030, renewables will dominate the sales of energy-producing and consuming technologies. The green prize will be evident. Cheap renewables will be even cheaper. Fossil fuel demand will be off the current plateau and in clear decline. The negative externalities of fossil fuels will be increasingly weaponized. Climate impacts will be more visible. In 2023, it is hard to imagine what this will look like, let alone model it in any detail.