Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

Had to laugh at myself, I couldn't recall if this battery project had been mentioned before/recently. Then it dawned on me that battery stories, even just UK news, are now so frequent that they are starting to become a bit of a blur, for me. That, I think is a good RE/G&E progress, in itself.

So ..... just another big, big batt article:

500MW English battery gets green light

Blaby District Council has granted planning permission to UK developer Exagen, for a 500MW/1GWh grid-scale battery energy storage project on land to the north-east of Earl Shilton, Leicestershire.

The Normanton Energy Reserve will be one of the largest such projects in Europe and will serve the UK’s National Grid. The Planning Committee’s decision follows months of public consultation on proposals for the site, which include new habitats, extensive new woodland and boosting local biodiversity by over 25%.

Once built, the battery will be capable of powering 235,000 homes for two hours – the equivalent of 80% of the homes in Leicestershire – making it one of the largest BESS projects to be granted planning permission in the UK.

At about 10 times larger than most batteries currently providing storage for the grid, the £270m site will be directly connected to the energy network at a new substation and will help maintain grid stability in the face of increasing electricity demand.

Up to 35GW of storage capacity will be needed in the UK by 2050 to reach net zero targets said Exagen, adding the Normanton Energy Reserve project alone equates to 1.4% of this national requirement.

Martyn1981

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

I wonder if they get a discount for 1 GW's worth, if so, what might the cost per kWh work out to be?

Martyn1981

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

I wonder if they get a discount for 1 GW's worth, if so, what might the cost per kWh work out to be?

Yep the price per unit goes down as you buy more. Unfortunately CW, you can only order upto 1,000 on the website, but I'm sure you can negotiate a deal with them if you give them a call.  

So, for California (seems to be joint cheapest, but on checking even Alaska, isn't much more), you can have 1,000 units, of approx 1MW/4MWh, without installation, for $1,105,884,950. That will give you 979MW/3,916MWh*. And an estimated annual maintenance cost of ~$5.2m. Earliest delivery Q4 2024 ..... interested?

If you really need that 1GW, then you can have the 2MW/4MWh units totalling 1,927MW/3,854MWh for $1,153,670,360. Or just buy 519 units for 1,000.2MW/2,000.4MWh, for the bargain price of $598,767,820.

*That's $282.40/kWh, but of course, that's a fully useable unit, batts, inverters, thermal management, breakers, controls, container etc etc.

Coastalwatch

Martyn1981 said:

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

I wonder if they get a discount for 1 GW's worth, if so, what might the cost per kWh work out to be?

Yep the price per unit goes down as you buy more. Unfortunately CW, you can only order upto 1,000 on the website, but I'm sure you can negotiate a deal with them if you give them a call.  

So, for California (seems to be joint cheapest, but on checking even Alaska, isn't much more), you can have 1,000 units, of approx 1MW/4MWh, without installation, for $1,105,884,950. That will give you 979MW/3,916MWh*. And an estimated annual maintenance cost of ~$5.2m. Earliest delivery Q4 2024 ..... interested?

If you really need that 1GW, then you can have the 2MW/4MWh units totalling 1,927MW/3,854MWh for $1,153,670,360. Or just buy 519 units for 1,000.2MW/2,000.4MWh, for the bargain price of $598,767,820.

*That's $282.40/kWh, but of course, that's a fully useable unit, batts, inverters, thermal management, breakers, controls, container etc etc.

Cheers Mart, glad you supplied the figure I was hoping for, including the working out.

Have to confess I was just wondering how low they might eventually get too. Until you mentioned the remaining items making up the final cost....... so perhaps divide it by two. Mind you, by the time they've satisfied the uk's 35 GW requirement together with global demand elsewhere we shall need as many alternatives to Lithium as man and womankind can develop.

Perhaps the governments proposed incentive scheme for longer term storage development will usher in some alternatives.

Martyn1981

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

I wonder if they get a discount for 1 GW's worth, if so, what might the cost per kWh work out to be?

Yep the price per unit goes down as you buy more. Unfortunately CW, you can only order upto 1,000 on the website, but I'm sure you can negotiate a deal with them if you give them a call.  

So, for California (seems to be joint cheapest, but on checking even Alaska, isn't much more), you can have 1,000 units, of approx 1MW/4MWh, without installation, for $1,105,884,950. That will give you 979MW/3,916MWh*. And an estimated annual maintenance cost of ~$5.2m. Earliest delivery Q4 2024 ..... interested?

If you really need that 1GW, then you can have the 2MW/4MWh units totalling 1,927MW/3,854MWh for $1,153,670,360. Or just buy 519 units for 1,000.2MW/2,000.4MWh, for the bargain price of $598,767,820.

*That's $282.40/kWh, but of course, that's a fully useable unit, batts, inverters, thermal management, breakers, controls, container etc etc.

Cheers Mart, glad you supplied the figure I was hoping for, including the working out.

Have to confess I was just wondering how low they might eventually get too. Until you mentioned the remaining items making up the final cost....... so perhaps divide it by two. Mind you, by the time they've satisfied the uk's 35 GW requirement together with global demand elsewhere we shall need as many alternatives to Lithium as man and womankind can develop.

Perhaps the governments proposed incentive scheme for longer term storage development will usher in some alternatives.

Reading your comments, I thought you might like a bit of pondering I came up with a while back, regarding the UK's intraday storage needs, which will most likely be handled by battery storage. This will balance demand and supply fluctations across the day, but not longer term issues, when LDES (long duration energy storage) will be needed.

I was prompted by comments on some sites about the sheer scale of battery storage needed, and how hard this would be to fulfill. And also the fact that I kept seeing the same figure of 30GWh being quoted for annual production of batts, whenever a battery factory was mentioned in the news for BEV's. I think one example was VWG talking about 240GWh from 8 planned/proposed new factories. [Note, the Tesla Megapack factory in Lathrop, is scaling up to 40GWh, as is the planned figure for their Chinese Megapack factory.]

So, I took the 30GWh figure, and the 500GWh figure I've seen so many times as an estimated UK intraday storage figure, and realised it was only a x17 difference. Or to put it another way, if the batts last 17yrs before needing to be replaced, and it takes 17yrs for our intraday needs to rise to that 500GWh figure - then the UK would only need the equivalent of one of those BEV battery factories, for grid support.

Maybe I'm looking at this from a strange perspective, but that doesn't seem like such a huge challenge for UK intraday needs, if it's 'just' the same as one BEV battery factory, of which ever more are being announced. And of course for folk like you with V2H/G, the battery role may even be shared.

I appreciate that this may seem like an odd way to look at the problem/challenge, but just found it useful for placing the task in context - very very big, but entirely doable.

Martyn1981

Chris Goodall's weekly Carbon Commentary newsletter:

1, Electrifying mining vehicles. 70+ tonne mining vehicles will be complex to electrify. Not only do these trucks work long hours each day, making charging more difficult, but the enormous weight of the batteries reduces the carrying capacity of the vehicle. Nevertheless, some manufacturers have concluded that electric power is a viable way forward. Caterpillar announced that it would work with CRH, North America’s largest producer of aggregates, to trial new electric trucks as well as providing the charging infrastructure. This is Caterpillar’s first such agreement.

2, Synthetic aviation fuel. Infinium, one of the prospective participants in the synthetic fuels industry, said it was planning a factory in Norway. Very low cost electricity for making hydrogen is a principal requirement for making low-carbon fuel and northern Norway provides this. The CO2 also needed will be provided by plants sited on a nearby industrial park. US-based Infinium now has planned projects in most large European countries and over a dozen around the world. But its assertion this week that its proposed Norwegian plant will be the first in that country will have surprised Norsk e-Fuel, one of the pioneers in the synthetic fuel business, which hopes to have its first plant operating in northern Norway by 2026 not far from the proposed Infinium site.

3, Decarbonisation of high temperature heat industries. Electricity can probably be used directly for industrial requirements up to about 1000 degrees (although, as in note 9, heat pumps can only manage much lower temperatures). Several large industries, such as porcelain-making and glass manufacture, need hotter kilns. This will mean burning hydrogen, although it is often not a simple matter to switch away from natural gas. For example, hydrogen doesn’t radiate heat when combusting, which may make ceramics manufacture more difficult. A large project to use ‘blue’ hydrogen with carbon capture to make glass in the north-west of England took a step forward by achieving permission for construction this week. The plant will produce a stream of hydrogen with an energy value of over a gigawatt when completed in 2028. That equates to about a quarter of million tonnes of H2 a year. Recent weeks have seen large reductions in estimates of the volumes of hydrogen needed globally to fuel the transition. I question whether these new forecasts accurately calculate the H2 needed for steel and for the other industries, such as ceramics, needing more than 1000 degrees.

4, Carbon capture efficiencies. The project in note 3 is said to assume that 97% of the CO2 produced in the hydrogen manufacturing process will be captured and stored. This is an aggressively optimistic assumption. No existing CCS site has achieved capture rates remotely close to this level. Another ‘blue’ hydrogen project was announced last week in the Netherlands, with Norway’s Equinor working with industrial gas company Linde to also produce a quarter million tonnes of the gas. The CO2 storage location isn’t specified but Equinor will probably be using the Northern Lights saline aquifers project in the Norwegian North Sea. This project targets a 95% CO2 capture rate, also well above what has historically been possible around the world. High carbon capture rates require larger amounts of energy to be used, adding to the cost burdens of CCS.

5, The market for the Netherlands hydrogen. Steelmaker ThyssenKrupp put out a call for tenders for hydrogen for its huge works at Duisburg, Germany, the biggest plant in Europe. This steelworks would be a natural customer for the hydrogen mentioned in note 4. A year ago, ThyssenKrupp bought a 12 kilometre gas pipeline link on the Dutch/German border from RWE. That connection now provides a direct future route from Eemshaven, the location of the proposed Netherlands hydrogen facility, to Duisburg.

6, Modular EV architecture. Major manufacturers are developing single designs for the chassis of electric vehicles. Many different types of car or van will use the platform. Korean manufacturer Kia showed an architecture which enables an EV to be switched quickly between the configuration for a taxi, perhaps to be used during the day, and a delivery van, perhaps for night-time work. Kia is also partnering with Uber to offer a tailored car suitable for drivers offering ride-hailing. Journalists digging into Ford’s next range of electric vehicles noted that it appears to be developing a standard chassis and software which can be used to offer a wide range of different vehicle types. This follows similar announcements from General Motors and the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL. The overriding aim of this trend towards single EV platforms is to reduce costs by standardising components and manufacturing processes. (Thanks to Gage Williams)

7, On the other hand, EV proponents were discomfited by the decision of Hertz to sell 20,000 of its EVs – about one third of its fleet - and exchange them for internal combustion engine cars. It seems that the repair costs of electric vehicles, whether used for short-term rentals or leased to Uber drivers, are higher than expected and demand is more limited.

8, The cost of electrolysers. A recent paper estimated the steepness of the learning curve for the three main types of electrolyser, using a database that tracks the cost of hydrogen projects since 2000. The paper suggests a slope of around 15% for each doubling of installed electrolyser volumes, very roughly comparable to what we have seen for solar PV and lithium ion batteries. The authors, including noted researchers who have been following the development of hydrogen for several years, suggest that by 2030 electrolyser costs should fall well below $300 a kilowatt, compared to at least $900 a kilowatt today. This decrease means that the cost of green hydrogen will be increasingly dominated by the price of electricity. (These forecasts are of course dependent on the rate of electrolyser installation). The continued higher prices for solid oxide machines are balanced by their striking increases in the efficiency of hydrogen production. Less and less electricity will be needed to make a kilo of H2 across all electrolyser types with the paper stating that solid oxide ‘electrolyzers are likely to approach the theoretical optimum of 33 kWh per kg towards the end of this decade’. Many analyses of the future economics of hydrogen fail to incorporate the reductions in the electricity that will be required.

9, Heat pumps for industry. Conventional heat pumps for heating domestic homes don’t deliver a high enough temperature for most industrial applications. In late 2022 Nestlé put out a request for the development of heat pumps that can provide temperatures up to 200 degrees and also use low global warming potential refrigerants, such as CO2 or ammonia. The role in food manufacturing is particularly clear because most factories have a variety of heating and cooling needs which heat pumps can service symbiotically. Several heat pumps have been recently installed across Nestlé factories that show the potential for large reductions in energy use. Last week German heat pump supplier GEA said it will install its high temperature heat pumps, which can take water up to 95 degrees, in a Nestlé infant milk factory in the Netherlands. 200 degrees is still a long way off but extensive use of heat pumps will significantly reduce emissions in food factories.

10, Capital requirements for the transition. One potential obstacle to decarbonisation is the amount of capital required. Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) brought out a report that showed that the required investment in renewables necessary to achieve the targets set out in the core IEA scenarios rises from about $1.1 trillion in 2023 to around $1.8 trillion in 2030 (about 2% of current global GDP). This represents a 7% yearly increase, compared to average 6% annual growth rates since 2015. Falling requirements for fossil fuel investment under the IEA scenarios mean that the net amount of new capital required across all energy sources only rises by 2% per annum until 2030, or less than the expected growth in global GDP. RMI concludes ‘The key now is to ensure that capex moves from generation to grids, and from developed markets to emerging markets. The primary impediments to change are policy and expertise rather than the volume or availability of capital.’

11, ‘Grid forming’ batteries. The new 185MW/565MWh installation at Kapolei near Honolulu in Hawai’i offers grid support capabilities that match conventional fossil fuel plants. The Kapolei batteries provide what is known as inertia, as well as the capacity to start up when the rest of the grid is non-operative and an extremely fast response time when stabilising the AC frequency. The developers claim the project is the most advanced battery system in the world and a ‘postcard from the future’. The installation will allow the Hawai’i grid to incorporate 10% more renewables than at present, the owner says. Battery systems like this will eventually allow grids to entirely run on renewable sources. Other large utilities are copying the approach. For example, AGL in Australia recently announced a larger battery with similar features, also to be built near to the site of a recently closed coal-fired power station. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency is part-funding the batteries saying that ‘we’ll.. need these new batteries to provide the crucial system security services that are currently provided by .. traditional generators’.

Martyn1981

Is was intriqued by item 10 in Chris' newsletter, regarding the capital investment needed for the tyransition, and the annual growth. So I went to the link and downloaded the report, but tbh, the link itself explains the main point, and the included chart is a great visual aid. It shows what we've managed in the past, and how much of the capital is just a redirection from FF investment:

Coastalwatch

Came across this on another forum so credit due to someone else. I hadn't previously come across Minesto so thought perhaps others may be interested too!

Clean energy giant awakens: Minesto's Dragon 12 ready to power homes

Minesto, Saab's leading ocean energy developer and spinoff, has reported the first successful launch and recovery of its 1.2MW, 25-ton Dragon 12 tidal kite.

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/minesto-successfully-tests-its-25-ton-12mw-dragon-12-tidal-kite

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Coastalwatch said:

Martyn1981 said:

Martyn1981 said:

*Speaking of economic roles, I thought I'd mention the Tesla Megapacks for two reasons.

Firstly, to show that the 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.27m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.32m, so the storage type (and therefore cost) depend upon the role it's needed for.

On the subject of batts, just thought I'd mention that the prices I quoted here at the end of December are already out of date. Not a big shift, 'only' $40k, but nice to see steady progress. Fingers crossed that worldwide production of necessary materials and batts will keep expanding, allowing costs/prices to keep reducing.

Update - 1MW/4MWh version start at $1.23m each, whilst the 2MW/4MWh version cost $1.28m

I wonder if they get a discount for 1 GW's worth, if so, what might the cost per kWh work out to be?

Yep the price per unit goes down as you buy more. Unfortunately CW, you can only order upto 1,000 on the website, but I'm sure you can negotiate a deal with them if you give them a call.  

So, for California (seems to be joint cheapest, but on checking even Alaska, isn't much more), you can have 1,000 units, of approx 1MW/4MWh, without installation, for $1,105,884,950. That will give you 979MW/3,916MWh*. And an estimated annual maintenance cost of ~$5.2m. Earliest delivery Q4 2024 ..... interested?

If you really need that 1GW, then you can have the 2MW/4MWh units totalling 1,927MW/3,854MWh for $1,153,670,360. Or just buy 519 units for 1,000.2MW/2,000.4MWh, for the bargain price of $598,767,820.

*That's $282.40/kWh, but of course, that's a fully useable unit, batts, inverters, thermal management, breakers, controls, container etc etc.

Cheers Mart, glad you supplied the figure I was hoping for, including the working out.

Have to confess I was just wondering how low they might eventually get too. Until you mentioned the remaining items making up the final cost....... so perhaps divide it by two. Mind you, by the time they've satisfied the uk's 35 GW requirement together with global demand elsewhere we shall need as many alternatives to Lithium as man and womankind can develop.

Perhaps the governments proposed incentive scheme for longer term storage development will usher in some alternatives.

Reading your comments, I thought you might like a bit of pondering I came up with a while back, regarding the UK's intraday storage needs, which will most likely be handled by battery storage. This will balance demand and supply fluctations across the day, but not longer term issues, when LDES (long duration energy storage) will be needed.

I was prompted by comments on some sites about the sheer scale of battery storage needed, and how hard this would be to fulfill. And also the fact that I kept seeing the same figure of 30GWh being quoted for annual production of batts, whenever a battery factory was mentioned in the news for BEV's. I think one example was VWG talking about 240GWh from 8 planned/proposed new factories. [Note, the Tesla Megapack factory in Lathrop, is scaling up to 40GWh, as is the planned figure for their Chinese Megapack factory.]

So, I took the 30GWh figure, and the 500GWh figure I've seen so many times as an estimated UK intraday storage figure, and realised it was only a x17 difference. Or to put it another way, if the batts last 17yrs before needing to be replaced, and it takes 17yrs for our intraday needs to rise to that 500GWh figure - then the UK would only need the equivalent of one of those BEV battery factories, for grid support.

Maybe I'm looking at this from a strange perspective, but that doesn't seem like such a huge challenge for UK intraday needs, if it's 'just' the same as one BEV battery factory, of which ever more are being announced. And of course for folk like you with V2H/G, the battery role may even be shared.

I appreciate that this may seem like an odd way to look at the problem/challenge, but just found it useful for placing the task in context - very very big, but entirely doable.

Hi

Additionally ..... although the load on early storage will result in high cycle rates, each incremental uplift in capacity seriously reduces the cycle load resulting in extended battery life expectations and a consequential lowering of the ROI on capital invested .... 

I'd anticipate that the initial requirements for this type of battery would be based more on the power they can immediately inject into the grid to support issues which can be addressed/resolved over a longer timescale (ramping up/switching other sources etc), whilst the total energy capacity becomes a secondary consideration until there's enough installed capacity to rely on to any extent other than time shifting accumulated excess electrons from unschedulable sources to high demand periods .... as such it's likely to be more of an opportunistic 'profit centric' exercise than planned 'strategic energy policy' for the good of the consumer/economy, so when the capacity reaches a certain level in a diminishing returns environment, where's the incentive to install more without seeking huge levels of government support?

Anyway, whatever the reasoning for installing, the batteries would have an initially high level of financial/impact justification per unit of measure which rapidly decreases as additional capacity is added, which remains the case until a minimum strategic storage capacity threshold is met which enables the decommissioning of alternative 'politically unviable' generation sources ... the key question here is what could realistically be classified as a strategically significant level of storage? ... is it based on typical weather patterns? ... on typical generation plant downtime? ... or are we talking inter-seasonal? (LOL!!! .... ) ....      

Just some food for thought ... HTH - Z