More Green Records and Milestones

Legacy_user

The march towards a renewable energy future continues apace.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41397133

More than half the UK's electricity came from low carbon sources this summer, the National Grid says, making it the "greenest" summer on record.

Between late June and September, 52% percent of electricity generation was met by low carbon sources, compared with about 35% four years ago.

and

Meanwhile, the UK's first subsidy-free solar farm was officially opened on Tuesday.

The 10 megawatt Clayhill solar farm, near Flitwick in Bedfordshire, will generate enough electricity for around 2,500 homes and save 4,452 tonnes of carbon.

In addition to the rows of panels there are five battery storage units, to maximise use of power from the solar farm by allowing electricity to be stored and fed into the grid when it is needed.

Steve Shine, executive chairman of Clayhill's developer Anesco, said: "For the solar industry, Clayhill is a landmark development and paves the way for a sustainable future, where subsidies are no longer needed or relied upon."

I love the name Steve Shine - he was born to work in solar.

GreatApe

It gets progressively harder as you try to integrate more wind and solar

Also the nuclear fleet is on its last legs and that provides about 20-25% of the green electricity we have and I dont think it looks likely we will replace the nukes

So possibly, just like in Germany, most the green wind and solar is going to displace green nuclear over the next 5-10 years

Plus its still very costly, marginal electric out of existing plants only costs £25/MWh while wind/solar projects in the early 2020s are estimated to be more than double that still

Having said all that by 2030 things will be more green than today maybe as much as 50% green 50% nat gas

France will also be important, if they abandon their nukes its going to be a lot harder for them and their neighbors. They export a huge quantity of green nuclear the biggest exporter of electricity worldwide. If they let their nukes go 2030 might be no better than 2010 so twenty years to stand still

GreatApe

ilovehouses wrote: »

We do seem to be short on UK produced nuclear. even running flat out (which they always are) they won't hit 20% of today's energy demand.

Not quite accurate, this is for the last 24 hours

Nuclear 22.43%
French Nuclear imports 2.37%
Coal 7.21%
CCGT 54.16%
Wind 3.18%
Solar 2.79%

Nuclear while old is still a very significant part of annual electricity supply.
What seems likely is that all the effort and cost to go wind/solar is going to just displace mostly retired nuclear not coal/gas and it seems to be the path Germany is taking too.

The UK is at least likely to build 2 x EPRs so at least some of the nukes will be replaced here, the germans are going to completely get rid of their nuclear plants over the next 5 years. The UK might also further extend the lives of the current nukes that is wise but I doubt we can get much more than another 5-10 years out of them

GreatApe

Last 52 Weeks

Nuclear 24.08%
Wind 9.80%
Solar 3.47%
French nuclear 2.62%
CCGT 44.43%
Coal 7.44%

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

It gets progressively harder as you try to integrate more wind and solar

Also the nuclear fleet is on its last legs and that provides about 20-25% of the green electricity we have and I dont think it looks likely we will replace the nukes

So possibly, just like in Germany, most the green wind and solar is going to displace green nuclear over the next 5-10 years

Plus its still very costly, marginal electric out of existing plants only costs £25/MWh while wind/solar projects in the early 2020s are estimated to be more than double that still

Having said all that by 2030 things will be more green than today maybe as much as 50% green 50% nat gas

France will also be important, if they abandon their nukes its going to be a lot harder for them and their neighbors. They export a huge quantity of green nuclear the biggest exporter of electricity worldwide. If they let their nukes go 2030 might be no better than 2010 so twenty years to stand still

Then again new nuke is going to cost us £102.50 per mwh so any use of solar/wind plus storage instead of this is almost certain to be cheaper.

A new 300mw solar plus storage subsidy free plant is soon to be announced, the storage moves the mid day generation to the evening when it can address peak load rather than displacing nuclear base load.

Is comparing marginal cost of existing capacity that has already been fully capitalized against new capacity including capital payback fair? Offshore wind has a guaranteed price of only £57.50 per mwh...and this is only for 15 years. Beyond that point it will no doubt be still generating at an marginal cost close to zero....

michaels

ilovehouses wrote: »

We must have the technology to better match energy demand to supply. I don't see what's difficult about plugging your electric car in, loading the washing machine and tumble dryer, setting the latest time you need your car and clothes for and letting software decide the best time to run.

Isn't that what the botched roll out of smart meters is supposed to be about? Instead we are rolling out meters that only provide automated meter reading and disconnections for non-payment at a cost of about £100 per household per year over 5 years (hidden in the bills).

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Then again new nuke is going to cost us £102.50 per mwh so any use of solar/wind plus storage instead of this is almost certain to be cheaper.

A new 300mw solar plus storage subsidy free plant is soon to be announced, the storage moves the mid day generation to the evening when it can address peak load rather than displacing nuclear base load.

Is comparing marginal cost of existing capacity that has already been fully capitalized against new capacity including capital payback fair? Offshore wind has a guaranteed price of only £57.50 per mwh...and this is only for 15 years. Beyond that point it will no doubt be still generating at an marginal cost close to zero....

I wasn't really commenting on the pros and cons of nuclear or its cost

Just pointing out that the UK, like Germany, Looks likely to abandon its nuclear fleet.
The result of which will likely be that all the green energy installed over the 30 year period of 2000-2030 will just about displace green nuclear and not coal/gas

The Germans green groups really shot themselves in the foot, they decided to get rid of safe clean cheap existing nuclear and opted to keep open cast brown coal mines feeding brown coal power stations.

GreatApe

ilovehouses wrote: »

Do you get those numbers from here...

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Nuclear currently running at 7GW out of a maximum of 8GW. 7GW is 19.22%.

We must have the technology to better match energy demand to supply. I don't see what's difficult about plugging your electric car in, loading the washing machine and tumble dryer, setting the latest time you need your car and clothes for and letting software decide the best time to run.

Not sure where we'll end up in energy mix. Any new nuclear will be expensive because we can't do cheap which gives some headspace for renewable supply to be cost effective.

on that website you can download the last 24 hours or even the last years data and have a look at overall demand vs sources of supply. The front page only shows what it is right now, so nuclear might be 19.22% right now but it gets as high as 35% in the night. Overall last 52 weeks is

Last 52 weeks UK grid
CCGT 44.43%
Nuclear 24.08%
Wind 9.80%
Coal 7.44%
Solar 3.47%
French interconnect 2.62%

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Then again new nuke is going to cost us £102.50 per mwh so any use of solar/wind plus storage instead of this is almost certain to be cheaper.

A new 300mw solar plus storage subsidy free plant is soon to be announced, the storage moves the mid day generation to the evening when it can address peak load rather than displacing nuclear base load.

Is comparing marginal cost of existing capacity that has already been fully capitalized against new capacity including capital payback fair? Offshore wind has a guaranteed price of only £57.50 per mwh...and this is only for 15 years. Beyond that point it will no doubt be still generating at an marginal cost close to zero....

Nuclear is a great technology if it is done on a 50+ reactor basis (ideally 100+) if it is done on a small scale as per the uk then its going to be costly and delayed. Its no different from houses if or I who never built a house attempt to do it it our 1st go is going to be far more costly and time consuming and lower quality than our 10th one and by the time we get to 100 houses we would be quite expert at it

The Chinese are only on about 50 reactors and they are popping them out on time and on budget. Roughly 5 years and $2 per watt. The things will last 60-100 years and operate at 98% CF. Even many of the american nukes, built 40 years ago have licences to work to 60 years and will likely get another 20 years extension the top 20 there operate at 98% CF


Nuclear is a proven tech that could have been done and could take a country to 70% nuclear 30% gas. That would be a very green grid. It could be done over a 20 year period as per the french experience.

Wind power and solar have not yet proven themselves to anything near that. I think 70% wind/solar and 30% nat gas is possible however it will involve a lot of batteries and also a lot of curtailment that is to say we would have to overbuild wind/solar and accept that a lot of it will have to be dummped


With nuclear all the UK needs is 4 nuclear power stations with quad EPRs and 20GW of CCGTs and that would take us to 70% nuclear 30% nat gas.

With offshore wind + solar we are looking at 70GW offshore wind and 30GW soalr and 45GW of CCGTs and 10GWh of batteries for a similar result

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

Nuclear is a great technology if it is done on a 50+ reactor basis (ideally 100+) if it is done on a small scale as per the uk then its going to be costly and delayed. Its no different from houses if or I who never built a house attempt to do it it our 1st go is going to be far more costly and time consuming and lower quality than our 10th one and by the time we get to 100 houses we would be quite expert at it

The Chinese are only on about 50 reactors and they are popping them out on time and on budget. Roughly 5 years and $2 per watt. The things will last 60-100 years and operate at 98% CF. Even many of the american nukes, built 40 years ago have licences to work to 60 years and will likely get another 20 years extension the top 20 there operate at 98% CF


Nuclear is a proven tech that could have been done and could take a country to 70% nuclear 30% gas. That would be a very green grid. It could be done over a 20 year period as per the french experience.

Wind power and solar have not yet proven themselves to anything near that. I think 70% wind/solar and 30% nat gas is possible however it will involve a lot of batteries and also a lot of curtailment that is to say we would have to overbuild wind/solar and accept that a lot of it will have to be dummped


With nuclear all the UK needs is 4 nuclear power stations with quad EPRs and 20GW of CCGTs and that would take us to 70% nuclear 30% nat gas.

With offshore wind + solar we are looking at 70GW offshore wind and 30GW soalr and 45GW of CCGTs and 10GWh of batteries for a similar result

Interesting thoughts, I did try to get a handle on intermittency costs of wind and solar as someone is suggesting these could even go negative if the rest of the mix was right but the maths is too complicated for me....

However suppose the nuke costs as much as Hinckley C then it may be that your alternative wind/solar/CCGT/Battery mix ends up not costing any more and hopefully we could find something useful to do with the dumped wind/solar - aluminum smelting or hydrolysis of water to make hydrogen as an intermediate to jet fuel?

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Interesting thoughts, I did try to get a handle on intermittency costs of wind and solar as someone is suggesting these could even go negative if the rest of the mix was right but the maths is too complicated for me....

However suppose the nuke costs as much as Hinckley C then it may be that your alternative wind/solar/CCGT/Battery mix ends up not costing any more and hopefully we could find something useful to do with the dumped wind/solar - aluminum smelting or hydrolysis of water to make hydrogen as an intermediate to jet fuel?

no that is not possible you do not build a capital intensive industry like aluminium smelting or even a big hydrogen plant and then just run it just 25% of the year while the wind is blowing strong. Those types of facilities literally need to run all the time

The true value of intermittent supply is easy to calculate, its simply the marginal fuel cost

Take a hypothetical uk grid with 50GW of CCGT and 50GW of offshore wind.

Lets say a tornado destroys all the wind farms, what is the additional cost to the county a year after the tornado vs a year before?

Well its just the additional fuel needed to run the CCGTs at a higher CF since there are no more wind farms displacing fuel used int he CCGTs

At current gas prices its £25/MWh. So that is the value of solar/wind just £25/MWh. IF you add massive quantities of batteries to a farm to make it load following then its value is whatever the wholesale price is

So when people jump up and down that offshore wind is only £57.5 (£63 in todays money) they clearly do not realize that the £63 is more than twice the true value of intermittent supply

That is to say the true subsidy for any intermittent uncontrolable supply is the strike price minus the marginal fuel price in this example £63 - £25 = £38/MWh