The UK grid is already solved we do not need more mass PV/Tidal/Nuclear/Wind

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm pretty much just guessing here, but I think a future leccy figure could be around 220% of today's, assuming a large majority of transport and space heating going leccy, and crucially the space heating has to be heat pumps, or the increase will be far, far higher.

That's based on doubling, plus 10% losses (direct or through storage).

Even if we assume that bio-gas will displace some FF gas for space heating, there will still be an enormous amount of leccy consumed, either for transport/mechanisation in anaerobic digestion farms, or for H2 production and or H2 plus CO2 capture for bio-methane.

So using an approx figure of 42% today (35% RE plus 7% HPC nuclear), we need an ickle bit more to reach 220%, but at least we have a virtually unlimited potential from off-shore wind as the back-bone to UK RE, given its potential to provide 10 to 11 times our future needs (and costs are closing in on subsidy free).

The UK is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy

We don't need your 220% anytime soon
Human driven electric cars will take 15-20 years to deploy
A gas boiler ban on existing homes will also take 15-20 years to deploy but we don't have a boiler ban or significant EV sales.

As such as early as 2027 we are 85% non carbon 15% biomass/Nat-Gas with what is under construction and committed to. Building more wind or nuclear or tidal than what is committed to won't make us any greener come 2027

If however you implement a boiler ban in say 2030 then you will need to deploy significant offshore wind in the period 2030-2050 to supply your electric heat pumps and boilers.

Tidal nuclear and mass solar PV those especially make no sense
They should be scrapped and offered no time or money
More than 2GW of offshore wind per year is unnecessary from now until 2030

Beyond 2030 might require much more offshore wind power to electrify heating and transport
Perhaps as much as 5GW per year. But until 2030 just sticking to the plan solves the grid no more needs to be

GreatApe

markin wrote: »

So around 16 years to swap over, So adding power for 1.6m electric boilers or Heat pumps to the grid every year could be a challenge if we don't get a head start on it, And that number could snowball if its just as cheap and less maintenance for landlords and home users.

It's probably 1.4 million boilers excluding new builds for a stock of 26 million boilers (plus I wonder if they have forgotten to include the boilers in shops offices and other buildings?)

1.4/26 = 18.5 years

It's actually likely to be longer than that as people will stockpile boilers or parts to keep their 4p gas boilers going rather than pay 16p for electricity so let's say 20-25 years

Regarding it being a challenge it definitely is a huge huge challenge
Not only do you need to build offshore wind farms to heat homes via electricity but you also need to build CCGTs to make sure on windless winter weeks people don't freeze to death.

Only no private company is going to want to build CCGTs to run them only a few days/weeks a year so the government is going to have to sub them directly or indirectly

Plus potentially significant grid upgrades as homes go from using 3000 units to perhaps over 10,000 units and a lot of that increase concentrated in the peak winter months


Either way a gas boiler ban will not be implemented over night
Even for new builds notice of 6 years was given
If there is a similar 6 year notice for existing homes that gives a lot of time to prepare to build wind farms and backup CCGTs
But until such a ban is announced or put into law it makes no sense mass over building wind farms to sit idle

markin

You don't need to ban for it to start the take over, if the price and running costs make sense it will just happen, same with EV's. Making "power too cheap to meter" Wind Power in this case, would help do that.

Export/Import

Norway has imported up to 10% of its electricity production during 2004-2009.[9] According to IEA in 2015 Norway exports about 15% of its electricity generation and imports about 5%, and the net electricity export was 14.645 TWh.[39]
Norway and Sweden's grids have long been connected. A new 1 GW[40] 420 kV high-voltage link between Nea in Norway and Järpströmmen in Sweden was commissioned in 2009.[41] Beginning in 1977 the Norwegian and Danish grids were connected with 500 MW, growing to 1,700 MW in 2015.[42] Norway's grid is connected with the 700 MW NorNed-cable to the Netherlands. There are plans for cables with Germany (NordLink 1400mw or NorGer) and the UK HVDC Norway Great Britain 1400mw, Scotland Norway 1400mw interconnector .


Wind power

Wind power capacity was 838 MW in 2015 and is expected to increase by 1,000 MW by 2020.[27][28] Norway has excellent potential for wind power.

GreatApe

markin wrote: »

You don't need to ban for it to start the take over, if the price and running costs make sense it will just happen, same with EV's. Making "power too cheap to meter" Wind Power in this case, would help do that.

Including the standing charge gas costs just a tad under 3p (for a heavy user 30,000 units a year)

Electricity costs about 14.5p for a large user (including the standing charge)
Wholesale electricity is about 4.5p a unit so 10p is the cost to get it to you

Even if wind power prices fell to £20/MWh (unlikely) it would still cost 12p to buy electricity for your home (2p electric + 10p other)

So even in a super cheap offshore wind power world electricity costs 4x natural gas (3p NG Vs 12p electricity).

Plus you can't just plop a wind farm in the North sea and just hope that the wind blows exactly at the time you need heating for the nations homes. In fact you'd need more or less 100% gas fired backups so people don't freeze to death. There is no easy solution to electrifying heating. It will have to be a combination of offshore wind plus backup CCGTs. The two combined might get you towards 70% electricity from wind farms 30% from backup CCGTs

ed110220

GreatApe wrote: »

Including the standing charge gas costs just a tad under 3p (for a heavy user 30,000 units a year)

Electricity costs about 14.5p for a large user (including the standing charge)
Wholesale electricity is about 4.5p a unit so 10p is the cost to get it to you

Even if wind power prices fell to £20/MWh (unlikely) it would still cost 12p to buy electricity for your home (2p electric + 10p other)

So even in a super cheap offshore wind power world electricity costs 4x natural gas (3p NG Vs 12p electricity).

Plus you can't just plop a wind farm in the North sea and just hope that the wind blows exactly at the time you need heating for the nations homes. In fact you'd need more or less 100% gas fired backups so people don't freeze to death. There is no easy solution to electrifying heating. It will have to be a combination of offshore wind plus backup CCGTs. The two combined might get you towards 70% electricity from wind farms 30% from backup CCGTs

You're forgetting or sweeping under the carpet the fact that gas heating would typically be replaced with heat pumps in decarbonisation. Heat pumps typically have a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3 to 5, meaning that they produce 3 to 5 kWh of heat output for each kWh of electricity used. Therefore to compare the cost of electricity and gas is a cheap trick, when you'll be consuming 3 to 5 times less electricity than gas. If your electricity is 12p/kWh and you have a COP of 3, each kWh of heating you use will cost 4p not 12p, so the cost should be similar to gas.

A lot of your reasoning is also circular and/or based on dubious starting points. For example you say that the electrification of heating will be slow and therefore we don't need more renewable energy for a long time. However it's widely acknowledged that lifting the block on onshore wind power will decrease the cost of electricity. If electricity becomes cheaper, the use of heat pumps to replace gas heating will become more attractive and the transition will happen faster.

More fundamentally we urgently need to cut our fossil fuel use, so a slowly-slowly approach is insufficient. We've made good progress with electricity but virtually none in heating and transport. To meet our climate commitments we need to massively speed up our decarbonisation of those sectors. It's much too late now for a softly softly gradual approach.

Solarchaser

What I see in all of this is a great incentive for micro generation, especially solar and wind, to heat up heat stores during the day to take care of hot water and heating, and crucially to take the load off the local substations and cabling.

Excellent thinking greatape

ed110220

Solarchaser wrote: »

What I see in all of this is a great incentive for micro generation, especially solar and wind, to heat up heat stores during the day to take care of hot water and heating, and crucially to take the load off the local substations and cabling.

Excellent thinking greatape

Excellent point, especially as heat pumps are not as good at heating water to higher temps as they are at giving lower temp heating, so solar immersion heating of hot water would go well with heat pump space heating. There I was thinking he was just aping the fossil fuel lobby

GreatApe

ed110220 wrote: »

You're forgetting or sweeping under the carpet the fact that gas heating would typically be replaced with heat pumps in decarbonisation. Heat pumps typically have a coefficient of performance (COP) of 3 to 5, meaning that they produce 3 to 5 kWh of heat output for each kWh of electricity used. Therefore to compare the cost of electricity and gas is a cheap trick, when you'll be consuming 3 to 5 times less electricity than gas. If your electricity is 12p/kWh and you have a COP of 3, each kWh of heating you use will cost 4p not 12p, so the cost should be similar to gas.

A lot of your reasoning is also circular and/or based on dubious starting points. For example you say that the electrification of heating will be slow and therefore we don't need more renewable energy for a long time. However it's widely acknowledged that lifting the block on onshore wind power will decrease the cost of electricity. If electricity becomes cheaper, the use of heat pumps to replace gas heating will become more attractive and the transition will happen faster.

More fundamentally we urgently need to cut our fossil fuel use, so a slowly-slowly approach is insufficient. We've made good progress with electricity but virtually none in heating and transport. To meet our climate commitments we need to massively speed up our decarbonisation of those sectors. It's much too late now for a softly softly gradual approach.

On the fact of it heat pumps are a great idea but I ask myself why hasn't any EU nation embraced heat pumps for heating needs? It's not like they are new technology as heat pumps have been around for longer than I have been alive

There are literally millions of homes heated by electricity directly in the UK France Germany... basically every EU country. Some....like Norway and Sweden are almost 100% resistance electricity heated

Why do people in Norway and Sweden choose to pay full price for electrically heating their homes when according to you they can save 70-80% of the cost by installing heat pumps?



Now having actually worked with and designed some heat pumps I can tell you what the main problems are but I'll save you the trouble because clearly they have no problems at all. The people of Norway and Sweden are just thick they choose resistance heating over heat pumps because they hate mother nature.... Or are in the pockets of big resistance heater....or something

GreatApe

Solarchaser wrote: »

What I see in all of this is a great incentive for micro generation, especially solar and wind, to heat up heat stores during the day to take care of hot water and heating, and crucially to take the load off the local substations and cabling.

Excellent thinking greatape

The stress is during the winter months so PV doesn't help the grid or help heat your home much at all

I've actually offered a working solution

You replace the current fleet of gas boilers with hybrid boilers and just keep installing offshore wind farms. The more offshore wind you install the more hours the hybrid boilers use electricity rather than natural gas

This can get decarbonisation of heating towards 70% perhaps even 80%


Oh and I do hope heat pumps work
There are ways to make them more likely to work
Especially air to air heat pumps they can be produced quite cheaply
There one of the big problem is you have to keep both sides very clean else dust on both ends will take your COP down considerably

On paper they sure look good but I keep asking myself why hasn't Norway or Sweden already converted to heat pumps nor have a plan for mass conversion. Why have they been using resistance heaters for decades rather than heat pumps which have existed for as long as I have been alive hell they have existed for as long as my parents have been alive

mmmmikey

GreatApe wrote: »

The stress is during the winter months so PV doesn't help the grid or help heat your home much at all

I've actually offered a working solution

You replace the current fleet of gas boilers with hybrid boilers and just keep installing offshore wind farms. The more offshore wind you install the more hours the hybrid boilers use electricity rather than natural gas

This can get decarbonisation of heating towards 70% perhaps even 80%


Oh and I do hope heat pumps work
There are ways to make them more likely to work
Especially air to air heat pumps they can be produced quite cheaply
There one of the big problem is you have to keep both sides very clean else dust on both ends will take your COP down considerably

On paper they sure look good but I keep asking myself why hasn't Norway or Sweden already converted to heat pumps nor have a plan for mass conversion. Why have they been using resistance heaters for decades rather than heat pumps which have existed for as long as I have been alive hell they have existed for as long as my parents have been alive

Norway and Sweden are colder in the winter than the UK, so air to air heat pumps in particular aren't as good a solution as they are in milder climates. Any one of the regular contributors to these forums who has installed a heat pump can attest to their efficiency in the UK. and different countries evolve differently; pointing out that heat pumps aren't widely deployed in Scandinavia proves nothing.