First blackout of the wind power heavy system

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Basically, I think he kinda proves that the .

His nuclear solutions are sub optimal

A nuclear UK (or a nuclear world) should use either nuclear CHP significantly reducing the capital cost of the system and conserving uranium resources

Perhaps as little as 50GW nuclear capacity would be sufficient for the UK in 2050 generating 400TWh of electricity (300TWh for normal needs and 100TWh for transportation) and using most of the 800TWh of waste heat for heating needs.

Going off sizewell B costs and £50 billion for a hot water distribution grid it would of cost about £270 billion with about £0.5 billion per year spent on importing uranium.

Very affordable price and can be done in 20 years near 100% solution to the big three and this infrastructure will probably last 80-100 years. Requiring £15 billion a year over 20 years

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His RE version is far too optimistic it assumes things like everyone being okay to reduce their thermostat to 17 centigrade on particularly cold days. Also the ridiculous assumption that there will only be 30 million homes in the UK by 2050 when some 28.5 million exist today and some 7.5 million will be built on the next 30 years so he is off by at least 6 million homes!! . Correcting for those the RE model would be closer to

250GW offshore wind @ 40% CF = 876 TWh
150GW solar @ 10% CF = 131 TWh
200GW of backup CCGTs (potentially run off biogas)
40 million heat pumps
50GW of interconntors
Huge quantities of batteries on grid and in BEVs
Massive grid upgrades to be able to handle 4x the power and energy flows

Significant amounts of curtailment and significant amounts of NG(or biogas. But either way it produces actual pollution).

This is impossible to cost but its probably north of £1.5 trillion
Requiring £50 billion a year over 30 years.....
Plus creating a lot of future electronics waste so some poor Africans can recycle PV panels wind turbines and the masses and masses of other components

GreatApe

Solarchaser wrote: »

Maybe I'm being daft.... it's always possible.
Why are solar and wind putting out mega tons of co2 in the graph?

You mean the EM table?

I think it's to do with their associated fossil fuel and carbon emissions in construction and maintenance. So the CO2 in the cement for the foundations to the steel in the turbines to the rare earths and other toxic metals needed to be mined etc add all that up and divide by the total units produced in its lifetime and you get an estimate emmissions per unit of energy. Same for nuclear

However nuclear designs exist which use a lot less materials than before
For instance the AP1000 design uses a fraction of sizewell B in concrete steel and land

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Basically the figures show that with (just) wind and solar, we'd have to overproduce, spill 34%, and still use 13% gas (it now says gas and bio-fuels), and we'd also need 500GWh of battery storage for this to work (that's intra-day storage).

But what jumped out at me, was:-
1. Why just wind and solar (later tidal gets a mention), as the more tools in teh RE toolbox the better.
2. 34% spill even at a very inefficient 40% would provide the bio-gas to meet the 13%.
3. With V2G 500GWh of storage is just 1/3rd of a UK car fleet with BEV's, then there's commercial vehicles too that may be parked up for the evening demand peak, stationary storage in homes and businesses for economic benefits, and so on.

Basically, I think he kinda proves that the solution is almost easy, by accident.

I can see a lot of problems with the above. I started by looking at daily UK wind farm output to see what sort of fluctuations occurred. Without delving too deeply, it was apparent that UK wind was virtually becalmed from 30/05/18 to 04/06/18.... & it's unlikely I dropped on the only instance of this happening. Combine this with little or no solar in Nov/Dec/Jan & it's unlikely that the 13% biogas would cope with our daily needs for very long. Agreed that 500GWh of V2G might get us through the first 24 hours, but after that many of those EVs are going to need charging. This of course ignores the extra demand generated by the 13m EVs in the first place...which is another problem.

"Almost easy by accident" is asking for mother nature to teach you a very hard lesson if you don't factor in near zero renewable energy for extended periods.

zeupater

1961Nick wrote: »

I can see a lot of problems with the above. I started by looking at daily UK wind farm output to see what sort of fluctuations occurred. Without delving too deeply, it was apparent that UK wind was virtually becalmed from 30/05/18 to 04/06/18.... & it's unlikely I dropped on the only instance of this happening. Combine this with little or no solar in Nov/Dec/Jan & it's unlikely that the 13% biogas would cope with our daily needs for very long. Agreed that 500GWh of V2G might get us through the first 24 hours, but after that many of those EVs are going to need charging. This of course ignores the extra demand generated by the 13m EVs in the first place...which is another problem.

"Almost easy by accident" is asking for mother nature to teach you a very hard lesson if you don't factor in near zero renewable energy for extended periods.

Hi

... and that's where investment in tidal barrier, tidal flow & related high volume pumped storage schemes (amongst others) come into play ... schedulable generation and investment in a set of strategic storage solutions goes a long way towards mitigation of RE variability ...

HTH
Z

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

I can see a lot of problems with the above. I started by looking at daily UK wind farm output to see what sort of fluctuations occurred. Without delving too deeply, it was apparent that UK wind was virtually becalmed from 30/05/18 to 04/06/18.... & it's unlikely I dropped on the only instance of this happening. Combine this with little or no solar in Nov/Dec/Jan & it's unlikely that the 13% biogas would cope with our daily needs for very long. Agreed that 500GWh of V2G might get us through the first 24 hours, but after that many of those EVs are going to need charging. This of course ignores the extra demand generated by the 13m EVs in the first place...which is another problem.

"Almost easy by accident" is asking for mother nature to teach you a very hard lesson if you don't factor in near zero renewable energy for extended periods.

The big problem is electrifying heating. If you don't electrify heating it's relatively doable
The UK in 2050 will need something like
300TWh for normal electricity needs & 100TWh for BEVs

This can be achieved with
100GW of offshore wind
100GW solar PV
4.5GW nuclear electricity (no new builds just competing HPC and keeping sizewell B. Closing all the rest)
45GW backup CCGTs
20GW of interconntors
5GW power (20GWh energy) in stationary battery storage

This will produce 30% more than needed so you have to curtail a significant amount)

But it gets the UK towards a very green workable grid. Something like 95% solar wind hydro (both domestic and imported) 5% natural gas (perhaps bio methane)

The above won't be easy or cheap and it will take 30 years but it is possible.
Even on windless winter weeks you have imports (hydro nuclear foreign wind) and the backup CCGTs



However try to electrify heating and things become much much more difficult not least you go from 400TWh electricity demand towards closer to twice that and far far more concentrated in peak cold winter days. It's possible to still have a deep decarb but you may need something closer to 70-80% solar wind Interconnectors and 200GW of backup CCGT providing the remaining 20-30%

I'd say do the above keep a lean grid use it for electricity and transportation and do heating via nuclear heat able to load follow. We would not need a significant amount of uranium or a huge investment. By comparison to provide all our heating needs with nuclear heat we would use about 1/3rd as much uranium as France does today. The grid is so much easier to solve if you don't electrify hearting.

It's literally the difference between 50GW winter demand and potentially as much as 200+GW peak particularly cold winter days demand.

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

... and that's where investment in tidal barrier, tidal flow & related high volume pumped storage schemes (amongst others) come into play ... schedulable generation and investment in a set of strategic storage solutions goes a long way towards mitigation of RE variability ...

HTH
Z

Tidal output variation is also not controllable so does not help you out too much

The big problem is heating, if you don't electrify heating you can have for 2050 electricity plus transport say 400TWh

8.5% nuclear (from 3 reactors. No new builds, most closed down)
1.5% hydropower
89% wind from 90GW offshore @45% CF
20% solar from 90GW PV @10% CF
5% electricity from 40GW backup CCGTs
50GWh (25GW power) stationary battery storage (more for stability)
124% of needs so export/curtail about net 24%
Ability to import export 50% of daily demand via 25GW of interconntors

So there is a workable pathway that requires little grid upgrades and would be a -95% decarb for electricity and transportation.

Now try to electrify heating and you are going to have a hell of a task making it work
Certainly won't be able to get to 95%/5%

Hexane

GreatApe wrote: »

Tidal output variation is also not controllable

Say what? Are you suggesting the bear AIs are going to take control of the moon or something? The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out, it's not controllable (King Canute knows that) but it sure is predictable.

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

I can see a lot of problems with the above. I started by looking at daily UK wind farm output to see what sort of fluctuations occurred. Without delving too deeply, it was apparent that UK wind was virtually becalmed from 30/05/18 to 04/06/18.... & it's unlikely I dropped on the only instance of this happening. Combine this with little or no solar in Nov/Dec/Jan & it's unlikely that the 13% biogas would cope with our daily needs for very long. Agreed that 500GWh of V2G might get us through the first 24 hours, but after that many of those EVs are going to need charging. This of course ignores the extra demand generated by the 13m EVs in the first place...which is another problem.

"Almost easy by accident" is asking for mother nature to teach you a very hard lesson if you don't factor in near zero renewable energy for extended periods.

Perhaps your misunderstanding revolves around the 13% bio-gas figure. That's annual not daily, so around 47 full days pa, and of course it won't need to supply 100%, even on really bad days.

So as I said, it actually looks surprisingly 'easy' based on the figures he provides.


To clarify for anyone else a bit confused, the figures/example given are one where the annual generation from wind and solar add up to 121% of annual leccy demand. But because at times it will overproduce, there will be spill, and because at times it will underproduce, gas (ideally bio-gas) will step in as a demand following leccy source to fill the gap.

Whilst it's theoretically possible for wind and PV to be at zero, it's highly unlikely. PV generation is pretty much guaranteed every day, though of course it could be minimal, off-shore wind farms individually generate approx 85% of the time, and collectively 100% of the time now, and as bigger/better WT's are deployed we can expect the low generation at those 85 &100 percentiles to grow.

Plus of course, I did point out that more RE tools make for a better RE toolbox.

Martyn1981

Hexane wrote: »

Say what? Are you suggesting the bear AIs are going to take control of the moon or something? The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out, it's not controllable (King Canute knows that) but it sure is predictable.

The tidal lagoons that have been suggested, but are struggling now cost wise against ever cheaper off-shore wind, would provide around 13% of our leccy needs. They would generate for 14hrs per day (4*3.5hrs with 2.5hr slack tide periods between). They are predictable 100's of years in advance, and if necessary could discharge too soon, or too late in order to match peak demand periods but at the cost of some generation during that period.

Also, and I don't know to what degree this matters, but they would not all operate at exactly the same time (differing UK coastal locations) so there would (nationally) be a widening of that 14hr period.

1961Nick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Perhaps your misunderstanding revolves around the 13% bio-gas figure. That's annual not daily, so around 47 full days pa, and of course it won't need to supply 100%, even on really bad days.

Since this "almost easy" grand plan doesn't feature any backup FF generation, can I ask how many days worth of biogas will be stored? It'll need to be a lot since there won't be any 'spill' when the wind isn't blowing (or worse blowing too much) & those 13M BEVs will need charging after 24 hours.