When will fossil fuel useage peak a general discussion

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

But why do electricity to hydrogen back to electricity at about 33% efficiency (and creating waste in the process)

This all reeks of accounting tricks to confuse you the government and the consumer

Are you aware you are actually paying for 3 units of wind power and only getting one unit back?
So the electricity will cost at least 4 x the price of offshore wind power

If offshore wind power costs £50/MWh that means your hydrogen stored energy is actually going to cost you £200/MWh

You are much better off building more Interconnectors
Build interconntors to Canada and the USA & Build more to Norway

When you are in need of power import from them for £50/MWh
When you have too much export to them for £50/MWh

The return trip of sending units out to Norway or France or Germany and then importing at some future date... Is closer to 90-95% efficient Vs your 33% or so for hydrogen so you actually need less overall infrastructure.


Having said that there will be the need to do some electricity to hydrogen to make ammonia for fertilisers. And perhaps electricity to hydrogen to be used as liquid hydrogen fuel for aircraft. Perhaps you can run those on excess electricity but it makes little sense to do electricity to chemicals and back to electricity when much more efficient options exist

If the hydrogen is produced using only energy that would otherwise have been curtailed, what would the unit cost be then?

Martyn1981

1961Nick wrote: »

If the hydrogen is produced using only energy that would otherwise have been curtailed, what would the unit cost be then?

Exactly, the price of the leccy being used for longer term storage won't be £50/MWh, as that excess, spill, curtailment etc will be 'the stuff' nobody else wanted, it could even have a negative price, though I assume negative prices will disappear as more storage expands to make use of low cost/negative priced leccy ...... supply and demand economics finding a balance over time.

So, again let's make some guesses, leccy at £10/MWh, we buy 3MWhs, then after all system losses we sell 1MWh at £100+. £30 becomes £100, and so long as the leccy to H2 and gas generation plant costs all come in at less than £70 (in this example) a profit is made. And hopefully I'm using old and low figures for the H2 process, which might be more like 80% not 50%.

Perhaps we run the H2 through fuel cells and produce leccy directly, reducing some losses.

Or we produce methane by combining the H2 with a waste source of CO2, ideally from bio-energy burning, and sell the methane, or gas generation again.

Not only is H2, bio-gas, CAES, LAES etc possible, but they are actually happening, and will form part of the RE future.

1961Nick wrote: »

You may view all this as giving money to the wealthy, others may see it as temporarily giving your own money back to you. I can't think of any CC drivers I know that view their CC as a 'benefit' ....most of them see it as a millstone these days.

In the US, Tesla have noted repeatedly that the majority of trade-ins they see for the TM3 are from a lower segment, the $25k Toyota's etc, so the good news seems to be that many people are doing the maths, and looking at TCO, not just purchase cost, plus of course leasing has now opened. So whilst out of my price range, I also don't see this as a wealthy person's car, just new kit that will reach us all eventually, and needs some support to artificially speed up its deployment as it has additional desirability.

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

If the hydrogen is produced using only energy that would otherwise have been curtailed, what would the unit cost be then?

Still whatever the CFD is

If they sell for £0 you still have to make up the difference as a consumer

So if the CFD is £50/MWh and you need 3 units to get 1 unit return you have an absolute minimum cost of £150/MWh assuming all the infrastructure to build this is free and you enslave people and pay them zero to build run and maintain all of this hydrogen infrastructure. If you're not going to bring back slavery for hydrogen expect this to be a good deal higher than £150/MWh

Again it makes no sense when you have the option to build interconntors to Norway or more to rUK or even much further away

zeupater

1961Nick wrote: »

If the hydrogen is produced using only energy that would otherwise have been curtailed, what would the unit cost be then?

Hi

Logically, you could look to change the rules around curtailment funding fully independent of the main cfd strike price, with 'storage diversion' payment only being made when spot capacity in excess of spot demand is diverted to a form of chemical energy for long term storage, be it hydrogen, methane or whatever .... the unit cost then would equate to that currently attributable to curtailments, so a value, but not an additional one ...

HTH
Z

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

If the hydrogen is produced using only energy that would otherwise have been curtailed, what would the unit cost be then?

It's accounting tricks
The cost to the hydrogen producer might be low
But since you the consumer is paying for all of this it's payments out of your pocket

The hydrogen plants sells you a unit of electricity for £50/MWh
It purchased 3 units of electricity for £0
But you as the consumer had to pay £50/MWh for those three units to be generated

The cost is a minimum £150/MWh

You want to be in a situation you don't curtail nor do syn fuels or you do so for an absolute minimum. So mass interconntors before syn fuels

markin

GreatApe wrote: »

Uk
2018 emmissions 394 million tons CO2
1991 emmissions 603 million tons CO2
1973 emmissions 718 million tons CO2 peak year

Down some 45% from peak

This was primarily because of a shift from a coal heavy energy infrastructure to a gas heavy infrastructure. Gas is more clean than coal plus it's 60% efficient in a gas fired stations Vs close closer to 30% so a double win. Nuclear (both domestic and French imports) also played a part. Plus going from maybe 25% efficient open coal fired to 90% efficient condensing boilers




There is always a tone of self hate and self doubt with the left what's up with that?

Re the ships, probably where they are fueled so I would guess roughly 40% in the UK 60% in China (retuning lighter so less fuel burnt)

Re the manufactured goods, where they are produced.
But I would argue we don't import more goods today than we did in 1973
In 1973 we imported more or less all the oil we use
Sure plastic toys from China were not a thing but how much energy do you think it took to produce pipe process that crude the literally 500 million barrel a year we imported?

The thread is FF usage, Im not sure C02 can directly be used to say FF has peaked in the uk because Gas is far cleaner than coal. Im sure it has peaked, But when and by how much? I think someone would have to convert coal, gas, oil to kwh to see when FF kwh peaked.

NatGas shot up in 1970 so that would mean less c02 but not less FF usage.


// I somehow forgot about Nuclear, so as long as the plants stay up we could never reach 1970 usage again. So discounting any new Nuclear the next peak for oil and gas from 1995 to now seems to be around 2005.// You should edit the first post to make it clear you mean world FF not uk.


Uk... Peak oil was 1970, Peak natGas consumption was 2004, Peak Coal may have been 1965 that where the chart i found starts.

Electricity Production in United Kingdom reached 21,784 GWh in Apr 2019, compared with 23,036 GWh in the previous month. Electricity Production data of United Kingdom is updated monthly averaging at 27,379 GWh from Jan 1997 to Apr 2019. The data reached an all-time high of 37,831 GWh in Mar 2004 and a record low of 19,812 GWh in Jun 2018.

https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-kingdom/natural-gas-consumption

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

It's accounting tricks
The cost to the hydrogen producer might be low
But since you the consumer is paying for all of this it's payments out of your pocket

The hydrogen plants sells you a unit of electricity for £50/MWh
It purchased 3 units of electricity for £0
But you as the consumer had to pay £50/MWh for those three units to be generated

The cost is a minimum £150/MWh

You want to be in a situation you don't curtail nor do syn fuels or you do so for an absolute minimum. So mass interconntors before syn fuels

The consumer is already paying for curtailment so why do you include that in the cost?

Why not pay generators the curtailment payment +5% for any energy diverted to chemical storage? It's extra income for the generator & the hydrogen plant pays virtually nothing for energy.

Why is that an accounting trick if everyone wins?

zeupater

1961Nick wrote: »

The consumer is already paying for curtailment so why do you include that in the cost?

Why not pay generators the curtailment payment +5% for any energy diverted to chemical storage? It's extra income for the generator & the hydrogen plant pays virtually nothing for energy.

Why is that an accounting trick if everyone wins?

Hi

As per my previous post (#46) ... why pay anything above the current curtailment rate as it's pretty generous anyway .... replacing curtailment payments with a divert to storage scheme with equivalent compensatory payments makes ample sense to me ... I wouldn't expect the nuclear or FF industries to have a positive reaction to the idea though! ...

HTH
Z

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

The consumer is already paying for curtailment so why do you include that in the cost?

Why not pay generators the curtailment payment +5% for any energy diverted to chemical storage? It's extra income for the generator & the hydrogen plant pays virtually nothing for energy.

Why is that an accounting trick if everyone wins?

How can everyone win by turning 3 units of electricity into 1 unit of electricity it only works with accounting tricks

You are saying 'it will be curtailed anyway' I am saying it won't be because we have 5GW of interconntors roughly 5GW under construction 5GW likely to start soon start construction and 10GW will be built so it will be exported not curtailed. And new markets will develop for this electricity things like cheap rate extra heating.

If we get to a situation where we are over producing so much that there is a situation of curtailment then people will build even more interconntors to further away markets because it makes sense to use interconntors where if you put in 3 units you'd get back 2.9 units rather than 1 unit with chemicals dance


Also the chemical dance means you'd have to over produce by some 30-40%
If the UK needs 1,000 TWh for a population of 80m then you'd need to produce 1,300-1,400 units of renewables (300-400 units being lost in the chemical dance). So you've increased costs by 30-40% to generate 30-40% more units. This is before costing the hydrogen conversation and reconversion and storage infrastructure!!!!!!!!!! Can't you see this isn't close to cost free??

By comparison with mass interconntors you'd size to generate 1,010 TWh and import 250TWh and export 250TWh so net 1,000 useable

GreatApe

Okay since you lot don't seem to grasp the situation

Let's say the UK needs 700 TWh of electricity in 2050 and that you can build wind/PV power to generate 700 TWh annually with say 144GW of wind @50% CF and 80GW of solar @10% CF

This of course won't work because some times you will have too little and other times you will have too much

You have at least these two options


Option 1

Build 50 GW of interconntors to Europe and further too.
This means at times of excess you can export your excess let's say for £50/MWh and at times of need import your needs for say £50/MWh. Of your 700TWh generation you might export 200TWh a year and import 200TWh a year.

These interconntors would cost perhaps £50 billion and are pretty inert and will last many decades

Option 2

You do the chemicals dance
Anyone want to calculate how much wind and PV you'd need to get a net 700TWh when your chemicals dance is at best giving you 50% back and more likely 33% ?

The answer is a good deal more than the amount in option 1
So you are effectively building additional wind and PV infrastructure to get just 1/3rd of its output back

Anyway I don't know why I'm arguing about this. We already have 5GW of interconntors with some 8.2GW under construction or soon about to start. By the time any mass curtailment issues arise (perhaps around 2040) we will have more interconntors still.