Scotland, 100% Renewable energy reliant soon!

Solarchaser

Yep in fact, make it 30 huge batteries, surrounded by a lovely field of wind turbines to remove the blot of the landscape that hunterston is.
What a fitting end .
Love it

GreatApe

Solarchaser wrote: »

Yep in fact, make it 30 huge batteries, surrounded by a lovely field of wind turbines to remove the blot of the landscape that hunterston is.
What a fitting end .
Love it

Batteries won't work for bulk storage

To cover just five days of your nuclear output you'd need 250GWh of batteries
That's more batteries than the planet produces in a single year not to mention it would cost you $50 billion dollars to buy at $200/KWh that's nearly $10,000 each per head of Scottish population men women and children

More realistic is you'll just close the nukes and go from a net electricity exporter to about zero net exports and build a CCGT for backup

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

Not worth its own thread

But the Scots have a plan to build a huge pumped hydro project

1.5GW power 30GWh storage

Hasn't really got anywhere

Good or bad is debatable but it's clearly not economic as it stands

Better and more electrically efficient to build an additional 1.5 GW link to Norway than to build such a pumped hydropower system

In fact it looks like pumped hydro is dead there isn't much of an economic case
And like nuclear what killed it was gas fired power stations

I'd support state owned pumped hydro storage. It wouldn't disrupt the existing economics of the energy market & it would enable more RE to be deployed. It seems like a better idea than 37 new state owned wind farms going into competition with the existing wind sector.

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

I'd support state owned pumped hydro storage. It wouldn't disrupt the existing economics of the energy market & it would enable more RE to be deployed. It seems like a better idea than 37 new state owned wind farms going into competition with the existing wind sector.

They are too expensive and they consume electricity and energy

It's not a good idea

It's better to build another link to Norway and that can act as s pumped hydropower
However in that instance it's closer to 95% efficient rather than 80%
Plus the amount of storage is vastly more

The proposed pumped hydro in Scotland while big is only upto 20 hours storage
A cable to Norway could act as days weeks even months of storage and discharging
Much more useful

1 link to Norway is under construction
Another Norway Scotland link was agreed but Norway is getting cold feet in that one for some reason. Nicola sturgeon should send them a sturgeon as a gift to try and persuade the Norwegians to go ahead with it. That one line is equal to 35% of Scotland's demand both in and out

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

They are too expensive and they consume electricity and energy

It's not a good idea

It's better to build another link to Norway and that can act as s pumped hydropower
However in that instance it's closer to 95% efficient rather than 80%
Plus the amount of storage is vastly more

The proposed pumped hydro in Scotland while big is only upto 20 hours storage
A cable to Norway could act as days weeks even months of storage and discharging
Much more useful

1 link to Norway is under construction
Another Norway Scotland link was agreed but Norway is getting cold feet in that one for some reason. Nicola sturgeon should send them a sturgeon as a gift to try and persuade the Norwegians to go ahead with it. That one line is equal to 35% of Scotland's demand both in and out

I didn’t say the storage had to be in Scotland.....just that the state should invest in pumped hydro. No reason why it couldn’t be in Norway if that provides more value for money.

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

I didn’t say the storage had to be in Scotland.....just that the state should invest in pumped hydro. No reason why it couldn’t be in Norway if that provides more value for money.

In Norway they wouldn't be building pumped hydropower

When Scotland has excess wind say 1GW excess then this can be sent to Norway where they reduce their hydropower output from say 15GW to 14GW. No water is actually being pumped uphill instead less is being pumped downhill

When Scotland needs power, they let more flow downhill so their output goes from 15GW to 16GW

So it isn't real pumped storage it is 'virtual' pumped storage
Much cheaper, more or less 'free'

England is building one link to Norway

Another from Scotland to Norway was agreed but they seem to be having cold feet might be built but perhaps delayed. hopefully it is built as it would be very useful. On top of these two link if another two could be built that would be great. 4 links with 5.6 GW capacity would allow the UK to integrate another ~7GW of offshore wind into the UK grid than without those links

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

In Norway they wouldn't be building pumped hydropower

When Scotland has excess wind say 1GW excess then this can be sent to Norway where they reduce their hydropower output from say 15GW to 14GW. No water is actually being pumped uphill instead less is being pumped downhill

When Scotland needs power, they let more flow downhill so their output goes from 15GW to 16GW

So it isn't real pumped storage it is 'virtual' pumped storage
Much cheaper, more or less 'free'

England is building one link to Norway

Another from Scotland to Norway was agreed but they seem to be having cold feet might be built but perhaps delayed. hopefully it is built as it would be very useful. On top of these two link if another two could be built that would be great. 4 links with 5.6 GW capacity would allow the UK to integrate another ~7GW of offshore wind into the UK grid than without those links

So the answer is to use public funds to build links to Norway & then leave the private sector to carry on financing & building offshore windfarms.

How do we cope with the occasional 72 hour Pan European wind lulls?

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

So the answer is to use public funds to build links to Norway & then leave the private sector to carry on financing & building offshore windfarms. ?

You don't have to use public funds but I am not against that
Offshore wind farms are becoming very capable
Another option is something they term a 'wind connector' which is a cable between two wind farms

Let's say Norway has a wind farm and the UK has a wind farm both of which go onshore as HVDC
Well you can run a cable linking these two wind farms and that cable would be significantly cheaper than a interconnector since you don't need the costly onshore conversions and links. These 'wind connectors' may also be useful in upgrading UK domestic grids

How do we cope with the occasional 72 hour Pan European wind lulls

As things stand there is no way to get rid of thermal capacity in the grid
But this isn't really a problem, we don't plan on getting rid of natural gas for at least another 2 decades so maybe something will come up. In the meantime the EU will just fill in solar/wind gaps with gas/coal/biomass and Interconnectors

Going to 85%+ fossil free in the grid is fine, don't need to get to 100%
Once the grid is at 85%+ then working on heating transport industry etc is more important
Can solve the other 15% of the grid some time after 2040

edgex

Martyn1981 wrote: »

That's so impressive, and they have done the right thing since they have a large neighbour who's desperate for any spare RE leccy.

What jumped out at me, was the point about moving on next to transport and heating, and given a high penetration of clean leccy they are perfectly placed to advance those other sectors.

They really seem to have embraced the advantages, and possibly established an employment replacement as N. Sea oil and gas declines?

Edinburgh-Glasgow rails electrified
Edinburgh trams are electric

"Around 75% of Scottish passenger journeys are currently undertaken on electrified lines."
https://www.gov.scot/publications/protecting-scotlands-future-governments-programme-scotland-2019-20/pages/5/



They have better building standards, particularly on energy efficiency, so the heating demand from newer build properties is less than that for England.

Martyn1981

edgex wrote: »

Edinburgh-Glasgow rails electrified
Edinburgh trams are electric

"Around 75% of Scottish passenger journeys are currently undertaken on electrified lines."
https://www.gov.scot/publications/protecting-scotlands-future-governments-programme-scotland-2019-20/pages/5/



They have better building standards, particularly on energy efficiency, so the heating demand from newer build properties is less than that for England.

Cheers, it's almost like they have a sensible and coordinated policy. Certainly makes England, and yes I have to admit, Wales too, look bad.

Interesting about the heating issues, I read a lot on here about people crticicising the idea of heat pumps, but they seem popular in Scandinavia, so more to do with the property (as you point out).


Perhaps the true potential is in setting out a working example that others can look to and say 'see, it's not that hard, and it works well'. Removing the fear of change is so important in gaining results.