The Alternative Green Energy Thread

JKenH

michaels said:

90GW more is 4.5x current capacity - and current plus nuclear is already 100% of demand at some points.

So basically we are looking at moments where supply is 5x demand and days where supply is 3 x demand.  Not sure what average spill would be but say it is 50% under CfD that means that each used unit of generation costs double the CfD - or be it this might be around 10p pr kwh which doesn't sound too bad.

It also means there would be an awful lot of 'free but intermittent' electricity.  Not sure how that impacts the economics of short and medium term storage.

Problem seems to be that you end up driving so much gas out of the market that the fixed cost of gas generation skyrockets.
(Assuming you still need just as much capacity for those wind free periods - perhaps a bit less because intraday storage probably smooths the day/night but more EVs and Heat Pumps offsets this; imports from Africa etc might help but a lot of nearby Europe might see similar renewals generation as us so won't be able to make up the shortfall)

I think we need to make the distinction between capacity and generation. If we currently have a little over 20Gw capacity and increase it to 90GW then that would have taken wind and solar’s generation on a day like Tuesday to around 7.2 GW. Gas and coal averaged 21.6 GW so that still leaves a shortfall of 16GW. 

Monday and Wednesday were also pretty poor days so there would also have been a shortfall those days as well so not much opportunity to time shift or top up storage - the lowest the contribution from gas and coal fell to in the early hours of Tuesday was around 18.8GW.

michaels

JKenH said:

michaels said:

90GW more is 4.5x current capacity - and current plus nuclear is already 100% of demand at some points.

So basically we are looking at moments where supply is 5x demand and days where supply is 3 x demand.  Not sure what average spill would be but say it is 50% under CfD that means that each used unit of generation costs double the CfD - or be it this might be around 10p pr kwh which doesn't sound too bad.

It also means there would be an awful lot of 'free but intermittent' electricity.  Not sure how that impacts the economics of short and medium term storage.

Problem seems to be that you end up driving so much gas out of the market that the fixed cost of gas generation skyrockets.
(Assuming you still need just as much capacity for those wind free periods - perhaps a bit less because intraday storage probably smooths the day/night but more EVs and Heat Pumps offsets this; imports from Africa etc might help but a lot of nearby Europe might see similar renewals generation as us so won't be able to make up the shortfall)

I think we need to make the distinction between capacity and generation. If we currently have a little over 20Gw capacity and increase it to 90GW then that would have taken wind and solar’s generation on a day like Tuesday to around 7.2 GW. Gas and coal averaged 21.6 GW so that still leaves a shortfall of 16GW. 

Monday and Wednesday were also pretty poor days so there would also have been a shortfall those days as well so not much opportunity to time shift or top up storage - the lowest the contribution from gas and coal fell to in the early hours of Tuesday was around 18.8GW.

I think we are agreeing - the cost per unit for wind is not the problem even with spill but we will gradually reduce the number of days where gas generation is required which means the cost of the gas used and the CO2 produced also decline - but the problem is there would still be  days/periods where we need lots of gas generation and then the fixed costs of keeping the Power Stations available but only using them a few days a year becomes prohibitive.

JKenH

Norway faces reckoning over energy crisis ‘war profits’

No wonder Norway can offer such generous incentives for EVs.

Before the pandemic, Norway brought in about £24bn in oil and gas revenues annually. But that is now expected to surge above £100bn for the whole of 2022 and to £119bn in 2023. That is equivalent to nearly £32,000 each for the country’s 5.4 million citizens over two years.

No wonder Norway seeks to assuage its guilty conscience by sponsoring EV development but sooner or later it will have to face up to the reality of net zero.

In the longer term, Norway has yet to decide what to do about its oil and gas industry. Increasingly strident young activists are calling for the entire sector to be wound down by 2050, in line with United Nations “net zero” targets.

Eventually losing the state’s huge petroleum revenues would also make sustaining Norway’s big state more difficult, with future green energy technologies unlikely to yield the same profits, according to Juel.

This is partly why Frisch, the oil and gas consultant, argues that those who want the oil and gas industry completely gone are “not living in the real world”.

“Many are young people who have grown up in Norway after 1975 when we have had a strong economy and a high standard of living,” he adds. “They didn't see the things I saw in my childhood... when severe poverty was widespread”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/12/03/how-energy-bills-fuelled-norways-war-profits/

JKenH

https://bmrs.elexon.co.uk/generation-by-fuel-type

At 6pm today wind at 538MW was providing just 1.26% of our generation or 2.1% of fossil fuel generation and less than half of what the last of the no longer required coal stations are producing. I don’t know the total capacity of the UK’s wind farms but given wind was producing over 20GW a few weeks ago, it is likely it was operating at only around 2% of its full potential. That makes a bit of a mockery of this quote last month (my bold).

RenewableUK’s chief executive Dan McGrail said:

Generating more than 20 GW of electricity for the first time represents a new milestone for wind energy in Britain. The fact that we’ve smashed the last record within the space of a week shows that wind is consistently generating vast amounts of clean power and becoming the backbone of our modern energy system.

https://electrek.co/2022/11/03/uk-wind-energy-generation-record-20-gw/

When will this government, obsessed as it is with its Net Zero sound bites wake up and realise that renewables just can’t cut it on their own? When the chips are down and we really need reliable generation it fails miserably and even if we quadruple the number of wind turbines it will only be able to supply 5% of our needs in this type of situation.

Perhaps someone will reply and say it will all be fine once we have storage and at the same time provide a realistic calculation of what the cost of that storage will be. 

Edit: 

Definition: backbone - the chief support of a system or organization.

Where is the support from wind today? 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=backbone+meaning&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari

1961Nick

michaels said:

JKenH said:

michaels said:

90GW more is 4.5x current capacity - and current plus nuclear is already 100% of demand at some points.

So basically we are looking at moments where supply is 5x demand and days where supply is 3 x demand.  Not sure what average spill would be but say it is 50% under CfD that means that each used unit of generation costs double the CfD - or be it this might be around 10p pr kwh which doesn't sound too bad.

It also means there would be an awful lot of 'free but intermittent' electricity.  Not sure how that impacts the economics of short and medium term storage.

Problem seems to be that you end up driving so much gas out of the market that the fixed cost of gas generation skyrockets.
(Assuming you still need just as much capacity for those wind free periods - perhaps a bit less because intraday storage probably smooths the day/night but more EVs and Heat Pumps offsets this; imports from Africa etc might help but a lot of nearby Europe might see similar renewals generation as us so won't be able to make up the shortfall)

I think we need to make the distinction between capacity and generation. If we currently have a little over 20Gw capacity and increase it to 90GW then that would have taken wind and solar’s generation on a day like Tuesday to around 7.2 GW. Gas and coal averaged 21.6 GW so that still leaves a shortfall of 16GW. 

Monday and Wednesday were also pretty poor days so there would also have been a shortfall those days as well so not much opportunity to time shift or top up storage - the lowest the contribution from gas and coal fell to in the early hours of Tuesday was around 18.8GW.

I think we are agreeing - the cost per unit for wind is not the problem even with spill but we will gradually reduce the number of days where gas generation is required which means the cost of the gas used and the CO2 produced also decline - but the problem is there would still be  days/periods where we need lots of gas generation and then the fixed costs of keeping the Power Stations available but only using them a few days a year becomes prohibitive.

What about using the surplus from the 90GW to produce hydrogen & then burning that in converted CCGT power stations? Or better still, converted coal fired power stations?

shinytop

It will be fine once we have storage.  Storage of gas that is. 

I haven't heard anybody, anywhere, ever come up with a practical, deliverable and costed non-ff or nuclear solution for this.  Weights in mine shafts or flooding large parts of Scotland isn't going to work. 

 

70sbudgie

1961Nick said:

michaels said:

JKenH said:

michaels said:

90GW more is 4.5x current capacity - and current plus nuclear is already 100% of demand at some points.

So basically we are looking at moments where supply is 5x demand and days where supply is 3 x demand.  Not sure what average spill would be but say it is 50% under CfD that means that each used unit of generation costs double the CfD - or be it this might be around 10p pr kwh which doesn't sound too bad.

It also means there would be an awful lot of 'free but intermittent' electricity.  Not sure how that impacts the economics of short and medium term storage.

Problem seems to be that you end up driving so much gas out of the market that the fixed cost of gas generation skyrockets.
(Assuming you still need just as much capacity for those wind free periods - perhaps a bit less because intraday storage probably smooths the day/night but more EVs and Heat Pumps offsets this; imports from Africa etc might help but a lot of nearby Europe might see similar renewals generation as us so won't be able to make up the shortfall)

I think we need to make the distinction between capacity and generation. If we currently have a little over 20Gw capacity and increase it to 90GW then that would have taken wind and solar’s generation on a day like Tuesday to around 7.2 GW. Gas and coal averaged 21.6 GW so that still leaves a shortfall of 16GW. 

Monday and Wednesday were also pretty poor days so there would also have been a shortfall those days as well so not much opportunity to time shift or top up storage - the lowest the contribution from gas and coal fell to in the early hours of Tuesday was around 18.8GW.

I think we are agreeing - the cost per unit for wind is not the problem even with spill but we will gradually reduce the number of days where gas generation is required which means the cost of the gas used and the CO2 produced also decline - but the problem is there would still be  days/periods where we need lots of gas generation and then the fixed costs of keeping the Power Stations available but only using them a few days a year becomes prohibitive.

What about using the surplus from the 90GW to produce hydrogen & then burning that in converted CCGT power stations? Or better still, converted coal fired power stations?

It isn't new news, or hydrogen, but this technology isn't totally different. 
https://highviewpower.com/plants/#uk-projects-mob

I believe that what you suggested with hydrogen is also being developed (I can't remember which thread I read about it on). The problem with green hyrogen, is that it is so much in demand, burning it for energy generation is one of the least profitable uses. 

1961Nick

70sbudgie said:

1961Nick said:

michaels said:

JKenH said:

michaels said:

90GW more is 4.5x current capacity - and current plus nuclear is already 100% of demand at some points.

So basically we are looking at moments where supply is 5x demand and days where supply is 3 x demand.  Not sure what average spill would be but say it is 50% under CfD that means that each used unit of generation costs double the CfD - or be it this might be around 10p pr kwh which doesn't sound too bad.

It also means there would be an awful lot of 'free but intermittent' electricity.  Not sure how that impacts the economics of short and medium term storage.

Problem seems to be that you end up driving so much gas out of the market that the fixed cost of gas generation skyrockets.
(Assuming you still need just as much capacity for those wind free periods - perhaps a bit less because intraday storage probably smooths the day/night but more EVs and Heat Pumps offsets this; imports from Africa etc might help but a lot of nearby Europe might see similar renewals generation as us so won't be able to make up the shortfall)

I think we need to make the distinction between capacity and generation. If we currently have a little over 20Gw capacity and increase it to 90GW then that would have taken wind and solar’s generation on a day like Tuesday to around 7.2 GW. Gas and coal averaged 21.6 GW so that still leaves a shortfall of 16GW. 

Monday and Wednesday were also pretty poor days so there would also have been a shortfall those days as well so not much opportunity to time shift or top up storage - the lowest the contribution from gas and coal fell to in the early hours of Tuesday was around 18.8GW.

I think we are agreeing - the cost per unit for wind is not the problem even with spill but we will gradually reduce the number of days where gas generation is required which means the cost of the gas used and the CO2 produced also decline - but the problem is there would still be  days/periods where we need lots of gas generation and then the fixed costs of keeping the Power Stations available but only using them a few days a year becomes prohibitive.

What about using the surplus from the 90GW to produce hydrogen & then burning that in converted CCGT power stations? Or better still, converted coal fired power stations?

It isn't new news, or hydrogen, but this technology isn't totally different. 
https://highviewpower.com/plants/#uk-projects-mob

I believe that what you suggested with hydrogen is also being developed (I can't remember which thread I read about it on). The problem with green hyrogen, is that it is so much in demand, burning it for energy generation is one of the least profitable uses. 

I agree that green hydrogen is valuable at the moment, but that could change when the UK has 90GW of wind power & frequent periods of surplus generation. The choice becomes generate hydrogen or curtailment. Putting a value on hydrogen for electricity generation at the moment isn't easy because there aren't any hydrogen fired power stations. If it happens, they will operate when the grid is under stress & the marginal price of electricity is high - I believe the the price yesterday evening was around £2500/MWh. 

JKenH

Just wondering, how does the efficiency of burning hydrogen to generate electricity compare to using it in a FCEV? Obviously we don’t have either the quantity of hydrogen available or the infrastructure in place to support a mass rollout of FCEVs so it’s just a theoretical question. How would the cost of moving hydrogen in a national network from where it might be generated compare with moving electricity around?

1961Nick

JKenH said:

Just wondering, how does the efficiency of burning hydrogen to generate electricity compare to using it in a FCEV? Obviously we don’t have either the quantity of hydrogen available or the infrastructure in place to support a mass rollout of FCEVs so it’s just a theoretical question. How would the cost of moving hydrogen in a national network from where it might be generated compare with moving electricity around?

There are a lot of mothballed coal fired plants around that would surely make ideal sites for hydrogen production, storage & electricity generation? All the electricity supply/distribution infrastructure should already be there.