The Alternative Green Energy Thread

ABrass

QrizB said:

ABrass said:

Just for interest, are we adding more Solar power generation to the grid than we are electric vehicle demand?

A BEV travelling 10000 miles/yr at 0.25kWh/mile will need 2500kWh.

The pending round of CfD auctions will be for approx. 10GW of renewable generation, mostly wind. Wind is delivering something like a 47% capacity factor over the year (link but a bit out of date), so that 10GW will deliver 40TWh per year, enough to fuel 16 million BEVs.

Based on that I think we're adding renewable capacity faster than we're buying BEVs.

So we'll be eliminating the equivalent of half the cars on the road in the UK with that one round of renewables. It helps put the complaints about how much energy we'll need in perspective.

JKenH

I don’t really want to get into the argument about efficiency just here but on my calculations that 40TWh at a more realistic 2.5miles/kWh from the plug would just cover your additional 10m vehicles with nothing to spare. Let’s put that to one side though and look at it in two parts. 

If you build enough new wind farms to supply 40TWh of generation then you will displace 40TWh of coal and gas. In the last 12 months much of it under lockdown we have burnt 4.7TWh of coal and 107.7 TWh of gas. So we will still have to burn 72TWh of fossil fuels even if demand stays at current levels. That helps with our plan to clean up the grid but we still have a long way to go.

We then add 10m vehicles to the grid and we are back to square one. Where does the electricity come from to power those? Renewables and nuclear are already 72 TWh short of meeting existing demand so we will have to burn an additional 40TWh (or 24TWh on your figures) of gas to power the new EVs added to the fleet. 

Whichever way you look it at adding more EVs requires an equivalent amount of fossil fuel generation over what would be needed if we stayed with ICEVs. In fact it’s worse than that because that additional 40TWh of wind (an increase of around two thirds on the last 12 months wind) that is being built out is intermittent so we will have some days when we have 10GW, some days more, and other days like today when we might only have around 1.5 GW extra. People are still going to want to charge their cars so we will need an extra 8.5 GW of gas/coal to meet the extra 10GW of demand so we need even more fossil fuel or nuclear capacity.

Edit: “increase in” changed to “amount of”

ABrass

New car sales in the UK are 2.3 million a year. So assuming we've magically started buying only EVs that's four years production for a total of around £200 million pounds of funding.

So, in this absurd case, we're still four years down the line, by which time there'll already be another two batches of wind coming on stream as CfD auctions are every two years.

Since wind is only getting cheaper and more reliable, the future is looking bright.

JKenH

ABrass said:

New car sales in the UK are 2.3 million a year. So assuming we've magically started buying only EVs that's four years production for a total of around £200 million pounds of funding.

So, in this absurd case, we're still four years down the line, by which time there'll already be another two batches of wind coming on stream as CfD auctions are every two years.

Since wind is only getting cheaper and more reliable, the future is looking bright.

The 16m EVs was not my figure (I was simply responding to it) but the Climate Change Committee suggested a target of 23m electric cars by 2032.

ABrass

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

New car sales in the UK are 2.3 million a year. So assuming we've magically started buying only EVs that's four years production for a total of around £200 million pounds of funding.

So, in this absurd case, we're still four years down the line, by which time there'll already be another two batches of wind coming on stream as CfD auctions are every two years.

Since wind is only getting cheaper and more reliable, the future is looking bright.

The 16m EVs was not my figure (I was simply responding to it) but the Climate Change Committee suggested a target of 23m electric cars by 2032.

So, three years worth of wind allocation under contract for difference at current rates. Spread over 11 years. I don't think that's something to be concerned by.

Solarchaser

If there are all new Bev's coming in, displacing Fossil fuel vehicles, I wonder how much energy is saved by not powering as many refineries, or for shortened shifts as obviously the demand for ff's will decrease, burning ff's on drilling rigs etc, the helicopters that fly rig workers back and forth....

I'm also surprised there is no mention of curtailment of wind, or using the battery storage that's online or coming online.

One might wonder, were one so inclined, why companies like octopus etc offer cheaper tarrifs at certain times of day 🤔 

JKenH

Mounting fears of a 1970s-style three-day week as Britain's energy crunch deepens

Mr Moffatt* said the British Government had failed to come to terms with the implications of greater reliance on intermittent renewable power, especially since it was also phasing out coal and running down nuclear power. 

More offshore wind and solar, coupled with the switch to electric vehicles, requires large amounts of gas on tap for flexible "peaker" plants able to respond with quick dispatchable power at certain times.

Large strategic gas reserves become even more critical under a net-zero strategy, not less - at least in the first phase up to the mid-2030s. 

Edit: link attached 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/19/mounting-fears-1970s-style-three-day-week-britains-energy-crunch/

* Clive Moffatt, a gas consultant and former adviser to the Government on energy security

michaels

JKenH said:

Mounting fears of a 1970s-style three-day week as Britain's energy crunch deepens

Mr Moffatt* said the British Government had failed to come to terms with the implications of greater reliance on intermittent renewable power, especially since it was also phasing out coal and running down nuclear power. 

More offshore wind and solar, coupled with the switch to electric vehicles, requires large amounts of gas on tap for flexible "peaker" plants able to respond with quick dispatchable power at certain times.

Large strategic gas reserves become even more critical under a net-zero strategy, not less - at least in the first phase up to the mid-2030s. 

Edit: link attached 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/19/mounting-fears-1970s-style-three-day-week-britains-energy-crunch/

* Clive Moffatt, a gas consultant and former adviser to the Government on energy security

Is the problem a lack of supply or a price crunch?  Even with loads of storage if the international price of gas rises then it costs more to use that gas for generation or fertiliser or whatever as it is the current price of the gas that matters, not what it cost when the storage was filled.

JKenH

michaels said:

JKenH said:

Mounting fears of a 1970s-style three-day week as Britain's energy crunch deepens

Mr Moffatt* said the British Government had failed to come to terms with the implications of greater reliance on intermittent renewable power, especially since it was also phasing out coal and running down nuclear power. 

More offshore wind and solar, coupled with the switch to electric vehicles, requires large amounts of gas on tap for flexible "peaker" plants able to respond with quick dispatchable power at certain times.

Large strategic gas reserves become even more critical under a net-zero strategy, not less - at least in the first phase up to the mid-2030s. 

Edit: link attached 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/09/19/mounting-fears-1970s-style-three-day-week-britains-energy-crunch/

* Clive Moffatt, a gas consultant and former adviser to the Government on energy security

Is the problem a lack of supply or a price crunch?  Even with loads of storage if the international price of gas rises then it costs more to use that gas for generation or fertiliser or whatever as it is the current price of the gas that matters, not what it cost when the storage was filled.

Both. We have already seen how prices have rocketed but compared to the rest of Europe we are critically low on stored gas.
From the same article: 
...the UK has less than nine terawatt hours of storage compared to 75 terawatt hours in the Netherlands (with a quarter of the population). Dutch storage is nevertheless unusually low for this time of the year at 52pc of capacity, compared with 85pc to 90pc normally. The stocks are 113 terawatt hours in France, 148 in Germany and 166 in Italy.

shinytop

Didn't anyone do a "what happens if there's an increase in demand, there's no wind/sun and gas prices go up" spreadsheet before we decided to rely so much on RE?  Or maybe they did and just hoped for the best...