The Alternative Green Energy Thread

joefizz

JKenH wrote: »

Stupidly when I first started thinking about getting an electric car I thought you could just buy your electricity with a credit card.

Its just been badly thought out, same with the connectors. Just going to !!!! people off.


Its the same with parking across the UK/Ireland some places you pay with cash, some places card, some places make you use an app and a different app from the last place that made you use an app, some its a bloody disc system. Its a complete pita and doesnt need to be.

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Just following up on an article on another thread, here are some interesting statistics from a week ago.

At 17.30 on 16 November when electricity demand peaked, wind was able to contribute just 4.5% of demand (1.9GW out of total demand of 41.6 GW). Solar had of course already shut down for the day. Gas contributed 55.5%, coal 6.0%, Imports 9.4% and nuclear 13.7%. Mention has been made of batteries charged from renewables being able to step in to eliminate the need for non renewable sources but from 10am on 16 November wind power did not get above 2.0 GW or exceed 5% of grid demand so there was never any surplus to charge the batteries. Wind had peaked the previous day at almost 10GW but at that time coal was still being burnt to meet demand so the opportunities to send to storage were limited and any overnight storage would presumably have been used up during the day.

I am a supporter of offshore wind and but its proponents have to be realistic that it is still a long way from being able to reliably respond to meet peak demand. I often think of the analogy of staffing. Wind is a volunteer who will help out when it suits him at minimal cost but he is not reliable and at the time you most need him he might not turn up - you have to plan based on that eventuality.

I recall reading somewhere that, planning for the future, wind should not exceed 30 % of total generation capacity as beyond that level the need for curtailment and back up generation makes it uneconomic.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2019-11-16&&_k=n9ilfz

The problem is price other than that offshore wind power is actually very good

You just keep installing wind until you exceed a certain curtailment level you deem too much

I'm not sure how much wind is curtailed in the UK at the moment but it's probably below 5%

Let's say we set a limit of 15% curtailment so we throw 15% away

With that much Curtailment we can probably go towards 60-70% offshore wind 30-40% mix of imports and natural gas


To take your volunteer analogy it's like having 12 volunteers and 50% are likely to turn up but it could be zero percent or 100%. In the event 12 turn up you tell two to go home. In the event 6 turn up you hire 4 temps for that day

Wind power is expensive but affordable so we will do a deep decarb with offshore wind (and existing and new nuclear existing of existing hydropower and existing and new interconntors). Hopefully it goes from expensive to affordable (£47 is still too expensive £30 is good below £25 is fantastic)

Also I suspect future wind farms can be built overclocked so they don't produce 40-45% capacity factor but 50-60% which will allow better integration into the grid.


But yes you are right about one thing a wind/PV world needs 100% thermal backups so we will need to pay for the gas plants to sit idle most the time to guarantee supply. That's just a cost we have to accept or we just keep using fossil fuels which is okay by me but I realise this is a minority position

GreatApe

Cardew wrote: »

Such treasonous remarks have no place in a forum dedicated to the glorification of all things RE;)

There doesn't have to be an extreme and realistically even if we wanted an extreme it's not going to arrive for 30-40 years

There are really only four options

1 Stick with what we got (this is actually the smartest decision but the idea of if it ain't broke don't fix it doesn't have a lot of supporters)

2 Go nuclear heavy (this would work. By heavy I mean 80%+ of primary energy needs) but has no public support and red tape means it takes 8-10 years in Europe while these Chinese do it in 4 years and a few months

3. Go wind/PV heavy (this would work but not 80% probably closer to 60% of primary energy not anytime soon)

Or #4 which is actually reality and perhaps the most reasonable which is do all of the above in a slow affordable practical way.

I'd say the UK is doing #4
We are build a few nukes we are doing significant offshore wind and we did significant wind and solar and are building significant interconntors to make it all work

Germany is trying #3 (by closing its nukes before necessary) but it too is realistic on path #4 which is a very slow deployment of wind/PV while keeping using its existing infrastructure for the next 20-40 years


Wind power is now successful enough that I am confident enough to say it will meet at least 10% of the world's primary energy needs. 10% sounds crap for zealot buts its a significant import achievement considering even oil only got to about 40% at it's peak no one tech or fuel has ever or will ever have 100% and no one is really planning for 100% bar forum debates

I take my hat off to the wind industry and the government that supported it
While not quite there it will make it into
And for the UK it's likely to go to at least 40% of electricity from onshore+offshore

EVandPV

joefizz wrote: »

Its just been badly thought out, same with the connectors. Just going to !!!! people off.


Its the same with parking across the UK/Ireland some places you pay with cash, some places card, some places make you use an app and a different app from the last place that made you use an app, some its a bloody disc system. Its a complete pita and doesnt need to be.

In Scotland, there is the Charge Place Scotland network with the vast majority of charging points currently free to use.
You can start a charge with either an app or an rfid card. Membership is £20 a year.

1961Nick

GreatApe wrote: »

There doesn't have to be an extreme and realistically even if we wanted an extreme it's not going to arrive for 30-40 years

There are really only four options

1 Stick with what we got (this is actually the smartest decision but the idea of if it ain't broke don't fix it doesn't have a lot of supporters)

2 Go nuclear heavy (this would work. By heavy I mean 80%+ of primary energy needs) but has no public support and red tape means it takes 8-10 years in Europe while these Chinese do it in 4 years and a few months

3. Go wind/PV heavy (this would work but not 80% probably closer to 60% of primary energy not anytime soon)

Or #4 which is actually reality and perhaps the most reasonable which is do all of the above in a slow affordable practical way.

I'd say the UK is doing #4
We are build a few nukes we are doing significant offshore wind and we did significant wind and solar and are building significant interconntors to make it all work

Germany is trying #3 (by closing its nukes before necessary) but it too is realistic on path #4 which is a very slow deployment of wind/PV while keeping using its existing infrastructure for the next 20-40 years


Wind power is now successful enough that I am confident enough to say it will meet at least 10% of the world's primary energy needs. 10% sounds crap for zealot buts its a significant import achievement considering even oil only got to about 40% at it's peak no one tech or fuel has ever or will ever have 100% and no one is really planning for 100% bar forum debates

I take my hat off to the wind industry and the government that supported it
While not quite there it will make it into
And for the UK it's likely to go to at least 40% of electricity from onshore+offshore

If we were to take wind power to 60%, what's the probability that we'd be able to sell the surplus rather than curtail it?

GreatApe

1961Nick wrote: »

If we were to take wind power to 60%, what's the probability that we'd be able to sell the surplus rather than curtail it?

The UK plan is ~40% wind (offshore + onshore combined) by 2030 so we don't really need to worry about 60% for more than a decade and the difference between 40% and 60% is massive

There is no way to avoid it wind will face Curtailment because well we curtail today in 2019 and we have nowhere near 60% of electricity from wind. When the wind blows hard and curtailment is necessary prices will fall to zero and other countries will happily import free electricity but the UK is unlikely to have more than 15GW interconntors anytime soon (we only have about 5GW today)

Before anyone gets too happy wholesale prices can fall to zero that doesn't mean as a retail customer you can buy for zero or anywhere close to it as most of what you pay isn't wholesale costs. Wholesale costs are only about 4p average but you pay closer to 16p

When the wind blows hard and demand is lower there will be significant Curtailment perhaps as much as half of wind farms turned off during those times. As a guess without digging up data if we produced 60% of energy from wind we may need to install 75% and curtail 20% of that.

It's as always a question of economics
Getting to 60% will be possible, even more is possible it's just a question of how much you want to pay.

Overall don't worry this stuff is slow it's going to be a decade before anyone has to worry about how to integrate 60% into the grid. More important question might be how are we going to expand the grid to handle 250% more power and energy when transport and heating is electrified. People don't like new overhead cables or converter stations etc in their back yards. Burying it is much more expensive both in cost and energy losses. A cable in the ground wastes more energy per mile as does an overhead line. Bear in mind most the cost of electric is the grid and distribution networks so someone smart better figure out a cheap effective acceptable way to expand the grid.

Again not a huge problem until beyond 2030

JKenH

When looking at the Octopus Powerloop scheme I noticed that Octopus EV also supply EVs on lease, with the e-Golf available from £201/month.

https://www.octopusev.com/charging

joefizz

1961Nick wrote: »

If we were to take wind power to 60%, what's the probability that we'd be able to sell the surplus rather than curtail it?

Very high...
..or it was before Brexit.
Have a look at the plans for the pan european network. Bold plans to take geothermal excess from Iceland and hydro excess from norway into the uk to complement nuclear from france and wind from holland already in existence.
Irelands wind excess sometimes goes to the uk and vice versa.
The more interconnectors the better as they generally only currently work one way so at the same time as we import excess geothermal and hydro we could be exporting more wind to france who in turn could shift their excess nuclear then to spain, germany, switzerland etc. Spain/portugal could get excess solar from morocco and so on. This movement of energy will allow more localised small scale stor in the form of batteries and infrastructure storage in terms of pumped hydro, compressed air etc etc.



Previously nation states have seen energy as a national security issue but its now really a global problem which requires global solutions where possible.


The bottlenecks are current infrastructure and the contracts to each separate provider prohibit this to a certain extent but that will change.
No amount of batteries (people really should research what not only what STOR means in linguistic terms but actual/reality terms) will help on the large scale as they are used as short term operating reserves locally.

joefizz

GreatApe wrote: »

It's as always a question of economics
Getting to 60% will be possible, even more is possible it's just a question of how much you want to pay.

Exactly! Im on the ferry to Liverpool, long day ahead, have a couple of hours work with me so will make a few posts perhaps on some of the trials and explain behaviour modification a bit more maybe. (its not re-education camps at the base of windfarms - economy 7 is behaviour modification).


Ive posted before about smart meters and rollouts etc. There were studies and trials done probably 5 years ago now where instead of e7 the day was split up into 4 time zones with the normal peak of 4-7 increased in price but iirc other time periods were reduced.

Anyone watching gridwatch will see the pumped hydro kick in during these periods...


Any uni specialising in electric power will publish their results and also the uk gov website usually has the national results published somewhere. Its just a question of searching out the actual data and not estimating or guessing.
Like Freakonomics the models and estimates go out the window when real people get their hands on stuff.



Anything that gets introduced will have been trialled years ago, anybody in receipt of subsidy for solar or batteries or heat pumps etc will be actually part of the future trials.
The current vehicle and home to grid trials for STOR are great examples of using us to see how people might react in 10 years or so when we have to start worrying about this stuff for real. Of course by then we need to have plans already implemented as its too late to worry about it later.

1961Nick

Time to baton down the hatches & get serious about our flood defences?

Countries will have to increase their carbon-cutting ambitions five fold if the world is to avoid warming by more than 1.5C, the UN says.

The annual emissions gap report shows that even if all current promises are met, the world will warm by more than double that amount by 2100.

Richer countries have failed to cut emissions quickly enough, the authors say.

Fifteen of the 20 wealthiest nations have no timeline for a net zero target.

Greenhouse gas concentrations break records
China coal surge threatens Paris climate targets
Musicians 'have to be proactive' on climate change
Hot on the heels of the World Meteorological Organization's report on greenhouse gas concentrations, the UN Environment Programme (Unep) has published its regular snapshot of how the world is doing in cutting levels of these pollutants.

The emissions gap report looks at the difference between how much carbon needs to be cut to avoid dangerous warming - and where we are likely to end up with the promises that countries have currently committed to, in the Paris climate agreement.

The UN assessment is fairly blunt. "The summary findings are bleak," it says. "Countries collectively failed to stop the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that deeper and faster cuts are now required."

The report says that emissions have gone up by 1.5% per year in the last decade. In 2018, the total reached 55 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent. This is putting the Earth on course to experience a temperature rise of 3.2C by the end of this century.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50547073