The Alternative Green Energy Thread

ABrass

shinytop said:

michaels said:

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

Why is RE even being discussed? RE low points is a concern, but we have enough Gas and Coal to cover that if needed. Right now we're potentially in trouble because we might run out of Gas, and even if we don't we're going to be paying through the nose.

If only we had more RE to avoid us having to rely on this unreliable gas supply.

The high baseload price is largely down to gas prices. The high peak prices we are a seeing are due to an imbalance of supply and demand. There are several plants not functional at the moment, some due to planned maintenance, others unplanned shut downs. Normally this time of year there would be plenty of wind but this month it has been very low both here and in Europe. 

In the last month wind has provided around 12% of our generation. Last year over the same period wind provided 27% of our generation  and in 2019 21%, 19% in 2018 and 13% in 2017. In 2017 nuclear was providing 27%, in 2018 25%, 2019 21%, 2020 14% and this year 17%. This year wind has generated around 39% of installed capacity. 

We do rely now on more of our electricity coming from Europe and the high cost of imports is also driving prices. We are coping at the moment but the very high peak prices we are seeing is indicating the system is not coping as well as it should this time of year and in the winter months when demand can be 25% higher than at the moment there may be problems. 

The problem with relying on wind is that is is both intermittent and unpredictable. There have been several occasions this month when wind has been producing less than 1GW so if we tripled our current wind capacity to around 75GW we would still have only added 2GW to supply at these low periods. If by the time that capacity is online our electricity demand does go up by 10GW (to cover the increased load from electric heating and electric vehicles) then even with the increased wind capacity there will be still be an even bigger shortfall of 8GW during periods like this. So how is that shortfall made up? Storage you may say. There is 16GW of storage in the pipeline but that is short term storage and won’t keep us going through a sustained period of low winds unless there are alternative generation to refill the batteries. We are stretched as it is so where will that 16GW come from to go into the batteries? 

More RE will help but on its own, even with storage, it won’t be enough. On days when wind is only operating at 3-4% of installed capacity it alone can’t solve the problem. 

I believe green hydrogen from wind spill is supposed to be the solution that should be ideal to use with a lot of our existing natural gas infrastructure? 

Worrying I will sound like Martyn, more wind capacity and thus more spill will actually make the necessary infrastructure more cost effective so it would seem to be a transition problem rather than a long term problem and indeed if current gas prices were to become the norm it would no doubt also hugely improve the economics of such a wind build out.

Of course though it will still need storage which is already an issue.

Other point to note, highlighting the unpredictability of wind as these figures do also highlights that nuclear is not as suitable as gas as a compliment for wind because of its high fixed costs and lack of flexibility and (at least with the current aging fleet), lack of reliability.

Isn't is better to pay some high costs for energy security?  If wind/solar is as cheap as some say then it will offset these higher costs while displacing ff.  Think of it as an insurance premium.  At the moment, the house is on fire and we've forgotten to renew the premium.

Green hydrogen has not (afik) been tested on an industrial scale; nuclear has.

Nuclear has been tested, and found wanting. Hydrogen is fairly simple, make the gas, store the gas, burn the gas.

For production there's at least one 20MW plant here https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/worlds-largest-hydrogen-plant-in-fukushima-opens/

Storage I haven't got a clue but turbines can be built to burn hydrogen. It hasn't been proved to work cost efficiently yet, just like nuclear power.

QrizB

For anyone wondering where all the wind generation is:

JKenH

QrizB said:

For anyone wondering where all the wind generation is:

That was interesting. I wonder how September’s figures will compare. 

Your post prompted me to have a look at other data on the BEIs website and I was quite surprised by the stats in this table for average temperatures over the last 20years (click on the data tab).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1012960/ET_7.1_AUG_21.xls

Edit: sorry the table is too wide for me to screen shot it complete but I was very surprised how similar the temperatures had been over the last 5 years compared to the first 5 years of the millennium. 

michaels

QrizB said:

For anyone wondering where all the wind generation is:

What period are the Max and Min over - it would seem quite unlikely that 2 months out of 7 would be below the historic minima if it covers a long period.

As an aside I had this strange thought.  In general the amount of energy going into the atmosphere and the amount leaving the atmosphere must be in balance or else the weather would either get more and more violent calmer and calmer.  If there was previously a balance of energy in and energy out and we are now removing energy using wind turbines then could the amount of energy in the atmosphere be falling overall as we basically 'mine/extract' atmospheric energy?!

shinytop

michaels said:

QrizB said:

For anyone wondering where all the wind generation is:

What period are the Max and Min over - it would seem quite unlikely that 2 months out of 7 would be below the historic minima if it covers a long period.

As an aside I had this strange thought.  In general the amount of energy going into the atmosphere and the amount leaving the atmosphere must be in balance or else the weather would either get more and more violent calmer and calmer.  If there was previously a balance of energy in and energy out and we are now removing energy using wind turbines then could the amount of energy in the atmosphere be falling overall as we basically 'mine/extract' atmospheric energy?!

It all ends up back in the atmosphere as low grade heat, doesn't it?  

JKenH

Interesting idea. I wonder if anyone has investigated the damping effect of a wind turbine. I suspect it would be too small to be detectable outside the area in the immediate vicinity of the wind farm. It would certainly affect the area around it but how far away would that effect extend? 

A hurricane unleashes about 200 times the total electrical energy we generate in the world. We  only use around one ten-thousandth of the energy that reaches the planet from the sun so I doubt any energy we input or absorb will have a significant impact in the short term. The natural variation in the weather will mask our activity. 

Over a couple of hundred years it seems our activity can have a cumulative impact. 

QrizB

michaels said:

QrizB said:

For anyone wondering where all the wind generation is:

What period are the Max and Min over - it would seem quite unlikely that 2 months out of 7 would be below the historic minima if it covers a long period.

The data is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-7-weather

The methodology used is here (page 44 of the document):
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090129113604/http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file47740.pdf

JKenH

Electric wholesale prices down to zero!

Have gas prices suddenly come down or do we have some wind at last? Now some will say that’s an argument for more wind while others will argue it is our dependence on wind  that has been the cause of the recent price volatility.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2021-09-23&&_k=u7oake

michaels

JKenH said:

Electric wholesale prices down to zero!

Have gas prices suddenly come down or do we have some wind at last? Now some will say that’s an argument for more wind while others will argue it is our dependence on wind  that has been the cause of the recent price volatility.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2021-09-23&&_k=u7oake

I wish I had a battery - fill up 10kwh for free and sell it back for £160 per mwh?!

JKenH

Article from 2018. Prescient?

A new observational analysis using data from 10 European Union countries affirms the rather devastating conclusion that wind power installation “preserves fossil fuel dependency” because for every 1% increase in the installed capacity of wind power there is a concomitant ~0.25% increase in the need for more electricity generation from fossil fuels.

And, sure enough, the growth in natural gas production and consumption across the globe is expected to explode in the coming decades (EIA, 2016), nearly doubling in production (from 300 to nearly 600 billion cubic feet per day) between 2010 and 2040.

https://notrickszone.com/2018/04/30/new-papers-intermittent-wind-power-preserves-increases-need-for-fossil-fuel-energy-generation/