The Alternative Green Energy Thread

Thrugelmir

shinytop said:

Cardew said:

EricMears said:

michaels said:

I guess we will decide pretty soon that we can pay for Russian gas in roubles after all....

If the value of the rouble has dropped as much as news bulletins seem to be claiming,  surely paying for gas in roubles would be a huge cost saving ?

The Rouble has recovered from its huge fall in early March and is now trading against all the major currencies at the same level as it was before the invasion.

But the contract will be based on Euro or $ anyway, won't it?

Do you honestly think that the Russians care two hoots about a piece of paper. Demand for gas will start falling away soon. Putin is more likely to hold this card until the autumn now. Has far greater bargaining power then. 

markin

JKenH said:

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=7-days&start=2022-03-21&&_k=x94o8e

Interesting to see just how consistently low wind output has been over the last week, generating on average just 2.30GW compared to 16.28 GW from fossil fuels and 5.45GW from Nuclear. The totals for the week are 0.38TWh from wind compared to 2.72TWh from fossil fuels and 0.91TWh from nuclear.

For wind to replace fossil fuel usage we would need to add more than 10 x our existing capacity or we could build storage to take advantage of both intermittent wind and solar generation. 

If, say we had double the existing capacity of both our existing wind and solar we would then have been able to generate 1.42TWh. If we doubled it again then 2.84 TWh would have been generated, now only a mere 13.44 TWh short of our fossil fuel generation. At this stage we would need 13.44 TWh of storage to cover the shortfall if we closed all our FF generating plants. Tesla quote $1,235,890 for a 3MWh pack in California. 

We would need 4,480,000 of those. Let’s assume the price in the Uk would be £1m for a Megapack then the total investment in storage would be £4.48Tn. This seems a ridiculously high number so I hope I have got the right number of zeros. In addition to this of course we have added around 72 GW capacity in wind farms which would be £0.12Tn and 45 GW of solar at a cost of around £0.09Tn, (peanuts compared to the cost of storage). 

Or we could just make up the shortfall in generation by building an additional 4 HPCs at a cost of around £0.1Tn. So 4 new HPCs would solve the problem for half the cost of rolling out a 300% increase in wind and solar, let alone the mind numbing expenditure on storage that would be required to needed to deal with the intermittency problem that still remains with wind and solar. 

Imagine we built 12 new HPCs to replace our existing nuclear fleet with a capacity of 43.2 GW at a cost of £0.3Tn which meets our current needs. We would have the potential then to back those up with intraday storage of say 10 GWh at a cost of £0.0033tn (£3.3bn). We could service them in the summer when demand was less. Anything our existing intermittent renewables generated could be diverted to generating hydrogen. 

This is not intended as a pro nuclear argument, rather an attempt to understand the true cost of meeting our generation needs purely from renewables compared to our existing fossil fuel plants and the alternatives. 

I do hope someone will check my calculations, please, and let me know so I can correct them if  required and apologise if they are completely wrong. The storage figures just seem so horrendous that I find it hard to believe they can be right. If they are then goodness help us.

I would hope the cost of storage would be based on compressed air, liquid air, flow battery, super caps, ect, and be 80% cheaper, with lithium only being used for a day. But still a big cost.

ABrass

Coire Glas, 30GWWh for £1 Billion. Apparently we've already got too much intra day storage.

JKenH

markin said:

JKenH said:

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?period=7-days&start=2022-03-21&&_k=x94o8e

Interesting to see just how consistently low wind output has been over the last week, generating on average just 2.30GW compared to 16.28 GW from fossil fuels and 5.45GW from Nuclear. The totals for the week are 0.38TWh from wind compared to 2.72TWh from fossil fuels and 0.91TWh from nuclear.

For wind to replace fossil fuel usage we would need to add more than 10 x our existing capacity or we could build storage to take advantage of both intermittent wind and solar generation. 

If, say we had double the existing capacity of both our existing wind and solar we would then have been able to generate 1.42TWh. If we doubled it again then 2.84 TWh would have been generated, now only a mere 13.44 TWh short of our fossil fuel generation. At this stage we would need 13.44 TWh of storage to cover the shortfall if we closed all our FF generating plants. Tesla quote $1,235,890 for a 3MWh pack in California. 

We would need 4,480,000 of those. Let’s assume the price in the Uk would be £1m for a Megapack then the total investment in storage would be £4.48Tn. This seems a ridiculously high number so I hope I have got the right number of zeros. In addition to this of course we have added around 72 GW capacity in wind farms which would be £0.12Tn and 45 GW of solar at a cost of around £0.09Tn, (peanuts compared to the cost of storage). 

Or we could just make up the shortfall in generation by building an additional 4 HPCs at a cost of around £0.1Tn. So 4 new HPCs would solve the problem for half the cost of rolling out a 300% increase in wind and solar, let alone the mind numbing expenditure on storage that would be required to needed to deal with the intermittency problem that still remains with wind and solar. 

Imagine we built 12 new HPCs to replace our existing nuclear fleet with a capacity of 43.2 GW at a cost of £0.3Tn which meets our current needs. We would have the potential then to back those up with intraday storage of say 10 GWh at a cost of £0.0033tn (£3.3bn). We could service them in the summer when demand was less. Anything our existing intermittent renewables generated could be diverted to generating hydrogen. 

This is not intended as a pro nuclear argument, rather an attempt to understand the true cost of meeting our generation needs purely from renewables compared to our existing fossil fuel plants and the alternatives. 

I do hope someone will check my calculations, please, and let me know so I can correct them if  required and apologise if they are completely wrong. The storage figures just seem so horrendous that I find it hard to believe they can be right. If they are then goodness help us.

I would hope the cost of storage would be based on compressed air, liquid air, flow battery, super caps, ect, and be 80% cheaper, with lithium only being used for a day. But still a big cost.

Yes, hopefully storage costs will fall substantially but even if they do fall by 80% we are still approaching £1tn which is around 8 times the cost of the wind farms we are hoping to add. I would be only too happy to see us meet demand with renewables and avoid nuclear, particularly as we should be able to roll out the renewables much quicker but can we afford to? That would still be an investment of around £36k per domestic electricity consumer which spread over 20 years would be almost £1800 per household per year (as opposed to the £8000 per consumer per year my figures suggested). We are some way from seeing those technologies scaled up commercially and it is a big assumption that we can cut cost of storage by 80% and by when? These figures do not include grid costs. 

My exercise was simply to look at costs rather than promote a technology but I don’t see how we can look at the cost of replacing gas with renewables without including the cost of storage and then nuclear seems so much cheaper - unless my figures are wrong in which case I would love some one to rework them.

The figures may seem out of proportion to what we pay for domestic storage with our solar power/home battery set ups where we have seen the cost of batteries is of a similar order to the cost of the solar panel installation so just to get an idea of whether my £tns figure is of the right order I will work some costs through to go off grid with my existing electric consumption and keeping my oil fired central heating.

I have seen £6k mentioned for 16kWh of batteries coupled with say 8kw of solar power which would cost around £8-10k. If one were to go off grid relying on solar and we had a particularly bad winter spell and needed to store 7 days worth of solar (102kWh) it would only cost around £42k or 5 times the cost of the solar installation so around £50k in total. Also would our 8kw of panels be enough to build up a surplus over a few days to put 100kwh or so into our batteries in December? My 7.8 kw of panels generated just 63 kWh in December but the E-W orientation is not optimal and south facing panels might have achieved double this, but that would still only be around 4kw a day average given a poor December like we had. I actually used 1290 kWh in December (43kwh/day) or around 20 times what I generated so would have needed around 150 kw of panels to get through December if the solar were spread evenly through the month. To get through 7 days of next to zero generation I would need around 300kwh of storage on top of which I would probably need 300kw of panels to fill my batteries ahead of those 7 days so we are now talking about over £100k of storage and £300k of panels or around £400k. 

Now apply that to 28m households that’s £11.2tn if I have got my figures right. Commercial battery storage atm is of the order of £300/kWh perhaps 25% cheaper than domestic and commercial solar is around 50% cheaper so the cost would be  around £6.3tn. That’s without industrial and commercial use. 

Let’s assume for one minute those commercial rates could be scaled to domestic solar installations then my £400k investment comes down to £225k (that’s how I arrived at the £6.3tn above). My total consumption for the year is around 10kwh. Over a 20 year investment frame that’s £11,250 pa or 112.5p/kWh. 

Now these figures might seem totally unrealistic when one of our board members is already managing with around 9kwh of panels and 16kWh of storage (cost around, say, £16k, maybe 8p/kWh) to meet most of their  needs but what they demonstrate is that while that set up will perhaps be sufficient for (say) 90% of our domestic electricity consumption it is the last 10% that is incredibly difficult/expensive to cover without flexible generation. 

JKenH

ABrass said:

Coire Glas, 30GWWh for £1 Billion. Apparently we've already got too much intra day storage.

That’s about the same price per MWh as a Megapack. Intra day storage is easier to solve.

Edit: no sorry, it’s a tenth of the cost. That is beginning to make a lot more sense. Much better value than batteries and a 50 year life. Why are we bothering with batteries then?

Edit 2: that brings the storage cost down to around £450bn on my calcs plus £120bn wind turbines and £90bn plus infrastructure upgrades. Maybe £0.7tn or around 30 HPCs. 

Edit 3: correction now that I have found the mistake in my £4.4tn figure, then applying the same logic that £450bn becomes £75bn.

Cardew

shinytop said:

Cardew said:

EricMears said:

michaels said:

I guess we will decide pretty soon that we can pay for Russian gas in roubles after all....

If the value of the rouble has dropped as much as news bulletins seem to be claiming,  surely paying for gas in roubles would be a huge cost saving ?

The Rouble has recovered from its huge fall in early March and is now trading against all the major currencies at the same level as it was before the invasion.

But the contract will be based on Euro or $ anyway, won't it?

Yes!

However Putin was trying to insist that payment was in roubles; which presumably was the point Eric Mears was making.

shinytop

Thrugelmir said:

shinytop said:

Cardew said:

EricMears said:

michaels said:

I guess we will decide pretty soon that we can pay for Russian gas in roubles after all....

If the value of the rouble has dropped as much as news bulletins seem to be claiming,  surely paying for gas in roubles would be a huge cost saving ?

The Rouble has recovered from its huge fall in early March and is now trading against all the major currencies at the same level as it was before the invasion.

But the contract will be based on Euro or $ anyway, won't it?

Do you honestly think that the Russians care two hoots about a piece of paper. Demand for gas will start falling away soon. Putin is more likely to hold this card until the autumn now. Has far greater bargaining power then. 

No but I wasn't thinking of the Russians.  Without European money (in roubles, Euro, bitcoin or anything else) in addition to other sanctions, the Russian economy will collapse.         

markin

ABrass said:

Coire Glas, 30GWWh for £1 Billion. Apparently we've already got too much intra day storage.

"3m homes for 24hrs" so we just need 10?  https://www.coireglas.com/project

In one video they say we currently have 4GW and the NG think we need 40GW of storage by 2050.

Has it got the planning permission?

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60250f77169f1f1381bb3020/t/60a53f280a15fb41b5a01055/1621442352145/decision-letter-and-conditions-coire-glas-002.pdf

JKenH

markin said:

ABrass said:

Coire Glas, 30GWWh for £1 Billion. Apparently we've already got too much intra day storage.

"3m homes for 24hrs" so we just need 10?  https://www.coireglas.com/project

In one video they say we currently have 4GW and the NG think we need 40GW of storage by 2050.

Has it got the planning permission?

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60250f77169f1f1381bb3020/t/60a53f280a15fb41b5a01055/1621442352145/decision-letter-and-conditions-coire-glas-002.pdf

10 needed for 24 hours if we only use 10kwh per day at the time it is needed but that’s just domestic use. I’ll try and have a look to see how much of our consumption is domestic. If we wanted sufficient storage for a 7 day stilling event we would need 70 of those for domestic use plus whatever industry needs less whatever nuclear, biomass, solar and exports were producing. 

markin

Nuclear fusion breakthrough: 'Holy grail' of power production closer to reality after UK start-up develops new technique for accelerating fuel at 200 times the speed of sound

"In terms of how this would apply to a large scale nuclear power plant, the target containing the nuclear fusion fuel would be dropped into the reaction chamber before the projectile is launched downwards through the same entrance. The projectile would then catch up with the target, impacting it at just the right moment, creating a pulse of fusion energy. That energy is absorbed by lithium flowing inside the chamber, heating it up,' First Light Fusion explained. 'The flowing liquid protects the chamber from the huge energy release, sidestepping some of the most difficult engineering issues in other approaches to fusion. 'Finally, a heat exchanger transfers the heat of the lithium to water, generating steam that turns a turbine and produces electricity.' "

And then back down to Earth

"'With this result we have proven our new method for inertial fusion works and, more importantly, we have proven our design process. 'The design used to achieve this result is already months out of date. 

'As soon as we reach the maximum with one idea, we invent the next, and that incredible journey of discovery is what is so exciting.'

Having achieved nuclear fusion, the team is now planning a 'gain' experiment, in which more energy is put out than in.

But the firm doesn't think it will be long before it has a working nuclear fusion plant up and running.

'First Light is working towards a pilot plant producing ~150 MW of electricity and costing less than $1 billion in the 2030s,' it said."