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Martyn1981 wrote: »So, my gut feeling,
Mine too, without even considering the figures but just thinking of how we can mop up spare power if it is offered at a cheaper rate. Immersion heaters, EVs, SSE's proposed pump storage scheme, process heat or refrigeration for industry/agriculture and that's just for starters.
I haven't looked at the Chancellor's statement in any detail (amidst the chaos) but electrical heating is only any good with decent insulation and can we rely on the large scale spec builders if there aren't also new regulations (previously abandoned by the current government)? Loads of new building round here and I can't see any signs of PV, I bet they haven't pre-installed wiring for EV chargers and I suspect there will be combi-boilers and no immersion tanks.0 -
I can't help thinking that good old-fashioned storage heaters have a role to play here - well, maybe not old-fashioned but at least the newer high heat retention models
There's no inherent reason why night storage heaters have to be charged at night and it's easy to envisage controls that will allow them to soak up power whenever it is cheap. Not the answer in themselves of course, and not as efficient as heat pumps, but I can see them playing a useful part of the mix as we transition to electric heating.0 -
HiI can't help thinking that good old-fashioned storage heaters have a role to play here - well, maybe not old-fashioned but at least the newer high heat retention models
There's no inherent reason why night storage heaters have to be charged at night and it's easy to envisage controls that will allow them to soak up power whenever it is cheap. Not the answer in themselves of course, and not as efficient as heat pumps, but I can see them playing a useful part of the mix as we transition to electric heating.
Possibly the case if you look at it from an individual property basis, but when consideration is given to the reality that the average dual fuel household consumes around 4x more energy as gas than electricity the size of the problem on a nation scale becomes apparent ....
Without the thermal energy multiplication effect that heat-pump technology provides, even moving the majority of UK households to exceptionally high insulation levels simply lines up a significant & unavoidable electricity supply capacity problem for the future.
Add to this the certainty that as the combination of EV & home battery charging plus resistance heating eats up the overnight surplus generation capacity the unit price differential between daytime & cheap rate energy supply will gradually align, so no more overnight cheap rate heating which considerably impacts household heating bills ....
When you look at the issue in these terms, there are only really two logical solutions ... either build far more generation capacity than currently planned -or- base household space heating requirements on technologies which can deliver a COP of well over 1, which naturally excludes any form of resistance heating, no matter how many 'space age' materials the salesman or marketing material claims they may contain ....
HTH
Z"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle
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Over the last week, other than a dip last Thursday night and Saturday night, it's been generating a reasonably steady 10 to 11 GW - about 30% ish of overall consumption.
Blow blow thou winter wind......
Some stats:Citing data from analyst firm Aurora Energy Research the group said that from last Friday through to yesterday wind provided 35.6 per cent of the UK's electricity.
The performance meant wind was the single largest source of power, beating gas on 31.2 per cent, nuclear at 21.3 per cent, 6.7 per cent from biomass, 2.6 from coal, 1.8 per cent from hydro, and 0.8 per cent from other sources.
Offshore wind alone generated 21.4 per cent of UK electricity last week, beating nuclear in the rankings.Offshore wind's contribution of more than a fifth of the electricity mix came from just 7.9GW of capacity. Under the new Offshore Wind Sector Deal announced by the government last week the industry has set a goal to deliver over 30GW of capacity by 2030.Mart. Cardiff. 5.58 kWp PV systems (3.58 ESE & 2.0 WNW). Two A2A units for cleaner heating.
For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.0 -
Martyn1981 wrote: »
For me the issue is that gas was frequently down to 5gwh so once wind goes capacity up by much more than this we will surely be into curtailment unless we can find something else to do with the power.
Which brings me to an interesting survey I was asked to complete today, not sure who for but they basically wanted to know if I would be happy with up to 20% hydrogen in domestic gas supplies. The questions seemed to suggest I might be expected to be very concerned about the perceived explosion risk?!I think....0 -
For me the issue is that gas was frequently down to 5gwh so once wind goes capacity up by much more than this we will surely be into curtailment unless we can find something else to do with the power.
And the 2GW of bio-mass that can be turned off, and the 2GW of French purchases that would be stopped, and the declining nuclear generation, and the small, but growing additional demand from EV's. So not really a problem when wind gen increases by 5GW's, more like 10GW's, which probably takes us to 5-10yrs from now and therefore we need to include lots more BEV storage/demand and the deployment of large scale grid demand which will most likely grow in step with cheap peak supply generation.
Basically, you seem to be basing your concerns on a single fixed metric - wind generation, but ignoring the additional multi issues that already exist, or are certain to exist within the time-frame of your concern.Mart. Cardiff. 5.58 kWp PV systems (3.58 ESE & 2.0 WNW). Two A2A units for cleaner heating.
For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.0 -
Martyn1981 wrote: »And the 2GW of bio-mass that can be turned off, and the 2GW of French purchases that would be stopped, and the declining nuclear generation, and the small, but growing additional demand from EV's. So not really a problem when wind gen increases by 5GW's, more like 10GW's, which probably takes us to 5-10yrs from now and therefore we need to include lots more BEV storage/demand and the deployment of large scale grid demand which will most likely grow in step with cheap peak supply generation.
Basically, you seem to be basing your concerns on a single fixed metric - wind generation, but ignoring the additional multi issues that already exist, or are certain to exist within the time-frame of your concern.
It is not really as concern, I think we need to go a lot more than even the 10 you mention before we end up with curtailment of anything like enough to impact the economics of wind.
However given that we are likely to see it start in 5 years (or perhaps a bit longer) isn't it worth speculating about how the 'free leccy' might be used. I can see BEV but perhaps more so with PV with a regular pattern, wind energy you might want to store for a week or longer and BEV 'storage' is more suitable for a daily cycle imo. However H2 seems to me to make perfect sense as it can be fed into the gas network and thus reduce CO2 directly up, initially up to the 20% ish that apparently appliances should be able to safely accept.
Obviously there is also pumped storage, battery and even a Norwegian connector for much bigger pumped hydro.I think....0 -
It is not really as concern, I think we need to go a lot more than even the 10 you mention before we end up with curtailment of anything like enough to impact the economics of wind.
However given that we are likely to see it start in 5 years (or perhaps a bit longer) isn't it worth speculating about how the 'free leccy' might be used. I can see BEV but perhaps more so with PV with a regular pattern, wind energy you might want to store for a week or longer and BEV 'storage' is more suitable for a daily cycle imo. However H2 seems to me to make perfect sense as it can be fed into the gas network and thus reduce CO2 directly up, initially up to the 20% ish that apparently appliances should be able to safely accept.
Obviously there is also pumped storage, battery and even a Norwegian connector for much bigger pumped hydro.
That's kinda what I've been trying to point out, it won't happen when gas hits zero, it'll happen when all variable supply hits zero, and it won't be free leccy, it'll be cheaper leccy, since more uses will be found for it as the price falls.
If you'll recall, a few years ago you followed 'cells' down the same rabbit hole with his claims that PV would become un-economic and eat its own tail due to oversupply.* But that argument was incredibly poor since it was based on lower PV leccy prices during the middle of the day in the summer somehow removing/destroying all annual profitability, and of course ignoring short term storage and BEV's.
*That argument was heavily based on the German example but ignored the fact that Germany (unlike the UK) uses a lot of coal generation which simply isn't as responsive as gas, and coal interests have a lot of sway over German policies. Plus of course Germany was, and still is, building out it's internal infrastructure for a better N/S transmission of leccy. The UK has seen some similar curtailment issues of wind where transmission build outs and upgrades follow behind off-shore wind deployments by some years as the National Grid has a policy of waiting in case new generation deployments do not get completed.
Regarding longer term storage, and minimum price stability, I do think H2 will come into play, and CAES and LAES, but perhaps bio-methane (as discussed on here a month or so back). If bio-gas can be produced at somewhere around 80% efficiency, then that gives a base price for leccy around £15/MWh (as gas is about £20/MWh), and whilst UK gas storage is quite small on a per capita basis compared to some of our European neighbours, it's still very big compared to leccy storage, so those storing gas could opt to buy bio-gas instead of FF gas if the price is right.Mart. Cardiff. 5.58 kWp PV systems (3.58 ESE & 2.0 WNW). Two A2A units for cleaner heating.
For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.0 -
Hi... However H2 seems to me to make perfect sense as it can be fed into the gas network and thus reduce CO2 directly up, initially up to the 20% ish that apparently appliances should be able to safely accept ...
I personally like the idea of hydrogen extraction from water as an energy storage medium, but for the process to be efficient you need to find on outlet for all of the oxygen which is produced as a co-product.
Roughly speaking, 56kWh of electricity would be required to split 10litres of water into 37kWh of hydrogen (33.3kWh/kg) with ~8.9kg of oxygen being the co-product, which we need to find a use for.
As discussed earlier, feeding the 56kWh through the gas mains could allow a co-gen domestic fuel cell system to produce ~25kWh of electricity whilst releasing ~25kWh.t to be used for space or DHW heating ... however, the source plant needs to find a use for the around 8x the mass of oxygen, so this likely involves using the oxygen to improve combustion (ie rapid oxidisation) efficiency in some process or other, importantly, doing this without the combustion process combining oxygen with nitrogen to create NOx as a by-product.
A well hoped for process theory to achieve this would be to increase the oxygen content in direct biofuel combustion energy generating plant to (thus increasing the process efficiency through achieving higher burn temperatures & reducing the nitrogen content) and using the plant & process as a focal point for carbon concentration & sequestration ...
Now that's the theory, all it takes is for someone to make it all work on a scale that is efficient & cost effective! ... easy really, that's why everyone's doing it in generating plant we see all over the place, or not as the case may be! ...
Another option could be to process water locally on a domestic scale and store both hydrogen & oxygen separately to be combined later through a home fuel cell system .... the problem here would include the words compressed, gas, safety, inspection, certification, competence & explosion ... all fine in a large scale professionally staffed plant -- but in the house, garage or a shed at the bottom of the average urban garden overseen by everyday folk, maybe not such a good idea!
Finally, as an aside, maybe an entirely separate mains gas network system could be laid to every property with a fuel cell co-gen system to supply oxygen, but the real-world cost would be ultra-prohibitive, so not much chance of that happening!
HTH
Z"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit. " ...... Aristotle0 -
Hi
A well hoped for process theory to achieve this would be to increase the oxygen content in direct biofuel combustion energy generating plant to (thus increasing the process efficiency through achieving higher burn temperatures & reducing the nitrogen content) and using the plant & process as a focal point for carbon concentration & sequestration ...
HTH
Z
Morning. Putting aside CCS, I recall that a use for CAES is to improve the efficiency of thermal generation, so more bang for less fuel buck, so I assume that adding O2 would have the same effect as adding more air. Does that make sense?
So, something I hadn't thought about was the O2 side of the equation giving an additional boost from H2 production as you point out. Nice.Mart. Cardiff. 5.58 kWp PV systems (3.58 ESE & 2.0 WNW). Two A2A units for cleaner heating.
For general PV advice please see the PV FAQ thread on the Green & Ethical Board.0
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