Energy distribution (and electricity generation)

[hollus]

Covid, Johnson, elections, monopolies, national debt, Ukraine, lefties... let's leave out the politics, please. Deleted.

[Tommy Cookers]

this thread exists because ....

in the UK for 20 years 'they' have implied that a vital matter is 'decarbonisation' of electricity generation ... but ...
EVERYTHING (ie greenhouse gas removal in all manifestations of use of every type of energy) is the vital matter
broadly that is the 'Net Zero' now variously mandated eg the UK Net Zero by 2050
(though NZ ignores Global Warming-contributing direct heat effects eg heat lost in electricity generation and delivery)

the UK has progressed its NZ via effectively a 20 year consensus (NZ about 45% and electricity about 50% progressed)
but now everyone is pretending that this didn't happen - because there's a General Election
we're told to vote on 4 July for 'all decarbonised electricity by 2030' combined with 'no new fossil-fueled cars by 2030'
by people whose prospectus shows zero need for increased electricity production (mentions wave power though !)
despite the need to replace gas-fired heating with electric heat pumps

we're all using stuff like bio-fuels whose production is said to increase GHG emissions eg ethanol, palm oil
(btw UK animal-grade wheat bio-ethanol still exist at Teesside)
fermentation for ethanol produces CO2 which bizarrely when used as by product eg the USA treats as 'carbon capture'
(btw Drax wood-fired electricity is 2600 MW 80% carbon-free and their carbon capture now has permission again)
ok 'they' now recognise that agriculture is the biggest ghg emitter
(sevenfold population increase since 'their' 1850 means a lot of ploughing/plowing - now and forever)


there's still a 'try everything' policy in the UK (but no nuclear direct method of electricity production)
though pilot scheme tests of hydrogen-blend domestic heating have been abandoned ...
(the EU is to blend 6% hydrogen into natural gas - so the UK needs primary legislation to de-blend such imports)
but hydrogen to be made on an industrial scale by 'renewables electrolysis' is all the rage
eg in the NE a 100MW hydrogen plant to de-carbonise heavy/chemical industry (eg fertiliser but not steel ?)
there's 875 MW's worth of taxpayer-funding available (the Hydrogen Production Business Model)

and the National Grid says (to use the 'renewables gluts') they need 17 GW storage capacity (not batteries)
(though presumably they alread count our EV batteries wherein they will deposit and recover electricity)
eg a 50 MW plan of NE coast 'renewable' electricity making hydrogen and storing it in caverns (ex natural gas) ...
'burning & turning' gas turbine generation at times of high demand
eg a 50 MW air liquifaction/boiling plant with 6 hour duration

anyway NG plans nearly to double its cable mileage although ...
'Over-Planting' is also a new big thing - for wind farms and solar farms
OP means building-in more generating capacity - but not using all the energy available when conditions are ideal
ie the actual mean energy output will be increased without needing an increased cabling transmission capacity
handy - as cable orders now take about 8 years to completion
yes OP will reduce the number of potential blackouts

there's a big solar farm planned near to me - its battery is a joke
(and typically batteries are spec'ed eg for 2 hrs @ 350W per house)
if the mean continuous output is 18% of capacity that's 350W per house
my guess is 50% over-planted (they won't tell me)
over-planting of course costs correspondingly more in everything except cabling
and even in ghg terms UK solar power will cost at least double what Spanish solar power will
eg the 'ghg-breakeven' time due to the production ghg of the EV panels is maybe 3-4 years

[Greg Locock]

We do it better in Australia. Subsidise wind. Subsidise solar. Subsidise batteries. Subsidise new fossil fuel plants. Then since 64% of our current power is provided by coal which is only viable run as baseload and we don't (physically can't) have enough storage, we subsidise coal.

You'd think with all these subsidies power would be cheap. It isn't. So power bills are subsidised as well.

Oh well, it's the young uns as vote for these stupid policies, and they will be paying the subsidies off (in the form of national debt) for the rest of their lives.

The thing these nitwits forget is that it is not the maximum renewable/battery penetration that matters, but the minimum. Thus far in June the max was 58%, the min was 8%. That means if you want to get rid of fossil fuels you need 100/8=12 times as much renewable stuff as we currently have.

[hollus]

No politics, thanks. Too many goverments, too little engeneering here.

[Greg Locock]

Absolutely true. What each country needs is an engineered plan, not a mish mash of politically driven subsidies that encourage rent-seekers to develop the most cost efficient solution for themselves.

When this is done you end up with papers like the (pro renewable) Royal Society's one for the UK, which suggests that a true net zero non nuclear grid will need MONTHS of storage to get around rare but crippling dunkelflaute events.

https://royalsociety.org/news-resources ... y-storage/

Similar analysis for other grids suggests that several weeks of storage may be sufficient if you can import energy at scale, but I haven't seen any others based on 37 years of weather data.

My own modelling based on (only) 2 years of actual data from UK wind and solar farms suggest that the most cost effective solution before subsidies is a mix of solar and onshore wind and several days of storage, with no offshore wind at all. That's got big NIMBY issues (which to a large extent I agree with). That of course will fall over at least one in 37 years.

If you allow a gas peaker to operate 10% of the time the system gets much smaller and cheaper (50% from memory).

A grid that is wind+solar+storage , basically what Australia is proposing, will struggle to provide baseload power at night, and will have mad excesses during the day, sometimes.

[Tommy Cookers]

in the UK 36 million EVs will be the storage



NET ZERO and ....... GHG EQUIVALENCE OF ENERGY SYSTEMS

Net Zero (in proscribing global warming by greenhouse gases) ignores GW by other heat sources ....
ie generation prime mover 'cooling' and electricity transmission and electricity consumption
... with gas heating a 'houseful-unit' of heat engenders 20 'houseful-units' of global warming by GHGs ...
ie alternative heating methods and energy systems can be rated as global warmers in GHG-equivalent terms

but nuclear power is quite warming ..... maybe 3 GHG
1 unit of electricity costs 2 units of heat (3 counting the electricity consumption)
(nothing better exists - and nothing that produces electricity directly)

wind power is quite warming (locally anyway) ......
air mixing gives rather large (nighttime) warming effects and (onshore) CO2 emission from plants
ES energy storage (non-battery) will cost c.1 unit of heat to produce 1 unit of electricity

solar power (EV) has high production GHG and can warm ....
overplanting/regulation (electricity not taken) contributes a warming term offsetting/outweighing local cooling
ES will cost c.1 unit of heat to produce 1 unit of electricity

[Tommy Cookers]

Mr Dunkelflaute has been here again and again ..... (up to Friday 13th)
this year DF records for the UK have been broken
Sweden and Norway are now enraged, being charged 100 times the proper price for their own (hydro) electricity .....
because Germany has been buying it at the DF panic price
Norway says it won't renew the interconnector cable (it's due for renewal in 2026) - and Sweden similarly
the UK is accelerating its already-lavish decarbonisation of electricity and so looks stupid in this DF weather
when eg 75% of electricity is gas-powered, 4% wind-powered, and of course 0% solar-powered
the government is like a silly kid, implying that DF is caused by global warming (and so will be cured by decarbonisation)

the formerly private electricity grid(s) Electricity System Operator is now the National Energy System Operator NESO
NESO is sloppy and campaigning eg to pressure the regulator OFGEM on funding of grid capacity expansion
eg subsea Scotland-to-England Eastern Green Link 1 and Eastern Green Link 2
doubling grid capacity to decarbonise cars & heating is now 'only' 75% to be secretly funded by the electricity consumer ??
justified by the resulting billions reduction in 'curtailment' payments (those paid for generators not to generate)
... also very quietly Dogger Bank 3 electricity prices to be paid were retroactively raised (benefiting Danish Govt)

Scotland via Crown Estate Scotland has made many seabed leases on the back of high strike prices ....
NESO advocacy might lead to a stitch-up of English funds in compliance with these ....
which because Scotland has little shallow water demand the untried and hideously expensive floating wind farms
the (newish) HMGovt is dumping the Western Gateway (a Wales/SW England combo) ....
this was demanding floating wind farms and likely a Severn tidal power barrage


NESO is in love with everything 'energy' eg hydrogen - presumably the 'industrial' (which means Northern)
but the UK PMStarmer has now legitimised natural gas by calling it 'a 5% strategic gas reserve' and so ....
there's been actual developments apparently funding .....
of Allam-cycle (eg 55% efficient gas-powered generation with 97% carbon capture) for Redcar-on-Tees
handily this has been proven 'at scale' in LaPorte Texas over the last several years by NET Power
https://netpower.com/technology/
https://www.netzeroteesside.co.uk/project/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0423009536
and Redcar will have the UK's last blast furnace - so might fancy being hydrogenated
(actual steelmaking is now called by the Govt 'heavy steelmaking' - and so recycling scrap steel is called steelmaking)