Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[Ross_K]

...Electricity is just ridiculous, can't see what that has to do with the Russians.

Peter

Gas-fired power stations.

Could be worse. Until February/March this year, here in Ireland, we were burning Russian coal in power stations like it's 1922 rather than 2022.

Sitting where we do in the North Atlantic, large-scale sea-based wind farms should be a no-brainer but it seems like the will to get it done just isn't there. Easier to keep plodding along, doing things the old way

[Hell Razor5543]

There is an off shore Scottish wind farm slowly coming on line that will, when at full capacity, have enough power to supply one million Scottish homes (so two thirds).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... l-62638500

[myglaren]

And the Russians stick two fingers up

Climate change: Russia burns off gas as Europe's energy bills rocket

They say the plant, near the border with Finland, is burning an estimated $10m (£8.4m) worth of gas every day.

Experts say the gas would previously have been exported to Germany.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Considering there's a bit of a gas shortage going on, wouldn't it make more sense to turn down the gas burners and turn up our all our lovely Gigawatts of wind generation a bit ? Oh.... hang on a minute......

gas guzzler.jpg

The dials never lie...that is that day/hour/second snapshot no denying. Another dial is needed at the right hand side for renewables storage, the building out of which should be wrapped up in any of the licence arrangements to construct wind and solar generation installations. Let's just call them "they" as we cant be sure who is responsible, (ESO, Offgem, HM Govt) but "they" should be switched on to building a grid with adequate storage for the security of energy supplies. It is patently obvious that without storage, wind and solar are subject to periods of feast and famine. Its an old old story, in times of feast, you put some into storage, so when famine inevitably happens, there is enough for you to survive!


“1.3 TWh of UK wind generation wasted” due to lack of grid-scale storage, developer claims

Regards Neil

[Peter.N.]

The Orkneys are producing more electricity that they can use and exporting some to the mainland, not as much as they could as the cable isn't thick enough.

Peter

[bobins]

The dials never lie...that is that day/hour/second snapshot no denying. Another dial is needed at the right hand side for renewables storage, the building out of which should be wrapped up in any of the licence arrangements to construct wind and solar generation installations. Let's just call them "they" as we cant be sure who is responsible, (ESO, Offgem, HM Govt) but "they" should be switched on to building a grid with adequate storage for the security of energy supplies. It is patently obvious that without storage, wind and solar are subject to periods of feast and famine. Its an old old story, in times of feast, you put some into storage, so when famine inevitably happens, there is enough for you to survive!

Regards Neil

Actually, they do lie and can only be used as a rough guide If you tally up all the supply (and buying and selling via interconnects) and look at the demand, you'll see there's a discrepancy - not much, but enough to show it's not entirely accurate. Also, they freely admit that the supply shown for solar supply isn't accurate because - at least for the purposes of that website - the info for solar supply isn't centrally aggregated.

[bobins]

.......but "they" should be switched on to building a grid with adequate storage for the security of energy supplies. It is patently obvious that without storage, wind and solar are subject to periods of feast and famine. Its an old old story, in times of feast, you put some into storage, so when famine inevitably happens, there is enough for you to survive!


Regards Neil

As a serious point - and not playing devil's advocate, if you've effectively got 'free' electricity being produced i.e. the turbines are turning and the sun is shining, but no one wants it - then is the 'best' form of storage to convert it to Hydrogen ? For 'Best' I'm including many factors - land use, ease of construction of plant, ease of expansion of storage capacity, lifespan of plant, ubiquity of stored product, cost, energy density, and so on.

[bobins]

Gas has always been the cheapest fuel by miles but it looks as though oil is marginally cheaper now. Electricity is just ridiculous, can't see what that has to do with the Russians.

Peter

The basic reason is the energy market is skewed (and screwed) so the wholesale price of 'energy' (electricity) is set by gas. It makes not a jot of difference that the cost of electricity generated by nuclear, wind, solar, hydro etc hasn't increased, the wholesale market price for energy (electricity) is set by the wholesale price of gas.
I think it's fair to say that the UK wholesale energy market is FUBAR'd on many levels

[NewcastleFalcon]

.......but "they" should be switched on to building a grid with adequate storage for the security of energy supplies. It is patently obvious that without storage, wind and solar are subject to periods of feast and famine. Its an old old story, in times of feast, you put some into storage, so when famine inevitably happens, there is enough for you to survive!

As a serious point - and not playing devil's advocate, if you've effectively got 'free' electricity being produced i.e. the turbines are turning and the sun is shining, but no one wants it - then is the 'best' form of storage to convert it to Hydrogen ? For 'Best' I'm including many factors - land use, ease of construction of plant, ease of expansion of storage capacity, lifespan of plant, ubiquity of stored product, cost, energy density, and so on.

A few column inches from the archives about storage, and yes I can see Hydrogen being used as a storage medium under those circumstances, possibly even the most likely. The round trip efficiency nowhere near as good as batteries but better for longer term storage.

Spoiler: show

The answer to your question 2 seems to be that electricity over produced by wind tidal and solar that would otherwise go to waste can be used to produce hydrogen and to charge batteries for later use.
There's a lot about it in the fully charged series.

This post from the Hydrogen thread covers the ground on Hydrogen as a storage intermediary in grid storage.

viewtopic.php?p=686057#p686057

Through the pages of this thread many examples have been reported, together with many informative vids from the likes of justhaveathink, and fully charged on the various storage options from grid scale batteries, hydrogen storage, and liquid air, to old coal fired power stations, large battery storage, hot rocks, molten metal, liquid air , gravity, flywheels, pumped hydro, flow batteries etc. etc

Round trip efficiency from electricity in to electricity out, capital costs, useful life , duration time and capacity for storage, frequency of charge/discharge, and expected number charge-discharge cycles all will most likely result in a mix of storage options evolving.

Regards Neil

Energy storage equally important as energy generation in any Energy Security Strategy.

Brief recap on what has been considered on the pages of this thread, and a new one which does a bit of a summary at the start

Link: New Energy Storage Tech Breathing New Life into old coal fired power plants

Link: Sodium Ion Batteries

Link: Energy Storage in Hydrogen does it beat batteries

Link: Hydrostor

Link: Hot Rocks

Link: Iron-Air Batteries

Link: Gravity Energy Storage

Link: Liquid Air Batteries

Link: Redox Flow Batteries

Link: Liquid Metal Batteries


to be added too

Regards Neil

Storage looks to be a money making business, with a business plan that works on the back of the ESO's own demand for balancing and other activities which I don't pretend to understand like frequency modification and inertia
as well as market speculation buying and storing low, and selling and discharging high.

Regards Neil

[bobins]

But is the realistic prospect of energy storage mainly only a two horse race between Hydrogen and battery ? Are there any other viable options ? I realise there are plenty of other ways to store energy, but which ones can be termed more than 'A nice idea' ?

[myglaren]

Depends largely on how it can be used and if it is personal or commercial.
Heating sand seems to be one way. Heat it up in summer and use the heat in winter.
Water too.

[Peter.N.]

Who thought up that brilliant arrangement and why?

Peter

[thorter]

The big problem for grid scale storage is the vast amount required. So far, battery stores have been aimed at stabilisation of the grid, that is minutes worth of capacity. Places nearer the Equator than UK (with 12 month solar availability) hope to achieve a few hours to cover nighttime demand, and this might just work. Unfortunately at UK latitudes, solar is nearly useless in mid Winter.

Wind generation suffers from gluts and extended famines. There can be low wind for a month even during Winter. Current UK daily electricity usage is roughly 750GWh, so with the planned transfer of heating and vehicles to electricity, we need say 2TWh (2000GWh) of supply per day (by 2035), and in times of low wind, storage would likely need to supply half of that, say resulting in a total of at least 20TWh.

Installing storage at the rate of 1GWh each day (a vast store whether battery or hydrogen), this would take 20,000 days or over 50 years! 20 million electric cars, each with a 100kWh battery would equate with 2TWh, so a tenth of what would be needed even if every one were completely emptied. How are they then recharged? How do we get 20 million charge/discharge stations? Multiply all that by 50 to get the needs of the developed world? Has any of this been thought through properly?

Modern wind farms have more that 40 years of operation. We would need to increase the number in the UK by 10 times in less than the time it took to build the Elizabeth line in London. The storage necessary has yet to be properly proven as a full scale prototype, and certainly not available to start building out.

It ain`t gonna happen!

[Gibbo2286]

After always shopping around annually I'd settled for the last four years on Shell as my energy supplier, best deal I could get each year.

I was paying £48 a month on direct debit and they said I'd built up too much credit so reduced it to £35 a month, with the current crisis they raised it to £71 a month.

Today I had cause to dig out my bank statements from 2006 and I'm surprised to see that I was with E-on back then and paying £67 a month by DD

[NewcastleFalcon]

The big problem for grid scale storage is the vast amount required. etc.
It ain`t gonna happen!

No matter how fast or slow storage solutions are developed they will be developed. Without them your calculations are worse, and the assets of wind generation no matter how intermittent will not be utilised to capacity, madness in itself.

Solar wind and storage for the foreseeable, are going to be a growing part of the energy mix, but Nuclear is not exiting stage left any time soon although next generation Hinkley C isn't on stream yet and Sizewell C is decades away, and Gas fired power generation will remain a stubbornly difficult commodity to reduce.

There isn't anything else, so if that still isn't enough, its draconian management of demand time. Rationing! Planned Power Cuts, Switching off the Street Lights, no artistic illumination of Buildings.

Regards Neil