Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Technology => Topic started by: thedoc on 27/08/2013 14:04:01
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Renewable energy farms can only produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows, but new cheaper batteries allow them to store energy.
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Excellent technology, with serious economic consequences.
The problem with unreliable energy sources is that if they account for more than about 10% of the maximum grid capacity, they make the entire system uneconomic. If the wind blew at rated speed for 90% of the time, you would need 10% of your reliable sources to be switched off for 90% of the time in order to cover the gaps. This might be tolerable, but idle machines need space and maintenance, so they represent a financial loss (and the wind generally only blows at 10% of rated speed). Above 10% of unreliables, it is difficult to persuade anyone to invest in conventional plant: big nukes and clean coal take a long time to fire up, small ones are expensive; gas plant costs less to install but is at the mercy of suppliers on the other side of the world; and whilst oil can be stockpiled, it is horrendously expensive to run. The sensible investment is in nuclear and big coal plant, but the prospect of at least 20% overcapacity or underutilisation will not attract shareholders.
So rather than impose levies on conventional power in order to subsidise unreliables, government should require windfarmers and the like to subsidise conventional standby plant, or require them to install at least 5 days' storage capacity at rated power, and insist that the store is full before allowing them to supply the grid directly.
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But look how terribly dangerous nuclear power is probably as many as 100 people have died as a result of nuclear mishaps since 1940
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My goodness! That's almost a whole day's toll of coal miners, or ten minutes at Aberfan.
Now you could argue that wind electricity hasn't killed many people to date, but that is taking a very short-term view of windmills, which have been killing people on and off for thousands of years. And ignoring the lifecritical nature of a continuous electricity supply in the modern world.
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Many of the "wind farms" are being built in places that get quite regular wind such as at the coast, or the Columbia gorge, although undoubtedly it varies somewhat with weather.
Building a battery system with several megawatt-days, or gigawatt-days capacity, as well as high peak power flow, and low losses is undoubtedly expensive, as well as replacement expenses. Some UPS type batteries may last over a decade, but only with occasional power drains.
It is my belief that hydroelectric power plants need to be redesigned to have a portion of the generation with quick reacting grid buffers. While one might not want to vary the dam output from 0% to 100%, one could certainly fairly rapidly vary the flow by 10% or 20% or so.
In some cases, the reservoirs are back to back as on the Columbia River, or paired as the Lookout Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookout_Point_Lake) / Dexter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexter_Lake) Reservoir pairs in which the upper reservoir could go through huge production surges with little environmental impact.
In designing a "grid", one should consider each energy resource for its strengths and weaknesses.
Solar: Strong diurnal patterns. Also affected by seasons and clouds. Perhaps helped by an East/West or North/South power grid, but long distance grid links are also expensive. Unused power is "wasted".
Wind: Variable, 24 hrs/day. Unused power is "wasted"
Nuclear, I believe power output can be varied somewhat on a diurnal basis, but to a large part slow reacting. Also, one has to plan on shutdowns and recharge cycles.
Coal/Steam, also slow reacting, but can vary with diurnal usage. UNUSED POWER IS CONSERVED.
Internal Combustion fuels including biogas, can be quick reacting, Unused power is conserved, depending on supply and storage.
Hydroelectric. Generally seasonal. Should have a couple of days partial storage capacity depending on the design, but certainly must use 100% of the water supply. I believe many plants are designed to be slow reacting, but that isn't necessarily a requirement. They should be able to be designed to be quick reacting, at least in part, especially if designed to buffer water flow.
Tides. Diurnal, no storage capacity beyond perhaps a few hours.
Underwater Ocean Currents. Are these fairly constant? No Storage.
Anyway, it is my thought that rather than investing in expensive batteries, to design the grid to utilize the natural capabilities of each power generation system.
Any use of fossil fuels should be incorporated only to buffer other systems considering essentially infinite storage capacity of the fossil fuels, and expense of the fuels.
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The big problem with wind is that power output depends on the cube of the wind speed, so a windmill with a nominal rating of 100 kW at its optimum wind speed tends to produce less than 15 kW averaged over a year, even in the best UK onshore locations. Offshore you can get about 20% of rated power but the maintenance costs are ridiculous. You can't make it go much faster than its optimum because the blade speed is limited to the speed of sound at the tip, so if you use big wings to squeeze the last drop out of a gentle breeze, you have to feather it in a gale (drag force increases with v^2, so you need to minimise the angle of attack to prevent damage), and a small fan will only produce useful power on the few days when it gets really windy.
All the best UK locations have been taken, so future wind plant is unlikely to exceed 10% of its rated capacity. And even if we covered the entire country with windmills, we couldn't generate all the power we need (less than 30% of our energy consumption is electricity).
Windmills are very effective where you can use power opportunistically. Grinding corn is possibly the only large scale example.
Scottish Hydro have already built pretty much everything that might possibly be economic for hydroelectricity in the UK.
Tidal power is hugely attractive in theory, and has been for the last 150 years or so. But only three large plants have ever been built because there really aren't many suitable locations.
My vote is for biofuel, and an 80% reduction in energy use.
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Storage of electricity has always been problematic. Liquid and gaseous/liquified fuels store much more densely and safely (because the atmosphere is a vast, omnipresent "free" repository of the other energy-producing ingredient: oxygen; it also doubles as a toxic waste dump - it's a pity we have to breathe the stuff!).
For solar-thermal generators, molten-salt thermal storage seems more promising than lithium-ion electric batteries. The thermal storage can shift generation capacity from the daytime (when the sun shines best) into the evening peak, when solar heating is fairly ineffective.
Most of the discussion so far has been about "Supply-Side" energy management, where you manage how much power is produced from different sources, and when.
However, an equally important aspect is "Demand-Side" management, where you manage how and when energy is consumed.
- In some countries, there is a long history of using off-peak electricity for hot water and slab heating. The electricity company signals when it is to turn on and off, typically using tones on the power line to select one of dozens or hundreds of "channels". If power is short that night, they can leave it on for less time.
- New buildings are often built from better insulating materials (less air conditioning load), are pre-configured so the power consumption in office blocks is reduced at night and weekends, and can often sense when rooms are unoccupied and turn off the lights
- Extending this to other applications like air conditioning, dishwashers, clothes dryers etc is effectively a problem in communication, computing and economics.
- In the end, what we spend on electricity is a tradeoff with what we spend on health, communication, transport, entertainment, food, etc. You only really discover how much you value something when it stops for a while...
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Another thing to consider.
Most of the "developed world" is based on grid power.
An alternative is distributed off-grid power. In a sense, it is inefficient because excess power is wasted, and it can be difficult to plan for peak needs.
However, there are some advantages such as lower line losses, and it shifts the storage needs from the producer to the consumers. The consumer also becomes much more aware of actual power usage.
Anyway, one might consider encouraging distributed generation/storage in cases where the "grid" is unavailable such as the developing world, new developments, and places where the grid suffers massive failures such as after Hurricane Katrina.
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Using primary electricity for space heating is insane. It is the most expensive and most flexible form of energy we have, and really shouldn't be squandered. A properly insulated and correctly sited new build, even in the British Isles and the northern US states, doesn't require any space heating at all. A school in Chester, built some 50 years ago with airspaced double glazing, has never used space heating, and modern insulators are a lot better.
Right now I'm converting a 150-year-old stable block into domestic accommodation. Despite having all-north-facing picture windows, and being shaded by trees on the south so negligible solar input, we calculate that an airsource heat pump will provide all the hot water and space heating for a 120 square meter single storey building - possibly the worst case starting specification for a single elderly occupant - for around £1.50 per day. With a family of four, it shouldn't need any space heating at all.
I never understood why commuter trains are heated in winter. You stand on the platform in the snow, wearing several layers of clothing, then cram into a small space with lots of other people, take off your coat, and sweat. Why not turn the heating off keep your coat on for the journey?
Grid power actually accounts for very little of our energy needs. What matters is that it is instantly available at all times, and extremely flexible - hence the electricity grid, and with rather less flexibility, the gas grid. I guess the most common example of distributed off-grid energy is road fuel. Reliable old technology, no problem dealing with peak demand, and no waste! And the consumer is acutely aware of power usage. Indeed that is true in any case where you have to pay for it, surely?
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Using primary electricity for space heating is insane. It is the most expensive and most flexible form of energy we have, and really shouldn't be squandered.
"In 1979 the Danish government unveiled the “Heat Supply Law for Denmark,” dividing the country into regions that would be supplied with domestically produced natural gas, and those that would be supplied with CHP produced district heating. Furthermore, the government created an “obligation to connect law” which required citizens to connect to district heating or natural gas if it was available, and outlawed the use of electric heating for new building construction. This acted as a reinforcing loop - creating a strong domestic demand for the new Danish gas, and also for the continued expansion of district heating"- Source: Danish Energy Agency, 2010
And why not here?
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Creeping socialism, dammit.
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Here, rainfall is strongly seasonal. And, thus river flow also is seasonal. Thus, more hydroelectric energy is generated during the winter. Therefore, there are actually benefits of using electric heating when there is more electricity being generated.
However, I agree it is ludicrous to keep the house at 70° year around. Let it get a bit warmer in the summer and save on the AC bill, and a bit cooler in the winter.
Much more could be done to incorporate geothermal heating/cooling in home design.
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In Quebec, the provincial hydroelectricity agency prices electricity so cheaply everyone uses it to heat their houses. The government then declares a loss which is made up by billions in equalization payments from the rest of Canada. No creeping socialism there, it's rampant.
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No creeping socialism there, it's rampant.
I don't we should confuse mismanagement with socialism (of whatever flavour).
However, it would seem a great shame in places where hydroelectric is seasonal, that there may turn out to be far too little incentive to improve the housing stock to make it thermally efficient. This outcome has not exactly been uncommon over the years in a 'free market' economy either; power has been cheap (relatively speaking) for a very long time.
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Talking of socialism...
The Chinese government have identified the batteries in electric cars as being the perfect reservoir for the country's electrical storage requirements. Imagine a whole population of electric vehicles with maybe a third of them plugged in and charging from the grid at any moment. Some of them will be pretty close to being fully charged and so they can be used to buffer the supply. Presumably you'd get some financial inducement to leave your car plugged in as much as possible.
Seems like an interesting idea.
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Yes,
Plug-In cars may serve as a power reservoir, unless you are planning on a trip that requires a 100% charge, and find your car is only 75% charged.
Battery life is also affected by depth of discharge and the number of cycles. So, extra power cycles during the day may adversely affect one's car battery life, and having the batteries partly charged when one expects them to be fully charged could be bad.
On the other hand, some power companies are charging different rates depending on the time of day, so it may make sense to use a smart charger to recharge after midnight when the rates are lowest.
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Well yes obviously renewable energy can provide 24-hour power with an energy store back-up but there's no need to re-invent the wheel here folks.
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
works well to back-up intermittent wind turbine power, if you build enough energy storage capacity to service your electricity grid's needs when the wind isn't blowing much.
The more difficult question, which I now have an answer for all you naked scientists to check my figures and peer-review for me please is -
How much nameplate or maximum wind power generation capacity in GigaWatts (GW) and pumped-storage hydro-electricity energy storage capacity in GigaWatt-hours (GWh) ONLY would it take to provide all the electrical power needs for the UK grid, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week?
My estimate for the UK grid's requirements is -
- Wind Turbine maximum power 290GW
- Pumped-storage hydro energy capacity 1400GWh
That's a LOT more of both needed than we have installed already.
Today in the UK we have about 12GW of wind power installed.
So I estimate we'd need a factor of 290/12 = 24 times more wind turbine power than we have today.
Today in the UK we have about 27GWh of pumped-storage hydro installed.
So I estimate we'd need a factor of 1400/27 = 52 times more pumped-storage hydro than we have today.
I initially worked out figures for the energy requirements of Scotland only, or a peak demand of 6GW or 11.4% of the UK peak power demand of 52.5GW.
Scotland Electricity Generation – my plan for 2020
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/scotland-electricity-generation-my-plan-for-2020/
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/scotland_electricity_plan_scottish_scientist1.jpg?w=1461&h=1218)
I've created a spreadsheet model to determine how much wind power and pumped-storage hydro energy capacity would be required for Scottish needs.
So remember to multiply the figures in my diagrams by 52.5/6 or 8.75 to get the appropriate numbers for the UK.
Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_june50.jpg?w=2040&h=906)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_june.jpg
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_january_b501.jpg?w=2040&h=879)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_january_b1.jpg
My cost estimate for Scotland was £50 billion for wind turbines and pumped-storage not counting grid infrastructure upgrades.
So say maybe £480 billion for the UK.
The annual government budget for the UK is something over £700 billion so a project of the size of £480 billion or the cost of 40 channel tunnels would clearly take a number of years to afford and to build.
So renewables-only electricity generation is indeed possible but it is not cheap and it is not easy, if my figures are anything like correct.
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Present UK grid capacity is about 80 GW. It is sensible to plan for 100 GW in the foreseeable future.
Nameplate capacity of a windfarm is of no importance: what matters is actual mean performance. Currently it is about 30% of rated capacity and is unlikely to improve as all the best sites have, of course, already been taken. So the current input from wind is about 4 GW averaged over the entire year.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk shows today's wind contribution to be 0.68 GW as I write, about 1.9% of present consumption. The amount is likely to decrease in the next 3 hours as he sun goes down, and this will coincide with rising demand for rush-hour trains and domestic cooking. Today is fairly typical of the hottest and coldest days in the UK, which are the days when there is maximum demand and no wind. These anticyclonic conditions can last up to 14 days at a time, so if you want to rely entirely on wind you need at least 14 days' storage capacity, and 100% overcapacity in your generating system so that you can recharge the batteries when the wind blows, whilst continuing to supply the immediate load.
If you can site the storage units next to the windmills, that's entirely sensible and indeed should be a planning condition for every windmill. Unfortunately you probably can't do so for offshore windmills, and would create a huge visual nightmare and an additional maintenance problem if you did so for onshore wind. So you probably need to site your storage units somewhere near the distribution stations. Problem is that you now need to double the power capacity of the grid cables so they can carry both the demand current and the recharging current. You need to factor that cost into your calculation.
Present pumped storage capacity is 30 GWh, installed on the best available sites. 14 days' storage is almost 27,000 GWh. Given the very small amount of ground above 1000ft amsl in the UK, I suspect that this cannot be achieved without substantial damage to upland farming. Remember that a PSU needs two ponds, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom. And of course the pump/generators need to have the same running capacity as the maximum grid demand.
Thus, if you are prepared to flood most of the Highlands and Snowdonia, you need to install 300 GW of windmills to meet peak demand, plus 300 GW to recharge the storage units, plus 100 GW of pump/generators, plus 100 GW of additional grid cabling and switchgear.
The cost of doing so is left as an exercise for the reader, but I think you will find nuclear power a lot cheaper, more reliable, and less environmentally damaging.
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Hi Alan and thanks for your feedback.
Present UK grid capacity is about 80 GW. It is sensible to plan for 100 GW in the foreseeable future.
Data statistics show a trend of decreasing maximum power demand.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)#Network_size
2005/6 63GW
Digest of UK Energy Statistics
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/337649/chapter_5.pdf
Table 5.9 page 143
2009 60,231 MW
2010 60,893 MW
2011 57,086 MW
2012 57,490 MW
2013 53,420 MW
Gridwatch
23/01/2014 17:30:03 52477 MW
I am no expert but my guess would be the energy trend is caused by the deindustrialization of the UK with our previous heavy industry being done in China increasingly?
So I don't foresee a need for 100GW total capacity on present trends.
Also I don't see an urgent need to build additional renewable reserves since it would be acceptable at least initially to use other types of capacity - such as biomass fuel burning or even fossil-fuel burning power stations as a reserve.
For the academic interest in looking at the figures, to calculate a capacity where peak demand = 70% of total capacity including reserves.
52.5 GW / 0.7 for a 75GW total renewable capacity.
maximum wind power + reserve = 290GW / 0.7 = 414 GW
pumped-storage hydro + reserve = 1400 GW / 0.7 = 2000 GWh
Nameplate capacity of a windfarm is of no importance: what matters is actual mean performance. Currently it is about 30% of rated capacity and is unlikely to improve as all the best sites have, of course, already been taken. So the current input from wind is about 4 GW averaged over the entire year.
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk shows today's wind contribution to be 0.68 GW as I write, about 1.9% of present consumption. The amount is likely to decrease in the next 3 hours as he sun goes down, and this will coincide with rising demand for rush-hour trains and domestic cooking. Today is fairly typical of the hottest and coldest days in the UK, which are the days when there is maximum demand and no wind. These anticyclonic conditions can last up to 14 days at a time, so if you want to rely entirely on wind you need at least 14 days' storage capacity, and 100% overcapacity in your generating system so that you can recharge the batteries when the wind blows, whilst continuing to supply the immediate load.
Present pumped storage capacity is 30 GWh, installed on the best available sites. 14 days' storage is almost 27,000 GWh. Given the very small amount of ground above 1000ft amsl in the UK, I suspect that this cannot be achieved without substantial damage to upland farming.
Thus, if you are prepared to flood most of the Highlands and Snowdonia,
I've taken all those factors into account in my modelling. Did you not even notice that I recommend installing 290GW of wind turbines which makes peak demand of 52.5GW only 18% of installed nameplate wind turbine capacity?
My model has been tested on real gridwatch data for 2014 and the more cost effective solution is not "14 days' of storage capacity" but only a bit more than 1 day of storage and more wind power.
Alan you are doing what I was doing before I did the numerical modelling using real demand and wind power data from gridwatch - guessing and going on hunches.
There's no substitute for running a computer model on real data and plotting graphs to prove your solution works. I did that. My solution works, I think. Certainly you are not disproving my model by quoting your hunch that 14 days storage is needed. No it's not.
If you can site the storage units next to the windmills, that's entirely sensible and indeed should be a planning condition for every windmill. Unfortunately you probably can't do so for offshore windmills, and would create a huge visual nightmare and an additional maintenance problem if you did so for onshore wind.
Pumped-storage can be built in a very low profile way. Admittedly 52 times more pumped-storage than we have now, would have a higher profile but nothing like the profile of the existing wind turbines we have never mind the 24 times more we'll need.
So you probably need to site your storage units somewhere near the distribution stations. Problem is that you now need to double the power capacity of the grid cables so they can carry both the demand current and the recharging current. You need to factor that cost into your calculation.
Well I've just not factored the cost of grid into my cost estimates, sorry.
Remember that a PSU needs two ponds, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom. And of course the pump/generators need to have the same running capacity as the maximum grid demand.
Already remembered, thanks.
you need to install 300 GW of windmills to meet peak demand,
290GW of wind turbines. Only more if we opt for a wind turbine reserve.
plus 300 GW to recharge the storage units, plus 100 GW of pump/generators,
No peak demand is 52.5 GW so I only need 52.5 GW of hydro-generators. The same 52.5 GW for pumps is plenty too and has no problem in filling the reservoirs from empty in a little over a day.
plus 100 GW of additional grid cabling and switchgear.
The additional grid infrastructure is needed to connect up all the new turbines which can be supplying up to 290GW of power, but not all to the pumped-storage and demand. Anything in surplus above 2 x peak demand needs new grid for export only or to power-to-gas to generate hydrogen for the gas grid.
The cost of doing so is left as an exercise for the reader, but I think you will find nuclear power a lot cheaper, more reliable, and less environmentally damaging.
Aside from the grid costs which are complicated to calculate and depend on the length of new grid between plants whose location is not yet known, I've already estimated costs of about £480 billion for 290GW of wind turbine and 1400GWh of pumped-storage.
Well thanks again for your feedback Alan!
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1400 GWh (5.04x1015 J) of pumped hydro storage would be quite an engineering feat!
Even assuming 100% efficiency (not a terrible approximation) you would have to have about 1010 m3 (1013 kg) of water pumped up 50 meters. That volume is slightly larger than the average volume of Loch Ness, which is the largest Loch in Scotland (7.4 km3 = 7.4x109 m3)*.
Perhaps we could use an elevation of 300 meters (the height of the Shard, in London) and only 1.67x109 m3 of water (somewhere between the size of Loch Tay and Loch Morar)*.
On the other hand, 1400 GWh of electrochemical energy could be stored in 1.4x105 m3 of zinc metal (and the air needed to react with it). Not a small volume, certainly, but four or five orders of magnitude smaller than for pumped hydro.
*Loch volumes found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lochs_of_Scotland
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Hi chiralSPO and thanks for your feedback.
1400 GWh (5.04x1015 J)
Check.
1400 GWh = 1.4TWh = 58.33 GW-days
of pumped hydro storage would be quite an engineering feat!
This is 1960s technology. Technically, it is very easy to do and not such a big a job either. £37 billion or 3 channel tunnels' worth of work.
Now the wind turbines are more work. 290GW with 12GW installed already leaves 278GW to build and install and at £1.6 billion per GigaWatt (on land) that comes to £445 billion worth of turbines or 37 channel tunnels' worth.
So the wind turbines are far more of an engineering feat.
Even assuming 100% efficiency (not a terrible approximation) you would have to have about 1010 m3 (1013 kg) of water pumped up 50 meters. That volume is slightly larger than the average volume of Loch Ness, which is the largest Loch in Scotland (7.4 km3 = 7.4x109 m3)*.
Perhaps we could use an elevation of 300 meters (the height of the Shard, in London) and only 1.67x109 m3 of water (somewhere between the size of Loch Tay and Loch Morar)*.
David JC MacKay in his book "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" considers finding sites for 1200GWh and reckons it would be tough.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_192.shtml
David cleverly managed to think of not putting all the water at one site though which makes it a lot less tough.
300 metres of head is typical for pumped-storage though 500 metres is possible too.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml
The pumped-storage hydro scheme at the Cortes-La Muela, Spain hydroelectric power plant has a head of 524m and impounds a water of volume of 23Hm3 = 23 x 106m3 with a mass of 23 x 109Kg.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcanales.lasprovincias.es%2Fdocumentos%2Fimag%2Fcentral_hidroelctrica_de_cortes_la_muela.jpg&hash=0d5d5f2be45b95fc8a37cb5b428daadd)
Which represents a stored energy maximum of mgh = 23 x 109 x 9.81 x 523 = 1.18 x 1014J or 32.8 GWh. A similar amount of energy is planned by the SSE for their pumped-storage hydro scheme for Coire Glas, Scotland.
http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/CoireGlas/
So only 1400/32.8 = 43 Cortes-La Muelas or 1400/30 47 Coire Glases. I should point out that unlike Cortes La Muela which is pretty much maxed out, the site at Coire Glas - if the design was maxed out in the same fashion - could host a much bigger reservoir there - not 1400 GWh certainly - but 1/3rd of that possibly.
So if three sites like Coire Glas could site our needs for pumped-storage, I don't think it is as tough as David MacKay claims.
Time for the tough to get going.
On the other hand, 1400 GWh of electrochemical energy could be stored in 1.4x105 m3 of zinc metal (and the air needed to react with it). Not a small volume, certainly, but four or five orders of magnitude smaller than for pumped hydro.
Well pumped-storage hydro is the method of choice for electricity grid energy storage.
Thanks again for your feedback chiralSPO!
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My model has been tested on real gridwatch data for 2014 and the more cost effective solution is not "14 days' of storage capacity" but only a bit more than 1 day of storage and more wind power.
and that, I think, is the fatal flaw in all proposals for wind power. During a winter anticyclone, the whole of the UK (and most of Europe) can be covered by a high pressure zone with average winds of 5 kt or less, for at least a week at a time. "More wind power" won't deliver any power when there's no wind! You need to consider a supply that, in effect, can go to zero for several days at a time, and when it recovers, you need to supply all the present demand plus enough power to recharge your storage system before the next shutdown. Thus your installed primary generating capacity needs to be about 6 times average demand, plus 1 x peak demand for the pumped storage units. Ignoring the cost of building the storage ponds and extra grid capacity, this means that you have to install 7 times the present generating capacity in order to meet present demand from renewables instead of fossil and nuclear generators.
Saying that Also I don't see an urgent need to build additional renewable reserves since it would be acceptable at least initially to use other types of capacity - such as biomass fuel burning or even fossil-fuel burning power stations as a reserve.
is frankly ignoring the weight of the elephant. As I understand it, current biomass generators in the UK are net negative - the energy required to transport and process the fuel is more than they produce - and any "reserve" station has to recoup its costs from unplanned and intermittent running, which makes even gas an uneconomic investment. And it's intellectually dishonest! You can't start off with a plan for 100% renewables and then say "plus a bit of coal in case it goes wrong".
My preference would be to reinstate low-pressure gasholders and use wind power to generate hydrogen which we distribute through the existing gas grid. And before the usual smartasses tell us about the difficulties and dangers of hydrogen, let me remind them that until 1963, the gas grid contained 50% hydrogen: the dangerous stuff was 10% carbon monoxide.
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My model has been tested on real gridwatch data for 2014 and the more cost effective solution is not "14 days' of storage capacity" but only a bit more than 1 day of storage and more wind power.
and that, I think, is the fatal flaw in all proposals for wind power.
No testing my model on a whole year of real world demand and wind power data demonstrates there's no fatal flaw.
During a winter anticyclone, the whole of the UK (and most of Europe) can be covered by a high pressure zone with average winds of 5 kt or less, for at least a week at a time. "More wind power" won't deliver any power when there's no wind! You need to consider a supply that, in effect, can go to zero for several days at a time, and when it recovers, you need to supply all the present demand plus enough power to recharge your storage system before the next shutdown. Thus your installed primary generating capacity needs to be about 6 times average demand, plus 1 x peak demand for the pumped storage units. Ignoring the cost of building the storage ponds and extra grid capacity, this means that you have to install 7 times the present generating capacity in order to meet present demand from renewables instead of fossil and nuclear generators.
Well I tested my model on all the data from 2014, including the winter months.
Actually, as this graph of the January modelling shows, there was no such shortage of wind in January 2014.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_january_b501.jpg?w=2040&h=879)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_january_b1.jpg
The biggest lull in the wind in 2014 was pointed to on this "Idiocy of Renewables" webpage.
"92 Continuous Days of LoLo Wind - That's EverSoLo Electricity from Wind Turbines!"
http://idiocyofrenewables.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/92-continuous-days-of-lolo-wind-thats.html
To cope with this difficult time, I had to fine tune my solution, but it does work as this graph for June 2014 shows.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_june50.jpg?w=2040&h=906)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_june.jpg
But instead of pointing to real data which illustrates a wind condition, you simply wave your hands in a data-free way. That's not scientific Alan.
I admit I have not tested my model on data from all years. Maybe there is data set from Gridwatch which will break my model and force me to increase the wind GW or pumped-storage GWh, but you certainly have not pointed to such a specific data set, have you?
You have not done the scientific thing which the author of the "Idiocy of Renewables" did when he quoted hard data to make his point.
You know Alan, I love a challenge. I really do. If you can point to the data of a very low wind spell in the UK from Gridwatch, I'd be delighted to test out my model on it.
Saying that Also I don't see an urgent need to build additional renewable reserves since it would be acceptable at least initially to use other types of capacity - such as biomass fuel burning or even fossil-fuel burning power stations as a reserve.
is frankly ignoring the weight of the elephant. As I understand it, current biomass generators in the UK are net negative - the energy required to transport and process the fuel is more than they produce
Really? Got some evidence for that? Mankind has long used wood as fuel so maybe they knew something you don't?
- and any "reserve" station has to recoup its costs from unplanned and intermittent running, which makes even gas an uneconomic investment.
Well the grid can hire power plants to stay on stand-by and pay a premium for emergency power and make reserve stations profitable.
And it's intellectually dishonest! You can't start off with a plan for 100% renewables and then say "plus a bit of coal in case it goes wrong".
If I had to resort to fossil fuel, gas would be the choice because a) it is a faster start up and b) renewable-generated hydrogen from power-to-gas can be added to the fuel mix.
My plan for Scotland recommends converting the last coal power station in Scotland at Longannet to burn biomass fuel.
I do offer a 100%-renewable 24-hours a day, 7-days a week electricity generation plan but it is much tougher to guarantee 52 weeks a year.
If that's as intellectually dishonest as the "teetotal" man who has one glass of sherry at Christmas, well I can live with that.
My preference would be to reinstate low-pressure gasholders and use wind power to generate hydrogen which we distribute through the existing gas grid. And before the usual smartasses tell us about the difficulties and dangers of hydrogen, let me remind them that until 1963, the gas grid contained 50% hydrogen: the dangerous stuff was 10% carbon monoxide.
Yes, my plan generates surplus wind power at times of up 60% of maximum wind power. This can be used to produce hydrogen in power-to-gas for injection into the gas grid.
However, it is not as efficient to re-generate electricity from power-to-gas hydrogen as it is from pumped-storage hydro, so we need the pumped-storage as I have described for more efficient energy storage.
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You know Alan, I love a challenge. I really do. If you can point to the data of a very low wind spell in the UK from Gridwatch, I'd be delighted to test out my model on it.
As you say, we have 12 GW installed windpower in the UK.
According to Gridwatch, today is the seventh consecutive day with wind power at less than 2GW. In fact the running average is less than 1 GW for the past week.
I think you - or at least your customers - will find 24 hours' storage rather inadequate, even in a mild spring.
I am reminded of the statistician who, on learning that the average depth of the Thames is 3 feet, drowned whilst walking from Chelsea to Battersea.
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You know Alan, I love a challenge. I really do. If you can point to the data of a very low wind spell in the UK from Gridwatch, I'd be delighted to test out my model on it.
As you say, we have 12 GW installed windpower in the UK.
Yes.
According to Gridwatch,
Be aware that Gridwatch data for wind power is not what is served from the full 12 GW installed in the UK, but for only just over 50%. So Gridwatch's maximum wind power data reading in 2014 was only 6835 MW on 2014-12-09 19:50:02.
To check this, visit the Gridwatch website http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
and hover your mouse above the wind power dial and a context pop-up text bubble appears which says ..
Wind: This is the total contributed by metered wind farms. Wind power contributes another about 50% from embedded (or unmetered) wind turbines that shows only as a drop in demand.
Which also means the demand data is slightly lower than it really is too but that can be discounted for present purposes.
today is the seventh consecutive day with wind power at less than 2GW. In fact the running average is less than 1 GW for the past week.
As I say, I love a challenge and the low wind period just now is such a challenge, so I've run it through my model - normalised for a case study of the UK this time - and here's the results.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015_50.jpg)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015.jpg
So there would still be some water left at this time in the 1400 GWh reservoirs with 290 GW installed wind power, but it is running low admittedly, so we'll have to wait to see if the wind can pick up to save the day or whether I will need to rethink my 1400 GWh / 290 GW recommendation.
I think you - or at least your customers - will find 24 hours' storage rather inadequate, even in a mild spring.
Remember I have tested these the equivalent of these 1400 GWh / 290 GW specifications (normalised for the case study of Scotland) on the spring of 2014 and it worked.
As you can see for this period in early April 2015, the design specifications of 1400 GWh / 290 GW have managed this period of low wind (so far) for longer than 24 hours of low wind.
This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days but the daily average of power demand is less than the peak demand of 52.5GW. Demand from April 1 to 9 2015 has varied between a minimum of 25649 MW and a maximum of 43069 MW.
I am reminded of the statistician who, on learning that the average depth of the Thames is 3 feet, drowned whilst walking from Chelsea to Battersea.
He should have gone to spec-savers. [:)]
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This is the 8th consecutive day with wind below 2 GW - your storage system is looking a bit marginal.
However, having addressed the elephant in the room, it is a good time to look at a couple of diplodoci.
Diplodocus 1. Electricity accounts for less than 25% of UK energy consumption. Practically all the rest is direct burning of fossil fuels. So if you replaced all electricity generation with wind, we would still be emitting at least 75% of current carbon dioxide levels, and society would grind to a halt when the oil runs out. If you want to run everything on unreliables, you will need at least 4 times as much generating distribution and storage capacity as your current best estimate, plus an unimaginable capital expenditure on electric transport and heating. As that expenditure will be mandatory, it will have to come from government or the windmill builders. Fat chance.
Diplodocus 2. We use electricity because it is cheapish and reliable. Given that you will need to install at least 3 times overcapacity (possibly 7 times on my assumptions) plus storage facilities in order to approach current levels of reliability, what is the anticipated future unit cost? You need to take into account a 10 - 15 year life for outdoor electromechanical equipment, a sensible rate of return on capital, maintenance costs (I usually estimate 50 - 100% of capital cost over 10 years for a guaranteed uptime maintenance contract. Equipment installed indoors at ground level is a lot cheaper to maintain.), and the cost of supporting the interim use of reliable sources.
The problem is that you are looking at it from an idealistic Scottish perspective. The more practical Irish saying is: If I was going to Cork, I wouldnt start from Dublin. Alas we are, metaphorically, in Dublin. And riding a diplodocus or two.
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This is the 8th consecutive day with wind below 2 GW - your storage system is looking a bit marginal.
I demonstrated with a graph how my plan coped with your challenge but still you nit-pick. [|)]
However, having addressed the elephant in the room, it is a good time to look at a couple of diplodoci.
Diplodocus 1. Electricity accounts for less than 25% of UK energy consumption. Practically all the rest is direct burning of fossil fuels. So if you replaced all electricity generation with wind, we would still be emitting at least 75% of current carbon dioxide levels, and society would grind to a halt when the oil runs out.
Well what is the real problem? Fossil fuels "running out" or "warming the globe"?
If you want to run everything on unreliables, you will need at least 4 times as much generating distribution and storage capacity as your current best estimate,
The 25% of energy use for transport would need 2 times as much (more because of rush hours by trains and trams but less because electric motors are more efficient than combustion engines) but the 50% of heating energy doesn't need proportionally more electrical power because we can use the surplus power at windy times for hydrogen generation from power-to-gas and electrical storage heaters using off-peak electricity. Also heat pumps and geothermal heating provide proportionally more heat energy than electrical power consumed.
plus an unimaginable capital expenditure on electric transport and heating. As that expenditure will be mandatory, it will have to come from government or the windmill builders. Fat chance.
We can imagine and estimate the expenditure but none of it is "mandatory". We could just let the globe warm up.
Diplodocus 2. We use electricity because it is cheapish and reliable. Given that you will need to install at least 3 times overcapacity (possibly 7 times on my assumptions)
I've recommended nameplate maximum wind power = 5.5 times peak demand.
The figures I gave were very clear - for Scotland 33GW/6GW = 5.5, for UK 290GW/52.5GW = 5.5
I'm not sure where you get "3" or "7" from?
plus storage facilities in order to approach current levels of reliability, what is the anticipated future unit cost?
I anticipated a total cost in my first post.
My cost estimate for Scotland was £50 billion for wind turbines and pumped-storage not counting grid infrastructure upgrades.
So say maybe £480 billion for the UK.
The annual government budget for the UK is something over £700 billion so a project of the size of £480 billion or the cost of 40 channel tunnels would clearly take a number of years to afford and to build.
So renewables-only electricity generation is indeed possible but it is not cheap and it is not easy, if my figures are anything like correct.
It all depends on how quickly, over how many years, the country decided to spend those vast amounts of money and how it was funded. There's no requirement to fund any of it by additions to fuel bills.
You need to take into account a 10 - 15 year life for outdoor electromechanical equipment, a sensible rate of return on capital, maintenance costs (I usually estimate 50 - 100% of capital cost over 10 years for a guaranteed uptime maintenance contract. Equipment installed indoors at ground level is a lot cheaper to maintain.), and the cost of supporting the interim use of reliable sources.
Well it would have to be built to last because £480 billion extra is not an amount of money which Britain could afford to spend on electricity bills every 10 to 15 years. Maintenance costs would have to be much less than the capital investment otherwise it's not affordable.
The problem is that you are looking at it from an idealistic Scottish perspective. The more practical Irish saying is: If I was going to Cork, I wouldnt start from Dublin. Alas we are, metaphorically, in Dublin. And riding a diplodocus or two.
Much is favourable in Scotland for renewable energy - the geography is ideal for both wind and pumped-storage - so Scotland could serve as a testing ground for a renewables-only energy strategy, for Britain, Europe and the world to test out solutions.
If we can't afford to do renewables-only in Scotland, chances are it won't be affordable anywhere.
HEY 'APOSTROPHES' ARE ALLOWED AGAIN! [:)]
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This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days
Fine. But average demand for the last 8 days has been over 30 GW so you needed 240 GW-days to supply it. I don't think a 300% shortfall (and the wind is only just now picking up to 3 GW) is "nitpicking"!
I've recommended nameplate maximum wind power = 5.5 times peak demand.
The figures I gave were very clear - for Scotland 33GW/6GW = 5.5, for UK 290GW/52.5GW = 5.5
I'm not sure where you get "3" or "7" from?
We're not far apart here. 3 is the absolute minimum required to meet average demand, assuming that all future windfarms have the same average load factor as at present. Thus is unlikely as the best sites are already occupied. You need twice that capacity in order to meet demand whilst you are recharging your storage facilities, hence 6. Your storage facilities must also be capable of meeting peak demand, hence 7. But given the high failure rate of windmills (see below) you will need a continuous build program to replace them all every 10 years or so, so the figure is probably nearer 8 times.
Much is favourable in Scotland for renewable energy - the geography is ideal for both wind and pumped-storage - so Scotland could serve as a testing ground for a renewables-only energy strategy, for Britain, Europe and the world to test out solutions.
Perfectly correct and exactly wrong! Scotland is enormously favoured - perfect geography and climate, with very low populaton density. It is a rubbish model for England - flat, prone to long periods of zero wind, high population density - and virtually irrelevant to the rest of the world. Anywhere windier tends to be unpopulated except for the coast of Iceland, where steam comes out of the ground anyway. Anywhere with higher mountains and more rain already has signficant hydroelectricity.
Not much to test, really. You can't change weather or geography, or do much about demand distribution. Physics is well understood. Which just leaves economics:http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime (http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime)
The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.
The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed. This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.
The results show that after allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics the average load factor of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear. By 10 years of age the contribution of an average UK wind farm to meeting electricity demand has declined by a third.
This decline in performance means that it is rarely economic to operate wind farms for more than 12 to 15 years. After this period they must be replaced with new machines, a finding that has profound consequences for investors and government alike.
Specifically, investors expecting a return on their investment over 20-25 years will be disappointed. Policymakers expecting wind farms built before 2010 to be contributing towards CO2 targets in 2020 or later must allow for the likelihood that the total investment required to meet these targets will be much larger than previous forecasts have suggested. As a consequence, the lifetime cost per unit (MWh) of electricity generated by wind power will be considerably higher than official estimates.
Compared with 45-plus years for nuclear and coal plant, this isn't an attractive investment.
There is a solution, but wind isn't it.
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This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days
Fine. But average demand for the last 8 days has been over 30 GW so you needed 240 GW-days to supply it. I don't think a 300% shortfall (and the wind is only just now picking up to 3 GW) is "nitpicking"!
It seems nitpicking when you don't acknowledge the graph I posted shows acceptable performance for the data available when I downloaded it which was up to the 9th April.
today is the seventh consecutive day with wind power at less than 2GW. In fact the running average is less than 1 GW for the past week.
As I say, I love a challenge and the low wind period just now is such a challenge, so I've run it through my model - normalised for a case study of the UK this time - and here's the results.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015_50.jpg)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015.jpg
So there would still be some water left at this time in the 1400 GWh reservoirs with 290 GW installed wind power, but it is running low admittedly, so we'll have to wait to see if the wind can pick up to save the day or whether I will need to rethink my 1400 GWh / 290 GW recommendation.
I think you - or at least your customers - will find 24 hours' storage rather inadequate, even in a mild spring.
Remember I have tested these the equivalent of these 1400 GWh / 290 GW specifications (normalised for the case study of Scotland) on the spring of 2014 and it worked.
As you can see for this period in early April 2015, the design specifications of 1400 GWh / 290 GW have managed this period of low wind (so far) for longer than 24 hours of low wind.
This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days but the daily average of power demand is less than the peak demand of 52.5GW. Demand from April 1 to 9 2015 has varied between a minimum of 25649 MW and a maximum of 43069 MW.
I've recommended nameplate maximum wind power = 5.5 times peak demand.
The figures I gave were very clear - for Scotland 33GW/6GW = 5.5, for UK 290GW/52.5GW = 5.5
I'm not sure where you get "3" or "7" from?
We're not far apart here.
We're as far apart as Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker.
Obi-Wan: How long before you can make the jump to light speed?
Han Solo: It'll take a few moments to get the coordinates from the navi-computer.
[the ship begins to rock violently as lasers hit it]
Luke: Are you kidding? At the rate they're gaining...?
Han Solo: Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it.
3 is the absolute minimum required to meet average demand, assuming that all future windfarms have the same average load factor as at present. Thus is unlikely as the best sites are already occupied. You need twice that capacity in order to meet demand whilst you are recharging your storage facilities, hence 6. Your storage facilities must also be capable of meeting peak demand, hence 7. But given the high failure rate of windmills (see below) you will need a continuous build program to replace them all every 10 years or so, so the figure is probably nearer 8 times.
You are "dusting crops" with your hand-waving guess-timates but I've got my "precise calculations" and "co-ordinates from the navi-computer" from my spreadsheet model.
Much is favourable in Scotland for renewable energy - the geography is ideal for both wind and pumped-storage - so Scotland could serve as a testing ground for a renewables-only energy strategy, for Britain, Europe and the world to test out solutions.
Perfectly correct and exactly wrong! Scotland is enormously favoured - perfect geography and climate, with very low populaton density. It is a rubbish model for England - flat, prone to long periods of zero wind, high population density - and virtually irrelevant to the rest of the world. Anywhere windier tends to be unpopulated except for the coast of Iceland, where steam comes out of the ground anyway. Anywhere with higher mountains and more rain already has signficant hydroelectricity.
Not much to test, really. You can't change weather or geography, or do much about demand distribution. Physics is well understood. Which just leaves economics:http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime (http://www.ref.org.uk/press-releases/281-wearnandntearnhitsnwindnfarmnoutputnandneconomicnlifetime)
Scotland is more of a "rubbish model" for somewhere such as Holland where it is even flatter than England. Scotland could still offer pumped-storage hydro facilities for surplus wind power generated in flat parts of Europe like Holland though.
My point was not that Scotland is the same as elsewhere but that all the key components of a renewables-only energy strategy could be developed, perfected and implemented there. It has the geography and it also has at least the beginnings of the engineers and engineering infrastructure required. It's an excellent place to host the engineering side of a renewables-only international effort.
Scotland is not the only such place in the world but the Scottish government has been keen to promote renewables - we have 5GW of wind power installed already - and I'm sure this is an area of industry where Scots would like to co-operate with others throughout the UK and internationally.
The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.
The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed. This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.
The results show that after allowing for variations in wind speed and site characteristics the average load factor of wind farms declines substantially as they get older, probably due to wear and tear. By 10 years of age the contribution of an average UK wind farm to meeting electricity demand has declined by a third.
This decline in performance means that it is rarely economic to operate wind farms for more than 12 to 15 years. After this period they must be replaced with new machines, a finding that has profound consequences for investors and government alike.
Specifically, investors expecting a return on their investment over 20-25 years will be disappointed. Policymakers expecting wind farms built before 2010 to be contributing towards CO2 targets in 2020 or later must allow for the likelihood that the total investment required to meet these targets will be much larger than previous forecasts have suggested. As a consequence, the lifetime cost per unit (MWh) of electricity generated by wind power will be considerably higher than official estimates.
Compared with 45-plus years for nuclear and coal plant, this isn't an attractive investment.
Not at 10 to 15 years at £1.6 billion per gigawatt, admittedly. Nevertheless, the UK has 12GW already invested in wind turbines so the technology has advantages over the other renewables which the government has been promoting. Wind still looks like the best of the renewables.
Also, it may well be possible to drive costs down. Either new designs for turbines giving more power per pound and longer service-life or mass production techniques to reduce costs per turbine of much the same design.
Considering the size of the investment required, it makes a lot of sense to see what can be done to get costs down.
There is a solution, but wind isn't it.
Backed-up with pumped-storage, maybe wind is a solution.
I don't think coal or fossil fuels can be made climate-friendly by carbon capture and storage (CCS) because CCS is vulnerable to black-market dumping of carbon dioxide which will defeat the climate change aim.
Nuclear has excellent prospects for portable power. I have a vision of helicopters big enough or nuclear reactors small enough to be flown anywhere in the world to provide power for the initial development of a location. Or a nuclear-powered ground vehicle, producing energy or fuel to power civil engineering machines - rail-track laying, road-building, runway making, port-construction. Enough to get conventional development established somewhere undeveloped, then the portable nuclear moves on to elsewhere in the wilderness where the going is too tough for fast progress because of power shortages.
So I'm all for nuclear where it offers unique advantages. But nuclear for grid power, I'm not convinced has a future though. Too risky - as Fukushima, Chernobyl, Dounreay shows. If you don't need to take the risk of nuclear - and with renewables, we don't - why take the risk?
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Excellent technology, with serious economic consequences.
The problem with unreliable energy sources is that if they account for more than about 10% of the maximum grid capacity, they make the entire system uneconomic. If the wind blew at rated speed for 90% of the time, you would need 10% of your reliable sources to be switched off for 90% of the time in order to cover the gaps. This might be tolerable, but idle machines need space and maintenance, so they represent a financial loss (and the wind generally only blows at 10% of rated speed). Above 10% of unreliables, it is difficult to persuade anyone to invest in conventional plant: big nukes and clean coal take a long time to fire up, small ones are expensive; gas plant costs less to install but is at the mercy of suppliers on the other side of the world; and whilst oil can be stockpiled, it is horrendously expensive to run. The sensible investment is in nuclear and big coal plant, but the prospect of at least 20% overcapacity or underutilisation will not attract shareholders.
In 2014 Spain got 27% of its energy from wind power (21%) and the solar. According to you, nothing over 10% is possible. Spain are increasing this up to 40%.
Coal and nuclear? Are you blooding kidding?
Nuclear is very, very, very heavily subsidised (about 12p per kWh or more in liability insurance).
As for 'clean coal' what drugs are you on? The piles of toxic sludge that are the end product of burning coal are the lie to that, and there's the huge CO2 pollution. You'd have to be a complete idiot to build new coal power stations. Natural gas is much better, but even that...
So rather than impose levies on conventional power in order to subsidise unreliables, government should require windfarmers and the like to subsidise conventional standby plant, or require them to install at least 5 days' storage capacity at rated power, and insist that the store is full before allowing them to supply the grid directly.
Um. No.
The way it actually works is that the electricity gets a 'spot price' on the electricity market, and this determines what the electricity is sold at. In some grids, the price of electricity can actually go negative over short periods. The market mostly sorts itself out, people don't install generators if they don't think they will make money; and note that the subsidies on wind are very small right now; pennies per kWh.
But look how terribly dangerous nuclear power is probably as many as 100 people have died as a result of nuclear mishaps since 1940
It's not the deaths it's the economic disruption. Note that we haven't had the worst possible nuclear accident. For example with Fukushima, if the wind had been different, it would have dumped nuclear fallout over Tokyo. There was a possibility that they would have had to evacuate Tokyo...
Try to imagine what that would have been like. My brain is too small to imagine it, and I think yours is too.
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This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days
Fine. But average demand for the last 8 days has been over 30 GW so you needed 240 GW-days to supply it. I don't think a 300% shortfall (and the wind is only just now picking up to 3 GW) is "nitpicking"!
It seems nitpicking when you don't acknowledge the graph I posted shows acceptable performance for the data available when I downloaded it which was up to the 9th April.
Your graph appears to show 60 GW of wind power on 7 April. Gridwatch put the figure at about 1.5 GW. Does a discrepancy of 4000% count as nitpicking?
Not at 10 to 15 years at £1.6 billion per gigawatt, admittedly. Nevertheless, the UK has 12GW already invested in wind turbines so the technology has advantages over the other renewables which the government has been promoting. Wind still looks like the best of the renewables.
As long as I have to subsidise your product when I use it, pay an additional subsidy when it is not required, and fire up a coal station when the wind doesn't blow, wind power is one hell of a good investment. But if you eliminate the crooks politicians, insist on adequate storage and grid capacity, and leave it to the market, it isn't.
The fact that the government has been promoting anything is no measure of its rationality. There are three reasons why a politician does anything: because the EU tells him to, because it will improve his chances of re-election, or because his brother-in-law will make a profit.
We can imagine and estimate the expenditure but none of it is "mandatory". We could just let the globe warm up.
It probably will anyway. Massive climate change predates homo sapiens, and it was warmer 500 years ago than now. Or maybe it will cool down. Nothing we can do to prevent it, but we could spend a bit of time and effort mitigating its effect, which will be disastrous either way. Chucking money at windmill manufacturers won't prevent mass migration as world agriculture fails to meet demand.
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This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days
Fine. But average demand for the last 8 days has been over 30 GW so you needed 240 GW-days to supply it. I don't think a 300% shortfall (and the wind is only just now picking up to 3 GW) is "nitpicking"!
It seems nitpicking when you don't acknowledge the graph I posted shows acceptable performance for the data available when I downloaded it which was up to the 9th April.
Your graph appears to show 60 GW of wind power on 7 April.
My graph is the result from a computer simulation of what wind power the UK would generate if the UK had installed 290GW of maximum wind power rather than just the 12GW we have installed just now.
So the grey line plots gridwatch data for wind power multiplied by a normalisation factor to indicate what wind power would have been produced had we 290 GW's worth of wind turbines installed. Understand?
Imagine 7 April is Groundhog Day but what Phil Connors (Bill Murray) does different this time is he installs 290 GW of wind turbines and 1400 GWh of pumped-storage hydro.
Gridwatch put the figure at about 1.5 GW.
Well I told you to be aware about Gridwatch wind power data. Remember?
You know Alan, I love a challenge. I really do. If you can point to the data of a very low wind spell in the UK from Gridwatch, I'd be delighted to test out my model on it.
As you say, we have 12 GW installed windpower in the UK.
Yes.
According to Gridwatch,
Be aware that Gridwatch data for wind power is not what is served from the full 12 GW installed in the UK, but for only just over 50%. So Gridwatch's maximum wind power data reading in 2014 was only 6835 MW on 2014-12-09 19:50:02.
To check this, visit the Gridwatch website http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
and hover your mouse above the wind power dial and a context pop-up text bubble appears which says ..
Wind: This is the total contributed by metered wind farms. Wind power contributes another about 50% from embedded (or unmetered) wind turbines that shows only as a drop in demand.
Which means a Gridwatch wind data item of "about 1.5 GW" corresponds to a real UK wind power generation of something a bit less than 3 GW.
Does a discrepancy of 4000% count as nitpicking?
The exact normalisation factor used in the simulation is 4243%. That is worked out as 290000 / 6835.
290000 MW is the 290 GW maximum wind power installed being modelled and 6835 MW is the maximum wind power data item from Gridwatch wind power on 2014-12-09 19:50:02
So the model plots 42 times the wind power data Gridwatch records but only 290/12 or 24 times the actual wind power currently installed.
So you were only nitpicking about the days plotted, when there is no way I could have plotted data that was not available at the time.
It seems you have not before now begun to examine what values are being plotted.
So maybe less nitpicking on the days plotted and more attention to the detail of what is being plotted might be appropriate.
Not at 10 to 15 years at £1.6 billion per gigawatt, admittedly. Nevertheless, the UK has 12GW already invested in wind turbines so the technology has advantages over the other renewables which the government has been promoting. Wind still looks like the best of the renewables.
As long as I have to subsidise your product when I use it, pay an additional subsidy when it is not required, and fire up a coal station when the wind doesn't blow, wind power is one hell of a good investment. But if you eliminate the crooks politicians, insist on adequate storage and grid capacity, and leave it to the market, it isn't.
Well the energy market was never going to find its way to renewable energy on its own. It needed incentives. Either that or nationalisation.
The fact that the government has been promoting anything is no measure of its rationality. There are three reasons why a politician does anything: because the EU tells him to, because it will improve his chances of re-election, or because his brother-in-law will make a profit.
And the greatest of these is "because it will improve his chances of re-election" [^]
We can imagine and estimate the expenditure but none of it is "mandatory". We could just let the globe warm up.
It probably will anyway. Massive climate change predates homo sapiens, and it was warmer 500 years ago than now. Or maybe it will cool down. Nothing we can do to prevent it, but we could spend a bit of time and effort mitigating its effect, which will be disastrous either way.
Disastrous which "either way"? Warmer or colder? Preventing or not preventing? Mitigating or not mitigating?
It seems to me if we can prevent it getting a lot warmer that's likely to prevent a disaster.
If we can't prevent it getting a lot warmer, it seems to me mitigating it - by say moving to settle the cooler polar regions, building sea walls to keep out rising sea levels, growing crops on floating man-made islands towed to where it is cooler, putting up orbiting sun-reflectors - that could all help to prevent a disaster.
Chucking money at windmill manufacturers won't prevent mass migration as world agriculture fails to meet demand.
Well it may just help a lot with that too.
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Disastrous which "either way"? Warmer or colder?
Yes.
A bit colder and crops fail in Russia, western Europe and North America. A bit warmer and crops fail in southern Asia. Either way you will be looking at mass starvation or mass migration. We may be lucky as the warming seems to have slowed down a bit, but it hasn't reached a historic maximum yet. Unfortunately the human population has, and continues to rise, so life is becoming more marginal each day.
You might try to increase crop yields with artificial fertilisers, but it's already the case that about 20% of the mass of humans is derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which consumes vast quantities of fossil fuel (about 5% of all natural gas, currently) and ultimately damages the environment through nitrate runoff. Even if we ignore those elephants, a small change in rainfall distribution will be disastrous.
In summary: wind-generated electricity on a large scale creates more problems than it solves and is not affordable as a significant replacement for conventional generation; electricity is in any case not the key energy source for sustaining human life or lifestyle; and a climate-led disaster is pretty well inevitable.
One question intrigues me: the "unmetered" wind power contribution. I can't imagine anyone giving away expensively-generated electricity, so my guess is that the unmetered capacity is individual windmills supplying fully-off-grid installations. Thus whilst they might be said to be reducing (or rather, eliminating) demand, you can't factor them against the actual metered demand on the grid. I'd appreciate some elucidation here.
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It's perfectly possible to power an electric car your normal mileage using the electricity from a domestic roof PV. You need just 5kWh generation per day to get the average car mileage.
That's great if you work night shifts. Unfortunately most people use their cars during daylight. I guess you could have two cars, but as it takes as much energy to make a conventional car as it uses during its lifetime, and rather more to make an electric car, you're still screwed by the laws of physics.
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Not on today's grid it doesn't. Solar panels mean that the fossil fuel production goes down during the day, and the car pulls it back up at night. So the net carbon footprint is zero, or negative, even if you're not putting the electricity directly into the car.
And suitable pricing would help. You should be able to be charging your car with the electricity you're generating, even if you're not at home. It's all the same grid. There's no reason that couldn't be sorted out.
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Disastrous which "either way"? Warmer or colder?
Yes.
A bit colder and crops fail in Russia, western Europe and North America. A bit warmer and crops fail in southern Asia. Either way you will be looking at mass starvation or mass migration. We may be lucky as the warming seems to have slowed down a bit, but it hasn't reached a historic maximum yet.
Even at our unluckiest, global warming couldn't speed up faster than the speed of modern civilisation to focus on the warming, slow it down or find another solution to any problems arising.
I wouldn't describe mass migration as necessarily being a "disaster" per se. One could describe the movement of Homo Sapiens out of Africa as a mass migration that happened over 200,000 years. Out-of-Africa was not exactly a disaster, except perhaps for the Neanderthals and maybe the previous top predators who had to make way for man.
The colonisation of the Americas was a mass migration. Again not a disaster, except perhaps for indigenous civilisations, such as they were.
You say "mass migration" like it is a bad thing. It doesn't have to be.
Unfortunately the human population has, and continues to rise, so life is becoming more marginal each day.
Now human population is something which can rise and fall at an astonishing rate compared to global temperature changes. However population rise can also be a solution, if the populations are well led and productive.
You might try to increase crop yields with artificial fertilisers, but it's already the case that about 20% of the mass of humans is derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which consumes vast quantities of fossil fuel (about 5% of all natural gas, currently) and ultimately damages the environment through nitrate runoff.
All such bridges have been crossed when we got to them. So shall it be.
Even if we ignore those elephants, a small change in rainfall distribution will be disastrous.
I can see you are a rainfall gauge "half-empty" kind of guy. [8D]
In summary: wind-generated electricity on a large scale creates more problems than it solves and is not affordable as a significant replacement for conventional generation; electricity is in any case not the key energy source for sustaining human life or lifestyle; and a climate-led disaster is pretty well inevitable.
Well the affordability of £480 billion for the UK - or proportional sums for other countries - is questionable certainly. It would be wise not to put all our eggs in that basket until such time as the figures look more affordable. Nevertheless putting some eggs in that basket would be wise.
One question intrigues me: the "unmetered" wind power contribution. I can't imagine anyone giving away expensively-generated electricity, so my guess is that the unmetered capacity is individual windmills supplying fully-off-grid installations. Thus whilst they might be said to be reducing (or rather, eliminating) demand, you can't factor them against the actual metered demand on the grid. I'd appreciate some elucidation here.
I didn't factor in non-metered demand into my calculations. That was ignored or discounted as irrelevant. The system I designed and modelled was to supply the metered demand only and it does that, perfectly so far.
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A lot of the 'unmetered' wind and (more so) solar is actually on the grid, and metered, but there's no real-time monitoring of them, so the graphs don't include them. Basically the individual installations are too small.
Nevertheless they do subtly appear on the graphs, but as a reduction in demand. The national grid do model them by using met-office data.
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Even at our unluckiest, global warming couldn't speed up faster than the speed of modern civilisation to focus on the warming, slow it down or find another solution to any problems arising.
20 years after the Kyoto Protocol, nothing has been done. In fact, if the warmists are to be believed, things are getting worse. I don't share your faith in human altruism.
I wouldn't describe mass migration as necessarily being a "disaster" per se. One could describe the movement of Homo Sapiens out of Africa as a mass migration that happened over 200,000 years. Out-of-Africa was not exactly a disaster, except perhaps for the Neanderthals and maybe the previous top predators who had to make way for man.
The gradual dispersal of a few humans into unoccupied hunting grounds cannot be compared with the movement of 150,000,000 Bangladeshis when the sea level rises and the crops fail for 3 consecutive years.
The colonisation of the Americas was a mass migration. Again not a disaster, except perhaps for indigenous civilisations, such as they were.
Hardly mass migration. The population of Tennessee, for instance, has grown "internally" by a factor of 200 since independence, and of the entire USA by a factor of 100 in just over 200 years. And as with the African diaspora, the spread has been onto largely unpopulated but very fertile land. There's not a lot left.
You say "mass migration" like it is a bad thing. It doesn't have to be.
Your peaceful solution to a 5 cm sea level rise in Bangladesh would be welcome.
Now human population is something which can rise and fall at an astonishing rate compared to global temperature changes. However population rise can also be a solution, if the populations are well led and productive.
You are halfway to the solution. We could live very well and entirely sustainably with about one tenth of the present population. If we reproduce at half the replacement level, we would reach that state in 100 years at no cost - in fact a considerable saving of effort and money. I shudder at the idea of "well led": Great Leaders like Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Thatcher were a disaster.
You might try to increase crop yields with artificial fertilisers, but it's already the case that about 20% of the mass of humans is derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which consumes vast quantities of fossil fuel (about 5% of all natural gas, currently) and ultimately damages the environment through nitrate runoff.
All such bridges have been crossed when we got to them. So shall it be.
What an appalling strategy! Everyone involved in such activities, from Caesar to Montgomery, regarded the planning of bridges and crossings to be absolutely essential to progress. There's an old saw about "the skilled pilot uses his skill to foresee and avoid situations that will place demands on his skill".
Even if we ignore those elephants, a small change in rainfall distribution will be disastrous.
I can see you are a rainfall gauge "half-empty" kind of guy. [8D]
Well spotted. Actually I'm a pilot who notices "tanks half empty" before the fires go out.
I didn't factor in non-metered demand into my calculations. That was ignored or discounted as irrelevant. The system I designed and modelled was to supply the metered demand only and it does that, perfectly so far.
Hold on there, pardner! You insist that present wind supply is twice what Gridwatch displays, but present demand is only the metered demand. You can't have it both ways!
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Even at our unluckiest, global warming couldn't speed up faster than the speed of modern civilisation to focus on the warming, slow it down or find another solution to any problems arising.
20 years after the Kyoto Protocol, nothing has been done. In fact, if the warmists are to be believed, things are getting worse. I don't share your faith in human altruism.
Civilisation has accomplished a lot in 20 years, including installation of renewable energy electricity generators. You, I and the warmists are 20 years older. For us as individuals things can always get worse, of course.
I wouldn't describe mass migration as necessarily being a "disaster" per se. One could describe the movement of Homo Sapiens out of Africa as a mass migration that happened over 200,000 years. Out-of-Africa was not exactly a disaster, except perhaps for the Neanderthals and maybe the previous top predators who had to make way for man.
The gradual dispersal of a few humans into unoccupied hunting grounds cannot be compared with the movement of 150,000,000 Bangladeshis when the sea level rises and the crops fail for 3 consecutive years.
The colonisation of the Americas was a mass migration. Again not a disaster, except perhaps for indigenous civilisations, such as they were.
Hardly mass migration. The population of Tennessee, for instance, has grown "internally" by a factor of 200 since independence, and of the entire USA by a factor of 100 in just over 200 years. And as with the African diaspora, the spread has been onto largely unpopulated but very fertile land. There's not a lot left.
There's a lot of infertile land left world-wide to be made fertile by appropriate civil engineering works. There's also a lot of ocean left to be floated upon.
You say "mass migration" like it is a bad thing. It doesn't have to be.
Your peaceful solution to a 5 cm sea level rise in Bangladesh would be welcome.
Raise the land by 5cm. Raise the sea walls by 5cm. If my first guess is not appropriate there will be plenty of time for the people of Bangladesh to come up with better solutions.
Now human population is something which can rise and fall at an astonishing rate compared to global temperature changes. However population rise can also be a solution, if the populations are well led and productive.
You are halfway to the solution. We could live very well and entirely sustainably with about one tenth of the present population. If we reproduce at half the replacement level, we would reach that state in 100 years at no cost - in fact a considerable saving of effort and money.
There's no need to seek to reduce the population. More people means more effort and money is available.
I shudder at the idea of "well led": Great Leaders like Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Thatcher were a disaster.
The bad leaders make my point that the quality of leadership makes a difference.
You might try to increase crop yields with artificial fertilisers, but it's already the case that about 20% of the mass of humans is derived from the Haber-Bosch process, which consumes vast quantities of fossil fuel (about 5% of all natural gas, currently) and ultimately damages the environment through nitrate runoff.
All such bridges have been crossed when we got to them. So shall it be.
What an appalling strategy! Everyone involved in such activities, from Caesar to Montgomery, regarded the planning of bridges and crossings to be absolutely essential to progress. There's an old saw about "the skilled pilot uses his skill to foresee and avoid situations that will place demands on his skill".
Well I've managed to cross my own bridges perfectly well thank you. I don't claim to cross everyone else's bridges for them but trust them to do so for themselves but offer my help if needed.
Even if we ignore those elephants, a small change in rainfall distribution will be disastrous.
I can see you are a rainfall gauge "half-empty" kind of guy. [8D]
Well spotted. Actually I'm a pilot who notices "tanks half empty" before the fires go out.
So you fly a fire-fighting airplane, do you? I always think there is more sense in dry lands subject to fires in allowing or insisting that people clear fire-breaks around their houses and that authorities do the same for roads so as to keep people safe enough but otherwise just let forests and scrub land burn. I'd rather employ fire-fighters in helicopters to go rescue people in danger than to employ them putting out forest, bush etc. fires.
I didn't factor in non-metered demand into my calculations. That was ignored or discounted as irrelevant. The system I designed and modelled was to supply the metered demand only and it does that, perfectly so far.
Hold on there, pardner! You insist that present wind supply is twice what Gridwatch displays, but present demand is only the metered demand. You can't have it both ways!
I've not claimed either the unmetered demand or unmetered wind is "not present". I've simply ignored both unmetered demand and unmetered wind power as not relevant to my calculations, my recommended solution or the success of my solution. I'd be recommending 290GW even if unmetered demand and unmetered wind was 1000 times what it is, even if it was all the rest of the demand and the wind power in the world, even if it was demand and wind power in strange new worlds, new civilisations, to which we have not yet boldly gone.
My plan is to meet the metered UK demand with 290GW and 1400GWh and so far, so good.
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The only thing I disagree with in the model is that you're assuming only wind and pumped storage.
In the real world we have solar coming up. It's running behind wind because it's more expensive than it, and much more expensive than burning dinosaurs... but it's starting to be cheaper than metered electricity from the grid. When that happens the price of the metered electricity from the grid will start to go up; more of the electricity will be peaking electricity. This will push installation of solar ever harder, because it's cheaper to the end user, and the grid will get greener.
Also, wind and solar are anti-correlated.
During the summer, the wind is relatively low, but solar goes up. Vice versa in the winter.
And then there's electric cars. Electric cars are a drop in the bucket right now. But the lifetime cost of electric cars is becoming cheaper than petrol cars. We're more or less at the cusp. When we cross the cusp a LOT of people are going to start buying. Sure, they're not good for everyone, but 99% of most people's journeys can be done with them (some people-notably sales people-need hybrids or diesels or other cars). But the vast majority of other people are better off with electric cars. So we're probably going to suddenly see a jump; large percentages of new cars will electric.
I mean, right now, there's about 2 million new cars sold each year in the UK. If even half a million electric cars were sold, after two years, there would be one million cars. If they were connected to the grid through inverters, then they could potentially supply the entire electricity demand for about half an hour (not that they would, but the point is that it's a *substantial* resource.)
So, electric cars; the pumped storage stuff may not be needed.
The fundamental point is that the more you add different types of sources and other storage to the mix, the more the variations even out. So the full 290 GW may not be needed; that gives on average maybe 70 GW or a little less, but to the extent other sources provide power, this can be reduced.
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an unimaginable capital expenditure on electric transport
the lifetime cost of electric cars is becoming cheaper than petrol cars
I was very surprised recently when a colleague decided to replace his petrol car by a hybrid car, on economic grounds. Part of this was the observation that the hybrid has a higher resale value than a petrol car of the same age. I always thought that they carried a significant cost premium.
A move from petrol to hybrids brings a significant reduction in dinosaur consumption*, provided you don't use the airconditioning too much.
A major takeup of all-electric cars (and smartphones and smart watches) depends on further advances in battery technology; unfortunately, this is an area of technology which is not progressing particularly quickly.
* OK, according to current theories, most carbon-based fossil fuels come from the Carboniferous period, which predates the dinosaurs.
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A major takeup of all-electric cars (and smartphones and smart watches) depends on further advances in battery technology; unfortunately, this is an area of technology which is not progressing particularly quickly.
No, that's false. The main problem that is stopping people buying the cars right now, is purchase price, but the cost of the battery (which is the primary cost item) is dropping 8% year on year due to economies of scale. The limited range is rarely the issue that people think it would be (some people really do regularly do long distances and they would be better off with a hybrid or a diesel.) The UK has a pretty good charging infrastructure now and it's likely to further improve.
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Thank you for your feedback wolfekeeper.
The only thing I disagree with in the model is that you're assuming only wind and pumped storage.
Well what is it about my model that you agree with then?
In the real world we have solar coming up. It's running behind wind because it's more expensive than it, and much more expensive than burning dinosaurs... but it's starting to be cheaper than metered electricity from the grid. When that happens the price of the metered electricity from the grid will start to go up; more of the electricity will be peaking electricity. This will push installation of solar ever harder, because it's cheaper to the end user, and the grid will get greener.
Also, wind and solar are anti-correlated.
During the summer, the wind is relatively low, but solar goes up. Vice versa in the winter.
Which very strongly suggests to me that I should extend my model to include power from solar as well.
Solar power in the United Kingdom
"In 2014, the almost 650,000 solar installations had a total capacity of over 5,000 MW of solar power."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
Which makes me disappointed indeed that the Gridwatch site, http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ from where I downloaded the demand and wind power data http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/download.php does not include any data relating to solar power. [:(]
Does anyone know where data for solar-generated MW with time for the UK can be found? I mean like how much every 5 minutes like Gridwatch -
How Gridwatch data is downloaded, in a format that can be uploaded by a spreadsheet ...
id, timestamp, demand, wind
403446, 2015-04-01 00:05:03, 26774, 5590
403447, 2015-04-01 00:10:02, 26993, 5571
403448, 2015-04-01 00:15:02, 27252, 5566
- or how much every hour would be excellent too, but how much every week is no good for simulating how it interacts with wind intermittency. Daily values might be of marginal interest.
Anyone? Who knows where UK solar-generation data can be had? Come on! Speak up! [?]
So, electric cars; the pumped storage stuff may not be needed.
The Scottish government has approved a plan to build a pumped-storage hydro scheme at Coire Glas, Scotland, proposed by the SSE, http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/CoireGlas/
but, frustratingly, has not been given financial incentives from UK policy.
I'm not the only Scot who is pointing this glaring omission out.
"Scottish Renewables – Pumped Storage – Position Paper"
http://www.scottishrenewables.com/media/uploads/140529_scottish_renewables_pumped_storage_position_paper.pdf
So I really need to accuse UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey, and the UK government of Cameron & Clegg for really failing Scotland and Britain very badly on pumped-storage hydro. [:(!]
I can't really in any way agree with any kind of statement which lets that lot of rubbish UK politicians off the hook for not incentivizing or bankrolling the urgently-needed pumped-storage hydro.
If I am to be expected to discuss electric cars for energy storage, it needs to be after said politicians have been thoroughly named, shamed and turfed out of office, a better government is elected and all planned pumped-storage hydro plans are fully funded and going ahead to construction.
The fundamental point is that the more you add different types of sources and other storage to the mix, the more the variations even out. So the full 290 GW may not be needed; that gives on average maybe 70 GW or a little less, but to the extent other sources provide power, this can be reduced.
A very interesting fundamental point and if I can source solar generation data with time, I'll see what I can do to extend my model to investigate it.
Thanks again for your feedback wolfekeeper. [:)]
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National grid do a far g(r)eekier version:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
From there I managed to find this:
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=actgenration/actualorestimated
That might only be today's though, I didn't look at it too carefully, but if you hunt around you might find more.
edit: no you can select any day over a wide range and get the data.
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National grid do a far g(r)eekier version:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
From there I managed to find this:
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=actgenration/actualorestimated
That might only be today's though, I didn't look at it too carefully, but if you hunt around you might find more.
edit: no you can select any day over a wide range and get the data.
Great find wolfekeeper! [8]
Even the guy from gridwatch didn't seem to know about any solar data available. I will investigate further later and report back but the BM Reports site seems to be unresponsive right now.
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I imagine the solar figures are estimates based on weather and PV installation data: the national grid need a model of it to improve their demand estimates.
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The Scottish government has approved a plan to build a pumped-storage hydro scheme at Coire Glas, Scotland, proposed by the SSE, http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/CoireGlas/
but, frustratingly, has not been given financial incentives from UK policy.
I'm not the only Scot who is pointing this glaring omission out.
It's not an omission. It's called "preparing for independence". For as long as SNP policy is to appropriate UK-owned energy sources and sell the product to the remainder of the Kingdom, you will have to fund your own capital projects.
The UK has a pretty good charging infrastructure now and it's likely to further improve.
Reading Motorway Services has parking space for about 600 cars and 100 trucks, with two recharging points. OK for "early adopters" (I've never seen either charging point occupied!) but a long way short of providing an adequate replacement for liquid fuels. And as I am sure SS will agree, if you replace all road transport with electric vehicles, you will need to double your entire grid capacity: generation, distribution and storage. No problem, as long as the cost only falls on the users of electric vehicles (why not? Petrol companies are not charities and not subsidised by the taxpayer - the entire extraction, refinement and distribution system is paid for by the user, who also pays 120% tax to support "alternatives"!)
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National grid do a far g(r)eekier version:
http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm
From there I managed to find this:
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=actgenration/actualorestimated
"Actual Or Estimated Wind And Solar Power Generation (B1630)"
That might only be today's though, I didn't look at it too carefully, but if you hunt around you might find more.
edit: no you can select any day over a wide range and get the data.
You can select the year back to "1999" but get "No results" for selected dates earlier than about Christmas holidays 2014. The data doesn't look reliable. Highly corrupt or random data in places.
There's also "solar" data included here -
"Actual Aggregated Generation Per Type (B1620)"
https://www2.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=actgenration/actualaggregated
I imagine the solar figures are estimates based on weather and PV installation data: the national grid need a model of it to improve their demand estimates.
The guy from Gridwatch says "that is estimated and its not real time. ..Its the guess for a days worth".
I asked him if he knew where to find solar data but he didn't offer much hope.
It doesn't exist. I've been looking for years. Its all small scale stuff and no one knows until people send in their bills how much it has generated. Or how much fraud is going on.
How can you collect real-time data from a million rooftop solar panels? Even if you could,. how could you tell if it was really solar energy or someone driving an inverter from next doors supply, or from a diesel generator?
You can guess at how much is being generated by looking at the midday dip in the 'demand' figures. But its only a guess.
Hmmm. [:-\]
The Scottish government has approved a plan to build a pumped-storage hydro scheme at Coire Glas, Scotland, proposed by the SSE, http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/CoireGlas/
but, frustratingly, has not been given financial incentives from UK policy.
I'm not the only Scot who is pointing this glaring omission out.
It's not an omission. It's called "preparing for independence". For as long as SNP policy is to appropriate UK-owned energy sources and sell the product to the remainder of the Kingdom, you will have to fund your own capital projects.
Well we can still co-operate on joint projects even if Scotland goes independent, as per the Channel Tunnel which was a British - French venture, as was Concorde, as is Airbus. The fact that the UK and France are independent countries didn't stop us co-operating on a joint ventures for mutual benefit.
So let's co-operate, as Britons, but also as Europeans.
I was thinking, if we are needing to use solar then let's do it right.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F5%2F59%2FSolarGIS-Solar-map-Europe-en.png%2F800px-SolarGIS-Solar-map-Europe-en.png&hash=a3bd0e24a42aa3ae0ed18ede1813c13f)
"Solar power in the United Kingdom"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
What Europe needs is a whole lot of mass-arrays of solar photo-voltaic panels somewhere near the south of Spain, either on land, or if the Spanish need their land for growing grapes or whatever, how about on artificial floating islands somewhere off Gibraltar?
Maybe north Africa wants in too? There's a lot of sun in Morocco across the Gibraltar Strait. Maybe Morocco would like to sign a 50- or 100-year lease to the European Union for some land in Morocco to put solar photovoltaic arrays on? We could make it worth their while. Guarantee the deal by deploying a European military force to guard our solar PV arrays and the interconnector carrying the power back to Europe. [O8)]
So the Mediterranean or thereabouts for solar, everywhere for wind, Scotland for pumped-storage hydro.
If we pull together as Europeans, we can take advantage of the best renewable resources and share the spoils amongst us all. Everyone wins if we co-operate. If we retreat into our bunkers, everybody loses.
We need to be co-operating and national independence should be not be viewed as "a barrier" to co-operation on joint projects for mutual benefit. The multi-national companies have figured that out years ago so here and now we all also need the independent national public sectors to remember the benefits of working together, right?
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The UK has a pretty good charging infrastructure now and it's likely to further improve.
Reading Motorway Services has parking space for about 600 cars and 100 trucks, with two recharging points. OK for "early adopters" (I've never seen either charging point occupied!) but a long way short of providing an adequate replacement for liquid fuels.
Right.... so you've never seen either of them occupied, but you "know" that it's not adequate? Do you have these 'intuitions' often???
And as I am sure SS will agree, if you replace all road transport with electric vehicles, you will need to double your entire grid capacity: generation, distribution and storage. No problem, as long as the cost only falls on the users of electric vehicles (why not? Petrol companies are not charities and not subsidised by the taxpayer - the entire extraction, refinement and distribution system is paid for by the user, who also pays 120% tax to support "alternatives"!)
Right.... it's a 'funny' thing, none of the electric car adopters have reported their electricity bill doubling. It's almost like you're talking bullshit, but you would never do that, right?
Electric cars do, on average 25 miles per day. They use 0.15-0.25kWh per mile. So let's take the upper of those two figures. That's about 6.25kWh/day.
Let's further assume that all of the cars in the UK become electric. There's 35 million cars in the UK.
So that's 6.25 * 35,000,000 * 365 = 79 billion kWh.
Meanwhile the UK grids output in (say) 2012 was 375 TWh.
If you divide one by the other you get 21%; most of which would be done at night, when the grid is quiet, and that's assuming worst case 0.25 kWh per mile. More normally electric cars get more like 0.15 kWh/mile.
So nothing like doubling.
And that's going to take a decade or two to achieve.
Meanwhile, people are installing solar panels... currently at a faster rate than they're buying electric cars.
A 1kW (peak) solar panel in London makes very roughly 3kWh of electricity per day, on average. That's about 5 square metres. The car uses 4kWh.
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Part of the problem for electric car users is the distance between filling stations. If you take the M25 and M4 from South Mimms to Reading, it's "only" 50 miles, with no service stations in between. The next station westwards is a further 20 miles, out of reach for most hybrids on "battery only" and marginal for medium 100% electrics. So if we have 500 electric cars parked at either station (not unusual) we will need 500 charging points, not 2. If you have slowmoving traffic in winter you can expect to find a fair number of automotive corpses around the motorways.
Yes, electric transport is great for urban use. I am all in favour of electric taxis, trolleybuses, trams and underground trains, but quoting "average daily mileage" does not make the electric car practicable for intercity use, or desirable in town.
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Part of the problem for electric car users is the distance between filling stations. If you take the M25 and M4 from South Mimms to Reading, it's "only" 50 miles, with no service stations in between. The next station westwards is a further 20 miles, out of reach for most hybrids on "battery only" and marginal for medium 100% electrics. So if we have 500 electric cars parked at either station (not unusual) we will need 500 charging points, not 2. If you have slowmoving traffic in winter you can expect to find a fair number of automotive corpses around the motorways.
Everything you're saying is such complete and utter bullshit.
If you have a hybrid, do you want me to draw you a picture? They have a hole for petrol? You see the word 'hybrid' means hybrid electric-fossil fuel engine, and you can put fuel in it, or you can charge it from the wall. It's MAGIC.
And the economics of fast chargers is bloody simple, even for you. Each charger cost about US$60,000, about £40,000:
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/05/03/ev-charging-station-infrastructure-costs/
So if you charge (say) £40 for a recharge, then to repay for the charger infrastructure costs in a year each charger has to charge £40,000/£40 = 1000 cars per year = ~3 cars per day. After that, it's gravy. Of course you could charge less, say £20, and take longer to repay the loan, but the economics are simple; if you have cars queueing, add more chargers, unless you're a complete moron they make you money. (n.b. they're not charging at the moment, that's not a permanent thing, and they are already in some parts of America).
So if they really need 500 fast chargers, they would be ecstatic, they're making money.
edit: so what you're saying is that they may have to make multistory car parks, with fast chargers, so they can make EVEN MORE MONEY. Oh dear, they will be so sad.
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No need for a drawing, thanks. I first drew a hybrid car (actually it was a bus) 60 years ago and would very much like to own one, preferably with a gas turbine rather than a reciprocating engine as prime mover.
But this thread is about the replacement of fossil fuels by wind, not just better ways of using them.
The engineering of recharging stations isn't a problem. All you need to do is deliver an additional 20MW to every motorway service station. There are just over 100, so using your figures for a charging point and assuming there is adequate grid capacity and every station is within 30 m of an 11 kV supply, we need an infrastructure investment of about £1.5 - 2bn for the motorways alone. Probably the same again for A roads and again for city stations.
This leads to a chicken and egg problem. Even if I could afford the cost and inconveniece of an electric car, I couldn't go anywhere with it until there were enough charging points along the way, and it would be difficult to persuade anyone to invest £2bn in the hope that everyone will buy an electric car the next day. I think you would be looking at about 10 years for 50% market penetration. That sort of investment requires government intervention (not guarantees - they just end up with a tax bill and no product) and a nationalised electricity supply. I'm all in favour of that, but it doesn't seem very likely to happen in the UK.
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I have no idea why you think the government would need to pay for this.
At the service station, they get money from the punters, and they use this to pay for the equipment.
If it costs them more, they charge more. They have (pretty much) a captive audience, and the equipment has a long life- they can probably easily borrow money for this, it's capital investment, and the users effectively pay them to build it.
It's self financing. It's money that would otherwise have gone to pay for petrol, often in another countries, instead it's spent on jobs within the UK.
On the contrary, the government could tax it, just like they tax petrol.
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The revenue argument is clear, but how are you going to raise £3billion capital for a venture that depends on everyone else buying an electric car before your hardware is obsolete? Market penetration (outside of the urban weekend ecowarrior clique) will be poor until the recharge network is complete.
they can probably easily borrow money for this,
Just try it! Private venture capital expects a 20% return in the second year of investment. Banks expect to see 50% equity funding for a new venture and are unlikely to lend at less than 10% in the foreseeable future. So you install £3billion capital equipment in, say , a year, then have to repay at least £300,000,000 in year 2 (half capital repayment, half interest, on the £1.5bn you borrowed). But how many people will have bought electric cars in the first year?
As I pointed out earlier, incremental growth (say 2 recharge points per station) is fairly easy to accomplish, but at some stage you are going to have to bite the bullet and undertake a massive refit to bring 20MW to each service station. If you are too slow, people will complain about having to wait for hours to recharge, if you are too quick you won't realise the expected (or required) return on investment.
Be sure the government will find a way to tax it, whatever you do, because whilst personal transport is obviously essential for politicians, it's an undeserved luxury for the plebs who vote for them. I'd prefer it if the grid were run as a profitable national asset, with a 20 year planning horizon. But I don't see any rightwing government nationalising the grid, or any leftwing government promoting private transport. And whilst businessmen can work with 20 or 50 year plans, politicians can't.
Any thoughts about electric HGVs? Obviously feasible, but what recharging facilities can you offer?
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Look, none of this is rocket science; apparently it is for you, but I think everyone else reading this thread will understand that there's no fundamental problem, and I haven't even mentioned that you can order backup generators up to 250 megawatts, off-the-shelf items, to power recharging points during peak time if you're a bit shy on grid connection. The electricity itself is not even the expensive bit, it's installing the plug-in points, and as I say, they're self financing; and it's good to have a backup generator anyway, in case the grid goes down.
Really, this is not hard.
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Really, this is not hard.
I look forward to your becoming the first UK electric car billionaire.
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No, but buying shares in services stations might be profitable.
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Chicken! This is, apparently, a self-financing no-brainer, led by an acknowledged expert. You should be selling shares, not buying them!
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Hi chiralSPO and thanks for your feedback.
1400 GWh (5.04x1015 J)
Check.
1400 GWh = 1.4TWh = 58.33 GW-days
of pumped hydro storage would be quite an engineering feat!
This is 1960s technology. Technically, it is very easy to do and not such a big a job either. £37 billion or 3 channel tunnels' worth of work.
Now the wind turbines are more work. 290GW with 12GW installed already leaves 278GW to build and install and at £1.6 billion per GigaWatt (on land) that comes to £445 billion worth of turbines or 37 channel tunnels' worth.
So the wind turbines are far more of an engineering feat.
Even assuming 100% efficiency (not a terrible approximation) you would have to have about 1010 m3 (1013 kg) of water pumped up 50 meters. That volume is slightly larger than the average volume of Loch Ness, which is the largest Loch in Scotland (7.4 km3 = 7.4x109 m3)*.
Perhaps we could use an elevation of 300 meters (the height of the Shard, in London) and only 1.67x109 m3 of water (somewhere between the size of Loch Tay and Loch Morar)*.
David JC MacKay in his book "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" considers finding sites for 1200GWh and reckons it would be tough.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_192.shtml
David cleverly managed to think of not putting all the water at one site though which makes it a lot less tough.
300 metres of head is typical for pumped-storage though 500 metres is possible too.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_191.shtml
The pumped-storage hydro scheme at the Cortes-La Muela, Spain hydroelectric power plant has a head of 524m and impounds a water of volume of 23Hm3 = 23 x 106m3 with a mass of 23 x 109Kg.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcanales.lasprovincias.es%2Fdocumentos%2Fimag%2Fcentral_hidroelctrica_de_cortes_la_muela.jpg&hash=0d5d5f2be45b95fc8a37cb5b428daadd)
Which represents a stored energy maximum of mgh = 23 x 109 x 9.81 x 523 = 1.18 x 1014J or 32.8 GWh. A similar amount of energy is planned by the SSE for their pumped-storage hydro scheme for Coire Glas, Scotland.
http://sse.com/whatwedo/ourprojectsandassets/renewables/CoireGlas/
So only 1400/32.8 = 43 Cortes-La Muelas or 1400/30 47 Coire Glases. I should point out that unlike Cortes La Muela which is pretty much maxed out, the site at Coire Glas - if the design was maxed out in the same fashion - could host a much bigger reservoir there - not 1400 GWh certainly - but 1/3rd of that possibly.
So if three sites like Coire Glas could site our needs for pumped-storage, I don't think it is as tough as David MacKay claims.
Time for the tough to get going.
On the other hand, 1400 GWh of electrochemical energy could be stored in 1.4x105 m3 of zinc metal (and the air needed to react with it). Not a small volume, certainly, but four or five orders of magnitude smaller than for pumped hydro.
Well pumped-storage hydro is the method of choice for electricity grid energy storage.
Thanks again for your feedback chiralSPO!
Intro please ...
Billy Ocean - When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going -
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearn_pumped-storage_50.jpg)
Click for a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearn_pumped-storage.jpg
The map shows how and where the biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme could be built – Strathdearn in the Scottish Highlands.
The scheme requires a massive dam about 300 metres high and 2,000 metres long to impound billions of metres-cubed of water in the upper glen of the River Findhorn. The surface elevation of the reservoir so impounded would be as much as 650 metres when full and the surface area would be as much as 40 square-kilometres.
There would need to be two pumping stations at different locations – one by the sea at Inverness which pumps sea-water uphill via a pressurised pipe to 350 metres of elevation to a water well head which feeds an unpressurised canal in which water flows to and from the other pumping station at the base of the dam which pumps water up into the reservoir impounded by the dam.
The potential energy which could be stored by such a scheme is colossal – thousands of Gigawatt-hours – a minimum of 100 GigaWatt-days, perhaps 200 GW-days or more.
This represents enough energy-storage capacity to serve all of Britain’s electrical grid storage needs for backing-up and balancing intermittent renewable-energy electricity generators, such as wind turbines and solar photovoltaic arrays for the foreseeable future.
The geography of Scotland is ideal for siting pumped-storage hydro schemes to serve a European energy network infrastructure, with benefits for Scots, Britons and Europeans alike.
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When the facility is generating, will there be problems maintaining the required flow along the canal to maintain the head in the Inverness pipe/generator? Assuming the goal would be to be able to generate a few GW, I wonder if the design would need to include a quite-large holding pool at the Inverness end of the canal?
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/worlds-biggest-ever-pumped-storage-hydro-scheme-for-scotland/comment-page-1/#comment-5
David,
I’m honoured to welcome your first comment on my blog – the first of many I hope. Your book – “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air” by David JC MacKay
http://www.withouthotair.com/
is the 2nd-most quoted reference source (after Wikipedia) in the online discussions I have been party to regarding renewable energy, especially your Chapter 26 “Fluctuations and storage”
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml
in the context of pumped-storage hydro.
I rushed this post out in the early hours of this morning because I am keen to share my design concept at the earliest opportunity regardless that many key details of my proposal remain unspecified in the post at this time (15 April 2015). I intend to update this post on my own initiative and in answer to comments such as yours.
The most important missing detail in the first draft of this post is (was) any estimate for the power capacity. Whilst we may agree that power capacity should be in proportion to the energy storage capacity, we may differ on precisely what constant of proportionality to recommend.
On page 189 of your book,
http://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_189.shtml
you recommend storage capacity equivalent to 5 days of average power. Attempting to follow the guidance in your book, from an energy storage capacity of 100 GW-days, would not your book’s recommendation for power capacity be the peak power equivalent of 20 GW average power (1.6 x 20 = 32 GW peak power) or for 200 GW-days energy storage then the peak power equivalent of 40 GW average power (1.6 x 40 GW = 64 GW peak power), which is a lot more than “a few GW”?
Peak-power is the more relevant nameplate specification for a pumped-storage hydro-scheme because pumps and turbines must be able to handle peak power, not only average power.
In my blog post “Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power”
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/
I modelled a smaller constant of proportionality for energy storage capacity of only 1.11 peak-demand-days (equivalent to 1.6 x 1.11 = 1.77 average power-days), with satisfactory results. So, as of now, I’m recommending only “1.77 days” equivalently compared to your “5 days”, a constant of proportionality of about a third of yours.
Accordingly, I’d recommend for 100 GW-days, a nameplate peak power capacity of 100 / 1.11 = 90 GW, and for 200 GW-days, 180 GW. As you can see this is considerably in excess of UK peak demand of 60 GW, opening up the possibility to provide grid energy storage services to Europe as well.
Those figures had to be discussed first before turning to the requirements for water flow through the pumps, the pipe and the canal because all of the features of the hydro scheme must be scaled appropriately.
The required flow rate of water can be calculated, as you know, from the head and the power capacity and the empirical Manning formula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manning_formula
may be used to design the cross-sectional area of a canal to achieve the required flow rate.
So to get to your question David, yes there would indeed be problems in maintaining the required flow along the canal to maintain the head – at both ends because flow is in both directions – but a holding pool at either end, however large, would not solve those problems. Only a canal of a sufficient cross section with additional design features as required could hope to do so.
I’ve not done any estimates for the required minimum cross section of the canal as yet but that’s of interest certainly.
Once again, David, I must tell you how ‘fair chuffed’ I am that you commented on my post!
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You think you could get planning permission for that massive salt-water tank? There are better technologies on the way which will wipe out the point of it before it could be built.
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The scale of this 64 GW dam project can best be appreciated by comparison with the Hoover Dam with a peak output of 1.4GW, and Drax power station (4GW). The largest hydroelectric station in the UK is 0.3GW at present. Admittedly these are fairly historic structures, so a fair comparison would be with the 22 GW Three Gorges Dam
......the dam flooded archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people, and is causing significant ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides. The dam has been a controversial topic both domestically and abroad.
except that both Hoover and Three Gorges are freshwater systems. Having overcome the minor technical problem of pumping seawater back and forth, raised enough money to build a power station three times larger than any other on the planet, and installed a distribution system to carry the entire national demand to and from one station instead of 600 with sufficient redundancy, you may find just the teensiest hint of concern from the occasional treehugger!
I think it is an inspiring project, which should be started immediately and funded entirely by the windpower industry. As the Hoover Dam was completed in 5 years and the Three Gorges in 12, it should be possible to complete this project before wind generation exceeds 20% of grid capacity - the point at which grid stability would be seriously compromised. The only pity is that it is in the wrong place:
Because of the power loss associated with this north to south flow, the effectiveness and efficiency of new generation capacity is significantly affected by its location. For example new generating capacity on the south coast has about 12% greater effectiveness due to reduced transmission system power losses compared to new generating capacity in north England, and about 20% greater effectiveness than northern Scotland.
but you can't have everything!
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Mere scale is virtually never a reason not to do something. You should look at stuff like cost per person, and the timescale over which it would be built instead.
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Scale is important because this project requires capital input. There is obviously no physical reason why it can't be done but the practicality is that you need enough money up front to start the work, with a sufficient promise that it will be funded to completion. Failing that, a project will run into the sand as lack of continuing funding means delay, which increases costs and makes further funding less attractive.
Whilst Scottish independence remains a serious possibility, it won't be funded by the UK government, so the money has to be raised either by private investors or by taxing the Scots for long enough to build up the required capital reserve (and not spending it on something else, which politicians are bound to do).
So, let's have some cost estimates, please!
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I’ve updated my post to include more detailed estimates for the reservoir volume, maximum flow rate, energy storage and power capacity.
The volume of water impounded by the dam - about 4.4 billion metres-cubed of water.
The maximum potential energy which could be stored – about 6800 Gigawatt-hours – or 280 Gigawatt-days.
To fill or empty the reservoir in a day would require a flow rate of 51,000 metres-cubed per second, the equivalent of the discharge flow from the Congo River, only surpassed by the Amazon!
When nearly empty and powering only the lower turbines by the sea, then about 132 GW could be produced. When nearly full and the upper turbines at the base of the dam fully powered too then about 264 GW could be produced.
I’ve also used the Manning formula to estimate a canal size to cope with the maximum flow rate.
Canal
The empirical Manning formula relates the properties, such as volume rate, gradient, velocity and depth of a one-directional steady-state water flow in a canal.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/manning_power_canal.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/manning_power_canal_200.jpg
For 2-way flow, the canal must support the gradient in both directions and contain the stationary water at a height to allow for efficient starting and stopping of the flow.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/2-way_power_canal_501.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/2-way_power_canal1.jpg
The “2-way Power Canal” diagram charts from a spreadsheet model for a 51,000 m3/s flow how the width of the water surface in a 45-degree V-shaped canal varies with the designed maximum flow velocity. The lines graphed are
• Moving width – from simple geometry, for a constant volume flow, the faster the flow velocity, the narrower the water surface width
• Static width – the width of the surface of the stationary water with enough height and gravitational potential energy to convert to the kinetic energy of the flow velocity
• 30km 2-way wider by – using the Manning formula, the hydraulic slope can be calculated and therefore how much higher and deeper the water must begin at one end of a 30km long canal to have sufficient depth at the end of the canal and therefore by how much wider the canal must be
• Canal width – adding the 30km-2-way-wider-by value to the static-width determines the maximum design width of the water surface.
The equation thus derived,
y = 2 √ ( 51000/x) + 0.1529 x2 + x8/3/40
where y is the maximum surface water width in the canal and x is the designed maximum flow velocity
predicts a minimum value for the canal width of about 170 metres (plus whatever additional above the waterline freeboard width is added to complete the design of the canal) at a design maximum flow velocity between 10 and 11 metres per second.
Guinness World Records states that the widest canal in the world is the Cape Cod Canal which is “only” 165 metres wide.
So the canal, too, would be the biggest ever!
You think you could get planning permission for that massive salt-water tank?
Well the SSE got planning permission for their plans for a pumped-storage hydro-scheme at Coire Glas.
BBC: "Scottish government approves £800m Lochaber hydro scheme" - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-25365786
Admittedly, the SSE plan is only for a 30GWh reservoir and mine is some 226 times bigger.
There are better technologies on the way which will wipe out the point of it before it could be built.
Well the "long-life" electrical battery has been such a favourite topic for marketing hyperbole for so many decades that scientists are naturally sceptical of any such new claims.
The scale of this 64 GW dam project
I've increased the estimate for the storage capacity up from "200 GW-days or more" to "280 GW-days", so even assuming David MacKay's very conservative requirements for 5-days of average power that estimate goes up to 280/5 x 1.6 = 90 GW.
can best be appreciated by comparison with the Hoover Dam with a peak output of 1.4GW, and Drax power station (4GW). The largest hydroelectric station in the UK is 0.3GW at present. Admittedly these are fairly historic structures, so a fair comparison would be with the 22 GW Three Gorges Dam
......the dam flooded archaeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people, and is causing significant ecological changes, including an increased risk of landslides. The dam has been a controversial topic both domestically and abroad.
The population density of the Highlands of Scotland is 9 people /km2. The scheme could be easily contained within 4 squares each of 10km x 10 km. So tops only 400km2 x 9 = 3600 people might be displaced (with generous compensation I trust).
except that both Hoover and Three Gorges are freshwater systems. Having overcome the minor technical problem of pumping seawater back and forth,
The Okinawa pumped-storage hydro scheme uses the sea as a lower reservoir.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_Yanbaru_Seawater_Pumped_Storage_Power_Station
raised enough money to build a power station three times larger than any other on the planet,
Even the SSE has not raised the £800 million for their 226 times smaller scheme, so the 226 x £0.8 billion = £180 billion for this scheme is a big ask.
and installed a distribution system to carry the entire national demand to and from one station instead of 600 with sufficient redundancy,
It all adds to the cost, for sure.
you may find just the teensiest hint of concern from the occasional treehugger!
We can easily plant more trees than we have to uproot for this scheme.
I think it is an inspiring project, which should be started immediately and funded entirely by the windpower industry.
No for this, I was thinking some of the European Central Bank quantitative easing money would come in handy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30933515
The ECB has only created 60 billion Euros because, after all, governments don't tend to trust bankers all that much these days but for a sound investment like this, with overwhelming benefits for Europe's renewable energy goals, perhaps the ECB can be persuaded to chip-in a good deal more than 60 billion Euros. Then of course the UK can chip-in with some Q.E. or deficit-spending likewise.
It's a big ask but it is worth it.
As the Hoover Dam was completed in 5 years and the Three Gorges in 12, it should be possible to complete this project before wind generation exceeds 20% of grid capacity - the point at which grid stability would be seriously compromised. The only pity is that it is in the wrong place:
Well this scheme's full power output from 130 GW up to 230 GW of power available is 20% of 650 GW to 1150 GW or 20% of the entire generation capacity of Europe.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=2&pid=2&aid=7
Because of the power loss associated with this north to south flow, the effectiveness and efficiency of new generation capacity is significantly affected by its location. For example new generating capacity on the south coast has about 12% greater effectiveness due to reduced transmission system power losses compared to new generating capacity in north England, and about 20% greater effectiveness than northern Scotland.
but you can't have everything!
Direct current is more efficient for long distance power transmission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
Mere scale is virtually never a reason not to do something. You should look at stuff like cost per person, and the timescale over which it would be built instead.
Agreed.
Scale is important because this project requires capital input. There is obviously no physical reason why it can't be done but the practicality is that you need enough money up front to start the work, with a sufficient promise that it will be funded to completion. Failing that, a project will run into the sand as lack of continuing funding means delay, which increases costs and makes further funding less attractive.
Whilst Scottish independence remains a serious possibility, it won't be funded by the UK government, so the money has to be raised either by private investors or by taxing the Scots for long enough to build up the required capital reserve (and not spending it on something else, which politicians are bound to do).
I think the way to build this is not all at once but first to build part of the sea-side scheme, using a length of canal as an upper reservoir.
Get a system working for Scottish 2020 renewables-only needs then once the team which has done that has a working scheme in place, hopefully the investment to complete the rest of the sea-side scheme and the reservoir and dam-base pumps would become available.
That way at least we'd have working pumped-storage to show for any investment if the money ran out before final completion.
So, let's have some cost estimates, please!
8 GW / 8.5 GW-days - £5.4 billion (Scottish needs demonstrator project, using about 20km of canal as the upper reservoir)
264 GW / 280 GW-days- £180 billion
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There are better technologies on the way which will wipe out the point of it before it could be built.
Well the "long-life" electrical battery has been such a favourite topic for marketing hyperbole for so many decades that scientists are naturally sceptical of any such new claims.
I was thinking about two things: nuclear fusion power stations, and battery storage optimised not for power to weight ratio but for low cost bulk storage (there are promising noises coming from people working on that). Both of these will be in place before you can build your monster.
What is certain is that your giant fish tank would meet with enormous opposition for a variety of obvious reasons. You're talking about a dam 300m high and 2km long - an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is not an impossibility in that location, so I wouldn't want to live downhill from there.
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The production of concrete generates 410 kg of CO2 per m3.
A dam is roughly triangular in section with base width equal to its height, so we are looking at a carbon footprint of 37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for the dam, plus probably twice as much to line the canal. plus whatever it takes to get the concrete to site. I guess at least 150 megatonnes. How much wind energy is required to offset this?
Remember that this project doesn't generate any energy, it merely stores energy generated elswhwere, so there's no "carbon offset" involved.
Nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint of all energy sources, at about 4 gram per kWh so you would need 37,500 GWh of additional free wind energy to repay the carbon cost of building the project. Except that wind actually has a higher carbon footprint than nuclear, so if you wanted to reduce the overall carbon emission of the electricity grid you would do better to replace all the fossil plant with nuclear: no storage problem, no additional land requirement, and no additional transmission grid capacity.
But the SNP is pledged to a non-nuclear Scotland!
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I agree that nuclear power is an excellent, low carbon energy source that should be taken better advantage of. However, that doesn't get you completely away from the energy storage problem. Nuclear plants have a very constant output, that can only be modulated a little bit, and quite slowly (as far as I know). While this can be used to provide a large portion of the base load, it is ill-adapted to the variability in consumer demand for electricity. Energy storage technology is still required for peak shaving and peak shifting, if you don't want to have some gas- or coal-fired powerplants that get cycled on and off as needed...
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We could get rid of a lot of the sudden peaks in energy demand by getting rid of soap operas.
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There is certainly a place for pumped energy storage in an all-nuclear system, but as the ramp-up time for a nuke is a matter of minutes (the trick is never to shut the reactor down completely, and baseload is about half peak in the UK), you don't need to store the entire grid demand for 5 days, just half the demand for an hour or two. This was the philosophy behind Dinorwig, and it works very well.
As I recall, the largest peak demand was during the Queen's coronation. as the procession left the Abbey, the entire nation switched the kettle on and went for a pee.
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Nuclear is a non starter; renewables are growing far faster and that's not changing any time soon.
Although nuclear reactors can and are built to load follow, running a nuclear reactor at partial power makes it even less economic; the cost of the electricity is inversely proportional to its production.
Indeed that's why Dinorwig was built, it looked like they would need a whole bunch of pumped storage because the plan was to produce lots of nuclear power plants and they didn't want to have to make them load follow; in the end nuclear got scaled wayyyy back.
Apart from the huge economic risks of a major meltdown, nuclear power also has the waste problems, which have never really had any good solutions, only least bad ones; which still weren't very good.
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At the moment I can't remember who to attribute this to, but there is a quote or saying out there along the lines of:
"I am a firm believer that nuclear fusion will ultimately be the only source of power used by the people of Earth--after all, we already have the reactor!"
In all seriousness, with the exception of radioactive materials and geothermal power, all of our energy is originally solar. We just need to develop more efficient ways of capturing, storing and distributing that energy, and we would have access to an almost unlimited supply of energy (several orders of magnitude more than our current demands.)
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In all seriousness, with the exception of radioactive materials and geothermal power, all of our energy is originally solar. We just need to develop more efficient ways of capturing, storing and distributing that energy, and we would have access to an almost unlimited supply of energy (several orders of magnitude more than our current demands.)
Plants do it very well, and you can eat them too. The problem is that there are too many people. But that problem can be solved by simply doing nothing - make fewer people. Alas, however, there is no profit to be made by such a simple solution, and a world with a small population of well-fed, contented people would have no need of priests, politicians, and other parasites, so it won't happen because people are individually clever but collectively stupid.
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Plants are actually not that good at photosynthesis; their conversion efficiency for solar energy to plant energy is only about 1-3% or so, whereas solar panels are ~15-45% or more. Some of that is probably because they need the energy for metabolism; but the end result is the same; they suck for what we as humans want from them.
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Canal lining and boulder trap
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/bouldertrap1.jpg)
To maximise the water flow velocity, canals are lined to slow erosion. Concrete is one lining material often used to allow for the highest water flow velocities, though engineering guidelines commonly recommend designing for significantly slower maximum flow velocities than 10 m/s, even with concrete lining.
Designing for a slower maximum flow velocity requires a wider canal to maintain the maximum volume flow rate and is expensive in construction costs.
Water flowing at 10 m/s has the power to drag large – in excess of 10 tonnes – boulders along the bottom of a canal with the potential of eroding even concrete, so I suggest that the bottom 6 metres width of the lining, (3 m either side of the corner of the V) may be specially armoured with an even tougher lining material than concrete and/or include bottom transverse barriers of 2 metres depth to impede the flow along the corner of the V and trap boulders, smaller stones and gravel, in which case the water flow is more precisely modelled for Manning formula calculations as a trapezoidal canal with a bed width equal to the 4 metre width of the top of bottom transverse barrier (“boulder trap”) and a 2-metre smaller depth from the top of the boulder trap to the water surface.
Main Dam
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearndam_50.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearndam.jpg
The image shows the location of the main dam at latitude 57°15’16.2″N, decimal 57.254501°, longitude 4°05’25.8″W, decimal -4.090506°.
Click to view location on Google Maps -
NOPE - MY LINK TO GOOGLE MAPS IS BEING BLACKLISTED
but I've got a work-around via tinyurl
http://tinyurl.com/StrathdearmDamGoogleMaps
Assuming the dam would be twice as wide as its height below the dam top elevation of 650 metres, the superficial volume is estimated at 80 million cubic metres, not including the subterranean dam foundations which would be built on the bedrock after clearing away the fluvial sediment.
There are better technologies on the way which will wipe out the point of it before it could be built.
Well the "long-life" electrical battery has been such a favourite topic for marketing hyperbole for so many decades that scientists are naturally sceptical of any such new claims.
I was thinking about two things: nuclear fusion power stations,
So impractical as to not even be worth discussing. In my opinion, that will never be in place. I regret that Prof Brian Cox has been allowed air time on the BBC to mislead popular science viewers about this topic. Well I suppose he is more entertaining than a lot of the other rubbish on the box, but still - there's no substitute for practical applied science.
and battery storage optimised not for power to weight ratio but for low cost bulk storage (there are promising noises coming from people working on that). Both of these will be in place before you can build your monster.
Well we've heard promising noises for decades about this. I'm not getting my hopes up.
What is certain is that your giant fish tank would meet with enormous opposition for a variety of obvious reasons. You're talking about a dam 300m high and 2km long - an earthquake of 6 on the Richter scale is not an impossibility in that location, so I wouldn't want to live downhill from there.
It should be possible to build a dam as strong as the surrounding mountains, to withstand any earthquake which the mountains endure.
Admittedly, for people living near such big dams, repeated minor earthquakes arising from reservoir induced seismicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_seismicity#Artificial_lakes
may cause fear and alarm, at least until such time as the locals get used to it.
The production of concrete generates 410 kg of CO2 per m3.
A dam is roughly triangular in section with base width equal to its height,
I would place that configuration on the experimental side of the experimental-versus-conservative design boundary for dam footprints, which I would place at the ratio of base width equal to twice its height, which is how I've drawn my dam's footprint in my above diagram.
The issue is blast waves normal to the dam wall - with the
"width = 2 x height"
or wider configurations, the normal shock is directed into the ground, harmlessly and foiling any sabotage of the dam.
Any narrower than w=2h and the normal shock wave reaches the opposite dam wall above the ground which can fail in tension as the shock wave is reflected from opposite wall, as was demonstrated in the WW2 Dam Busters raid.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.airrecce.co.uk%2FWW2%2Fimagery%2FDambusters%2FDIAGRAM%2520SHOWING%2520METHOD%2520OF%2520ATTACK1.JPG&hash=a1fd106c70fce687bcc2ec54c236d594)
so we are looking at a carbon footprint of 37 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for the dam,
You appear to have assumed a dam volume of 90 million cubic metres, which is closer to my estimate than expected because
a) the dam is effectively smaller near its edges because the geography is higher
b) my 80 million cubic metres doesn't include dam foundations so the total including foundations could easily exceed your 90 million cubic metres.
plus probably twice as much to line the canal.
Well I can't agree with this estimate. What did you assume for the canal length, lining area and thickness?
If the depth of the canal water is 88 metres and ignoring any freeboard above the waterline.
Length of lining of canal up the 45 degree slope = √( 2 x 88 x 88) = one slope 124.45 m
Two slopes = 248.9 call that 249m
Canal length 30km = 30,000 metres
Lining area = 30,000 x 249 = 7.47 x 10^6 m^2
Volume of lining per metre thickness is about 7.5 million metres cubed
So even if the lining were 1 metre thick - more than it needs to be I think - that would only be 7.5 million metres cubed, less than 1/10th of the dam volume.
Yet you estimate the canal needs twice the concrete for the dam. Why? Does the canal lining have to be 20 metres thick? Or has one of us got our sums wrong?
plus whatever it takes to get the concrete to site.
Plus fuel for the construction equipment and explosives to blast rock.
I guess at least 150 megatonnes.
Really?
How much wind energy is required to offset this?
Well it is your figure so you work it out. This link
http://www.electricityinfo.org/co2emissions.php
suggests that the average CO2 emission is 470g/kWh of electricity generated.
I'll work out how much CO2 my dam will save if used as part of a renewable-only generation system for the equivalent peak-power of 264 GW which equates to an average power capacity of 264/1.6 = 165GW
Annual CO2-free energy produced is 165 x 24 x 365 = 1.445 x 10^6 GW-hours = 1,445 TerraWatt-hours = 1.445 PetaWatt-Hours (PW-hours)
CO2 emissions 470g/kWh
= 470Kg/MWh
= 470 tonnes / GWh
So that's an annual CO2 saving of 470 x 1.445 x 10^6 tonnes CO2 = 679 million tonnes CO2
Remember that this project doesn't generate any energy, it merely stores energy generated elswhwere, so there's no "carbon offset" involved.
This pumped-storage hydro scheme would allow intermittent renewables to supply power 24/7 so it should get part of the credit for the carbon dioxide not emitted.
Nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint of all energy sources, at about 4 gram per kWh so you would need 37,500 GWh of additional free wind energy to repay the carbon cost of building the project. Except that wind actually has a higher carbon footprint than nuclear, so if you wanted to reduce the overall carbon emission of the electricity grid you would do better to replace all the fossil plant with nuclear: no storage problem, no additional land requirement, and no additional transmission grid capacity.
What is the carbon footprint of Chernobyl or Fukushima and who is wasting time counting that when the radiation poisoning footprint of a nuclear disaster is what matters most anyway?
But the SNP is pledged to a non-nuclear Scotland!
I favour retention of the British nuclear deterrent on the Clyde.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fww2today.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2010%2F08%2FNever-was-so-much-owed-by-so-many-to-so-few-poster.jpg&hash=2869e66d68bdc44d66336103c256c73c)
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maybe build a solar highway/belt around the equator? floating kind?
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I'll work out how much CO2 my dam will save if used as part of a renewable-only generation system for the equivalent peak-power of 264 GW which equates to an average power capacity of 264/1.6 = 165GW
But (a) you state we only need an average of about 60 GW and (b) wind currently produces rather less than one third of its peak capacity - and the best sites have already been used.
Note that your dam won't save (i.e. generate or reduce the need for) electricity, only embarrassment.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html (http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html)
Calculated deaths per Terawatt hour
Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe's estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation.
Hydroelectric power was found to to have a fatality rate of 0.10 per TWh (883 fatalities for every TW·yr) in the period 1969–1996
Nuclear power is about 0.04 deaths/TWh.
So if we add hydropower storage to wind, it's altogether about 6 times more dangerous than nuclear.
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I'll work out how much CO2 my dam will save if used as part of a renewable-only generation system for the equivalent peak-power of 264 GW which equates to an average power capacity of 264/1.6 = 165GW
But (a) you state we only need an average of about 60 GW and (b) wind currently produces rather less than one third of its peak capacity - and the best sites have already been used.
That may or may not be the case, but in any case there's something called 'repowering' where you replace wind turbines with bigger ones.
Note that your dam won't save (i.e. generate or reduce the need for) electricity, only embarrassment.
This is a systems question.
The system as whole certainly does generate electricity and not embarassment, and the dam is part of that system.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html (http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html)
Calculated deaths per Terawatt hour
Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe's estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation.
Hydroelectric power was found to to have a fatality rate of 0.10 per TWh (883 fatalities for every TW·yr) in the period 1969–1996
Nuclear power is about 0.04 deaths/TWh.
So if we add hydropower storage to wind, it's altogether about 6 times more dangerous than nuclear.
Yes, these are still very small numbers, whereas nuclear power is plausibly more than a billion times more potentially economically destructive in the worst conceivable accident. At one point in Fukushima, they were wondering whether they were going to have to evacuate the whole of Tokyo FFS.
Estimates I've seen are that Ukraine is spending about 5% of its GDP on Chernobyl-related work, to this day.
So, the upside with nuclear power is that your lights work. The downside is that you potentially have to evacuate, lose your job, your house, your pets die chained to a railing until they starve to death, while you go and live in some hell-hole evacuation centre, as happened in Japan.
Thanks... but no thanks.
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Yes, these are still very small numbers, whereas nuclear power is plausibly more than a billion times more potentially economically destructive in the worst conceivable accident. At one point in Fukushima, they were wondering whether they were going to have to evacuate the whole of Tokyo FFS.
Estimates I've seen are that Ukraine is spending about 5% of its GDP on Chernobyl-related work, to this day.
So, the upside with nuclear power is that your lights work. The downside is that you potentially have to evacuate, lose your job, your house, your pets die chained to a railing until they starve to death, while you go and live in some hell-hole evacuation centre, as happened in Japan.
Thanks... but no thanks.
Ah yes, Fukushima. 16,000 civilians killed by a tsunami that destroyed an entire county, and one power station worker voluntarily received a lethal dose of radiation. My point exactly: water is dangerous, people are irrational. Apart, it seems, from our French neighbours who generate almost 80% of their electricity from nukes with remarkably few cases of hysteria.
Chernobyl wasn't an accident. It was a deliberate experiment to override the safety systems and ignore the operating manual "to see what happens" - which was all in the textbooks anyway.
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Back to square one: it's 21 April, and so far only 4.5 days this unexceptional month with wind sufficient to generate 2 GW - the running mean is less than 10% of capacity. Time, I think, to review the statistics: as I suggested a few pages back, you need at least 14 days' storage at mean demand if you are going to use electricity as a reliable power source.
Interestingly, governments get upset and start putting emergency schemes into play when at-plant fossil fuel reserves fall below 5 days' worth. One can't help feeling that they know something about it.
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Careful here.
The measured wind output is 0.77 GW. That's about 1.5GW, because half is unmetered. This is coming from 12 GW of nameplate wind power.
Meanwhile Scottish Scientist called for 290GW of nameplate wind power.
So, if we had 290GW we would be getting 290/12 * 1.5 = 37 GW of power right now.
Demand is... about 33 GW (adding 0.77 to allow for the unmetered wind power).
So yes, it would be working perfectly fine right now.
Interestingly, governments get upset and start putting emergency schemes into play when at-plant fossil fuel reserves fall below 5 days' worth. One can't help feeling that they know something about it.
And there's blazing sunshine here. By the time a system like Scottish Scientist's would be up, how many GW of solar power will be on the grid? How many GWh of electric car batteries?
Consider: it's getting to summer. In summer, you get more sunshine and less wind.
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You can't assume that metered demand is being met by unmetered input - that would be ridiculously generous of the suppliers, and anyway, as Gridwatch states, unmetered supply is already shown as a reduction in demand, so you mustn't double-count it! Furthermore it is generally the case that unmetered wind is small power for local consumption and therefore will not contribute significantly more to the grid as large windfarms are built to absorb your taxes.
Thus using conventional arithmetic, if we had 290 GW of installed wind power right now, we would be getting 290/12 = 24.16 GW from the wind and about 10 GW from SS's reservoir.
Except that the 100 GW-day reservoir would by now be empty, so we are going to be about 20 GW short of demand by 8 pm. No problem: just shut down half of the country, and reintroduce Victorian Values, the Paleolithic Diet, and all the other trendy non-electric goodies from the past.
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I didn't double count it, I added it to both the demand AND the generation sides of the equation, and doing that is quite valid.
Yes, they're individually small, but there's a lot of them.
In fact my calculation is pessimistic; some of the wind will be not grid connected, in which case it won't be reducing the grid demand; so the calculated demand would appear higher, not lower than it should be in my calculation.
All I'm really assuming is that the wind power production is representative of the unmetered production. Given that weather systems tend to cover the country, that's not an unreasonable assumption.
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By the time a system like Scottish Scientist's would be up, how many GW of solar power will be on the grid? How many GWh of electric car batteries?
You really want to have your cake and eat it! Every watt of car battery is another load on the grid, so if you want to replace road vehicles with electric ones, you will need 580 GW of installed wind power and twice the storage capacity that SS is proposing. Plus, of course, twice the grid carrying capacity and a whole lot of infrastructure to deliver the juice to the cars.
And that will still leave you with 50% of current UK fossil fuel consumption for heating, cooking and direct use in industry....
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We already explained to you that you that average daily mileage of cars is only 20-30 miles, and that that only needs 5 kWh per car, per day. Meanwhile the minimum electric car has a 25 kWh battery...
Please try to not repeat falsehoods that we have already pointed out. I know you don't really care about facts and truth, but it gets boring.
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According to HM Government (or at least the Department of Energy and Climate Change), 36% of current UK energy use is for transport. If I am repeating falsehoods, they come with great authority.
If you look at domestic fuel bills you will find that the average consumption is around 50% electricity and 50% gas, oil or coal. Pretty much the same over all industries, though as UK manufacturing declines, the trend is toward more electricity and less primary heat. But then the supply companies are probably lying too.
One of the many problems with the windmill lobby is a fixation with electricity. It only accounts for a about a third of UK energy consumption, and worldwide, a lot less. Trouble is that you can't use a windmill to make anything else, so it's a very expensive fix for a small part of the problem, and replaces a cheap, reliable fuel with an expensive, unreliable one. Which is a pity. I'd love to have a wind generator, and I'd be delighted if the whole UK could be run on wind, but it just won't do the job on the required scale.
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As we have already pointed out to you, but you have pointedly 'forgotten', again, windmills and solar panels are not heat engines and the solar/wind/battery/electric motor power system is much, much, much more energy efficient than going the antiquated heat engine route.
Even with heating, it's much more energy efficient to use electrical power and run air or water source heat pumps than to use fossil fuel energy directly for heating.
So instead of using 36% of the UK's energy on transportation, try ~10% using electricity.
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solar/wind/battery/electric motor power system is much, much, much more energy efficient than going the antiquated heat engine route.
True, but vehicle aerodynamics takes no account of the power source. If you need 100 kW to shift load x at speed y with engine A, you will still need 100 kW with engine B. There is admittedly something to gain by using regenerative braking but in the words of Ettore Bugatti, "my cars are designed to go, not to stop".
And given that the energy required to make a petrol-engined car is about the same as the energy it consumes in its lifetime, how does the lifetime energy balance work out for an electric car?
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maybe build a solar highway/belt around the equator?
Perhaps surprisingly, the equator is not the ideal location for solar power, for two reasons
- the insolation (amount of sunshine) is higher where the air is drier than the equator which gets a lot of rainfall
- the equator is hotter and photo-voltaic panels are less efficient when hot
So those two reasons explain why parts of the Himalayas and the Andes which are sunny and cold are optimal sites for PV panels. Land nearer the tropics than the equator looks to be better for solar power than land nearer the equator than the tropics.
"So nearer the equator" is not always better depending on where you start from, but starting from Scotland or Britain, most places nearer the equator are better for solar power than we are here.
Most surprisingly, according to the Atlas of Solar Power, even Antarctica (during the southern hemisphere's summer presumably) is a good spot for PV panels!
Atlas of Solar Power from Photo-Voltaic Panels
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/photo-voltaic-atlas_50.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/photo-voltaic-atlas.jpg
floating kind?
Yes indeed, as I already suggested, mounting PV panels on artificial floating islands is a good idea. Looking at the Atlas of Solar Power, there looks to be a good place to float PV-panel platforms off the west coast of north Africa, between the Canary Islands and Cape Verde. [8D]
I was thinking, if we are needing to use solar then let's do it right.
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F5%2F59%2FSolarGIS-Solar-map-Europe-en.png%2F800px-SolarGIS-Solar-map-Europe-en.png&hash=a3bd0e24a42aa3ae0ed18ede1813c13f)
"Solar power in the United Kingdom"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Kingdom
What Europe needs is a whole lot of mass-arrays of solar photo-voltaic panels somewhere near the south of Spain, either on land, or if the Spanish need their land for growing grapes or whatever, how about on artificial floating islands somewhere off Gibraltar?
Maybe north Africa wants in too? There's a lot of sun in Morocco across the Gibraltar Strait. Maybe Morocco would like to sign a 50- or 100-year lease to the European Union for some land in Morocco to put solar photovoltaic arrays on? We could make it worth their while. Guarantee the deal by deploying a European military force to guard our solar PV arrays and the interconnector carrying the power back to Europe. [O8)]
So the Mediterranean or thereabouts for solar, everywhere for wind, Scotland for pumped-storage hydro.
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solar/wind/battery/electric motor power system is much, much, much more energy efficient than going the antiquated heat engine route.
True, but vehicle aerodynamics takes no account of the power source. If you need 100 kW to shift load x at speed y with engine A, you will still need 100 kW with engine B. There is admittedly something to gain by using regenerative braking but in the words of Ettore Bugatti, "my cars are designed to go, not to stop".
Irrelevant. A petrol car burns about 500kW or more of primary energy to get that power, and that's ignoring the energy needed to make that petrol, which is substantial, whereas the electric car is the equivalent of ~130 kW.
And given that the energy required to make a petrol-engined car is about the same as the energy it consumes in its lifetime, how does the lifetime energy balance work out for an electric car?
It seems to be significantly better, particularly if you're using solar or wind for the source of energy. They take more energy to build, but use a LOT less in operation.
Whereas virtually all of the lifecycle analyses being done right now, pretty much assume that power is more or less only being generated using fossil plants, and even they show a net win; but that isn't even what we're talking about here, we're talking about a true green grid.
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SS, you are so beautiful, as your science!
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Presumably with 290 GW of peak wind, you'd have spare energy a lot of the time. I mean the standard capacity factor is about 25-35%, so you'd be averaging more power than you actually need- it's sized for the periods when the wind is a bit anemic. So at 25% CF, that's 72GW average, whereas the normal demand is 35-55.
But that's actually probably good; things like electric cars don't usually care as much about having to have power every single day; you could potentially just set the minimum charging point for what you need day-to-day, and if there's spare electricity going because it's particularly windy, it would charge it up further and save money; also electric water heaters could be switched on.
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Presumably with 290 GW of peak wind, you'd have spare energy a lot of the time. I mean the standard capacity factor is about 25-35%,
I entered this discussion with a guesstimate that an installed capacity of 6 times average demand and 5 days' storage would do the trick, but events have shown otherwise,. My apologies.
So far this month, 20 out of 24 days the capacity factor of wind has been less than 10%, and for the last 2 days, zero. The mean capacity factor for the last 24 days has been about 14% and tomorrow isn't looking any better. So in order not to lose too many lives, destroy too much food, bring industry to a halt, or generally inconvenience the population, it seems on current evidence that you need at least to install at least 7 times average demand and one month's storage capacity.
And that's just to meet the present need for electricity. If you want a wholly wind-powered economy you will need a generating capacity of 20 times present electrical demand, and a month's storage capacity at 150GW, otherwise people will surely die or find themselves stranded far from home.
But here's a trick - sell electricity on a live market. When supply is low, prices are high. That will regulate demand and ensure that it is always exactly matched to supply. Because there is no significant lag between supply and consumption, and consumption can be monitored at every point of use, the unit price can be varied every second or less. The poor will have to learn to make choices instead of profligately cooking and keeping warm at the same time, and they will have to trade in their huge plasma screen TVs for neater LED models (everyone knows that the poor have ENORMOUS televisions - the Daily Mail says so). My private patients will continue to enjoy the fruits of their crimes, whilst honest peasants will be told that the waiting list for radiotherapy is due to factors beyond human control, not politics or incompetence.
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On floating platforms, solar power, power-to-gas and energy storage ...
Off-shore wind-turbines generate electricity, as we all know. Now I’ll explain how off-shore solar and hydrogen can power our electricity too.
Solar at sea is easy. Simply mount photovoltaic panels on platforms isolated on their own or in the wide-open spaces between the off-shore wind turbines. Mount PV-panels high and dry but be sure to mount them below the height of the rotors of the wind turbines so as not to interfere with the wind flow.
Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/deepseahydrogenstorage.jpg)
Floating platforms can generate electricity from wind, sun or hydrogen gas, which can be stored in inflatable gas bags in deep sea water.
The diagram shows how hydrogen gas can be used to store energy from renewable-energy platforms floating at sea by sending any surplus wind and solar electrical power down a sub-sea cable to power underwater high-pressure electrolysis to make compressed hydrogen to store in underwater inflatable gas-bags.
Deeper seas are better because the water pressure is proportional to the depth allowing the hydrogen to be compressed more densely, so that more hydrogen and more energy can be stored in an inflatable gas-bag.
Later, when there is a lull in the wind or when it is dark, the hydrogen can be piped from the gas-bag up to the platform on the surface to fuel gas-fired turbine generators or hydrogen fuel cells to generate electricity on-demand in all weather conditions.
Deeper seas, which are better for storing hydrogen in, can be found from an atlas of the oceans, such as this one.
Sea Atlas - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/6004-050-e076d00f.gif
Looking at a close-up of the map for the area of sea closest to Scotland, Britain and Western Europe –
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/seas_euro_n_africa.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/seas_euro_n_africa-200.jpg
– this shows that deep sea water most suitable for hydrogen storage is not to be found around the coast of the British Isles but depths greater than 4,000 metres can be found in vast areas of the Atlantic beginning a few hundred miles to the south-west in the Bay of Biscay.
So one area of sea which looks suitable for both solar and hydrogen powered electricity generation appears to be just to the west and south-west of the Canary Islands and to the north of the Cape Verde Islands. Whether this area is near enough to western Europe to be the best choice to supply western Europe considering the additional costs of longer interconnection cables remains to be estimated.
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So far this month, 20 out of 24 days the capacity factor of wind has been less than 10%, and for the last 2 days, zero.
No:
https://twitter.com/ElectricMixUK/status/591194830824411136
0.37 GW out of 6 GW metered.
With 290 GW that's equivalent to 17 GW, about half the demand.
Previous day was 0.75 out of 6 GW metered:
https://twitter.com/ElectricMixUK/status/590832433391673344
That's equivalent to 36 GW, which is pretty much the average demand that day.
Previous day to that was:
https://twitter.com/ElectricMixUK/status/590470039096156160
That's equivalent, to all of the demand: 38.7 GW
After that, I got bored. But whatever else, that's not zero production; it's most of the UK demand supplied by wind, per Scottish Scientist's plan.
Anyway, so... yup... you're full of sh1t, again, sorry.
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Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage
Very sensible idea. Worth also investigating the use of the existing UK gas grid to store and distribute low-pressure hydrogen or manufactured methane, thus obviating the need for an electricity store, major construction works or any novel generating plant: use the gas to run the existing gas power stations when the wind fails, just as now.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510066/audi-to-make-fuel-using-solar-power/ (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510066/audi-to-make-fuel-using-solar-power/)
Existing petrol-engined road vehicles can run on methane with very little conversion, or you could synthesise higher hydrocarbons for better energy density: pure synthetic diesel produces less NOx than biodiesel. And of course methane is already the preferred source of domestic and industrial heating in the UK, whilst hydrogen and oxygen are extremely useful industrial gases.
This approach might actually make wind power economically viable and socially useful.
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"The UK has reached the limit on hydro" (paraphrased) said Andrew Neil questioning the parties' energy and climate change spokespersons on the BBC's Daily Politics, first broadcast on 20th April and rebroadcasted earlier today on BBC Parliament.
What Mr Neil meant is that even it would be nice to build more hydro-electric schemes to provide renewable power when the wind is not blowing (sun is not shining etc), regrettably there are no more suitable sites to build more hydro schemes in the UK.
Actually, I have a plan to build a new massive pumped-storage hydro scheme in Scotland which could keep the UK's lights on 24/7, in a 100% renewable energy way.
World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?
https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/worlds-biggest-ever-pumped-storage-hydro-scheme-for-scotland/
So Andrew Neil was wrong. The orthodoxy about "the UK has reached the limit on hydro" is wrong.
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Look, none of this is rocket science; apparently it is for you,..
I'm certain that the rest of us in this forum would very much appreciate it if you'd stop using such a disrespectful tone with Alan. He's an intelligent, knowledgeable person whom many of us in the forum respect and admire. We don't like to see him insulted like this. Please stop.
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... Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage ...
[ Invalid Attachment ]
How big is this gas-bag ?, and how deep will it be under the sea ? .
Do flexible materials exist to make such a bag which can withstand the buoyancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy) forces ?
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F2%2F24%2FFlickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Underwater_Missions_Unit_Transfers_Equipment_Using_Special_%2522Lifting-Bags%2522.jpg%2F640px-Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Underwater_Missions_Unit_Transfers_Equipment_Using_Special_%2522Lifting-Bags%2522.jpg&hash=4dbfbc21a0f536f5942cab24370dbb56)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_bag
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It needn't be a balloon. A steel can will do quite nicely, and it doesn't need to be very deep under the ocean: the domestic gas supply pressure is only a meter of water gauge or less. The deeper it is, the more efficient, but large steel cans are very cheap and easy to make.
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It needn't be a balloon. A steel can will do quite nicely, and it doesn't need to be very deep under the ocean: the domestic gas supply pressure is only a meter of water gauge or less. The deeper it is, the more efficient, but large steel cans are very cheap and easy to make.
Scottish Scientist was suggesting storing the hydrogen at depth (~100m)
Deeper seas are better because the water pressure is proportional to the depth allowing the hydrogen to be compressed more densely, so that more hydrogen and more energy can be stored in an inflatable gas-bag.
Building a heavy-duty "gasometer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder)" made of steel, on the sea-floor, 100m below the surface of the salty-sea, sounds very-expensive and impractical to me : It will be bigger than a military submarine , and they cost over a billion dollars each.
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Hence the reason for a low-pressure steel tank - far simpler, and the weight of the tank provides the driving force to pump the gas.
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I'll work out how much CO2 my dam will save if used as part of a renewable-only generation system for the equivalent peak-power of 264 GW which equates to an average power capacity of 264/1.6 = 165GW
But (a) you state we only need an average of about 60 GW
No I didn't. In the context of "60 GW" I was not talking about "we" but "the UK" and not "an average" but "peak".
Also I wasn't talking about anyone "needing" a peak demand.
Peak demand is a given and you use that given to model how much energy storage capacity you need to match up with and back up that given peak demand.
Alternatively, if one has a energy storage capacity available one can predict how much of a peak demand one can offer to use the energy storage to back up.
However peak demand is not something one, or my plan, "needs" per se.
Accordingly, I’d recommend for 100 GW-days, a nameplate peak power capacity of 100 / 1.11 = 90 GW, and for 200 GW-days, 180 GW. As you can see this is considerably in excess of UK peak demand of 60 GW, opening up the possibility to provide grid energy storage services to Europe as well.
and (b) wind currently produces rather less than one third of its peak capacity
True enough. Is your point intended to be along the lines of your previous comment?
Diplodocus 2. We use electricity because it is cheapish and reliable. Given that you will need to install at least 3 times overcapacity (possibly 7 times on my assumptions)
I've recommended nameplate maximum wind power = 5.5 times peak demand.
The figures I gave were very clear - for Scotland 33GW/6GW = 5.5, for UK 290GW/52.5GW = 5.5
I'm not sure where you get "3" or "7" from?
My "5.5 x peak demand" recommendation is based on my modelling of a wind power & pumped-storage hydro only renewables system.
For such a wind & pumped-storage system, I also recommended matching peak power in GW equal to energy storage in GW-days divided by 1.11.
So for a wind & pumped-storage hydro only system with
- 280 GW-days energy storage,
I recommend being able to back up only
- a peak demand power of only 280/1.11 = 252 GW,
- an average demand power of only 252/1.6 = 157 GW
and commensurate with those figures,
- a nameplate wind turbine maximum power capacity of 252 x 5.5 = 1386 GW
would be required to complete that system - a system which could span multiple countries in Europe, not just the UK.
To put this in perspective, in the whole of Europe there was (2013/4) only about 213 GW of wind and solar power generating capacity installed (though it increases every year) -
Wikipedia - Renewable energy in the European Union
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_European_Union
- which would use up only 213/1390 = 15% of the balancing and backing-up capacity of this scheme.
So this "biggest-ever" scheme could meet all of Europe's future needs for balancing and backing up intermittent renewables even when intermittent renewable power generating capacity grows to more than 6 times what it is today.
The "264 GW" peak power and the 264/1.6 = 165 GW average power was not based on the computer modelling of wind & pumped-storage hydro systems but purely from the somewhat arbitrary maximum canal design flow rate of being able to empty my plan for a Strathdearn reservoir in a day and estimating what peak power could be generated from turbines for that particular maximum flow rate.
I used that 264 GW peak power generation to predict carbon dioxide saving without claiming I had a modelled system to demonstrate such a peak power production.
I've made no prediction as to how much nameplate wind power, solar power, biomass power or whatever renewable power might be required to help supply such a "264 GW" peak power or "165 GW" average power from this hydro-scheme plan as yet.
- and the best sites have already been used.
I just don't agree. I don't even agree with wind "farms" as such because I think huddling wind turbines together where they shelter each other from the wind is inefficient.
I would recommend instead deploying wind turbines in lines, more like the way pylons are deployed, but siting wind turbines on land on exposed high points or along ridges and for off-shore, in circular formations.
Note that your dam won't save (i.e. generate or reduce the need for) electricity, only embarrassment.
The hydro turbines generate electricity. The dam holds the water in the reservoir. I manage to generate my own embarrassment without the assistance of any dam. [:I]
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html (http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html)
Calculated deaths per Terawatt hour
Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe's estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation.
Hydroelectric power was found to to have a fatality rate of 0.10 per TWh (883 fatalities for every TW·yr) in the period 1969–1996
Nuclear power is about 0.04 deaths/TWh.
So if we add hydropower storage to wind, it's altogether about 6 times more dangerous than nuclear.
That's good to know for new portable nuclear power which I support but not convincing enough for me to support new-build nuclear power stations for the grid.
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Back to the gas-bags ...
Approximately 1 m3 of air at ambient pressure is required per tonne of lift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_bag#Filling_lift_bags
So if your hydrogen gas-bag was 300 m3, (approximately as big as a house), the buoyancy force would be around 300 tonnes. If the bag was a cube the [5] surface area would be 224 square meters, so the pressure would be 1.34* tons per square meter.
* I'd throw in a factor of ten to be on the safe side, so you're looking for fabric/membrane for your gas-bag which can withstand a pressure of around 13 tonnes per square meter, indefinitely. Does such a thing exist ? [ that pressure is about the same as for a car-tyre, which is reinforced with steel & nylon/kevlar ].
If the gas-bag was even bigger, the required strength per square meter for the envelope would have to increase. So the properties of materials currently available will set an upper-limit on the maximum size of such a gas-bag. A house-sized bag would only contain enough gas to heat A house for about a week in winter.
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1.3 tonnes per square metre is only a fraction of 1 atmosphere.
The highest pressures I can think of off-hand from a flexible fabric would be the Bigelow space stations. They're pressurised to around 70 kPa- about 7 tonnes per square metre.
And I don't think there's a maximum diameter- you just put more layers of material down.
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1.3 tonnes per square metre is only a fraction of 1 atmosphere.
You haven't added in the 10x safety-margin , which would make it "only" around atmospheric pressure ...
And I don't think there's a maximum diameter- you just put more layers of material down.
You're agreeing with me that you would have to increase the strength per square meter the bigger the envelope got. So as it gets larger at some point it's going to get impractical / unaffordable.
Building an envelope the size of a house to store a weeks worth of gas for one house seems uneconomic : there would have to be one per house. How much would a tyre the size of a house cost ? , then add the cost of making the floating platform with the solar cells and turbines , installing them and maintaining them at sea & under the sea. [ Oh and energy conversion losses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conversion_efficiency#Example_of_energy_conversion_efficiency) of ~50% x1 or x3].
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Building an envelope the size of a house to store a weeks worth of gas for one house seems uneconomic : there would have to be one per house. How much would a tyre the size of a house cost ?
...and yet, remarkably, hot air balloons fly quite well (I've flown them with a deadweight up to 5 tonnes, then packed them into the back of a Transit van) hydrogen balloons fly even better (Graf Zeppelin had a grand piano and nearly 100 tonnes of static lift) and half of the UK's power consumption already derives from gas. In fact within living memory, nearly all that gas was stored above ground as gaseous hydrogen and methane at less than 2 atmospheres pressure, and those gas tanks survived two world wars - as indeed did most of those around Europe.
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1.3 tonnes per square metre is only a fraction of 1 atmosphere.
You haven't added in the 10x safety-margin , which would make it "only" around atmospheric pressure ...
Nope, there's already a safety margin. It's a pressure vessel. Pressure vessels are potentially insanely dangerous, that's why there's ALWAYS a safety margin.
And I don't think there's a maximum diameter- you just put more layers of material down.
You're agreeing with me that you would have to increase the strength per square meter the bigger the envelope got. So as it gets larger at some point it's going to get impractical / unaffordable.
Nope. Again, it's a pressure vessel. Pressure vessels for gases have a mass that is strictly proportional to the mass of gas they can hold. So if it's cost effective at some size, it's cost effective at all proportionately bigger sizes.
edit: see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Gas_storage
edit2: submarines are similar, but they're designed for much high pressures, some of them can take thousands of atmospheres. That's also different because it's a compression, for compressive loads, steel works well. For tensile loads, kevlar is much lighter, stronger cheaper.
edit3: another example is fizzy drink bottles. A 2 litre, 6 atmosphere bottle weighs a few tens of grams and costs pence. A 2 litre, 1 atmosphere, compressive vacuum chamber would cost tens of pounds, and be made of glass or steel and be much, much heavier. It's a completely different thing.
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... it's a pressure vessel. Pressure vessels for gases have a mass that is strictly proportional to the mass of gas they can hold. So if it's cost effective at some size, it's cost effective at all proportionately bigger sizes.
We're agreed that the wall-strength will have to increase as the size of the envelope is is scaled-up. So the cost per unit area will increase as the envelope gets bigger if same material is used increasingly thickly. My point was a fabric adequate for a lift-bag the size of a suitcase would not be adequate for a gas-bag the size of a house : the bigger version would have to be a better-specification to withstand the higher pressure, e.g. it would have to be thicker or reinforced or completely-different material.
In Scottish-Scientist's diagram the gas-bag resembles a hot-air balloon which are made of lightweight nylon, in practice the gas-bag will have to be more like the wall of a car-tyre. A hot air-balloon costs about £10K , what will a car-tyre the size of house cost ? $100K ?, and each household would need one. It seems uneconomic.
... (Graf Zeppelin had a grand piano and nearly 100 tonnes of static lift) ... gas was stored above ground as gaseous hydrogen and methane at less than 2 atmospheres pressure, and those gas tanks survived two world wars - as indeed did most of those around Europe.
If you tried to sink a Zeppelin, or a gasometer, underwater they would burst before they were completely submerged because of the increased buoyancy force by [attempting to] surround them with water, rather than the air they are usually surrounded by.
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But if you inflate it deep under water, it stays compressed, like the swim bladder of a fish. Some deep-sea fish lead happy and useful lives at great depth but explode when brought to the surface.
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... like the swim bladder of a fish ...
Biomimicry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomimetics) : an excellent idea. What would a fish-bladder scaled-up to the size of a hot-air balloon cost to make ? , ( bear in mind the wall-strength of the bladder would have to increase proportionately ).
( no pun intended :¬)
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You seem to be under some misapprehension regarding the required wall strength of a vessel iin equilibrium. The pressure of the gas inside equals the pressure of the water outside, so there is no stretching or bending force in the wall. The only reason bathyscaphes and submarines have such thick walls is to keep the pressure inside much lower than the pressure outside.
If you ignore the mass of gas, the buoyancy force equals the weight of water displaced, which is fairly independent of depth. In the case of air balloons, we transmit the lift force to the load by enclosing the (hydrogen) balloon in a net or stitching load tapes into the fabric of a hot-air balloon. A big fishing net would do the job here.
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... the buoyancy force equals the weight of water displaced ...
Or to put that another way : the gas-bag would have to be strong enough to contain the same amount of water as it displaced, when on land, like those above-ground temporary back-yard swimming pools ...
[ Invalid Attachment ]
... In the case of air balloons, we transmit the lift force to the load by enclosing the (hydrogen) balloon in a net or stitching load tapes into the fabric of a hot-air balloon. A big fishing net would do the job here.
Agreed : mesh-reinforcement is a solution, as exists in a car-tyre , which brings us back to the cost of making something similar to a car-tyre , but as big as a house, or hot-air balloon.
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Back to square one: it's 21 April, and so far only 4.5 days this unexceptional month with wind sufficient to generate 2 GW - the running mean is less than 10% of capacity. Time, I think, to review the statistics: as I suggested a few pages back, you need at least 14 days' storage at mean demand if you are going to use electricity as a reliable power source.
Interestingly, governments get upset and start putting emergency schemes into play when at-plant fossil fuel reserves fall below 5 days' worth. One can't help feeling that they know something about it.
The challenge was met on 9th April.
today is the seventh consecutive day with wind power at less than 2GW. In fact the running average is less than 1 GW for the past week.
As I say, I love a challenge and the low wind period just now is such a challenge, so I've run it through my model - normalised for a case study of the UK this time - and here's the results.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015_50.jpg)
Click for full size image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april2015.jpg
So there would still be some water left at this time in the 1400 GWh reservoirs with 290 GW installed wind power, but it is running low admittedly, so we'll have to wait to see if the wind can pick up to save the day or whether I will need to rethink my 1400 GWh / 290 GW recommendation.
I think you - or at least your customers - will find 24 hours' storage rather inadequate, even in a mild spring.
Remember I have tested these the equivalent of these 1400 GWh / 290 GW specifications (normalised for the case study of Scotland) on the spring of 2014 and it worked.
As you can see for this period in early April 2015, the design specifications of 1400 GWh / 290 GW have managed this period of low wind (so far) for longer than 24 hours of low wind.
This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days but the daily average of power demand is less than the peak demand of 52.5GW. Demand from April 1 to 9 2015 has varied between a minimum of 25649 MW and a maximum of 43069 MW.
This is because 1400GWh is 58.33 GW-days
Fine. But average demand for the last 8 days has been over 30 GW so you needed 240 GW-days to supply it. I don't think a 300% shortfall (and the wind is only just now picking up to 3 GW) is "nitpicking"!
It seems nitpicking when you don't acknowledge the graph I posted shows acceptable performance for the data available when I downloaded it which was up to the 9th April.
Your graph appears to show 60 GW of wind power on 7 April.
My graph is the result from a computer simulation of what wind power the UK would generate if the UK had installed 290GW of maximum wind power rather than just the 12GW we have installed just now.
So the grey line plots gridwatch data for wind power multiplied by a normalisation factor to indicate what wind power would have been produced had we 290 GW's worth of wind turbines installed. Understand?
Imagine 7 April is Groundhog Day but what Phil Connors (Bill Murray) does different this time is he installs 290 GW of wind turbines and 1400 GWh of pumped-storage hydro.
So the challenge was met from 1st to 9th April but Alan wanted to see more.
So I have run the Gridwatch data for the 1st to today 26th April through my model to see.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april_1_26_2015_50.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april_1_26_2015.jpg
So the configuration of 290GW nameplate of maximum wind turbine power and 1400 GWh maximum pumped-storage energy capacity would have performed well. [8D]
Time for this Groundhog Day movie to end because the solution works. Phil Connors has got the girl.
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Pretty good calculations, SS. Assuming 100% availability of your 290 GW installed wind power, you had 8 hours' reserve at the worst point in the last month. Given the usual standards for offshore (100-year) and nuclear (1000-year) adverse events, I wonder how much statistical data you would need to meet an acceptable criterion of confidence?
All we need do now is to find a substitute for the other 70% of the UK's energy consumption, and you will be a hero.
But most significantly, you have robustly shown that by adding 5.5 times more generating capacity than is required to meet actual demand, then (or preferably before then) building the world's largest hydroelectric scheme in the hope of never using it, and doubling the carrying capacity of the grid, we might, with luck, get back to where we are now, except that the rest of the UK will be beholden to Scotland.
I have never seen a more thorough and elegant demonstration of the political economic and practical futility of wind power. The physics seems impeccable, the statistics are sound, and I hope your papers get the publicity they deserve.
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Or to put that another way : the gas-bag would have to be strong enough to contain the same amount of water as it displaced, when on land, like those above-ground temporary back-yard swimming pools ...
Not at all! The swimming pool has to be strong enough to carry the water because there's nothing supporting it outside. But a bubble of gas under water needs no container to stop it dissipating, only something to stop it rising. And at significant depth, the assembly will actually become less buoyant
Wetsuits are made from neoprene, impregnated with tiny air bubbles. When divers descend, these air bubbles are compressed and lose buoyancy. Wetsuits that provide 11 pounds/5 kilograms of buoyancy at the surface will only provide about 2.5 kg of buoyancy at 33 feet/10 meters where the ambient pressure is two atmospheres (ata). At an ambient pressure of five ata, which occurs at 130 feet/40 meters, its buoyancy will be reduced to about one kilogram. In addition to wetsuit compression, the gas spaces within a diver's body compress at depth, further reducing your buoyancy.
That's the problem that fish have to overcome: if they dive too deeply, the swim bladder gets compressed so they can't return to shallower water.
So no problem with an underwater gasbag: as long as it's deep enough, its buoyancy will be limited by the external pressure.
At 100 m depth, the ambient pressure is about 150 psi - a fairly convenient working pressure for gas transmission to the grid (though the main arteries work at about 1200 psi - say 800 m depth. - so you'd need boost pumps from most UK waters). The density of hydrogen at 100 m is about the same as atmospheric air, so no great problem with buoyancy, particularly if you use steel tanks rather than balloons.
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Presumably quite a lot of the primary energy for the UK is used to make electricity; if we get 1kWh of electricity from a fossil fuel that would have taken 2-3kWh of primary energy. Using wind changes that equation.
A lot of the rest of the energy will be things like heating in buildings and transportation. But heating energy can be reduced using heat pumps/air conditioners. They can make ~3 kWh of heat from 1 kWh of electricity.
And electric cars, again, a factor of ~3 improvement from going the electrical route. And they have built-in batteries. Sure, they're not as easy to use for long distances, but building a fast recharging infrastructure is better or worse than the equivalent amount of pumped storage??? Fast recharging is probably easier. And you could power them from (mostly unmetered) solar.
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... a bubble of gas under water needs no container to stop it dissipating, only something to stop it rising ...
The fabric of the gas-bag will experience the buoyancy force, that force won't just exist in the tether anchoring the bag to the sea-floor.
... use steel tanks rather than balloons
Re-creating steel gas-holders, (aka gasometers), at the bottom of the sea would be hugely-expensive, even if made to the same specifications as the original land versions ...
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Fb%2Fbf%2FMeadow_Lane.jpg%2F640px-Meadow_Lane.jpg&hash=dc27338701e9bb36b658551df8431888)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_holder
Guesstimate : around the same cost as an offshore oil-rig , hundreds of millions of pounds ?
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fd%2Fd9%2FTypes_of_offshore_oil_and_gas_structures.jpg&hash=2d0a362670846f8a567f4c461a5d4fb3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Types_of_offshore_oil_and_gas_structures.jpg
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Guesstimate : around the same cost as an offshore oil-rig , hundreds of millions of pounds ?
Why? The tank shouldn't cost much more than a tank of the same size on shore, and it doesn't need to be in particularly deep water, or indeed under water at all - as your photograph shows, we have a 200 year history of storing hydrogen in big tanks on the ground - as long as it is near a supply of water and bulk electricity.
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Careful here.
The measured wind output is 0.77 GW. That's about 1.5GW, because half is unmetered. This is coming from 12 GW of nameplate wind power.
Meanwhile Scottish Scientist called for 290GW of nameplate wind power.
So, if we had 290GW we would be getting 290/12 * 1.5 = 37 GW of power right now.
Hmm. That's not what I meant by "nameplate" which I meant interchangeably with "maximum wind power" as in proportion to the maximum wind power as metered by Gridwatch.
I've tried to avoid any comparison to unmetered or claimed installed capacity but which is never measured or metered.
The figure I am multiplying-by depends on this statistic.
The maximum wind power in 2014 measured by Gridwatch in 2014 was 6835 MW on 2014-12-09 19:50:02.
So if my modelled "290 GW maximum wind power" had been installed it would have produced 290,000 MW on 2014-12-09 19:50:02.
"nameplates" of wind turbines which are unmetered I ignore.
"nameplates" of wind turbines which are out of commission I ignore.
"nameplates" whose operator forgot to turn them on I ignore.
"nameplates" which are just nameplates but don't deliver that power I ignore.
So I'm strictly only referring by "nameplate" to the actual real measured power - nameplates which "do what they say on the nameplate" so to speak. "Ronseal" (it does what it says on the tin) nameplates, if you like.
So don't compare what I would describe as the UK's 6.8 GW "nameplate" maximum wind power which was actually metered on 9th December 2014 with the "12 GW" as allegedly installed wind turbines capacity in the UK, which I've ignored for the most part.
So the way I would do the conversion from a "measured wind output is 0.77 GW" is as follows
0.77 x 290,000/6835 = 0.77 x 42.42 = 32.7 GW which is closer to 33 GW than the "37 GW" you got doing the calculation your way.
Now maybe with the fact that wind turbines like everything else are not 100% reliable this would mean to get to a maximum wind power of 290 GW, there would need to be 290 GW of working turbines plus another percentage of wind turbines which are down for maintenance etc.
I'm only really modelling performing capacity. The actual number of turbines needed and adding up all the values including what's on the nameplates of the turbines which are not working at any time would be a different figure and higher than 290 GW, but I'm not getting in to how much that might be at this stage.
By the time a system like Scottish Scientist's would be up, how many GW of solar power will be on the grid?
Solar is definitely in the mix of very promising renewable generators and I propose future systems with solar too.
I've only modelled wind but not solar because Gridwatch has wind data but no solar data to model with.
So the model is not intended to be a blue print for a system in future to be "up" but to give us an idea of things like - well how much energy storage might we need and how much renewable generating capacity might we need?
So think of the "290 GW" solution as an approximate guide to how much wind + solar + wave + tidal might the "UK" (meaning the electricity consumers of Britain or of the sum of the home nations now part of the UK) need, rather than me proposing that we do actually do the Groundhog Day thing and install 290 GW of wind for real.
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You can't assume that metered demand is being met by unmetered input - that would be ridiculously generous of the suppliers, and anyway, as Gridwatch states, unmetered supply is already shown as a reduction in demand, so you mustn't double-count it! Furthermore it is generally the case that unmetered wind is small power for local consumption and therefore will not contribute significantly more to the grid as large windfarms are built to absorb your taxes.
Thus using conventional arithmetic, if we had 290 GW of installed wind power right now, we would be getting 290/12 = 24.16 GW
Incorrect. I've not used the "12 GW" figure in my modelling so it has no place in any such sum.
I did use the "12 GW" and "12" factor in my first post -
Today in the UK we have about 12GW of wind power installed.
So I estimate we'd need a factor of 290/12 = 24 times more wind turbine power than we have today.
- but that "12" has not been a factor in any of the modelling I have done.
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By the time a system like Scottish Scientist's would be up, how many GW of solar power will be on the grid? How many GWh of electric car batteries?
You really want to have your cake and eat it! Every watt of car battery is another load on the grid, so if you want to replace road vehicles with electric ones, you will need 580 GW of installed wind power and twice the storage capacity that SS is proposing. Plus, of course, twice the grid carrying capacity and a whole lot of infrastructure to deliver the juice to the cars.
And that will still leave you with 50% of current UK fossil fuel consumption for heating, cooking and direct use in industry....
I should point out that whereas my model indicates that present UK electricity needs could be met by 1400 GWh of energy storage capacity, even twice that or 2800 GWh would only be 41% of the 6800 GWh provided by my Strathdearn pumped-storage hydro scheme.
So my plan for Strathdearn PSH offers energy storage capacity for
* the present needs of the UK
* + some needs of other countries
* + British future needs after we have electrified all our transport
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SS, you are so beautiful, as your science!
Aw shucks! [:I]
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Presumably with 290 GW of peak wind, you'd have spare energy a lot of the time. I mean the standard capacity factor is about 25-35%, so you'd be averaging more power than you actually need- it's sized for the periods when the wind is a bit anemic. So at 25% CF, that's 72GW average, whereas the normal demand is 35-55.
But that's actually probably good; things like electric cars don't usually care as much about having to have power every single day; you could potentially just set the minimum charging point for what you need day-to-day, and if there's spare electricity going because it's particularly windy, it would charge it up further and save money; also electric water heaters could be switched on.
Absolutely right there wolfekeeper.
My modelling identifies surplus power with the "export" legend and graph lines coloured turquoise.
The area under the export power curve represents power x time or energy, as does the area under the demand power red line.
So compare the area under the export curve with the area under the demand curve and I think you can estimate that there seems to be the same again surplus energy available as there was energy supplied for electricity demand.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april_1_26_2015_50.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/windpumpedstorage_april_1_26_2015.jpg
This surplus power could actually be exported to other countries or used for power-to-gas to make hydrogen to be added to consumer gas supplies for example.
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Presumably with 290 GW of peak wind, you'd have spare energy a lot of the time. I mean the standard capacity factor is about 25-35%,
I entered this discussion with a guesstimate that an installed capacity of 6 times average demand and 5 days' storage would do the trick, but events have shown otherwise,. My apologies.
So far this month, 20 out of 24 days the capacity factor of wind has been less than 10%, and for the last 2 days, zero. The mean capacity factor for the last 24 days has been about 14% and tomorrow isn't looking any better. So in order not to lose too many lives, destroy too much food, bring industry to a halt, or generally inconvenience the population, it seems on current evidence that you need at least to install at least 7 times average demand and one month's storage capacity.
Well as my modelling of April 1st to 26th has demonstrated, 5.5 times peak demand [5.5 x 52.5 ≈ 290 GW] was enough (which by the way is equal to 5.5 x 1.6 = 8.8 times average demand) and 1.11 days of peak demand power energy storage capacity (which by the way is equal to 1.11 x 1.6 = 1.78 days of average power energy storage capacity).
Note you are under-estimating the power required. Your "7 times average demand" would be only 52.5/1.6 x 7 = 230 GW.
So there I am saying - "Hey Alan, the UK would need 290 GW of wind power maximum. But there you are saying, "oh no SS, the UK can get away with only 230 GW".
Sorry but a mere "7 times average demand" or 230 GW would not be enough, at least not with only 1400 GWh of energy storage it wouldn't.
But of course you'd make your mere 230 GW work with a massive "one month's storage capacity" which would be 52.5/1.6 GW-months = 32.8 GW-months = 998 GW-days = 23953 GW-hours but just call that 24,000 GW-hours.
At a cost estimate of £26.7 million per GW-hour, your one month's storage capacity would cost 24,000 x 26.7 = £640,000 million or £640 billion, 53 channel tunnels worth and the best part of one year's government spending.
So it's cheaper to do it my way.
And that's just to meet the present need for electricity. If you want a wholly wind-powered economy you will need a generating capacity of 20 times present electrical demand, and a month's storage capacity at 150GW, otherwise people will surely die or find themselves stranded far from home.
I don't "want" a wholly wind-powered economy. I was modelling a wind & pumped-storage generation system because that's easier to model because the data is available and offers useful for pointers towards a renewables-only energy system.
Your figures are speculative at this stage and I won't speculate with figures of my own in reply except to say that your notion of "one month's storage capacity" is inappropriately high.
But here's a trick - sell electricity on a live market. When supply is low, prices are high. That will regulate demand and ensure that it is always exactly matched to supply. Because there is no significant lag between supply and consumption, and consumption can be monitored at every point of use, the unit price can be varied every second or less. The poor will have to learn to make choices instead of profligately cooking and keeping warm at the same time, and they will have to trade in their huge plasma screen TVs for neater LED models (everyone knows that the poor have ENORMOUS televisions - the Daily Mail says so). My private patients will continue to enjoy the fruits of their crimes, whilst honest peasants will be told that the waiting list for radiotherapy is due to factors beyond human control, not politics or incompetence.
Well I think with wind power's increasing penetration into the electricity market we will be seeing the widespread adoption of off-peak electricity rates set automatically according to wind supply and relayed to smart meters to alert customers when they can save money by heating water, storage heaters, charging up electric cars and so on.
Everyone loves a bargain Alan and wind power can offer very cheap rate electricity at windy times.
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Everyone loves a bargain Alan and wind power can offer very cheap rate electricity at windy times.
It's a sad fact that only the wealthy can afford a bargain. I would like to have an electric car for nipping out to the shops, but I only have the capital for one car so it has to be the one that will also do 300 miles at 70 mph without stopping, so I can get to work and back on the same day - not some time in the distant future when we have 20-second charging points all over the country, but tomorrow. I would like to buy bulk electricity for a storage heater but having just spent a fortune on an underfloor heat pump system, I can't adapt to that brave new world without destroying half the house. Fortunately I can afford to buy heating oil (for the other half!) in bulk when it's cheap, but the poor never seem able to fill a big tank, or to buy a whole case of wine (I pay 25% less than someone who can only afford a bottle at a time). And so it goes on. Sure, rip out your 50 gallon hot water tank and replace it with an intelligent offpeak 200 gallon unit - it will only cost you £1000 and you will save £100 per year: try that on a pensioner!
And if we all started using offpeak electricity, wouldn't that just create a new peak, or at least even out demand? The offpeak boom was in the 1950s and 60s when common sense ruled and the trend was to build more nuclear power stations, which work best when feeding a constant load at 90% capacity, so you could match load to supply over the long term by pricing. With wind it's the other way around - you have to use the stuff when it's available or get involved in expensive storage schemes.
Seriously, I think your hydrogen store is a runner, because it can be introduced gradually and with no significant change in infrastructure or consumer hardware (changing from town gas to methane just involved changing the final jets on cookers and furnaces) but pumped water is a nonstarter in the big race.
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It's a sad fact that I don't have a car that can go at 150 mph for 300 miles without stopping.
When will this conspiracy against poor people like me end??? When?
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It's a sad fact that I don't have a car that can go at 150 mph for 300 miles without stopping.
That's why I use an aeroplane. Or, if I'm in a real hurry, a telephone.
When will this conspiracy against poor people like me end??? When?
When we have ground the last peasant into the dust and rid the world of poverty by the simple expedient of ridding it of poor people, of course. Really, why do the working class ask such stupid questions? Qu'ils mangeant de brioche, mon ami.
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Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage
Very sensible idea.
Thanks Alan. [:)]
Worth also investigating the use of the existing UK gas grid to store and distribute low-pressure hydrogen or manufactured methane,
Methane is harder to make from power-to-gas but easier to pipe into the existing gas grid with no conversion issues.
thus obviating the need for an electricity store,
Well hydrogen needs storing somewhere too.
Also pumped-storage hydro offers a higher energy efficiency energy store. You lose at least half of the energy converting to hydrogen then back to electricity. So a power-to-gas only energy store would not be the most efficient in the long run.
So I recommend what's most appropriate where and when
- pumped-storage hydro for land storage up to a limit of 1.11 peak-electricity-demand-days for the intermittent renewables,
- power-to-gas and gas-storage for surplus power after the pumped-storage hydro reservoirs have been topped up
- undersea hydrogen stores for off-shore when there's no or less demand for electricity from land than is being generated
major construction works or any novel generating plant: use the gas to run the existing gas power stations when the wind fails, just as now.
But for renewables-only generation, even using gas-energy-stores only, we'd need to build more novel gas-fired power stations. There's not enough gas-fired plant to provide the full electricity demand as yet. We'd also need either lots of hydrogen to methane conversion plant and / or additional hydrogen storage. Hydrogen is not a zero-build option.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510066/audi-to-make-fuel-using-solar-power/ (http://www.technologyreview.com/news/510066/audi-to-make-fuel-using-solar-power/)
Existing petrol-engined road vehicles can run on methane with very little conversion, or you could synthesise higher hydrocarbons for better energy density: pure synthetic diesel produces less NOx than biodiesel. And of course methane is already the preferred source of domestic and industrial heating in the UK, whilst hydrogen and oxygen are extremely useful industrial gases.
I'm not sure if it is worth collecting the oxygen from the undersea electrolysis situation. I had in mind the option of just letting the oxygen gas bubble away.
One reason to store the oxygen would be to increase the efficiency and reduce the nitrogen oxide combustion by-products of hydrogen-fired generators. Whether that advantage is worth the cost of collecting the oxygen, I'm not sure.
Be aware that for undersea electrolysis in order to produce oxygen as the anode gas, a custom electrolyte solution will have to be used. If you try electrolysing sea water directly you get chlorine gas off at the anode, which is not so easy to dispose of and can be poisonous.
So the technique will be to separate the custom more-concentrated electrolyte solution from the sea water by a semi-permeable membrane and allow pure water to pass through it by osmosis from the relatively dilute sea water.
It's worth pointing out that whereas we might describe this process as undersea "high-pressure" electrolysis, it is only so, "high-pressure", because of the ambient high-pressure resulting from being under water at depth.
So there's no high-pressure-vessel containment required for the electrolyte solution - as is required for high-pressure electrolysis which operates on the surface - and so undersea, a semi-permeable membrane is all that is required to keep the electrolyte solution contained.
This approach might actually make wind power economically viable and socially useful.
Hmm. I still think we need to build more pumped-storage hydro for best results.
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Hydrogen storage isn't a problem, or at least it has been solved, used and abandoned in living memory (mine!). The oldfashioned town "gasometers" contained 50% hydrogen at final delivery pressure, above ground in water tanks, and worked for well over 100 years.
Rather than electrolyse seawater, my preference would be to bring the electricity ashore (as is already done, so no new technology required) and electrolyse fresh water inside the gasometer, either using "high pressure" electrolysis at the bottom of a lake or near-atmospheric pressure in a river or pond.
Gas-fired power stations already supply about half the UK demand, and are much cheaper and easier to build than coal or nuclear. The principal reason that gas has not taken over completely from coal is the rising cost of gas, so I don't foresee any great problem in expanding the gas-to-electric capability if electrolytic hydrogen becomes as cheap as wind enthusiasts would have us believe.
Thermal inefficiency isn't a problem either.We already tolerate a 50% energy loss in converting fossil or biofuel to electricity, but as I have pointed out a few times above, electricity is not the most important energy source anyway: we burn 70% of our fossil fuel either for direct heat or for transport, and hydrogen or synthetic liquid fuel would be perfectly acceptable in these roles, with minimal modifications to the burners, as distinct from ripping out industrial furnaces wholesale and replacing them with electric ones.
The organic growth of a wind-to-hydrogen economy is the least disruptive path to sustainable, secure, zero-carbon energy for the UK - it's the next best thing to Icelandic geothermal power, without the attendant earthquakes and volcanic deserts.
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I forget whether I already posted this:
(basically Texas has shed-loads of wind)
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Interesting and related news from Elon Musk.
So he's selling 10kWh of battery for around $3500.
That's an average of $350 for 1kWh. If the batteries last 10 years, and they get cycled once a day; that's 3650 cycles, i.e. 9.6 c = ~ 6p for storage. The current cost difference on economy 7 is about 10p. So it's cheaper to buy all of your electricity at night and use it during the day storing it in these batteries.
Now, you might say- oh well, the economy 7 will smooth out then, because everyone will buy the batteries and then there won't be such a big price differential. This isn't actually a bad thing, because the day price will go down even if you haven't got a battery.
But this also misses the point that as more wind comes into the network, the natural variations in supply can be eaten up by the batteries also; the suppliers just need to create a new super 'economy' rate that is related to the wind supply.
edit: reading the small print, the 7kWh battery is suitable for daily cycling, and costs $3000 and is guaranteed for 10 years. So that's $428/kWh. So that's 11.7c per kWh; which is still 7p/kWh average per day.
edit2: OK, so it's only 92% efficient, so that makes it 8.1p/kWh.
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10 kWh will run a house for most of a day, so it's a sensible starting point.
Lead-acid traction batteries cost about $30 per kWh, generally last about 5 years, and are easy to maintain and recycle. Why pay more?
All modern domestic appliances work on 50 or 60 Hz AC, so in addition to the battery you will need a charger/inverter unless you want to completely re-equip your house. Add another £2000 and at least £500 installation charge to estimate the payback period.
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... Deep Sea Hydrogen Storage ...
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How big is this gas-bag ?, and how deep will it be under the sea ? .
Do flexible materials exist to make such a bag which can withstand the buoyancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy) forces ?
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2F2%2F24%2FFlickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Underwater_Missions_Unit_Transfers_Equipment_Using_Special_%2522Lifting-Bags%2522.jpg%2F640px-Flickr_-_Israel_Defense_Forces_-_Underwater_Missions_Unit_Transfers_Equipment_Using_Special_%2522Lifting-Bags%2522.jpg&hash=4dbfbc21a0f536f5942cab24370dbb56)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_bag
The biggest air-lifting bags available to buy now off-the-shelf hold a volume of 50 metres-cubed and they have a diameter of 5 metres and a height of 7.5 metres.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/seaflex-50t-air_lifting_bag.jpg)
Presumably they could be custom-made much bigger for storing hydrogen but are not yet available to buy off-the-shelf because any bigger would not be useful for air-lifting bag purposes.
In any case, it will always be possible to increase the volume by rigging multiple gas-bags together as shown in this diagram.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/three-gas-bag-rig.jpg)
As for depth, as I mentioned earlier
Deeper seas are better because the water pressure is proportional to the depth allowing the hydrogen to be compressed more densely, so that more hydrogen and more energy can be stored in an inflatable gas-bag.
the deeper the better because the density of hydrogen increases with depth, as per these graphs.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/densityofhydrogenwithdepth_50.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/densityofhydrogenwithdepth.jpg
Consider how many 50 m3 gas-bags we'd need to store the energy required to provide 1 MW of electrical power for 1 day - a useful amount of back-up energy to store to serve one floating platform.
1 MW for 1 day = 1 MJ/s x 60 x 60 x 24 = 86.4 GJ of electrical energy which can be generated from 86.4/e GJ of hydrogen energy of combustion where "e" is the efficiency of the hydrogen-to-power generator and can vary from 30% to 60% depending on the complexity and expense of the generator.
The combustion energy from 1 gram of hydrogen is 143 kJ.
So the mass of hydrogen with 86.4/e GJ of energy is
mass = 86.4 x 109 J / (143 x 103 J/gram x e)
mass = 604/e Kg of hydrogen to provide 1 MW of power for 1 day
Consider three scenarios - 50 m3 gas-bags floating on the surface, at 200 metres depth and at 2000 metres depth.
Surface
Surface density of hydrogen 0.1g/L
Volume = 604,000g / (0.1g/L x e) = 6,040,000/e L = 6040/e m3
= 121/e x 50 m3 gas-bags
for efficiency of 30% that's 121/0.3 = 403 x 50m3 gas-bags [V]
200m
200m density of hydrogen 1.8g/L
Volume = 604,000g / (1.8g/L x e) - 335/e m3 = 6.7/e x 50 m3 gas-bags
for efficiency of 30% that's 6.7/0.3 = 23 x 50m3 gas-bags [:-\]
2000m
2000m density of hydrogen 16 g/L
V = 604,000g / (16 g/L x e ) = 37.75/e m3 = 0.755/e x 50 m3 gas-bags
for efficiency of 30% that's only 0.755/0.3 = 3 x 50 m3 gas-bags [:)]
So the advantage of depth in reducing the volume and therefore the number of gas-bags required to store a given mass and energy content of hydrogen is clear.
How deep you actually want to put the bags depends on -
a) the depths available of the sea where floating platforms can be operating at - consult a sea depths map, like the ones I posted earlier
Deeper seas, which are better for storing hydrogen in, can be found from an atlas of the oceans, such as this one.
Sea Atlas - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/6004-050-e076d00f.gif
Looking at a close-up of the map for the area of sea closest to Scotland, Britain and Western Europe –
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/seas_euro_n_africa.jpg)
Click to view a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/seas_euro_n_africa-200.jpg
– this shows that deep sea water most suitable for hydrogen storage is not to be found around the coast of the British Isles but depths greater than 4,000 metres can be found in vast areas of the Atlantic beginning a few hundred miles to the south-west in the Bay of Biscay.
So one area of sea which looks suitable for both solar and hydrogen powered electricity generation appears to be just to the west and south-west of the Canary Islands and to the north of the Cape Verde Islands. Whether this area is near enough to western Europe to be the best choice to supply western Europe considering the additional costs of longer interconnection cables remains to be estimated.
- and how deep you actually want to put the gas-bags depends on -
b) how deep the high pressure electrolyser can be made to work. High-pressure electrolysers can be made to work (in pressure vessels on the surface) at pressures corresponding to the pressures at depths of 1000 metres (about 100 bar) but higher pressures maybe up to 300 bar may be possible (corresponding to a depth of 3000 metres).
Since, as far as I know, the electrolysers required for this application have neither been designed, prototyped nor tested experimentally at sea depths, it is impossible at this stage to say with any certainty or proof at what precise sea depth high pressure electrolysers can be made to work, at all, or economically.
There seems to be an opportunity from this concept but only speculative answers to certain questions can be given at this time.
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10 kWh will run a house for most of a day, so it's a sensible starting point.
Lead-acid traction batteries cost about $30 per kWh, generally last about 5 years, and are easy to maintain and recycle. Why pay more?
Because they only last 5 years, because they can only be discharged halfway, because they're not very efficient, and because $30/kWh is highly over optimistic?
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2000m
2000m density of hydrogen 16 g/L
V = 604,000g / (16 g/L x e ) = 37.75/e m3 = 0.755/e x 50 m3 gas-bags
for efficiency of 30% that's only 0.755/0.3 = 3 x 50 m3 gas-bags [:)]
What does 4000*m of [copper] underwater power-cable cost ?, and how much does 4km of power-cable weigh ? , ( weight will have a bearing on the size of the floating-platform necessary ).
Divers can only work at 200m , so if it's 2000m forget about maintenance.
Putting stuff in 2km of water is what people do if they never want to see it again.
[ the Titanic is at 3.8 km ].
[*Two 2km power-cables according to your diagram (https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/deepseahydrogenstorage.jpg) ,
and 2 or3 anchor cable$ also each 2km long ].
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Rather than work 2000 m below the sea, Why not compress hydrogen to 200 atmospheres in standard industrial bottles? It's already available off the shelf and used in huge quantities every day.
Bring the electricity ashore, electrolyse fresh water, and use the existing gas grid to store and distribute energy as previously.
Audi announced this week that they are now running a car on synthetic hydrocarbon fuel made from atmospheric CO2 and electrolytic hydrogen - LPG and liquid fuels are a lot more convenient and require very little conversion of existing vehicles.
As for the notion of siting windmills in a circle, the reason it isn't done is because half of them will then be in downwind of the other half, regardless of the wind direction.
Optimum siting is obviously in a line perpendicular to the prevailing wind. In the UK the wind rose generally has two maxima, one southwest and the other, rather smaller, northwest, so a staggered phalanx works pretty well.
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Looks like organic flow batteries are going to start to be available from 2017.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/harvards-organic-flow-battery-under-development-in-europe
The previous estimates I've seen were that the chemicals for storing a kWh cost about $30; the current chemistries appear to be able to handle 5000 reuses; which is about $0.006 per kWh of usage.
If this is successful, it would appear to be a total game changer.
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http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/harvards-organic-flow-battery-under-development-in-europe
First, the company plans to attack the domestic storage market with systems of 5- to 20-kilowatt-hours, designed to hold around four hours of electricity.
Some elementary physics missing here.
He also cites the fact that quinones are natural, organic products that present little or no health risk.
Bullshit
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx9902082Quinones represent a class of toxicological intermediates which can create a variety of hazardous effects in vivo, including acute cytotoxicity, immunotoxicity, and carcinogenesis.
So, apart from some duff science and a few barefaced lies, it seems like a good idea!
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Looks like organic flow batteries are going to start to be available from 2017.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/harvards-organic-flow-battery-under-development-in-europe
The previous estimates I've seen were that the chemicals for storing a kWh cost about $30; the current chemistries appear to be able to handle 5000 reuses; which is about $0.006 per kWh of usage.
If this is successful, it would appear to be a total game changer.
I am familiar with this from the primary literature, it's nice to see that the tech is going from academia to application, though I'm not sure that quinone-based flow batteries are ultimately the most exciting development. Flow batteries can store effectively unlimited amounts of energy (as big as you want the electrolyte reservoirs to be), which is nice, but both the energy density and power density are quite low compared to other energy storage methods. Flow batteries will be very useful for some applications, but I don't think it will be a "total game changer."
Also, there is no reason to say that quinones are benign! Sure there are natural quinones (like those involved in photosynthesis, and what bombardier beetles blast their enemies with, and the myriad cytotoxic quinones deployed by bacteria in their perpetual chemical warfare)...
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In the context of this thread, for storing renewable energy, it's primarily a question of cost. If it costs £0.1 per kWh that is stored, then it's unlikely to be widely deployed as representing a large percentage of our power, whereas at ~£0.01 per kWh, it becomes more or less a no brainer.
I believe the quinones they're planning to use are believed to be relatively benign; they're chemically closer to photosynthesis quinones. The real nasty with previous versions was the hydrobromic acid, but they've replaced it with potassium hydroxide; which is clearly corrosive, but probably wouldn't form WWI-style gas attack if a premises caught fire.
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In the context of the organic flow battery, taking Scottish Scientist's estimate of a requirement for 1400 GWh of storage, then we can calculate the cost for the batteries.
The estimate I saw before for the batteries was that the chemicals cost around $30/kWh of capacity. On top of that we would need tankage and pumps, and power converters. But for a first cut, let's just convert that nominatively to £30/kWh, as a start.
So we need 1400e9/1e3 = 1400 million kWh of storage, which at £30 per kWh = £42 billion for equipment that should last 20 years.
If we assume the money was borrowed for this at (say) 10% APR, I make that an average yearly cost of ~£70 per person. Which probably sounds like quite a lot. But this is deceptive.
Most of that is indirect charges, since much of the electricity is used in industry, and really overall the battery only adds a penny per kWh that is stored and then sold- and maybe about half of the power/energy would be used directly without storage. Additionally, wind power is a penny or so cheaper than nuclear, and wind power backed up with battery is flexible power- it's both baseload and peaking power; whereas nuclear power is really only baseload power, it gets more expensive when used to load follow, and it avoids any need for peaking plants.
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Nighttime energy demands is much lower than the day and we are wasting a great deal of energy from nuclear power plant and coal that’s difficult rapidly to power up. Wind power is cheapest source of renewable energy, but now a day’s challenge to deal with periodic movement of wind speed. Single wind farm will swing greatly, the variations in the total output from number of wind farms originally distributed in different wind systems.
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selected
100 since 1940 wow
Having spent 7 years of my life in nuclear I, m still alive but your 100 is missing some 5 noughts minimum
Or was that a joke?
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If you want really good reading matter, see if you can find a small book by Fred Hoyle in the 1960s/70s
It's called "Energy or Extinction"
It answers all your questions and put into KWHr all out uses of energy from fuel to food etc.
To the young. Fred Hoyle was a great informer.
Although times have changed, guess the annual energy usage in KWHr of Americans, British and Indians on average before you read this book.
See how wave power compares with wind turbines etc.
It's really essential reading.
Rob
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we are wasting a great deal of energy from nuclear power plant and coal that’s difficult rapidly to power up
Very little is wasted - where and how would you dump it? The trick is to supply as much base load and predicted demand as possible from nuclear and big coal stations, using gas and small coal to supply short-term additional demand. In fact demand doesn't change abruptly as it is diversified among some 60,000,000 users. The problem arises when more than 20% of capacity is unreliable and generally unavailable when most needed - on the hottest and coldest days, when there is no wind.
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Demand changes fairly quickly on the UK grid due to the wide availability of electric kettles. They actually have to have people in the grid control centre watching TV so they know when to kick in extra power.
Peak demand on the UK grid is actually in the winter, not the summer, and happens when wind is at its strongest.
See:
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Coal is being killed off now, even wind power often beats power production, the grid is mostly gas at the moment. Nuclear is chugging along, but I don't see it growing.
Worldwide, renewables are being installed and the net effect is that fossil plants are being retired; because renewables are cheaper.
Scottish scientist's plan of installing salt water pumped storage seems to be quite promising, particularly if there's a lot of solar in the grid, the electricity should be super cheap and reliable.
Solar panels are getting ridiculously cheap now; they're well under £0.5/W, and still getting cheaper. A 1kW panel produces about 900 kWh per year in the UK, and produces power more cheaply than the grid can, so a grid tied solar panel is a win for the consumer, and over the life of the panel ridiculously cheap.
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Worth a careful look at the Gridwatch graphs. In recent weeks and months, demand has (as always) generally been highest when wind output was lowest. This is because UK winter weather is dominated by warm Atlantic lows, that bring high winds but mild temperatures, and cold Arctic highs that bring low temperatures and negligible wind speed.
The "electric kettle problem" hasn't really raised its head since 2 June 1953 when there was a hiatus in the BBC transmission of the Coronation and everyone had a cuppa and used the toilet - all the water pumps started at the same time. Thus warned, the CEGB managed to avoid significant power cuts after the 1966 World Cup Final but were caught unawares on 2 June 1979, a day of major national celebration.
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Worth a careful look at the Gridwatch graphs. In recent weeks and months, demand has (as always) generally been highest when wind output was lowest. This is because UK winter weather is dominated by warm Atlantic lows, that bring high winds but mild temperatures, and cold Arctic highs that bring low temperatures and negligible wind speed.
A pretty story, but I am not seeing any such trend in the data.
The "electric kettle problem" hasn't really raised its head since 2 June 1953 when there was a hiatus in the BBC transmission of the Coronation and everyone had a cuppa and used the toilet - all the water pumps started at the same time. Thus warned, the CEGB managed to avoid significant power cuts after the 1966 World Cup Final but were caught unawares on 2 June 1979, a day of major national celebration.
Only because they watch this like a hawk and kick in Dinorwig when they need to; the idea that "In fact demand doesn't change abruptly as it is diversified among some 60,000,000 users." is clearly false.
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I've extended my modelling (http://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) to include back-up generators and modelled some example working system configurations using scaled real world wind turbine generation data and demand data, from the UK grid during low wind conditions in September 2014.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/wind_turbines_pumped-storage_hydro_back-up_generators_uk_sep_2014_2-7_0-6_40.jpg)
Graph 8. Peak Demand (52,500 MW), Store – 0.6 days x peak demand (756 GWh), Wind – 2.7 x peak demand (141,700 MW), Back-up – 0.4 x peak demand ( 21,000 MW)
I've summarised the results in a table.
Table of wind, pumped-storage & back-up factors
The factors in the table are peak demand power multipliers. Each row triplet describes a possible system configuration for 24/7/52 reliable 100% renewable energy generation.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/windstoragebackuptable.jpg)
Using these results, I have written a web-page script on-line calculator -
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer/) (my Scottish Scientist Wordpress blog post for documentation and discussion)
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (http://scottish.scienceontheweb.net/Wind%20power%20storage%20back-up%20calculator.htm) (the actual calculator web-page which has to be hosted separately because it uses javascript which Wordpress, the blog host, don't allow).
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/windstorageback-uptables3.jpg)
Peak demand, wind and back-up power / energy usage and storage capacity calculator
For the specification and design of renewable energy electricity generation systems which successfully smooth intermittent wind generation to serve customer demand, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year.
Adopting the recommendation derived from scientific computer modelling (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) that the energy storage capacity be about 5 hours [see note] times the wind power capacity, the tables offer rows of previously successful modelled system configurations (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) - row A, a configuration with no back-up power and rows B to G offering alternative ratios of wind power to back-up power. Columns consist of adjustable power and energy values in proportion to fixed multiplier factors.
The wind power generation Capacity Factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Wind_farm) (C.F.) percentage can be adjusted too.
Note: I should caution against unrealistic "green energy" expectations following news reports of commercial engineering companies peddling - "largest ever" batteries (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-40527784) which can store only 10 or less minutes times the wind or solar power capacity. Such relatively small energy stores are grossly insufficient to design a power-on-demand system where energy is sourced in the main from wind and solar power generators.
At best, expensive energy storage from batteries can cobble together wind and solar generators as bit-part generators in a grid system where most of the power must still come from conventional dispatchable generators, usually fired by fossil fuels. Therefore "largest ever batteries" or other battery sales in this context are a commercial marketing deception and a fraud driven by the profit motive which trick and lock-in grid managers into continuing fossil fuel dependence. Such batteries offer no "100% renewable energy solution" at reasonable cost. The established technologies to expect to be deployed for wind and solar energy storage are pumped-storage hydro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity) and power to gas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas). So Elon Musk is every bit the enemy of renewable energy as Donald Trump is. At least Donald Trump is honest about supporting coal.
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Long time no see, my friend - good to see you are still at the helm!
Since our last joust on these pages my neighbour has bought a BMW electric car, Tesla have opened a showroom in the town centre, and HM Government has announced all sorts of drastic plans to have all-electric cars by whatever date, presumably in an effort to reduce the pollution of London air by trucks and buses. Said neighbour now uses the electric car to commute 4 miles to the gym instead of riding her bike to work, but always rents a petrol or diesel car if she has to drive more than 100 miles and come home the same day.
So here's the next problem. Driving around on a working day I note that peak times for motorway services are a broad surge around 0900, lunch stops 1230 - 1330, and absolute mayhem from 1700 to 1900. It's the last one that concerns me. Having charged your electric car overnight, you go to work, make a couple of trips to clients and suppliers, and then worry about getting home - sensible to top up en route, using the 500,000 fast chargers that have replaced the liquid fuel pumps (except for legacy cars, trucks, buses, tractors...). If every business motorist has an electric car, what is (a) the total additional demand on the grid and (b) the likely evening peak demand?
I think we are agreed on power-to-gas, though I think that solution is a lot simpler than you do, but I think you will need to flood an awful lot of Scotland to satisfy England's future peak demand for pumped storage, and if the SNP has its way, who is going to invest in a renegade country that will sensibly sell its energy to the highest bidder (Germany)?
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Long time no see, my friend - good to see you are still at the helm!
Hello Alan. It's the wee small hours so I'm half asleep at the wheel.
Since our last joust on these pages my neighbour has bought a BMW electric car, Tesla have opened a showroom in the town centre, and HM Government has announced all sorts of drastic plans to have all-electric cars by whatever date, presumably in an effort to reduce the pollution of London air by trucks and buses. Said neighbour now uses the electric car to commute 4 miles to the gym instead of riding her bike to work, but always rents a petrol or diesel car if she has to drive more than 100 miles and come home the same day.
Well that's why hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (H2FCVs) are the superior kind of electric vehicle - more energy, more power or longer range, higher specific power so faster acceleration and faster refuelling too.
So here's the next problem.
There's more? You've already signed Battery-only EVs death warrant and now you want to jump on its grave?
Driving around on a working day I note that peak times for motorway services are a broad surge around 0900, lunch stops 1230 - 1330, and absolute mayhem from 1700 to 1900.
Rush hours.
It's the last one that concerns me. Having charged your electric car overnight, you go to work, make a couple of trips to clients and suppliers, and then worry about getting home - sensible to top up en route, using the 500,000 fast chargers that have replaced the liquid fuel pumps (except for legacy cars, trucks, buses, tractors...). If every business motorist has an electric car, what is (a) the total additional demand on the grid and (b) the likely evening peak demand?
Well can't the EVs charge up in the office car park? Without having done the sums I would guess that a standard 13 amp 230 V socket would do the job, one for each parking place.
I think we are agreed on power-to-gas, though I think that solution is a lot simpler than you do, but I think you will need to flood an awful lot of Scotland to satisfy England's future peak demand for pumped storage,
Or fill one part of Scotland with an awful lot of water, like 4 billion metres cubed.
STRATHDEARN PUMPED-STORAGE HYDRO SCHEME (up to 180 GW / 6,800 GWh)
World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland? (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/worlds-biggest-ever-pumped-storage-hydro-scheme-for-scotland/)
Which I mentioned back in post 21, on: 15/04/2015.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearn_pumped-storage_50.jpg)
Click for a larger image - https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/strathdearn_pumped-storage.jpg
The map shows how and where the biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme could be built – Strathdearn in the Scottish Highlands.
The scheme requires a massive dam about 300 metres high and 2,000 metres long to impound billions of metres-cubed of water in the upper glen of the River Findhorn. The surface elevation of the reservoir so impounded would be as much as 650 metres when full and the surface area would be as much as 40 square-kilometres.
There would need to be two pumping stations at different locations – one by the sea at Inverness which pumps sea-water uphill via a pressurised pipe to 350 metres of elevation to a water well head which feeds an unpressurised canal in which water flows to and from the other pumping station at the base of the dam which pumps water up into the reservoir impounded by the dam.
The potential energy which could be stored by such a scheme is colossal – thousands of Gigawatt-hours – a minimum of 100 GigaWatt-days, perhaps 200 GW-days or more.
This represents enough energy-storage capacity to serve all of Britain’s electrical grid storage needs for backing-up and balancing intermittent renewable-energy electricity generators, such as wind turbines and solar photovoltaic arrays for the foreseeable future.
The geography of Scotland is ideal for siting pumped-storage hydro schemes to serve a European energy network infrastructure, with benefits for Scots, Britons and Europeans alike.
Strathdearn (@ 6800GWh) would have the energy storage capacity of 700 Dinorwigs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station) (@9.4GWh) or 50 times the biggest energy storage capacity in the world of San Luis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Luis_Dam) in California (@126GWh).
and if the SNP has its way, who is going to invest in a renegade country that will sensibly sell its energy to the highest bidder (Germany)?
Well the UK currently buys electricity supplied via the interconnectors to France and the Netherlands who are actually better placed than Scotland is to offer their juice to Germany.
However Norway can easily snap up all the energy storage business from Germany, Denmark, the low countries, the Baltic States, Poland even.
Norway already has 80,000 GWh of conventional hydroelectric energy storage and this conventional hydroelectric power could be used in arbitrage trading.
Some more of Norway's conventional hydroelectric power could be converted to pumped-storage.
If that wasn't enough, Norway's fjords are ideal for sea-water pumped-storage schemes.
Plus Norway is closer to Germany and Denmark.
So whilst yes, it is possible for Scotland to supply the European continent it would have to do so through England or English waters and so Scotland is dependent on an ongoing cooperative relationship with England.
So it is from Scottish pumped-hydro that England, Wales and Ireland would get the better deal. It is Norway's energy storage that Germany will be bidding against England for. It is Norway who will have a crush of European customers who will push prices up. Scotland is a secure supplier for England.
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"Filling up at the office" is an interesting idea. You can get about 3 kW from a 13A socket, and the average consumption of a small car is about 20 kW, so if your commute is 30 minutes and you arrive with an empty tank, you will have to stay in the office for 3 hours in order to drive home again. Just feasible. In wintertime, of course, you will have to stay an extra hour so you don't freeze on the way home. And if your commute was an hour, you would be better off moving house.
But the installed power capacity of the UK is currently around 1 kW per capita. A modern office may supply 2 kW per worker, and factories up to 5 kW. If everyone drives to work and back, without doing any useful journeys during the working day, we will need to double the power capacity of every workplace and install a whole load of weatherproof metered sockets in every car park. Who we? The employer, presumably. So now I have to spend another £500 capital per worker for the privilege of having them turn up at all, then charge them for the road fuel they use, deduct what they used on business once they had arrived at the office, faff about with differential tax rates....
Far better to skip the electric car nonsense and use all that free power to make liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water. Now wouldn't it be nice if we could trap the CO2 at source - making petrol from exhaust fumes - there's a project for the next sixth-form science fair!
So whilst yes, it is possible for Scotland to supply the European continent it would have to do so through England or English waters and so Scotland is dependent on an ongoing cooperative relationship with England.
Physics is one thing, politics is quite another.
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"Filling up at the office" is an interesting idea.
It was a suggestion in passing Alan in response to you raising the somewhat off-topic subject of electric cars and I can't be first person to have suggested that idea.
What I find particularly "interesting" and know a lot about is this topic "How can renewable energy farms provide 24-hour power?"
That's why I have posted this, in this topic.
I've extended my modelling (http://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) to include back-up generators and modelled some example working system configurations using scaled real world wind turbine generation data and demand data, from the UK grid during low wind conditions in September 2014.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/wind_turbines_pumped-storage_hydro_back-up_generators_uk_sep_2014_2-7_0-6_40.jpg)
Graph 8. Peak Demand (52,500 MW), Store – 0.6 days x peak demand (756 GWh), Wind – 2.7 x peak demand (141,700 MW), Back-up – 0.4 x peak demand ( 21,000 MW)
I've summarised the results in a table.
Table of wind, pumped-storage & back-up factors
The factors in the table are peak demand power multipliers. Each row triplet describes a possible system configuration for 24/7/52 reliable 100% renewable energy generation.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/windstoragebackuptable.jpg)
Using these results, I have written a web-page script on-line calculator -
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer/) (my Scottish Scientist Wordpress blog post for documentation and discussion)
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (http://scottish.scienceontheweb.net/Wind%20power%20storage%20back-up%20calculator.htm) (the actual calculator web-page which has to be hosted separately because it uses javascript which Wordpress, the blog host, don't allow).
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/windstorageback-uptables3.jpg)
Peak demand, wind and back-up power / energy usage and storage capacity calculator
For the specification and design of renewable energy electricity generation systems which successfully smooth intermittent wind generation to serve customer demand, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year.
Adopting the recommendation derived from scientific computer modelling (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) that the energy storage capacity be about 5 hours [see note] times the wind power capacity, the tables offer rows of previously successful modelled system configurations (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/scientific-computer-modelling-of-wind-pumped-storage-hydro/) - row A, a configuration with no back-up power and rows B to G offering alternative ratios of wind power to back-up power. Columns consist of adjustable power and energy values in proportion to fixed multiplier factors.
The wind power generation Capacity Factor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Wind_farm) (C.F.) percentage can be adjusted too.
Note: I should caution against unrealistic "green energy" expectations following news reports of commercial engineering companies peddling - "largest ever" batteries (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-40527784) which can store only 10 or less minutes times the wind or solar power capacity. Such relatively small energy stores are grossly insufficient to design a power-on-demand system where energy is sourced in the main from wind and solar power generators.
At best, expensive energy storage from batteries can cobble together wind and solar generators as bit-part generators in a grid system where most of the power must still come from conventional dispatchable generators, usually fired by fossil fuels. Therefore "largest ever batteries" or other battery sales in this context are a commercial marketing deception and a fraud driven by the profit motive which trick and lock-in grid managers into continuing fossil fuel dependence. Such batteries offer no "100% renewable energy solution" at reasonable cost. The established technologies to expect to be deployed for wind and solar energy storage are pumped-storage hydro (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity) and power to gas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_to_gas). So Elon Musk is every bit the enemy of renewable energy as Donald Trump is. At least Donald Trump is honest about supporting coal.
So I would very much look forward to receiving an on-topic reply from anyone who finds any of that interesting.
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This free symposium (including lunch) should be worth the trip
https://www.winton.phy.cam.ac.uk/energystorage. (https://www.winton.phy.cam.ac.uk/energystorage.)
Storage and distribution of energy is seen as the missing link between intermittent renewable energy and reliability of supply. Current technologies that are being deployed have considerable headroom for improvements in performance, with the symposium speakers discussing some of the many new technologies that are being explored and how understanding the basic science of these can accelerate their development.
Though, like you, I think we already have the necessary technologies as long as people stop messing about with little batteries and concentrate on big infrastructures. My point throughout the energy debate is that there is no point in developing electric transport systems or converting manufacturing industry from gas to electricity when we have perfectly good means of distributing and using liquid and gas fuels, and the possibility of manufacturing them with surplus electricity. "Start from where you are" is always a good motto.
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Far better to skip the electric car nonsense and use all that free power to make liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water....
"free power"
One of the points of this discussion is the projected shortfall of electric power when fossil fuels are phased out. Let's remember that we will have to derive ALL our energy from renewable electricity. By definition then the absolute best levels of efficiency are necessary. Surely this rules out using electricity to produce gas or liquid fuels at substantially less than 100% to then power vehicles (or anything else, except specialised processes). Battery vehicles are the most efficient of all the transport options.
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The problem is that they aren't.
Whilst you might get 80-90% "revenue" efficiency from mains electricity to battery to motor, this only applies to brand new batteries, which generally fall to 50% overall within 3 - 4 years. The efficiency of production of mains electricity is unlikely to exceed 80% from source to consumer. So far, all electric vehicles have been heavier than their internal combustion equivalents, nobody has produced a battery that approaches the energy density of liquid fuels, and half of our energy consumption is for heating, not motive power, which cannot be replaced without substantial capital investment, much of which is to pay the fuel cost of making new boilers and furnaces!
If we replace all oour consuming equipment with electrical equivalents, we will not only have to increase our renewable generation capacity by around 400%, but also build a huge new infrastructure for distributing it, whereas we already have all the requisite infrastructure for distributing liquid and gas fuels.
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"How can renewable energy farms provide 24-hour power?"
Diversity and a grid.
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The problem is that they aren't. Whilst you might get 80-90% "revenue" efficiency from mains electricity to battery to motor, this only applies to brand new batteries, which generally fall to 50% overall within 3 - 4 years. The efficiency of production of mains electricity is unlikely to exceed 80% from source to consumer.
My EV now more than 3 1/2 years old, its battery recently tested during a dealers service and declared to be still 100%.
Petrol and diesel vehicles may reach 30% fuel efficiency in real life. I'm not sure of the overall efficiency of hydrogen production to fuel cell car, but I think that the fuel cell alone is around 80% efficiency, and also cannot absorb energy from regenerative braking without a battery (often fitted, I believe).
The transmission efficiency from generator to customer is around 90%. This may improve with more renewables, as generators although much smaller, will be in greater numbers, and widely distributed. As opposed to post privatisation when many power stations were demolished to capitalise on land sales, leaving fewer, distantly spaced large stations, resulting in longer transmission lines.
What method of powering vehicles gives more than 80-90%?
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The problem is that they aren't.
Whilst you might get 80-90% "revenue" efficiency from mains electricity to battery to motor, this only applies to brand new batteries, which generally fall to 50% overall within 3 - 4 years.
That's true with laptops, but that's because the manufacturers want you to buy a new laptop every few years. Electric cars use almost the same type of batteries, but they do a few things differently. Number one is they recharge them more slowly- electric cars are mostly trickle charged at home. That greatly helps the battery life. Second thing is that they're mostly only charged to 80%. That roughly doubles the life of the battery. The third thing is that many cars have cooling systems for their batteries. That means that they don't get too hot during fast charges or enthusiastic driving- heat is a big enemy of Li-Ion batteries. And in hot climates they use slightly different chemistry that is more heat tolerant.
The upshot is that the batteries seem to be lasting a solid ten years or more.
The efficiency of production of mains electricity is unlikely to exceed 80% from source to consumer.
Yes, nearer 60% is more common I believe.
If we replace all oour consuming equipment with electrical equivalents, we will not only have to increase our renewable generation capacity by around 400%, but also build a huge new infrastructure for distributing it, whereas we already have all the requisite infrastructure for distributing liquid and gas fuels.
No, because electrical power is low entropy and so far more efficient than primary fossil power. But we don't have the choice to do business as usual. Fossil fuels are no longer viable. CO2 pollution is a huge problem now. In any case, the technologies are rapidly dropping in price and will soon overtake fossil technologies anyway in cost effectiveness.
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The demand for power has increased , and it is increasing ,think of electric cars , electric trains , electric scales,etc, almost everything has become electric, the threat of climate change made organizations , manufacturers, even politicians embrace a project of clean energy , which in fact an electric-thing project, fortunately we have unlimited sources of clean energy, unfortunately we do not have enough pots to store ocean water.
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QuoteThe efficiency of production of mains electricity is unlikely to exceed 80% from source to consumer.Yes, nearer 60% is more common I believe.Quote
A bit disappointing. Does this figure include the losses from using fossil fuels as the source?
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That's true with laptops, but that's because the manufacturers want you to buy a new laptop every few years. Electric cars use almost the same type of batteries, but they do a few things differently. Number one is they recharge them more slowly- electric cars are mostly trickle charged at home. That greatly helps the battery life. Second thing is that they're mostly only charged to 80%. That roughly doubles the life of the battery. The third thing is that many cars have cooling systems for their batteries. That means that they don't get too hot during fast charges or enthusiastic driving- heat is a big enemy of Li-Ion batteries. And in hot climates they use slightly different chemistry that is more heat tolerant.
All true!
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QuoteThe efficiency of production of mains electricity is unlikely to exceed 80% from source to consumer.Yes, nearer 60% is more common I believe.Quote
A bit disappointing. Does this figure include the losses from using fossil fuels as the source?
No, it's conversion losses all the way along the line. You lose energy in transmission from where it's generated, you lose energy converting from 240v to whatever voltage the battery uses, you lose energy in storing and discharging the physical battery, you lose energy running the inverters to power the motors, you lose energy in resistance inside the motors, you lose some energy in the gearbox. It works out in the end, when you multiply each of the relatively losses you're just over 60% efficient, depending a bit on the details of the car and the charger. It's still about twice as good as a fossil car though, and the electricity can originally have come from nuclear or wind or solar or whatever, so no CO2 pollution.
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A big new plant is being built in China to produce vanadium flow batteries. This will rival Tesla's US factory producing lithium-ion batteries.
The vanadium batteries use tanks of liquid, and are possibly more suited for stationary grid-style applications.
See: https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/its-big-and-longlived-and-it-wont-catch-fire-the-vanadium-redoxflow-battery
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Plan for biggest-ever Australian pumped storage hydro scheme published. ;D
SNOWY 2.0 (http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/) – 350 GWh / 2 GW (http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/) (up to 8 GW) –
http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/ (http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/our-scheme/snowy20/)
"The need for large-scale storage will only increase and in the future Snowy Hydro could look to replicate Snowy 2.0 to create up to 8,000MW of pumped-hydro storage at this site."
– SNOWY 2.0 Feasibility Study Summary (http://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/SH1045_SummarySnowy20_web.pdf)
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Snowy 2.0: Let's hope that droughts don't reduce the storage capacity of this "water battery".
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Snowy 2.0: Let's hope that droughts don't reduce the storage capacity of this "water battery".
Rainfall is indeed a limiting factor for Snowy Hydro.
Wikipedia - Renewable Energy in Australia - Hydro power (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Australia#Hydro_power)
"The Snowy Mountains Scheme constructed between 1949 and 1974 consists of 16 major dams and 7 major power stations, and has a total generating capacity of 3,800 MW. The scheme generates on average 4,500 GWh electricity per year. Hydro Tasmania operates 30 power stations and 15 dams, with a total generating capacity of 2,600 MW, and generates an average of 9,000 GWh of electricity per year."
So the Snowy Mountains Scheme in New South Wales generates on average only half the hydroelectric energy that Hydro Tasmania generates despite Snowy having 46% more generating capacity than Tasmania.
The reason presumably is the difference in rainfall / drought - Tasmania simply gets more rainfall than New South Wales where and when the rain is needed.
As the Snowy 2.0 video points out, Snowy is located between Sydney and Melbourne and therefore the transmission costs to the consumers there and to more Australian consumers generally will be cheaper than the longer transmission distance from Tasmania, I would suppose.
I would expect that Tasmania's day for big pumped hydro will come eventually - when exactly will depend on when Australia wants to transition fully to 100% renewable energy?
I've had a quick casual scope of Tasmania for suitable pumped hydro sites - (Blakers has done a systematic survey, identifying 22,000 potential sites all across Australia (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/scotland-electricity-generation-my-plan-for-2020/#comment-520)) and Lake St Clair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_St_Clair_(Tasmania)) caught my attention as a reservoir that should be very useful for pumped hydro schemes to use.
Actually, New South Wales is still heavily dependent on coal and doesn't have anything like the wind power that Scotland generates now. It is South Australia which really needs energy storage but because they've not planned ahead to have pumped storage ready for when it is needed, South Australia has been resorting to batteries and peaking gas generation to back up their significant wind power.
This is why Snowy 2.0 is described as a "national" project, not merely for New South Wales alone.
Snowy 2.0 looks to be a very promising project. Quite exciting really for pumped-storage hydro nerd like me! ;D
What would be great is if Scotland's or the UK's official pumped hydro plans were as big and as well advanced as Snowy 2.0. Oh we have smaller advanced plans - but for example, the SSE's plan for Coire Glas only plans a 30GWh scheme - less than 9% the energy storage capacity of Snowy 2.0.
We also have bigger unofficial plans a plenty - like mine for Strathdearn - a mighty 6,800GWh - nearly 20 times bigger than Snowy 2.0 but I am nowhere near getting the sort of official feasibility study that Snowy 2.0 is - and neither has anyone else with a big Scottish, Welsh, British pumped hydro scheme plan, to my knowledge.
Hopefully the UK will take a look at Snowy 2.0 and raise our game to what's needed for energy storage for the British Isles.
Using Norway's hydroelectricity is not the way to go for Britain in my opinion - the Norwegians will have many customers bidding up the price they can charge for energy storage. Britain needs our own energy storage.
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Scottish scientists results are interesting. I think that significant amounts of electricity are going to be coming from solar though, and it has somewhat different properties to wind. Notably, it's less variable, and is somewhat anti-correlated with wind.
Realistically, the UK grid is going to have both on it, and that means that they're going to statistically cancel. Somebody modeled that here:
http://www.wind-power-program.com/intermittency2.htm
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Scottish scientists results are interesting.
Thanks.
I think that significant amounts of electricity are going to be coming from solar though, and it has somewhat different properties to wind. Notably, it's less variable, and is somewhat anti-correlated with wind.
Realistically, the UK grid is going to have both on it,
Agreed.
Solar is not the strong year-round performer at UK latitudes that it is closer to the equator.
Nevertheless, in summer (even between equinoxes - 20 March to 23 September) solar is a very useful supplement to wind.
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cheaper than the longer transmission distance from Tasmania, I would suppose.
Tasmania is fairly close to Melbourne - but Tasmania is an island, and underwater electrical lines are much more expensive to install, and harder to repair than overland routes. Recently the Tasmania-Victoria link was out of action for 6 months after an electrical fault - and because it also has an optical fiber, internet capacity to Tasmania was greatly reduced for the same period.
I've had a quick casual scope of Tasmania for suitable pumped hydro sites
Tasmania values its forest areas. A number of years ago, the Tasmanian hydro authority's campaign to dam every river was blocked on environmental concerns over the Franklin River. I think they will proceed more carefully now.
They are more likely to succeed with wind power - but it will involve building transmission lines from the windy west to the populated east side, which won't be popular, either.
And hydro-generator engineers will need to get their brains around the concept that air is also a fluid.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Tasmanian_energy_crisis#Basslink_outage
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cheaper than the longer transmission distance from Tasmania, I would suppose.
Tasmania is fairly close to Melbourne - but Tasmania is an island, and underwater electrical lines are much more expensive to install, and harder to repair than overland routes. Recently the Tasmania-Victoria link was out of action for 6 months after an electrical fault - and because it also has an optical fiber, internet capacity to Tasmania was greatly reduced for the same period.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Tasmanian_energy_crisis#Basslink_outage
I suggest an alternative approach for Australia's grid interconnectors between Tasmania and Victoria.
Basslink Island Hop Routes
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/basslink_island_hop.jpg)
Map adapted from Basslink map here (http://www.basslink.com.au/basslink-interconnector/maps/).
My concept is to use 2 interconnectors carrying half the current each, instead of one, and to use the islands to break the underwater lengths into shorter segments, by hopping between islands as shown in the map.
The advantage is that when you get a break in an underwater cable then you still have 50% current capacity and the repair is quicker because it is more affordable to completely replace the broken segment with a temporary replacement cable. Then you've got all the time you need to make a permanent repair.
For interconnectors over stretches of ocean where there are not enough natural islands to serve as segmenting points, then artificial (floating) islands could be constructed or decommissioned oil and gas rigs reused for the purpose.
Simple. 8)
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One interesting thing I worked out; the UK has about 30 million cars. If you replaced them all with electric cars with (only) 30kWh batteries, that's a storage capacity of 900 GWh. The UK daily usage is roughly 1000 GWh; so it's comparable.
Cars are stationary about 95% of the time so potentially you could use the cars as pretty much the only storage on the grid, but you could certainly add more as well.
One other thing I read was that cars used as grid storage their batteries are predicted to last longer than cars that aren't. The reason wasn't specified, you'd think it would wear them more quickly, but my guess is that the average state of charge can be maintained closer to 30% which gives the batteries the best longevity.
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So we use your car for storing electricity when nobody else is using it. Presumably that means we can take electricity from your car when we need it, which is OK unless you happen to want to drive your car when your neighbour has "siphoned off the gas" to heat his house....Or will you only drive at night or on windy days?
I find it interesting that my car and my house run on pretty much the same fuel, and almost the same quantity. 25,000 miles per year at 10 miles per liter of diesel, and heating the house takes 2500 liters of oil a year. I use far less electrical energy - maybe a quarter of the heating oil energy content. So if I went "all electric" the grid would have to supply me with 9 times as much as at present. That's a huge infrastructure investment in generating capacity alone, to be added to the cost of uprating the distribution network and finding some way of storing 3 - 5 days' worth of the stuff. Hence my enthusiasm for using the existing and entirely adequate gas and liquid fuel storage and distribution infrastructure and end-use machinery, and using all that free electricity to synthesise carbon fuels.
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So we use your car for storing electricity when nobody else is using it. Presumably that means we can take electricity from your car when we need it, which is OK unless you happen to want to drive your car when your neighbour has "siphoned off the gas" to heat his house....Or will you only drive at night or on windy days?
No. The user would configure their car to sell electricity back, if and when and only to the extent that they want to do that; but don't forget they would be selling it back at a significant premium. Also, don't forget that the average mileage is only 30 per day, which is only 10 kWh per day. Most electric cars now have ~30 kWh batteries so there's spare capacity that's not being used.
If you're commuting at the full range of your car, then you need a bigger battery in your car anyway. The new Tesla model 3 for example has a 50-75kWh battery which can do over 200 miles on a single charge.
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I like the idea of 24 hour moon power, via the tides. The moon's gravity moves oceans of water back and forth, with a lot of dynamic and potential energy, just waiting to be tapped.
For example, picture if high tide brought water into a large cove, that is then dammed, just before the tide goes out. We have a huge daily reservoir of water power. Or you run underwater turbines to capture the energy of the tidal water flow, in both directions. The tides are very reliable and have energy in both directions.
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Tidal power looks like it's quite expensive though, and it's not 24 hours, the tide has to turn around.
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Tidal power, like rocket flight, is one of those scientifically obvious solutions that spawn massively imponderable engineering problems. As a result, after a hundred years of R&D, there are still only a handful of tidal generating stations around the world. Part of the problem is the ecological and economic impact of a tidal dam. Many life forms, including coastal communities of homo sapiens, depend on the tidal range, and even the variation of tidal range, for their life and living. And of course the antifracking treehuggers will complain that extracting energy from the moon's orbit will upset Selene and bring her crashing to earth.
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Tidal power looks like it's quite expensive though, and it's not 24 hours, the tide has to turn around.
The superior double lagoon design ...
(see The Naked Scientist topic - How can tidal lagoons generate electrical power on demand? (https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=69662.0) )
.. produces power for 24 hours a day, if not uniformly for 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year because of the variation between high energy spring tides and low energy neap tides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide#Range_variation:_springs_and_neaps).
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It defend on the power storage and the use.
Energy can be harvested enough for a day.
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Using these results, I have written a web-page script on-line calculator -
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (my Scottish Scientist Wordpress blog post for documentation and discussion)
Wind, storage and back-up system designer (the actual calculator web-page which has to be hosted separately because it uses javascript which Wordpress, the blog host, don't allow).
Now renamed as the “Wind, solar, storage and back-up system designer (http://scottish.scienceontheweb.net/Wind%20power%20storage%20back-up%20calculator.htm)” to mark solar’s debut.
http://scottish.scienceontheweb.net/Wind%20power%20storage%20back-up%20calculator.htm
I’ve re-programed my (formerly wind-only) grid systems designer to include solar power and I’ve added a few other useful features too.
If readers have any questions, problems etc arising with the new version then please reply to this comment (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/wind-storage-and-back-up-system-designer/#comment-15216).
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Looking forward to reading your latest, SS. I think there is some psychic connection: I haven't thought much about energy storage since your last posting 18 months ago but it all came to mind this week during a trip to Bute and hearing about a hydrogen fuel-cell bus trial. Eminently practicable without flooding the Highlands. More anon!
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BBC: Lightning strike 'partly to blame' for power cut (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49402296)
A lightning strike and the sudden loss of two large electricity generators caused nearly a million people to lose power in England and Wales earlier this month, an interim report has found.
The National Grid outage affected homes, businesses and transport, and while power was restored quite quickly, disruption continued into the next day.
Regulator Ofgem has opened an investigation into National Grid and other companies involved.
National Grid: Interim Report into the Low Frequency Demand Disconnection (LFDD) following Generator Trips and Frequency Excursion on 9 Aug 2019 (https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/151081/download)
The National Grid’s interim report includes a high-resolution frequency vs time graph, part of which I have extracted and annotated.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/ng_hz_v_time.jpg)
The National Grid was in breach of its licence obligations (to keep grid frequency above 49.5 Hz) within 5 seconds of the first events which precipitated this power cut crisis.
This proves that the National Grid has totally inadequate automated frequency response services. (https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services/frequency-response-services)
The Times did their own version of this graph.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/timesgridfrequencyvstime-.png)
Nice. :)
Remedial Action
Operationally, the National Grid should contract for generators (while not actually generating at full load or at all) to run in spinning reserve for frequency response service (https://proceedings.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=2087716) and to add “inertia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_response)” or rotational kinetic energy to the synchronous generators system which is drained by any supply-demand power deficit, moderating the rate of frequency slowing.
The National Grid should contract for a margin of excess demand-side response (https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services/demand-side-response-dsr) capacity too.
Those cheap and cheerful measures could be done very quickly and would keep the lights on securely while considering the best investment decisions to suit the transition to renewable energy, most likely supplementing the UK’s 2.9GW of pumped storage hydroelectricity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station#Operation) short term operating and fast reserve with fast-response electrical energy storage, be that from super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor) and / or batteries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_storage_power_station) to supply a short burst of fast-reserve power of no more than about 2.9GW – to sustain the supply power and maintain frequency while the UK’s pumped storage hydroelectric schemes are reaching full power output from their highest state of readiness, ideally spinning reserve.
Battery vs Ultracapacitor
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/solargis-solar-map-europe-en.png)
The National Grid reports it has 472MW of batteries already so investing in another 2.4GW of super-capacitors should complement the UK’s 2.9GW of pumped storage hydroelectricity nicely to create a high specification renewable energy reserve power supply that could power up instantly and last for hours if necessary, even in the event of a power shortage crisis that was twice as bad as the one just suffered.
Here are some reference links which explain the two quite distinct concepts of –
(1) spinning reserve power, the capacity of a spinning generator held in reserve to increase its power generation massively on command which does not require any change in the rate at which the generator spins,
Wikipedia – Operating Reserve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_reserve)
Energy Storage Association – Spinning Reserve (http://energystorage.org/energy-storage/technology-applications/spinning-reserve)
(2) the inertial response of synchronous generators, a property of rotational kinetic energy changes which is associated with grid power imbalances that is intrinsic to the changes in the rotation rate of those generators with grid frequency
Wikipedia – Inertial Response (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_response)
Inertia in Electricity Systems (https://adgefficiency.com/inertia-electricity-systems-energy-basics/)
Many generator types can offer either or both of those useful functions to protect against power stations trips which threaten frequency drops and power cuts.
Whilst both coal and nuclear power stations excel at providing inertia (when they are generating at constant load) they are not the quickest and best at increasing their power output on command from spinning reserve.
So in terms of spinning reserve, we can expect excellent performance from certain hydroelectric turbines such as those at Dinorwig (https://www.electricmountain.co.uk/Dinorwig-Power-Station), which when synchronised and spinning-in-air offer an emergency load pick-up rate from standby of 0MW to 1,320 MW in 12 seconds – impressive!
However it seems on the day of this power cut, the National Grid shamefully neglected to contract and to deploy Dinorwig instantly in an automated frequency response role.
The National Grid has not admitted to that crime of omission explicitly but only in so many terms, admitted to having only 1,000MW of automated reserve power back up, 472MW of which was batteries.
We can also deduce the same from the Gridwatch data (https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/download.php) –
Date stamps – GMT – frequency – pumped
8/9/2019 15:55:37 – 48.889 Hz — 293 MW
8/9/2019 16:05:35 – 50.1819 Hz — 958 MW
– which shows that the UK’s pumped storage hydroelectricity generation was 293MW at the time of the power cut and did not ramp up to 958MW until about 10 minutes after the power cut – 10 minutes too late to avert the power cut!
The UK’s about 20GW total of Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) both contribute a lot of inertia to the grid – in proportion to those CCGTs which are actually online and in synchronous rotation – and the UK’s CCGTs also are capable of outstanding performance as spinning reserve, due to their ability to ramp up power quickly from partial load to full load. This is always true for the CCGT’s gas turbines but is not always the case for the CCGT’s steam turbines especially not when the CCGT is operating in stand-by at zero or very low load when there would not typically be enough heat nor steam pressure to quickly ramp up the steam turbine’s power output.
One more word on the decommissioning of coal-fired power stations. It would be possible in theory to re-purpose the turbine units of those decommissioned coal-fired power stations so as to keep their useful inertia for the grid without burning any coal or boiling up any steam. This could be done by starting the turbines and spinning them up to synchronous rotation using electrical power.
Regrettably, the UK’s reckless rush to demolish coal-fired power stations has never considered the potential advantages to maintaining grid resilience which could be had by suitable re-purposing of these power station plants. The accountants who know little about power generation have simply rushed in to strip assets so as to sell off the land and placed our electricity power supply in great danger.
To serve our electricity needs on dark windless nights in the middle of winter at least expense, we ought to convert coal-fired power stations to burn bio-mass fuel as has been wisely done at Drax in England, but was recklessly not done at Longannet in Scotland which is now being demolished, which will require in future new-build biomass power stations in Scotland.
It would be just to seek compensation for the public purse from those who ordered and allowed Longannet levelled to the ground – an unforgivable and gratuitous act of industrial vandalism (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-49397655). >:(
In the context of the transition to renewable energy, please note -
- that the power-cut which the UK suffered recently was not because of the intermittent nature of wind power, nor because of the transition to renewable energy, so this power cut should not be conflated and confused with the issue of storage requirements for transition to 100% renewable energy, which is a different issue and a different requirement to the energy storage requirements of coping with such power station trips
- that the energy storage capacity requirement for managing the grid’s future intermittent renewable generation will be larger than batteries can provide for at an affordable cost,
- that pumped storage hydroelectricity is a better, most cost-effective technology for large capacity energy storage for most national grids, albeit supplemented with batteries and / or super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors for the best frequency-response performance.
Re-nationalising the National Grid?
In May 2019, the BBC reported (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48286563) that the Labour Party unveiled plans to take the National Grid into public ownership (https://www.labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Bringing-Energy-Home-2019.pdf).
After this power cut, the Guardian asked “Does this strengthen the case for nationalising the National Grid? (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/12/what-are-the-questions-are-raised-by-the-uks-recent-blackout)“.
Maybe it does because the suspicion must be that the privatised National Grid has hived off its grid management to a separate “Electricity System Operator” company limiting its liability with respect to OFGEM fines, with a shoddy frequency response service, risking power cuts in order to profiteer with predictable consequences for grid reliability.
My view – re-nationalise the National Grid with extreme prejudice. :D
Adapted from my blog post - Remedying UK Power Cuts and Re-nationalising the Grid (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/remedying-uk-power-cuts/)
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Well, I didn't expect to find myself agreeing ...
Yes, the problem here is that the Grid was being run for profit, rather than its real purpose of maintaining the supply.
This thread is based on the difficulty (some say impossibility) of ensuring that when losses of generators occur (due to weather) we can switch other ones (possibly in other countries) in to replace them.
That is difficult, but it shouldn't be impossible.
What surprises me is that the grid's automatic systems didn't provide enough reserve.
The grid negotiates with very large power users and offers a reduced tariff to those who are prepared to accept automatic short term power cuts.
If you are a supermarket chain running a huge refrigerated warehouse a 15 minute power cut isn't going to affect you at all- you just need a bit of emergency lighting. Steel processing furnaces can also tolerate short power cuts- their large thermal mass tides them over.
In exchange for a reduced electricity price you accept a relay that continuously monitors the mains frequency and, if it drops below some set point (commonly 49.5 Hz), the relay cuts the power to your refrigeration plant.
Systems like that should automatically balance the load with the supply.
If they didn't work it's because they were not properly implemented.
And the obvious reason is that the Grid's profits suffer if it offers discounts to customers.
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Two irrational responses to a minor cockup!
First: The statutory minimum frequency is surely no more than an indication of load vs capacity. Time was that we had two clocks in a power distribution center, one linked to Greenwich via telephone line (yes, I'm going back over 60 years!) and one driven by a mains synchronous motor. The requirement was to keep the latter within 5 minutes of the former, so any short-term drop below 50 Hz could be made up overnight and load shedding was a response to a real disaster (of which we had plenty in the 1950s). One minute below 49Hz was not an emergency if there was sufficient capacity on standby.
Seond: The real problem on 9 August was the fragility of the consumer systems. Apparently some trains could not be restarted by the drivers, but needed an engineer to locate the train and drive out to reset the electronics. How is this an advance on steam and diesel? An idiot would think that if the power is switched off for 10 minutes, all the trains should start running again with a 10 minute delay, not 7 hours. But the world is run by computers, not idiots!
Last week's ITV show "Fighter Pilot" had a new recruit about to take his first flight in an F35. Called his instructor - "user name and password rejected". After a couple of goes, the instructor said "try switching everything off and start again", then asked the cameraman to leave as the next trick (apparently, calling a ground engineer) was top secret. Funny in a flying school, kiss of death on a carrier flight deck.
My personal record was waiting 4 hours at £100 per hour whilst folk ran around a medical school trying to find the password to switch on the x-ray machine, beating by 1 hour the dentist whose brother had installed the computer the day before, and promptly flew back to India with the password securely tucked in his briefcase.
Whatever happened to keys? Who is going to steal a train (or a dental x-ray) and how far will he get against unscheduled points?
Anyway, I agree with all you say and I'm all in favour of renationalising as much of the electricity supply industry as economically possible. But it is incumbent on end users to note that (1) a centralised supply is prone to occasional failure and (2) a machine that cannot be started by its driver is a liability, not an asset.
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Who is going to steal a train (or a dental x-ray) and how far will he get against unscheduled points?
There was a rumour at the time that this
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=9018
was caused by kids who had broken into the train with a view to joyriding.
The train got as far as a major road junction.
On a related note, did you know that all JCBs have the same key?
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Well, I didn't expect to find myself agreeing ...
Yes, the problem here is that the Grid was being run for profit, rather than its real purpose of maintaining the supply.
Agreed.
This thread is based on the difficulty (some say impossibility) of ensuring that when losses of generators occur (due to weather) we can switch other ones (possibly in other countries) in to replace them.
That is difficult, but it shouldn't be impossible.
Again agreed.
It was inevitable that when one of the power stations which tripped was a wind farm that the fossil-fuel- and nuclear- lobbies against wind and solar power would try to "blame wind", conflating the non-wind causes of this power-cut with the intermittent power supplied by renewable energy farms and that anti-wind propaganda could easily have been swallowed whole by an unsuspecting polity had someone not published to explain the facts of the matter.
Unpicking that deliberate conflation and confusion so as to defend the reputation of wind and solar power and to show how it is indeed possible to guarantee no power-cuts with a well-designed and well-managed 100% renewable energy system is therefore on-topic in this thread.
What surprises me is that the grid's automatic systems didn't provide enough reserve.
The National Grid had only 1,000MW of automatic back-up power available and as far as I can tell from the National Grid's report (see the somewhat cryptic and terse information in tables 3 and 4 on pages 15 and 18), that 1,000MW included both frequency response "dynamic response" power reserves from batteries and frequency response "static response" demand-side cut-offs.
The grid negotiates with very large power users and offers a reduced tariff to those who are prepared to accept automatic short term power cuts.
If you are a supermarket chain running a huge refrigerated warehouse a 15 minute power cut isn't going to affect you at all- you just need a bit of emergency lighting. Steel processing furnaces can also tolerate short power cuts- their large thermal mass tides them over.
In exchange for a reduced electricity price you accept a relay that continuously monitors the mains frequency and, if it drops below some set point (commonly 49.5 Hz), the relay cuts the power to your refrigeration plant.
Systems like that should automatically balance the load with the supply.
If they didn't work it's because they were not properly implemented.
Of that sort of demand-side cut-off measure, they only seem to have had
- 198MW triggered at 49.7Hz and delivered within 30 seconds (why take so long to operate a relay, or was it something more sluggish than a relay involved? The report is not transparent about such questions.)
- 230MW triggered at 49.6Hz and delivered within 1 second (that's quick enough but why only 230MW?)
Systems like that should automatically balance the load with the supply.
If they didn't work it's because they were not properly implemented.
Agreed.
By 16:53:31, 1 minute after the events which precipitated this crisis, there was "a total of 1,691MW of cumulative infeed loss" which was more than the 1,090MW of all "frequency response is being delivered at this point attempting to restore the frequency to operational limits".
See table 1 on page 11.
1 minute in, the grid was still suffering a 600MW power deficit and so frequency continued to drop, provoking the automated power cuts to unsuspecting customers.
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One minute below 49Hz was not an emergency if there was sufficient capacity on standby.
According to Wikipedia - National Grid Reserve Service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service#Other_National_Grid_measures)
If Frequency Response and spinning reserve fails to control grid frequency and it falls too far, then the fans feeding combustion air into power station boilers begin to deliver at inadequate draft/pressure since they are synchronous, and the output of all power-stations in the grid, goes into irreversible decline. To prevent this, frequency sensitive relays on entire substations trip out, disconnecting entire customer areas on a pre-determined schedule.
So it really depends on how far the frequency falls during that "One minute below 49Hz". If the frequency falls too far then the grid is in peril because the power stations are only contracted to operate for 20 seconds under 47.5Hz - and not at all below 47Hz. See table 5 on page 19 of the National Grid's report.
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fans feeding combustion air into power station boilers begin to deliver at inadequate draft/pressure since they are synchronous
Well, that's a piss poor design, isn't it?
Ironically, it seems that coal powered stations are less robust than wind power.
It's fairly stupid that the driver can't restart a train after a power failure.
It's even more stupid that a power station can't even cope with a brown out.
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It should be a requirement of every new house build that solar panels are installed. This should also be required for new commercial builds.
Retrofitting all buildings should be a priority. Why is this so hard?
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FGS! I haven't used a synchronous fan or a 50Hz transformer for anything more important than stirring my office air and venting the toilets in the last 20 years. All the industrial chillers and aircon systems I have installed in clinics have had inverters, as have all the computer systems, so that they can work from out-of-spec mains or shut down recoverably from a crudely phased UPS. Back in the day, power stations had banks of lead-acid batteries to keep the lights and telephones working, with enough reserve to restart the boilers (if they had run out of oily rags and matches).
We also tested hospital diesel generators every week. But "we" were public sector employees, now replaced by offsite contractors to PFI companies that have gone into liquidation.
Chernobyl was over 30 years ago, as was the US ice storm brownout. Does nobody ever learn?
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A few years ago, there was a major power outage in South Australia, triggered by major storms that knocked down transmission lines carrying electricity from distant coal generators.
- Some storms were predicted, so starting up a more local coal-fired station to run as spinning reserve would have been a very expensive but (in retrospect) wise precaution.
One of the findings of the enquiry was that wind-farms had circuit-breaker settings that reflected the traditional behavior of coal-fired power stations more than wind-farm capability.
- In seeing repeated frequency drops, the wind-farms were cut off, when the wind was still blowing.
These wind farms did not have enough capacity to save the South Australian grid, but they would have continued generating until later in the failure, rather than contributing to the onset of the failure.
As a result of this, Tesla has built a battery inverter installation in South Australia to stabilise the grid, and introduced a new category of grid support which operates in under 100ms, instead of the traditional load scheduling that operates on >15 minute timescales.
I guess as we transition to new forms of generation & power reserves, we need to consider which parts of the traditional grid design are still relevant, and which need to be updated.
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1 minute in, the grid was still suffering a 600MW power deficit and so frequency continued to drop, provoking the automated power cuts to unsuspecting customers.
Dinorwig can supply a maximum power of 1,728-megawatt (2,317,000 hp) and has a storage capacity of around 9.1-gigawatt-hour.
National grid, or just a bit of vanity engineering, not for public use? And is this a valid model for hydro storage on a larger scale? IIRC there had been plenty of rain, so the tanks must have been full.
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so starting up a more local coal-fired station to run as spinning reserve would have been a very expensive but (in retrospect) wise precaution.
Gas turbines can ramp up their power faster than coal-fired power stations so gas is a better choice for spinning reserve than coal, unless coal is all you have.
South Australia doesn't yet have much in the way of hydroelectric power so that wasn't an ideal option for them.
As a result of this, Tesla has built a battery inverter installation in South Australia to stabilise the grid, and introduced a new category of grid support which operates in under 100ms, instead of the traditional load scheduling that operates on >15 minute timescales.
Batteries are fast admittedly but super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors are equally fast and more powerful for the same money, though store less energy and don't generate for so long.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/solargis-solar-map-europe-en.png)
So for the same money -
- batteries give you less power but for a longer time, the minutes you need to start up a total smaller generator capacity from a dead stop.
- super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors give you more power for a shorter time, the seconds you need to ramp up the power of a total larger generator capacity from spinning reserve.
Since the UK has lots (about 20GW) of gas turbines and a decent amount (about 2GW) of pumped storage hydroelectricity which can operate in spinning reserve and power up in seconds then we will get more frequency response Watts for our pounds if we buy super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors to support our plentiful existing spinning reserve capacity.
Some of the hydroelectricity capacity the UK has has not yet been upgraded to operate in spinning-in-air for a (super-capacitor / ultra-capacitor supported) fast-start up and so the batteries which the UK already has - 472MW - can best be deployed to support a fast-start frequency-response in support of those more sluggish-start hydroelectric generators.
Rather than buy more batteries, I'd rather upgrade more hydroelectric capacity to operate in spinning-in-air reserve.
So let not the UK ape South Australia and be convinced by Tesla's snake-oil battery salesmen to invite little rocket man Elon Musk to jet-set in as "the savour" of the UK National Grid for the transition to 100% renewable energy. ::)
It's bad enough that the National Grid already has "a battery venture with Tesla". (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/interview-national-grids-john-pettigrew-the-man-who-keeps-the-lights-on-most-of-the-time-hjfd9xl5t) If I were the suspicious sort, I'd suspect that National Grid manufactured this power cut to justify higher bills or a government grant to pay for a Tesla "biggest ever" battery contract. ;)
"Biggest ever batteries" as a one-size-fits-all solution for renewable energy grids? That don't impress me much!
Since we have got onto the subject of "Australia", I must mention my enthusiastic support for Snowy 2.0. :D
Tasmania is also good for pumped hydro. South Australia is short of fresh-water but sea-water schemes are possible there.
Batteries can't match pumped hydro for endurance so please resist the temptation to waste precious UK investment resources on "biggest ever batteries". ::)
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Dinorwig can supply a maximum power of 1,728-megawatt (2,317,000 hp) and has a storage capacity of around 9.1-gigawatt-hour.
National grid, or just a bit of vanity engineering, not for public use? And is this a valid model for hydro storage on a larger scale? IIRC there had been plenty of rain, so the tanks must have been full.
Dinorwig could indeed have saved the day, had it been contracted to be on stand-by for frequency response in seconds instead of as it was used, on stand-by for short term operating reserve response in minutes.
As can be seen at a glance from the Gridwatch graphs (https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/), the National Grid has been misusing the UK's pumped storage hydroelectricity capacity for routine generation at times of peak load, to save the cost of gas for the same, or the cost of investing in building more pumped storage hydroelectricity capacity.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/gridwatchpumped.jpg)
So they've misused Dinorwig to increase National Grid operating profitability at the expense of disarming the UK's most powerful emergency power supply.
The privatised National Grid has profiteered on the orders of its chief executive Mr John Pettigrew so that he can get his increased salary and bonuses and the customers can suffer the risk of power cuts, that's why. Profit before public service. What else in Tory-boy UK?
So in terms of spinning reserve, we can expect excellent performance from certain hydroelectric turbines such as those at Dinorwig, which when synchronised and spinning-in-air offer an emergency load pick-up rate from standby of 0MW to 1,320 MW in 12 seconds – impressive!
However it seems on the day of this power cut, the National Grid shamefully neglected to contract and to deploy Dinorwig instantly in an automated frequency response role.
The National Grid has not admitted to that crime of omission explicitly but only in so many terms, admitted to having only 1,000MW of automated reserve power back up, 472MW of which was batteries.
We can also deduce the same from the Gridwatch data –
Date stamps – GMT – frequency – pumped
8/9/2019 15:55:37 – 48.889 Hz — 293 MW
8/9/2019 16:05:35 – 50.1819 Hz — 958 MW
– which shows that the UK’s pumped storage hydroelectricity generation was 293MW at the time of the power cut and did not ramp up to 958MW until about 10 minutes after the power cut – 10 minutes too late to avert the power cut!
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IIRC there had been plenty of rain, so the tanks must have been full.
The point of Dinorwig, is that it doesn't really depend on rain.Gas turbines can ramp up their power faster than coal-fired power stations so gas is a better choice for spinning reserve than coal,
It's a long time ago, but I went to an open day at Fiddlers Ferry once
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlers_Ferry_power_station
They had a gas turbine of sorts.
It was an aircraft jet engine coupled to a MW or so generator.
That gave them enough power to "cold start" the station without the grid- I guess a lot of that power drove the fans.
The jet engine itself had a diesel engine to run it up to speed from "cold".
That diesel was fitted with an electric starter driven from batteries but, in principle, you could crank the whole 2GW coal station from a standing start.
By hand.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlers_Ferry_power_station
BBC - "Fiddler's Ferry: SSE to close its last coal-fired power plant" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-48628334)
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/73F6/production/_107368692_fiddlerc_getty.jpg)
Fiddler's Ferry near Warrington will close on 31 March 2020
Energy firm SSE has announced it is closing its last coal-fired station - the Fiddler's Ferry site near Warrington, Cheshire.
The company said the plant, which employs 158 people, will close on 31 March 2020 and it was beginning a consultation with trade unions.
SSE said the station's losses were "unsustainable".
Trade union Unite, which has 110 members at the site, said it was "grim news" for the workers.
Last month, the UK had its first week without using electricity from burning coal since the 1880s.
Stephen Wheeler, managing director of Thermal Energy at SSE, said the proposed closure of its final coal-fired station was "not a decision we are taking lightly".
He added: "Financially, Fiddler's Ferry is loss-making and our projections show that it will continue to be so."
The company said it hoped to redeploy some employees elsewhere in the group with others remaining to decommission the site.
A statement said it would be offering enhanced voluntary redundancy terms to avoid compulsory redundancies.
Regarded as a landmark in Merseyside, the station - which has two groups of four cooling towers - opened in 1973.
It was formerly operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board until privatisation, with SSE taking it over in 2005.
The government plans to phase out the UK's last coal-fired plants by 2025 to reduce carbon emissions.
So there is still 7 months for the UK to save Fiddler's Ferry to serve in future as a renewable-energy dispatchable back-up biomass-burning power station at times of low wind and solar power generation, which will be needed for the lowest-cost transition to 100% renewable energy.
Even when Fiddler's Ferry is at a low state of readiness, its furnace extinguished and its boilers cold, its turbine - generators could be spun up to synchronous rotation using electrical power and thereby add inertia to the grid to buy time in the event of a power station trip to help to avert a disruptive power-cut.
The danger is imminent and it is real. This is what the psychotic accountants have done to Longannet coal-fired power station in Scotland.
Longannet before -
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1591D/production/_108394388_workinf_longannet976.jpg)
Longannet now -
(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/D385/production/_108394145_longannet_inside.jpg)
It'll be too late to save Fiddler's Ferry if we allow them to do there what they did at Longannet, OK?
The time to act is now.
The company which has condemned FIddler's Ferry is SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy plc) which is an energy company headquartered in Perth, Scotland.
The UK energy sector and I believe many aspects of company law is a reserved matter - governed by the Westminster Parliament and UK Prime Minister and government.
SSE is in no way accountable to the Scottish Parliament for this decision or for most of its decisions.
With the devolution settlement as it is, even if the Scots wanted to save Fiddler's Ferry we couldn't. This is not on us Scots, OK? This is on the whole UK.
It is my duty, as a Scot with an interest to see power security and good management of the UK energy sector to disown this reckless decision of a nominally "Scottish" company SSE. >:(
That's nothing to do with "saving coal", OK? To hell with coal. We need to save the plant for biomass burning and inertia.
The same applies to other UK coal-fired power stations though some like Aberthaw have not been converted to burning biomass. Nevertheless it will be cheaper and quicker to convert from coal to biomass than to demolish a coal-fired power station and build a new biomass power station.
Guardian - German utilities firm RWE to close its last UK coal plant in 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/01/german-utilities-firm-rwe-to-close-its-last-uk-coal-plant-in-2020)
Decision will leave only four remaining coal plants powering British homes
The German utility giant RWE will close its last UK coal plant after the coming winter, leaving only four remaining coal plants powering British homes.
RWE will close the Aberthaw B power station in south Wales at the end of March 2020...
The Thatcherite (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher) "market" has got the bit between its teeth and it is running amok with the UK's electricity generating sector.
" This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated. ”
— Assessment by the ICI in 1948
Even from beyond the grave, Thatcher is still managing to wreck this country's infrastructure. She and her Tory-boys are the ruin of us.
Demolishing coal-fired power stations delays the transition to 100% renewable energy
Why? Simply because without those power stations converted to burn renewable-energy biomass as back-up power the cost and the time taken for the transition to 100% renewable energy will be multiple times greater.
Meanwhile, burning fossil-fuel natural gas as back-up power may keep the lights on but it will bind the UK into a fossil-fuelled future for many more years. So we absolutely need biomass burning for the transition.
Tree-huggers may foolishly rejoice that fewer trees will be felled if there are fewer biomass-burning power stations to burn them in? Don't celebrate too soon - massive wild-fires will eventually consume most of the trees that tree-huggers want to hug and those trees will go up in smoke sooner or later.
I am sorry but the harsh reality is that tree-hugging, massive wild-fires and burning fossil-fuel natural gas is not helping, but hindering the transition.
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The point of Dinorwig, is that it doesn't really depend on rain.
I know that. I was just eliminating one feeble excuse!
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And then the demolition of Didcot cooling towers blacked out a significant area with flying debris hitting a transmission line. Worse still, it has removed the only visual reference point I can recognise when flying to work in Southampton!
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Maybe it's just me; I thought the tragedy of the demolition at Didcot was the 4 dead people.
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The company which has condemned FIddler's Ferry is SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy plc) which is an energy company headquartered in Perth, Scotland.
I think the blame really lies elsewhere.
Here's what WIKI says about F's F.
"On 18 November 2015 Amber Rudd the Minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change proposed that the UK's remaining coal-fired power stations will be shut by 2025 with their use restricted by 2023."
So we absolutely need biomass burning for the transition.
Where do you propose to grow it?
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Maybe it's just me; I thought the tragedy of the demolition at Didcot was the 4 dead people.
That was 3 years earlier. Altogether not a happy business, but I'm sure someone will fill the space with tiny, expensive houses.
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The company which has condemned FIddler's Ferry is SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy plc) which is an energy company headquartered in Perth, Scotland.
I think the blame really lies elsewhere.
Here's what WIKI says about F's F.
"On 18 November 2015 Amber Rudd the Minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change proposed that the UK's remaining coal-fired power stations will be shut by 2025 with their use restricted by 2023."
Indeed. SSE are operating as all private companies must within the market whose parameters are established by the government, which could pay incentives, change the rules, to encourage the profitability of biomass back-up power stations or simply re-nationalise the National Grid and the coal-fired power stations, convert them to bio-mass and run them as critical renewable energy back-up power grid infrastructure.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
Industrial Vandalism. From beyond the grave, Thatcherite market forces delay the transition to 100% Renewable Energy
In Amber Rudderless's case that should be "Hey Tory-girl there's a CLIMATE EMERGENCY!"
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So we absolutely need biomass burning for the transition.
Where do you propose to grow it?
(https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/09/global_biomass_for_2010/17160326-2-eng-GB/Global_biomass_for_2010_node_full_image_2.png)
Global biomass for 2010 (https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/09/Global_biomass_for_2010)
Released 20/09/2017 8:44 am
Copyright GlobBiomass project
Description
Map showing global growing stock volume (GSV) – the amount of wood expressed in cubic metres per hectare – derived from satellite radar data in 2010. Dark green represents areas of high growing stock volume, while white areas have none.
Drax gets their biomass pellets from North America I believe.
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So we absolutely need biomass burning for the transition.
Where do you propose to grow it?
(https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/09/global_biomass_for_2010/17160326-2-eng-GB/Global_biomass_for_2010_node_full_image_2.png)
Global biomass for 2010 (https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/09/Global_biomass_for_2010)
Released 20/09/2017 8:44 am
Copyright GlobBiomass project
Description
Map showing global growing stock volume (GSV) – the amount of wood expressed in cubic metres per hectare – derived from satellite radar data in 2010. Dark green represents areas of high growing stock volume, while white areas have none.
Drax gets their biomass pellets from North America I believe.
Do you not feel that we are burning the Brazilian forests fast enough already?
It seems to be adding another variation to the theme of "food miles".
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So we absolutely need biomass burning for the transition.
Where do you propose to grow it?
(https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2017/09/global_biomass_for_2010/17160326-2-eng-GB/Global_biomass_for_2010_node_full_image_2.png)
Global biomass for 2010 (https://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/09/Global_biomass_for_2010)
Released 20/09/2017 8:44 am
Copyright GlobBiomass project
Description
Map showing global growing stock volume (GSV) – the amount of wood expressed in cubic metres per hectare – derived from satellite radar data in 2010. Dark green represents areas of high growing stock volume, while white areas have none.
Drax gets their biomass pellets from North America I believe.
Do you not feel that we are burning the Brazilian forests fast enough already?
Science is knowing and that's more than a feeling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSR6ZzjDZ94).
I know that fossil-fuel burning tree-hugging hypocrites aren't lifting a finger to reduce the scale of devastating wild-fires, in Brazil, in the American West, in Australia, or indeed anywhere in this world. Indeed, tree-hugging is making wild-fires worse.
It is the sustainable harvesting of trees that will give forests their best economic value.
A metaphorically "hugged tree", in Brazil, say, hugged by touchy-feely President Macron at a G7 meeting, is totally worthless to a Brazilian farmer who will ignore the tree-huggers and set fires so that the hugged tree and its neighbours are burnt to a crisp so that the farmer can plant crops and graze cattle, feed his family.
Meanwhile, the hugged and wild-fire burnt trees of the world are of no use whatsoever for back-up power generation at times of low wind and solar power, but the tree-huggers will look the other way as fossil-fuels are burned for back-up power, stoking up the problem of global warming and natural wild fires.
The tree-huggers are the fellow travellers and bed fellows of climate deniers - all hand-wringing, no solutions and no appetite for an open debate. Tree-huggers need their "safe zones" to get away with being dead wrong.
Whereas a "harvested tree" that is turned into wood pellets and sold to biomass power stations that keep the lights on without burning fossil fuel is a source of income for the forester who replants more trees to sustain his source of income and feed his family, creating fire-breaks to contain wild-fires and now the forest thrives. Then we can stop burning fossil fuels and halt global warming in its tracks. Win, win.
Like I said -
Tree-huggers may foolishly rejoice that fewer trees will be felled if there are fewer biomass-burning power stations to burn them in? Don't celebrate too soon - massive wild-fires will eventually consume most of the trees that tree-huggers want to hug and those trees will go up in smoke sooner or later.
I am sorry but the harsh reality is that tree-hugging, massive wild-fires and burning fossil-fuel natural gas is not helping, but hindering the transition.
It seems to be adding another variation to the theme of "food miles".
Shipping can be converted to renewable energy power too.
But hey if you want to plant a tree where your house is and go live in the Brazilian rain forest, hug a tree instead of your loved ones, be my guest.
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A metaphorically "hugged tree", in Brazil, say, hugged by touchy-feely President Macron at a G7 meeting, is totally worthless to a Brazilian farmer who will ignore the tree-huggers and set fires so that the hugged tree and its neighbours are burnt to a crisp so that the farmer can plant crops and graze cattle, feed his family.
You forgot what he actually does.
He grows crops to sell on the international market to offset debts which his government ran up without offering him anything in return,
That government, and the international market are amenable to influence by tree hugging voters.
We re really not talking about the locals using slash + burn agriculture to feed their families here.
It's just dishonest to pretend that we are.
The fires are set by multinationals wanting to make profits, not by locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Causes
The tree huggers had actually reduced deforestation rates.
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We re really not talking about the locals using slash + burn agriculture to feed their families here.
It's just dishonest to pretend that we are.
The fires are set by multinationals wanting to make profits, not by locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Causes
From that link.
The Brazilian government granted land to approximately 150,000 families in the Amazon between 1995 and 1998. Poor farmers were also encouraged by the government through programmes such as the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform in Brazil (INCRA) to farm unclaimed forest land and after a five-year period were given a title and the right to sell the land. The productivity of the soil following forest removal for farming lasts only a year or two before the fields become infertile and farmers must clear new areas of forest to maintain their income. In 1995, nearly half (48%) of the deforestation in Brazil was attributed to poorer farmers clearing lots under 125 acres (0.51 km2) in size.
That's what your Wikipedia link is talking about.
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This is what Wiki is on about
"Logging in the Amazon, in theory, is controlled and only strictly licensed individuals are allowed to harvest the trees in selected areas. In practice, illegal logging is widespread in Brazil.[29][30] Up to 60 to 80 percent of all logging in Brazil is estimated to be illegal, with 70% of the timber cut wasted in the mills.[31] Most illegal logging companies are international companies that don't replant the trees and the practice is extensive."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Logging
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This is what Wiki is on about
"Logging in the Amazon, in theory, is controlled and only strictly licensed individuals are allowed to harvest the trees in selected areas. In practice, illegal logging is widespread in Brazil.[29][30] Up to 60 to 80 percent of all logging in Brazil is estimated to be illegal, with 70% of the timber cut wasted in the mills.[31] Most illegal logging companies are international companies that don't replant the trees and the practice is extensive."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil#Logging
Instead of paying lip-service to "banning logging", knowing full-well that there is no intention whatsoever to enforce the law (more tree-hugger hypocrisy) the government should permit and tax logging, giving tax-breaks to responsible companies who follow the rules and the taxes collected can pay for law enforcement.
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government should
Perhaps.
But isn't it likely that they like the bribes?
Hardly the tree hugger's fault that there's a ready international market for biomass- without which the corrupt business wouldn't exist.
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government should
Perhaps.
But isn't it likely that they like the bribes?
Which "bribes"? Like the offer of $22m in aid from the G7 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-49479470), from tree-hugger Macron?
The G7 are wrong to offer bribes so that Brazil will tell the tree-hugger lies that Macron wants to hear.
Hardly the tree hugger's fault that there's a ready international market for biomass- without which the corrupt business wouldn't exist.
There's not enough of a biomass market yet, for back-up power at times of low wind and solar power and that's the tree-huggers' fault for insisting on fossil-fuel natural gas or even coal for back-up power.
The corruption exists because Brazil is being bribed by tree-huggers to outlaw logging etc.
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tree-hugging is making wild-fires worse.
There are some instances of this happening in Australia.
Unlike the damp tropical rainforest in the Amazon, where fires should be somewhat rare....
The forests in temperate Australia are often dry, often burn and some trees actually require fire for their seeds to germinate.
- Many trees are protected from mild fires by insulating bark
- There are signs from the earliest European explorers that the Aboriginal people often burnt sections of forest
- However, preventative burns have recently been blocked in some forest areas, and around people's homes, on environmental grounds
- Then, when a fire does start, there is lots of fuel on the ground, and it becomes an inferno which burns through the insulating bark, and kills mature trees
- The eucalyptus tree has a lot of oil, and this fuels intense fires (eucalyptus now grow wells in California with few local predators, and the fires there have been quite severe)
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- However, preventative burns have recently been blocked in some forest areas, and around people's homes, on environmental grounds
- Then, when a fire does start, there is lots of fuel on the ground, and it becomes an inferno which burns through the insulating bark, and kills mature trees
- The eucalyptus tree has a lot of oil, and this fuels intense fires (eucalyptus now grow wells in California with few local predators, and the fires there have been quite severe)
The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018))
You can see in this photograph and video of the fire-ravaged town of Paradise, Butte County, California, that the house plots were surrounded by trees. It looks they built the town in the forest, clearing only the minimum of trees for building plots and roads.
(https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/07/12/USAT/53a9c18e-7e28-4699-a825-4f0beee4ca13-AP_Paradise_Population_Count.JPG)
https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2019/07/12/USAT/53a9c18e-7e28-4699-a825-4f0beee4ca13-AP_Paradise_Population_Count.JPG
The trees seem to have endured the fire better than the town did.
Lax building codes, mismanaged planning authorities, profiteering developers, tree-hugger politicians - they called the town "Paradise" because to tree-huggers, living in a town where you are surrounded with trees to hug IS "paradise".
In reality, "tree-hugger paradise" is Hell on Earth.
Tree-hugging is an existential threat to humanity and there really ought to be a law against it. >:(
Architects who want to offer residents shade from the sun should design verandas, cloisters, gazebos etc.
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Which "bribes"? Like the offer of $22m in aid from the G7, from tree-hugger Macron?
No, the big, regular ones.The corruption exists because Brazil is being bribed by tree-huggers to outlaw logging etc.
The corruption exists because there's a lot of money to be made in illegal logging.
Without that money there would be nothing to bribe the state officials with.
I'm sure some of those officials are quite happy to take money from both sides.
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Quote from: Scottish Scientist on Yesterday at 21:11:57
Which "bribes"? Like the offer of $22m in aid from the G7, from tree-hugger Macron?
No, the big, regular ones.
Ah, you must mean the $1.3 billion in tree-hugger bribes (https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/about) donated by the UK and a dozen+ other donor countries etc. for bribes paid out by the World "tree-hugger" Bank (https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/participants-page)?
Donor Participants (https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/donor-participants)
The FCPF's Readiness and Carbon Funds are supported by government and non-governmental entities, including private companies that make a minimum financial contribution of $5 million.
Readiness Fund Contributors
European Commission, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany(BMZ,BMU), Italy, Japan(MAFF,MOF), Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom(DFID,DECC), United States of America
Carbon Fund Contributors
Public Sector
European Commission, Australia, Canada, France, Germany(BMZ,BMU), Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom(DFID,DECC), Government of the United States of America
Private Sector & NGOs
BP Technology Ventures Inc., The Nature Conservancy
The World Bank is the Trustee of the Readiness Fund and the Carbon Fund (https://www.forestcarbonpartnership.org/participants-page)
The World Bank is betraying its mission to support economic development by bribing countries like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (https://news.un.org/en/audio/2016/04/611662) to corrupt their logging and biomass-fuel sector with tree-hugger bribes and hypocrisy.
The tree-hugger politicians and banksters are an existential threat to humanity and they should be arrested not allowed to donate tax-payer cash for tree-hugger bribes.
The corruption exists because Brazil is being bribed by tree-huggers to outlaw logging etc.
The corruption exists because there's a lot of money to be made in illegal logging.
Corruption exists because of the tree-hugger bribes corrupting countries like Brazil and the DRC to outlaw and corrupt the logging sector.
Without that money there would be nothing to bribe the state officials with.
Without the world tree-hugger politicians and banksters' bribes the logging industry in Brazil and the DRC would be a legal, honest and well-managed sector of those countries' economies.
I'm sure some of those officials are quite happy to take money from both sides.
Indeed but the corruption starts at the highest-level with tree-huggers such as French President Macron, whose foolishness has been stoked by voters and viewers believing the propaganda of tree-hugger charities and media stories.
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Unfortunately, "economic development" (i.e. the expansion of the economy, not cautious and conservative improvement) means disruption of the ecology, whether this involves flooding bits of Scotland or burning bits of Brazil to put money into somebody's pocket.
As long as there is an implicit or explicit requirement to increase the number of humans and their per capita consumption of resources, we are doomed, because they ain't makin' land anymore.
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Unfortunately, "economic development" (i.e. the expansion of the economy, not cautious and conservative improvement) means disruption of the ecology, whether this involves flooding bits of Scotland or burning bits of Brazil to put money into somebody's pocket.
"Economic development" comes in two main types - sustainable and unsustainable. There is not a one-size-fits-all "economic development".
The extraction, processing and burning of fossil-fuels would be an example of unsustainable development.
Replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy would be an example of sustainable development.
It is risky to stick with fossil fuels, not "cautious".
Conservatives like to stick to risky behaviours, even when scientists explain the risks.
Civilisation has ecological implications. What's "ecological disruption" for a hunter-gatherer and his prey is economic development for the civilised world.
Conservationists who want to stick with the arbitrary status quo ecology of a particular location at a particular time have been and always will be brushed aside by economic development, whether you or I like it or not.
You are more than welcome to switch off your electricity powered by flooded parts of Scotland and Wales and burnt biomass.
You are more than welcome to stop eating food farmed from land that was once forest.
You are more than welcome to go and live with the indigenous communities deep in the rainforest if your prefer the way that they have modified the ecology from the way it was before they invaded and changed the place.
Or perhaps you do not have the courage of your tree-hugger convictions?
As long as there is an implicit or explicit requirement to increase the number of humans and their per capita consumption of resources, we are doomed, because they ain't makin' land anymore.
China made some islands in the South China Sea to lay claim to its resources. Hong Kong reclaimed land for its airport. So actually, they are making land and the potential to improve land quality is great.
For example, water from the River Congo could be diverted north to make the Sahel and perhaps one day the Sahara bloom.
If I was world leader that is what mankind would do - make productive land where before there was none.
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@Scottish Scientist Wow! You really have your smears worked out, don't you. So you use tree-hugger as a smear term to negate any opinion that goes against your own. That sounds like a right wing troll tactic.
Now you wouldn't be a disingenuous right wing troll, would you? Bait and switch is their preferred tactic. Which looks suspiciously like what you are doing. Accept my sincerest apologies if I have this wrong.
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So you use tree-hugger as a smear term to negate any opinion that goes against your own.
Not true.
As I referred to earlier, the prejudices and ignorance of tree-huggers cannot stand scrutiny in an open debate and typically tree-huggers will insist on a "safe-space" where scientists cannot be heard.
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Now you wouldn't be a disingenuous right wing troll, would you? Bait and switch is their preferred tactic. Which looks suspiciously like what you are doing. Accept my sincerest apologies if I have this wrong.
Well why don't you read my 100% renewable energy blog, where I have most recently criticised right-wing Thatcherite free-market misgovernment (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/industrial-vandalism-how-market-forces-delay-the-transition-to-100-renewable-energy/) and get back to me with your apology after you have read and understood.
My 100% Renewable Energy Blog (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/)
* Wind, solar, storage and back-up system designer
* Industrial Vandalism: how market forces delay the transition to 100% Renewable Energy
* Double Tidal Lagoon Baseload Scheme
* Off-Shore Electricity from Wind, Solar and Hydrogen Power
* World’s biggest-ever pumped-storage hydro-scheme, for Scotland?
* Search for sites to build new pumped-storage hydroelectricity schemes
* Glasa Morie Glass Pumped-Storage Hydro Scheme
* Let’s supersize × 1000 the tiny Glasa hydro scheme!
* Modelling of wind and pumped-storage power
* Scotland Electricity Generation – my plan for 2020
* South America – GREAT for Renewable Energy
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Ah, you must mean the $1.3 billion in tree-hugger bribes donated by the UK and a dozen+ other donor countries etc.
Obviously not, because that's spread out across the whole world, not just Brazil.
I'm talking about the "take" from a 22 Billion dollar industry in Brazil alone.
typically tree-huggers will insist on a "safe-space" where scientists cannot be heard.
Like where?
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Ah, you must mean the $1.3 billion in tree-hugger bribes donated by the UK and a dozen+ other donor countries etc.
Obviously not, because that's spread out across the whole world, not just Brazil.
As is the UN-REDD tree-hugger bribes of a paltry $280 million (https://www.un-redd.org/donors).
That's a total of $1.5 billion in tree-hugger bribes I've uncovered already. I wonder what Brazil's share of that is? Enough, seemingly, to persuade Brazil's politicians to parrot the hypocrisy and lies that world's tree-huggers want to hear.
I'm talking about the "take" from a 22 Billion dollar industry in Brazil alone.
That "$22+ bn" is the turnover of the legal part of the logging sector, I assume, where taxes are paid, but bribes are not paid.
So you refer to the bribes from illegal logging to officialdom to turn a blind eye and not enforce the hypocritical laws that the Brazilian government was bribed by world tree-huggers to enact?
You do not know how much those bribes are worth because the accounts of illegal logging are not published. Enough to allow the illegal logging to continue clearly.
However much the illegal logging is worth, it is better brought in from the cold, legalised, managed and taxed. For that to happen, first world tree-huggers must be stopped from bribing Brazil, DRC etc. with the West's tax-payer funds.
typically tree-huggers will insist on a "safe-space" where scientists cannot be heard.
Like where?
Like below-the-line Guardian comments, where my "Scottish Scientist" username was put on pre-post moderation. The Guardian comments is an internet rabbit-hole where Guardianista prejudices are shared but from where science is routinely excluded.
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That "$22+ bn" is the turnover of the legal part of logging sector, I assume, where taxes are paid, but bribes are not paid.
And the estimate is that the illegal version adds another $100Bn or so.
So thisThat's a total of $1.5 billion in tree-hugger bribes I've uncovered already. I wonder what Brazil's share of that is? Enough, seemingly, to persuade Brazil's politicians to parrot the hypocrisy and lies that world's tree-huggers want to hear.
Makes no sense.
They get enough cash from illegal logging to not care very much about the tree huggers.
Like below-the-line Guardian comments, where my "Scottish Scientist" username was put on pre-post moderation. The Guardian comments is an internet rabbit-hole where Guardianista prejudices are shared but from where science is routinely excluded.
And what did you do to upset them?
What "science" were you excluded for posting?
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So, basically, you want to save the coal fired power stations but burn trees in them instead of coal. Well Brazil have just been forced into putting out all the fires encouraged by their right wing, nutcase, authoritarian leader.
Donald Trump loves Bolsonaro. Maybe Bolsonaro didn't rake the forests enough to prevent the fires. Or maybe he is as right wing and out of touch as you seem to be.
You simply shouldn't be taken seriously. I don't know exactly what your hidden agenda is but it can't be anything sensible.
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P.S. I especially liked the ad "How to get paid without a job".
:-\
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That "$22+ bn" is the turnover of the legal part of logging sector, I assume, where taxes are paid, but bribes are not paid.
And the estimate is that the illegal version adds another $100Bn or so.
Estimated by whom? Do you have a link for the source of that estimate?
That's a total of $1.5 billion in tree-hugger bribes I've uncovered already. I wonder what Brazil's share of that is? Enough, seemingly, to persuade Brazil's politicians to parrot the hypocrisy and lies that world's tree-huggers want to hear.
Makes no sense.
They get enough cash from illegal logging to not care very much about the tree huggers.
They cared enough to enact the laws which made some logging "illegal" so that they could pocket the bribes from world tree-huggers.
It "makes no sense" for a corrupt politician to refuse to take bribes, from the world tree-huggers, from illegal loggers or from anyone else.
Oh no doubt there are honest politicians but they typically don't have enough money to fund a successful election campaign and sometimes meet with a nasty "accident" at the hands of the hit-men hired by the vested interests they dared to whistle-blow about.
Like below-the-line Guardian comments, where my "Scottish Scientist" username was put on pre-post moderation. The Guardian comments is an internet rabbit-hole where Guardianista prejudices are shared but from where science is routinely excluded.
And what did you do to upset them?
Specifically, I don't know. I can't ask them in Guardian comments because they censor everything I comment from my "Scottish Scientist" username.
So I am prevented from openly challenging the Guardian's moderator team's censorship of my comments, prevented from exposing their newspaper as utter hypocrites for masquerading as a "liberal newspaper" but actually being illiberal bigots when it suits them.
They have a standard list of moderator policies (https://www.theguardian.com/community-faqs#311) but that doesn't really explain why they decided after all that time to "Your comments are currently being pre-moderated" me.
What "science" were you excluded for posting?
Pretty much exclusively renewable energy comments as far as I can remember but read for yourself. My last Guardian comment was in September 2018 (https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/14857627?page=1) and there are 100 pages of my comments back to October 2015 (https://profile.theguardian.com/user/id/14857627?page=100).
So I wasn't censored for 3 years but now I am. >:(
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Oh no doubt there are honest politicians but they typically don't have enough money to fund a successful election campaign and sometimes meet with a nasty "accident" at the hands of the hit-men hired by the vested interests they dared to whistle-blow about.
You are so out of touch. Bernie Sanders in the US is running for president and continually fights big corporations. The justice democrats have elected several uncorrupted Congress members who take no corporate money and fight for the ordinary working people. Go get an education before spouting your nonsense.
So I am prevented from openly challenging the Guardian's moderator team's censorship of my comments, prevented from exposing their newspaper as utter hypocrites for masquerading as a "liberal newspaper" but actually being illiberal bigots when it suits them.
Well stop trolling the guardian website and your problem will disappear. You don't have a plan to save the world you have a plan to get recognised. This likely involves relieving people of their money, but I might be wrong.
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If I was world leader that is what mankind would do - make productive land where before there was none.
You lost all of my considerable sympathy with your implicit "tree hugger" insult, so I won't waste much time here.
Just to remind everyone that Easter Island once had trees and people, until the people cut down the trees, and Oklahoma was "productive" for nearly 30 years before the wind blew all the ancient prairie soil away. There's even a suggestion that the Sahara is man-made.
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So, basically, you want to save the coal fired power stations but burn trees in them instead of coal.
Somewhat like Drax biomass power station in England does, but not 24/7/52 as "baseload" generation but on stand-by to provide back-up power at times of low wind and solar power, yes.
Well Brazil have just been forced into putting out all the fires encouraged by their right wing, nutcase, authoritarian leader.
Not "forced" - bribed - not "put out" - going through the motions of trying but failing to put wild-fires out.
The wild-fires are not out, are not going to be put out until the rainy season returns and the rain puts them out all by itself.
The facts of wild-fires don't really matter because the tree-hugger bribes are so that the likes of Macron and other tree-hugger world leaders can grab headlines and virtue signal to their tree-hugger base.
I've already explained in my previous comments why tree-hugger bribes don't and never will actually stop wild-fires and how it is only legalising all of the logging sector and proper management of the forests will work to reduce wild-fires.
Science is knowing and that's more than a feeling.
I know that fossil-fuel burning tree-hugging hypocrites aren't lifting a finger to reduce the scale of devastating wild-fires, in Brazil, in the American West, in Australia, or indeed anywhere in this world. Indeed, tree-hugging is making wild-fires worse.
It is the sustainable harvesting of trees that will give forests their best economic value.
A metaphorically "hugged tree", in Brazil, say, hugged by touchy-feely President Macron at a G7 meeting, is totally worthless to a Brazilian farmer who will ignore the tree-huggers and set fires so that the hugged tree and its neighbours are burnt to a crisp so that the farmer can plant crops and graze cattle, feed his family.
Meanwhile, the hugged and wild-fire burnt trees of the world are of no use whatsoever for back-up power generation at times of low wind and solar power, but the tree-huggers will look the other way as fossil-fuels are burned for back-up power, stoking up the problem of global warming and natural wild fires.
The tree-huggers are the fellow travellers and bed fellows of climate deniers - all hand-wringing, no solutions and no appetite for an open debate. Tree-huggers need their "safe zones" to get away with being dead wrong.
Whereas a "harvested tree" that is turned into wood pellets and sold to biomass power stations that keep the lights on without burning fossil fuel is a source of income for the forester who replants more trees to sustain his source of income and feed his family, creating fire-breaks to contain wild-fires and now the forest thrives. Then we can stop burning fossil fuels and halt global warming in its tracks. Win, win.
as right wing and out of touch as you seem to be.
You simply shouldn't be taken seriously. I don't know exactly what your hidden agenda is but it can't be anything sensible.
I'm not "right wing". Right-wingers would allow the market to demolish valuable solid-fuel burning power stations, like the right-wing Tory government is doing.
On that issue, I've already demonstrated that I am not "right wing" - which is more that you can boast.
You don't know because you haven't read my 100% renewable energy blog because you are happy with your prejudice about me.
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Oh no doubt there are honest politicians but they typically don't have enough money to fund a successful election campaign and sometimes meet with a nasty "accident" at the hands of the hit-men hired by the vested interests they dared to whistle-blow about.
You are so out of touch. Bernie Sanders in the US is running for president and continually fights big corporations. The justice democrats have elected several uncorrupted Congress members who take no corporate money and fight for the ordinary working people. Go get an education before spouting your nonsense.
10 days ago or so, Bernie recently published his Green New Deal policies and I commented on them then.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/greentechmedia/bernie_sanders_proposes_massive_renewables_buildout_and_publicly_owned_electricity/#comment-4588911718
It's good. I love Bernie's vision. He reminds me of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
One omission is bio-fuels. It makes a lot of sense to harvest wood from the American West - so prone to wild-fires - and use that wood to make biomass fuel for back-up generation.
Better that the wood burns in a power station furnace where it does some good than to leave it to burn in a wild-fire.
If you've got a dispatchable renewable energy power source like bio-fuels it makes for a cheaper and quicker 100% renewable energy solution
Otherwise you need to overbuild your renewable generators and build a lot more storage and that may take you 30 years instead of 10.
So I am prevented from openly challenging the Guardian's moderator team's censorship of my comments, prevented from exposing their newspaper as utter hypocrites for masquerading as a "liberal newspaper" but actually being illiberal bigots when it suits them.
Well stop trolling the guardian website and your problem will disappear. You don't have a plan to save the world you have a plan to get recognised. This likely involves relieving people of their money, but I might be wrong.
I wasn't "trolling" as my 3 year record of high quality posts on Guardian comments proves.
It is not only "my" problem but the problem of UK society that the Guardian isn't as liberal as they claim to be.
I do have a plan (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2015/03/08/scotland-electricity-generation-my-plan-for-2020/) for Scotland that I could scale up for the UK in a heartbeat but you don't want to read it. You'd rather troll the author of a plan you've never read as you are doing now.
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The problem here is that you cherry pick. Yes, you could make all logging legal. Then what would happen? Would the corporate logging companies say yes we will take care of the forest. More likely they would plunder as much as they could for short term gain. It reduces profits to fix what you damage.
A fracker doesn't care about the landscape so why should a logger. It's all about the money and your little scheme doesn't figure AT ALL.
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You lost all of my considerable sympathy with your implicit "tree hugger" insult, so I won't waste much time here.
I am sorry Alan because my intention wasn't to insult you.
Just to remind everyone that Easter Island once had trees and people, until the people cut down the trees
They are not "cutting" down all the rainforest trees Alan but they are setting fires to burn down more trees than they should for farming, remember?
If instead they were cutting more trees down to use as biomass fuels then there would be an incentive to plant new trees to sustain their business model and the forest would have a guaranteed future.
and Oklahoma was "productive" for nearly 30 years before the wind blew all the ancient prairie soil away.
In forestry, it is good practice to cut trees down with a chain saw, not pull them out by the roots which help to anchor the soil in place.
In farming, wind breaks, tree-lines, hedges etc. can help to stop the wind whipping up the soil.
There's even a suggestion that the Sahara is man-made.
A suggestion I heard on TV is that it used to be hotter in the Sahara, hot enough to have monsoon-style rains.
Man could make the desert bloom again and there have been plans published for Africa to do just that for Lake Chad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Chad_replenishment_project), though the Sahara is a desert too far at the moment I think.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.carbonbrief.org/is-burning-wood-for-energy-worse-for-the-climate-than-coal/amp (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.carbonbrief.org/is-burning-wood-for-energy-worse-for-the-climate-than-coal/amp)
"Several other DECC scenarios also show that burning wood in UK power plants can be worse than coal."
"The UK is burning nearly four million tonnes of wood a year to generate power, and Drax is the single largest user. Most of its supplies come from north America."
So we don't want to burn our own wood so we plunder the forests of North America. We must thank them for their generosity.
Here come the tree huggers.
'Drax says it uses wood from thinnings and off-cuts, and that this reduces emissions by 80 per cent compared to burning coal. The saving is calculated with a less complete method than that used by DECC’s calculator, however. According to Greenpeace, who can usually be relied on for a well-turned quote, this leaves a hole in the methodology “big enough to drive a logging truck through”.'
The emissions saving from burning wood at Drax might still be as high as 80 per cent using the more complete DECC biomass calculator method. Or it might not. A Drax spokesperson tells Carbon Brief there’s no way to directly compare the two methodologies because the calculator is theoretical and “does not model real situations”.'
Let's not let facts get in the way of saving the world. Do you get paid by the energy industry by any chance?
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The problem here is that you cherry pick. Yes, you could make all logging legal. Then what would happen? Would the corporate logging companies say yes we will take care of the forest. More likely they would plunder as much as they could for short term gain. It reduces profits to fix what you damage.
The government would award the logging concessions only to the responsible companies, who promised to take care of the forest and if they didn't they lose their tax-breaks, be fined and lose their logging concessions to their competitors who were as good as their word.
A fracker doesn't care about the landscape so why should a logger. It's all about the money and your little scheme doesn't figure AT ALL.
I don't support "fracking" caring or otherwise. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, remember?
If logging is legal, it is all about the taxes. If it is illegal, it is all about the bribes.
Taxes pay for forestry law enforcement. Bribes pay for looking the other way as forestry law is broken.
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Do you get paid by the energy industry by any chance?
No I don't. I'm independent.
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https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.carbonbrief.org/is-burning-wood-for-energy-worse-for-the-climate-than-coal/amp
In practice there will be some emissions related to the energy needed to drive the truck hauling the log, the power needed to turn that into wood pellets and the heat required to dry it.
Every stage of the biomass industry can, should and in due course will, be converted to renewable energy.
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Is it the completely uncorrupted government that would be overseeing the logging industry? In America the Trump administration is actively tearing up regulations. So who will be regulating the loggers again? Speak up, I can't hear.
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And BTW Boris appears to be our own personal version of Trump.
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Is it the completely uncorrupted government that would be overseeing the logging industry? In America the Trump administration is actively tearing up regulations. So who will be regulating the loggers again? Speak up, I can't hear.
It is $1.5+ billion of world tree-hugger bribes which have corrupted the Brazilian law-makers to enact fake laws that the government has no intention of enforcing, to pretend to limit the scale of the logging sector.
Don't bribe people and you won't corrupt them.
Stop bribing people if you want to stop corrupting them.
Clinton could have increased her chances of defeating Trump in rust-belt states if she explained to the coal-fired power station workers that their jobs were secure with the transition to 100% renewable energy because they will be on stand-by to generate back-up power from biomass fuels at times of low wind and solar power.
I hope the Democrats beat Trump in 2020. I really do.
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And BTW Boris appears to be our own personal version of Trump.
I just took a pop at "Tory-boy" BoJo in my latest blog post (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/industrial-vandalism-how-market-forces-delay-the-transition-to-100-renewable-energy/).
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg (https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
Hey Tory-boy, there's a CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
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It is $1.5+ billion of world tree-hugger bribes which have corrupted the Brazilian law-makers to enact fake laws that the government has no intention of enforcing, to pretend to limit the scale of the logging sector.
They were doing it anyway.
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And BTW Boris appears to be our own personal version of Trump.
I just took a pop at "Tory-boy" BoJo in my latest blog post (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2019/08/31/industrial-vandalism-how-market-forces-delay-the-transition-to-100-renewable-energy/).
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg (https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
Hey Tory-boy, there's a CLIMATE EMERGENCY!
Wooo! Boris must be quaking in his boots. There are thousands of protesters on the streets. So why are you typing posts on a forum?
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It is $1.5+ billion of world tree-hugger bribes which have corrupted the Brazilian law-makers to enact fake laws that the government has no intention of enforcing, to pretend to limit the scale of the logging sector.
They were doing it anyway.
Well they didn't want to let Leonardo DiCaprio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fmSJu7jgX0) down. ;)
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Wooo! Boris must be quaking in his boots. There are thousands of protesters on the streets. So why are you typing posts on a forum?
Well I wouldn't want the authorities to mistake me for the "controlling mind" of Extinction Rebellion and hold me accountable for all the inconvenience.
The "controlling mind" of the global transition to 100% renewable energy I can live with and to achieve that, my blog is of much more use than a police cell all to myself.
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It is $1.5+ billion of world tree-hugger bribes which have corrupted the Brazilian law-makers to enact fake laws that the government has no intention of enforcing, to pretend to limit the scale of the logging sector.
They were doing it anyway.
Well they didn't want to let Leonardo DiCaprio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fmSJu7jgX0) down. ;)
Can I just add that I have already pencilled in another star for the public relations aspects of my South American renewable energy giga-projects.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/south-america-great-for-renewable.jpg)
South America – GREAT for Renewable Energy (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/south-america-great-for-renewable/)
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I don't support "fracking" caring or otherwise. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, remember?
I think that natural gas (eg from fracking) is a useful transition from coal towards renewables:
- Less environmental impact than coal: Coal tends to dig big holes (which later cave in, destroying homes), and produce lots of rock spoil and mine water. Natural gas has a much smaller impact, provided you take care of the water table and water waste.
- As a fuel, coal is mostly Carbon. Natural gas produces much of its energy from the Hydrogen atoms
- Coal often has impurities like sulphur, mercury and arsenic, which goes up the smokestack, and affects nearby populations.. Natural gas is much purer.
- Burning coal produces lots of ash, which must be stored for the long term. Natural gas doesn't have as much residue.
- It takes a long time to get a coal-fired station up to speed, so it is really only useful for base load (ie really inefficient overnight). Natural gas turbines can get up to speed much more quickly, and can be used to fill in for evening peak demand (the Sun is going down, and solar power infeed is dropping), and morning peak (the Sun is coming up).
But I agree that natural gas should not be seen as a long-term goal.
At best, expensive energy storage from batteries can cobble together wind and solar generators as bit-part generators in a grid system
Maybe, but they are now being installed in larger numbers.
Batteries are still useful, because they can offset short-term variability in wind and solar output, reducing the number of times quick-response hydro or gas is needed.
This will allow grid operators to increase renewables beyond the current approx. 30% of load which they see as the renewables limit without batteries.
It doesn't hurt that:
- The price of batteries and their associated electronics is dropping rapidly
- they can be installed more quickly than a GW power station (they basically need a concrete slab)
- They are modular, and can be expanded incrementally
- They have lower visual impact (less NIMBY impact)
- So they can be installed near existing substations
- They can be installed near existing population centers, ironing out glitches in the long-distance transmission network
On a slightly different tack, I heard a discussion (in English) with Maja Göpel, a German advocate of environmental change (who is apparently well-known in Germany).
She believes that environmental costs must be factored into our economic calculations.
- While "externalities" like the environment are not included in costings, businesses and economists will continue to treat them as "free", and will continue destroying them with gay abandon.
- That then brings up the big political question about how companies that have been getting all this good stuff "for free" will campaign vigorously against any legislation that would see them paying for the same stuff.
- Anyway, an interesting discussion of this multi-faceted issue:
Listen (1 hour): https://omegataupodcast.net/321-societal-change-and-the-climate/
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I don't support "fracking" caring or otherwise. Natural gas is a fossil fuel, remember?
I think that natural gas (eg from fracking) is a useful transition from coal towards renewables:
Dream on. The harsh reality is that natural gas is being misused by profiteers to set back the transition to 100% renewable energy by the demolition of coal-fired power stations instead of converting them to burn renewable energy biomass, to operate on stand-by to provide back-up power.
- Less environmental impact than coal: Coal tends to dig big holes (which later cave in, destroying homes), and produce lots of rock spoil and mine water. Natural gas has a much smaller impact, provided you take care of the water table and water waste.
- As a fuel, coal is mostly Carbon. Natural gas produces much of its energy from the Hydrogen atoms
- Coal often has impurities like sulphur, mercury and arsenic, which goes up the smokestack, and affects nearby populations.. Natural gas is much purer.
- Burning coal produces lots of ash, which must be stored for the long term. Natural gas doesn't have as much residue
Natural gas would better than coal but not as good as biomass and therefore natural gas is not good enough.
- It takes a long time to get a coal-fired station up to speed, so it is really only useful for base load (ie really inefficient overnight).
Solid-fuels - coal or biomass, but I am making the argument only for biomass not coal - can vary their power output smoothly if not rapidly according to the rate at which fuel is fed into the furnaces.
Coal-converted-into-biomass-burning power stations can also start up from cold within hours and that time can be reduced with co-firing with gas for a rapid fire-up. Therefore for extended periods of low wind and solar power biomass power stations can serve effectively as back-up power when supplemented by instant power regeneration from energy storage - pumped storage hydroelectricity and hydrogen from electrolysis.
Natural gas turbines can get up to speed much more quickly,
Indeed, gas turbines - natural gas or hydrogen from electrolysis - can ramp up their power from spinning reserve quickly enough to serve as frequency response automated back-up power in the event of a generator trip.
and can be used to fill in for evening peak demand (the Sun is going down, and solar power infeed is dropping), and morning peak (the Sun is coming up).
The sun going down is predictable and so that's no problem for solid-fuel power stations to be ready in time for.
However the utility of biomass power and the fact that it is renewable energy counts for nothing with the profiteers who are demolishing the world's coal-fired power stations with an unseemly haste. Government help is required - either rigging the market to favour biomass or if that fails then the government must accept its mission to nationalise the coal power stations before the profiteers asset strip and demolish them.
But I agree that natural gas should not be seen as a long-term goal.
We disagree if you are content to turn a blind eye to the sabotage of the transition exemplified by the demolition of coal-fired power stations.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg (https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/industrial-vandalism.jpg)
We disagree because you have no plan to replace natural gas any time soon and whether you admit it or not, you are binding in fossil fuel natural gas generation for the long term.
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At best, expensive energy storage from batteries can cobble together wind and solar generators as bit-part generators in a grid system
It's worth quoting me in full.
At best, expensive energy storage from batteries can cobble together wind and solar generators as bit-part generators in a grid system where most of the power must still come from conventional dispatchable generators, usually fired by fossil fuels. Therefore "largest ever batteries" or other battery sales in this context are a commercial marketing deception and a fraud driven by the profit motive which trick and lock-in grid managers into continuing fossil fuel dependence. Such batteries offer no "100% renewable energy solution" at reasonable cost. The established technologies to expect to be deployed for wind and solar energy storage are pumped-storage hydro and power to gas. So Elon Musk is every bit the enemy of renewable energy as Donald Trump is. At least Donald Trump is honest about supporting coal.
Another golden opportunity to be gleefully unimpressed by little rocket man's biggest-ever battery. ;D
Maybe, but they are now being installed in larger numbers.
Not now and never in large enough energy storage capacity for the transition to 100% renewable energy.
Recently, the UK suffered a nation-wide power cut despite the investment in 472MW worth of batteries (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/remedying-uk-power-cuts/). The problem with batteries is that you can never afford enough and you will bleed your budget dry trying to.
Batteries are still useful, because they can offset short-term variability in wind and solar output, reducing the number of times quick-response hydro or gas is needed.
Batteries don't remove the need for hydro or gas - they just allow time for the turbines to spin up from a dead-stop while maintaining exemplary frequency response.
A more cost-effective solution to the same end may be to keep enough turbines on spinning reserve and match those with super-capacitors / ultra-capacitors.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/solargis-solar-map-europe-en.png)
This will allow grid operators to increase renewables beyond the current approx. 30% of load which they see as the renewables limit without batteries.
Keep your eyes on the prize - 100% (no less) renewable energy and have a plan to get there.
Many a climber celebrated at Everest Base Camp before dying on the way to or from the summit.
The Soviets were first into Earth orbit but the Americans were first on the moon.
Do not lead your army up a dead-end from where they cannot win the war.
For the transition to 100% renewable energy we need more energy storage capacity than can be afforded with batteries and we need renewable energy back-up power, in the proportions illustrated by my Wind, solar, storage and back-up system designer (http://scottish.scienceontheweb.net/Wind%20power%20storage%20back-up%20calculator.htm).
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A minor point of disagreement. Apart from lithium-ion batteries, which are inherently selfdestructive, most batteries fail predictably as their internal impedance rises with use. Using bypass diodes, you can produce very robust high voltage stacks where the failure of a few elements simply reduces the opencircuit voltage of the stack. Supercapacitors, on the other hand, tend to fail suddenly and completely, albeit less often than batteries.
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Supercapacitors, on the other hand, tend to fail suddenly and completely, albeit less often than batteries.
Really? Well Wikipedia "Supercapacitor" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor#Lifetime) says
Evaporation generally results in decreasing capacitance and increasing internal resistance. According to IEC/EN 62391-2 capacitance reductions of over 30% or internal resistance exceeding four times its data sheet specifications are considered "wear-out failures", implying that the component has reached end-of-life. The capacitors are operable, but with reduced capabilities.
Is sudden failure your experience with supercapacitors or do you have a source for "sudden failure"?
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Experience, though it was some time ago. The essence of a supercap is a very thin dielectric layer
C = εmε0A/d
where εm is the relative dielectric constant of the dielectric material m and ε0, of the vacuum. A is the area of the plates and d is the thickness of the dielectric. Modern dielectrics can have very high values of ε but the manufacturing process is always a compromise between practical values of A and d. Mechanical fracture or chemical failure at a point in the dielectric produces a local short circuit through which the capacitor discharges, with catastrophic results.
Things may have improved - I hope so!
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I am making the argument only for biomass
Burning wood or other biomass produces lots of ash.
This requires good ash filters, and careful disposal of the ash. (Can it be used as fertiliser?)
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Partly-burned wood ash (potash) is a useful feedstock for all sorts of processes, though it represents an inefficient initial combustion process. Fully-burned "fly ash" from wood or coal is a useful building material - the basis of "breeze blocks" - but not a lot of use as fertiliser as it has a high metal and silicon content but very little nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium.
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I am making the argument only for biomass
Burning wood or other biomass produces lots of ash.
This requires good ash filters,
Required in the power stations now being demolished by misgoverned profiteers.
and careful disposal of the ash. (Can it be used as fertiliser?)
Yes wood ash can be leached to make potash fertiliser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash#Fertilizers).
Fly ash can also be used to make concrete (https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pavement/recycling/fach03.cfm).
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Partly-burned wood ash (potash) is a useful feedstock for all sorts of processes, though it represents an inefficient initial combustion process. Fully-burned "fly ash" from wood or coal is a useful building material - the basis of "breeze blocks" - but not a lot of use as fertiliser as it has a high metal and silicon content but very little nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium.
Snap.
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The failure mechanism on capacitors is due to applying an over voltage which causes the dielectric to momentarily break down, and damage the plates, reducing the surface are of the capacitors, careful design can avoid over voltage and careless dielectric breakdown. Thermal cycling is another common failure mechanism on the connections. Which could cause an over voltage on other caps connected in series etc. They are not expensive and could be checked at service intervals for capacitor tolerance etc. Caps failing could be switched out. It just requires a bit of engineering.
South America as a great renewable energy continent, but is prone to political problems. ie Lake Titicaca 4000m high borders Peru and Bolivia. The Peruvians own 60% and the Bolivians own 60%.
For Biomass to work it needs to be commercial viable. Brazil was making huge amounts of biodiesel from sugar cane, until the world fuel price dropped a few years back. They dumped all there sugar on the world market causing a slump in world sugar prices, and moved back to using oil.
The artificially low price of none renewable energy is preventing a large scale adoption of renewable energies. A global political solution is required to address this problem. Tax none renewables at increasing higher levels, and introduce laws to prevent global tax avoidance.
Biomass needs to be grown commercially as a cash crop on a large scale and requires fertile land near to the generation plants. It could work where the land is available, and the biomass is not prone to catching fire like in mainland Europe Portugal and Spain for example.
Alternatively if you want to look at using none commercial land why not use the desserts and large scale solar power, if there was a global electrical grid as the day becomes night the next solar array around the planet could start generating without a power outage. This would give an income to poorer countries, without oil reserves. It is possible to do this but again a global political will would be required and some very high voltage transmission lines.
Another alternative would be to change working practices, where by factories only consume electricity when lots is available, they could bid for it in an auction every day.
The human race could all move to areas where solar was readily available, work from home, or find jobs closer to where they live.
Alternatively perhaps nuclear fusion might work at some distant point in the future (dream on Boris).
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I am making the argument only for biomass
Burning wood or other biomass produces lots of ash.
This requires good ash filters,
Required in the power stations now being demolished by misgoverned profiteers.
and careful disposal of the ash. (Can it be used as fertiliser?)
Yes wood ash can be leached to make potash fertiliser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash#Fertilizers).
Fly ash can also be used to make concrete (https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pavement/recycling/fach03.cfm).
Sorry cant help this, you have an interesting thread running. But :) Is this the scots man coming out in you, looking for the cheapest alternative, 2nd hand power stations!.
Serious Question has anyone ever tried to develop a small scale biomass generation station. something like Combined heat and power sometimes used in hospitals. Maybe could be scaled to individual environmentally minded peoples pockets. allowing more people to go off grid.
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ie Lake Titicaca 4000m high borders Peru and Bolivia.
(https://scottishscientist.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/lake-titicaca-azores.jpg)
South America – GREAT for Renewable Energy (https://scottishscientist.wordpress.com/south-america-great-for-renewable/)
Put Lake Titicaca for pumped-storage together with the Atacama Desert for solar PV, Patagonia for wind power and the Amazonian etc rainforests for biomass and conventional hydroelectricity and South America would seem to be blessed by natural renewable resources (and therefore riches) which are second to none in the world.
If South America can get their political act together and link those renewable energy assets up, they could supply the world energy market very profitably.
It would be easy enough to make synthetic fuels from South American renewable energy and ship them all over the world.
It would even be possible – now hold onto your hat – to run a 6,000 mile long distance power transmission cable from Lake Titicaca (as the obvious central hub for South America’s renewable energy distribution network) to Europe
For Biomass to work it needs to be commercial viable.
Biomass for stand-by back-up power could be made commercially viable by the government and OFGEM requiring the National Grid to contract for stand-by back-up power from biomass power stations.
Alternatively, biomass would also work as a nationalised industry.
It is fossil fuel back-up power that will never work to complete the transition to 100% renewable energy but forever to delay it.
Biomass ... requires fertile land near to the generation plants
Actually, Drax Power Station in England imports its biomass fuel from North America.
perhaps nuclear fusion might work at some distant point in the future
The only nuclear fusion technology that works is nuclear weapons.
For energy generation, the Sun is the only nuclear fusion reactor that we need.
But Is this the scots man coming out in you, looking for the cheapest alternative, 2nd hand power stations!.
It is the scientist in me who has looked for and found the cheapest and quickest 100% renewable energy solution.
It would be absolutely cheaper in the terms understood by Englishman Ebenezer Scrooge to neglect the terrible cost to the environment of burning fossil fuel natural gas for decades more, as advocated by the foolish Tory boys who misgovern the UK's energy policy.
The Scot in me would like to take this opportunity to celebrate our common English language spoken and often correctly spelled all across these British Isles.
all there sugar
all their sugar
none renewable
non-renewable
desserts and large scale solar power
deserts and large-scale solar power
Serious Question has anyone ever tried to develop a small scale biomass generation station. something like Combined heat and power sometimes used in hospitals. Maybe could be scaled to individual environmentally minded peoples pockets. allowing more people to go off grid.
Could this little-known biomass generator start an energy revolution? (https://newatlas.com/power-pallet-20-gasifier-biomass-generator/32245/)
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It could work where the land is available, and the biomass is not prone to catching fire like in mainland Europe Portugal and Spain for example.
Lots of other questionable statements in that posting, but forest fires are common in Europe - even in the soggy British Isles. The difference is that the wild forests are pretty small and separated by thousands of years of arable development, and the big managed forests are carved up by firebreaks and patrolled by rangers, so the damage is usually controlled and limited.
The Brazilian problem seems to be commercially intentional fires that get out of control.
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Serious Question has anyone ever tried to develop a small scale biomass generation station. something like Combined heat and power sometimes used in hospitals. Maybe could be scaled to individual environmentally minded peoples pockets. allowing more people to go off grid.
Small scale doesn't usually involve significant thermal generation of electricity. Offgrid friends use wood fuel for 50 kW of heating and cooking, with just a few kilowatts of solar and wind electricity for lighting and power tools - much less complicated than steam turbines! Chicken poo makes good methane for running a car, with old cooking oil for the tractor.
Once you get above about 20 houses in a group it's worth using the Swedish model of biomass and refuse burning in a central powerhouse to provide CHP. All a bit socialistic and you need one member on call to keep the kit running, but I've seen it working on a few islands.
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Could this little-known biomass generator start an energy revolution? (https://newatlas.com/power-pallet-20-gasifier-biomass-generator/32245/)
I thought someone might have something working already. I wonder how commercially viable it is? Solar is a lot simpler, and probably less expensive. A 20kW generator might power a house requiring air conditioning, a freezer, an electrical cooker etc. But the cost of the electricity might be a lot higher than other sources.
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Thanks for the informtion..