The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Talksteer]

PRTVR said:

Talksteer said:

Gary C said:

Cobnapint said:

PushedDover said:

Firstly do’ya’thunk that of overnight became more expensive, customers would pivot to using day time and nullifying your claim?

No, because for most people with EVs (which will be most of 'us' in about 20 years time), the only time they'll get to charge up will be at night when they get home from work.
Of course, the number of charging points in company car parks will increase and charging at work will be possible at many places, but you'll pay for it.

I'm not suggesting that overnight will become more expensive than day time. I'm saying that cheap off-peak, overnight, E7 etc will be a thing of the past as night demand rockets.

Forget about EV's, they can be coped with and charged even if normal useage patterns continue as has been demonstrated earlier in this thread.

However, replacing gas heating with electric would/will be interesting.

Presume when you write electric you mean a heat pump.

Peak heat demand in the UK is about 170GW,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/...

However the caveats are that before you fit a heat pump you need to improve the insulation of the building. The increase in insulation between a UK average category E and a B is around a factor of two ergo we can probably halve the heating requirement. Assuming a COP of about 3.5 that would mean a peak electricity demand of 24GW, with a ramp rate of around 8GW/h.

That is obviously a lot but not unfeasible, I suspect it will also have a degree of diurnal peakiness about it meaning that we can do something with either batteries or storage heaters.

Insulation can be improved but at what cost, the BBC did a piece on heat pumps, a family in London had to spend £35000 to get the heat pump to work, how many have that amount of money spare?

Heat pumps will follow the general adoption curve of most new technologies. At the moment we are really in the tail end of the early adopters.

At the moment installing a heat pump system into a new build is in the region of 1% the cost of the house in terms of cost difference between that and a gas boiler. The issue is more that the 1% is likely to come off the profit margin of the bulk homebuilders so some of them are lobbying against it!

If you put that cost difference into the mortgage the system will easily pay for itself. Over time the cost of a heat pump will come down as volumes raise. It's fundamentally just an Aircon unit.

So the adoption profile will be new builds first, then post 2000 houses which can be converted much more easily.

As time moves forward the units get cheaper and the installers get more experienced. The performance of the devices is improving over time meaning that they can deliver heat at higher temperatures which helps out older homes.

Key policy provisions will be grants and tax relief for early adopters and schemes to put the cost of such upgrades onto mortgages. We have already got dates to make gas boilers illegal for new builds, eventually it will be illegal to fit a new boiler at all, or fix an old one.

In theory buyers should be discounting houses that don't have a heat pump much in the same way that buyers of cars with known big bill service items for do.

[wombleh]

Sorting insulation/heating on our 60s build is likely to be about that £35k figure. Just doing loft insulation is much less but not sure a heat pump would cope with that. Was noise about newer ones with higher heat output that could be a drop-in replacement. Wonder what the calculations look like for subsidising home insulation versus subsidising the power generation.


Centrica are being asked to keep Rough storage cavern open, interesting sounding place, massive undersea reservoir full of gas at 3000PSI: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a3...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)

[carl_w]

wombleh said:

Centrica are being asked to keep Rough storage cavern open, interesting sounding place, massive undersea reservoir full of gas at 3000PSI: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a3...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_(facility)

It's a partially depleted gas field. So effectively they pumped about a third of the gas out, and then pumped a load back in.

[Scotty2]

As far as I'm aware it cannot operate unless a lot of money is spent on it. HSE issues on the wells which are pretty old. It was also mooted as a potential CCS project, but again the wells need workovers. Allegedly.

[Condi]

Rough was due to cost about £2bn when they decided to close it. Would probably make that back in 1 or 2 year now, but when the decision was made there was little to no spread between the summer and winter (ie what they could buy and sell at).

There is a little bit of concern within Government that demand reductions are a possibility this winter, last year was tight but this year there are 2 fewer nuclear units and 2 fewer coal units, representing about 4.5GW less generation. On top of this the interconnectors to France (4GW), which typically import, will schedule themselves to be exporting.

It's a good time to own a gas fired power station I would say, as it has been for 18 months.

[Evanivitch]

Condi said:

It's a good time to own a gas fired power station I would say, as it has been for 18 months.

I'm on my way down Baglan now to claim squatters rights.

[Jambo85]

Condi said:

There is a little bit of concern within Government that demand reductions are a possibility this winter

Hi Condi - do I understand correctly that you mean reducing demand by forcibly disconnecting certain users?

Thanks.

[Scotty2]

Some users have "Interruptible Contracts" where they can switch to an alternate fuel source when requested. They get a better tariff for that. Takes some of the demand off the system but only for a while.

[Condi]

Jambo85 said:

Hi Condi - do I understand correctly that you mean reducing demand by forcibly disconnecting certain users?

Thanks.

Yeah, large industrial customers often have agreements or contracts which mean they can be turned down, or off, if required. Domestic customers would be the very last people to be affected, and I doubt that is likely.

Interesting that despite Kwasi's letter the other day EDF have said Hinkley Point B will not be generating past it's agreed end date of July. The request from BEIS always seemed a bit strange - it was basically "you present the safety case and we'll have a look", but also "please please present a safety case". If it was easy to agree a safety case and keep the station open longer EDF would have already done so, but for years the station has been working towards this date, with it's buying of fuel, spares, employment contracts etc. If the safety case was easy or worthwhile then Hunterston and HPB would have both stayed open longer, but the ONR put conditions on the running of the units which make them unprofitable then they'll stop generating. The letter was basically an attempt to be "seen to be doing something" without any understanding of what "doing the thing" actually entails, which is a pretty good summary of the entire government. Planning, foresight, and understanding of detail not really their thing.

Edited by Condi on Wednesday 1st June 12:31

[Jambo85]

Condi said:

Jambo85 said:

Hi Condi - do I understand correctly that you mean reducing demand by forcibly disconnecting certain users?

Thanks.

Yeah, large industrial customers often have agreements or contracts which mean they can be turned down, or off, if required. Domestic customers would be the very last people to be affected, and I doubt that is likely.

Thanks. Was just struggling with the terminology as in a literal sense the demand is still there, it just can’t be met But I get it.

[hidetheelephants]

Condi said:

Yeah, large industrial customers often have agreements or contracts which mean they can be turned down, or off, if required. Domestic customers would be the very last people to be affected, and I doubt that is likely.

Interesting that despite Kwasi's letter the other day EDF have said Hinkley Point B will not be generating past it's agreed end date of July. The request from BEIS always seemed a bit strange - it was basically "you present the safety case and we'll have a look", but also "please please present a safety case". If it was easy to agree a safety case and keep the station open longer EDF would have already done so, but for years the station has been working towards this date, with it's buying of fuel, spares, employment contracts etc. If the safety case was easy or worthwhile then Hunterston and HPB would have both stayed open longer, but the ONR put conditions on the running of the units which make them unprofitable then they'll stop generating. The letter was basically an attempt to be "seen to be doing something" without any understanding of what "doing the thing" actually entails, which is a pretty good summary of the entire government. Planning, foresight, and understanding of detail not really their thing.

That's it basically; alleviate that and offer to underwrite the additional costs due to contracts ending etc and EDF would put them back on. They are essentially doing the same as the Germans, obtain flimsy excuse for not acting then don't act.

[Condi]

hidetheelephants said:

That's it basically; alleviate that and offer to underwrite the additional costs due to contracts ending etc and EDF would put them back on. They are essentially doing the same as the Germans, obtain flimsy excuse for not acting then don't act.

Maybe Gary would know more, but they are fueled to their end dates now, and that is likely a bigger problem than anything else, even if the ONR were prepared to sign off a life extension. Certainly the Germans have said about their reactors that it would take 12-18m to buy new fuel and so it's not simply a case of "running them longer". Perhaps they could run at a reduced output, which does happen occasionally, but not for such an extended period of time.

Quite simply, too little, too late, and putting the onus on EDF to make the case for keeping them available when EDF themselves have announced the closure dates is never going to be appealing to the company.

[Gary C]

Condi said:

Yeah, large industrial customers often have agreements or contracts which mean they can be turned down, or off, if required. Domestic customers would be the very last people to be affected, and I doubt that is likely.

Interesting that despite Kwasi's letter the other day EDF have said Hinkley Point B will not be generating past it's agreed end date of July. The request from BEIS always seemed a bit strange - it was basically "you present the safety case and we'll have a look", but also "please please present a safety case". If it was easy to agree a safety case and keep the station open longer EDF would have already done so, but for years the station has been working towards this date, with it's buying of fuel, spares, employment contracts etc. If the safety case was easy or worthwhile then Hunterston and HPB would have both stayed open longer, but the ONR put conditions on the running of the units which make them unprofitable then they'll stop generating. The letter was basically an attempt to be "seen to be doing something" without any understanding of what "doing the thing" actually entails, which is a pretty good summary of the entire government. Planning, foresight, and understanding of detail not really their thing.

Edited by Condi on Wednesday 1st June 12:31

Yep

If the gov were serious, they would have agreed to underwrite the risks (ie costs) of not being able to make a safety case, including covering all the fuel bought and not used and its disposal.
Its also possible that we know we would find it impossible to make the case to the ONR without significant investment in extra plant protection systems, which again the gov would have to pay for and might not be feasible in the timescales needed.

In theory it might be possible to transfer unused fuel elements to another AGR, I imagine HPB was using the robust fuel version of AGR fuel that we use, but the enrichment and poisons might be very different and not compatible with our fuel cycle thus meaning an order for some very expensive fuel that never gets used. Its also possible it has subtle differences that I'm not aware of.
Shame really. HPB was still onload refuelling right up until the end, whereas we have lost our ability to do it.

Trying to plan a shutdown so that the station has used up all its core life and fuel at the same time is near impossible and needs to ballance in favour of nuclear safety without leaving us with a pile of unusable fuel.

Wylfa got it wrong and could have run for quite a bit longer, but there was no fuel left and all the production equipment had been scrapped.

Edited by Gary C on Wednesday 1st June 18:16

[hidetheelephants]

Condi said:

hidetheelephants said:

That's it basically; alleviate that and offer to underwrite the additional costs due to contracts ending etc and EDF would put them back on. They are essentially doing the same as the Germans, obtain flimsy excuse for not acting then don't act.

Maybe Gary would know more, but they are fueled to their end dates now, and that is likely a bigger problem than anything else, even if the ONR were prepared to sign off a life extension. Certainly the Germans have said about their reactors that it would take 12-18m to buy new fuel and so it's not simply a case of "running them longer". Perhaps they could run at a reduced output, which does happen occasionally, but not for such an extended period of time.

Quite simply, too little, too late, and putting the onus on EDF to make the case for keeping them available when EDF themselves have announced the closure dates is never going to be appealing to the company.

The german govt are talking ste though; fuel could be expedited to keep the running plants running, fuel fab is a competitive business and there is some spare capacity. There would be a cost associated with that, but there are costs associated with every other means of reducing dependence on russian energy in an expeditious manner. They've made a political decision and are covering it with a coal-fired figleaf paid for with extra carbons and some dead ukrainians.

[NST]

Ivan stewart said:

We will survive , it will just get more expensive to make anything so China and India etc will benefit ,our standard of living will fall for most of us and it won’t make sod all difference to the climate ,
But we already know that !! we continue to vote for
The same fairy stories ..

Completely agree. For the 1st time I see people struggling with the costs raising and raising. None of this is new, way before covid started, the issue of energy generation, infrastructure, transport, and farming and manufacturing etc etc. To be totally honest Government doesn't actually know what it is doing, just more ambiguous words, and what seems like partying on friday to have a break from all the hard work they do..
Probably been advised by the big 4 on audit and strategy.. 🙄😂

[irc]

Wind doing well today.

[Cobnapint]

Hehe.

[skwdenyer]

On another note, does anyone know anything about the Gates-funded TerraPower project? Is it as good as claimed; and if so, should we be embracing it here?

[Talksteer]

skwdenyer said:

On another note, does anyone know anything about the Gates-funded TerraPower project? Is it as good as claimed; and if so, should we be embracing it here?

They are basically developing a sodium cooled fast reactor with the benefit of modern simulation tools. It's basically solving problems (waste and fuel availability) that aren't really problems likely at the expense of factors like construct cost and risk which are problems.

That said they have manned to get the DoE to pay for their first of a kind plant along with X-Energy so they have some chance of actually happening.

Frankly sodium fast reactor have a massively chequered history with the exception of some in the USSR. Even so no SFR has been constructed for a cost comparable to a LWR.

They are also working on a molten salt rector which is conceptually interesting as it is literally just a sphere with molten salt being pumped through it at a crazy flow rates and power density.

[faa77]

Forgive if already discussed.

Heard we sell our gas to Europe during Summer at low price and then buy it back during Winter at high price???? Geniuses

Also heard the reason is we don't have enough storage capacity.

Given this energy crisis...... shouldn't we build more capacity so we can use our own gas??