The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Evanivitch]

pquinn said:

Condi said:

I think National Grid are really worried about the amount they are going to have to pay to balance the network this year.

National Grid is worried? So after years of

Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.

the long expected 'Oh st' moment arrives like a massive surprise?

Worried about what they have to pay because of massive rises in gas prices.

But alternatively they can now use new levers (domestic consumer side incentives) that they didn't have previously, as well as working more closely with a wider subset of industry to manage the demand side.

The opposite issue will apply at times when we see 20-25GW of wind generation on a quiet weekend afternoon. We're literally 18 months away from seeing that realisation.

[xeny]

Evanivitch said:

The opposite issue will apply at times when we see 20-25GW of wind generation on a quiet weekend afternoon. We're literally 18 months away from seeing that realisation.

You could run experiments on JET at a profit if prices are sufficiently negative.

[Condi]

We already have negative prices, and the number of negative priced periods will increase as additional wind is installed, so it does work both ways. Over the long term renewables will make power cheaper, as once they are built generation is almost zero cost, but it will mean there is more volatility and will take a few more years of buildout to achieve.

[irc]

Condi said:

pquinn said:

the long expected 'Oh st' moment arrives like a massive surprise?

Well, if you go back 2 years then you would expect Dungerness, Severn Power, and Hunterstone (?) to be available, so there is about 4GW less than might have been planned for. Had France not had issues with their nukes then you might expect us to be receiving 4GW of imports too, so arguably when longer term plans were made they were looking at 8GW of additional supply.

Relying on foreign countries to keep the lights on was never a good idea.

[Talksteer]

Condi said:

We already have negative prices, and the number of negative priced periods will increase as additional wind is installed, so it does work both ways. Over the long term renewables will make power cheaper, as once they are built generation is almost zero cost, but it will mean there is more volatility and will take a few more years of buildout to achieve.

Well they make things cheaper until penetration gets to the point where you end up having to pay for them to curtail regularly while having to pay for CCGT plants that mostly do nothing.

[Condi]

Talksteer said:

Well they make things cheaper until penetration gets to the point where you end up having to pay for them to curtail regularly while having to pay for CCGT plants that mostly do nothing.

As you increase the volatility the economic argument for storage increases too, and so money will flow into more medium and long term storage solutions. Left to itself the market will generally sort itself out, the problem comes at the extreme edges which markets are not good at coping with. Eg your cold low wind days in December, and that is what NG and the government have to plan for, essentially a market failure.

As far as curtailment costs, the cfd contracts have a clause whereby if prices are negative for 3 hours (from memory) they don't get paid anything anyway.

[xeny]

This goes back round to the question are there any good (i.e. economically implementable) storage solutions for several days of national demand?

[Evanivitch]

Talksteer said:

Well they make things cheaper until penetration gets to the point where you end up having to pay for them to curtail regularly while having to pay for CCGT plants that mostly do nothing.

Curtailment is going to be increasingly unlikely as we move to a more flexible demand management. Everything from home storage (battery and thermal), Vehicle -to-grid and the production of hydrogen (for fertiliser, steel) will flex to take advantage of the lower prices during high Renewables.

And yes, we will need to pay increasingly for stand by generation from large gas powerstations. But if we can use the batteries and storage capabilities to reduce the demand for smaller OCGT/Diesel for STOR then we've done well there.

[PRTVR]

Evanivitch said:

Talksteer said:

Well they make things cheaper until penetration gets to the point where you end up having to pay for them to curtail regularly while having to pay for CCGT plants that mostly do nothing.

Curtailment is going to be increasingly unlikely as we move to a more flexible demand management. Everything from home storage (battery and thermal), Vehicle -to-grid and the production of hydrogen (for fertiliser, steel) will flex to take advantage of the lower prices during high Renewables.

And yes, we will need to pay increasingly for stand by generation from large gas powerstations. But if we can use the batteries and storage capabilities to reduce the demand for smaller OCGT/Diesel for STOR then we've done well there.

What you are talking about has never been carried out any where in the world, its all pie in the sky, the things you mentioned will have a large cost associated with them making products in the UK more expensive and cost of living increases leading to inflation, it really is madness, cheap energy is the cornerstone of a thriving economy.

[Evanivitch]

PRTVR said:

What you are talking about has never been carried out any where in the world,

Not true.

We already have battery and thermal storage in homes. We already have V2G trials (unfortunately limited to Chademo cars) and we already have companies like Octopus using their levers to encourage domestic users to consume power during high Renewables (both on Agile tariff and wider smart tariffs with 1-hour events).

The hydrogen economy 100% needs to scale, but it's really a parallel to the aluminium smelting economy that has largely left the UK (but remains in France where traditionally nuclear meant low overnight prices).

Fertiliser from hydrogen would allow us to detach from international gas market fluctuations. Similarly we don't have a large UK domestic coal industry any more (and the damage that does to communities).

Cheap energy is necessary, yes. But also energy independence and some protection from international market fluctuations. Renewables can, if managed properly, go some way to improving that position as they already do to some degree today. I'm not pretending it's all positive with renewables.

[PRTVR]

Evanivitch said:

PRTVR said:

What you are talking about has never been carried out any where in the world,

Not true.

We already have battery and thermal storage in homes. We already have V2G trials (unfortunately limited to Chademo cars) and we already have companies like Octopus using their levers to encourage domestic users to consume power during high Renewables (both on Agile tariff and wider smart tariffs with 1-hour events).

The hydrogen economy 100% needs to scale, but it's really a parallel to the aluminium smelting economy that has largely left the UK (but remains in France where traditionally nuclear meant low overnight prices).

Fertiliser from hydrogen would allow us to detach from international gas market fluctuations. Similarly we don't have a large UK domestic coal industry any more (and the damage that does to communities).

Cheap energy is necessary, yes. But also energy independence and some protection from international market fluctuations. Renewables can, if managed properly, go some way to improving that position as they already do to some degree today. I'm not pretending it's all positive with renewables.

But what we are talking about is grid level backup that can be maintained for days if not weeks, I personally do not see the need for renewables ,we will have small nuclear reactors with gas backup, where does wind fit in the mix ? apart from complicating the issue by making the balancing act of supply and demand more difficult.

[Condi]

PRTVR said:

What you are talking about has never been carried out any where in the world, its all pie in the sky, the things you mentioned will have a large cost associated with them making products in the UK more expensive and cost of living increases leading to inflation, it really is madness, cheap energy is the cornerstone of a thriving economy.

Well, people said the same about the motorcar, the aeroplane, at one point even the horse and cart - you can't stop progress because you can only look backwards and not forwards.

I agree that cheap energy is what underpins any economic growth, and in time then I do believe that renewables should decrease power prices because their marginal cost of generation is very low. When HPC was being proposed everyone said how expensive it was, at £90/MWh, but when the last round of wind CFD's were as low as £45/MWh I didnt see many people outside the industry saying how cheap it was. Baseload power is now about £150-£200/MWh so offshore wind is viable at between 25% and 30% of the current power price. The wind CFD's are actually subsiding consumers at the moment, not the other way round.

PRTVR said:

But what we are talking about is grid level backup that can be maintained for days if not weeks, I personally do not see the need for renewables ,we will have small nuclear reactors with gas backup, where does wind fit in the mix ? apart from complicating the issue by making the balancing act of supply and demand more difficult.

But we don't have small nuclear reactors yet, and thanks to the attitude of governments past and present even getting 1 new nuclear power plant going took 30 years! The RR SMR's are nowhere near ready to start being built, let alone signed for, built and providing a substantial amount of baseload power. There is still the unanswered question of what to do with the (relatively small) amount of high level waste which has been another political hot potato for the last 40 years.

I agree that if you were to go back 20 years then things might have been done differently, but you can't go back 20 years, only forwards. Renewables, at times, provide a huge amount of carbon free and low priced power, and yes while it does complicate the balancing of the Grid this is the route politicians have chosen to go down. All the rest of us can do is make the best of the rules which have been set.

[Evanivitch]

PRTVR said:

But what we are talking about is grid level backup that can be maintained for days if not weeks,

We reduce that demand through storage where available (and I know there are no viable TWh storage solutions), through diversity (both of type and distribution. We have no tidal generation, and offshore wind is underdeveloped in the West and South West regions until floating turbines come online more widely), and through the use of standby generation (gas, biomass etc).

PRTVR said:

I personally do not see the need for renewables ,we will have small nuclear reactors with gas backup, where does wind fit in the mix ? apart from complicating the issue by making the balancing act of supply and demand more difficult.

I'm all for a nuclear dominated grid from a technical perspective. But from a political and social position it has failed to make a wider argument, and it will take substantial political will to reinvigorate the UK (and more widely global) nuclear industry to provide more of what is our only proven, scalable low-carbon energy resource.

If we get 20-30% generation from nuclear I would have to consider that a success when looking at the last 30 years of failed energy policy.

Renewables are here to stay, they're not perfect but they're still improving and provide tangible benefits today.

[hidetheelephants]

Evanivitch said:

Not true.

We already have battery and thermal storage in homes. We already have V2G trials (unfortunately limited to Chademo cars) and we already have companies like Octopus using their levers to encourage domestic users to consume power during high Renewables (both on Agile tariff and wider smart tariffs with 1-hour events).

Why have they shackled themselves to Chademo? It's a dead format outside of Japan.

[Evanivitch]

hidetheelephants said:

Why have they shackled themselves to Chademo? It's a dead format outside of Japan.

Because Chademo was the only standard with a stable and published V2G standard.

The CCS standard was released only recently.

[PushedDover]

hidetheelephants said:

Evanivitch said:

Not true.

We already have battery and thermal storage in homes. We already have V2G trials (unfortunately limited to Chademo cars) and we already have companies like Octopus using their levers to encourage domestic users to consume power during high Renewables (both on Agile tariff and wider smart tariffs with 1-hour events).

Why have they shackled themselves to Chademo? It's a dead format outside of Japan.

Also current and active in Madeira IIRC, with Renault.

[robinessex]

Any reason we couldn't have giant heat pumps around UK's shore pumping out the heat contained in the ocean(s) surrounding us?

[Evanivitch]

robinessex said:

Any reason we couldn't have giant heat pumps around UK's shore pumping out the heat contained in the ocean(s) surrounding us?

Possible. Water Source Heat Pumps are a thing and can be used in ponds, rivers and lakes.

[Condi]

Can also be used the other way, many buildings in Geneva don't have air-con, but instead pump cold water out the bottom of Lake Geneva, pass air over a heat exchanger and dump the heated water back into the Lake. Mind you, when it was 34 degrees air temp last week the best it could manage was to drop the office temp down to 24 which was still warmer than might have been liked!


If you were to look at district heating and using waste heat there are far far better sources than sea water I would imagine. FWIW a nuclear power station will dump over half the energy output back into the environment as heat, and a coal station nearly 65%, if you could capture some of this waste energy and use that to heat homes you'd effectively double the useful output of them.

[Talksteer]

Evanivitch said:

PRTVR said:

What you are talking about has never been carried out any where in the world,

Not true.

We already have battery and thermal storage in homes. We already have V2G trials (unfortunately limited to Chademo cars) and we already have companies like Octopus using their levers to encourage domestic users to consume power during high Renewables (both on Agile tariff and wider smart tariffs with 1-hour events).

The hydrogen economy 100% needs to scale, but it's really a parallel to the aluminium smelting economy that has largely left the UK (but remains in France where traditionally nuclear meant low overnight prices).

Fertiliser from hydrogen would allow us to detach from international gas market fluctuations. Similarly we don't have a large UK domestic coal industry any more (and the damage that does to communities).

Cheap energy is necessary, yes. But also energy independence and some protection from international market fluctuations. Renewables can, if managed properly, go some way to improving that position as they already do to some degree today. I'm not pretending it's all positive with renewables.

The issue with hydrogen is that electrolisers don't really ramp they need regular baseload power or their own local batteries.