The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[rxe]

Evanivitch said:

Except the cars are coming onto market to support this and the chargers are coming onto market to support this, and neither are added cost over standard equipment.

Those on ECO7 tariffs already charge for as little as 7p/kWh, so even a penny per kWh sales would be a significant part of their already small costs, and without any exceptional upfront costs.

Edited by Evanivitch on Thursday 19th April 12:42

The problem is not the technology. Imagine the scenario - the weather forecasters are predicting a week of flat calm overcast weather in December. The country looks to its storage solution in order to keep the lights on. All good.

Now at an individual level what will the population do?

1) They'll make sure their cars are fully charged, thus increasing the load
2) They'll, er, forget to plug them in when the demand is there

Unless, of course, they get paid through the nose to plug them in. People aren't going to become rational actors in respect of power generation when they behave completely irrationally in all other scenarios.

[Evanivitch]

rxe said:

Evanivitch said:

Except the cars are coming onto market to support this and the chargers are coming onto market to support this, and neither are added cost over standard equipment.

Those on ECO7 tariffs already charge for as little as 7p/kWh, so even a penny per kWh sales would be a significant part of their already small costs, and without any exceptional upfront costs.

Edited by Evanivitch on Thursday 19th April 12:42

The problem is not the technology. Imagine the scenario - the weather forecasters are predicting a week of flat calm overcast weather in December. The country looks to its storage solution in order to keep the lights on. All good.

Now at an individual level what will the population do?

1) They'll make sure their cars are fully charged, thus increasing the load
2) They'll, er, forget to plug them in when the demand is there

Unless, of course, they get paid through the nose to plug them in. People aren't going to become rational actors in respect of power generation when they behave completely irrationally in all other scenarios.

A week of calm weather, on a 60kWh car, with an average 12 mile commute.

It'd be like rushing to buy bread because it's raining.

And the point of the system isn't to provide day-on-day backup, it's to meet the needs of the variation throughout a day.

[Toltec]

Evanivitch said:

A week of calm weather, on a 60kWh car, with an average 12 mile commute.

It'd be like rushing to buy bread because it's raining.

And the point of the system isn't to provide day-on-day backup, it's to meet the needs of the variation throughout a day.

If you need a 120 miles of commuting plus some social usage I'd be uncomfortable about not being able to charge for a week let alone allow power to be pulled for grid support on a car with a 200ish mile range. Unless I had an ICE car for backup of course. Even then I'd prefer to have a configuration that allowed me to use the car batteries as backup for my house in case of power loss rather than supporting the grid. Unless I had an ICE backup generator of course.

As you say, day to day variation, which means during the day when demand is highest it will be parked near work and not connected.

[Evanivitch]

Toltec said:

If you need a 120 miles of commuting plus some social usage I'd be uncomfortable about not being able to charge for a week let alone allow power to be pulled for grid support on a car with a 200ish mile range. Unless I had an ICE car for backup of course. Even then I'd prefer to have a configuration that allowed me to use the car batteries as backup for my house in case of power loss rather than supporting the grid. Unless I had an ICE backup generator of course.

As you say, day to day variation, which means during the day when demand is highest it will be parked near work and not connected.

I don't think you'll ever see V2G being used for personal power cut protection.

To my limited knowledge you'd have to have a seperate ring main to provide power over a blackout period otherwise you'd risk back powering the grid which is a huge safety issue.

Most home storage solutions offer a switchable backup solution for a ring main to support the fridge and maybe microwave/kettle.

[Kccv23highliftcam]

wst said:

People who don't like renewables, a question.

What about tidal power? That's pretty much clockwork.

The sector big players don't see the technology being sustainable in the long or even short term.

[Toltec]

Evanivitch said:

I don't think you'll ever see V2G being used for personal power cut protection.

To my limited knowledge you'd have to have a seperate ring main to provide power over a blackout period otherwise you'd risk back powering the grid which is a huge safety issue.

Most home storage solutions offer a switchable backup solution for a ring main to support the fridge and maybe microwave/kettle.

You can have auto switchover from mains to generator and UPS systems mange not to feed back into the grid without any drop to the load so it wouldn't be difficult. You'd probably use interrupted switchover on most circuits so there was no parasitic drain and UPS on a few critical things if you really want to. The car batteries would be used more like a generator so the auto switch would disconnect the incoming supply and fire up the invertors to run the house from the mains, when mains was restored you would shut down the battery supply and connect back to mains. You could put some hysteresis in to stop the house supply flip flopping and to be kind to the grid so you wouldn't drop load straight back on the instant power was restored. There is even the possibility that you could cooperate further by delaying restoring load until cleared by the grid.

If the future is going to include grid instability it would seem odd not to make use of the power you can store in a car to keep your house lights on. Call it a plus to owning an EV.

[anonymous-user]

rxe said:

The battery is of the order of 100 MWh - source here:

https://electrek.co/2018/01/23/tesla-giant-battery...

Demand in the UK on a Winter's evening - something like 40 GWh.

0.1/40 = 0.0025 of an hour, or 9 seconds. So, you're spot on, my estimate of 2 minutes was an order of magnitude out. The Tesla battery could power the UK for 9 seconds.

As to catching fire - well, you try discharging a Li-ion at 3600/9 C = 400C, and see how hot it gets.

Or are you concerned about the money? This 9 second battery cost about 50 million USD - that's what Musk said it would cost him to lose the bet, so I have no idea of that is the cost of materials, or the installed cost. Either way, we need more than 9 seconds. Let's say that we have a 24 hour reserve , so we need (24 x 3600)/9 times the battery, that's 9600 times bigger, or of the order of USD 480 billion.

Now realistically, we'll need more than 24 hours of backup, so you're looking at something of the order of a trillion dollars worth of batteries. That's close to half the GDP of the UK. That will certainly have an economic impact.

Then you have to load on the cost of sufficient renewables to not only power the UK, but charge the battery at the same time. That won't be cheap either...

You've got to love it when someone does a back of a fag packet calc, fails to account for most of the important points, and then proclaims something as "impossible" as a result....

Luckily, the real experts, the people who make there living out of these things are taking rather more time and effort to accurately determine the facts and those calculation that's depend on them.


For example, you take a single tesla storage battery system and some how extrapolate to say that can't work in the Uk? Well, near my house is a MaccyDs restaurant, it serves hamburgers, but probably only around 1,000 per day, so should i extrapolate to say that this means there is no way fast food restaurants cannot work for the UK as a whole?

You then go on to pluck a figure out of the air for the total cost of a uk battery storage system, applying ridiculous requirements (like being single handly capable of running the entire uk for an entire day) and hence propose it won't work.


The fact is, with not very mature tech, whilst batteries are still not that mass produced, Tesla installed a suitable system for a relatively low price in less than 3 months!

Given that just Hinkley Point C alone is projected to cost over 20 Billion pounds, do you still think batteries are "expensive"?

[Evanivitch]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

That is utter fake news you are propelling - even if the statement is true - which I doubt, would you like to tell the good people of PH 'why' the lights would have gone out?

Well Coal did provide 24% of power over the 24th Feb to 4th March.

What was the alternative of coal power wasn't available?

[Condi]

The issue about the beast from the east was as much about our gas storage and capacity as it was about coal. If the gas had been there all the CCGT's would have run instead. Instead of building new coal stations investment in gas storage would be more useful.

Give it 5 years there will be little or no coal generation in the UK, anyone on here can make whatever arguments they like, but it is becoming increasingly uneconomic and so as plants shut down they're not being replaced.

[PRTVR]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

PRTVR said:

wst said:

Out of interest, we had a 54 hour and 50 minute period of zero coal usage on the grid, it ended today. That is a new record.

But during the beast from the east coal was delivering 25% of electricity, without it the lights would have gone out.

That is utter fake news you are propelling - even if the statement is true - which I doubt, would you like to tell the good people of PH 'why' the lights would have gone out?


Was it because
(a) an armchair expert of PH said the 'high pressure' would equate to no wind power generation ?
(b) Gas prices had spiked (Putin and the coincidentally the pipeline under the sea taking a crap all at the same time) and Coal was cheaper at the time.

What would have replaced the output from the coal fired power stations ? 10gw for days.
The arm chair experts as you like to call them are just people who have monitored the electricity generation system for years,
we have seen regularly a high pressure sat over the UK in winter, remember the beast from the East was not a high pressure sat over the UK, when that happens wind drops off (just like today) that combined with low temperatures makes for extra demands on electricity generation,
where will the extra electricity come from if the gas supplies have problems, a mix of generating types is the answer if only to prevent dependency on mainly on fuel source, with the possibilities of massive price increases.


Fake news ........ Coal was running flat out at 10gwh if I think you said the max demand is around 40gwh I will let you do the maths.

[DurianIceCream]

Solar has dropped in price enough that some new build solar farms now have double sided solar panels. There is a generation panel on the bottom, facing the ground, as well as the top, facing the sun. The price is low enough that it is economic to put a panel facing away from the sun to pick up light reflected from the ground. This doesn't apply to GB where they sun isn't particularly strong.

[Gary C]

Condi said:

The issue about the beast from the east was as much about our gas storage and capacity as it was about coal. If the gas had been there all the CCGT's would have run instead. Instead of building new coal stations investment in gas storage would be more useful.

Give it 5 years there will be little or no coal generation in the UK, anyone on here can make whatever arguments they like, but it is becoming increasingly uneconomic and so as plants shut down they're not being replaced.

Coal is only 'uneconomic' due to the artificial market manipulation.

Now, is that manipulation justified ?, that's a whole different argument.

[Condi]

Gary C said:

Coal is only 'uneconomic' due to the artificial market manipulation.

Now, is that manipulation justified ?, that's a whole different argument.

I agree. But that manipulation is not going away any time soon, and if anything the carbon credits will get more, not less expensive, so all you can do is react to the economic environment in front of you.

Ergo, coal plants are uneconomic.

[V8 Fettler]

The recent cooler spell of weather was as nothing compared to the winters of 1947 and 1963, and yet we were within a few days of running out of gas. The current model is deeply flawed, we have minimal resilience.

When EVs achieve a range of 1000 miles or so, most people will only plug in once a month (average car mileage in the UK = approx 8k).

[Toltec]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Toltec said:

If you need a 120 miles of commuting plus some social usage I'd be uncomfortable about not being able to charge for a week let alone allow power to be pulled for grid support on a car with a 200ish mile range. Unless I had an ICE car for backup of course. Even then I'd prefer to have a configuration that allowed me to use the car batteries as backup for my house in case of power loss rather than supporting the grid. Unless I had an ICE backup generator of course.

As you say, day to day variation, which means during the day when demand is highest it will be parked near work and not connected.

Then perhaps a EV is not for you, but yet is for others?

You may not have an EV car connected during the day, many do. At work. At their home as they work from home. Shifts. Housewife etc.
Because it does not suit an (imaginary)0 scenario you have conceived, does not make it less likely.

For me personally an EV would not work, yet, I walk to work and what little mileage I do tends to be on longer journeys so the economics don't stack up. That and the lack of large estate bodied EVs.

Some people would certainly have an EV connected during the day, however without a massive shift in the availability of on road parking with bi-directional power points most commuters will not be connected during the day. The ones that are will probably have batteries well below full charge so the top 15% you mention above will not be available anyway.

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Toltec said:

If the future is going to include grid instability it would seem odd not to make use of the power you can store in a car to keep your house lights on. Call it a plus to owning an EV.

It is not so much the Grid Instability - which , low and behold is the argument used by the haters consistently, but the opportunity to remove the peak demand on generation - the spikes. That is how the grid and Energy firms are seeing the big advances.

Daily demand fluctuates between 25GW and 40GW. If that difference can be smoothed, that is an awful lot of Power Generation (that sits idle currently when no demand) that can be removed. A Storage (mass, physical, battery, or household level) system that can fill the gaps between the low and peak is where the money is being invested.

That is all fine if the storage is used to smooth out demand and is topped up from a constant baseload supply that does not fluctuate wildly. If your supply fluctuates on a weekly level then you need far more storage, this will be expensive and not something that can be supplied by domestic EVs. If we had a constant 30GW base supply, an average 15GW wind/renewable and say 12 - 15GW storage* that might work, figures pulled off the top of my head purely as an example.

* Would need capacity to supply a net average of say 3GW for a week so 0.5TWh ish.

It all depends on the bias of cost between storage and running slower reacting base load sources at lower than optimum output. It comes down to if having wind and lots of storage is cheaper than nuclear and storage.

[rxe]

Max_Torque said:

You've got to love it when someone does a back of a fag packet calc, fails to account for most of the important points, and then proclaims something as "impossible" as a result....

Luckily, the real experts, the people who make there living out of these things are taking rather more time and effort to accurately determine the facts and those calculation that's depend on them.


For example, you take a single tesla storage battery system and some how extrapolate to say that can't work in the Uk? Well, near my house is a MaccyDs restaurant, it serves hamburgers, but probably only around 1,000 per day, so should i extrapolate to say that this means there is no way fast food restaurants cannot work for the UK as a whole?

You then go on to pluck a figure out of the air for the total cost of a uk battery storage system, applying ridiculous requirements (like being single handly capable of running the entire uk for an entire day) and hence propose it won't work.


The fact is, with not very mature tech, whilst batteries are still not that mass produced, Tesla installed a suitable system for a relatively low price in less than 3 months!

Given that just Hinkley Point C alone is projected to cost over 20 Billion pounds, do you still think batteries are "expensive"?

Um, I think you need to re-read what I said. I didn't say it was impossible, just that it was very expensive. So expensive that we probably can't afford it. Just as with your fast food example, there is nothing wrong with the technology, we know how to do it, we just need an awful lot of it out there.

We all know that renewables are variable. Sometimes there is no wind, and sometimes there is no sun. Or very little of either. While renewables are nibbling at the edges, it doesn't matter. No one cares if I don't pull any power from the grid today because it is sunny, because in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, its a rounding error.

The more renewables come on line, the more overall variability there will be. So the guys running gas power stations will have periods of low demand, and then periods of super urgent high demand. They still have all the costs to cover - the need all the staff, all the kit, all the contracts, so the price per unit goes up. The more variable our system, the fewer units of energy there will be to cover the costs.

At the end state you end up in one of two places. Option 1 is that we have a load of renewables, and keep all of the Gas infrastructure up and running for emergencies. This is very expensive. Option 2 is that we store enough energy in (something) to cover the lean times. Given that we're out of pumped hydro options, that leaves us with batteries. That is also very expensive.

Gas providers are not going to remain in business on the off chance they might be needed for a week in December unless they are paid to do it.

Either way, the outcome is expense. At the moment people like me with solar panels are having a bloody field day - we get paid through the nose to generate power, and we draw a little bit of power through a staggeringly expensive infrastrure when we need it. Scale it up and it is not economically viable.

And as to the question, would I prefer a £20billion Sizewell or a $0.5 trillion battery - I'll take a fleet of Sizewells. They'll last a lot longer than 20 years, and actually generate the power we need.

[wombleh]

Gas stations are paid for availability at the moment, even if they're not running.

I'm not sure if those costs are factored into the publicly quoted costs for the sources they support (which would be renewable when not generating and nuclear when on outage), I'm not sure how you could reasonably allocate them among the different sources so probably not.

[Ali G]

Obviously, we all bow down to renewables and await the dawn of the new more bountiful age of enlightenment.

[Condi]

V8 Fettler said:

The recent cooler spell of weather was as nothing compared to the winters of 1947 and 1963, and yet we were within a few days of running out of gas. The current model is deeply flawed, we have minimal resilience.

Maybe so, but cant you see that anyone in the market is simply reacting to the market signals (ie economic incentives)? Any change in strategy needs to come from NG or the gov. Power producers are just going to build and sell what is profitable, and as a shareholder that is what I want.

The UK does need more gas storage, which I would argue is a much better spend than either investing in new coal plants or keeping them around for longer than economically viable. Again, however, for private businesses planning and investing for a once in 50 year event doesnt make much economic sense.

[wombleh]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

I am surprised myself, however:

Wind and solar overtake nuclear as source of UK electricity for first time ever, and Greenhouse gas emissions also fell by 3 per cent across the country, thanks largely to a drop in coal use.

UK nuclear fleet is at 2/3 capacity at the moment due to outages (planned ones). That's still good news though.