The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[V8 Fettler]

Ali G said:

So jealous - beware the Nags Head!

I occasionally drink in the Nag's Head, but not THE Nag's Head. It's difficult to avoid the references.

[rolando]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

I'm calling it:

V8 Fettler, Ali G, Rolando - your persistent borish, stalking, non contributing posts on this thread really are self centred and a disappointment for others who either contribute or read this thread.

Please do bugger off.

I feel honoured to be included in such company.

[Evanivitch]

V8 Fettler said:

Community heat pumps? Where are the calcs? Costs? Has the model ever worked on a large scale?
.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Heat_Pump

[Ali G]

Lie back, rest a little, relax and tell me if these stalkers that you have sent.

[LongQ]

For those interested in discovering the Winter of 1963 this video may be of interest. Not so much for the images as for the snippets of news reports used as the commentary. That said there are several minutes of film of snow and ice covered roads for car spotters who may stumble in here from time to time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DalYSIRU4rQ

Note that the very cold weather covered most of northern Europe much of the time.

Note also the coal fires in people's homes. Not a lot of Central Heating in the UK back then.

And of course "gas", back then, was almost exclusively "town gas" stored locally in gasometers. As far as I recall UK Town Gas was exclusively created from coal at the time but there may have been one or two places where some alternative sources were available.

All of the coal was, as far as I know, sourced from the UK.

[Condi]

This thread is descending into an ever more pathetic argument between a small number of posters, each with their own straw man arguments, hypothetical situations, and statistics or 'facts' which are dubious to say the least.



I think its fair to say that coal generation will stop by 2025, whatever opinions anyone on this thread has about a winter from 50 years ago. It is also fair to say renewables, by their very nature, have periods where they dont generate either as much as desired or at all. However, compared with 50 years ago we do have inter connectors (gas/power), we also have nuclear stations, and are able to bring in gas on boats. We also have demand side response contracts, so we can shut down or restrict some of the users for a period of time. Granted thats not ideal, but the winter of 1947 caused parts of the country to shut down anyway, and many coal powered stations were forced to close or run at reduced capacity because the trains were unable to get through. Domestic customers only got power 18 hours per day. So to suggest that things were well in 1947 and the country continued as if nothing had happened because of domestic coal is as fallible as saying wind will power the country 24/7. Wikipedia actually notes that the wind was strong, reaching over 100mph at times, so by having a greater mix of sources the country is in theory more resilient than we were back then.



So can we put this stupid argument to bed now please? Neither side are right, neither side are wrong, but it doesnt make enjoyable reading.

[wst]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Who has said there is a drop in the Cold ?
Other than listening to the Armeggedon of the past above I have not seen this elsewhere

Eeeexactly. Refute his claim with proof and his argument becomes utterly invalid, or just be a passionate moron just like him, no-one proves anything, and you might as well both be correct which is of no use to the further involvement of rational humans in this thread.

[wst]

V8 Fettler said:

Reference to the wind lull http://euanmearns.com/uk-grid-january-2017-and-the...

That reference refers to that diagram, which uses the wrong data.

Show me the wind speeds on wind generation sites over that week. Don't show me the wind power generation.

I have a car with a 700 mile range. Does this mean that I have a car with a HUGE fuel tank and a really uneconomical engine, or a car with a fantastically economical engine and TINY fuel tank? You cannot tell, because I have not given you the correct data.

The link asserts there was no wind that week, but does not show that there was no wind that week. It shows that there was no power (relatively speaking) generated by wind that week. That is a measurement of something different.

[V8 Fettler]

Condi said:

This thread is descending into an ever more pathetic argument between a small number of posters, each with their own straw man arguments, hypothetical situations, and statistics or 'facts' which are dubious to say the least.



I think its fair to say that coal generation will stop by 2025, whatever opinions anyone on this thread has about a winter from 50 years ago. It is also fair to say renewables, by their very nature, have periods where they dont generate either as much as desired or at all. However, compared with 50 years ago we do have inter connectors (gas/power), we also have nuclear stations, and are able to bring in gas on boats. We also have demand side response contracts, so we can shut down or restrict some of the users for a period of time. Granted thats not ideal, but the winter of 1947 caused parts of the country to shut down anyway, and many coal powered stations were forced to close or run at reduced capacity because the trains were unable to get through. Domestic customers only got power 18 hours per day. So to suggest that things were well in 1947 and the country continued as if nothing had happened because of domestic coal is as fallible as saying wind will power the country 24/7. Wikipedia actually notes that the wind was strong, reaching over 100mph at times, so by having a greater mix of sources the country is in theory more resilient than we were back then.



So can we put this stupid argument to bed now please? Neither side are right, neither side are wrong, but it doesnt make enjoyable reading.

Hence stockpile coal at the power stations.

Re; gas on "boats", this solution failed during the recent chilly snap https://www.utilitywise.com/2018/03/06/gas-deficit...

utilitywise said:

There is now only 220mcm of gas stored at the UK’s three LNG terminals (Grain, Dragon, and South Hook), yet during the cold snap sendout peaked at over 80mcm/day. Were that rate to continue, LNG stocks would be empty within a week. This gas will have to be replenished but there are currently no tankers booked for the UK.

Enjoyable reading?! No-one is forcing you to read the thread.

[V8 Fettler]

Evanivitch said:

V8 Fettler said:

Community heat pumps? Where are the calcs? Costs? Has the model ever worked on a large scale?
.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drammen_Heat_Pump

14MW is not large scale, 500MW would be large scale. District heating systems can lack resilience, particularly if there is only one source of heat. Major infrastructure works required, particularly for existing buildings.

In my experience over the decades in the UK, local authority district heating has been ripped out and replaced with individual gas central heating / hot water.

[turbobloke]

"So can we put this stupid argument to bed now please? Neither side are right, neither side are wrong, but it doesnt (sic) make enjoyable reading."



/PH

Sorry to read that somebody is forcing you to read threads against your will. Nasty.

[V8 Fettler]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Thank fk.

We can now say that the with copious references to 'High Winds' and 'Blizzards' and 'Gale force winds' that were mentioned throughout the video that V8 Fettler can now rest easy that ....


......drum roll.......


"if we have a repeat of the winters of 1947 or 1963?"



We'd be just fkity fine.


PLEASE STOP ASKING THAT QUESTION NOW

There may well be some wind during a cold spell, but how do we manage without sufficient gas to act as a back-up? Utilitywise link posted previously describes how we nearly ran out of gas during the recent short, chilly snap.

"We'd be just fine" is a dismal approach to risk management, see Chernobyl, Herald of Free Enterprise and many other disasters for a similar mentality.

[V8 Fettler]

wst said:

V8 Fettler said:

Reference to the wind lull http://euanmearns.com/uk-grid-january-2017-and-the...

That reference refers to that diagram, which uses the wrong data.

Show me the wind speeds on wind generation sites over that week. Don't show me the wind power generation.

I have a car with a 700 mile range. Does this mean that I have a car with a HUGE fuel tank and a really uneconomical engine, or a car with a fantastically economical engine and TINY fuel tank? You cannot tell, because I have not given you the correct data.

The link asserts there was no wind that week, but does not show that there was no wind that week. It shows that there was no power (relatively speaking) generated by wind that week. That is a measurement of something different.

Use Occam's razor, why else would there be a substantial drop in the amount of electricity generated by wind?

If you can't accept the Met Office's statement that there was a settled spell with high pressure in charge during the second half of the January 2017 then you'd better take that up with the Met Office.

[rolando]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Back on track for the thread then ?

Storage. Energy Storage is the answer.
If Batteries are not your thing, thoughts first mooted 4 or 5 years ago of 'excess' renewables being used for electrolysis and Hydrogen / storage are resurfacing now - as the cost of Renewables electricity fall.

"Natural gas prices are set to rise steadily until the 2040s, from €0.017/kWh in 2020 to €0.032/kWh by 2030 and €0.041/kWh by 2040, the IEA claimed.

By contrast, IEA analysts forecast that production costs for hydrogen generated by wind power are set to fall from "about €0.18/kWh" to €0.13/kWh by 2030, to €0.12/kWh by 2030, and to between €0.021/kWh and €0.032/kWh by 2040, analysts at Energy Brainpool highlighted."

Source?
Do these costs include the true cost of generating electricity using wind turbines, including the overhead of having redundant power stations on standby for still days etc. etc.?

[turbobloke]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

rolando said:

Source?

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/more-renewables-could-make-hydrogen-cheaper-than-gas-says-study/

An interesting read.

The title of the article is Renewable power could make hydrogen cheaper than gas yes indeed a lot of things could (/may/might etc) happen.

The narrative explains that "if enough surplus renewable energy is then available to fuel the electrolysis process then the technology has “high potential for further cost reductions”, based on reduced maintenance costs and increased efficiency.

Also "The findings draw heavily on International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that predict natural gas prices will more than double from €0.017/kWh in 2020 to €0.041/kWh in 2040. At the same time, hydrogen generated from wind power could fall from “about €0.18/kWh” to between €0.021 and €0.032/kWh in 2040.

Crystal balling with the unexplained prospect of reduced maintenance costs and increased efficiency thrown in alongside 'if', 'could' x2, 'potential' and 'about' for good (if hazy) measure.

Very interesting speculation all the same.

[rolando]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

rolando said:

Source?

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/more-renewables-could-make-hydrogen-cheaper-than-gas-says-study/

Thank you. Storing and distributing the stuff safely could be a bit of a headache though.

[andymadmak]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/more-...

Interesting article. Not least for these lines:

article said:

Electricity interconnectors are expensive projects that often have a political dimension to them and battery technologies are still not at a point where they can be rolled out on a large scale.

I'd have two questions about the widespread use of electrolysis:

1) assuming that seawater would be used as the basis for the reaction, what will happen to the large volumes of highly toxic sodium hypochlorite produced as a consequence of the reaction?

2) How much additional gas storage would need to be built for this solution to be truly viable?

[Ali G]

Firstly, where is this surplus energy?

Three days of coal free leccy generation is just a start!

Best get busy renewables or fission here we go..

[wst]

V8 Fettler said:

Use Occam's razor, why else would there be a substantial drop in the amount of electricity generated by wind?

If you can't accept the Met Office's statement that there was a settled spell with high pressure in charge during the second half of the January 2017 then you'd better take that up with the Met Office.

Occam's razor probably comes up with "the conditions were not suitable for generating power with wind" without presuming which parameter made it unsuitable.

Settled spells don't mean "not windy", they mean "the weather wasn't changing". That is why they have at one point, the sentence, "The second week was unsettled and increasingly windy", because if "unsettled" meant "windy" then this sentence would be a tautology. In fact, this sentence says "the weather was changing, and the wind was increasing".

[Ali G]

Can we agree that there are periods of time during which there is little or no wind in the UK and environs, or has "no wind" become a banned phrase in Mr Windy's naughty book!