The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[Evanivitch]

Ali G said:

So the intermittancy of wind power has been solved?

Point me to the Nobel prize winner...

Pumped storage. It already exists, we just need to flood a few more Welsh Valleys to make it sufficient capacity.

Make sure you send it recorded.

[turbobloke]

Evanivitch said:

Ali G said:

So the intermittancy of wind power has been solved?

Point me to the Nobel prize winner...

Pumped storage. It already exists, we just need to flood a few more Welsh Valleys to make it sufficient capacity.

Make sure you send it recorded.

EROEI not good enough by a wide margin, not a matter of capacity real or imagined - return to sender.

[Evanivitch]

turbobloke said:

Evanivitch said:

Ali G said:

So the intermittancy of wind power has been solved?

Point me to the Nobel prize winner...

Pumped storage. It already exists, we just need to flood a few more Welsh Valleys to make it sufficient capacity.

Make sure you send it recorded.

EROEI not good enough by a wide margin, not a matter of capacity real or imagined - return to sender.

An ESOI of 210 not sufficient?

http://energystoragereport.info/eroi-energy-return...

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

What makes you think you know far more than the industrialist, infrastructure engineers, economists, financiers, academics that actually have invested real time and energy in the Future Power Generation of Great Britain- versus what is, at best (almost) jovial mud slinging and one liners that carry simply sentiment?

I can tolerate a lack of education in a subject, but a lack of respect of others - more learned - is a bizarre stance to take.
Often traits of the dense bully incapable of comprehending evolution (applicable to nature or humans I add)

i don't think anyone is questioning the specific knowledge of these people . the issue is they are only doing what they have been tasked to do . those issuing the task are the problem .the task being energy generation by any means without tax gas. the questions should really be put to those that have lobbied political establishment of developed countries to go down this road. currently it looks nothing more than a massive transfer of tax payer money into the hands of a few.
other opinions may vary, but that is my take on it.

at some point chickens will come home to roost ,those that have the money will be long gone as usual and the gullible politicians that swallowed the bs easily due to the increased ability to grandstand and virtue signal will have been replaced by another lot of self serving rent seekers .
inquiries will be held , blame cast around,but the main protagonists will never be held to account .

the future is nuclear ,imo. built in a hurry ,but that won't be a problem as necessity is the mother of all invention.

Edited by wc98 on Thursday 3rd August 07:53

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

So that's you cynical take on it - yes.

But as with mostnon this thread- there is enjoyment in pushing back on the way things are going- but without alternative solutions, and you yourself will recognise you knowledge in just the small aspect of the subject I have answered questions on, was minimal or at best presumed until a few months ago. I'd even say that you'd have happily bet against the points back then that you openly accept today.

you have indeed opened my eyes further to how the industry operates ,maybe not always in ways you would hope. i can't think of one single thing i would have bet against wind industry related that i wouldn't now though.

so far the only thing i think i got wrong was operating conditions for the larger vessels used on initial installation projects ,there might be something else i didn't notice though.

at least i offered an alternative solution in nuclear ,surely i get a point for that

[turbobloke]

Evanivitch said:

turbobloke said:

Evanivitch said:

Ali G said:

So the intermittancy of wind power has been solved?

Point me to the Nobel prize winner...

Pumped storage. It already exists, we just need to flood a few more Welsh Valleys to make it sufficient capacity.

Make sure you send it recorded.

EROEI not good enough by a wide margin, not a matter of capacity real or imagined - return to sender.

An ESOI of 210 not sufficient?

http://energystoragereport.info/eroi-energy-return...

An interesting link with an interesting title. The link concerns a Weissbach et al paper. I covered the work of Weissbach et al yesterday in the petrol and diesel cars thread.

Anyway, back to the title and content at the link, which show that EROEI is the indicator to use when examining energy viability.

Link posted by Evanivitch said:

Why energy storage is a dead-end industry

Could energy storage send us back to the Stone Age? Galling as it may seem to those of us who view storage as the solution to the problem of renewable energy intermittency, and hence the key to a carbon-free future, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests this might indeed be the case.

.....

The concept of energy return on investment (EROI, also called energy returned on energy invested) is critical to energy storage because it provides a measure of whether a particular technology might be appropriate for use at scale.

.....

Energy return on investment and renewable energy

With newer renewable technologies, though, EROIs tend to drop sharply. Wind turbines and solar panels require energy-intensive materials processing and precision manufacturing, and currently are built with an expected lifespan of around 25 years.

.....

The first snag is that, as we know, it is practically impossible to rely too heavily on wind or solar PV without some form of storage in place to cope with the intermittent nature of generation. And many types of storage, it turns out, also have poor EROIs.

.....

Energy needed by society

This is potentially very serious stuff. If accurate, it means that the pressure-group ideal of a fully renewable, nuclear-free future is not just unachievable, but could lead modern societies into a death spiral of diminishing energy returns along the way.

.....

In addition, the calculations essentially negate the use of batteries for anything other than powering your mobile phones and laptops.

.....

The Weissbach study, for example, used transparent calculations based on published data and was accepted for publication in Energy, a peer-reviewed journal.

.....

In a nutshell, the current work on EROI and similar measures suggests there could be something fundamentally wrong with the move to renewable generation sources in general and the use of energy storage to balance intermittent sources in particular.

What those transparent calculations showed was that both wind and PV solar, coupled with storage ('buffering') in an attempt to cope with the inevitable intermittency problem, could not power a developed western society, hence the comment in the article you linked which speaks of a death spiral of diminishing energy returns sending us back to the stone age or, as I put it yesterday in the other thread, back to a localised medieval lifestyle (that nobody will vote for when they get the first sniff).

The Weissbach et al paper I cited yesterday shows clearly that wind “firmed” with pumped storage, with an EROEI of 3.9, joins solar PV and biomass as an unviable energy source. The minimum EROEI required is ~7. Energy sources must exceed a threshold of about 7 to yield the surplus energy required to support an OECD level society.

We cannot use energy storage to overcome the variability of solar and wind power and it's not a matter of capacity real or imagined. It's a matter of staying alive in a modern society rather than regressing thousands of years to a localised medieval lifestyle. Tell that truth to people and see how they vote.

[turbobloke]

wc98 said:

at least i offered an alternative solution in nuclear ,surely i get a point for that

Lots of points.

Without a minimum of half a dozen Hinkleys in the pipeline on time, the government's wet dream aka nightmare of a decarbonised economy by 2050 lacks energy viability and remains pie in the wind sky.

Storage cannot solve the intermittency problem without some fantasy fiction technology.

I've asked crystal ball owners to report in with the nature of this salvation but so far there have been no takers including from supposed wind industry insiders.

[V8 Fettler]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

What is the minimum utilisation ratio for offshore to date? This can be used as an indicator of the capacity of the required back-up systems.

To date ?

What a stupid question, and irrelevant.

See second word of thread title
(And congrats for repeating a question asked by yourself before to needle a point vs. Contribute)

If you don't know current real-world utilisation, how can you competently design for future utilisation? Or is it just guesswork? My estimate is 5%, is that about right?

[rxe]

There are two possible outcomes for power generation.

1) st loads of gas power. This will continue until the green lobby manage to persuade people that it is not a good idea.

Then

2) Nukes, lots of Nukes. At the moment no one wants nuclear power stations, nasty scary things and people dance on the head of a pin about safety worries. When the gas supplies get constrained and the lights go out on a winter's evening, people will start dying like flies and the survivors will be digging the foundations of the nukes with their bare hands.

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

AS I received today

http://www.owjonline.com/news/view,wind-battery-co...

Exert :
Dong Energy said it planned to integrate a battery system into its Burbo Bank offshore windfarm, creating a first-of-its-kind wind power and battery hybrid system that will provide frequency response to help keep the grid frequency stable at 50 Hz and maintain operability. This will be the first time batteries have been integrated into an offshore windfarm.

Now, it seems, Deepwater Wind in the US has taken a leaf out of the same book and is bidding to build a combined offshore wind and battery storage system for a project in the US. It describes its ‘Revolution Wind’ proposal as the largest combined offshore wind and energy storage project in the world.

“People may be surprised by just how affordable and reliable this clean energy combo will be. Offshore wind is mainstream and it is coming to the US in a big way,” said Deepwater Wind’s chief executive officer, Jeff Grybowski.

Deepwater Wind is proposing the 144 megawatt (MW) Revolution windfarm – paired with a 40 MW battery storage system provided by Tesla – in response to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ request for proposals for new sources of clean energy in Section 83D of the Act to Promote Energy Diversity. Deepwater Wind also provided bids for a larger 288 MW version of Revolution Wind and a smaller 96 MW version

awesome , huge batteries, miles offshore, in a horribly corrosive environment. what could possibly go wrong .maybe we will see ocean acidification after all .
as for the bet , if the terms could be written in simple words based on a simple metric i would have a look at it. on second thoughts , remembering the last attempt at striking a bet and the obfuscation that went with it i think i might pass .

[LongQ]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

turbobloke said:

Storage cannot solve the intermittency problem without some fantasy fiction technology.

I've asked crystal ball owners to report in with the nature of this salvation but so far there have been no takers including from supposed wind industry insiders.

AS I received today

http://www.owjonline.com/news/view,wind-battery-co...

Exert :
Dong Energy said it planned to integrate a battery system into its Burbo Bank offshore windfarm, creating a first-of-its-kind wind power and battery hybrid system that will provide frequency response to help keep the grid frequency stable at 50 Hz and maintain operability.This will be the first time batteries have been integrated into an offshore windfarm.

Now, it seems, Deepwater Wind in the US has taken a leaf out of the same book and is bidding to build a combined offshore wind and battery storage system for a project in the US. It describes its ‘Revolution Wind’ proposal as the largest combined offshore wind and energy storage project in the world.

“People may be surprised by just how affordable and reliable this clean energy combo will be. Offshore wind is mainstream and it is coming to the US in a big way,” said Deepwater Wind’s chief executive officer, Jeff Grybowski.

Deepwater Wind is proposing the 144 megawatt (MW) Revolution windfarm – paired with a 40 MW battery storage system provided by Tesla – in response to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ request for proposals for new sources of clean energy in Section 83D of the Act to Promote Energy Diversity. Deepwater Wind also provided bids for a larger 288 MW version of Revolution Wind and a smaller 96 MW version

Note

that will provide frequency response to help keep the grid frequency stable at 50 Hz and maintain operability.

In other words they are putting something in place at source that stops the fluctuating output causing problems with the distribution network. Something that established non-wind powered turbines have in place already by the nature of their designs.

Why would you do that?

I would assume that is explained in the article that I have yet to read - but maybe it isn't.

One reason I could think of is that if you were planning to be able to offer your output to multiple grids in some way, especially in Germany for example, it may be a requirement of the grid operators that frequency fluctuations are controlled at source if commercially viable prices are to be obtained.

No doubt Paddy can tell us more about this at some point.


ETA:

Read the article that basically just made a sales pitch for a development in NE USA that seems to have been contentious for years.

The writer seemed to refer to the specifics of the DONG project but is much more vague about how the US developers are proposing to use the batteries - unless the idea is the same.

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 3rd August 20:32

[LongQ]

This thread is about Power Generation in the UK but the UK is unlikely to be able to operate locally in isolation from other players nor avoid the effects of workwide energy developments for technology or resource demands.

On of the more interesting aspect of that is the question of batteries for storing and distributing energy - especially that part of electrical energy that can be generated when total supply from renewables comes to exceed demand.

The two obvious competing demands are for EV's and for general storage for the grid either to balance frequency or smooth supply capacity or to perfomr some sort fo longer term storage for consumption by end users during periods of shortfall in real time generation.

All of these aspects currently compete for the same or rather similar technology and materials.

This paper, written by some bloke off the internet, undertakes some investigative work (it seems) and compiles a comprehensive review of what it known centering on the Tesla Gigfactory model and condsidering its efficacy and sustainability.

https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2017/07/05/emissi...


It makes for a long but rather interesting read.

One wonders how the apparent level of likely demand for material and manufacturing capacity can be accommodated in the time scales being talks about. But that is just the start of the questions raised.

[LongQ]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Why should the UK be working in insolation (reading your first para) - it also means it can not sell surplus if that is your view.

Isolation Paddy. Not insolation.

And my point was that although the thread title only mentions Power Generation in the Great Britain (so not even the UK but I assume UK is intended) whatever developments the players want to pursue will always be likely to be influenced by wider considerations - in the case of this article the global effect of battery development and manufacturing. This was mentioned in case anyone might suggest that the Gigafactory based analysis had nothing to do with GB/UK.

Quite where your concept of surplus (of what?) fits into that I'm not sure but I'm looking forward to finding out.

[Ali G]

Paddy,

There is no possibility that Wind can ever meet even a meagre amount of the UK's demand for energy, let alone providing an exportable source of of energy.

[V8 Fettler]

V8 Fettler said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

What is the minimum utilisation ratio for offshore to date? This can be used as an indicator of the capacity of the required back-up systems.

To date ?

What a stupid question, and irrelevant.

See second word of thread title
(And congrats for repeating a question asked by yourself before to needle a point vs. Contribute)

If you don't know current real-world utilisation, how can you competently design for future utilisation? Or is it just guesswork? My estimate is 5%, is that about right?

If we work with 5% minimum utilisation then for every GW of wind power generated for baseload, we need another 0.95GW of conventional power on standby, a proportion of which will be inefficiently rotating at idle. This doesn't appear to be clearly factored into the costs of wind power.

[El Guapo]

rxe said:

There are two possible outcomes for power generation.

1) Gas

2) Nukes

3) Give up and buy power from China or India. It looks like they will have a huge surplus by 2050. You'd need a long cable and the price per kWh would be high but it's doable.

[V8 Fettler]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

V8 Fettler said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

What is the minimum utilisation ratio for offshore to date? This can be used as an indicator of the capacity of the required back-up systems.

To date ?

What a stupid question, and irrelevant.

See second word of thread title
(And congrats for repeating a question asked by yourself before to needle a point vs. Contribute)

If you don't know current real-world utilisation, how can you competently design for future utilisation? Or is it just guesswork? My estimate is 5%, is that about right?

If we work with 5% minimum utilisation then for every GW of wind power generated for baseload, we need another 0.95GW of conventional power on standby, a proportion of which will be inefficiently rotating at idle. This doesn't appear to be clearly factored into the costs of wind power.

So smarty pants - what's 'the amount' ?
You seemed to think it's an obvious value.
(And again - why are you using your own estimates, or guesswork? Go off and find the answer if you feel strongly)

Are you not an expert in this field? I'm merely a punter who pays for it all.

I can see you're getting annoyed, so I'm obviously on the right track.

[turbobloke]

V8 Fettler said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

V8 Fettler said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

V8 Fettler said:

What is the minimum utilisation ratio for offshore to date? This can be used as an indicator of the capacity of the required back-up systems.

To date ?

What a stupid question, and irrelevant.

See second word of thread title
(And congrats for repeating a question asked by yourself before to needle a point vs. Contribute)

If you don't know current real-world utilisation, how can you competently design for future utilisation? Or is it just guesswork? My estimate is 5%, is that about right?

If we work with 5% minimum utilisation then for every GW of wind power generated for baseload, we need another 0.95GW of conventional power on standby, a proportion of which will be inefficiently rotating at idle. This doesn't appear to be clearly factored into the costs of wind power.

So smarty pants - what's 'the amount' ?
You seemed to think it's an obvious value.
(And again - why are you using your own estimates, or guesswork? Go off and find the answer if you feel strongly)

Are you not an expert in this field? I'm merely a punter who pays for it all.

I can see you're getting annoyed, so I'm obviously on the right track.

Well spotted, it's a dead giveaway.

I won't mention that the industry and its insiders don't know the full cost of wind power (or won't acknowledge it) as this would only make things worse.

Ooops.

[Gary C]

LongQ said:

Note

that will provide frequency response to help keep the grid frequency stable at 50 Hz and maintain operability.

In other words they are putting something in place at source that stops the fluctuating output causing problems with the distribution network. Something that established non-wind powered turbines have in place already by the nature of their designs

Edited by LongQ on Thursday 3rd August 20:32

We have some droop on large existing generation, however AGRs run at about 25% so their frequency regulation is almost none existent (infact because most gas circulators slow when the frequency goes down, the output can actually fall).

It's the embedded generation that's making life hard for generates and the grid. Demand goes up and down unpredictably, far to fast for some large generators.

If a wind farm could have embedded storage that is instantly demand controlled, that would help.

[turbobloke]

Gary C said:

If a wind farm could have embedded storage that is instantly demand controlled, that would help.

A one-off? Non-viable at scale.

Why energy storage is a dead-end industry:
http://energystoragereport.info/eroi-energy-return...

Energy storage cannot solve the problem of intermittency of wind or solar power:
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of...

Basic stuff from Weißbach et al.