The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[PRTVR]

Condi said:

PRTVR said:

Electrons do not have green labels, France is producing electricity from gas at the moment 6GW also importing from Germany that has coal stations.

Yes, but 6GW of gas is what, 15% of French demand? The bulk of French supply is nuclear.

My point is that if fossil fuels enter the network you cannot say the electricity coming to the UK is totally green.

[Condi]

PRTVR said:

My point is that if fossil fuels enter the network you cannot say the electricity coming to the UK is totally green.

I know, and my point is you can take an average generation mix from a different country and assume that that will be representative of what flows over the IC. So that 60% or whatever is was will be a mix of Irish wind, French nukes, Belgium nukes, French gas etc. I never said it was totally green.

[silentbrown]

Evanivitch said:

Anyone want to make a guess at what the 2019 Renewables generation will be?

Breaking 35%? 40%?

Reminder for 2018

UK Energy Statistics said:

Of electricity generated in 2018, gas accounted for 39.4 per cent whilst coal accounted for
only 5.0 per cent. Renewables share of electricity generation increased to 33.3 per cent in
2018 - a record high - with 111 TWh electricity generated from renewable sources, as a
result of increased capacity. Nuclear generation’s share declined slightly on 2017, due to
reactor outages and required maintenance.

I've crunched the numbers to remove imports, so we're looking at purely GB generation.

For 2019:
Gas : 41.74%
Nuclear: 18.26%
Wind/Solar/Hydro: 28.8%
Biomass: 8.9%
Coal + Other: 2.28%

Biomass (but not nuclear) is considered "renewable" in the above snippet, so we've got 37.72% renewable generation for 2019.

I haven't looked at this in terms of absolute quantities of TWh, but I think imports have increased and consumption fallen a little,which makes the figures look rather better than the reality.

[dickymint]

Ouch!!!!!!!!!!!!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50971717

[Evanivitch]

silentbrown said:

I've crunched the numbers to remove imports, so we're looking at purely GB generation.

For 2019:
Gas : 41.74%
Nuclear: 18.26%
Wind/Solar/Hydro: 28.8%
Biomass: 8.9%
Coal + Other: 2.28%

Biomass (but not nuclear) is considered "renewable" in the above snippet, so we've got 37.72% renewable generation for 2019.

I haven't looked at this in terms of absolute quantities of TWh, but I think imports have increased and consumption fallen a little,which makes the figures look rather better than the reality.

Thanks! So non-thermal renewables plus nuclear is still less than 50%.

[silentbrown]

Evanivitch said:

silentbrown said:

I've crunched the numbers to remove imports, so we're looking at purely GB generation.

For 2019:
Gas : 41.74%
Nuclear: 18.26%
Wind/Solar/Hydro: 28.8%
Biomass: 8.9%
Coal + Other: 2.28%

Biomass (but not nuclear) is considered "renewable" in the above snippet, so we've got 37.72% renewable generation for 2019.

I haven't looked at this in terms of absolute quantities of TWh, but I think imports have increased and consumption fallen a little,which makes the figures look rather better than the reality.

Thanks! So non-thermal renewables plus nuclear is still less than 50%.

Yes. 47.06% of UK generation. 2018 by comparison was 42.1%, if my maths is right. A pretty big shift, regardless.

[Gary C]

silentbrown said:

Yes. 47.06% of UK generation. 2018 by comparison was 42.1%, if my maths is right. A pretty big shift, regardless.

An incredible shift looking at the big picture. From fk all to 47% is quite incredible but when all the AGR's have gone and all the coal and a large number of the gas stations have plans to close, we need to build enough to manage the gaps.

[silentbrown]

Gary C said:

From fk all to 47% is quite incredible. but when all the AGR's have gone and all the coal and a large number of the gas stations have plans to close, we need to build enough to manage the gaps.

Indeed. (You need to go a long way back to hit "f all" - Nuclear contributed about 25% of generation in the late 90's.)

Somewhat related, I did some fag-packet guestimates about EVs: UK's current EV "fleet" consumes about 0.02% of our generated electricity. If every car in the country was an EV, doing 12K miles, we'd need about 20% more generation. Does that sound right or have I dropped a zero or three?

[Condi]

silentbrown said:

Somewhat related, I did some fag-packet guestimates about EVs: UK's current EV "fleet" consumes about 0.02% of our generated electricity. If every car in the country was an EV, doing 12K miles, we'd need about 20% more generation. Does that sound right or have I dropped a zero or three?

Probably does sound about right, but of course there is a lot of generation sat a lot of the time, especially overnight when EVs are likely to be charged.

[mondeoman]

Condi said:

silentbrown said:

Somewhat related, I did some fag-packet guestimates about EVs: UK's current EV "fleet" consumes about 0.02% of our generated electricity. If every car in the country was an EV, doing 12K miles, we'd need about 20% more generation. Does that sound right or have I dropped a zero or three?

Probably does sound about right, but of course there is a lot of generation sat a lot of the time, especially overnight when EVs are likely to be charged.

Wouldn't it be better for the EVS to be charged at work, so everyone knows they can get home?

[LongQ]

mondeoman said:

Wouldn't it be better for the EVS to be charged at work, so everyone knows they can get home?

Yep. Charger at work, charger at home.

It will be important to be sure that the vehicles can travel and record the miles required for road charging to work as a replacement for Vehicle taxes.

Better still if the system is designed to automatically charge for the car AND all of its passengers on their personal travel accounts.

Of course many people are unable to charge at work an no doubt if it should become an option the councils will see it as a revenue opportunity

I wonder of businesses lucky enough (or unlucky enough depending on how you see things) to have spaces for their workers to park will want to kit out all of the spaces or will they prefer to shuffle the cars around during the day? Or use something like the robotic - take the charger to the car device that got some press last week?

[Dr Doofenshmirtz]

silentbrown said:

Evanivitch said:

silentbrown said:

I've crunched the numbers to remove imports, so we're looking at purely GB generation.

For 2019:
Gas : 41.74%
Nuclear: 18.26%
Wind/Solar/Hydro: 28.8%
Biomass: 8.9%
Coal + Other: 2.28%

Biomass (but not nuclear) is considered "renewable" in the above snippet, so we've got 37.72% renewable generation for 2019.

I haven't looked at this in terms of absolute quantities of TWh, but I think imports have increased and consumption fallen a little,which makes the figures look rather better than the reality.

Thanks! So non-thermal renewables plus nuclear is still less than 50%.

Yes. 47.06% of UK generation. 2018 by comparison was 42.1%, if my maths is right. A pretty big shift, regardless.

That's quite impressive considering the PH experts poured scorn on windy mills not so long ago. Modern ones produce even more power. Trouble is you still have an issue when the wind isn't blowing, where does the shortfall come from, import from Europe?

[Condi]

LongQ said:

Yep. Charger at work, charger at home.

Why? The average commute is something like 6 or 10 miles. The battery in even the cheapest EV's can do roughly 120 miles, so for many people (even adding in school run, trip to shops etc) if they recharged once every 2 or 3 days that would be fine. There is no need to plug in every time you stop.

For all the doom and gloom, range isn't as much as an issue for most people as they make out. The person at work with the longest commute also drives a EV because it is cheaper than buying diesel.

[silentbrown]

Dr Doofenshmirtz said:

Trouble is you still have an issue when the wind isn't blowing, where does the shortfall come from, import from Europe?

You can do some of that. European solar, wind and hydro *may* still be generating even if ours aren't.

But primarily you're turning gas-powered generation on and off.

Just looked at the Gridwatch page. wind + biomass + nuclear + hydro are generating over 70% of current consumption....

[Evanivitch]

mondeoman said:

Wouldn't it be better for the EVS to be charged at work, so everyone knows they can get home?

Would make sense if we had large scale solar at workplaces for summer and CHP in winters?

[LongQ]

Condi said:

LongQ said:

Yep. Charger at work, charger at home.

Why? The average commute is something like 6 or 10 miles. The battery in even the cheapest EV's can do roughly 120 miles, so for many people (even adding in school run, trip to shops etc) if they recharged once every 2 or 3 days that would be fine. There is no need to plug in every time you stop.

For all the doom and gloom, range isn't as much as an issue for most people as they make out. The person at work with the longest commute also drives a EV because it is cheaper than buying diesel.

Quite so. But in a two vehicle household (assuming they are not deemed to be unacceptable) charging 2 vehicles at home concurrently may not be feasible without significant infrastructure redevelopment. So all new build (and refurbishment project?) accommodation will be legally required to have a charger (if any sense is deployed ahead of the elimination of ICE powered vehicles).

And of course some of the charger units fitted will be obsolete (or simply fail) before they are ever used. What a great used of materials and energy.

Commuting by personally OWNED transport makes no sense at all, especially in a predominantly urban environment - which will be most human habitable environments based on the rate at which "urgently required new housing" is being flung up to grab as much cash as possible from low interest rate supported price excesses.

With cities actively taking steps to eliminate personal transport from their "centres" and signs that the younger generations are simply not bothering to learn to drive (probably very wise) the concept of city dwellers taking on the overhead of personally owned day to day transport will most likely fade away quite rapidly. So no need to worry about where to park and charge an electric vehicle in a crowded urban environment or when living in a block of flats. Just call a council provided self driving eco pod for your journey if available public transport is impractical for one's needs.

Once all the complexities of interaction with non-selfdriving mobile obstacles have been eliminated the self driving system would be much simpler to develop and might even become truly possible - especially for a self contained local area where day to day maintenance works and specifically tricky junctions (or whatever) can be uniquely identified and catered for in software.

Such transport systems, widely implemented in cities, could significantly cut the costs of electric travel and make far more efficient use of available generation as well as more effective use of the vehicle fleet.

Small, light, small battery capacity pods could easily satisfy the 'commute' requirement without a need for large capacity batteries if there were plenty of local automated charging stations to keep them running and charged during the day. Absolutely no need for Tesla levels of performance.

The HS2 route could then be converted to an electric pod highway, city centre to city centre, getting people from where they are to where they want to go directly, door to door when they want to travel without all the fancy stations and probably impossible scheduling that the current plan involves.

Better still for the morning traveller overnight power generation would power their journey - used only when there is demand. HS2 will require power to be available when it runs even if no one is aboard. Scheduling overnight runs to use available generation probably would not make any sense.

Night running trucks on an electric highway might make a lot of sense. I can't imagine HS2 lines being useable for freight. (If used as intended ...)

Managing usage vs. generation can be much easier if only people will take to some significant changes to the way they are allowed to run their lives.

Edited by LongQ on Saturday 4th January 13:25

[Gary C]

silentbrown said:

You can do some of that. European solar, wind and hydro *may* still be generating even if ours aren't.

But primarily you're turning gas-powered generation on and off.

Just looked at the Gridwatch page. wind + biomass + nuclear + hydro are generating over 70% of current consumption....

EDF did a study and showed that when UK Wind/Solar are insufficient to meet 100% demand, near Europe often wont have enough to spare. So we will need flexible dispatchable generation to meet demand, or have demand reduction (or a bit of both)

[gazapc]

Gary C said:

silentbrown said:

Yes. 47.06% of UK generation. 2018 by comparison was 42.1%, if my maths is right. A pretty big shift, regardless.

An incredible shift looking at the big picture. From fk all to 47% is quite incredible but when all the AGR's have gone and all the coal and a large number of the gas stations have plans to close, we need to build enough to manage the gaps.

I've come across this visualisation of the shift, amazingly quick!


Note the UK used a reasonable amount of oil for electricity up to the 70s/80s, although not labelled I'm guessing the grey should be coal+oil.

[LongQ]

gazapc said:

Gary C said:

silentbrown said:

Yes. 47.06% of UK generation. 2018 by comparison was 42.1%, if my maths is right. A pretty big shift, regardless.

An incredible shift looking at the big picture. From fk all to 47% is quite incredible but when all the AGR's have gone and all the coal and a large number of the gas stations have plans to close, we need to build enough to manage the gaps.

I've come across this visualisation of the shift, amazingly quick!


Note the UK used a reasonable amount of oil for electricity up to the 70s/80s, although not labelled I'm guessing the grey should be coal+oil.

I would assume that Coal also includes that converted to "Town Gas".

Note that there has been a rapid decline in coal l since the local mines became, for what ever reasons, uneconomic and then compounded by attitudes that could not formulate an energy policy for some time (so little or no investment) then an active policy of eliminating coal no matter what as soon as possible.

Meanwhile heavy industry declined and, along with a few other influences that suppressed the demand side, this resulted in lower demand than had been the case up until a decade or so ago.

All of this whilst the population headcount increased.

[LongQ]

Electric car charging prices.

Ionity is a joint venture between a numb er of EU bases vehicle manufacturers that aims to take on Tesla with a extensive set of charging stations around Europe.

Those they currently have have been charging a fixed fee for connection. €8 no matter how much energy is consumed. Good value if you go from empty to full. not so good if you need a quick top up. Diabolically expensive if there is a glitch and the charger to car connection drops after a very short period.

They are about to move to a price per kWh (as I understand it) rate.

The public rate is current set at €.79 per kWh. That seems to be about the same cost of fuel per Km as an ICE vehicle although, as we know, the ICE vehicles are paying a lot of tax or various sorts in that number.

The manufacturers are buying from the partnership at a wholesale rate and will be able to set their own charges. At the premium end of the market these will likely need to be competitive with Tesla. Details as so far known are included in the link.

https://www.electrive.com/2020/01/16/ionity-launch...


Part of the future pressure on a Renewables Heavy power generation system will be the Transport load whether for personal vehicles, public vehicles, trucks, or rail based transit. So the potential take up rate in the various sectors is somewhat significant in terms of creating and operating a pertinent grid structure reliably.

Do those electricity costs look like they will stimulate the market?

When governments decide they need to recoup the lost travel tax from reduced fossil fuel sales and find some way to do it - whether a tax on clean energy at the point of sale or road usage pricing, will electric vehicles (of all ages so that the used market is included) look attractive as low cost travel propositions?

The manufacturers, copying Tesla, are to offer their own schemes at their own prices. Do we think they will be offering "subsidised" prices as marketing devices or are they able to "by" the energy at a low price that gives them some in-service profit that they do not have today? Plus, of course, regular feedback from the vehicles when plugged in w/r battery performance and possibly other things one assumes.

It will be very easy for all levels of government to push legislation to promote a "clean transport" agenda and force people to adopt it at scale. Cities banning cars - something that appears to be in vogue amongst local area bureaucrats at the moment - is likely just the lead wave of a large tsunami.

Will the electric transport market have its enforced growth in any way constrained by the loss of "cheap" charging assumptions that basic transport consumers seem to find attractive at the moment?

How would that affect energy generation plans? (For instance if people turned to public transport and abandoned personal vehicles.)