The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
Nickgnome said:
Surely if properties were properly insulated the demand would not be impacted so dramatically and base load would decrease anyway.
True.. And it may be the case that the UK is not the best example to use here. However, if we want to use more renewables,(we do) we have to overcome intermittency, and that means overcoming storage. Places like China, India etc are going to see their power requirements increasing rapidly in the next 20 years - its why China is building so many more coal stations (1200 + 600, as well as a lot of investment in renewables)
Demand for power is rising, and will continue to do so for many years to come
andymadmak said:
Nickgnome said:
Surely if properties were properly insulated the demand would not be impacted so dramatically and base load would decrease anyway.
True.. And it may be the case that the UK is not the best example to use here. However, if we want to use more renewables,(we do) we have to overcome intermittency, and that means overcoming storage. Places like China, India etc are going to see their power requirements increasing rapidly in the next 20 years - its why China is building so many more coal stations (1200 + 600, as well as a lot of investment in renewables)
Demand for power is rising, and will continue to do so for many years to come
Although wind is not guaranteed if the geographic area is large enough it can be productive for a major portion of the time.
There is also Planned increased connectivity with France, some of which is underway, which gives additional resilience.
https://www.gov.uk › government › news › new-electricity-connection-to-...
https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk...
https://www.bbc.co.uk › news › uk-england-hampshire-50345575
andymadmak said:
The problem is the battery tech itself. There are times when we produce LOTS of energy from renewable sources, but we cannot store the excess to any meaningful degree.
As of now, on cold still nights we can crank up the gas plants and the nuclear and such like. There is no battery in existence yet that can store enough energy to do this, and certainly not over an extended period.
Robust technology that facilitates the storing of large amounts of renewable energy is something that several groups are working on....I have links to one of them
Again, you will forgive my ignorance on the subject but why can't we simply use (no doubt lots of) the sort of batteries that the likes of Tesla are producing? I get that they are expensive but had not appreciated there was a technical problem as well? As of now, on cold still nights we can crank up the gas plants and the nuclear and such like. There is no battery in existence yet that can store enough energy to do this, and certainly not over an extended period.
Robust technology that facilitates the storing of large amounts of renewable energy is something that several groups are working on....I have links to one of them
Thanks again.
Evanivitch said:
andymadmak said:
Demand for power is rising, and will continue to do so for many years to come
Has it?ant1973 said:
Again, you will forgive my ignorance on the subject but why can't we simply use (no doubt lots of) the sort of batteries that the likes of Tesla are producing? I get that they are expensive but had not appreciated there was a technical problem as well?
Thanks again.
A high-end Tesla has a 100kWh battery. That is it can store enough energy to supply 100kW for an hour (or 200kW for 30 mins etc). Current UK energy demand is about 41GW. 1GW = 1,000,000kW. So that's one problem: you'd need 4,100,000 Tesla batteries to store enough power for 1 hour of UK demand.Thanks again.
The other issue is discharge rate: can the Tesla battery actually discharge the full 100kW in an hour (without setting itself on fire). I guess not. You have to be careful with these batteries in terms of charge and discharge speed as both generate heat and you can get a run-away reaction that is quite powerful
Nickgnome said:
andymadmak said:
Nickgnome said:
Surely if properties were properly insulated the demand would not be impacted so dramatically and base load would decrease anyway.
True.. And it may be the case that the UK is not the best example to use here. However, if we want to use more renewables,(we do) we have to overcome intermittency, and that means overcoming storage. Places like China, India etc are going to see their power requirements increasing rapidly in the next 20 years - its why China is building so many more coal stations (1200 + 600, as well as a lot of investment in renewables)
Demand for power is rising, and will continue to do so for many years to come
Although wind is not guaranteed if the geographic area is large enough it can be productive for a major portion of the time.
There is also Planned increased connectivity with France, some of which is underway, which gives additional resilience.
https://www.gov.uk › government › news › new-electricity-connection-to-...
https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk...
https://www.bbc.co.uk › news › uk-england-hampshire-50345575
Sensible Idea but if the same amount of access to cooling is required as is the case for existing units then suitable locations may limit the numbers that could be deployed.
If used for any level of capacity greater than whatever the base load demand may be they would either need to be responsive enough to ramp up and down quickly or have some degree of storage so complement them - like renewables although perhaps not at the same scale.
That said ... if the storage has to be available anyway then one may as well go for nuclear generation and not worry too much about renewables.
Always some wind in a given geographic area.
You might want to check your understanding about that. Certainly in terms of having "enough" potential energy generating capacity to satisfy demand with a large overbuild that would mean much of the capacity being shut down in higher wind situations and any other generation type being meaningless and uneconomic.
Connections to France?
What will France be doing when it has failed to replace its Nuclear plants as they reach end of life in the next couple of decades?
And how many links would be required?
LongQ said:
Nuclear:
Sensible Idea but if the same amount of access to cooling is required as is the case for existing units then suitable locations may limit the numbers that could be deployed.
If used for any level of capacity greater than whatever the base load demand may be they would either need to be responsive enough to ramp up and down quickly or have some degree of storage so complement them - like renewables although perhaps not at the same scale.
That said ... if the storage has to be available anyway then one may as well go for nuclear generation and not worry too much about renewables.
Always some wind in a given geographic area.
You might want to check your understanding about that. Certainly in terms of having "enough" potential energy generating capacity to satisfy demand with a large overbuild that would mean much of the capacity being shut down in higher wind situations and any other generation type being meaningless and uneconomic.
Connections to France?
What will France be doing when it has failed to replace its Nuclear plants as they reach end of life in the next couple of decades?
And how many links would be required?
The new nuclear are small so cooling loads will be less. I assume the requirement is approximately proportionate to capacity.Sensible Idea but if the same amount of access to cooling is required as is the case for existing units then suitable locations may limit the numbers that could be deployed.
If used for any level of capacity greater than whatever the base load demand may be they would either need to be responsive enough to ramp up and down quickly or have some degree of storage so complement them - like renewables although perhaps not at the same scale.
That said ... if the storage has to be available anyway then one may as well go for nuclear generation and not worry too much about renewables.
Always some wind in a given geographic area.
You might want to check your understanding about that. Certainly in terms of having "enough" potential energy generating capacity to satisfy demand with a large overbuild that would mean much of the capacity being shut down in higher wind situations and any other generation type being meaningless and uneconomic.
Connections to France?
What will France be doing when it has failed to replace its Nuclear plants as they reach end of life in the next couple of decades?
And how many links would be required?
There are already 4 existing connections to Europe with a further 8 in various stages.
Privately funded so assume there business case is predicated on adequate supply from Europe being available.
Having a nautical bent weather patterns are of interest and taking all of Europe including us into account it is rarely windless everywhere.
Solar is so cheap now that all new houses should be mandated to have a couple of Kw as part of planning and building control and estate designs optimised for south facing roofs. It can go straight into HWS and heating with any excess exported.
Nickgnome said:
Having a nautical bent weather patterns are of interest and taking all of Europe including us into account it is rarely windless everywhere.
This point has been made on here before. However it's not a question of it always being windy somewhere... we'd have to have enough wind turbine generating capacity everywhere, in all these places, so that the place with the wind would be able to support the demand when all the other places with turbines but without wind (or with too much wind) are off lineandymadmak said:
Nickgnome said:
Having a nautical bent weather patterns are of interest and taking all of Europe including us into account it is rarely windless everywhere.
This point has been made on here before. However it's not a question of it always being windy somewhere... we'd have to have enough wind turbine generating capacity everywhere, in all these places, so that the place with the wind would be able to support the demand when all the other places with turbines but without wind (or with too much wind) are off lineAnd even if one has sufficient backup of some sort for several days of consumption in mid-winter in the higher reaches of the northern hemisphere or the extreme south of the southern hemisphere, the extended generation capacity required to replace the used saved energy over and above presnet generation can be somewhat surprising.
Basically it is a strategy, for 100% renewables with Nuclear eliminated, that is likely to require something like 6x the generating capacity that would be required if the generation technology was demand based rather than uncontrollably intermittent. That means that most of the time you have a lot of generation capacity sitting around idle.
The economics will be interesting.
And remember ALL of that capacity is exposed to wear and tear even if not used.
So whatever the standards they might all be built to and however much or little they are used, the whole lot will need to be replaced every 20 years? Maybe 30 years?
As for accommodation - it occurs to me that the best option would be to eliminate all these wasteful individual housing developments and take a tip from the Amazons of this world with their vast warehouse developments.
Do the same thing but make the interiors multilevel accommodation systems with shared energy and easy maintenance.
Basically a 21st century take on "loft" living whereby we simply skip the "use for commerce before converting to living accommodation" stage and dive straight in to utility living systems.
Many cities in very northern climes have employed smaller versions of the same concept for years but now in the time to extend the idea on a grander scale.
andymadmak said:
Nickgnome said:
Having a nautical bent weather patterns are of interest and taking all of Europe including us into account it is rarely windless everywhere.
This point has been made on here before. However it's not a question of it always being windy somewhere... we'd have to have enough wind turbine generating capacity everywhere, in all these places, so that the place with the wind would be able to support the demand when all the other places with turbines but without wind (or with too much wind) are off lineThere has always been a mix and resilience. The mix now includes renewables and provided we approach energy with a long term view a much more sustainable future is achievable.
LongQ said:
So whatever the standards they might all be built to and however much or little they are used, the whole lot will need to be replaced every 20 years? Maybe 30 years?
The coal stations running at the moment are over 50 years old, and a lot of parts in them are from new, so a piece of equipment sat idle for much of the time will easily last 30 years with a few minor overhauls. The gas stations' are overhauled at a given number of starts or running hours, so a station which doesn't start much, and doesn't run for long, wont require much maintenance at all. Nobody is proposing a system based on 100% renewable power without any thermal back up. It is an argument rolled out by people against renewable technology as an argument as to why it won't work, but everyone already understands that, so the point is moot. We do need to get better at storing energy, and we need to get better at using what we have efficiently, and avoiding the peaks and troughs of the daily demand curve. Money and effort is going into both those problems, as well as business's starting to take a tentative look at carbon capture and continued investment into new nuclear power.
Gary C said:
LongQ said:
Gary,
On the Hydrogen topic, the press release suggests feasibility study by Sept 2019 and demo unit running in 2020. That implies that something might be happening engineering wise by now.
My site search for further Press Releases re Hydrogen returned nothing.
Have you heard any more that may not have been the focus of an officially promoted main site PR job?
We were surprised when we saw that, and certainly nothing is happening on site, but I was told at a briefing that its still being considered.On the Hydrogen topic, the press release suggests feasibility study by Sept 2019 and demo unit running in 2020. That implies that something might be happening engineering wise by now.
My site search for further Press Releases re Hydrogen returned nothing.
Have you heard any more that may not have been the focus of an officially promoted main site PR job?
Smart money applying for funding that Sellafields fuel ponds are full and Heysham with its 4 stations and little used port could make an ideal "enhanced storage pond area" for fuel from the 3NH reactors (3 Northern Hs, Heysham, Hunterston and Hartlepool). The hydrogen produced through radiolysis of the fuel merrily corroding and reacting away whilst coling in a big pond should be good for powering a few trains up and down the West Coast. Even to send some fuel flaks to Sellafield when they have space!!!!! Though for some reason, the NDA don't seem to be paying a lot of attention to funding this proposal.
We had an EDF big-wig in last week whom was telling us "EDF Energy" is no more and that it is just "EDF" as they are now an electricity company!!!!!! Surely if looking to new Energy sources rather than Electricity shouldn't you become "Energy de France Generation?". Not generating Energy sounds a bit like giving up, or Magnox?
On another note, Fiddlers Ferry destruction announced for May 202 so hopefully after it comes off the bars a good few months going to Sankey Ubexing around the old site (sneaky way in from the Mersey via the ash pit apparently)!
Condi said:
LongQ said:
So whatever the standards they might all be built to and however much or little they are used, the whole lot will need to be replaced every 20 years? Maybe 30 years?
The coal stations running at the moment are over 50 years old, and a lot of parts in them are from new............................... Part of one generation 660MW set I've seen started life in an AGR, got refurbed, went to a coal plant, back to an AGR (broke or was about to break so was swapped for a spare in a planned outage), went to an oil fired station, oil fired station stopped working, got refurbed by the OEM who by now had been bought by the competition who'd then been bought by the competitions competition) now sits awaiting a home. Or melting down. If people knew how many parts were needing to be replaced and on shoestrings in the UKs "critical electricity generation and distribution grid" they'd get a shock. (Though power gen is probably a game level above the horrors of life expirey on the rail elec and infrastructure network).
I did ask at my last stint at Fiddlers Ferry if there were any original parts of the station that we could sell on (we're decommissioning power stations and there is lots of metal to sell at metal cost!!!!!, but if you can sell strategic spare parts to National Grid, kerrching). The reply was "I think the cooling towers are about the oldest bit"...........
..................... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddlers_Ferry_power_station.Condi said:
LongQ said:
So whatever the standards they might all be built to and however much or little they are used, the whole lot will need to be replaced every 20 years? Maybe 30 years?
The coal stations running at the moment are over 50 years old, and a lot of parts in them are from new, so a piece of equipment sat idle for much of the time will easily last 30 years with a few minor overhauls. The gas stations' are overhauled at a given number of starts or running hours, so a station which doesn't start much, and doesn't run for long, wont require much maintenance at all. Nobody is proposing a system based on 100% renewable power without any thermal back up. It is an argument rolled out by people against renewable technology as an argument as to why it won't work, but everyone already understands that, so the point is moot. We do need to get better at storing energy, and we need to get better at using what we have efficiently, and avoiding the peaks and troughs of the daily demand curve. Money and effort is going into both those problems, as well as business's starting to take a tentative look at carbon capture and continued investment into new nuclear power.
However, one thing that the on land traditional generators did not generally have to deal (other than perhaps some of them in cooling systems or due to coastal siting) with is salt corrosion and the general effects of exposure to the elements.
In a traditional generator the building took the weathering and the machinery was protected. That's not entirely the same model for a wind turbine or a solar panel.
A traditional generator, land based, can have maintenance undertaken at any time, more or less. Offshore wind turbines are likely to be somewhat more constrained by weather conditions, reducing opportunities.
Moreover the chances are that, unless maturity of the technology and the industry is rapid, replacement will require complete replacement. The entire installation. Removal of the old bases (where they exist) towers and turbines and re-jigging the connections.
Nobody here might be suggesting a system based on 100% renewable generation with no thermal backup but that does not mean that the politicians will not somehow manage to sign up to and attempt to deliver exactly that. There are, as previously discussed, a number of studies that look to do exactly that which is one of the reasons why hydro, pumped storage and various types of "battery" appear so often in the comments. And Nuclear for those not unilaterally opposed to it.
The only things I think are certain is that the pressure groups and politicians of the modern era are not at all competent at recognising their limitations. In turn are absolutely stupid enough to commit to actions far beyond their levels of understanding that would set in motion some sort of socio-economic catastrophe from which no one could extricate them. Cause enough "panic" and they will say and do anything.
The plans that you mention after the word "moot" have been plans for a long time and and are exactly the same sort of things that politicians re-waffle without any clue as to the practicality of any of them as solutions in relation to the nature of the "problems" they are likely to sign up to.
There are so many "plans" that "only" require "money and effort" that never get anywhere but manage to spend the cash and deploy the effort that I would be very surprised if they can all be kept afloat at the same time. Even more amazed if any turn out to be well enough funded for them to give a decent result in the time we are told is available.
More to the point at a time when simplicity would be the basis of the best solution one can pretty much guarantee that the specialists will go for complexity. It seems to be the new normal that drives an interactive lifestyle.
robbieduncan said:
A high-end Tesla has a 100kWh battery. That is it can store enough energy to supply 100kW for an hour (or 200kW for 30 mins etc). Current UK energy demand is about 41GW. 1GW = 1,000,000kW. So that's one problem: you'd need 4,100,000 Tesla batteries to store enough power for 1 hour of UK demand.
The other issue is discharge rate: can the Tesla battery actually discharge the full 100kW in an hour (without setting itself on fire). I guess not. You have to be careful with these batteries in terms of charge and discharge speed as both generate heat and you can get a run-away reaction that is quite powerful
So to continue the example, even if it was possible, a 100kW battery is around $20,000 according to the "internet". Each hour of storage would therefore have a capital cost $82,000,000,000. Am I wrong to think that battery costs are going to have to fall by a factor of 10 for the economics of this to be remotely workable? As far as I can tell, there is no large scale, economically viable, storage system available for renewables on the horizon. Does that not point to nuclear as the obvious answer for the forseeable future? The other issue is discharge rate: can the Tesla battery actually discharge the full 100kW in an hour (without setting itself on fire). I guess not. You have to be careful with these batteries in terms of charge and discharge speed as both generate heat and you can get a run-away reaction that is quite powerful
ant1973 said:
So to continue the example, even if it was possible, a 100kW battery is around $20,000 according to the "internet". Each hour of storage would therefore have a capital cost $82,000,000,000. Am I wrong to think that battery costs are going to have to fall by a factor of 10 for the economics of this to be remotely workable? As far as I can tell, there is no large scale, economically viable, storage system available for renewables on the horizon. Does that not point to nuclear as the obvious answer for the forseeable future?
Tesla do, of course, sell grid-sized batteries. But these are really for local use rather than whole country use.https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/29/20746170/tesla-...
3MWh. Price unknown. You can string them together to 1GWh.
But yes, nuclear is the answer I think
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