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Post by alec on Feb 9, 2023 16:41:10 GMT
Mr Poppy - I have tried to ease the tensions via private message, which I hope has hit the mark, but I still have a sense that we're not really disagreeing here. It's understood that interconnector operators earn money from arbitrage on locational price differentials, as well as through charges for the use of the cable to others. That's pretty obvious. Both revenue streams count towards the revenue floor and cap, where they are in place, with some interconnectors operating outside the system and taking on the full financial risk, presumably able to make unlimited profits in the right market circumstances. I questioned the £50,000 an hour scenario for the Greenlink operators because I can't see how that stacks up in the system. With a maximum annual cap revenue of £31.24m, at that rate of revenue it would only be around 624 hours of operation (100% capacity) before they hit the yearly revenue cap. Any income earned beyond that would be handed back to NG for payment back into the distribution charges system to bring consumer bills down. However, under the cap and floor regime, interconnectors must be available for use for 80% of the time, so c 7,000 hours pa. If they've made as much money as they are allowed in 624 hours that would leave them having to function for effectively nothing for nearly 6,500 hours in a year, if anyone wanted to use them, which seems counter intuitive. I also think 10p/kWh as an arbitrage/transmission fee for instantaneous generation supply seems high, but I could be wrong on that. It's substantially above the normal day/night wholesale price differential in the UK and I'd be a bit surprised if we saw those differentials on instantaneous prices between UK and Eire. But like I say, that may be wrong, but that still leaves the issue of how you would earn £50K an hour in a system with a £31m annual revenue cap and a mandatory requirement to be available for use for 80% of the year. Like I say, I'm not too sure whether we are disagreeing here or not, but I do now appreciate you are talking about the arbitrage fees and transmission charges, which I wasn't clear about to begin with. Maybe we can leave it at that?
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 9, 2023 16:56:31 GMT
The distinction is that Coire Glas is a new hydro project and so will need new infrastructure including transmission lines. The Strathclyde University proposals were for conversion of existing hydro-electric plants to pumped storage (effectively by fitting Francis turbines, like those at Cruachan, because these can be used for pumping water uphill, meaning that there is no need to bore extra pipes for the return flow). I would be interested to see if the Drax proposal for Cruachan gets the same opposition. Thank you for the reply. You certainly know a lot more about Scottish pumped hydro than I do so I appreciate your input as 'GB internal' is IMO a much more interesting and important subject. I did state: "Noting the impact on woodlands from the additional transmission network components (which wouldn't be needed in all cases)"Given most of the proposal are (quoting you) "conversion of existing hydro-electric plants to pumped storage" then I hope the NIMBY environmentalist issues won't be such an issue for other projects. As 'flex' hydro (used most days for short periods) then they should have sufficient 'transmission network components' already in place - which does beg the question of why Coire Glas was picked (the answer to which is possibly due to who owns which site and the more complex issues of which grid, which parliament/council, etc in Scotland - which I admit to not knowing on a site by site basis, but do appreciate will likely mean the most 'obvious' sites for conversion/new pumped hydro might not be picked in the best order of priority). For Cruachan then 'fingers crossed'. A quick search suggests the 'delay' issues for that one will suffer from at least 'Red tape' delays and the (totally justified) comments from Scot.Gov WRT to a pricing revenue mechanism:
Hydropower Boost From Scottish Highlands Mired in Red Tape
- Drax, SSE seek approval for ‘cap and floor’ revenue model
- UK government won’t issue investment rules until 2024
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-26/hydropower-boost-from-scottish-highlands-mired-in-red-tape?Which is incredibly annoying given how quickly we seem to sign off on new interconnectors for whom a 'cap and floor' REVENUE model was published back in 2016:
Cap and floor regime:
unlocking investment in electricity interconnectorswww.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/docs/2016/05/cap_and_floor_brochure.pdfCould be as simples as a 'copy-paste' (+minor tweak) of the interconnector regime IMO, even using the same 25yr (5x5) time period and noting that both 'temporal' and 'geographic' storage projects would last a lot longer than 25yrs - just that 25yrs does provide a sensible time to justify both the 'investor' developing the project and 'GB' being able to review their options at a later date. I'd be near 100% certain we'd extend 'pumped hydro' agreements on favourable terms - assuming the objective is 'the interests of the GB consumer', so should really use a much longer time period for pumped hydro than 25yrs. Rereading the Ofgem info from 2016 does get me a bit  . They very clearly don't allow a 'level playing field' for storage v interconnectors due to the dither and delay on a regime for storage, yet have the audacity to state "in the interests of GB consumers" One almost starts to suspect that 'vested interests' are deliberately stacking the deck in the favour of certain outcomes that suit them (and I think it is fair to say that UK HMG has an 'ENAT' mentally and not too keen to 'help' Scotland - even if that results in all GB consumers paying higher prices than we should be). Maybe Drax can speed things up on Cruachan if they offer to pay for Shapps to go on a nice holiday somewhere or buy him some new wallpaper?  |
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Post by alec on Feb 9, 2023 18:05:07 GMT
Mr Poppy - Ha! No idea why that 'I don't think' survived the proof read. I did actually explain above how the revenue is capped, which is kind of why I wrote "Both revenue streams count towards the revenue floor and cap, where they are in place..." but there you go. Let's go in peace.
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Post by leftieliberal on Feb 9, 2023 18:31:58 GMT
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Post by leftieliberal on Feb 9, 2023 18:35:31 GMT
Mr Poppy - I have tried to ease the tensions via private message, which I hope has hit the mark, but I still have a sense that we're not really disagreeing here.... I hope the mark isn't injured by you hitting him I know you'll never (very rarely and only then after being given massive hints) admit you are wrong but 'we're not really disagreeing' (when we clearly are) does suggest some 'shifting of the sands' is finally occuring and/or does question why you felt the need to make a 'bizarre' comment about confusion and misunderstanding (allegedly by moi) in the first place. I'm not going through your maths as you clearly don't understand the REVENUE is capped, noting that "Revenue = price x volume" (which should only be for a small % of the time given the role that interconnectors should have - %s that I have given as a plausible, simplified, "illustration"). I did like this little snippet from your private message which, as seems to be the 'norm' I'll quote as a snippet: Alec: " I've made a mistake - it happens. I don't think"  Yeah, no shit Sherlock - perhaps start 'thinking' before you reply/quote me with some 'fake correction' or 'fake gotcha' in the future "OR" (better yet) just stop replying/quoting me as Mark has requested more than once. I very much want to get back to being able to ignore you/your 'theories' in the same way most people ignore the anti-vaxxer chap (assuming he is still banging on about his nonsense) PS This message will 'self delete' in 15minutes (ish) as I'm done with you. Feel free to delete any of your posts or leave them up for all to see for perpetuity (preferably the latter, but up to you of course) PPS Thankfully we didn't need to get into how the month-month 'accounting' for use of interconnectors is done as that is a bit complicated, although I did set up the Prosecco analogy in case we did need to get into that (eg expecting someone will probably drink 20 proseccos, with a floor of 6, cap on 10 and 3 down after the first time period means you need to 'smooth' out how you account for them drinking the cap of 10 over the course of the 12 time periods... yeah, bit complicated, glad we didn't need to get into that as I'd get a bit about who is getting shafted by the 20-10 proseccos over the cap!) Do messages still disappear if someone quotes them? BTW I thought it is bad form to like your own posts.  |
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Post by lens on Feb 10, 2023 1:09:14 GMT
lens - I sense that we are well on the way to sorting out many of the problems we face regarding storage and transport of energy, with a whole range of technologies reaching the point of market activation. As you know, I'm skeptical of hydrogen as the mainstay for this. It's being pushed very hard indeed by large vested interests from the gas extraction and transport sector, for obvious reasons, but its properties and problems are well known, and while there is going to be a significant role for green hydrogen, more likely in heavy transport, shipping etc, for general balancing purposes my guess is it will be eclipsed by better technologies. I also wouldn't want to invest long term in lithium, as I think that's not a long term option. Apart from sodium batteries, the other big contender is iron-air batteries, which have ............... I intend to talk in generalities - getting overspecific on a post like this just gets confusing, and what may be true one month may not be so the next. That said, the obvious disadvantage to renewables is unpredictability. Can you guarantee the wind will be blowing in your wind farm at the required speed at 3pm on a given day? There are two fundamental approaches - first being a high level of interconnection, on the basis that if it's not windy somewhere, it may well be a few hundred miles away. Second is storage. Overproduce when times are good, store, and use such when times are bad. The question then is "how". OK, if that's simple, it's intended to be - step back and be able to see the forest and not the trees. To now go deeper into the "how" question of storage, the best solution in principle must be some form of battery. Easy to charge and easy to discharge with good response times. In practice the question is cost. And here I confess to surprise at how much grid battery storage is actually being deployed, given the cost of such when lithium based. There are two conceivable ways forward - make the batteries cheaper, or go for an alternative such as liquefied air (or similar alternatives), though with many such the lower capital cost comes with the disadvantage of lower in/out efficiency. I can't predict how the costs will go, but if batteries based on sodium or iron (or whatever) can reach a low enough price per kWh (whilst retaining pretty high in/out efficiencies) I see them sweeping everything else before them. Hydrogen? I don't see much future in the balancing role, especially with new batteries and other technologies advancing. The plant is just too costly to stand idle most of the time waiting for times of surplus, and it needs different equipment to generate hydrogen and then generate electricity. Whereas a battery performs both roles. That is not to say it won't have a very big role to play - but in replacing the huge quantites of hydrogen that industry currently uses as feed stock from "dirty" sources, not as "timeshifting" green energy generation. alec when you talk about not wanting to invest long term into lithium, are you talking specifically wrt bulk grid storage? If so, I'd probably agree - otherwise I see the amount of lithium used for battery storage continuing to soar for years to come, not for such as grid use, but certainly for road vehicles, and possibly many other forms of transport as well. Ones where energy density by weight is of prime importance, and ones where such of sodium, iron, whatever technologies may never compete. |
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Post by mandolinist on Feb 10, 2023 9:50:45 GMT
The Avonmouth wind turbine, built and planned by a community organisation, Ambition Lawrence Weston. Lawrence Weston is the ward next door to the one I live in, a large estate of 1930's-50's council housing. One of the most amazing successes of community empowerment and organisation ever. They have been amazingly well organised and committed, but also "lucky" in gaining a lot of funding from various EU funding pots. Watch this space as they are now trying to identify further sites for turbine development in neighbouring equally deprived neighbourhoods. |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2023 10:18:53 GMT
"it is a conceit held by many people in the green-energy business that Britain, along with the rest of Europe, has suffered since the invasion of Ukraine because we have not gone far and fast enough in dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy. Were Britain entirely powered by wind and sun, goes the argument, Vladimir Putin could do nothing to put our lights out.
You need to be somewhat blinkered, though, to believe that our self-imposed, legally binding target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 has really taken us closer to the happy state of energy security. Several times this winter, National Grid has had to warn of a potential shortage of power — on the last occasion it was handing bungs to consumers to persuade them to turn off their ovens and dishwashers for a couple of hours.
This did not happen due to a shortage of gas but because of a shortage of wind and sun.
For years, government has blindly pursued its net zero target by sanctioning more and more wind and solar farms without properly addressing the problem of intermittency. We already have, in theory, enough installed wind and solar plants to provide for Britain’s average power consumption of 37 gigawatts. On a good day, they manage over half. But on a bad day — such as we had last December — that falls below 2 per cent.
At the moment, we cope with this by turning gas plants on and off — not the most efficient way to use them, though it does at least keep the lights on. But the government has given us no idea of what happens after 2035 when, in accordance with its net zero strategy, all fossil fuels will be removed from the grid. Sunless, windless days can go on for weeks, yet we have energy storage capacity to meet less than an hour’s average electricity demand.
Aside from a smattering of small battery installations, there has been no investment in energy storage since a series of pumped-storage reservoirs were completed between the 1960s and 1980s. There is a good reason for this: it is fantastically expensive to store energy — the cost of storing it in lithium batteries is about six times the cost of generating the energy from wind in the first place.
While renewables struggle on sunless and windless days, oil and gas continue to supply the bulk of Britain’s energy needs, in spite of Putin."
"Even if we did manage to solve the storage problem, we would hardly achieve self-reliance for energy. Building wind and solar plants requires large amounts of steel, much of which is coming from South Asia. The decline in the UK steel industry has quite a lot to do with high energy prices, as carbon levies pile huge costs on energy-intensive industries. The net zero target gives the government a perverse incentive to drive heavy industry abroad because the target refers only to “territorial” emissions physically spewed out in Britain — it excludes emissions elsewhere in the world in the cause of producing goods and services for UK consumers."
"If we want energy security and fewer carbon emissions, all roads lead to nuclear. It will take much more than Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, however. Those two projects will not even make up for the existing stations due to be decommissioned over the next decade, let alone replace gas. "
"We are going to run headlong into the 2050 deadline for net zero before it arrives.
At some point over the next 27 years we are almost certainly going to be facing a choice: do we want affordable, reliable energy — or do we want to hit an arbitrary net zero target? I only hope that we will have a government that chooses the former over the latter."
From :-
"Energy security means postponing net zero
Sticking to an arbitrary emissions deadline blinds us to the fact that a grid based mostly on wind and solar is not viable"
Ross Clark
Friday February 10 2023,
The Times
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Feb 10, 2023 10:38:39 GMT
colin'For years, government has blindly pursued its net zero target by sanctioning more and more wind and solar farms' I am not sure he is entirely correct there, thanks to the tories change in planning law only three onshore wind turbines have been built in the last 3 years
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 11:04:39 GMT
For years, government has blindly pursued its net zero target by sanctioning more and more wind and solar farms without properly addressing the problem of intermittency. We already have, in theory, enough installed wind and solar plants to provide for Britain’s average power consumption of 37 gigawatts. On a good day, they manage over half. But on a bad day — such as we had last December — that falls below 2 per cent. At the moment, we cope with this by turning gas plants on and off — not the most efficient way to use them, though it does at least keep the lights on. But the government has given us no idea of what happens after 2035 when, in accordance with its net zero strategy, all fossil fuels will be removed from the grid. Sunless, windless days can go on for weeks, yet we have energy storage capacity to meet less than an hour’s average electricity demand. Aside from a smattering of small battery installations, there has been no investment in energy storage since a series of pumped-storage reservoirs were completed between the 1960s and 1980s. There is a good reason for this: it is fantastically expensive to store energy — the cost of storing it in lithium batteries is about six times the cost of generating the energy from wind in the first place. While renewables struggle on sunless and windless days, oil and gas continue to supply the bulk of Britain’s energy needs, in spite of Putin." ... "If we want energy security and fewer carbon emissions, all roads lead to nuclear. It will take much more than Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, however. Those two projects will not even make up for the existing stations due to be decommissioned over the next decade, let alone replace gas. " "We are going to run headlong into the 2050 deadline for net zero before it arrives. At some point over the next 27 years we are almost certainly going to be facing a choice: do we want 1/ affordable, reliable energy — or 2/ do we want to hit an arbitrary net zero target? I only hope that we will have a government that chooses the former over the latter." There has been some investment in storage (grid level batteries), some plans for Scottish pumped hydro (stuck in 'red tape' - much of which is due to UK HMG) and BEVs will also have a role to play (although that's a tricky one) however there is no denying that electricity is expensive to store energy for the range of 'cloudy dunkelflaute' periods that we get fairly frequently and it is also expensive to pay constraint fees to wind farms when we have too much wind and can't store it (either temporally or geographically as NW Europe has high weather correlation, notably for countries around the Southern N.Sea). 'Too much' wind will become an increasingly regular problem in the future, notably as soon as France gets its nuclear fleet fully back up and running - network constraint fees need to be considered as they do effectively reduce the 'cost' of investing in home grown storage. Nuclear will have an important role to play for GB (but not Scotland) and CON have finally come around to that view (LAB always held that view) - although we need to pick up the pace on getting through the 'red tape' as even 'new-new' nuclear takes many years to build. IMO we can achieve both 1/ affordable, reliable energy and 2/ hitting net zero by 2050 but to deal with intermittency we need mostly 'home grown' solutions as intimacy with other countries* does not deal with the issue of intermittency. We need a 'mix' of storage and I'll try to work on simplifying some numbers for an example of 'Scotland 2030 and beyond' as they are planning to go cold turkey on removing fossil fuels (and nuclear) from their electricity generation capacity this decade - which, given England usually gets quite similar weather patterns to where they have most of their current/by 2030 wind farms is going to be a problem for them (eg they go Indy) and whole of GB (assuming we stay as 'one nation' for the NG) unless we build a lot more storage (and/or delay weaning ourselves of nat.gas) * With 'local' ones 'usually' having 'similar' weather to GB and more distant ones being places like the Middle East - not countries I think we should be importing a lot of LNG from now or hydrogen from in the future. The 'Old Model Tory' view of 'Energy Security' was to rely on French nuclear and other interconnectors that would mostly be importing from our near neighbours (OKish if they have different 'types' of energy that complement GB's weather intermittency (eg Norway) - not if they highly correlate to our own problem) and importing LNG from places like Qatar - exporting jobs only to reimport a higher global carbon footprint and make our Energy less secure as it becomes subject to regional (pan Europe) or global pricing problems - a lesson we've just learned in a very expensive way. |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 11:30:43 GMT
colin Thank you for posting that info, I wasn't shooting the messenger but had read the article this morning and was a bit for reasons I'll explain. With nat.gas prices now dropping then I'm very worried we slip back into 'Old Model Tory' and whilst there is currently not much difference between 'New Model Tory' Plan A and B on stuff like nuclear and offshore wind farms then with public finances very tight and a lot of investment required then I wouldn't be certain LAB won't slip into 'dither and delay' mode. Link: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/energy-security-means-postponing-net-zero-jpttjvxn2NB We do need some nat.gas but for 'just transition' (pinching Scot.Gov's slogan but using it slightly different to them). There will certainly be a lot of 'vested interests' who want to drag out that transition. I do think we should get more of our O&G 'at home' rather than import LNG from places like Qatar but that shouldn't be misinterpreted as thinking we should drag out the 'transition'. There is no Plan(et) B (unless you're Musk perhaps) and we'll keep killing Planet A if we slip back into a 'climate delay' mindset. * which is often, wrongly IMO, considered a 'cost' but certainly does require 'revenue mechanisms' (eg the Scottish pumped hydro issue that LL and I discussed y'day) if we want to ensure most of the money is 'crowded in' from the private sector (either from Energy companies, who might need both 'carrot and stick' and/or 'soon to be realised' ££billions from breaking the chain to Brussels rules on pensions/insurance/banking)
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Post by alec on Feb 10, 2023 12:52:15 GMT
colin - the article by Ross Clark is fairly typical of the propaganda generated by the libertarian far right think tanks that people like Clark are very closely associated with. It's factually incorrect in places, and completely fails to mention many of the key developments we will need, and that are coming on stream. This needs to be viewed more holistically, as part of the ongoing right wing campaign against net zero and the whole climate change agenda. It's subtle, well funded and wrong headed.
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 13:14:25 GMT
If I get time later then I'll do a post covering a lot more detail on 'Future Scotland' but below is Scot.Gov's very realistic plans out to 2030: "For onshore wind, increasing from 8.78 GW as of June 2022, to over 20 GW by 2030, more than doubling our existing capacity.For offshore wind, increasing from 1.9 GW, as of June 2022, through a pipeline of 3.8 GW already consented, to 8-11 GW by 2030"...So a highly simplified, as light on the maths I can, post on 'Scotland 2030' using their stated plans which I'll multiply out with rounded numbers for the load factors (ie the 'average' % output, which in the case of wind is 'intermittent' but for CCGT was 'flexible' and for nuclear should only be for planned outages - but 'old-old' nuclear getting to/past its planned closure date does become less reliable).
Onshore Wind: 20GW x 30% = 6GW = 6GWh/h = 4,320GWh per month
Offshore Wind: 10GW x 40% = 4GWh/h = 2,880GWh per month
Nuclear: 1.2GW x say 84% = 1GWh/h = 720GWh per month
'Flex' CCGT: 1.2GW x say 42% (but note is 'flex') = 0.5GWh/h = 360GWh per month
Total = 10GWh/h = 7.22TWh per month (and 1,440GWh for the 6day periods in a 30day month that I'll use below)
I've crossed out nuclear and CCGT as per Scot.Gov's plan but we'll certainly get back to looking at CCGT later...
First up some 'simplification' assumptions. 1/ Solar is negligible so ignored, any current/new pumped/flex hydro will be used to help balance 'intra-day' supply-demand and/or the broader GB grid (only doing this so I can ignore it but it is fair to say they currently have nowhere near enough - as I'll show). They shut down their nuclear (Torness, 1.2GW) and their 'flex' CCGT (Peterhead, 1.2GW) so they rely only on wind. 2/ I'll pick April as a 'typical month' (avoids seasonal issue) and to avoid having to go to much into probabilities then I'll assume that 'April' is split into 5 periods of 6days
Red: 20% of 'average' wind - severe 'excess demand' = -1,152GWh (by the end of the 6day period)Amber: 60% of 'average' wind - mild 'excess demand' = -576GWh (") Green: A perfectly average week - bang on the 1,440GWh with supply = demandDark Green: 140% of 'average' wind - mild 'excess supply' = +576GWh
Black: 180% of 'average' wind - severe 'excess supply' = +1,152GWh
A bit simplistic but weather is not 'random' (ie you do often get calm days bunched together and windy days bunched together). Of course April'30 might not be an 'average' April - could be calmer/windy than 'average' but I want to avoid 'seasonal' issues, 'strategic reserve', etc as I know mentioning hydrogen is best avoided (although I'm pretty sure Scot.Gov will work it out and it appears they are). 3/ Scot.Gov state they'll hit 50% of total energy needs from renewables and I'll interpret that as exactly 100% of their electricity needs (ie they'll make some pretty significant further progress on decarbonising transport, heating, industry, etc. compared to where they are today). At the margin they'll probably not be that high IMO, but it is also possible they don't build as many wind farms as they hope and it's easy peasy to adjust 2030 to 2028 or 2032 if anyone thinks I'm too harsh/generous by making the maths as easy as possible to explain. 4/ Interconnectors are no help so will be ignored. In reality they'll make the problem for Scotland (and rGB) much worse as Scotland is only interconnected to England and NI - both of whom have high weather correlation to Scotland current/by 2030 wind farms so will be in 'excess supply' and 'excess demand' at the same time (usually). Scotland COULD outsource it's own storage problems via Interconnectors to England(+NI) but fair to say that would be a bad idea as if everyone is in the same boat with high weather correlation then the 'excess' issue will 'usually' be the same for everyone in GB (and whilst England has some 'good' interconnectors we'll be needing those for England's own problems). PAUSE FOR LUNCH (possibly an edit if my lurker friend spots a mistake or typo).. TO BE CONTINUED... |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 14:28:37 GMT
PART2. Above is a massive simplification but as can be seen the periods of 'excess demand' match the periods of 'excess supply' but the problem is that they are literally weeks apart (in my 6day week, chosen because it's fairly close to reality) I'll pick the Coire Glas project which IMO will be used mainly for 'intra-day' due to the higher cycle rate achievable and the existing 'day-night' imbalance but note that project is: "1.5GW and 30GWh of long short duration storage by 2030" (quibble on 'long' v 'short') www.waterpowermagazine.com/features/featurescottish-highlights-9973995/Let's deal with the 'mild' excess first. The 'amber' and 'dark green' periods of -/+ 576GWh need 'temporal' storage to balance out. 576/30 = 19.2 projects* of the scale of Coire Glas... by 2030! On average they will be used twice per month (for 'fill up' + 'draw down' = one cycle) as they'll also be needed for the 'red' and 'black' weeks. So 12 x 2 = 24 cycles per year. New assumption. A project like Coire Glas is 'break even' all by itself if it is used 96 cycles per year (and it is likely to be more than that). Any pumped hydro with the same costs and the same capability will need 96+ cycles per year to be 'economically viable'. As leftieliberal will point out then some projects would cost a lot less than Coire Glas so be a lot cheaper in £/GWh of storage capability terms, notably if you want a slower 'fill/empty' rate (and yep, we don't mind that). I'll also throw in the 'offset' of not needing to pay constraint costs to wind farms to not supply energy to the grid during excess supply periods (ie you can effectively pay the new/converted pumped hydro to 'fill up' using the £/GWh you would otherwise pay Scottish wind farms to not supply to the Scottish grid). So 24 cycles per year would IMO be 'economically' viable for a lot of potential pumped hydro conversion projects BUT we need a 'REVENUE' mechanism for whoever is going to build/convert the 576GWh of pumped hydro (or other forms of 'medium' term storage). Now onto the 'Red' and 'Black' periods. They create an additional 1,152 - 576 = 576GWh of storage requirement but the 'severe' temporal imbalances are only used once per month. I'm going to assume 'medium term storage' options are not 'economically viable' for just 12 cycles per year and they certainly won't be built by 2030. So do we pay constraint fees to wind farms 6days per month and 'severely' ration electricity for 6days a month? Do we think BEVs are the answer? So what can we do... HINTs: 1/ What about that CCGT plant in Peterhead that Scot.Gov want to shut down? Can't that be 'held in reserve'? 2/ What about England building a load of nuclear to 'help out' (or Scot.Gov changing their mind) so they have a reliable 'base load' that will reduce the peaks and troughs? 1/ Peterhead CCGT is 1.2GW (and perhaps one day can be repurposed to run on hydrogen as a 'peaker plant' but lets not mention hydrogen)So 1.2GW x 24 x 6days = 172.8GWh (nowhere near enough but let's assume they rely on England to make up the balance, especially if they go ahead and shut it anyway, becoming more reliant on English CCGT for periods of low wind and expecting England to buy up their excess wind supply when it is very windy in Scotland - times when it usually also windy in England and other countries around the N.Sea and everyone else is looking for somewhere/someone to buy their excess wind generated electricity) BUT....hold your horses!!! If you use CCGT for the 'Red' period then whilst that is only 6days/mth it means holding CCGT in reserve becomes expensive and if you also use it for 'Amber' periods then you cut down the cycle rate of the 'amber/dark green' storage cycle (as those 'naughty' CCGT 'vested interest' operators would know and anyone considering converting an existing hydro to a pumped hydro would fear UNLESS/UNTIL they get a revenue mechanism that guarantees they won't get shafted). 2/ Nuclear. That's a bit more complex and one for another time as I'll have to redo a load of the maths. Stay tuned for Part3 that will cover that but for now note that Torness is an old lady already, so keeping it going past 2030 is going to be difficult and will almost certainly reduce its load factor (and reliability). England(+Wales) are not building anywhere enough nuclear for our needs so we won't be able to help via nuclear. (3/ England could be a 'land bridge' to interconnectors elsewhere but as already noted then the high weather correlations mean that isn't going to help "OR" in reality it will help but only by someone else burning coal/gas and using interconnector constraint fees to get it into England and up to Scotland for the 'Red' periods and 'shut them down' Scottish wind farm constraint fees being likely for the 'Black' periods) * Could be 'grid level' battery/other storage as well. However, certainly with Lithium, then you're going to need a lot more than 24 cycles per year to make those economically viable. Other 'technology' might become cheaper and since we want 'slow' fill/empty rates, we aren't too worried about size and aren't going to mind too much if efficiency is below 100% (given the alternative is we pay wind farms to not supply in the 'excess' periods). Did someone mention hydrogen is proven tech and could be handy for 'seasonal' and export potential as well. |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 15:29:33 GMT
PS to PART2. Above shows Scotland as being 'self sufficient' (or at least trying to be) so what about the Scotland-England interconnectors then Trevor (talking to myself) - didn't you say we need more of those "Yes, and" storage...?!?
Yes, yes. Covered partly in option 3 but I'm not going into that maths again - twice bitten, thrice shy (even if the trolling has finally stopped)
What above does show is that you reach a point where even some of the "Yes, and" options start to conflict with each other. If Scotland was to build as much storage as I (and others) propose they need, then they won't need any 'interconnection' to England BUT if you get past 2030 then Scotland is going to start becoming a significant net exporter of electricity (unless they decide to prioritise green hydrogen as a 'value-add' export they can ship to Germany as ammonia)
However, as we are a massive way short of where Scotland needs to be on 'storage' (assuming they go 'cold turkey' on CCGT and nuclear) then any concern about "OR" Scotland-England interconnectors shouldn't stop Scotland building a load more 'medium' term storage. You'd need to be an 'ENAT' ultra (or a very naughty BNAT) with 'Old Model Tory' view, prioritising interconnectors to places like Denmark rather than Scotland-England, to think we don't need a lot more Scotland-England interconnectors (although perhaps the new, approved, not yet built Scotland-England interconnectors that NG have finally agreed to build will be enough to get to 2030?)
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Post by leftieliberal on Feb 10, 2023 18:46:00 GMT
PS to PART2. Above shows Scotland as being 'self sufficient' (or at least trying to be) so what about the Scotland-England interconnectors then Trevor (talking to myself) - didn't you say we need more of those "Yes, and" storage...?!? Yes, yes. Covered partly in option 3 but I'm not going into that maths again - twice bitten, thrice shy (even if the trolling has finally stopped) What above does show is that you reach a point where even some of the "Yes, and" options start to conflict with each other. If Scotland was to build as much storage as I (and others) propose they need, then they won't need any 'interconnection' to England BUT if you get past 2030 then Scotland is going to start becoming a significant net exporter of electricity (unless they decide to prioritise green hydrogen as a 'value-add' export they can ship to Germany as ammonia)
However, as we are a massive way short of where Scotland needs to be on 'storage' (assuming they go 'cold turkey' on CCGT and nuclear) then any concern about "OR" Scotland-England interconnectors shouldn't stop Scotland building a load more 'medium' term storage. You'd need to be an 'ENAT' ultra (or a very naughty BNAT) with 'Old Model Tory' view, prioritising interconnectors to places like Denmark rather than Scotland-England, to think we don't need a lot more Scotland-England interconnectors (although perhaps the new, approved, not yet built Scotland-England interconnectors that NG have finally agreed to build will be enough to get to 2030?) I pretty much agree with your figures. MacKay in SEWTHA reckoned on a 4-day period every month with negligible wind generation during the winter. A couple of years ago I downloaded a year's data (for 2019) from Gridwatch and plotted the total wind generation and I found one six-day lull as well as a couple of five-day lulls (this is just by eye-balling the graph). Your 576 GWh excess demand (amber) could be close to being covered by converting the top 12 hydro-electric systems in Scotland to pumped storage, based on the Strathclyde paper, but I haven't checked the details. It would basically mean replacing the turbines, so nowhere near as much work as Coire Glas or the Drax improvement to Cruachan which need new tunnels dug and a power station excavated inside the mountain. I agree about existing interconnectors. What Scotland really needs is an interconnector to Norway, where almost all the electricity generation is from hydro so could well provide the buffer needed. The Norway-England interconnector is 1.4 GW and they would probably need two of these (redundancy is usually a good idea) for Scotland-Norway. The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund may well be willing to pay for this because it would improve their supply security (according to Wikipedia Norwegian hydro-electricity production can vary by 60 TWh from year to year depending on precipitation). www.regjeringen.no/en/historical-archive/solbergs-government/Ministries/oed/press-releases/2016/white-paper-on-norways-energy-policy-power-for-change/id2484248/The other factor is tidal and tidal stream electricity generation. Combining it with pumped storage means storing the water for less than ~6 hours at a time (although there is still the difference between spring and neap tides) to get an effective baseload electricity generation (so being able to replace nuclear). I haven't investigated the difference between high tide times on the West Coast and on the North Coast of Scotland (I know that North Sea tides are usually much lower than West Coast tides for Great Britain). |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 10, 2023 19:49:57 GMT
I pretty much agree with your figures. MacKay in SEWTHA reckoned on a 4-day period every month with negligible wind generation during the winter. A couple of years ago I downloaded a year's data (for 2019) from Gridwatch and plotted the total wind generation and I found one six-day lull as well as a couple of five-day lulls (this is just by eye-balling the graph). Your 576 GWh excess demand (amber) could be close to being covered by converting the top 12 hydro-electric systems in Scotland to pumped storage, based on the Strathclyde paper, but I haven't checked the details. It would basically mean replacing the turbines, so nowhere near as much work as Coire Glas or the Drax improvement to Cruachan which need new tunnels dug and a power station excavated inside the mountain. I agree about existing interconnectors. What Scotland really needs is an interconnector to Norway, where almost all the electricity generation is from hydro so could well provide the buffer needed. The Norway-England interconnector is 1.4 GW and they would probably need two of these (redundancy is usually a good idea) for Scotland-Norway. The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund may well be willing to pay for this because it would improve their supply security (according to Wikipedia Norwegian hydro-electricity production can vary by 60 TWh from year to year depending on precipitation). www.regjeringen.no/en/historical-archive/solbergs-government/Ministries/oed/press-releases/2016/white-paper-on-norways-energy-policy-power-for-change/id2484248/The other factor is tidal and tidal stream electricity generation. Combining it with pumped storage means storing the water for less than ~6 hours at a time (although there is still the difference between spring and neap tides) to get an effective baseload electricity generation (so being able to replace nuclear). I haven't investigated the difference between high tide times on the West Coast and on the North Coast of Scotland (I know that North Sea tides are usually much lower than West Coast tides for Great Britain). Thank you for the reply and input. The main reason I picked 6days was to be able to use 5 different 'colour coded' periods = 30day month (April). I usually use 5days but I wanted an 'average' middle with a 'mild' and 'severe' on each side. Using shorter periods though you need to change the %s. EG A 'severe' 4day period could be as low as 6% 'average' wind (which gets you close to the more 'bunched' set of 5 periods I showed). WRT to cycles rates to be 'economically viable' then I avoided the ££ but in your opinion would 24 cycles per year provide sufficient 'temporal arbitrage' revenue to cover costs (eg a 6% 'running yield' >= 'floor' revenue / capital cost)? I'd really like to see at least one example of a 'cheap' conversion and agree with you that some fairly cheap options are available - possibly at a cycle rate of less than 24 per year (it is however curious why those haven't been picked??). The 96 cycles for Coire Glas is realistic but they'll obviously ask for more and want the formula written down in a Revenue mechanism. Fully agree on Norway->anyone being a good idea from the 'anyone' perspective. The only issue being that everyone wants to use Norway to effectively 'outsource' their temporal storage problem and Norway can't please everyone and are already risking upsetting their own people (IMO they would prefer to sell likes of Germany 'value-add' product like green hydrogen rather than just be the 'green battery' for Scotland, GB, everyone else). From a 'weather' (or generating) correlation perspective then most of Norway's wind farms are onshore on their West coast which is quite highly correlated to where Scotland has/will have their wind farms - not an ideal complement for Norway. Also IMO, then whilst Scotland is still part of UK then Westminster will want Norway-England if Norway did want to increase their interconnection capability to GB (and unlike Scotland then England is a bit further away and is looking to build nuclear and be a bit slower to come of CCGT). So a 'maybe' and no harm in asking Norway (I'm 'not uncertain' we and a lot of other countries have been asking) www.thewindpower.net/country_maps_en_19_norway.phpFully agree on tidal as well and would add that 'deep sea currents' are pretty reliable as an 'always on' base load so wouldn't need any storage (a wee bit of seasonality but that might actually not be a bad thing depending on location). I know Scotland are pushing quite a lot of Ocean tech (as are likes of Japan*) but its not 'proven' tech at large scale so need to be cautious on assuming how much it will help out and when. I can empathise with people who have the view of 'don't build nuclear as we can use the tide/ocean' but for now I'd put that firmly in the "yes, and" category. If tide/ocean power proves it's worth at scale then we don't have to build as much nuclear - the big order of RR SMRs that I'm hoping for can be split out into 5 now, 5 maybe later (covered a while back but still no news on that) So whilst I doubt Scotland will build anywhere near as much storage as it needs by 2030 in my illustrative, simplified scenario, then 'fingers crossed' some other stuff will mean my illustration is a little too pessimistic (and hopefully not due to a 'go slow' on decarbonising their economy).
* Giant Deep Ocean Turbine Trial Offers Hope of Endless Green Powerwww.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-30/japan-s-deep-ocean-turbine-trial-offers-hope-of-phasing-out-fossil-fuels?leadSource=uverify%20wall |
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Post by alec on Feb 10, 2023 20:17:57 GMT
leftieliberal - worth noting that the existing Norway interconnector lands at Blyth, which is well connected by twin 400kVa lines into Scotland, so they already have access to one such link. Also they already have 2.5GW of non-wind renewable generation capacity and (I think) there are live plans for another 2GW of biomass/waste plants to be onstream by 2030, so potentially covering more than half the notional gap in Trevor's worst case scenario, with the Blyth connector taking that up to potentially 75%. A bit of day/night shifting might ease the rest, but yes, I agree - this needs careful planning. More storage is sensible, but cracking the Westminster led funding structure is likely to be the key to doing that.
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Post by alec on Feb 10, 2023 20:36:38 GMT
No - scrub that - the plans are for new biomass totally 0.4GW, so a fair bit less. May be some others as well but the ones I was thinking of won't be that big.
Also worth noting that new interconnectors into Scotland would probably reduce the amount the UK spends on consgraint charges, so long as they are mainly for export (I think NG ESO modeled an 80/20 export/import split for northern interconnectors as effectively reducing constraints.
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 11, 2023 8:09:49 GMT
PART 3 - Scotland 2030, the need for a 'base load' (eg nuclear)
Will keep it short and simple as it will lead up to Part4 (the original point from a while back): Scotland-England interconnectors. For Part4 I'll also need to correct some of my simplifications but for now I'll just add one more assumption.
Any electricity Scotland can't store when it is 'too windy' can be sent to England (+NI) or worst case (as is sometimes the case now) pay curtailment fees to Scottish wind farms and the excess wind doesn't get used. Could be other uses for any 'excess' Scottish wind of course, such as exporting green hydrogen.
So, 576GWh over 6days = 4GW 'base load' (for just the additional bit of assuming they can cover the 'amber' risk but don't want to ration electricity for the additional bit from amber-red or use CCGT)
NB Their planned total wind production adjusted for base load = 10GW. 4GW is 40% of that (the difference between the 'red' and 'amber' scenarios). I haven't adjusted nuclear for load factor but 'new-new' nuclear would be a lot more reliable and using better tech than 'old-old' nuclear. Consider 4GW an 'under-estimate' for the simplified 'all wind' scenario.
Scotland has closed Hunsterston B (1.2GW, Jan'22) and plans to close Torness (1.2GW) but even those two wouldn't have been enough to cover a 'reasonable' amount of base load need to cover the foreseeable risk of 'dunkelflaute' periods (and note I picked April so am not using the word 'cold', although being Scotland then I'll accept the quibble that it's cold most of the year up there!)
Very simples point here being that if anyone wants to go fully renewables without nuclear then they are going to need a massive amount of storage "OR" build a massive amount of over-capacity* and pay a lot of curtailment fees.
* The 'Red' scenario is 20% of 'average' so to cover that they'd need 5x the amount of wind farm capacity that they intend to have by 2030 and note they already intend to build a lot by 2030. After 2030 and towards 2050 then they will be building a lot more GW of wind farms and then the issue will increasingly become what they intend to do with all the excess wind electricity they will often be producing ('usually' at a fairly 'similar' time WRT to weather as their near neighbours, although as they start to focus more on offshore in the North N.Sea the 'weather correlation' to South Scotland and England reduces a bit, which obviously helps... a bit)
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 11, 2023 9:42:57 GMT
Intro to Part 4 - "correcting" an assumption for 'excess supply' of wind
'Previously' I gave Scot.Gov's plans for 2030 and used 'load factors' to get to an 'average' situation and then took 20% and 60% levels to show 'Red' and 'Amber' scenarios.
Onshore Wind: 20GW x 30% = 6GWh/h
Offshore Wind: 10GW x 40% = 4GWh/h
Note. The weighted average load factor of the above is 33% (ie in the 'Red' scenario the load factor is 20% x 33% = 6.6%).
I then created mirror image scenarios but note the 'Black' scenario is 180% x 33% = 59.4%
The simplification was mostly to show that storage demand could be solved from the wind 'excess supply' side and I also ignored issues such as efficiency of pumped hydro, transmission line losses, etc (and a reasonable assumption that a lot of the 'conversion' of flex hydro wouldn't be able to use all the excess wind when it was available)
However, when moving on to show Scotland-England interconnectors then the 'Dark Green' and 'Black' scenarios under-estimate the amount of excess wind that Scotland will need to do 'something' with. Refilling 'flex' hydro by converting it to 'pumped hydro' will have a lot of issues as the water required to 'fill 'er (back) up' has to come from 'somewhere' other than rainfall and be pushed back up the mountain using 'something' that we want to be as cheap and low environmental impact as possible and that might well introduce some acceptable drops in 'efficiency' BUT the numbers I used were simplified and I covered myself with an additional 'assumption' that any additional excess could be sent to England(+NI)
I posted the wind farm stats a while back and clearly 59.4% is not 'peak wind' for a 6day period (although only 6.6% for 6days in the 'Red' scenario is not unrealistic)
Between now and 2030, assuming Torness (nuclear) and Peterhead (CCGT) close then there will be fairly frequent 'dunkelflaute' times when England sends electricity to Scotland - notably times when England is almost certainly going to be in 'excess demand' conditions as well, due to the high weather correlation between England and Southern Scotland, times when GB grid is paying top €€/MWh and interconnector fees to import that electricity onto the GB grid from mainland Europe (given we already almost always max out the 1.4GW(h/h) that Norway sends us, as Norway is almost always 'cheaper' than anyone+everyone else - especially whilst France is still having nuclear issues)
However, most of the flow and notably the peak flows will be Scotland->England and IF Scotland does substantially increase their storage* and IF they continue to build massive amount of wind farms after 2030 (notably in the North N.Sea) and IF they don't use their surplus electricity for something else (eg green hydrogen) then the limitation will be Scotland->England so I'll mostly look at that in Part4.
* Note England also needs to massively increase it's storage capacity to make more efficient use of the Scotland-England transmission lines (mentioned briefly in the past). The cables currently 'max out' at English peak demand and even if we do a better job 'smoothing' the 4-7pm period by demand shifting then I'm not going to assume BEVs 'do the rest' and sort out the day-night imbalance every day when folks are capable of seeing what the weather is likely to be in the coming days and might not act in the 'national' rational interest (see another previous post where I played 'devils advocate' for both sides of the role BEVs might have in short-medium term storage)
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 11, 2023 14:10:06 GMT
Quick tangent with a repost about constraint costs, just to ensure folks appreciate the ££/MWh 'cost' of NOT having sufficient storage, transmission network capacity etc. Note that more recently the dominant issue has been the need to use 'geographic' storage via interconnectors* as NG seem to prefer to import electricity (which is often 'via' France with the true source being coal - although obviously NG aren't going to say that) rather than use our own CCGT/coal generators. From p3: "Generation constraint management normally involves two actions within the Balancing Mechanism (BM) 1): a turn down of a generation asset e.g. an onshore wind farm, and 2) the turn up of a generation asset, which is currently almost always a gas CCGT plant, to meet the demand on the other side of the constraint boundary.The turn-up action is significantly more expensive to invoke than the turn-down of a generator. Why is that? The average cost to turn down a wind farm generator is circa £50 per MWh[3], while the average cost to turn up a CCGT plant is circa £200** per MWh, plus a CCGT plant typically needs to run for longer at a minimum power output"www.regen.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Regen-Insight-Managing-Constraint-Costs.pdfIncreasing storage isn't the only solution of course but it does need to be a much bigger part of the "Yes, and" solution to avoid 'turning down wind' when it's too windy and 'turning up gas' when it isn't windy enough, especially as we move to even more 'intermittency' with more wind (and solar) and hope to use less nat.gas. Part4 on 'Scotland-England': interconnectors will need to wait until after the rugby but I'll probably need to mention ££/MWh to show that overdoing the Scotland-England interconnectors would eventually cause an "OR" problem that makes storage less economically viable (and/or makes where you place it - in Scotland, near excess supply "OR" in London/S.England, near excess demand a problem). Investors don't like "OR" possibilities that might hang them out to dry at the whim of future politicians or political events, and hence want 'Revenue mechanisms' before they commit to doing anything (although that is no excuse for the 'dither and delay' as delay is expensive - not just in ££ but also in avoidable CO2 emissions). * Dec'22 is now available so below is 2022 data (Table3, 31 in the Dec'22 .pdf: data.nationalgrideso.com/balancing/mbss ). In 2022 we were a net exporter, helping out our neighbours but I've also posted the Jan'23 NG data that shows we've reverted to importing a lot of electricity - even 'off-peak' and even on fairly 'windy' days. ** Whilst the article was written in Aug'22 then those numbers were out of date even back then. The Ofgem letter in [3] of the link being from Apr'21 and using data from before that. 'Volatility' in electricity prices has been exaggerated due to Putin's war and the French nuclear issue (the weather is always unpredictable more than a few weeks out) but due to the desire/need to move to more renewables then 'volatility' in short-term price fluctuations is likely to be much higher in the future than it was in the past - unless we massively increase 'temporal' storage as the smoothing balance buffer in the system (outsourcing the 'problem' to another nation/country doesn't 'solve' the problem it just ADDS a 'geographic' component - one that is not 'free', even between Scotland and England) Attachment Deleted |
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Post by leftieliberal on Feb 11, 2023 20:02:19 GMT
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Post by lens on Feb 12, 2023 0:54:47 GMT
Yes, agreed. And it would be nice if such happened in lots of other built up areas as well. Is it really necessary to have the same level of street lighting at 3am as at (say) 9pm? Unfortunately, the idea that "brighter the better" street lighting is a strong crime deterrent has become very well entrenched in the public mind, whilst it's not supported by any real unequivocal evidence. (Try googling "street light crime survey") Surveys that have been done have come to different conclusions, but even the most optimistic don't show a marked effect. One theory has it that far from acting as a deterrent, artificial lighting can actually HELP burgulars! If that sounds counter-intuitive, I believe the theory goes along the line that the lighting means they can see what they are doing without giving themselves away by using torches, and in the case of personal crime, street lights can create deep shadows to hide in - whilst illuminating potential victims! |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 12, 2023 10:21:03 GMT
PART4a: Scotland-England Interconnectors Splitting out Scottish data* then Scot.Gov's target of 50% of total energy from renewables (and assuming that is 100% of their electricity needs) is a target should they easily meet with their 'pipeline' Scotland uses a lot more energy than GB average (for several reasons) but 'adjusted' scenario numbers and %s that I'll use for '2030' simplified illustration will be: % of time, -ve (import) or +ve (export) 10% -4GW
20% exactly meet on needs40% +4GW
20% +8GW
10% +12GW
NB1 I've dropped 'h/h' but capacity GW is also 'time' if you use 'h/h'. 4GW = 96GWh/day = 576GWh for a 6day period (to link it to storage)
NB2 The above probabilities are closer to reality than the crude 20% lumps I picked for storage. The implication of that (hinted to in the storage bit) is that the cycle rate for some of the 'medium' forms of storage will be lower than 24 cycles per annum and hence make it far less economically viable for 'medium-term' storage solutions to deal with the 'tails' of the wind distribution. Each extra piece of 'medium-term' storage added will help but it also means that all the storage that has already been built wouldn't be used so often as there is now more storage for the more frequent periods of need - something Ofgem seem to be overly scared about but do have to consider when they write revenue floor+cap agreements that effectively sign up bill payers to a minimum usage for 25yrs (assuming they copy the interconnector revenue mechanism and don't differentiate by 'short', 'medium' and 'long' time periods and corresponding likelihood of cycle rate)
NB3 The 'export' side should be a bit more skewed than that with some periods where they will hit 'excess supply' of over 20GW (especially on warm and windy nights) * Source: www.gov.scot/publications/energy-statistics-for-scotland-q3-2022/pages/key-points/(Fig 2 and 3 are worth a 'glance' as they show a lot of quarterly and annual variation in wind generation (eg 2021 was a pretty bad year but useful if you want to 'cherry pick' some 2022 % gain numbers I suppose) . Being a bit windier in Winter is helpful in tackling the seasonal issue but it's not that sunny in Scotland in the Winter and good to see that Scot.Gov realise that and aren't 'going large' on solar at a 'grid level'. The year-year variation is a bit more concerning as NW Europe usually gets similar weather and we should err on the side of caution. However, I won't get into 'strategic reserves' or other ways we could handle a 'dunkelflaute' Winter as that might drag up green hydrogen) Off to play the sport that Scotland invented but with the 'assumed' % time periods and GWs above then Part4b will be pretty simples. The 'conclusion' might take a bit longer but I'll let some numbers sink in a bit before getting to that. |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 12, 2023 14:34:32 GMT
Rugby about to start so some 'essential' reading as I got distracted on the main thread. Contrary to what some people might think then NG do have a plan to increase 'interconnectors' between Scotland and England. The 'delayed' Western Link (2.25GW) between Hunterston (former nuclear site so mostly using pre-existing infrastructure within Scotland when Scotland is 'importing') is now fully operational and hence the main reason 'wind' related constraint fees are now fairly minimal (for a while at least) but the link contains all the other upgrade 'plans', some of which are now firm commitments (eg the 2x2GW Eastern Links, which also use a lot of pre-existing infrastructure as they hook up to Peterhead (currently CCGT) and Torness (nuclear, due to close about the time SEGL1 will open). By 2030 then I'd be fairly sure there is 8GW of capability between Scotland and England but the 'easy'/obvious connections will have been used up - more later (or tomorrow) I posted the interactive map before but the whole write-up is essential reading:
Network Options Assessment (NOA)www.nationalgrideso.com/research-publications/network-options-assessment-noa |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 13, 2023 12:44:06 GMT
...% of time, -ve (import) or +ve (export) 10% -4GW
20% exactly meet own needs40% +4GW
20% +8GW
10% +12GW
...
So using above 'simplified' and rounded numbers for the Scotland only situation in 2030 then the 'average' will be Scotland needing transmission capability of 4GW to England(+NI) which will also cover all periods of Scottish 'excess demand' (assuming England is generating/importing the electricity that Scotland will need to cover 'dunkelflaute' periods*) The 'troubled' Western Link (2.25GW) plus other transmission capability with minor upgrades gets fairly close to 4GW. The two new Eastern links (2 x 2GW) will add a further 4GW. Total 8GW of Scotland-England interconnector capability by 2030. Clearly enough capability for Scotland to import (with the only question being whether England can generate/import enough - as England's weather is quite highly correlated to Southern Scotland, where most of the Scottish wind power will be generated into 2030). The 'problem' is that at 8GW capability then there will only be an 'excess' for 10% of the time and although it obviously makes sense to store that rather than pay wind farm curtailment fees then building storage isn't 'free' and at 10% of the time the economic viability of storage is hard to justify. It also becomes hard to justify building additional interconnectors if they are only going to be used on rare occasions and between nations with fairly high weather correlation - unless the 'importing' nation builds generating capacity that is quite different (eg nuclear, BECCS, still uses a lot of CCGT, etc) and ideally adds a lot of storage to make use of the excess Scottish electricity to smooth England's own wind farm intermittency. Given the flow will 'usually' be Scotland->England then it actually makes more sense for 'short-term' storage to be built in England to ensure the transmission lines are used 24/365 (or as close to that as economically viable) - with Scotland focussing mainly on 'medium-long' term storage (eg green hydrogen**)Also, since the limitation will be due to export capability then Scotland doesn't need to have any nuclear (or CCGT after the two Eastern lines are built) as they can get any 'excess demand' via imports from England (assuming England can generate/import enough) as stuff like nuclear is best run 'always on' (other than for refuelling or maintenance) so would only make the transmission capability problem worse. The obvious issue is then also that Scotland shouldn't roll out additional wind farms or any other form of electricity generation after 2030 UNLESS the new wind farm locations/renewable generation has materially lower weather correlation to English wind farms and/or a lot more storage capability is added (which they could outsource to England or use England as a 'land-bridge' to oursource the storage problem to places with whom England is interconnected) So some of the issues do become "OR" and reliant on revenue mechanisms for the provider of storage/interconnector/generating capacity and an appreciation of what every other component in an interconnected grid is doing/will do. However, 8GW of Scotland-England interconnector capability by 2030 should be plenty - provided we use the interconnectors as efficiently as possible and that will mean more 'short-term' storage (grid level batteries) in England and more 'medium-long' storage in Scotland and, yes, very occasionally some curtailment fees paid to Scottish wind farms as it's not economically viable to build storage or interconnector capability for the last 1-2% of 'excess supply'. After 2030 then the 'easy'/obvious interconnector 'hubs' will be used up and although the North N.Sea does have lower weather correlation to Southern Scotland and the Southern N.Sea then it's a very long way from where the demand is needed. Hub-hub distances, ignoring the additional transmission capability required to get the electricity to/from the hubs: Lerwick->Grimsby: 735km Although IIRC then that isn't actually much more than some of the England-rEurope interconnectors that are being built, noting that they don't have the additional transmission capability either! I personally would prioritise interconnections intra-GB***, especially when the weather correlation is lower (as it is between the sea around Shetland and Dogger Bank) Can anyone think of something other than 'undersea cables' for which there is already an extensive undersea network in the North N.Sea and how that might be repurposed and used for 'long-term' and a less 'perishable' form of storage, avoiding the need for having to build so many interconnectors and pumped hydro/grid level batteries?* Note previous assumptions concerning use of pumped hydro storage used to balance intra-day only. ** www.scotsman.com/business/renewables-drive-sees-aberdeen-firm-invest-ps1m-and-generate-20-jobs-4024648*** and not for 'nativist' reasons. Even setting aside the 'Energy Security' issue, which even with an iScotland wouldn't be a big deal as Scotland has very little option but to use England as a 'land bridge' for their exports. Scottish electricity will be 100% 'Green' with no risk that the 'marginal' bit is actually coal or CCGT being burned (and possibly coming via a few countries before it gets to England). Hence the 'slam dunk' case for prioritisation of connecting up GB and the penny did finally drop with CON HMG (and IMO Ed Miliband always 'got it'). Sadly we are still being held back by the ongoing 'dither and delay' for storage revenue mechanisms. |
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c-a-r-f-r-e-w
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Post by c-a-r-f-r-e-w on Feb 14, 2023 0:04:57 GMT
Hydrogen to be pumped into main gas pipeline by 2025
Fuel to be carried across country on 4,700-mile network as part of race to go green
“Between 2pc and 5pc of the fuel flowing through the country's transmission network will be hydrogen in two years under plans drawn up by National Gas, which owns the pipelines.
The blending would be the first step in plans to convert the network so that it can be filled entirely with hydrogen by 2050, as part of a national overhaul to cut carbon emissions.
Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said: “What we’re trying to achieve is to make sure there’s a balanced response to energy.
“On a winter’s day, you’ve got seven times more energy going through the gas network than the electricity network.
“We’ve got to look at ways to decarbonise that, while making sure that industry is still provided for – that businesses have the gas they need.
“So we are transferring slowly into hydrogen – we’re going to repurpose our system slowly over time into hydrogen, for the areas that can’t be electrified.””
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Operators of gas distribution networks are also working on plans which would allow them to blend up to 20pc hydrogen into natural gas in their pipelines from 2024.
However, blending hydrogen into the transmission network from the outset would be a bigger step, embedding hydrogen into the system.
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Hydrogen is also being considered as a replacement for natural gas in power stations, where it can be used to fill in gaps in power supplies on still days when wind turbines are not spinning.
The extent to which it will be needed is still uncertain, however, with particular question marks over its use in home heating, given the rising number of installations of electric heat pumps.
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“If you live in a flat in London, or Manchester, or wherever, and you can't electrify because there's nowhere to put an air source heat pump, or you haven't got room to put a hot water boiler in your flat, then we want to make sure we give customers choice.”
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 14, 2023 9:21:24 GMT
Hydrogen to be pumped into main gas pipeline by 2025Fuel to be carried across country on 4,700-mile network as part of race to go green
“On a winter’s day, you’ve got seven times more energy going through the gas network than the electricity network.
.. “So we are transferring slowly into hydrogen – we’re going to repurpose our system slowly over time into hydrogen, for the areas that can’t be electrified.”” …
Operators of gas distribution networks are also working on plans which would allow them to blend up to 20pc hydrogen into natural gas in their pipelines from 2024.
However, blending hydrogen into the transmission network from the outset would be a bigger step, embedding hydrogen into the system.
…
There a lots of trial going on in UK and around the World to see how much blending could be done with some investigation into full 100% UK: DNV to test safe use and conversion of pipelines to transport 100% hydrogenwww.offshore-energy.biz/uk-dnv-to-test-safe-use-and-conversion-of-pipelines-to-transport-100-hydrogen/Of course, like most of components in the Energy system, we don't use the nat.gas pipeline infrastructure 100% of the time but, unlike lecky, we do have a massive infrastructure of gas pipelines already built - connecting North Sea to GB, connecting Norway to GB and connecting GB to mainland Europe. Seems a waste to not at least consider repurposing it given the amount of wind farms we intend to build in the N.Sea Map just showing GB's North Sea bits www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=cb3474a78df24139b1651908ff8c8975(from: www.nstauthority.co.uk/data-centre/nsta-open-data/ ) Bigger map just showing gas infrastructure (offshore and onshore). Lots of lines going into St.Fergus (handy once we crack floating wind farms and start building a load of those in the deeper waters off Shetland) but also into several places in England (from: www.entsog.eu/maps#transmission-capacity-map-2021)Attachment DeletedI do appreciate the 'embedding' concern and the fear that we might decide a 20% blend if safe and don't push on with heat pumps, etc. However, the scale of electricity grid transmission network that needs to be built and upgraded if we adopt a 'minimalist' approach to hydrogen will be extremely expensive and certainly nowhere near 100% utilised. I certainly expect a lot of the wind farms in N.Sea that are built from 2030 will be 'hybrid' (H2 and lecky) although possibly just H2... provided we can repurpose the pipelines at comparatively low cost to be 100% H2 (and we'll need to run more tests and trials before we have that info) If 2-5% then 20% are 'steps' and H2 blends are only a 'bridge' to 100% then I certainly think we need to investigate it as an option but I'm very aware that will eventually create an "OR" choice but until 2030 most of the decisions we need to make are "Yes, AND" and no matter what we eventually do with all the lecky we'll hopefully generate from floating offshore wind farms we do need to start the long process of rolling that out at scale (mostly from 2030). PS Some other links with updates on trials, next steps, etc. Lots of trials and testing to do be before we have the info we need to make the 'big' (2030 onwards) decisions. Energy Security Bill factsheet: Enabling the Hydrogen Village trialwww.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-security-bill-factsheets/energy-security-bill-factsheet-enabling-the-hydrogen-village-trialHydrogen Strategy update to the market: December 2022: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1123751/hydrogen-strategy-update-to-the-market-december-2022.pdf |
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Mr Poppy
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Post by Mr Poppy on Feb 14, 2023 12:02:11 GMT
c-a-r-f-r-e-w - seeing some of the replies you received on the main thread then it is perhaps a good thing you posted the hydrogen info on the main thread? It perhaps worth looking at the £££ for the very occasional times that we use H2 (instead of nat.gas) as fuel for a 'peaker plants' that might only be used for say 500hrs per year Firstly WHEN might future H2 peaker plants be used. Only once all the below are met (or can be seen via weather forecast to very likely be met) 1/ We're in a prolonged 'cold dunkelflaute' period 2/ So is most of NW Europe (and assuming they're no longer burning stores of 'cheap+dirty' coal or 'becoming cheaper again+bit less bad' nat.gas as we/they are now) 3/ We didn't build enough 'short-medium' storage (and to deal with the '500hrs' per year 'tail' then we shouldn't) and can forecast that we need to 'turn on the reserves' 4/ We have stored enough hydrogen (eg as a 'strategic reserve' to cover just such occasions - noting how much nat.gas EU stores and the fuss often made about why we closed down Rough, 'white' hydrogen being very rare, etc) 5/ Various 'demand shifting' measures have been implemented (and we obvs want a lot of that, no one has ever said otherwise) 6/ We've (NG) become very confident about how BEV owners will react NB The final point means that we'll likely err on the side of caution about how much 'peaker plant' capacity we need and quite possibly use them more often, unless we radically change the 'price' for electricity and/or consider 'rationing'. The best way to start 'panic charging' would be for folks to think we're going to run out, won't be able to recharge their BEV and change their charging behaviour when the weather forecasts says conditions #1-2 in the above are coming. So, maybe we need an average 'peaker plant' to operate for an average of 500hrs per year (a bit like some of the current peaker plants that we're trialling on H2 blends*) I'll let someone else suggest how much electricity is going to cost for those rare occasions and note at the price that will be charged (assuming a market system**) then the price and 'efficiency' of hydrogen (assuming we have it, see #4) isn't going to be a problem (and 'projections' for the much lower price of H2 have been posted in the past). The 'mean' peak price is going to be higher than a median price and our+our neighbours network is going to suffer from higher intermittency in the future so I reckon we'll maybe want up to 10GW of 'peaker plants' available - hopefully less and note we currently have about 28GW of CCGT capacity (which is obviously not used all the time - some is only used very rarely... as 'peaker plants'). I'd be happy if at that kind of ££billions annual revenue to 'repurpose' some of our CCGT fleet we then decide we'd better approve a lot more 'short-medium' term electricity storage using Revenue floor/cap mechanisms (similar to the contracts given to interconnectors, discussed previously). Quite a lot of "OR" choices to make but I very much doubt England will go 'cold Turkey' and scrap all our CCGTs to rely solely on temporal/geographic storage rather than decide to scrap most, but repurpose maybe 10GW? Of course if someone has a better idea, proven to work*** and deployable at massive scale (noting #3 and #5) then they can show their numbers. * Posted before but since the Guardian is a popular choice for some people then: www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/23/peak-power-hydrogen-injected-uk-station-centrica** Bit of a bun fight going on with our neighbours about that but on this occasion then Spain and France are on the same page and the 'vested interests' who have a lot of CCGT (and in some cases productive gas fields that earn them a lot of €€s) are in the wrong (IMO). Not just ol' Blighty that suffers from 'dither+delay' but in theory we should be able to move to 'long-term' contracts rather than allow nat.gas suppliers and CCGT operators to benefit from price spikes when the intermittency (and lack of storage) problem means we have no choice but to rely on CCGT (or worse, coal, which has become almost 'base load' once again in places like Germany) www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/need-for-speed-as-eu-launches-debate-on-electricity-market-reform/*** If better options (eg cheaper but less efficient battery storage) become available then great - we can speed up retiring (rather than repurposing) our CCGT fleet. Hope for the best BUT plan for a bit better than the climate delayers 'do nothing' worst. To fail to plan is to plan to fail. Etc...
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