[HN Gopher] Wind is main source of UK electricity for first time
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Wind is main source of UK electricity for first time
Author : ljf
Score : 178 points
Date : 2023-05-11 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| spants wrote:
| ....have a a 100% renewables tariff but my bills go up because of
| oil/gas prices. WTF. They also don't go down as quickly as they
| rise. The energy market is a giant con.
| Paianni wrote:
| Your bills go up because of supplies of all sources of energy
| not meeting demand as well.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Everybody who shops around has a 100% renewables tariff. What
| that tells you is that most UK consumers don't shop around.
| This was more remarkable _before_ prices spiked, because
| previous to that the actual price you paid was usually _much_
| lower if you shopped around, and yet they also threw in "100%
| renewable" because it costs basically nothing. Now the only
| price it makes sense to pay is the price the government
| guaranteed, so shopping around is pointless. Which is fair,
| that was the reality anyway, the companies "selling"
| electricity exist only on paper, they aren't laying cables, or
| building power stations [similar companies in the same
| corporate family might but it's not important here] they just
| have a spreadsheet basically.
|
| Anyway, the reason it's so cheap to give the few people who
| care 100% renewable electricity is that the people selling the
| electricity get effectively paper "It's renewable" tokens which
| they can sell separately from the electricity, they're called
| REGOs.
|
| So say I make 10GWh of wind energy today, I get 10GWh of REGOs.
| I sell my electricity for the same grid market price as the gas
| electricity or coal power+, or whatever, nobody cares
| electricity is fungible, and I also sell my REGOs for very
| little because they're almost worthless, to Very Green Energy
| Co.
|
| That huge industrial site near you which makes stuff (I know,
| they do exist in the UK they just don't employ many people any
| more). They consume 15GWh of electricity, they don't care where
| it comes from, maybe it's from me, maybe it isn't, electricity
| is fungible, who cares. They don't care about the REGOs, they
| just need electricity.
|
| People like you, in your house, consume 5GWh of electricity.
| Again, electricity is fungible, so who cares where it came
| from, maybe it's gas, _but_ Very Green Energy Co. have 10GWh of
| REGOs, so they can assure you that you 're all getting
| renewable energy.
|
| + Actually the Subsidy rules mean I might sort of sell for a
| different price, but we'll ignore that here, it doesn't clarify
| this situation at all.
|
| As a consumer you can't in the UK choose to be fully exposed to
| price fluctuations, which would completely destroy you. You
| _can_ choose to be partially exposed, it 's very expensive
| right now, but can be cheaper in some periods. It's a risk,
| take only if you understand it, Octopus Energy are the people
| to talk to.
| scrlk wrote:
| > As a consumer you can't in the UK choose to be fully
| exposed to price fluctuations, which would completely destroy
| you. You can choose to be partially exposed, it's very
| expensive right now, but can be cheaper in some periods. It's
| a risk, take only if you understand it, Octopus Energy are
| the people to talk to.
|
| FWIW for the last few months, the Octopus Energy Tracker
| tariff has been quite a decent chunk below the Ofgem capped
| unit rates.
|
| E.g. today's gas unit rate is -59% and electric unit rate is
| -42% below the Ofgem capped rates for my area.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Price is set at the margin. Take a look at this graph:
| https://www.economist.com/img/b/400/507/90/media-assets/imag...
|
| If demand decreases, the supply/demand intersection will switch
| to the next highest cost producer. Or the same thing could
| happen if the supply of cheap electricity increases.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Liz truss's oil company friends must be spinning.
| NeoTar wrote:
| Can we hook them up to a generator?
| andybak wrote:
| If only they could generate electricity from light drizzle.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Hydroelectric!
| scythe wrote:
| For all we lament the ban on nuclear power in Germany, we could
| certainly do to grouse a little more about the ban on onshore
| wind power in England.
| PTOB wrote:
| This might be a first for electricity, but it's the second time
| for power.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| How much one can project to use car battery as one of the major
| energy storage, given most car is actually sit rather than move.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I like that interactive graph for power production in Germany:
|
| https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/p...
| samwillis wrote:
| Not today though, sadly it's down at 1.77% right now:
|
| https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
|
| It's nearly 50% gas (cctg, combined-cycle gas turbine) at the
| moment.
|
| Nice to see solar at up at nearly 18%!
| sph wrote:
| Linked are our French neighbours, with 71% nuclear vs UK's 10%.
| Also 14% hydroelectric. Impressive!
|
| https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
| cbmuser wrote:
| France is almost green here:
|
| > https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR
|
| Yet, many people think that nuclear is not the way to go.
| pydry wrote:
| France got a 40 year head start. They werent even aiming to
| decarbonize their electricity, it was a side effect of
| chasing energy independence during the oil crisis.
|
| It was the way to go in 1970.
|
| People think nuclear isnt the way to go now because it's
| eye wateringly expensive. EDF's bankruptcy and the rapidly
| exploding costs and risks of dealing with France's aging
| plants confirms this. In spite of still spending hand over
| fist, the % of nuclear power is in decline in France
| (theyre officially hoping solar and wind can fill in the
| gaps).
| krupan wrote:
| I always hear it's so expensive, but compared to what?
| Just continuing to burn fossil fuels?
|
| Costs I see to solar and wind that I rarely see anyone
| mention are:
|
| What happens when you cover large deaths of land with
| solar and windmills? What does that do to the micro
| climates of those areas and what affects will that have
| on the global climate? What does that do to the wildlife
| (both plant and animal) long term?
|
| What are the true costs of the mines and manufacturing
| and transportation needed to build and maintain all of
| that?
|
| I grew up near hydroelectric dams and when I was young
| they were hailed as free renewable energy. By the time I
| hit highschool they were demonized for forever changing
| the river's ecosystem and nearly driving certain fish
| species to extinction. How does wind and solar not end up
| the same?
| otherme123 wrote:
| In fact, I've seen the "solar and wind cover lots of
| land" in every single post about energy that comes on HN
| or Reddit.
|
| The answer the "compared to what?" is everything. It is
| clean, continuous, it's compact and other benefits. But
| it's expensive. You need over 30 years (being optimist)
| to break even. You need government financial support
| because no bank would finance that. That's the reason
| only countries like France or China build them: the costs
| are partially hidden in the country budgets or public
| owned corporations balances.
|
| About hydro, that was a "unknown unknown" paraprhasing
| Rumsfeld. You can't avoid what currently seems our best
| bet to our current knowledge (wind and solar) because
| _maybe_ there 's an unknown unknown that could bit us
| hard in 40 years.
| 7952 wrote:
| The science of understanding environmental impact has
| improved hugely. We can actually know pretty well the
| answer to those kind of questions. And often the impact
| will be less damaging to the environment than what it is
| replacing (such as farmland).
| jacquesm wrote:
| 'Force de Frappe'
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It should also be noted that the French government went
| out of its way to gut the nuclear ecosystem for electoral
| reasons (F. Hollande hoping to get the Green vote some 15
| years ago). Only recently did they realize that we don't
| have nearly enough renewables and that, yes, if you don't
| maintain your plants, they do tend to degrade rather
| quickly. And presenting the sector as a dead-end, of
| course they're now missing qualified people to do the
| maintenace and the design of new plants.
|
| This is in additation to the weird scheme forcing EDF to
| sell cheap energy to their competitors.
| flakeoil wrote:
| But how many heat their homes with electricity? Many
| households in France (and the UK and elsewhere) are heating
| their homes with gas and the same goes for cooking. The share
| of electricity of the total energy consumption is also
| important to consider.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Could it be possible that they are talking about energy
| production instead of energy use and conveniently writing "UK's
| electricity" to add ambiguity?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63976805
| ljf wrote:
| True - but solar is doing well today considering how grey is
| it: https://grid.iamkate.com/
|
| 17.7% right now, and 7.7% for the full 24 hours of yesterday.
|
| Good to see coal at zero, but sad to see the amount of gas we
| still require.
|
| Great progress though!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's sunny here.
| ljf wrote:
| Maybe for you...
| https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast/uk Day of
| rain and flood alerts for much of the UK, with lower
| temperature than the previous 5 days.
| trebligdivad wrote:
| That is the challenge; we often have a few weeks with low wind
| so need those fossil fuel generation to fill the hole. And
| adding more turbines doesn't help the bad cases much.
|
| (I tend to like https://grid.iamkate.com/ now )
| samwillis wrote:
| Yes grid.iamkate.com is brilliant, and it has good insights
| into costs. However, I just like the 90s skeuomorphic design
| of gridwatch.templar.co.uk, makes me think of simpler times.
| melx wrote:
| "...we often have a few weeks with low wind..."
|
| Plenty of wind up North + Scotland - just no means to
| transport it over where the most demand is (the South).
| tialaramex wrote:
| Not always. Often, but not always, and that's the problem.
| This afternoon for example, even off the East Coast of
| Scotland the wind was about as brisk as a stroll with your
| elderly grandmother. If you've got 10GW of wind turbines,
| but they're running at 5% output, that's 500MW, which isn't
| nothing but it's not even enough for Scotland.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| But it was windy in Ireland, Portugal and the Baltic sea.
|
| https://www.windy.com/?100m,50.958,4.345,5
| sh4rks wrote:
| Wow that website loads surprisingly fast
| samwillis wrote:
| It's almost entirely static (or at least server rendered)
| even all the SVG graphs. I'm going to take punt and say
| it's a static pre-rendered flat file based on the response
| time.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| This is excellent news. Unfortunately I think the UK's public
| understanding of energy production as a whole (let alone clean
| energy) is far far worse than people online might realise. I'm
| from the UK.
|
| A few years ago I was on a train as it went past a wind farm
| within a very short distance. One person in a group of teenagers
| sat near me said something like "I can't believe they make the
| wind with them, how did they make wind before?".
|
| They were not joking. I can't remember how the rest of the group
| reacted but I think I remember none of them seemed particularly
| aware of what an absurd question that was.
| vixen99 wrote:
| And don't move on to numbers. Prior to the pandemic which had a
| devastating effect on school students' numeracy skills in the
| UK, it's reported millions of adults lack basic numeracy
| skills, with half of those of working age having the maths
| ability expected of a primary school child.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7725495/Half-adults...
| [deleted]
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It may well have just been a deadpan joke full of deadpan
| teenagers, the first of whom to laugh is deemed the least cool.
| pixelbreaker wrote:
| Convenient of the BBC to publish this after
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/10/uk-tops-...
| detritus wrote:
| It's the Guardian's raison d'etre to be critical of its country
| to the point of almost derogatory pessimism. I say this as a
| subscriber. Such analysis also fails to take into account the
| steps that are [necessarily] taken to mitigate the impact in
| protected areas and the fact that our land mass is pathetically
| small compared to other countries on that list.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Likely a total coincidence.
| gumballindie wrote:
| I'd take any content from the guardian with a pinch of salt. I
| am certain that most countries ranked below the uk dont have as
| many protected areas, therefore dont have this issue. While
| damaging the environment is bad so is the misinformation the
| guardian loves to spread around.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > I am certain
|
| Perhaps a cursory check is in order?
|
| The UK has 28% on-land protected areas:
| https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/country/GBR
|
| Venezuela 57%: https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/country/VEN
|
| Germany has 38%:
| https://www.protectedplanet.net/en/country/DEU
| gumballindie wrote:
| What about china, canada and nigeria? These protect at most
| half of what the uk does. Coincidentally germany is EU's
| largest co2 emitter and a source of highly polluting cars.
| While it doesnt extract coal or other resources from its
| own territory it has no issue in using such resources from
| other countries. So while in absolute numbers it may appear
| better, overall it's worse.
| bertil wrote:
| This is cause for celebration, but it shouldn't hide the reality
| that with more than 8 tons per person per year, the UK is in the
| top 5 most carbon-emitting countries. The country has significant
| agriculture or industry can justify such a highly polluting
| regime.
|
| In truth, the UK has horrendous insulation and burns a staggering
| amount of gas to heat houses made of pasta stainers and wet
| cardboard; people drive their ICE cars everywhere... There are
| simple measures that should have been mandatory a decade ago.
| Instead, the government is too busy arresting the scientists who
| can help --for the crime of standing there, no less-- and handing
| over subsidies to companies that are making record profits and
| opening more gas wells.
|
| Far too many Britons dismiss the idea that they'll be direct
| victims of climate unsettling. Every model I have seen highlights
| dire possibilities.
| cbmuser wrote:
| > This is cause for celebration, but it shouldn't hide the
| reality that with more than 8 tons per person per year, the UK
| is in the top 5 most carbon-emitting countries. The country has
| significant agriculture or industry can justify such a highly
| polluting regime.
|
| France has been proving for years how to decarbonize fast:
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-
| sector?t...
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-
| sector?y...
|
| > https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-
| sector?y...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Possibly it's just on mobile, but the French graph seems to
| be on a completely different scale to the other two. Their
| agricultural emissions are higher than the UK for example,
| but at least for me that is far from obvious from the graphs.
| fabrika wrote:
| > 8 tons per person per year, the UK is in the top 5 most
| carbon-emitting countries.
|
| Can you share your sources please? Here, for example, they
| claim that the UK produces 5.5 tons per person, not 8. Much
| less than, say, the US with 15 tons:
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
| megaman821 wrote:
| Almost all the difference is due to bigger homes and more
| miles driven in the US. Hopefully adoption of heat pumps and
| electric cars will send that number plummeting in the next
| decade.
| wepple wrote:
| This is a bit buried but important:
|
| > And electricity only accounts for 18% of the UK's total power
| needs. There are many demands for energy which electricity is not
| meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and transport.
| Currently the majority of UK homes use gas for their heating
|
| Perhaps we should start talking about what % of "energy" comes
| from renewables? Probably far more difficult to calculate and
| we'll never hit 100% I guess?
| trebligdivad wrote:
| The UK does have live gas usage data which includes the amount
| used for electricity and that going to other uses;
|
| https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/ (I don't know of a
| friendlier URL)
| kieranmaine wrote:
| The UK government publishes data on this:
|
| From https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-
| secti...
|
| Energy Trends March 2023 -
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
| Demoloto wrote:
| We don't need to solve everything now.
|
| The headline is still good and doesn't need to be more specific
| to be good news.
| krupan wrote:
| But the headline is very misleading. The article says a third
| of their electricity comes from wind. 1/3 is not what came to
| my mind when I read, "main source of electricity." And now
| knowing that electricity is only 18% of their total energy,
| that means wind isn't really doing much at all for them. So
| you can't actually look at this and say, "wow, the main
| source of electricity! Climate change is nearly conquered! We
| just need more a few more windmills!" Like many will think
| when they read this headline.
| Demoloto wrote:
| In which country do you live? At least in Germany heating
| with electricity is not that common.
|
| I do have separate expectations on electricty vs heating.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| One complication is that burning fuel is so much less efficient
| than electrical usage If you ignore that, then it radically
| changes the impression you get from these stats.
|
| The technical terms are "primary energy" (the amount of energy
| you put in as fuel) and "final energy" the actual useful stuff
| you want done.
|
| Cars moving to EV will reduce the need for "primary energy" by
| about 4x if the useful final energy remains flat. Similar for
| heat pumps for home heating.
| ThomPete wrote:
| The problem with that argument is that wind and solar needs
| backup from fossil fuel.
| dmbche wrote:
| Or a buffer system with batteries - there are a few options
| that are being researched!
| ericd wrote:
| There's always wood... those stoves have gotten
| surprisingly efficient, and no new carbon in the carbon
| cycle, it's basically a solar battery.
| doublesocket wrote:
| Except they produce horrendous small particle pollution,
| which even the most efficient stoves haven't solved.
|
| https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/14/wood-
| bur...
| Pxtl wrote:
| I am curious if wood-burning technology would be a
| suitable solution for rural settings where lower
| population density means particulates and smog are a
| lesser concern. Pellet stoves for heating, wood-gas for
| long-ranged vehicles. But while trees are a renewable
| fuel, they still mean converting carbon from a
| sequestered place (a tree) into being released into the
| air.
| rgmerk wrote:
| In a densely populated country like the UK, nobody lives
| in a remote enough setting for their particulate
| emissions to not be a concern.
|
| Unfortunately, it seems like middle-class Brits are
| completely obsessed with log fires, judging by British
| home renovation shows.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Probably because of British home renovation shows.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Trees are net neutral.
|
| Tree starts as a seed. Grows up and sequesters X tons of
| carbon. Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon. Tree
| is re-planted, grows up, sequesters X tons of carbon.
| Tree is burned, releases X tons of carbon.
|
| If everything in the world right now was wood powered, we
| would not have a global warming problem. We would have
| massive tree farms sequestering the same amount of carbon
| we are releasing. (We might have a soot and particle
| problem, but that's another story).
|
| The problem with oil and coal, is we have no way to make
| more. We burn oil and release carbon.. how are we making
| more oil and pumping back underground to sequester that
| carbon?
| TravelPiglet wrote:
| Discounting all the power consumed planting, growing,
| cutting down and delivery of the logs to the power
| generator.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Very true, but we likely couldn't have that amount of
| farmland for what we currently just pull out of earth
| with millions of years of sequestring.. not sure if
| getting rid of most of the livestock needs would free
| enough ("Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global
| agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the
| world's supply of calories").. are there any calculations
| how many tree farms we'd need besides a huge
| solar/wind/geothermal mix?
| 7952 wrote:
| We don't have a way to make trees quickly enough. In the
| timespans relevant to climate change it is far from
| neutral.
| ericd wrote:
| It might be useful to keep in mind that culling trees
| means that a forest that was in steady state and pulling
| very little net carbon can go back into more active
| growth. But I suppose that the total carbon sequestered
| would be less with a decrease in the average age of the
| trees.
| ericd wrote:
| Looking at the report that that was based on (page xiv on
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploa
| ds/... ), it looks like the efficient stoves are at about
| 1/15-1/10 the open fire amount. Those "450x" numbers are
| compared to methane, which is close to zero particulate,
| so it's a little misleading. But burning methane means
| you're adding prehistoric carbon to the atmosphere.
|
| I'm guessing that if all the open fires were instead "low
| particulate" stoves, then it wouldn't be a concern
| compared to PM2.5 generation from vehicles.
|
| I don't see a perfect here until we all have heat pumps
| driven by nuclear.
| ericd wrote:
| This is kind of interesting:
| https://www.bts.gov/content/estimated-national-average-
| vehic...
|
| Exhaust particulate per mile has plummeted over the past
| couple of decades! By comparison, EPA stoves put out a
| couple grams of particulate per hour.
|
| But, it seems like it's not apples to apples, because
| brake dust is metal dust, whereas wood smoke tends to be
| mostly organic compounds. Maybe the body is better at
| dealing with organic wood smoke compounds? We've
| certainly been heavily exposed over many generations.
|
| Also, seems like there are some efforts to make
| electrostatic filters for fine particulate in flue gas:
| https://enervex.com/systems/particle-filter-system-for-
| stove...
| ljf wrote:
| Wind and solar need back up yes - but it doesn't have to be
| from fossil fuel. Currently that is often the cheapest and
| quickest - but batteries and other energy storage are fast
| becoming economical. We are already using less non-
| renewables each year.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Exactly - and any parts that are from fossil fuel can be
| replaced over time.
|
| That fossil fuel generation is centralised so easier to
| mitigate and not where the usage is happening (ie in our
| towns and cities).
| belorn wrote:
| > We are already using less non-renewables each year.
|
| While the UK may be using less non-renewables, they are
| paying more in total every year for fossil fuels.
|
| Articles like this one (https://www.theguardian.com/envir
| onment/2023/mar/09/fossil-f...) shows a rather dark
| trend.
|
| Some key quotes: _From 2020 to 2021 they (fossil fuels)
| received an extra PS1bn support from the government
| compared with 2020, a 10.7% increase_
|
| _In 2021, support for fossil fuel extraction rose by 20%
| to nearly PS2bn._
|
| Using fossil fuels as reserve energy is only getting more
| and more expensive.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Our gov is in the pocket of oil companies, they are
| perfectly happy for the rest of us to foot the bill for
| these record profits.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Fast becoming economical? How fast? Current cost for
| battery storage I've seen quoted (open to correction) is
| around $600K per MWh. For every MW of wind or solar power
| that would be $120 million. Wind farms at around $1.5
| million per MW ie., around 80 times that. And are there
| that numbers of batteries available? Currently dependent
| on availability of cobalt, lithium,manganese and nickel
| with China as the main supplier of these and world's
| largest producer of graphite, the primary anode material
| for Li-ion batteries.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Batteries are much cheaper today than they were
| yesterday, and it's a clear push downward over time.
|
| China being the "main supplier" has more to do with them
| undercutting everyone else in refining by not paying
| attention enough to their environment, it isn't
| sustainable. All of these raw materials have ample
| reserves outside of China. Some of battery economy comes
| from that, but not most of it.
|
| There are other ways to store energy than batteries. The
| Pacific Northwest and even California has a lot of pumped
| storage hydro capacity. Hydro is a renewable that can be
| used on demand, and can be combined with other renewables
| to move water back up to reservoirs.
| twelve40 wrote:
| pumped storage hydro, while really cool, are absolutely
| massive and complicated multibillion dollar
| infrastructure projects (which California lately has not
| been particularly famous for)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| They were built decades ago, so not a big problem now.
| The west has lots of places to build these things, it
| doesn't work out east nor probably in the UK outside of
| maybe Scotland.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| China is world leading on renewable production and
| installation, EVs and EV busses, Lithium, LFP and Sodium
| battery production, Hydro, HVDC, nuclear, high speed rail
| and a bunch of other stuff.
|
| It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty
| stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's
| because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig
| out of the ground and so their government hasn't been
| totally captured by fossil fuel interests.
|
| The west actively abdicated their early lead on all these
| technologies.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > It's not just a case of them being happy to dig nasty
| stuff out of the ground without care. If anything it's
| because they lack a specific type of nasty stuff to dig
| out of the ground and so their government hasn't been
| totally captured by fossil fuel interests.
|
| China still produces plenty of coal, so I'm not sure what
| your point is. I guess you mean oil, and their move into
| EVs totally makes sense from that context even if they
| can get it cheaply from Iran and Russia these days.
|
| But the cost is huge. Even the Chinese central government
| is pragmatic enough to admit that they have a huge
| unsustainable problem; e.g.
| https://time.com/6258519/china-lithium-mining-
| environmental-...
|
| > The crackdown in Yichun, Jiangxi province, follows a
| local lithium frenzy over the past year as miners raced
| to feed rampant demand for the battery material -- and to
| benefit from record global prices. Now, they're grappling
| with a close-up inspection by environment officials sent
| from Beijing.
|
| You can tour the Chinese countryside and find tons of
| places like this.
|
| > The west actively abdicated their early lead on all
| these technologies.
|
| The west could not keep up Chinese refiners because
| Chinese refiners have little regard for their
| environment. As the Chinese central government cracks
| down and the west worries more about their resource
| security, the Chinese will simply lose that advantage.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > around $600K per MWh
|
| So if enough solar gets built that the electricity price
| falls to near zero every day, batteries are now cheaper
| than natural gas?
|
| That's a very impactful change that I honestly didn't see
| coming.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Even at a domestic scale you can install solar and
| batteries for your household/heating/car usage --
| assuming you have the roof space -- be self sufficent 10
| months a year, and have a payack time of about 12 years
| last time I looked.
|
| The other 2 months a year sure, you've got either grid
| power or an off grid oil/gas generator.
| ben_w wrote:
| "$600K per MWh" sounds like the cost per peak (initial)
| storage capacity; as the batteries can be recharged
| something like six thousand times before wearing down to
| half capacity, that's more like adding $100 per MWh
| ($0.1/kWh) if you throw them out at that point or $50 per
| MWh (5C//kWh) if they keep wearing down at the same rate
| until they're negligible.
|
| > And are there that numbers of batteries available
|
| Not yet -- but there are enough people investing in each
| stage of mining, processing, and making battery
| factories, that this is probably not going to be an
| issue.
|
| > Currently dependent on availability of cobalt,
| lithium,manganese and nickel with China as the main
| supplier of these and world's largest producer of
| graphite, the primary anode material for Li-ion
| batteries.
|
| Technically, I think, yes; but that's just where we are
| today rather than a fundamental property of world
| geography.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Batteries are currently following their own version of
| Moore's law, though they double in quality (or halve in
| price) every 48 instead of every 18 months. Of course,
| that isn't a trend that can continue forever, but it
| doesn't need too many more iterations to be the only game
| in town.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| Storage will probably use sodium-ion batteries in the
| future. Those have none of the four elements you
| mentioned.
| 7952 wrote:
| I think you are assuming that turbines would be paired
| with a certain number of batteries and taken together
| that would provide continuous power. But that is just not
| how a grid works or how the economics work. Battery
| storage is economical because you can buy cheap and sell
| high. And a system with high renewables penetration will
| see some very high prices for a few hours or days per
| month and cheap prices the rest of the time. That is
| ideal for battery storage, particularly as renewables
| gets cheaper.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 8minute energy is building solar plants with overnight
| battery backup for 4 cents/kWh.
|
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200423005264/en/
| 8mi...
| pydry wrote:
| Snowy 2 is $6 billion for 350GWh, so $17k per MWh.
|
| At this point somebody usually argues that you can only
| do that in Australia and the geography for pumped storage
| is super rare (I call it the "theres a shortage of up"
| fallacy), and I have to cite the same study proving that
| it's actually not.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I would go the contrarian way and suggest Snowy 2 is one
| of several examples that demonstrate that spending the
| same amount of money on more renewable generation and
| some battery storage would provide more reliable power
| for less money.
|
| Which makes the geography question moot. But most
| people's intuitions on renewables/battery are years out
| of date so it's confusing to respond to their sarcastic
| "are we just going to build lots of batteries, LOL" with
| "actually yes that's going to be sensible for 80% of the
| world's population".
|
| edit: long article comparing Snowy to more solar plus
| batteries:
|
| https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/snowy-2-vs-battery-
| stora...
| pydry wrote:
| That's a weird article. It simultaneously argues that
| between batteries and snowy 2 there is no clear winner,
| that snowy 2 is a white elephant and that:
|
| >Hornsdale Power Reserve: $690 per kilowatt-hour of
| storage capacity. If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in at $10
| billion, its cost per kilowatt of power will be $5,000,
| which is 5.6 times more than Hornsdale. But its cost per
| kilowatt-hour of storage capacity is much lower no matter
| if you think $20, $29, or $250 is appropriate.
|
| In other words in terms of storing a large volume of
| energy, cheaply, at high efficiency, pumped storage blows
| everything else out of the metaphorical water - between
| 3x and 34.5x cheaper!
|
| I would say that batteries and large scale pumped storage
| complement each other. I don't agree that Australia will
| regret building it.
| robocat wrote:
| That article is completely mad. But it does admit the
| following: The main drawbacks [of battery
| storage] are: At the moment, it has a much higher cost
| per kilowatt-hour of storage capacity. Much shorter
| lifespan. If we consider Snowy Hydro 2's
| maximum possible energy storage capacity, it comes to
| only $20 to $29 per kilowatt-hour $5,000
| [buys] 5.16 kilowatt-hours of Hornsdale storage
|
| That is, Snowy Hydro is an order of magnitude cheaper for
| storage.
|
| The article continuously harps on about kW comparisons,
| and ignores comparing kWh storage: foolish for an article
| supposedly about electricity storage. For example the
| article makes the inane point: "If Snowy Hydro 2 comes in
| at $10 billion, its cost per kilowatt of power output
| comes to... $5,000 per kilowatt. That's not cheap. Gas
| generation normally comes to under $1,000 per kilowatt.",
| and again "Snowy 2 Vs. Hornsdale: Assuming Snowy Hydro 2
| costs $5,000 per kilowatt of power output, for that cost,
| we could instead buy . . .".
|
| Utter rubbish.
| [deleted]
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It's not really a problem, even just moving all fossil
| fuels from heating and transport and using it in electrical
| generation gets you a 4x gain, from which you lose about
| 50-60% when turning it to electricity, so still ahead by
| about 2x even before you start adding in the wind and
| solar.
|
| Plus we already built all that storage for gas and oil,
| might as well use it as part of the transition.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > from which you lose about 50-60% when turning it to
| electricity
|
| Does this include transmission losses? I think they
| average 10% for UK electricity.
| [deleted]
| ljf wrote:
| Figure to back this up for anyone wondering: 9% last
| year:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/550583/electricity-
| losse...
|
| Quote: Every year, the United Kingdom loses a share of
| generated electricity through transmission. In 2021,
| transmission losses amounted to around 25 terawatt-hours,
| or approximately nine percent of the electricity supplied
| in the UK that year. Transmission losses stood above 30
| terawatt-hours in the early 2000's.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yes it does. A big gas plant is say about 44% efficient
| (i.e. 56% lost as heat) so 10% of that electricity
| getting lost in wires takes you down to 40% of the
| original input energy.
|
| Heat pumps don't qualify for EU Renewable heat incentives
| if they get less than 2.5 SFP (COP averaged over the
| year's seasons).
| tialaramex wrote:
| You're possibly thinking of an Open Cycle gas turbine,
| where we burn gas, it spins the turbine, and the hot
| exhaust is lost energy. The UK has a negligible amount of
| this in electricity production and obviously with higher
| fuel prices there's ever less reason to use that small
| capacity. The 30GW or so gas turbine electricity in the
| UK is Combined Cycle, so the exhaust heat runs a
| secondary steam turbine bringing them up past 50%
| efficiency.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Well, the storage bit we are a bit bad at, the Tories
| didn't renew one of the biggest facilities after it
| closed down which was inconvenient during the Russia
| thing.
| makomk wrote:
| That gas storage facility got closed down because it
| didn't make economic sense to operate any more - the big
| summer-winter price swings that made it viable had ceased
| to exist (possibly because more widespread use of gas for
| electricity generation caused more gas usage in summer,
| I'm not sure) and it had physical limitations on how fast
| gas could be injected and extracted that meant smoothing
| over those seasonal changes was all it was really useful
| for. It still didn't even make sense during the whole
| Russia thing.
|
| Over in mainland Europe, gas storage was vital to dealing
| with Russia cutting off supplies because their gas
| infrastructure was physically incapable of importing gas
| from non-Russian sources fast enough to keep up with
| winter demand (if I remember rightly, even if they cut
| back massively on non-essential gas usage). So they
| basically needed full gas storage just to survive the
| winter, and of course Russia had made sure it was emptied
| out the winter before. The UK didn't have this
| limitation. This need to fill gas storage caused huge
| problems - global gas demand was already quite high and
| it takes a long time for supplies to be redirected and
| high-energy industries to reduce usage, so prices spiked
| sky-high at first.
|
| As a result, mainland Europe ended up filling its gas
| storage at close to the all-time-high price and emptying
| it out when prices were much lower, effectively buying
| high and selling low funded by extra charges on people's
| energy bills with the high prices being more or less a
| direct consequence of the fact that they couldn't just
| put off buying their gas until winter. If the UK
| government had done the same, the press here would never
| have shut up about how much money they "wasted" on it.
| 7952 wrote:
| Also our sources of gas are relatively diverse and secure
| compared to some main land countries. The UK maintained
| supply just fine, the problem was price. And arguably
| that had more to do with lack of nuclear capacity in
| France.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Additionally with an ever improving grid in Europe local
| variables such as weather or seasons be can also
| partially balanced.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, another story covering this had interconnects as
| just below gas in rank order of usage. Also, despite that
| large import, UK was a net exporter for the first time in
| a while last year since France was having issues with its
| nuclear fleet.
| stuaxo wrote:
| We need to get more interconnects between Scotland and
| England.
|
| They are building them, but in the sea which could be
| interesting with an annoyed Russia.
|
| Wind farms were built at sea, on the surface because of
| nimbyism on land, but being ever cynical I think the real
| reason was to push the cost and difficulty up giving oil
| companies more time.
|
| Later, during Liz Truss's short and disasterous tenure,
| just as solar panels were getting very cheap, even very
| low quality farm land was reclassified as a strategic
| asset for food to be grown on and no solar.
|
| In what was possibly a distraction wind was now to be
| allowed on land (of course it's much less convenient to
| put up a wind turbine than to get some very cheap solar
| panels and that's before all the nimby groups, some of
| which get dark money funding).
| Pxtl wrote:
| With what argument? Parent post was talking about measuring
| energy needs and how efficiency of consumption works, not
| wind and solar. Did you mean to reply to a different post?
| [deleted]
| slashdev wrote:
| When it comes to usage in heating, burning fuel is as
| efficient as it gets. All the chemical energy (available in
| that oxidation reaction) is converted to heat. Electricity
| involves more overheads in generation and transmission.
| yrro wrote:
| Some of that heat goes up the chimney. A good quality log
| burner, used correctly (and I believe that most people who
| use log burners have _no effing clue how to do so_ ) is at
| best 60-80% efficient.
|
| Plus you have to account for the energy used to grow,
| harvest, season & transport the wood, even before you throw
| 20-40% of it away when you actually burn the damn stuff!
| nindalf wrote:
| I think GP might be referring to a gas burning boiler.
| yrro wrote:
| Same principle just with a different efficiency number. I
| doubt any but a fraction of combi boilers are 98%
| efficient: most people run them too hot, so they aren't
| able to recover sufficient energy to reach that goal. But
| in any case, you now have to account for installing and
| maintaining the gas network, refining the oil into gas,
| shipping the oil to the refinery, extracting the oil in
| the first place, exploring for the oil in the first
| place, and so on.
|
| It's far more efficient to burn that fuel to move
| existing energy from one place (outside) to another
| (inside)... you can turn 1J of fuel into 4J of heating if
| you're lucky!
| nindalf wrote:
| Burning fuel is pretty efficient, until you realise that
| heat pumps have an efficiency greater than 1. So a heat
| pump driven by electricity uses less energy than burning
| fuel in a boiler. If the electricity is renewable, so much
| the better.
| krupan wrote:
| Heat pumps, however, do not work in all climates
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| The range of climates that heat pumps work in has
| expanded a lot in recent years. Some modern heat pumps
| work efficiently down to -20C or lower.
| proto_lambda wrote:
| I'd be surprised if there was anywhere in the UK where
| modern low-temperature heat pumps regularly don't work.
| diordiderot wrote:
| > burning fuel is as efficient as it gets
|
| Considering this is false as many commenters have
| mentioned, do you feel any obligation to edit or delete
| your comment?
| tpoacher wrote:
| Efficiency is only one aspect of the equation.
|
| Storage is another one. As is multiplicity of energy inputs.
|
| I still have no idea why nobody uses heat reservoirs for
| shower hot water, like they do in the Mediterranean. (it's
| not a sun coverage problem, because contrary to popular
| anecdotes, the UK actually gets quite decent sun coverage a
| lot of the time)
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| I heard (I know, I know) that solar hot water didn't count
| towards Kyoto Protocol "credits" so it wasn't promoted, in
| favour of solar photovoltaic, which did.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What is a heat reservoir for the shower, and what does it
| have to do with the sun? I'm Googling the term and all I'm
| finding is standard hot water storage tanks [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_water_storage_tank
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_heating
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks. That's wild, never heard of them before.
|
| Now I am indeed curious what the minimum amount of
| sunlight required is. I'm sure the angle of the sun is
| just as important as the duration, on top of weather and
| seasons and temperatures.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Main reason is that gas was heavily subsidised and promoted
| for a bit when they were pumping it from the North Sea.
|
| That was obviously short term stupidity at the time, but
| has only become more so with hindsight.
|
| Compare with Norway that also has North Sea gas, but
| heavily pushed heat pumps and is a market leader.
| makomk wrote:
| That's not obvious at all. At the time that the UK
| switched to gas, Norway was pushing resistive electrical
| heating and not heat pumps - and that only worked for
| them because nearly all of their electricity came from
| hydroelectric generation. The push for heat pumps is much
| more recent, with only a few thousand households in
| Norway having heat pumps as recently as 2005. The UK
| doesn't have the geography for that kind of large-scale
| hydroelectric, and there's a huge efficiency and
| equipment cost to using resistive electric heating rather
| than burning fossil fuels directly when your electricity
| has to be generated from fossil fuels. Also, the coal
| that cheap natural gas largely replaced in the UK was
| directly killing a bunch of people by causing pretty
| nasty pollution.
|
| In general, a lot of comparisons with other countries
| that get published in the British press are like this -
| they ignore important differences between the UK and
| those countries or problems and costs associated with
| what they're doing because the goal is to make it seem
| like there were easy options that the UK missed out on
| because our government is evil, not to actually help
| people understand the world.
| tbjgolden wrote:
| True - and fair point on the UK comparisons.
|
| Though of course, sometimes there are easy options that
| the UK missed out on because they are inept and
| apathetic, which would vindicate some of those
| comparisons to some extent.
| nindalf wrote:
| > as recently as 2005
|
| That's 18 years ago. Not exactly recent.
| [deleted]
| contravariant wrote:
| While that's true you do need to take into account the
| limited efficiency of power plants as well, especially when
| it comes to heating.
|
| Simply burning gas to generate heat is basically 100%
| efficient, if you convert it to electricity first you'd need
| a COP of at least 1.7 to recover the energy lost while
| generating the electricity.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A good heat pump has a COP of 4.
| dahfizz wrote:
| In ideal conditions. Even good heat pumps with COP >=4
| will drop below 2 when it's cold out
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| If it's very cold, yes. But the average should still be
| well above 3:
|
| > Similarly, in Finland, tests of air-to-air heat pump
| systems from various manufacturers resulted in COPs of 3
| at -10C and 2 at -20C.
|
| Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-the-
| energy-crisis...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Judging by how much insulation the typical English house
| has, it doesn't get cold there.
| stoobs wrote:
| Not as cold as the Nordics, sure, but depending on
| cycles, it can drop a few degrees below freezing between
| November - March
|
| The main issue is that homes were designed to trap and
| keep heat in, rather than true insulation, which means
| that as summers get warmer, our homes turn into ovens,
| with no way to cool them down properly. Case in point
| last summer with UK temps hitting 40C and above for a few
| weeks.
|
| Government are trying to kill off the old gas boilers
| though, with heat pumps being pushed very heavily, not
| sure if they're enforcing it yet or not though.
| Apparently they're also looking at switching out natural
| gas for a hydrogen mix, but that means having to rework a
| lot of the piping/valves as hydrogen needs much higher
| standards than currently applied.
| HPsquared wrote:
| With the high summer temperatures (likely to rise further
| with climate change), I wonder why more people aren't
| fitting forced air heating/cooling. That would kill two
| birds with one stone. Even just a simple mini-split
| system.
| vidarh wrote:
| The British seems to like to suffer in the heat. Every
| summer colleagues laugh at me for having AC units, and
| every summer they start loudly complaining about how hot
| it is a week or two later.
| tbjgolden wrote:
| Yeah, had to get clued up on this for new house in
| London. A few points:
|
| 1. It is unlikely that hydrogen will be pushed heavily by
| the UK gov because of the expensive pipe rework. The
| reason they're pushing hard for heat pumps is because of
| the Glasgow Climate Pact; they're on the hook to reduce
| carbon emissions or pay heavy fines. To that extent,
| subsidising heat pumps becomes financially less unviable
| for them than doing nothing.
|
| 2. Regarding the heat in summer; the houses insulate well
| but don't do much to prevent heat coming in from the
| windows during summer. There are some pretty useful half-
| fixes; mvhrs+insulation, or recessed
| windows/overhangs/sunshades massively aid this. For those
| who rent that's not much help though :(
| vidarh wrote:
| Being from Norway but living in the UK: The average UK
| house is not built for UK temperatures... Insulation here
| is a bad joke, at least in older housing.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| In the most populated regions of the UK it doesn't
| realistically go below -5c basically ever.
|
| The average minimum temperature in the winter months in
| London is 3c above freezing.
| EwanToo wrote:
| London had a -8C night earlier this year
|
| https://www.mylondon.news/weather/london-weather-coldest-
| nig...
| sgt101 wrote:
| as noted in the article - a once in 12 ish year event.
| So, 1/4000...
| nindalf wrote:
| Yeah we'll be fine unless extreme weather events become
| more common.
| lnsru wrote:
| But then it's nasty blackout. Somebody still needs to
| design electricity grid for one of these very rare
| events.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Burn some fossil fuels from a "national emergency
| reserve". Perfect is the enemy of good.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| I'd just whack the wood burner on. It makes sense for
| people to have a backup.
| vidarh wrote:
| A whole lot of other electricity demands drop massively
| at night, so while it needs to be planned for, the
| coldest nighttime period is also the time the electricity
| grid currently sees the lowest demand.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I live in a relatively cold place and my heat pump
| extract heat from the ground. It's worth it where it's
| cold.
| fatfingerd wrote:
| I did a double take on that claim about outdoor
| temperatures as I've always assumed people were talking
| about ground source heat pumps.
| contravariant wrote:
| In practice or is that what the manufacturers claim?
|
| Either way you should take into account you lose about
| 40% of that by simply converting the fuel to electricity,
| which is kind of the opposite of what happens when moving
| from combustion engines to electromechanical engines.
| Certhas wrote:
| Depends on operating regime, but newly installed pumps
| typically are used in a way that gets close to 3.
|
| You can generate electricity with a gas power plant at
| 50%, use that to operate heat pumps, and you will warm
| your house more than directly burning the gas.
|
| Or put another way, in a gas dominated grid, switching
| from gas heating to heat pumps saves carbon gas
| emissions.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| With the most common high-temperature hydronic heating,
| it's closer to 80% efficiency when running steady-state,
| and lower than that as the duty cycle decreases (if the
| system is oversized or for the 99% of the time you're not
| at the design temp). The remaining energy escapes as hot,
| uncondensed flue gases. Modulating/condensing boilers can
| get up to like 95% if you're running with ~100-120F water
| temperatures, but at that point you can also readily run
| with an air-to-water heat pump.
| Certhas wrote:
| No need to guess... If you watch about any talk on climate
| change mitigation it will start with a chart that shows which
| sectors use which amount of energy.
|
| It's literally the introduction of the IPCC Report WG3 Report
| on energy:
|
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
|
| Just check out the first figures.
|
| Decarbonization of energy use in different sectors will require
| different technologies, but electricity is key. ENTSOE expects
| the amount of energy use that is directly electric to rise to
| up to 50% by 2050 for Europe:
|
| https://2022.entsos-tyndp-scenarios.eu/scenario-results/#dem...
|
| We are talking so much about decarbonizing the electric grid
| because that's the easy part, but also because its the
| foundation for what must come afterwards.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >There are many demands for energy which electricity is not
| meeting, such as heating our homes, manufacturing and
| transport.
|
| Aka - the big ones.
| detritus wrote:
| Quite. I've tired of pointing out to overly-optimistic
| responses on the internet about how well countries are doing in
| this regard, when if you look at the overall energy usage pie-
| chart, there's a big chunk covering industry and transportation
| that's a looong way off yet from being covered by renewables.
|
| Not that I wish to be pessimistic, rather realistic.
| pydry wrote:
| If electricity prices stay low other forms of energy will
| migrate.
|
| Already people in the UK are hooking up electric cars and
| heat pumps to automated tariffs that charge/heat depending on
| the availability of cheap power (i.e. wind/sun availability).
|
| The important thing is to double down on what is already
| working.
| krupan wrote:
| Yes, if it gets cheaper people will migrate to electricity
| and then wind will not be able to be the "main" source of
| electricity anymore. They'll have to burn more coal or gas.
| Yay?
| pydry wrote:
| Or they'll just keep building solar, wind and power
| cables to keep up with the increased demand from this
| transition.
|
| This would be a good thing.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| I heard, just the other day, about someone (in the UK)
| using their Tesla to make money by buying cheap (night-
| time) power and selling it back during high-rate times, and
| I was moved to wonder... Does this "profit" making scheme
| still work when you take into account the lifespan of the
| Tesla's batteries -- I'd guess they're good for something
| like 4000 cycles, and then you're facing the cost of
| replacement. I have my doubts whether it really works out,
| but lack the data.
|
| Anyone with insight?
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I don't have the numbers with me, but I've seen
| convincing discussions that it _can_ work with some
| caveats. The main issue being that spot prices are
| extremely volatile, so it 's possible for a player at the
| utility space to get very high prices for electricity for
| very short times. But daytime-pricing schemes, while they
| follow the general trends of this volatility, insulate
| the consumer from the worst of this volatility enough
| that simply arbitraging the difference probably won't pay
| for the wear on a Tesla. But a fleet of Teslas paying the
| same rates as the utilities could make it a profitable
| enterprise.
|
| Reading between the lines of Tesla investor meetings it
| sounds as though they have the software but haven't
| implemented it because it would hurt their brand as a
| luxury good.
| reedf1 wrote:
| 100% of the renewable capacity is backed by the equivalent
| capacity for natural gas. This is fine it it is intended, and
| people understand that intermittent renewables are inexorably
| linked to natural gas. At least for the time being.
|
| The alternative is nuclear - which has no such requirement, and
| is consistent baseline capacity.
| konschubert wrote:
| You can make hydrogen and methane from electricity and use that
| to replenish the gas storage.
|
| Gas peaker plants are still required, yes. But they will need
| to run much less frequently than today.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > You can make hydrogen and methane from electricity and use
| that to replenish the gas storage.
|
| so, sort of like perpetual motion?
| signaturefish wrote:
| No, but I see what you mean. Generating hydrogen and
| methane using electricity will probably never be that
| efficient, but if you have spare power then using it to get
| 60% of its energy back again in the form of future
| burnables may still be worth it (percentage guessed and
| probably optimistic).
| dmbche wrote:
| No - what is being explained is that you need constant
| electricity, and wind and solar are not constant, so you
| need a way to skim the "extra" energy when it's made, and
| to being it back in the system when there's no wind/sun -
| by for example using the extra energy to make hydrogen gas
| and bringing that back in the system at night
| pydry wrote:
| People (nuclear advocates usually), like to pretend that
| the only way to deal with this is an unrealistic number
| of expensive lithium batteries or fossil fuels but there
| is also:
|
| * Smart meters that charge cars/turn on heat pump storage
| when electricity is plentiful. Already being done. German
| aluminum smelting ( _heavy_ electricity user) is dialed
| up and down depending on live electricity prices.
|
| * Pumped storage. Coire glass will built soon in the UK -
| pumping out a max of 1.5GW, snowy 2 in Australia will
| store _350GWh_ - at the _dirt_ cheap price of $6 billion.
| 90% efficient. Published studies confirm that, unlike for
| dams, the geography for this is very plentiful (contrary
| to nuclear lobby propaganda which routinely and
| dishonestly argues the exact opposite).
|
| * Hydrogen/windgas - only about 50% efficient round trip
| but it's easy to store hundreds of GWhs for months, so
| will be useful to create seasonal storage when, one day
| (god willing) we get to the point where overbuilt wind
| and solar manages to supply 100% of current demand and
| _large_ pumped storage /battery installations are full
| and we want seasonal storage for the unshiftable demand
| during the odd windless and dark weeks.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > People (nuclear advocates usually), like to pretend
| that
|
| When is this nonsensical tribalism going to end? Where
| are all the non-tribal people who are evaluating this
| stuff on facts and information alone? Why do we hear from
| the self-disqualifying tribalists?
|
| Rant over. You're right - if we all buy cars with giant
| lithium batteries in then we need to buy fewer non-car
| lithium batteries.
|
| And yes, pumped storage exists, and more will exist, but
| we have to decide how many point-solutions we need to
| replace consistent generation.
|
| > Hydrogen/windgas - only about 50% efficient round trip
|
| Moving electricity (at least in the UK) is only 90% [0]
| efficient on transmission alone. So, getting the power to
| the generation, which then becomes hydrogen at 50%
| capacity, to later burn at a certain efficiency and turn
| into electricity that gets transmitted at 90% efficiency,
| feels wrong. Unless your "round trip" figure includes the
| transmission losses, but then 50% feels too high to be
| doing that.
|
| [0]
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/550583/electricity-
| losse...
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| At the end of the day, intermittent renewables and
| nuclear are both low-externality energy sources chasing
| the same public funding. Neither competes with high-
| externality energy sources except in rare situations, and
| since the public purse isn't infinite they're in
| competition with each other.
|
| So it'll probably be a while. FWIW, I'm on the
| intermittent renewables camp, wish there was more
| civility in the debate, recognize the worst behavior
| comes from my side of the aisle and still think pro-
| nuclear arguments are their own worst enemies.
| pydry wrote:
| >When is this nonsensical tribalism going to end? Where
| are all the non-tribal people who are evaluating this
| stuff on facts and information alone? Why do we hear from
| the self-disqualifying tribalists?
|
| Remember when anthropogenic global warming denial was
| mainstream? For MANY MANY years after the scientific
| evidence was completely undeniable.
|
| Appeals to moderation were _everywhere_. The media would
| routinely play deniers with the scientific credentials of
| a ferret against actual scientists to maintain the
| appearance of balance and neutrality and claim it was an
| even debate.
|
| Believers in global warming got filed into a tribe (still
| are, in many ways) hence they got "instant
| disqualification" from appeal-to-moderates like yourself
| who craved the fake balance the media served up.
|
| Those people were almost as bad as the denialists. They
| werent at _all_ interested in the truth - just some kind
| of social "balance" or harmony.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The only logical fallacy is you thinking that people
| changing their minds as more evidence came along is now a
| reason to attack people who disagree with you on any
| topic now. I'm not appealing to moderates, or to anyone.
|
| I'm appealing to reason, as opposed to tribalism. You are
| citing the hurt of a tribe you have decided exists as a
| group to hurt, and justifying talking badly to other
| people who you imagine are in another tribe is, well,
| tribalism. Just stop and we can all have a useful
| discussion.
| mitigating wrote:
| The parent said "For MANY MANY years after the scientific
| evidence was completely undeniable". Maybe he's saying
| that both sides aren't equally valid and taking their
| opinions as soon is a waste of resources.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm not saying both sides are valid, nor about taking
| opinions. Where are you getting this?
|
| I'm saying stop thinking in terms of sides, and just
| present reasoned positions. Why is this so hard to grasp?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| And the double irony is that all those things actively
| help make nuclear grids more efficient and so have been
| done for decades with nuclear power in France.
| scythe wrote:
| >Published studies confirm that, unlike for dams, the
| geography for this is very plentiful (contrary to nuclear
| lobby propaganda which routinely and dishonestly argues
| the exact opposite).
|
| Could you please link this research? I have yet to find a
| thorough evaluation of pumped hydro resource availability
| anywhere.
| pydry wrote:
| https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/global/
|
| >We found about 616,000 potentially feasible PHES sites
| with storage potential of about 23 million Gigawatt-hours
| (GWh) by using geographic information system (GIS)
| analysis. This is about one hundred times greater than
| required to support a 100% global renewable electricity
| system.
| konschubert wrote:
| Yea. Burning hydrogen/methane is a last resort if all the
| other balancing options are not sufficient. It's
| expensive but it's not a problem for two months a year.
| [deleted]
| cinntaile wrote:
| What's the link with perpetual motion? You would use the
| excess electricity that is available to do that.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why does it have to be the equivalent capacity? Surely not all
| renewable generation could go down at once?
|
| Nuclear reactors can have problems, same with natural gas
| plants right? But no one suggests or has built a duplicate
| generation system. Why not?
| trebligdivad wrote:
| Unfortunately they mostly do for wind - we get still days
| where instead of the ~20GW peak wind, we get ~1GW for a few
| days. And the low wind pattern often sits over the whole of
| NW Europe, so transfer doesn't help as much as people hoped
| since the whole area is low on wind.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Offshore wind tends to be a solid bit more consistent than on-
| land, and UK uses offshore wind.
| Tade0 wrote:
| That's great in theory, but in practice Hinkley Point C won't
| start running until late 2028 according to the most recent
| estimates.
| Certhas wrote:
| And its more expensive than estimates for storage+renewables
| over its intended lifetime. With nuclear you pay extra to
| have to change the system less...
| belorn wrote:
| It is those situation where the government should just get
| people to bid on supplying a steady amount of non-fossil
| fuel energy for a given period in the future, and whoever
| bids lowest wins.
|
| If there are companies willing to sign a cheaper contract
| that provide equal stability of a nuclear power by using a
| combination of fossil free storage and renewables, they
| should then do that.
|
| The requirements are fairly simple. Provide energy when
| people want it with the capacity that people require, and
| supply it as cheap as possible with as little subsidizes as
| needed. No fossil fuels allowed.
| Certhas wrote:
| Agreed. That's the idea behind capacity markets, but the
| idea to pay people for capacity rather than for energy
| provided seems to be politically difficult, and (some)
| economists argue it's not needed.
| Certhas wrote:
| P.s.: Here is the European Commission on the use of
| capacity renumeration:
| https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-
| consumers/cap...
| ChocBananaChips wrote:
| Do you have sources for any of these claims?
| rosebay wrote:
| [dead]
| jacobp100 wrote:
| The UK is doing surprisingly well for offshore wind, with 7/10 of
| the largest offshore wind installations in the world being here.
| We're terrible for onshore though
| samwillis wrote:
| We've done a particularly good job of pivoting our off shore
| engineering expertise from north see oil to offshore wind. I
| see that as a massive success in reusing expertise in an old
| industry in a new one.
|
| When it comes to onshore, as a relatively densely populated
| island it can be politicly difficult to build large wind farms
| anywhere but in Scotland. Add to that the reasonable argument
| that offshore wind is more consistent and our offshore
| engineering expertise, it's quick to reach the conclusion we
| should be (almost) all in on offshore wind.
| konschubert wrote:
| Offshore is still more than twice as expensive as onshore.
| But yes, if you can't build them onshore or if you don't
| want, offshore is a great option.
| 7952 wrote:
| What I heard is that it wasn't actually a good fit for oil
| companies as they tend to focus on building one-off
| installations. Renewables is more similar to serial
| production where you have to do the same thing many times.
| Which is a good fit for dredging companies or cable layers.
| My guess is that we just had a lot of coast and shallow
| waters.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Considering UK is an island and offshore wind tends to be more
| consistent than onshore (although with higher cost to build)
| that doesn't sound like a problem?
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's certainly true that Britain has a lot of coastline, and
| that even allowing for the fact you can't put wind farms in
| the middle of a shipping lane (unless you don't mind constant
| collisions because nobody in a large boat can steer worth
| shit, the UK also has some big rocks, which like wind
| turbines are marked on charts and don't move yet idiots crash
| boats into those all the damn time) this works out to mean we
| could probably more than supply our energy needs from wind
| turbines + storage.
|
| On the other hand, onshore wind is cheaper and would have
| been viable all along, the Tories effectively banned it
| (technically they just made it very easy to block planning
| permission) for years because that wins over a certain kind
| of NIMBY voter. You couldn't build enough onshore wind to
| replace all the fossil fuels, but you could make a bigger
| dent than we did.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I'm not particularly well-versed in the technology but is
| there any reason the UK isn't utilising tidal power more?
| We have areas with some impressive tidal ranges including
| the Severn Estuary which has the second highest in the
| world. There was lots of talk about building a tidal lagoon
| in Swansea back when I lived in Wales but I've not heard
| anything about that since I moved away some years ago.
| ben_w wrote:
| I think the reason is that the water keeps surprising
| people by being really corrosive and otherwise damaging
| the equipment that's inside it; so it does work, it's
| just been more expensive to build and maintain than the
| other options so far.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| My understanding is that the technology for hydro isn't
| really there as of today. Maybe that will change in the
| future - that was certainly the case for wind and solar
| youngtaff wrote:
| The Swansea tidal lagoon was well dodgy... the promoters
| owned a quarry in Cornwall and they wanted to sell it's
| rock at inflated prices (plus producing concrete is
| hardly carbon friendly)
|
| Severn barrage is interesting but would have a quite
| large impact on the local nature habitat
| tialaramex wrote:
| The Swansea project you're thinking of was...
| controversial. It sure smells a lot more like a scam than
| you'd ideally like.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_Lagoon_Swansea_Bay
| jfindley wrote:
| Given the small land area and extremely high population density
| relative to its neighbours, onshore wind in the UK was never
| going to be a large scale solution. "Terrible for onshore"
| doesn't matter if sufficient generation can be met in other
| more reasonable ways.
| 7952 wrote:
| It is very high population density surrounded by some places
| with very low density. But the places with best wind resource
| in England tend to be AONB, national park. Areas like
| Lincolnshire, East Anglia have plenty of space.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > and extremely high population density
|
| I mean, Belgium and the Netherlands and more dense than the
| UK, and Germany is only a bit less dense. Plus onshore wind
| can be placed in agricultural areas, in the middle of
| cropfields.
|
| But the UK's offshore wind potential in incredible, so I get
| why we do that instead.
| tfgg wrote:
| We're bad at onshore wind, not due to lack of possible sites,
| but because of a government ban on building it: https://www.t
| heguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/onshore-...
| jfindley wrote:
| The guardian likes to ignore this, because it doesn't suit
| its reporting angle much, but England has 1.8x more
| population density than Germany and 3.6x(!) more than
| France. This means by simple maths far less available land
| per capita. Overall the UK comes in closer (but still
| ahead) of Germany but this is largely due to Scotland,
| which is a significant proportion of the UK landmass, but
| has very few people.
|
| The government ban you mention only applies to England,
| which already has almost half of the UK's onshore wind
| despite having by far the least space for it. Making
| complaints that the rural population of England, already
| under pressure due to soaring population density, doesn't
| want their remaining rural spaces covered in wind turbines
| when plenty of other good options exist requires quite a
| bit of mental gymnastics to justify.
|
| Population densities in people/km2: England 424, Scotland:
| 68, UK overall 272, Germany: 232, France: 118. Landmass in
| thousands of km2: England 130, Scotland: 77, UK overall
| 242, Germany: 357, France: 551.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Considering the huge potential of offshore wind in the UK,
| I think giving priority to offshore and avoid damage to the
| landscape makes a lot of sense.
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