Energy Crunch

[SydneyRover]

RD, this battery cost $100m and has paid for itself pretty much

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

''South Australia’s Tesla ‘Big Battery’ saved consumers $116 million in electricity costs last year''

https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saved-consumers-116-million-in-electricity-costs-last-year/

[River Don]

RD, this battery cost $100m and has paid for itself pretty much

https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/

''South Australia’s Tesla ‘Big Battery’ saved consumers $116 million in electricity costs last year''

https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saved-consumers-116-million-in-electricity-costs-last-year/

Yes but Wikipedia reckons that can supply 30 MW for 3 hours, which wouldn't go very far to meeting the UK energy needs if the natural gas was unaffordable. And that's just about the largest battery farm in the world isn't it?

[SydneyRover]

The battery meets the short term needs + 95% of the time, time enough to correct whatever is wrong, more than time enough to start up a standby gas turbine if required but agreed nowhere near enough to start a coal fired plant up.

[albie]

Albie,

As I understand it, the largest battery storage power plants are only cable of releasing relatively short bursts of power, a few minutes or an hour or so.

How far are we off having battery storage plants that might provide long lasting high levels of energy similar to what a natural gas fired powerstation might?

RD,

I don't know where you got that information from, so it is difficult to comment.
EV batteries hold charge and do not deplete quickly, so stationary uses would have the same characteristics if deployed at sufficient scale.

Other methods of holding energy are possible, but I do not the economics of their use.

Battery storage costs are falling dramatically, and going forward off-shore wind is likely to pair with storage capacity;
https://renews.biz/72674/storage-market-to-add-30gw-a-year-by-2030/

The issue is having sufficient holding capacity to meet dispatchable demand. Part of that capacity is the reserve held by take up of EV, which will increase sharply in the near future.

Battery technology is moving fast, with solid state chemistries about to enter the field.
It is hard to know how quickly electrification will displace gas as the primary energy source across a number of sectors....home heating for example.

Without that information, and the extent to which decentralised generation will become a factor, it is a challenge to estimate mid term storage requirements for a specific facility.

[River Don]

Albie,

It requires quite a bit of faith to believe the new tech, EV fleet and so on is all going to be coming along fast enough.

As it is were heavily reliant on natural gas, which is rapidly looking much less reliable.

More Nuclear energy would have been useful to us now but it's going to take a decade or more to get anything new built.

I wonder if knocking down Eggborough was such a great idea?

[River Don]

From the Telegraph: Blackouts next.

National Grid: Greater risk of blackouts this winter
There's a concerning warning coming from the National Grid this morning, which says Britain is facing a greater threat of blackouts this winter.

National Grid’s electricity system operator (ESO) believes supply will meet demand - but has cut its forecast of buffer supply.

The UK is facing supply constraints after a major fire knocked out a key cable bringing electricity from France, while demand is also growing.

It comes amid record high energy prices, which have already cause nine suppliers to go bust.

[River Don]

From the Gurdian.


Dale Vince, founder of green energy supplier Ecotricity, has accused the UK government of “killing energy companies right now” through the retail price cap.

Vince told Radio 4’s Today programme that the government should either let energy be a free market, or nationalise it.

Vince explained that the price cap means companies are being forced to sell power and gas for a lower price than they can buy on the wholesale market. That’s why 12 have gone out of business this year.

He said:

It doesn’t make sense to have a retail price cap but not a wholesale one.

Fifty percent of Britain’s gas today comes from the North Sea, our North Sea. Those operators’ cost of operation has not gone up, but they’re selling their gas at five times what they did in January.

They’re making billions, while the government resists the natural ability of energy companies to put their prices up to stay in business, in order to save consumers from, basically, world events.

Vince argues that it’s “illogical” to hold prices at one end of the supply chain and not the other end, and the natural consequence is companies going out of business.


He's dead right but I think the conclusion to draw is that in the circumstances, where it's difficult to impose a wholesale price cap... We'd be better served by a nationalised industry.

[SydneyRover]

I'm just watching a prog showing visitors to a town that served Chernobyl they get 70,000 visitors a year and guides are spending up to 22 a days a month there.

Not sure why you'd want to see an abandoned town, it's like Melbourne in lockdown, but dangerous.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Pud,

The levelised cost of energy index shows nuclear to be a rising cost industry, at a time when renewable costs are falling.

Here is a summary from Prof Dave Elliot;
https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2021/09/energy-economics-fiddling-with-figures.html

The difference between the two is rising, and the new "Contacts for Difference" auction in December will widen the cost gap.

It is interesting this, very interesting. We have a clear issue don't we that we need some form of backup to renewables get struggle to meet climate and cost targets to do so.

[SydneyRover]

Or go the other low tech way and insulate homes and businesses. There must quite a few areas of where large accumulated gains can be made. Increased use of public transport etc

[albie]

There is a basic confusion between ENERGY and ELECTRICITY in this thread.
They are not the same.
https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Gas is about 24% of the UK Energy mix. The increased cost of gas can only be mitigated by finding new supply sources, or Treasury intervention via consumer price support.
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
Change the settings on the graphics to UK from World.

Longer term, the UK can move some of the gas consumption to electricity from renewable sources. Home heating is a good example, where heat pumps can replace gas boilers.

A heat pump multiplies each unit of input so that it provides 3 or 4 times the output. Basically, it is a fridge in reverse. The downside is the extra cost of installation, which needs to reduce.

As Sydney says, insulation of homes is a pre-requisite. The people disrupting roads around London have a point, although their tactics are dubious.

[normal rules]

Stock up on candles. High risk of blackouts this winter reading numerous reports today.

[Janso]

Or go the other low tech way and insulate homes and businesses. There must quite a few areas of where large accumulated gains can be made. Increased use of public transport etc

If public transport is shite though people aren't going to use it. In the UK it's shite, unreliable and in some cases, expensive.

[ravenrover]

Free for us OAPs

[drfchound]

Free for us OAPs

Yep, I have my bus pass too.
Only use it a couple of times a year though.

[Janso]

Free for us OAPs

Yeah but the idea is to get working people using it.

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

Or go the other low tech way and insulate homes and businesses. There must quite a few areas of where large accumulated gains can be made. Increased use of public transport etc

If public transport is shite though people aren't going to use it. In the UK it's shite, unreliable and in some cases, expensive.

Absolutely.  It would cost me £4.70 to get 2 buses to work and take 45 minutes at least. It's a 15 minute drive costing me £1 a day in electric.  No brainer.  That's before car sharing is considered.

[SydneyRover]

Public transport should be frequent reliable and free.

[albie]

The latest battery chemistry out of the traps for storage is iron flow;
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-30/iron-battery-breakthrough-could-eat-lithium-s-lunch

A very competitive field, so other tech will put pressure on prices in future.
This is the way energy markets will move.

It does not provide direct relief for a gas shortage this winter, unfortunately.

[SydneyRover]

''‘Lightbulb moment’: the battery technology invented in a Brisbane garage that is going global
Dominic Spooner’s startup Vaulta is working on a reusable battery casing to create less waste and a lighter product''

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/18/lightbulb-moment-the-battery-technology-invented-in-a-brisbane-garage-that-is-going-global

[SydneyRover]

Money, the mother of invention

''Batteries of the future set to be cheaper and better — just by adding sugar''

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-09-14/batteries-lithium-sulfur-sugar-future-electric-vehicles/100457492

''Australian aluminium-ion battery breakthrough
Faster charging, greener and more reliable battery cells could lead to EV revolution''

https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/australian-aluminium-ion-battery-breakthrough-129973/

[Filo]

Drax is the UK’s biggest producer of CO2 burning biomass, but it’s not included in the UK emmision figures and is considered Carbon Nuetral, it was/ is all a big con to dump UK coal


https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-draxs-renewable-energy-plant-is-uks-biggest-co2-emitter-analysis-claims-12428130

[normal rules]

We have an infinitesimal amount of power from the sun. Limitless.
Based on Elon musks theory, we could power the whole of the uk with a big enough farm. He claims the USA could be powered with a farm 100 mile sq. and with a battery 1 mile sq. scale this down to uk size and this is very feasible.

[SydneyRover]

We have an infinitesimal amount of power from the sun. Limitless.
Based on Elon musks theory, we could power the whole of the uk with a big enough farm. He claims the USA could be powered with a farm 100 mile sq. and with a battery 1 mile sq. scale this down to uk size and this is very feasible.

And what is the most likely reason this is not going to happen, if it's the same as Oz it's the fossil fuel lobby, spoon feeding both sides of politics with piles of money to maintain the status quo.

[knockers]

You can't blame Francis Rossi!

[SydneyRover]

Or Alan Lancaster ............... now

[Axholme Lion]

Or go the other low tech way and insulate homes and businesses. There must quite a few areas of where large accumulated gains can be made. Increased use of public transport etc

If public transport is shite though people aren't going to use it. In the UK it's shite, unreliable and in some cases, expensive.

First bus from West Butterwick to Donny leaves at 0928 arriving at 1045. Last bus back leaves Donny at 1200 noon. Case closed. Ha ha.

[River Don]

Drax is the UK’s biggest producer of CO2 burning biomass, but it’s not included in the UK emmision figures and is considered Carbon Nuetral, it was/ is all a big con to dump UK coal


https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-draxs-renewable-energy-plant-is-uks-biggest-co2-emitter-analysis-claims-12428130

Drax is the UK’s biggest producer of CO2 burning biomass, but it’s not included in the UK emmision figures and is considered Carbon Nuetral, it was/ is all a big con to dump UK coal


https://news.sky.com/story/climate-change-draxs-renewable-energy-plant-is-uks-biggest-co2-emitter-analysis-claims-12428130

Yeah, I think burning biomass is a con. How long will it take those trees to regrow and recapture all that carbon? Can we be sure the Canadians will remain commited to regrowing the forests 20 or 30 years down the line? And might climate change impact how effectively those forests grow, if its warner and a lot drier for instance, the forests might become more susceptible to forest fires.

[River Don]

Here is an analysis of the energy crisis, entitled: Europe’s soaring gas prices: does Russia hold solution to crisis?

The natural gas market has entered uncharted territory. The movements in the price of gas on Wednesday had been, in the words of one analyst, “unprecedented since the year dot of gas liberalisation in Europe”. In record swings, Dutch wholesale gas, a European benchmark, soared by 30% within one period of three or four hours from an already eye-watering level.

These are chilling numbers for European governments with winter stretching ahead, and when the EU sneezes, the UK, heavily reliant on imports from across the Channel, also catches a cold.

The shortage was caused by a confluence of events around the world, as economies emerged power hungry from their pandemic slowdowns. At the centre of the storm is Russia. While it supplies only 1% of UK gas, Russia is the biggest supplier to Europe, accounting for roughly 40% of all EU gas. And a squeeze on European gas volumes leads to price hikes in the UK and beyond...

“While Russia has been technically fulfilling its contractual obligations with the west, it has not been interested in capitalising on the high demand to send additional gas to its European clients. It is the only country that could really ease the pressure on the prices and has decided not to,” said Maria Shagina, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich, who focuses on energy politics.

[Axholme Lion]

Maybe the west shouldn't be arseholes with Russia all the time?