Renewable Energy Discussion thread

[SV650rules]

Bill gates involved again, so battery will never be finished, will need constant updates and will slow down anything it is installed in You will know when it is updating as you will have no control over the car and will be unable to shut it down until uncle Bill has finished messing with it. There is also a good chance that after an update various parts of the car will no longer work properly...

She you see these breakthroughs think of the TV program 'tommorows world' and how few of the amazing things they showed ever happened.

[embee]

This is quite interesting reading (for those of a nerdy disposition)
https://assets.publishing.service.go..._June_2020.pdf
Renewable electricity generation in the UK is increasing quite substantially, and appears to be more or less directly substituting for gas, that being the most easily varied source. Reasonably encouraging I feel.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by embee

This is quite interesting reading (for those of a nerdy disposition)
https://assets.publishing.service.go..._June_2020.pdf
Renewable electricity generation in the UK is increasing quite substantially, and appears to be more or less directly substituting for gas, that being the most easily varied source. Reasonably encouraging I feel.

Hardly encouraging, look on here
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Quite a few times in the last few months wind has pretty much disappeared for 4 to 5 day stretches... and solar has been well below 1% for months ( well it is winter in UK ). The upshot was that gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro and cables from France etc. were flat out to make up the shortfall from renewables. The grid even issued a shortage warning ( where price goes up ) - truth is for every wind turbine you need 100% conventional power backup - we cannot run a country using fans on sticks, which is why Germany was building coal fired stations until recently
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...w-uniper-plant and China still building them at a good rate.

UK is responsible for about 1.5% of world emissions, whatever we do makes a miniscule difference to anything... we are saddling our country with unreliable renewables and risk making UK uncompetitive, high energy costs are the reason UK is not a good place for heavy industry and steelmaking etc.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

truth is for every wind turbine you need 100% conventional power backup

Or battery back up / pumped stored hydro / more inter-connects / etc. Yes renewable energy is unreliable and we need to mitigate against that. Generally the UK has wind blowing somewhere in it's environs, so wind can do a good job. Its a case of storing surplus energy from renewables for when its not quite meeting demand. A battery, a pumped storage scheme or "lending" it to another country are ways of doing this. I don't think current technology is the complete answer, but we HAVE to find the answer.

Humankind cannot just keep burning stuff if the planet (and out children) are to survive.

[Seeker]

We currently (!) have about 1 GW of storage but hoping to raise that to 10 GW by 2025 (about a third of daily consumption).
https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/ene...ty-increasing/

One interesting range of ideas is to use old coal mines for geothermal energy production or kinetic storage:
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/genera...he-coal-mines/

[timwilky]

My own preferred solution re storage of excess renewable energy has always been for hydrogen production. Storable and clean to use. Whether that use is use to burn as a fuel in an ICE or within a fuel cell to generate electricery. But I still think we need to look at renewables development around tidal. It is predicatable and guaranteed.

Unfortunately UK energy policies are built for cities where everyone is clustered, local heat and power initiatives etc, You do not need to be rural to have no infrstructure. and those that are, have little. My daughter has an oil fired boiler, no gas. her house was built in 1629 and listed. so prevented from most insulation initiatives. She cannot even double glaze. What will she do when new boilers are banned?

[embee]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

Hardly encouraging,

...... Germany was building coal fired stations until recently ......

Whether it is encouraging or not depends on whether you consider instantaneous or year-averaged generation. Sure flexible back-up is needed, but that doesn't necessarily mean the renewables are not worth the effort. Your opinion may well vary.

Germany's generation by renewables is increasing substantially, reportedly up to 46% for 2019. In 2018 green accounted for 40.6% in 2018, up from 38.2% in 2017, so pretty determined growth.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-ge...-idUKKBN1Z21K1
The coal issue is clearly a subject of contention, but I'm sure it's a stop-gap for the decommissioning of nuclear, and coal is planned to be phased out.

[SV650rules]

UK has over 40% of power as renewables, but as I said earlier that it often goes below 10% for days on end. Now grid storage for filling peaks and troughs of demand throughout 24 hours is one thing but grid storage that can cater for almost complete absence of renewables for 4 or 5 days in winter is quite another matter. Presently up to 45gigawatt is normal, just take a look at how much extra power is gonna be needed for electric vehicle and the scale of the problem of relying too much on renewables should be apparent...

The alternative is to build massive amounts of renewables to blight the country side and cross fingers that in the bad times you get enough, but remember the renewable companies have to be paid even when not needed by grid, so maybe a big increase in your electric bill.

[punyXpress]

Solution: solar power.
Fill the fields with solar panels.
Watch the weight drop off and all will be less fat ?

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

... truth is for every wind turbine you need 100% conventional power backup

This is only your opinion, not a universal truth. You stated it earlier in the thread but repetition does not make it true. I for one don't agree.

Originally Posted by SV650rules

...we cannot run a country using fans on sticks, which is why Germany was building coal fired stations until recently
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...w-uniper-plant and China still building them at a good rate.

Building coal is short term and non-sustainable (by definition, eventually non-renewable fuels will run out)

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Or battery back up / pumped stored hydro / more inter-connects / etc. Yes renewable energy is unreliable and we need to mitigate against that. Generally the UK has wind blowing somewhere in it's environs, so wind can do a good job. Its a case of storing surplus energy from renewables for when its not quite meeting demand. A battery, a pumped storage scheme or "lending" it to another country are ways of doing this. I don't think current technology is the complete answer, but we HAVE to find the answer.

Humankind cannot just keep burning stuff if the planet (and out children) are to survive.

Originally Posted by embee

Whether it is encouraging or not depends on whether you consider instantaneous or year-averaged generation. Sure flexible back-up is needed, but that doesn't necessarily mean the renewables are not worth the effort. Your opinion may well vary.

The coal issue is clearly a subject of contention, but I'm sure it's a stop-gap for the decommissioning of nuclear, and coal is planned to be phased out.

+1. Opinions do vary but I hope that there will soon be consensus on the general point that we need to continue searching hard and fast to determine a sustainable solution. Pragmatically, it may take several steps to get there but that's no reason not to take the first step or two.

Originally Posted by SV650rules

The alternative is to build massive amounts of renewables to blight the country side ...

I can see you're not a fan (sic) of windfarms from your repeated posts and choice of words. So no doubt you'll hate me for pointing out that having just had a quick look at the National Grid ESO TEC Register, there's c.65GW of proposed wind generation currently contracted to connect to the national grid. Currently there's about 15GW wind connected so it could be a fair step up, though note that 80% of it is offshore wind. (UK max demand winter peak historically tends to be c.55-60GW. FYI, there's also about another 60GW of non-wind connections contracted, mainly nuclear and gas. Very little is tidal, which as timwilky points out is a bit of a missed opportunity since it's the most predicatble natural sustainable 'fuel' source. Unless someone's expecting the moon to stop orbiting?! Maybe it will come, in time?)

Admittedly a lot of that will be speculative and effectively in competition with each other so it won't all get built but it is correct that larger amounts of total connected capacity gives resilience against supply variation. The initial part of you point about the alternative appears to be correct.

Originally Posted by SV650rules

... and cross fingers that in the bad times you get enough, but remember the renewable companies have to be paid even when not needed by grid, so maybe a big increase in your electric bill.

Sorry, I think this is scaremongering. It's not crossing fingers in bad times, it's analysing the data of the past and extrapolating forward. Some speculation and uncertainty, yes, but not pure hope. Also, generators are only paid to not generate in certain circumstances for system balancing. For the most part the operation is driven by the supply market and trading-led. Capital financing (loan interest) is probably the biggest fixed cost and funders tend not to invest in utilities when prospective return is dicey so they're unlikely to back something that would have a big disruptive influence on prices that would affect billing revenues. Also remember that for wind and solar the 'fuel' is free so that should theoretically lead to a reduction in cost to offset lower time in productive service.