Affordable, self-healing power grids are closer than you think When the first commercial coal-fired electric power plants came online, starting with the Holborn Viaduct power station that supplied electricity to the City of London in January 1882, the world was changed forever. Fast forward 142 years, and the world has changed a lot. When it comes to the power grids that distribute …
"interconnected microgrids fueled by smaller distributed power generation plants, such as wind and solar"
That's fairytale thinking. To manage a grid, keep inertia, and have the resilience and excess capacity to meet modern demand you need huge plants. To meet consumer and business needs, not to mention decarbonisation of heating, cooling and transport, you need lots of huge plants. Depending on where they are in the world they might be solar, they might be wind, but let's scupper this greeny folklore about smaller plants being the future. I'm surprised the article didn't throw in worlds like "pro-sumer", "wholegrain", "community cooperative", "beard oil", and the like.
The biggest solar plants are in the 1-2 GW range, not a collection of unmanaged panels scattered across the roofs of pensioners bungalows. China hold the title of the world's largest solar farm - a monster outlier at 15.7 GW across nearly 350 square kilometres. The same is true of wind farms, where big is beautiful. Hornsea 1 is 1.2 GW, and Hornsea 2 is 1.4 GW. The latest wind turbines aren't for crappy little micro-grid setups of one or two local units, they have individual outputs in the range of 14 MW and rotor diameters of around 240 metres, with a total height in excess of a third of a kilometre. You don't scatter a few of these around and call it an "affordable self healing grid", you have one of a small number of globo corp build them, another globo corp project manages the construction a farm of hundreds of these, yet another finances them, and another still operates them. And this isn't "self healing" in any way at all. Solar won't offset low wind conditions as you build the solar output into your ops profile. Like wise high wind won't necessarily correlate with any demand spikes, or loss of output from other units or grid linkages.
Depending on where they are in the world they might be solar, they might be wind, but let's scupper this greeny folklore about smaller plants being the future. I'm surprised the article didn't throw in worlds like "pro-sumer", "wholegrain", "community cooperative", "beard oil", and the like.
I think to an extent, it depends on the market. The US is already to a degree a series of micro-grids, ie states like Texas or California doing their own thing and being semi-isolated from the US 'National Grid'. Which at times causes both them and the grid problems. Other countries like the UK aren't as easy, especially if extended to dependent neighbours like NI, or Ireland itself.
"The US is already to a degree a series of micro-grids, ie states like Texas or California doing their own thing"
Most US states including those two names hardly qualify as micro-grids. If California were a country they'd be the 5th-6th largest economy in the world, with a population as great as Canada (or Poland, or Morocco), and a land area greater than Germany. Texas has a much greater area, slightly smaller population, but similar comments apply - these aren't micro-grids, they are near enough similar status to a fully fledged nation, each state having their own energy regulation arrangements. Almost all adjacent nations have a few cross border links, meaning that power is both imported and exported - true of the US as a whole, its component states, and the countries of Europe and elsewhere.
For years the UK has relied upon cheap excess French nuclear power to support its grid, and this has encouraged the dim thinking of Ofgem a whole load of new undersea connectors in the mistaken belief that as UK power demand rises and our conventional and nuclear generating fleet wither, other countries will magically have a surplus of cheap power when Britain needs it. With French nuclear capacity set to decline as the old stations close faster than new ones are being built, the position of France as a net exporter is going to fade away, and with the electrification of heating and transport countries will find that expecting somebody else to provide the raw generation capacity is a plan doomed to failure. Cross border or state line transfers will continue, and even increase in importance, but they're not going to be a magic bullet, and they don't address the problem that both peak demand and shortfalls in renewables between adjacent countries tends to be at similar times. Microgrids aren't going to be the answer, the answer is proper, rational strategic planning, large scale generation assets, and a focus on balancing worst cases against costs, plus putting affordability far closer to the heart of energy policy than it has been in the past fifty years.
More for interest than because it supports any particular position, there's a beautiful infographic here on European energy transfers:
https://ig.ft.com/electricity-sharing/
Most US states including those two names hardly qualify as micro-grids. If California were a country they'd be the 5th-6th largest economy in the world, with a population as great as Canada (or Poland, or Morocco), and a land area greater than Germany. Texas has a much greater area, slightly smaller population, but similar comments apply - these aren't micro-grids,
Yep, I was being somewhat sarcastic given I think Texas peak winter demand was close to the entire UK's. And it's capacity margin was rapidly diminishing as winter set it. But seems to be a similar problem, although more on macro-scale. States have degrees of autonomy, so setting any national policy gets tricky. I guess to an extent the UK has similar issues with Scotland's national grid, over-reliance on wind and thus when the wind stops, Scotland becomes dependent on England and the other interconnectors. So when it's cold and Scotland's demand is high, it'll be paying a hefty premium to import energy.
"So when it's cold and Scotland's demand is high, it'll be paying a hefty premium to import energy."
Conversely, when it's windy, Scotland is an exporter, and because most of the time the wind does blow, they are a net exporter. In terms of who benefits, the answer isn't either Scotland or England - the generating assets are owned by multinational corporations and banks. The complexity of how energy system costs are allocated and recovered is quite mind-blowing and lacks much sense or transparency. There are tens of thousands of pages of generation, network and supply codes and essential related documents (all publicly available). I've worked in the sector, I don't believe there's any individual has a proper understanding of the totality of these codes and the way the work together. There's people who understand a huge amount (I've worked with some) but the totality, nope. And there's lots of gaming around code changes, where individual companies trying and change arcane and little known rules to their own advantage.
Currently Scotland can't export all its spare windowed to England, Norway and NI.
The connectors sre not big enough. This may change, OTOH there's more wind and tide/current there.
So setting up a "gasometer" or two next to an existing combined cycle gas turbine /steam plant and putting low pressure H2 into it when otherwise wind turbine operators would be paid to not make power seems at least plausibly sensible.
So setting up a "gasometer" or two next to an existing combined cycle gas turbine /steam plant and putting low pressure H2 into it when otherwise wind turbine operators would be paid to not make power seems at least plausibly sensible.
Not really, but probably mostly due to the arcane way our energy system 'works'. So taking very expensive wind energy and using that to crack water just results in even more expensive H2. You cannae defy the laws of physics and bond energy. Doing the reverse and making CH4 would probably work out cheaper. Some molecules just love bondage. Gas companies have also been busily flogging off gasometers to property developers, so buying land to rebuild gas storage would be very expensive. And then there are boring little details like H2 being an escape artist, along with stuff like hydrogen embrittlement. Luckily when H2 does escape, it tends to disperse upwards pretty rapidly. But if it doesn't, there'll be a few large bangs.
More of the same bullshit. You never learn. Only you seem to invoke "the laws of physics" to predict commercial success. Green H2 is mainly made from excess electricity (otherwise ppl just sell that power to the grid if possible - they're not silly). So it's virtually free (leaving aside cheap electrolyser depreciation). Your statement "taking very expensive wind energy and using that to crack water just results in even more expensive H2" is the same grade 4 nonsense you keep repeating all year long. Strangely enough these considerations don't seem to deter investors. Anybody sensible would ask themselves why. You?
Don't be smarmy. We exchanged maybe a dozen posts on this topic last time you bought it up. You made some points but failed to back up your main assertion which was that H2 fuel cells in cars were the way to go.
Or, we didn't because you're a different AC and we have to go over the same ground again. You see? It's painful. Make an account, call yourself something anonymous. Own your opinions.
> You made some points but failed to back up your main assertion which was that H2 fuel cells in cars were the way to go.
That was never my point. My point is different. My point is that you can't rule it out on pure physics yield considerations. Consumers don't care about physics. They care about price/value ratio. There's nothing in physics that determines prices. Prices are in an orthogonal dimension involving supply, demand, volumes, learning rate, market-making, and value chain. Therefore, comparing the price of stored UK electricity at the time of EV charging against some hypothetical H2 price assuming H2 was produced locally is just a fallacy. Just like today, cars don't burn petrol extracted from the North Sea, tomorrow's H2 consumption might very well not be from local production. People ruling it out a priori have just stopped thinking right after their first reckoning and seem to be estranged to the economics aspects.
German policy makers know that better than anyone and are busy striking deals with Canada, Australia, Chile, Namibia and Morocco, to name just the most high-profile ones. They bet on very low price and green H2 carving itself a market (just like they managed to create a market for PV over the past 2 decades). Initially through subsidies, then autonomously. Initially in the established grey H2 market, then expanding in other domains.
But we can't read that kind of news in the Daily Mail. Worse yet, folks in this forum, seem to believe that having reached an above-tabloid education level in the 80s or 90s is sufficient to stop learning and lecture (bore) others ad vitam eternam. The amount of people in this forum whose authority on the topic is poor and yet who allow themselves to criticize seasoned professionals, engineers, economists, and policy makers on the basis of very basic arguments and back-of-envelope calculations is just bizarre. Thankfully, they have only infinitesimal influence on decisions.
Green H2 is mainly made from excess electricity (otherwise ppl just sell that power to the grid if possible - they're not silly).
So you agree, then, that turning electricity into hydrogen and back (round trip 50% efficient at best) only makes sense when there is electricity to spare? Which hardly ever happens. In fact, just about the only place it has ever made sense is Orkney, and that's only because they have a lot of renewable capacity and a very small connector to the mainland. That's being upgraded, at which point teh economic case for hydrogen will collapse, even there.
> round trip 50% efficient at best
BS. Minimizing yields only shows your bias. Even 50% yield means a 50% price spread qualifies the business case.
> when there is electricity to spare? Which hardly ever happens
More BS. More renewable generation capacity is being added all the time. Precisely. Because of the H2 business case. Comprendo?
"Even 50% yield means a 50% price spread qualifies the business case."
Except that you need to build a cracking plant, storage system (moving parts) and all to levels of safety which are rather mind boggling, thanks to hydrogen's ability to get just about anywhere
It's easier and cheaper to use batteries - which can be placed anywhere on the grid that's convenient (eg: at the load end of long transmission lines into cities)
When it comes to "using spare electricity" - we already HAVE such sites - eg: Dinorwig
Green H2 is mainly made from excess electricity (otherwise ppl just sell that power to the grid if possible - they're not silly). So it's virtually free (leaving aside cheap electrolyser depreciation).
Nice theory, but demonstrates you know even less about the energy market than I do. It is not 'virtually free', although constrained wind energy should have no economic value given there's no demand for it. But thanks to our bizarre energy policy, it generates constraint payments instead. But basically this 'excess' electricity cannot be despatched to the grid, else things go <bang>. So then you're left with one of those usual problems with windmills. How do you get the energy to where it's needed? You could collocate your electrolysers with your windmill so they can get powered before the grid tie-ins, then negotiate some price for that 'excess' energy. Which could be fun, if that's offshore. Or just fun where power cables land onshore because you'd then need land and planning permissions to build your hydrogen bombs. And then of course some way to deliver that H2 to where it's needed.
Strangely enough these considerations don't seem to deter investors. Anybody sensible would ask themselves why. You?
Any sensible investor would already know the answer to that question. The subsidies and the rigged energy market pretty much guarantee massive profits, especially as those profits can be carved out and securitised thanks to extremely generous long-term and inflated contracts. Just look at the web of SPVs hiding underneath the scumbags at Octopus to learn more. This type of structure also allows financial engineering to syphon off those profits and allow the parent or supply companies to plead poverty and slim margins.
But the same scumbags, along with their marketing companies like the Bbc tell us stuff like 'virtually free', and yet the more we 'invest' in 'renewables', the more expensive our electricty becomes. It's much the same with the lowball bids in previous CfD rounds. It allowed the scumbags to claim falling costs, yet at the same time companies like Orsted and Vattenfall in their regulated financial statements tell the markets they can't actually deliver at contracted prices due to rising costs, and can the next rounds of CfDs be a lot more generous.. please..
How.. cute. But at least G31.9 is not something you'll ever see on your bill as it requires a brain. On the slim chance that you have one the 'blah blah'.. Broca and Wernicke have left your cranium? And I'm guessing you're more familiar with seeing F65s on your invoices.
If you believe I lost my Wernicke's area?
Writing often reflects speech in that it tends to lack content or meaning. You also spelled Bbc incorrectly in your 'quote'.
Why are you replying?
That's actually a good question, but differential diagnosis is a thing. As for revelations, you do seem to exhibit masochistic tendencies, as well as over reliance on the reverse uno. But back to the other subject. How do you propose to get the 'virtually free' energy to your electrolysers, and then the H2 to market? Those would be rather expensive challenges to overcome. Then of course you'd have to sell your inferior product given H2 is less energy efficient than CH4. And then you have a slight problem that there is no 'surplus' or 'virtually free' energy anyway because we're facing a massive energy shortage to try and charge batteries..
Of course this isn't stopping rent-seeking scumbags trying to collect subsidies, despite the outcomes being obvious to, well, anyone with a brain.
> H2 is less energy efficient than CH4
1/ Sorry, you're not grade 4. You're lower.
H2 -> 120–142 MJ/kg
CH4 -> 55.6 MJ/kg
Obviously - because of Carbon's atomic number.
2/ Plus. It's not only about energy. It's also about redox power.
Vattenfall & SSAB of Daimler green steelmaking fame just inaugurated their green H2 facility.
It's also about Haber Bosh and green fertilizers, cements and more industrial use cases.
3/ Your "energy shortage" is a figment of your imagination. Why do we occasionally get negative prices on EPEX then? In any case demand breeds offer.
The only energy shortage is in an ATP shortage in your brain cells. Sadly.
Vattenfall & SSAB of Daimler green steelmaking fame just inaugurated their green H2 facility.
Oh, you found a press release, and believed it!
The Hybrit consortium — made up of Swedish companies Vattenfall, LKAB and SSAB — produced the world’s first fossil-free steel using H2 in 2021,
Which perhaps stretches the definition of 'production' and your 'redox' properties given the first line is-
Ovako’s facility in Hofors will use renewable H2 for industrial heat rather than direct iron reduction
and arguably stretches the meaning of 'fossil free' given steel fundamentally relies on carbon, which would be 'fossil', and produced if they're removing carbon from ore.. Which they may not be, given-
This is likely because the Swedish firm focuses primarily on recycling scrap steel, which accounts for 97% of its production.
which then gets into semantics about original carbon sins, and the general cost and viability of recycled vs virgin steel, especially if you need specialty steels. And then there's the cost compared to other steel producers. But-
Overall, the project cost SKr180m ($16m), of which SKr71m was supported by the Swedish Energy Agency.
It's subsidies all the way down. Plus it says it manages to sell it's steel at a premium.. For now, at least. But-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_hydrogen
For example, hydrogen produced by electrolysis powered by solar power was about 25 times more expensive than that derived from hydrocarbons in 2018
And of course wiki says it'll be jam tomorrow, so 'green hydrogen' will become economically viable, once 'renewable' energy starts becoming cheaper. And yet Vattenfall has been whining that it's costs have been increasing and not decreasing. Green economics are strange like that. Input costs keep increasing, yet we're meant to believe prices will fall. Of course if we believed the 'renewables' scumbags, we could end subsidies, but for some reason, the scumbags don't want that.
Industry and consumers do however, but until our useless politicians grasp that point, we'll continue to deindustrialise and lose business & jobs to countries that haven't drunk the Green kool-aid.
> "25 times more expensive than that derived from hydrocarbons in 2018"
LMAO. Green H2 is now below 1$ a kg in some production units. We're in 2024. Your confirmation bias is amazing. Do you also watch 2018 weather reports before deciding whether to take your umbrella with you in the morning?
> [Incoherent rant about green steel]
You poor annelid, blissfully showing off in your unfathomable ignorance of the subject matter. Green H2 has been part of the steelmaking industry for several years already. Not only in pioneer SSAB but also in Arcelor, Thyssenkrupp, Voestalpine (Donawitz, HYFOR with Primetals), and Salzgitter European plants.
So you cite " produced the world’s first fossil-free steel using H2 in 2021" but conflate scrap metal heating and the other H2 applications which are even cited in the article. Wiz: Blast Furnace (H2-BF), and direct iron reduction (H2-DRI).
Look it up. You might learn something (in addition to basic chemistry concepts). So far, it looks like you only learn stuff, by spewing BS on forums and having your misconception publicly corrected. Why don't you try to skip the correction step, this time around.
You poor annelid, blissfully showing off in your unfathomable ignorance of the subject matter. Green H2 has been part of the steelmaking industry for several years already. Not only in pioneer SSAB but also in Arcelor, Thyssenkrupp, Voestalpine (Donawitz, HYFOR with Primetals), and Salzgitter European plants.
Uhuh. So chemistry you say? Let there be rust!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron#Chemistry
Strangely, most of those processes use H2O, aka 'water'. Rather cheaper than 'green hydrogen'. Plus to turn the DRI into something useful, you still have to remove the fossil carbon..
Look it up. You might learn something (in addition to basic chemistry concepts). So far, it looks like you only learn stuff, by spewing BS on forums and having your misconception publicly corrected. Why don't you try to skip the correction step, this time around.
Well, I find myself having to correct your misconceptions rather frequently. So back to energy density, and a bit more chemistry, especially as your example states that the H2 is being used for heat-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion
You still think heating (or cooking) with H2 vs CH4 is.. better? Many chemists, physicists and engineers would disagree with you.
Man, you're thick. In your own very link, water is on the right (product) in 3 successive reductions.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_reduced_iron#Chemistry
> Strangely, most of those processes use H2O, aka 'water'. Rather cheaper than 'green hydrogen'. Plus to turn the DRI into something useful, you still have to remove the fossil carbon.
The following reactions successively convert hematite (from iron ore) into magnetite, magnetite into ferrous oxide, and ferrous oxide into iron by reduction with carbon monoxide or hydrogen.
3 Fe₂O₃ + CO/H₂ ⟶ 2 Fe₃O₄ + CO₂/H₂O
Fe₃O4 + CO/H₂ ⟶ 3 FeO + CO₂/H₂O
FeO + CO/H₂ ⟶ Fe + CO₂/ H₂O
Otherwise, please feel free to let us know about the super reduction power of water (into H peroxide I assume) and how water spontaneously reduces iron ores. If it works, patent it. You will be super rich (ROTFL).
> So back to energy density
You wrote "energy efficient" Not "energy density" when I corrected you. Very sore loser, again.
> especially as your example states that the H2 is being used for heat-
In green steelmaking, ideally, green H2 is involved into all GHG emitting steps*. Otherwise it's still not green. In blast furnace (basic oxygen furnace) as a transition to DRI. In the Electrical Arc Furnace (EAF - as source of green electricity) of DRI. That's already been there since the start of the 2020s.
And now in scrap metal heating (that's the NEW part, Mr ignoramus). Scrap being added to the EAF step. Sorry for the crash course.
To complement your already deep level of understanding, I found a nice BBC article, just the kind you seem to be fond of (endorsed by Taylor Swift - It can't be bad). Then we can get into scientific papers mixing technical considerations and economics.
*That was clearly explained in the original article.
You wrote "energy efficient" Not "energy density" when I corrected you. Very sore loser, again.
Cost considerations aside, if you replace a fuel with a high energy density with a lower energy density, is your conversion to heat going to be more, or less efficient?
Not sore, and better than being plain loser like you. I am curious why you try so hard to defend the 'renewables' scumbags, and resort to dishonesty in the process. Do you work in their PR I wonder?
> Cost considerations aside, if you replace a fuel with a high energy density with a lower energy density, is your conversion to heat going to be more, or less efficient?
Energy density in terms of Joules/volume unit is irrelevant because volumes depend on pressure. It's only relevant in internal combustion engines and similar devices. What's invariant is mass. So, energy density in terms of Joules/kg (termed specific/massic energy) is more meaningful. Anti-H2 brats love energy density because that's simple and fits their schoolyard level rhetoric.
> I am curious why you try so hard to defend the 'renewables' scumbags, and resort to dishonesty in the process.
I'm just giving you free education and correcting the grossest of your misconceptions. Consider yourself a non-paying student. It's a kind of challenge. If I can convince you, I can convince the most piggy headed of my real students. But, so far, fortunately, none of them reaches even 0.1 JE (the Jellied Eel "JE" being an SI unit of stubbornness).
It's only relevant in internal combustion engines and similar devices. What's invariant is mass. So, energy density in terms of Joules/kg (termed specific/massic energy) is more meaningful.
Uhuh. So the Greens attempt to redefine the universe, again. So I am but a simple engineer, and know I'm not going to throw a kilo of H2 on the barbie. I want to use stuff in ways that are antithetical to Greens, namely performing useful work. In the context of generating billions in creating the "Hydrogen Economy", subsidies are a substitute for useful work. They want jewels, not joules. So far, they've been succcessful in regulatory capture.
But the useful work is as a substitute for CH4, which is traded in BTU, therms, quads and rarely kilos. Because it's mostly used for heat, which what your scrap recycler will be using it for. Supplying that heat is obviously a function of volume and pressure, far less mass. And in typical Green fashion, you pay more and get less.
I'm just giving you free education and correcting the grossest of your misconceptions.
I guess this is why our economies are in such a mess and we're deindustrialising. We no longer educate people, just pump them full of misconceptions and misinformation.
> CH4, which is traded in BTU, therms, quads and rarely kilos
And in kWh, believe it or not (1 kWh ~ 3.4 MBtu). Not in m³. So your energy density is irrelevant. It's only relevant in a cylinder pushing on a piston (Cv/Cp). Comparing energy density (based on volume) is useless otherwise.
Now guess what. Hydrogen is traded in kg... Excellent point.
> Supplying that heat is obviously a function of volume and pressure, far less mass.
Bollocks. Energy comes from oxidation of C to CO2 and H to H2O irrespective of the volume occupied by your mole of combustible. That's why heat of combustion is measured in kJ per kg. QED.
Any progress with the reduction power of water patent?
So your energy density is irrelevant.
Uhuh. So H2 is a better heating fuel than CH4 because energy density doesn't matter in the brave Green world.
Any progress with the reduction power of water patent?
Nah, I'm bidding for triboelectric power generation. Infinite energy from making sugar lumps, breaking them and reforming them with 'virtually free' wind energy. Now where's mah subsidies!
> "So H2 is a better heating fuel than CH4 because energy density doesn't matter in the brave Green world."
Energy density is only a problem if you can't control the throughput. In some cities in Germany, you already have up to 30% H2 added to the natural gas distribution network. In an industrial setting, this is not a problem. Do you remember you started this rant when you noticed that H2 was not used for redox in my "press release" but... precisely for... heating? Here is the quote:
"But unlike other initiatives, Ovako plans to burn its green hydrogen for industrial heat, rather than use it to extract iron from ore in a process known as direct iron reduction. This is likely because the Swedish firm focuses primarily on recycling scrap steel, which accounts for 97% of its production. [...] Ovako anticipates that switching to green hydrogen to fire these processes would reduce its core emissions by a further 50% or more."
So why don't you go and tell Ovako's engineers that they're wrong because "Energy density blah-di-blah..., believe me, I'm an engineer". Surely they will be interested.
"...'green hydrogen' will become economically viable, once 'renewable' energy starts becoming cheaper...."
To be blunt: the only way green hydrogen will become "cheaper" is by widespread rollouts of molten salt nuclear energy plants - and it will STILL be three times the price per joule of the source electrons
This is where the fundamental conceit of piped hydrogen proponents falls down - natural gas is popular because it's 1/3-1/5 the price of electricity. Nobody is going to pay for it if it costs more than just running wires
Historically, electricity production accounts for only about 1/3 of our ENTIRE carbon emissions. Renewables can't bridge the gap between "replacing existing electricity production" and "making enough extra electricity to cover the other carbon sources", so their existence can only ever be regarded as a stepping stone along the way - they are NOT an "ends", merely one of the "means"
WRT "tidal" energy, the ecological impacts of large scale deployments are something that most people fail to take into account. Canada abandoned the Bay of Fundy proposals because it was realised that deploying it would result in extra tidal swings right down the east coast of North America - to the tune of 60-foot tides at Maine, 20-foot tides at New York and an extra 3-5 feet of tidal swing at Florida.
Yes, the Fundy proposal could have supplied 1/3 of Canada's needs, but at cost of unleashing ecological devastation upon its neighbour
To be blunt: the only way green hydrogen will become "cheaper" is by widespread rollouts of molten salt nuclear energy plants - and it will STILL be three times the price per joule of the source electrons
Yep, but that I guess depends on unravelling energy markets and restoring them to a simpler cost plus model. At the moment it's incredibly distorted by all the subsidies and regulation. Then it's back to how to use any H2 produced. It's less efficient than CH4 for heating, so instead of trying to replace methane with hydrogen, use the hydrogen for the Haber process, or just making syngas. But nuclear is the obvious solution, especially as my stalker helpfully points out the electrolyser for the scrap recycler is 700MW. That's a lot of windmills, and due to intermittency, those aren't going to be producing 700MW continuously. In Green freakonmics, this isn't a problem because the H2 can be fed into gas turbines when the wind isn't blowing..
Alternatively, power it off 1 regular sized NPP or a couple of SMRs and then maybe crack water as a power sink when there's a surplus. Reactors run at optimum efficiency, surplus power performs useful work.
> To be blunt: the only way green hydrogen will become "cheaper" is by widespread rollouts of molten salt nuclear energy plants
Ahem... except for two small details:
1/ nuclear electricity is not green. It might be low carbon (leaving aside protracted construction periods and centuries of waste management). But it's not green. Until Uranium ore can be harvested from sun rays, of course.
2/ nuclear electricity has the highest LCOE.
So, I'd put my money on something else. That was a bit too blunt.
2/ nuclear electricity has the highest LCOE.
No. That 'honour' is still held by offshore windmills. Especially floating windmills. But LCOE is a scam anyway because it's not a like-for-like comparison, so comparing nuclear with wind should really include the cost of storage and/or backup due to winds fundamental intermittency.
Keep on spinning for your industry though, even if 'fake news' and 'misinformation' is now illegal and punishable by prison time..
> No. That 'honour' is still held by offshore windmills. Especially floating windmills.
Well, you will need to tell Lazard they're wrong (another bunch of people on your "debunking" list).
Lazard 2023 LCOE (slide 2):
Nuclear: From 141 to 221 $/MWh
Offshore "windmill (lol)": From 72 to 140 $/MWh (not even overlapping).
Amazing how most people you come across are "wrong". What happened to their Wernicke area, FGS!? Or are they watching too much BBC?
Well, you will need to tell Lazard they're wrong (another bunch of people on your "debunking" list).Lazard 2023 LCOE (slide 2):
Nuclear: From 141 to 221 $/MWh
Offshore "windmill (lol)": From 72 to 140 $/MWh (not even overlapping).
Ah, you're functionally illiterate, aren't you? Picking a few totally at random*
https://cfd.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/AR4-MEY-510/
Current strike price 235.24£/MWh. Ok, that one's tidal, but still 'renewable'.
https://cfd.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/AR4-TFO-900/
Current strike price 116.77£/MWh for a floater.
And by the time you get to page 28, you get to the really fun ones like this-
https://cfd.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/INV-BUR-001/
Current strike price 209.32£/MWh for a measily 258MW installed. Batteries not included, and don't forget capacity factor.
Lazard knows exactly how and why they spin LCOE this way because they are after all an investment bank and asset manager.
LMAO²
No way.... Who's "functionally illiterate". Me or the guy who confuses SELLING PRICE and LCOE (COST). Very basic mistake. And you keep making it, over and over again. Not that I did not tell you before, Right?
- A cost is how much it costs to produce that electricity,
- A price is how much it is sold by the producer.
Or maybe you think these producers sell at cost? More bollocks.
So keep you "randomly picked" CFDs and get us some COSTS.
You really can't learn, can you?
No way.... Who's "functionally illiterate". Me or the guy who confuses SELLING PRICE and LCOE (COST). Very basic mistake. And you keep making it, over and over again. Not that I did not tell you before, Right?
No. Let me try to explain again.
CfD has a strike price. This is the price the producer sells its product at, and is contractually guaranteed. It's also contractually guaranteed to inflate because it's indexed. Thus the only way the price will fall is inflation becomes negative. Hence why the 'renewables' industries claim of falling prices is a lie. Under the current system, they can't fall, only rise.
If you're an energy supplier, then the CfD price is the price you pay for that electricty, and thus becomes your cost. This is extremely basic economics that you should understand as prices and costs really only matter depending on which side of the balance sheet they fall.
And again, LCOE is not a cost, it's a simplified cost model that excludes many actual costs in an attempt to make windmills look favorable. If you look at the actual, contractually committed costs, ie the CfD prices, you'll see they are not.
> "CfD price is the price you pay for that electricty, and thus becomes your cost. This is extremely basic economics that you should understand as prices and costs really only matter depending on which side of the balance sheet they fall."
Really, I love it. Why do we have two different words really? I have a little cousin like you: he's never wrong. But since you seem to master "basic economics", let me add to your knowledge.
PRICE = COST + MARGIN + TAXES
As you mention several time CfDs are prices. Let me cite you "CfD has a strike price. This is the price..."
Instead LCOEs are costs (that's the "C" in LCOE).
1/ Prices are heavily country dependent (costs are too, but taxes and margin add more fluctuations). So prices are not a good basis to compare technology efficiencies.
2/ The IRENA databases (PPAs and auctions database) are a better country-specific source of commercial info.
3/ LCOEs are indicators that are calculated to help investors make decisions and explore multi year TCO models.
THEREFORE:
- They don't include taxes.
- They don't include subsidies either.
- They don't include externalities (like nuclear waste management).
- They implicitly take into account load factors, since they are based on effective electricity generation.
According to LCOEs renewable COSTS have been falling (like every other good subject to learning rate) for the last 2 decades.
According to the IRENA databases, renewable PRICES (as in PPA and auctions) have ALSO been tumbling dramatically over the last two decades and are now in many cases below thermal (coals and gas) prices.
In any case CFDs are not the same as LCOEs and are not good indicators of costs. So you can't call me an illiterate and a liar by opposing CFDs to LCOEs.
Sorry if these indicators don't confirm your quixotic joust against "windmills". I know that must be frustrating. Just use your usual approach: call it a conspiracy from the BBC and the "scumbags".
Really, I love it. Why do we have two different words really?
It's a combination of English and accounting. It does this. So I sell you a cluebat for £9.99. That's my price, and your cost. It's still £9.99.
As you mention several time CfDs are prices
And like the £9.99 cluebat, also costs. The CfF price is the cost to us for that electricity. Again it's very simple. Here's wiki-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_for_difference#Electricity_generation
The costs of the CfD scheme are funded by a statutory levy on all UK-based licensed electricity suppliers (known as the ‘Supplier Obligation’), which is passed on to consumers.
Which is really the 'D' part of CfD. The wholesale rate for electricity might be only £30/MWh, so a supplier pays that. It also has to settle the difference between the wholesale price and the CfD price via the LCC supplier obligation slush fund.
But regardless, it shows you're either intentionally lieing, or really don't understand how it works. So earlier you picked-
Nuclear: From 141 to 221 $/MWh
Offshore "windmill (lol)": From 72 to 140 $/MWh (not even overlapping).
So converting to honest money, £112- £175 for nuclear and £57-£138 for offshore windmills. You imply that nuclear is more expensive than wind, yet-
https://cfd.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/INV-BUR-001/
Current strike price £209.32/MWh for a measily 258MW installed wind.
https://cfd.lowcarboncontracts.uk/cfd-register/register/NUC-HPC-198/
Current strike price £128.09/MWh for 3.2GW nuclear.
This clearly shows wind (at least in this example) costs consumers a LOT more than nuclear. And will continue to cost more thanks to indexation. But that inconvenient truth aside, you seize on a new concept-
PRICE = COST + MARGIN + TAXES
Well, yes. This is how it usually works. So ok.
£209.32/MWh= £57 + Margin + Taxes. Simple worked example based on actual data, ie the current INV-BUR-001 CfD. £57 in costs, ergo £152.32 in margin and taxes. This seems.. extremely generous to either the windfarmers profit margins, or taxes. Do you think >100% profit margin is acceptable in an essential service like electricity? Especially one pleading poverty, and Vattenfall & Orsted saying they can't actually build their windfarms at £57/MWh and need >£100/MWh instead.
2/ The IRENA databases (PPAs and auctions database) are a better country-specific source of commercial info.
Ermm. No-
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/about-us/
LCC is a statutory body appointed to manage this mess, so is the de-facto source for CfD info because it runs the market. IRENA is just another 'renewables' lobbying body that takes data from LCC
In any case CFDs are not the same as LCOEs and are not good indicators of costs. So you can't call me an illiterate and a liar by opposing CFDs to LCOEs.
I can and I will. I know CfDs are not the same as LCOEs, as should you. I know CfDs are costs because per UK law, they're the cost of our 'renewable' electricity. Again it's very clear that energy suppliers have to pay the "supplier obligation" costs and other subsidies to the 'renewables' market. That you can't accept these simple facts, or recognise that LCOEs are nothing but simple models that ignore actual costs and externalities strongly suggests you are either deliberately trolling, or you really don't understand how this stuff works.
> It's a combination of English and accounting. It does this. So I sell you a cluebat for £9.99. That's my price, and your cost. It's still £9.99.
Fine. We all got that. But you can't tell me that my costs are too high by using YOUR cost (my PRICE) as a proof. You're either dishonest or clueless.
Not commenting on the rest of your pathetic lucubration trying to prove that "CfDs are costs". => G31.9
> You claimed nuclear is more expensive, I showed wind is actually more expensive.
You can always pretend that your are right and everybody else is wrong. But nobody of the "everybody else" will agree. Your universe is a singleton. Come back with the rest of use when you're ready.
But you can't tell me that my costs are too high by using YOUR cost (my PRICE) as a proof.
Sure I can, I did, and pricing is analysed this way all the time. You claimed nuclear is more expensive, I showed wind is actually more expensive. You claimed a range of costs for wind, I've showed those costs are unrealistic because wind farmers like Vattenfall & Orsted cannot deliver projects at those costs and demand a lot more. If a supplier cannot deliver at an agreed price, ie £50/MWh, then their costs are obviously higher and the low end of your preferred LCOE assumptions is outdated or incorrect. This was already pretty well known though when those bids were made and the 'renewables' scumbags ran lots of press about how cheap windmills were now.
You're either dishonest or clueless.
Nope, that's still all on your side. After all, there is again plenty of evidence for this. Bid £50/MWh, can't deliver at £50/MWh and need >£100/MWh instead. Whoever put together those bids was obviously dishonest, clueless or failed to predict the inflationary pressure caused by both windmills and tobacco. Or if it was deliberately lowballed and underbid, it could also have been plain fraud.
So setting up a "gasometer" or two next to an existing combined cycle gas turbine /steam plant and putting low pressure H2
Take the terms "gasometer" and "H2" as metaphorical and replace them with "storage tank" and "Battery of reversible redox flow cells" and you may have something there. By using, say aqueous redox flow cells you've got the advantages of using potentially very large capacity energy stores that are:
* made of relatively cheap materials, hence fairly inexpensive energy storage
* potentially very large storage capacity
* can store energy sourced from any type of generator, turbine of solar panel
* potentially low pollution from leaks depending on the redox compound.
Or you could just setup a large battery at one of more grid nexus points and achieve the same thing
Which is what grid operators are doing (IMHO the wind operators should be forced to put batteries on THEIR side of the feedin point and levelise what they produce, instead of forcing the grid to put up with wildly variable output for which they're forced to pay top whack. This is another example of indirect subsidisation of renewables which heavily obscures the REAL costs)
Lester (RIP) used to heavily push molten salt nuclear and thorium. China has had a test MSR running for nearly a year now - the first since 1969 and the first time a MSR has been thorium fuelled.
If it works out as well as the original research at Oak Ridge indicated - 80% reduction in build cost, 80% reduction in operating costs, 99%++ reduction in waste volume and several orders of magnitude improvement in nuclear safety - then MSR rollouts will obliterate the renewables industry.
To cap it off, a complete MSR including containment building is calculated at 1/4 the size of a coal burner whilst providing more heat energy - meaning MSR technology can essentially be "drop in replacement" for such burners at such stations(*) and rollout can be even faster than you'd think
(*) Traditional nuclear power is hideously expensive, partially because it can only produce wet steam (not hot enough) and causes extremely high maintenance loads on steam turbines as a result
"States have degrees of autonomy, so setting any national policy gets tricky"
For the most part, they don't. As soon as there are interstate interconnectors in place power grids are subject to federal policies
Texas has more problems specifically BECAUSE it has so few interconnectors and it is an island grid BECAUSE running interconnectors makes them subject to federal rules on resiliance, etc
The power grid started out with a bunch of small stations (for resiliance, etc) selling waste heat into district heating systems (Hence the common term "Heat and lighting" in a lot of old company names) and consoldated into larger generation sites (the first "large" site was Niagra hydro) because they're vastly more efficient as well as easier to operate in the face of varying loads
The Federal policies on power distribution already existed but were given more teeth in the wake of the Enron Scandal - which was a result of California's attempt to make electricity a more "free market" commodity
The continental US (plus a good part of Canada) is composed of three grids: The eastern being everything but Texas more than 100 to 300 miles east of the Rocky Mountains, the western system being everything but Texas west of the boundary and Texas. California is part of the western grid also containing all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico along with most of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado plus British Columbia and possible parts of Alberta.
I'm dubious about the interconnected micro-grid proposal working as there isn't much being said about dealing with the vagaries of renewable power. The only two sources of high availability "zero" carbon power are nuclear and geothermal.
Heavy emphasis on "some". Periods of low precipitation can last for several years, causing a shortage of water needed for hydro. An early example was California ca 1920, where a large fraction of the electricity was generated by hydro, running into problems from a dry year curtailing production. One response was building more steam plants.
Note that nuclear and geothermal can also have problems with inland generating stations running low on cooling water in a dry year.
"nuclear and geothermal can also have problems with inland generating stations running low on cooling water in a dry year."
They can also have problems with that cooling water being returned at too high a temperature to rivers, thereby having to derate
BOTH issues have the same proximate cause: Geothermal and water-moderated nuclear power are low temperatire "wet steam" producers, which makes for thermally inefficient steam turbines due to the low delta-temperature unless provided with copious quantities of cooling water (This is quite apart from the wet steam being hell on turbines, making them a high maintenance cost items)
Unless you can feed a steam turbine with _at least_ 650C steam, you're facing serious downsides. I keep seeing proposals for geothermal power claiming 750C feedin (I'll believe that when I see it), but nuclear power can only operate above 350C at the reactor outlet if it's not being water-cooled (above this you end up with steam voids inside your reactor and these are bad news when the water is your moderator as well as coolant)
ORNL's MSRE ran at ~750C (which gives 400C headroom to the 1150C limiting temperature of fission reactions) and spent time at up to 850C to verify everything would handle heat excursions safely (electric heaters meant that it didn't need to be critical during temperature testing). TMSR-LF1 doesn't have published specs on its operating temperature
UK AGRs run at 550C but newer designs are capable of 650-750C (this doesn't solve the waste problem that you don't have with MSR designs, but at least the turbines are relatively efficient)
All of our power plants are steam plants. Well, those that don't rely on wind, tides or solar, that is.
It doesn't matter whether the power source is coal, nuclear, wood or whatever else, they all make steam to turn the turbines that generate the electricity.
The day we find a way to make electricity without steam is the day our civilization will have progressed yet another step, but for the moment, we're a steam civilization.
Bring on the hyperreactors, I say !
And those grids each have a history of falling over, each like a row of dominoes. But they haven't been broken up, because each of those grids creates resilience: the grid is tougher than it's constituent parts. There is an obvious and real contradiction in aims: each domino in the grid is supported by the other dominoes, but each domino has the potential to take out all the others.
So here's a suggestion to break up the mega-grids into micro-grids, and here's a discussion at The Register, where the idea of making the mega-grid more stable has been derailed by a discussion of generating capacity.
I tend to think of a power station as being 1GW, but that perhaps raises steam in a couple of boilers, and/or uses it to spin a couple of turbine-generator sets, and each can be switched off on occasion.
I suspect your 1.2GW wind power station is made up of several turbines.
I've not seen one larger than 16MW mentioned, but perhaps they are larger. Even so, they'll be 1 to 4 dozen to the GW, and arranged in groups, and the groups into groups and so on.
Which begins to look a lot like a small grid.
The solar panels on my roof are rated at 300W peak, let's say we can have big ones at 500W. That means 2000000 panels per GW.
Now we could wire all 2000000 in series and put out 60MV DC directly, but I think among the very many reasons not yo the old Christmas tree lights problem, one panel failing means the whole string does, is almost the least.
They'll be in rows of several dozen to a hundred, and wired to a sensible compromise. They may not even all be in the same field!
So again, modules, redundancy, and concentration, but not magically a single machine.
"I suspect your 1.2GW wind power station is made up of several turbines."
Yes, hence my reference to wind farms. Hornsea 1 uses 174 x 7 MW units, Hornsea 2 uses 8.4 MW units. Future extensions may take the whole Hornsea complex to a total of 6 GW, and it's likely they will use larger turbines, but as of now there's no firm plans because the UK government botched the procurement of offshore wind capacity last year (although they did continue to throw money at crappy solar farms and forever-experimental tidal power).
There's various wind turbine makers already touting 18 MW units, I don't think any are yet in commercial service, and we'll probably see a move towards 20 MW units. At the scale of these monsters now being designed they're having to deal with all manner of unknowns and materials science issues, not to mention in-service considerations. Whether it will be economic to go beyond 20 MW I couldn't say. There's much hope for floating wind turbines as that could make accessible much larger areas of sea, and offer much higher capacity factors (the Hywind floating offshore plant in Scotland has achieved 57% capacity factor across a full year) but the cost of floating systems remains much higher than fixed offshore units at present. For comparison, the capacity factor for solar is about 9.8% in the UK, nuclear is about 80%. CCGT or coal plants don't have comparable capacity factor data as they're marginal plant, but their availability factor of 90-94% would be a comparable number to current capacity factors for nuclear, wind or solar.
"Future extensions may take the whole Hornsea complex to a total of 6 GW"
There's a huge difference between "nameplate rating" and "actual output"
Most windfarms are lucky to achieve 30% utilisation factor and the annuallised output is usually closer to 22-25% of nameplate, with extended periods at 0-5% (unrelated to scheduled maintenance)
What a treat, really.
People of the trade have been telling you, and others, in El Reg's comments, for years now, that smart microgrids were on the way. All you managed to do is cling to some 20th century generation and distribution models as the god-sent truth.
Now it's stated black on white in an article echoing engineering authorities in the distribution domain. Yet still you cling to the past and rehash over-simplistic arguments about windless nights, ignoring that power generation (and now storage) is already in the consumer market where business models are totally different, ignoring that network management and load prediction have made huge progresses. Maybe these engineers in this article have already come across your simplistic arguments umpteen times and have more experience than yourself.
PS: down-voting comments stating facts can't change these very facts.
"People of the trade have been telling you, and others, in El Reg's comments, for years now, that smart microgrids were on the way"
People in the trade? Like me, perhaps? And I've heard this bilge for many a year, especially from those pushing particular agendas. Another favourite is DSR, where is we turn off the stuff somebody wanted to use, we can match demand to variable supply, and pretend that's smart and resilient.
Sticking an algorithm into a distribution control system to speed up isolation and reconnection isn't of itself a smart grid, and even with further software controls won't magically add resilience to microgrids. Stability and affordability in electricity generation and distribution have always been about scale. By all means, cling anonymously to the idea that tiddlygrids are going to supply you with cheap and resilient power, but it isn't going to happen.
"ignoring that power generation (and now storage) is already in the consumer market where business models are totally different"
Go on then, cut your own grid connection permanently. Even if it works for you, it's not going to work for more than the tiniest handful of people.
> People in the trade? Like me, perhaps?
No. I meant real people of the trade. Not commentards.
People like the engineers speaking in the article. Or people from Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. Or folks from RWE (Breuer), Vattenfall or Siemens. People who do the walk. Not people who call it impossible.
> Go on then, cut your own grid connection permanently.
Nobody said it was going to happen overnight. And no, I'm not going off-grid: my neighbours need me too and I need them. If you understood how smart microgrids work, you wouldn't write this ultimate ignorant comment.
Even in the cases of large solar or wind farms, the self-healing aspect is important.
One of the problems is that inverter-based plants have historically been designed to follow the grid, and to be prepared to shut down amd isolate themselves if they sense that the grid is going down. Now that these plants are becoming bigger chunks of the supply portfolio, they need different control strategies.
The IEEE recently did an informative presentation on real world examples of some large wind farm installations in Texas, and how they reacted to major grid disturbances during the summer of 2023.
Short version is, Texas has added a ton of wind and solar resources over the last year or so. Those added resources kept the grid up and running when a major thermal plant in Odessa, TX tripped offline ladt summer. Even though the inverter plants kept running, there are control improvements that would help ensure better stability. IIRC, these improvements would decrease the time for the grid frequency to stabilize after the trip and would also improve the ability of the inverter based resources to absorb a bigger disturbance in the future.
(Disclaimer: I only took one semester of power systems, the "real" EEs at the power companies understand this much better than I do.)
Renewable energy sources like solar and wind typically produce direct current electricity, requiring an inverter to turn it into alternating current......Keeping a bunch of microgrids playing nice with each other – and not destabilizing due to the creation of unintentional closed loops – will be tricky, if not impossible, without a bunch of new tech.
Not to mention 'renewables' like solar and wind being variable, intermittent, and the cause of the problem. So the solution is to throw even more money at the problem rather than recognising the root cause of the problem in the first place. With 'microgrids', one problem should be very obvious. So a grid sees a frequency or voltage drop and trips the relays to isolate. Yey! The microgrid is now protected. Or in other words.. Isolated. Where will the microgrid be getting fed power from?
This may make more sense with widespread SMR deployment where a microgrid has enough SMR-generated power to keep the lights on when the relays trip out. But I'm taking a wild guess here and thinking the person interviewed just happens to have a bunch of new tech to flog.
But if there's going to be massive grid re-engineering, maybe we should just bite the bullet and go DC instead. It'll be massively expensive, but that's the 'Net Zero' way.
Interconnect between "the continent" and the UK are already DC, aren't they?
Yep. So are EV chargers, and things like heating and cooking. So most of the impending demand suits DC. Downside is we have an awful lot of existing appliances and other electrical equipment that relies on an AC feed, even though pretty much all of it will waste energy converting that to DC anyway.
DC voltage conversion isn't exactly free. Ohm's Law applies as much to DC transmission as AC so higher voltage is preferred for high power transmission but will need to be stepped down closer to point of use.
Sub-sea lines tend to be DC nowadays because of the reactive effect of the sea water they are immersed in (its a dielectric). With a sub-sea AC line you have to fight the reactance on every cycle to charge up and discharge the surrounding water. I'm not a power engineer but I don't suppose you lose a lot of power that way (what you lose on the way up you get back on the way down), but the power factor of the line must be horrible hence the football pitches full of correction gear at either end. DC doesn't have this effect to the same extent but I imagine it still does when the loading of the line changes. Instead you need very big inverters and rectifiers.
DC is also significantly more dangerous to humans than AC (with AC the zero crossings give you a chance to let go with DC your muscles stay contracted continuously) so requires far more caution. For same reason the switching gear has to be a lot chunkier (arcs harder to extinguish). I'm quite surprised really that we are glibly chucking around hundreds of volts DC inside EV charging cables. I hope someone is going around pressing the T button regularly....
Historically appliance motors (washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.) would have been AC synchronous, connected straight to the mains and ran at a speed governed by the connected grid. Majority of the generating stations were thermal with big rotating turbines that were all synchronised with each other. My Dad worked in the power industry and loved to regale us with stories of generating sets going online but being a bit out (big bang), or worse a trip when they were a lot out (bigger bang and lots of steam)... The modern way is to use DC to drive variable frequency and/or variable voltage motors which is apparently more efficient overall, even with the loss of rectifying the incoming AC.
Fun fact -- half of the Japanese power grid is 50 cycles and the other half is 60 cycles. When I lived there you had to buy an appliance suitable for your part of the country. I dare say that is less of a concern now.
> Historically appliance motors (..., vacuum cleaners...) would have been AC synchronous
I don't know where you shop. In the US in most of the 20th century, vacuum cleaners were "Universal" which is a bastard DC machine. Same for most small power tools, hand-drills and homeowner power saws. (Also the true AC motors are almost all some form of "induction", not synchronous, slipping behind the utility 50 or 60 cps.)
The point of variable drive seems to be speed-control, which especially allows damping the SURGE at turn-on. My heat blower would dim the lights, my well pump still does. If it could start from zero instead of trying to hit 3,500 from a dead-stop, the current could ramp gently.
Residential utility power companies do NOT want redundant loops. It's all tributary. Here in the woods I know roads (and even a whole town) fed from both ends but not linked in the middle. You drive along and the power lines just stop for a quarter mile. No "ring-main" thinking here! Same reason ethernet gear fears loops. Logic- and line-level loops don't start fires and are easily broken. Power-level loops are more costly. (However for obvious reasons more "smart" switching is coming to power utilities. Smart meters are a major step in knowing where the problems are.)
Yes, DC everywhere is coming but don't hold your breath. Conversion from 7,200V to 230V is essential (unless you truly have good on-site generation) but AC transformers are everywhere and financed on very long time-scales.
Residential utility providers are not necessarily opposed to loops, some AC distribution systems were literally a grid with multiple paths from the substation to the final customer. Main reason for not wanting loops is to make setting up protective relays easier (in power system lingo, the relay is what detects the fault and the circuit breaker is the switch controlled by the relay that breaks the circuit). Transmission grids have many redundant loops, but the relays have an easy time differentiating between a local fault and a non-local fault.
You are spot on about "Universal" motors. Funny thing is that it's easy to make a power supply that will be just as happy to run off of 120VDC or 240VDC as it is to run off of 120VAC or 240VAC.
Currently available SiC FET's make transforming from 2400VDC to 120/240VDC a piece of cake, with efficiency better than 98%. 7200VDC to 120/240VDC is a bit more complicated - may need to wait for SiC IGBT's.
Currently available SiC FET's make transforming from 2400VDC to 120/240VDC a piece of cake, with efficiency better than 98%. 7200VDC to 120/240VDC is a bit more complicated - may need to wait for SiC IGBT's.
So perhaps a dumb question.. But how much rewiring would be needed, if we transitioned to a DC world? Most of my practical knowledge comes from the telco world, and sometimes having to point out to 'engineers' that just because the kit is only 50v, it doesn't mean it won't happily kill you. But rewiring 25m+ homes and businesses would be rather expensive, especially if you're trying to do that for a region before it can cut over to DC.
Unless your household can do a big bang cut-over from AC to DC then you'd need a whole parallel set of wiring and outlets. The DC outlets would need to be a different shape so that the wrong thing can't be plugged in even if you are all DC. Remember when unleaded petrol was introduced the filler was made really small so that you couldn't put a leaded nozzle into it? Whilst its true that a lot of devices with switched mode power supplies etc. are perfectly happy on DC as well as AC there will be some that aren't and you have to write the standards to the lowest common denominator. All the isolating and protective devices would need to be DC rated. These are generally bigger and chunkier so that presents a practical issue.
50V comes from the touch voltage that can drive sufficient current through your body to cause cardiac arrest. Same reason that final-circuit RCD's are supposed to trip at 30mA.
Think its fair to say that the standard for the supply to your household is unlikely to change. The conversion efficiency at point of use isn't really a problem in the great scheme of things, far more is lost in the transmission network especially on a rainy day. What we are going to have to think about is getting 3-phase into a large number of properties that historically had no need for so much electrical power. I'm wrestling with this at the moment. Lot more space taken up by the cut-out, need to segregate circuits by phase onto separate DB's taking up yet more space. Just another in the long list of practical obstacles in the quest for net-nothing-ness.
Unless your household can do a big bang cut-over from AC to DC then you'd need a whole parallel set of wiring and outlets. The DC outlets would need to be a different shape so that the wrong thing can't be plugged in even if you are all DC.
That's partly what I was wondering, ie how much existing cabling, sockets and switches could just be re-used, if we could just run using a standard UK 13A plug. So if changes would be needed for things like arc protection. I'm thinking 'no' given arcing is still a risk with AC.
What we are going to have to think about is getting 3-phase into a large number of properties that historically had no need for so much electrical power. I'm wrestling with this at the moment. Lot more space taken up by the cut-out, need to segregate circuits by phase onto separate DB's taking up yet more space.
Yep. I had 3-phase installed at a property and was a little dubious it ignored some safety advice I'd learned. Like phases being more than an arms length apart so you don't end up bridging 2 phases if you're not careful. But more challenging to do in a home than a data centre or exchange. I'm confident enough to change or add an outlet, but I have a healthy enough respect for electricity to leave most of that stuff to competent electricians. And I suspect the drive for domestic 3-phase supplies may identify ones that aren't.
It's a lot harder than you might think.
Most protective devices will not function on DC.
Almost all RCD/GFCIs are Type A, which require the current to touch zero briefly in order to function. DC-rated Type B do exist, of course.
MCBs generally rely on that same zero-touch to break the arc. As do light switches, and everything with a set of contacts. In a DC world their breaking capacity would be massively reduced.
Older/less efficacious LED lighting relies on capacitive droppers, though they're slowly being replaced - very slowly, as they generally have a very long service life.
FWIW, Anderson specifically makes plugs/sockets for DC circuits. They have on line for the ~380VDC used in modern data centers, with the plugs designed to shield the arc caused by pulling the plug out of the socket.
Back in the 1920 to 1950 time frame, there were a large number of houses in the US where the electric power was 32VDC from battery banks. The batteries where kept charged by small gasoline generators or windmill driven generators. There were a number of appliances made that would run off of 32VDC and the plugs and outlets were usually the same used for 110VAC.
"50V comes from the touch voltage that can drive sufficient current through your body to cause cardiac arrest."
Assuming dry hands. 12V can kill you if your hands are wet and ringing voltage superimposed on 50V HURTS like hell (it hurts even more when your hand jerks off the wiring block you were working on and impales itself on the one right next to it)
Phone circuits are current limited to keep people working on them alive. Inside the exchange the 50V sources are frequently capable of several thousand amps without breaking a sweat
Historically appliance motors (washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.) would have been AC synchronous, connected straight to the mains and ran at a speed governed by the connected grid
Synchronous motors are of very little use when the supply frequency is fixed, because they have to be spun up to speed by something before locking in, and too bit a load causes them to lose synchronism and stop. Just about the only domestic use of synchronous motors is, or was, in clocks like the Smith Sectric. These had to be started by pulling or twisting and then releasing a spring-loaded knob - that's what spun the rotor up to speed.
Domestic appliances typically use AC induction motors, which always run slightly slower than the rotating magnetic field pushing them along. In a four-pole machine that field goes round 25 times per second, 1500 times per minute, which is why most small AC motors run at 1450rpm or thereabouts. The 50rpm slip is what generates voltage, and therefore current, and therefore magnetic field, in the rotor.
"Ohm's Law applies as much to DC transmission as AC"
Losses in AC lines are also a result of electric and magnetic field coupling. It's an issue even at 50-60Hz and limits most electrical grid distribution to about 1200-1500 miles from point of origin
HVDC has lower losses along the cable, but higher losses incurred in the conversion at each end vs transformers
Swings and roundabouts, etc
As a side note AC does come with a small safety upside. You don't get the one sided heating on connections, less issues with corrosion as electrolysis LOVES DC and as the voltage drops to zero 100 times a second it is harder to sustain an arc. Solar installations have run into this problem on the DC side. In the UK it is advised not to use an external DC isolator on solar if the inverter has one built in.
The corrosion issue is why we had positive earth cars for a while.
Self healing power grids sound like fantasy. You'd need multiple redundant routes and spare capacity.
Yes, that's how existing macro-grids work. The are called "grids" because of the multiple redundant routes. When the source talks about "within 5 years" and "software upgrade", they are talking about existing grids.
It's not an idea for upgrading grid inter-connects: it's an idea for upgrading grids. Grid inter-connects get a lot more discussion, because they are significant and unusual, but grid connections are ubiquitous and critical.
The GB grid is, in fact, quite far advanced when it comes to self-healing grid, albeit using the 'traditional' methods attributed to Duke in this article. For over 10 years, the UK DNO's have been rolling out technology called "Adaptive Power Restoration Scheme", a self-healing grid technology developed jointly between General Electric and UK DNO's to algorithmically restore supply in under 1 minute in case of an outage on the HV network. The maximum number of customers are restored without control field staff involvement. Many DNO's have now rolled this technology out to > 90% of their network. It does require investment in remote monitoring and control, but comms links are generally reliable. The UK regulator has been helpful in this regard by incentivising quality of service through rewards and penalties.
In a global context, this type of application is generally called Fault Location, Isolation and Service Restoration (FLISR). UK DNO's are ahead of most companies globally in use of this type of technology.
But looking at field-technologies without the need for central control may have some advantages, though concerns will remain around the safety of the approach in underground networks where engineers may be on-site and there will be risks where there are automatic actions while they are potentially working on the network. A comparative project has recently been progressing to live trial with Scottish Power and DRAX, looking at how similar technology can establish and sustain microgrids in the case of major power outages (https://www.smart-energy.com/industry-sectors/energy-grid-management/synergy-project-demonstrates-renewable-energys-black-start-potential/).
It's world-leading tech, and developed by an amazing group of engineers in Blighty (Edinburgh) in close collaboration with the UK network companies :-)
In some ways the grid can be treated as a circuit switched network and thus managed by something akin to SS7.
Yep, but that's signalling, which can already be done in-band. But if that's exposed, which to an extent it would have to be, it would become vulnerable to attack. Other routing protocols could probably also be adapted, but with similar challenges. Like they can signal state and congestion, but vulnerable to flapping and congestion if the network becomes unstable. For routing, this just means packets get dropped. For high energy power systems, stuff may explode. As someone mentioned, inertia is increasingly becoming a problem because 'renewables' can't really do this, and instead rely on batteries to provide a buffer or synthetic inertia but at very high cost.
Why are batteries not the answer? There is plenty of research and already viable solutions for highly scalable batteries. You can't deploy all that stuff today, but we aren't ready for going full scale into renewables yet anyway.
Every substation would have a big flow battery (or whatever better tech we come up with) with multiple tanks sufficient to provide a few days worth of stored energy at typical demand. There would undoubtedly be plenty of end users who also had their own batteries. So even if the worst case scenario where solar and wind both stop producing entirely you'd have enough energy to carry through for everyone connected to that one substation. Deploy that at every substation and you can remove all the upstream infrastructure like the long distance power lines, big decentralized power plants, and so forth.
Obviously this would take a few decades to make happen, but so would building enough wind/solar and other renewable technologies to fully supplant current electrical demand plus the demand currently covered by fossil fuels in vehicles. During those 25 years or so you'd keep the existing infrastructure going, but instead of adding to it where you normally would as needed you target those places for the "future" upgrades earlier in the process. You'd close down coal plants first, then natural gas plants as you transition to not using fossil fuels for energy anymore (other than maybe limited circumstances where electrical+battery just isn't practical like long haul aviation) but even that would probably be replaced eventually by synthetic fossil fuels created using excess green energy on cool sunny days with a lot of wind.
Why are batteries not the answer? There is plenty of research and already viable solutions for highly scalable batteries.
Utilisation dear boy, utilisation.
In the current grid we can use batteries left right and centre, because they're ultimately supported by CCGT, nuclear and imports. But there's times when there's eff all wind power across much of northern Europe for five to ten days at a time, and generally those conditions are pre-disposed to winter when there's also eff all solar output. Which means the volume of batteries is simply unfeasible - as an indicative but educated guess, a UK semi-detatched house would use around 120 kWh a day in the depths of winter for both heating and 'leccy (ignoring EV charging!). Assume seven days of resilience, that's 840 kWh of local storage....have you got the money and the space? Even if you cut that by two thirds through advanced insulation that's still 280 kWh. There's also the problem that batteries are inefficient in terms of their round trip losses, and the less they're used the higher the unit cost.
replaced eventually by synthetic fossil fuels created using excess green energy on cool sunny days with a lot of wind
This is foolish green optimism. Do the maths. I've worked for a company that built a production scale "wind power to gas" plant, and although it's technically (relatively) easy, the economics are shocking. The efficiency of power to chemical (usually gas) transition is poor, the diabatic and adiabatic losses are grim, the system control overheads are notable, and the efficiency of reconversion to electricity is poor - and then you've got poor asset utilisation which kills the whole thing off, unless of course your objective is to make energy so expensive that people can't afford it. At the moment that's the consequence of UK energy policy, whether intended or not.
Well maybe it wouldn't work in northern Europe but it would work perfectly well anywhere in the US. The highest latitudes aren't as high as northern Europe and I'm not aware of anywhere that goes calm 5-10 days in the winter. There are giant wind turbines dotting the landscape all over where I live once you leave the cities, and they spin even with wind of 5 or 6 mph that I'd hardly term "wind" and doesn't create a wind chill value. Truly CALM conditions where there is no power generation is rare.
The other people in northern Europe, or at least the UK, is the insanity of using electric resistance heat which is the most inefficient possible method of heating. Upgrade those antiquated systems to heat pumps and they'd be far more efficient (plus they'd gain AC which most don't now because warm weather is so rarely for them, but it is getting more common)
Just cos a wind turbine is spinning doesn't mean it is making full power.
The UK largely uses gas for heating. We've had a domestic gas distribution network for a very long time. France is a HUGE user of resistive electric heaters as they've had a large supply of cheap nuclear electricity for a long time, so they don't care. I stayed with a friend in Canada many many moons ago and their house was all electric baseboard heating because their 'hydro' bill was cheap as the electricity came from hydro and nuclear.
The heat pumps being rolled out in the UK are also air to water (or water to water) so we don't get an A/C function. They only make hot/warm water.
Some heat pumps are reversible and can be used to cool the property in the summer. It's not very efficient though, maybe a couple degrees C temperature reduction, because of the low convection rate with "normal" radiators. There are "active" radiators with fans on them that would improve that.
The other people in northern Europe, or at least the UK,
Heat pumps probably make sense in England, where pumping heat from the "cold to the hot" is possible, but not in central Canada and northern USA, where pumping heat from the "very-cold to the hot" requires double-pump technology or new refrigerants. There is ongoing research, and funding from the DOE. The same is true in parts of Northern Europe.
Department of Energy residential cold climate heat pump challenge:
https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/residential-cold-climate-heat-pump-challenge
https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-leading-heat-pump-manufacturers-successfully-develop-next-generation
England is kept warm by the sea. And some parts of the world which are not coastal will be able to use rivers as heat sources for neighborhood heating even in cold weather.
There is an ever growing list of heat pumps that can work down to -30C and below. The US currently rates them only down to 5F (-15C) but at that temperature there are some that have a COP over 2 - so they are still more than twice as good as resistive heat at that temperature. And the design temperature for them to heat to is 70F, which is warmer than most keep their home in the winter (especially at night, when outside temperatures bottom out) so that number is actually a bit pessimistic.
There are some that maintain a COP greater than 1 down to -40C, which covers basically all of the US. OK there may be a few places where it gets colder than that a handful of nights every few years, but if I lived there I wouldn't consider it a travesty if my house couldn't maintain a 70F temperature all night and fell down into the mid 60s lol
Educated guess? Hilarious!
120 kWh a day for heating a semi-detached house!?
I live in such a house and can tell you the most I ever used was 46kWh on Jan 20th. Presumably it was very cold that day because the winter average for me is well below 30kWh per day. December average was <20kWh per day but it was an unusually warm month.
Inertia.
If you take, say, a large CCGT plant, you have really fucking heavy stuff rotating at 3,000rpm (in the UK). Those act as a damper which help keep the frequency stable. They don't want to change speed. Batteries, solar, wind - not grid-synchronous. No inertia effect. HVDC interconnectors/convertors - the same. Without inertia, managing frequency becomes really hard. Also the heavy rotating stuff is capable of generating/absorbing reactive power.
The electric grid is becoming less centralised with more and more generation (solar, bidirectional charging) happening at the edge of the grid.
There are trials of new-built homes with solar panels and included energy storage which are managed by the grid operator that are being sold with zero ongoing costs because they help balance the grid. Lookup zero bill homes from Octopus
I live in North Carolina and get my power from Duke Energy, AKA "The Duke of Darkness" (a sobriquet inspired by Britain's own Lucas Electric, AK "The Prince of Darkness").
For about 20 years I got my power from Carolina Power and Light, and Progress Energy (which took over CP&L). During that time I can only recall one significant power failure, and that was due to Hurricane Fran.
Now with Duke, if a month goes by without a power failure it's a cause for celebration. If Duke's system is an example of a "self healing grid" we are screwed.
And we really aren't going to be able to provide sufficient reliable, reasonably priced, 24x7x365 power using wind and solar. Those systems aren't nearly consistent enough and generally require economic subsidies to make any economic sense at all... and if an industry needs subsidies from the taxpayer to operate it's not an economically viable industry.
I was offered a research assistant job at Durham University in 1991, examining stability and resilience in power grids. Unfortunately the National Grid was privatised just after I was offered the job, which was then un-offered as the first thing the newly privatised company did was cancel all research funding. Still, I got a better job, as a result of which I met my wife so it all turned out fine.
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