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European Super Grid

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Re: European Super Grid

#21

Post by patrickk »

jopsen wrote: post #19
patrickk wrote: post #17

There's so many exciting projects[1] going on in Europe in this space. The offshore Danish wind power island and the massive wind farms off the UK coast for example. Given how windy[2] the coastlines around Britain and Ireland are, it's great to see this in development. One project I'd like to see get implemented is connecting Iceland to Britain to give 24/7 renewable baseload energy via undersea cables to Britain an…

[3] makes me wonder if we could simply convert Iceland to a giant geothermal power plant, and power most of Europe.. Sure, it would take some investment, but isn't the technology already here?

That’s what I often think. We have the technology. Sure it will take some time to iron out the kinks and there will be transmission losses but we can do this with current technology.

Despite all the recent talk the real barriers are lack of political will and investment, it was viewed as an emergency we could pull it off very quickly indeed.

Re: European Super Grid

#22

Post by tda »

pedrocr wrote: post #16
the8472 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like enough grid scale storage/dispatch to do 100% renewables. I might cover short-term variability but not seasonal differences. In Germany PV generation varies by 5x between summer and winter and in the Nordics it's obviously even more extreme. Unlike some other locations peak consumption also doesn't coincide with peak production since more energy is needed for heating during winter than for ACs duri…

Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar. And since some hydro allows shifting energy during the day even in summer it may be enough for a mix that solves both seasonal and daily/weekly variability. Build enough wind and solar to cover the total energy needs evenly during the year and use those 6+ days of hydro to shift energy during the day/week to solve the unreliability. Maybe 6 days of hydro…

Additionally we will need to live with a supply constrained electricity net. Sometimes there just isn't more available and variable pricing will be needed to reduce demand. Of course the Texas power crisis showed that even if prices rise 50x some people will stubbornly keep using power regardless and basically go bankrupt. But perhaps this is just because nobody is used to actually matching demand to supply vs the current situation where supply is always matched to the demand at all costs with (rolling) blackouts as the only effective measure to reduce demand.

I imagine that in a near future where most cars are electric (and thus transportation is a significant part of electricity demand) it should be quite easy to temporarily reduce demand, even in winter: just stop commuting for a few days (at least all office workers). Also big industrial consumers could be incentivized to reduce demand when supply is too low. It might require some design adjustments, but shutting down most industry and working from home for say 0-5 days a year is surely more cost effective than massively overbuilding renewable energy supply, making giant batteries.

Priorities should probably be 1. More grid interconnections (even out supply variability), 2. cheap long term storage like hydro, 3. demand reduction. I think we need all three to transition to a 100% fossil free future.

Re: European Super Grid

#23

Post by jopsen »

foepys wrote: post #20
jopsen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[3] makes me wonder if we could simply convert Iceland to a giant geothermal power plant, and power most of Europe.. Sure, it would take some investment, but isn't the technology already here?

The Swiss tried geothermal power at large scale but the initial tests caused two earthquakes of 3.5 and 3.4 respectively. They then stopped the project. Maybe somebody else has examples of well running geothermal power plants but at least the Swiss are quite vary of them.

Iceland does lots of geothermal power.. indeed power intensive industries like aluminum refining favor Iceland due to low power cost.

Sure, it's hard to know how far geothermal in Iceland could scale..

But there is an active volcano, how much worse can it get? :)

Re: European Super Grid

#24

Post by the8472 »

pedrocr wrote: post #16
the8472 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like enough grid scale storage/dispatch to do 100% renewables. I might cover short-term variability but not seasonal differences. In Germany PV generation varies by 5x between summer and winter and in the Nordics it's obviously even more extreme. Unlike some other locations peak consumption also doesn't coincide with peak production since more energy is needed for heating during winter than for ACs duri…

Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar. And since some hydro allows shifting energy during the day even in summer it may be enough for a mix that solves both seasonal and daily/weekly variability. Build enough wind and solar to cover the total energy needs evenly during the year and use those 6+ days of hydro to shift energy during the day/week to solve the unreliability. Maybe 6 days of hydro…

> Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar.

There isn't much growth potential for hydro since it's more dependent on geography than the others and many sites are already occupied. Short of mega-projects trying to exploit ocean currents.

> Build enough wind and solar to cover the total energy needs evenly during the year

That means you need to overbuild PV and wind independently, which may be an option but a costly one. And you'd still need more storage, 6 days are too short, there are lulls that last longer than that.

If seasonal storage can be built then it would complement both sources and could decrease the required overbuild factor. So it's still good idea to pursue it to reduce cost and reliance on a single source type.

Re: European Super Grid

#26

Post by rurounijones »

jopsen wrote: post #19
patrickk wrote: post #17

There's so many exciting projects[1] going on in Europe in this space. The offshore Danish wind power island and the massive wind farms off the UK coast for example. Given how windy[2] the coastlines around Britain and Ireland are, it's great to see this in development. One project I'd like to see get implemented is connecting Iceland to Britain to give 24/7 renewable baseload energy via undersea cables to Britain an…

[3] makes me wonder if we could simply convert Iceland to a giant geothermal power plant, and power most of Europe.. Sure, it would take some investment, but isn't the technology already here?

And what a juicy military target those undersea power cables would be in such a situation (Unfortunately)

Re: European Super Grid

#27

Post by throw0101a »

jopsen wrote: post #19
patrickk wrote: post #17

There's so many exciting projects[1] going on in Europe in this space. The offshore Danish wind power island and the massive wind farms off the UK coast for example. Given how windy[2] the coastlines around Britain and Ireland are, it's great to see this in development. One project I'd like to see get implemented is connecting Iceland to Britain to give 24/7 renewable baseload energy via undersea cables to Britain an…

[3] makes me wonder if we could simply convert Iceland to a giant geothermal power plant, and power most of Europe.. Sure, it would take some investment, but isn't the technology already here?

That'd be quite the underwater cable. It'd span about 900 km to get to the Scottish mainland:

* http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?MP=r&R=900km%40BIHN

1050 km to reach the tip of Norway (or Ireland).

Re: European Super Grid

#28

Post by gumby »

pedrocr wrote: post #16
the8472 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like enough grid scale storage/dispatch to do 100% renewables. I might cover short-term variability but not seasonal differences. In Germany PV generation varies by 5x between summer and winter and in the Nordics it's obviously even more extreme. Unlike some other locations peak consumption also doesn't coincide with peak production since more energy is needed for heating during winter than for ACs duri…

Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar. And since some hydro allows shifting energy during the day even in summer it may be enough for a mix that solves both seasonal and daily/weekly variability. Build enough wind and solar to cover the total energy needs evenly during the year and use those 6+ days of hydro to shift energy during the day/week to solve the unreliability. Maybe 6 days of hydro…

> Hydro and wind have the opposite seasonal variability to solar.

What? North eastern India (e.g. Leh) has hydro only in summer as the snowpack melts. In winter it can be -30 C with limited solar resource.

Re: European Super Grid

#29

Post by Reason077 »

zeroego wrote: post #13
Reason077 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European electricity market is not affected by Brexit. This is very beneficial for other reasons, of course: increased imports/exports, increased resiliency, etc.

This is incorrect. "All of Ireland's energy interconnections with Europe run through Britain. And since the U.K. is no longer part of the EU’s internal energy market (IEM), both islands have been suffering from increased supply volatility." [0] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/irelands-energy... A second source if needed: https://www.mondaq.com/ireland/renewables/1023934/brexit-the...

You're right. I was incorrect to state that Brexit hasn't affected the electricity market. Obviously there are different trading procedures in place now.

But there's no evidence that energy volumes moving between the EU and UK have declined since Brexit. In fact, trade volumes have increased on last year, due to the new France-Angleterre 2 (IFA2) interconnector coming online in January.

Additionally, there are multiple further new interconnectors under construction or being planned for the 2020s. Despite changes to the details of how the market operates, the UK will be increasingly closely tied to EU energy markets by virtue of being more physically connected to them.

UK interconnectivity with Europe to rise despite Brexit: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/world-regions/europe/uk-...

Re: European Super Grid

#30

Post by imtringued »

mrweasel wrote: post #6
jcranmer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the conditions in North Africa, you'd rather have the higher efficiency solar power of the "solar thermal power plant" rather than the lower efficiency photovoltaics.

It's also more environment friendly that photovoltaics panels, which are almost impossible to reuse.

I'm not sure what's so difficult in reusing glass and aluminum and resurfacing wafers.
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