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Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

bbc.com

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Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#111

Post by Corazoor »

aclelland wrote: post #18
martinald wrote: post #11

Really misleading article IMO. What this actually means is Scotland sometimes generated 200-300%+ of its demand from wind (and "exported" the rest), and sometimes low %age points and used other sources/imports. It makes it sound like Scotland is wind powered 97% of the time (only 3% more to go!), which is very different. There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices (typically when it is sunn…

Grid storage is such an interesting topic to me. We are all used to energy storage at a small scale (phone batteries, even electric cars) but the challenges of needing to store such vast amounts of energy seems like an almost impossible task, even the large Tesla battery in AU only seems to be used to help smooth the grid supply. It seems that the Scottish landscape might lend itself to more Hydro but that'll be an u…

> but the challenges of needing to store such vast amounts of energy seems like an almost impossible task

Only if you don't look at all available solutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas "P2G is often considered the most promising technology for seasonal renewable energy storage"

I dunno why this is such an unknown technique, natural gas storage is a very old and proven technology. Yet it is ommitted from almost any discussion about the subject...

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#112

Post by bluGill »

dmitri1981 wrote: post #72
pydry wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is an increasing crisis in the UK of negative electricity prices It seems like an opportunity more than a crisis to me. There are tons of potential applications for "free" electricity. * Storage heating/cooling that's basically free * Manufacturing carbon neutral jet fuel * Cheaper aluminium production It could also lead to onshoring of certain industries which previously moved to locales with access to cheap…

From what I understand that does not really work. For example, you can't have jet fuel manufacturing based on negative prices, because you need to have high utilisation rate for manufacturing equipment itself. It's not economically viable to have that equipment sitting idle during times of normal electricity prices.

If the primary cost is the machines you are correct. If the primary cost is energy, then low energy prices and extra machines makes sense.

Office work will ignore energy prices in general. Jet fuel manufacturing will if at all possible shut down when energy prices are high. If it isn't possible they will do some form of energy storage to cover high energy prices times.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#113

Post by headmelted »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #100
captainmuon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Transition to renewables is not just about replacing power plants, it is about changing demand structure. Negative prices are an incentive to build power buffers, or to use power when it is plenty. You can even do crazy things like make steel. One funny side effect that might happen is that for individuals, power will not become more expensive from renewable energy, but rather cheaper - so cheap that the meteri…

It would be cool if i could use an electric car parked at home during the day to store some of that cheap electricity then spend it from the car back into the house at night. When i looked into this last, it wasn’t common to have that bi-directional power flow capability. There was one, very expensive, Mitsubishi solution on the UK market around 2 years ago.

Nissan were looking into V2H for years but not sure what happened with it.

I was registered for a pilot at one point with a third party but never got invited to participate and have since forgotten who the company is.

EDIT: Looks like these can now be purchased and imported from China by end users: https://www.setec-power.com/product/vehicle-to-home-v2h-6kw/

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#114

Post by bluecookeh93 »

pydry wrote: post #58
martinald wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't the silver bullet some people say it is. Firstly, as others mentioned it really hammers the battery life. Secondly, it requires cars not being full so they can be topped up, which means less range. Not to mention I don't think the local grid to houses can support loads of cars suddenly getting charged at once, which is what you want for big wind spikes.

You could at least program the cars to adjust their charging based upon cost - e.g. if you leave it overnight and between 2-5am electricity prices go negative it could try to charge most of the battery during this period. Additionally you could program cars to feed into the grid when the price goes high enough to justify the cost of cycling the battery. This would help deal with unexpected events.

Yeah it's very much a niche but it's possible to buy chargers that integrate with Octopus Agile and do exactly that in the UK. Alternatively some of us are doing it with automations in apps like Home Assistant.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#115

Post by bluGill »

JamesBarney wrote: post #109
londons_explore wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly these 'negative' prices aren't available to regular people. Only a select few who can trade on the spot market can use them. If regular people could get paid to switch on space heaters, the negative prices would soon go away.

Here in Texas a lot of people could get access to spot prices and it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.

Most people have too much depend that is fixed for spot prices to make sense. If you have two meters putting one on spot might make sense - but that only works if there is something is stopping you from changing what meter is active.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#116

Post by pydry »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #100
captainmuon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Transition to renewables is not just about replacing power plants, it is about changing demand structure. Negative prices are an incentive to build power buffers, or to use power when it is plenty. You can even do crazy things like make steel. One funny side effect that might happen is that for individuals, power will not become more expensive from renewable energy, but rather cheaper - so cheap that the meteri…

It would be cool if i could use an electric car parked at home during the day to store some of that cheap electricity then spend it from the car back into the house at night. When i looked into this last, it wasn’t common to have that bi-directional power flow capability. There was one, very expensive, Mitsubishi solution on the UK market around 2 years ago.

Cycling car batteries is expensive. The cost of wearing out the battery is probably not going to exceed the value you get from drawing on it most of the time.

That said, if you leave a car plugged in overnight and it charges fastest when the wind is blowing and slowest when prices drift up that will have a similar effect - for free.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#117

Post by EdwardDiego »

danjac wrote: post #53
lightgreen wrote: post #6

Unlike most places in the world, Scotland is sparsely populated (5M) and mountainous, so they have an option of using hydro. Good for them, but let’s not jump to conclusion that their approach is for everyone. And yes, the article is only about electricity, not heating.

Oh dear. You do realize the Scots mostly don't live alone in little cabins in the mountains like in the movies, don't you? Most of the population lives in the (densely populated) Central Belt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Scotland

People keep making similar assumptions about my country based on an average population density when over half our population lives in 4 main cities, with a density approaching LA's.

FFS, we don't all live in isolated homesteads and frolic with sheep.

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#119

Post by missedthecue »

Glench wrote: post #87
missedthecue wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is like saying we can create 25 million jobs by starting a land war in Asia. I mean they directly compared it to WWII mobilization in the article.

Yeah exactly. That is the level of commitment needed to stay below 2 degrees of warming. The authors of that report worked backward from the goal of staying below 2 degrees and said, "what needs to happen in what timeframe to make that happen?" They found that if we started decades ago we wouldn't need a WWII-level of effort but since we waited so long we now have to move incredibly fast to electrify everything. But…

I just mean that it's a disingenuous way to say you're "creating jobs". Any mass government investment will create demand for labor, whether it's a massive investment in renewables, or in oil exploration, or in waging war, or anything else. It's not specific to green energy

Re: Equivalent of 97% of Scotland’s 2020 electricity consumption was from renewables

#120

Post by EdwardDiego »

lightgreen wrote: post #62
danjac wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh dear. You do realize the Scots mostly don't live alone in little cabins in the mountains like in the movies, don't you? Most of the population lives in the (densely populated) Central Belt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Scotland

Power lines are built from hydro power plants in the mountains to the cities. Obviously you know that so I don’t understand what you were trying to say.

TBH, I'm confused about what you were trying to say. Unless you live in the coastal lowland countries of Europe, pretty much every country has some geography conducive to hydro.

And what does the "sparse" (which implies thinly distributed, FYI, hence the person who replied to you specifying that it's actually quite dense in a localised area) population have to do with hydro or not?

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