Opportunity to generate cheap hydrogen?
The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
201–210 of 396 posts
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built? why would this be necessary when the entirety of Great Britain is one synchronous grid?
Strangely there already is one between Scotland and Wales and two more are proposed (see the article). I suspect NIMBYism is a big part of the explanation. Airborne AC links are efficient but ugly. Underwater AC links are tolerated by Nimbies, but inefficient. So you end up with underwater HVDC links.
HVDC links are more efficient than terrestrial AC transmission lines over long distances.
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's this incredible project to build a 10GW solar farm in Morocco (1/3 of UK peak consumption) and bring the power to the UK via HVDC cable. Amazingly they estimate only 10% losses despite being over 3800km long: https://xlinks.co/morocco-uk-power-project/ Surely HVDC links between Scotland and England could be built? And then there are pumped hydropower storage project like this one with a proposed storage capac…
I hope they will have good anti-submarine defences. And one more strategic dependency on another country.
Are you referring to Morocco or a potential future independent Scotland :-) ?
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#2046% curtailment seems pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things. Around 20-25% curtailment, it becomes economical to run those hydrogen electrolyzers part-time, even with the capital expenditures required. I wouldn't use that hydrogen gas to regenerate electricity, though - there are many industries that can directly consume that hydrogen gas and avoid the lossy round-trip from electricity->hydrogen->electricity.
I explore this idea further in this blog post: https://www.moderndescartes.com/essays/factobattery/
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#205I think one of the most important elements is buried - electricity pricing is uniform across the entire UK. That seems nuts to me, and incentivizes building in locations that are less useful - it's likely cheaper to build in Scotland, higher production from more wind, you get paid more (for expected yield plus curtailment apparently), and you have less wear on the equipment when you adjust to lower output.
Funnily enough this used to make sense. When you were burning coal, generation skewed north and its cheaper to generate close to source and transport energy. Now, transport of energy is a significant cost, but it’s difficult to price/support that, and the industry/national grid have been working very hard on smart grids for exactly this reason.
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#206The North Sea Link is 720 km long and costed only £1.6 billion and took only three years to lay: https://www.4coffshore.com/news/north-sea-link-starts-operat... So a new 440 km long cable for £3.4 billion done in 2029 seem like a crummy deal.
Yeah. The cost objection seems like learned helplessness.
A government interested in raising national productivity would underwrite the necessary cables and expedite their installation. However, that's apparently not the UK government since 2008.
1. "Productivity and potential 2003-2012: the UK decade that decayed", 2013: https://www.primeeconomics.org/articles/productivity-and-pot...
2. "UK productivity continues lost decade", 2019: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47826195
3. "The UK is facing two lost decades on living standards", 2022: https://www.ft.com/content/7968048a-3f7f-4cb0-8fa1-e10aff14b...
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#207The North Sea Link is 720 km long and costed only £1.6 billion and took only three years to lay: https://www.4coffshore.com/news/north-sea-link-starts-operat... So a new 440 km long cable for £3.4 billion done in 2029 seem like a crummy deal.
I assume that cables aren’t all equal, eg maybe the new one carries more power or is more efficient or the sea floor makes it harder to lay. It could still be a good deal even if the upfront cost is higher.
I guess there could also be accounting shenanigans, eg if you pay $x upfront and $y over several years, you could focus on $x if the project seems unpopular and focus on $(x+y) if the project shows a popular serious investment in a government policy.
But I’ve no idea about this case.
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#208If the UK were ruled, and all decisions made, by a benevolent dictator, then the solution to this problem is easy. Consider every option of where to build the wind turbines, and where to build power cables, add up the cost of every option, and choose the cheapest (environmentally and/or monetarily) that gives everyone the power they need. An ideal market would produce the exact same result right? Well not quite... An…
You really don't see any middle ground here? I feel like a rationally and centrally planned infrastructure not based on market incentives is not that hard to imagine, whatever your political beliefs are, why resort to some kind of philosophical thought experiment of the dictator?
Democratic rational central planning is a political belief. I happen to agree with it, but you’ll get called names for it.
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#209I know quite a bit about most of the things discussed in the article from having worked for a renewables company and yet I learned quite some new bits I didn’t know about, for example the intra-UK submarine HVDC connectors (and their eye watering cost). Not a very long article but packed with clearly written and valuable information. Great stuff
Are there any interesting things you know not mentioned in the article which you want to add here? (I’m curious to hear more)
Re: The UK is wasting a lot of wind power
#210Opportunity to generate cheap hydrogen?
Covered in the article.