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Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

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Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#291

Post by leonidasrup »

pfdietz wrote: post #199
leonidasrup wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pump have problems to reach high enough temperatures for most industrial heat applications. https://www.irena.org/Innovation-landscape-for-smart-electri... With electric resistance heating you can gen very high temperatures, but with less than 100% efficiency. With electric arc heating you can melt steel, but again less than 100% efficient.

> Heat pump have problems to reach high enough temperatures for most industrial heat applications. They do if you start from ambient temperature, but they can be more effective if they are pumping heat out of the waste heat stream of a process. This requires different working fluids than lower temperature systems, though. Most industrial heat energy is not consumed at very high temperature. IIRC, 2/3rds is at less th…

For example Haber process used for ammonia production, requires a temperature of at least 400 °C to be efficient. This process is accounting for 1–2% of global energy consumption, 3% of global carbon emissions, and 3% to 5% of natural gas consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Electric resistance heating generated from PV will supply energy only for few hours each day.

Heating storage (also cold storage) in industrial applications is possible and is done, but in many cases you are limited by allowed temperature range of chemical/physical processes. For example you are limited on the lower side by melting temperature of material and on higher side by high temperature corrosion.

Cold storage for electric demand response https://www.enersponse.com/cold-storage

In cement industries models have been developed to flatten the grid's hourly demand curve by minimizing the industrial customer's hourly peak loads and maximizing the shifting of demand to off-peak periods.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#292

Post by jahnu »

dotancohen wrote: post #261
jahnu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any more they don't. Those were older reactor designs which nobody wants now. And the 5 years was first-pour to switch on. Add a few years for planning, permitting and actually supplying to the grid. Newly approved Korean plans are aiming for 2038. Best of luck to them. I'm sceptical they'll make it. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/plans-for-two-ne... Edit to add: They used to be pretty fast but like…

Thank you for the correction.

No worries, mate. It’s a super interesting topic!

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#293

Post by youngtaff »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #226
shadowgovt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General question because I'm ignorant of UK internal politics: are the Isles' energy prices just generally higher? There aren't any large sources of fossil fuels or natural gas that aren't offshore, right? And the coal got significantly used up by hundreds upon hundreds of years of mining. I'm wondering if really, the causality is reversed: it's not that the renewables make energy expensive in the UK, it's that energ…

Yes, there are massive onshore reserves. The Tory government that has been accused on here of pimping the environment immediately banned all exploration. There is are also two relatively big offshore fields that were taken to a very late stage of development and then stopped because of opposition by local government. I would research exactly how big the gap is with other countries (and, remember, retail price is subs…

There aren’t massive untapped offshore reserves… the North Sea is a mature basin

The Tories granted a hundred plus drilling licenses and so far they’ve yielded a months worth of gas supply

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#294

Post by youngtaff »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #185
traceroute66 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So why not refine it in the UK? I already gave the answer in my original post.... UK crude is the wrong type of oil for UK refineries. Almost all UK refineries were built back in the day (late 60's/early 70's), before North Sea, when the UK was mostly importing oil from Libya and elsewhere in that region. All the stuff from Libya and elsewhere is far removed from the viscous, waxy sludge that emerges from the North…

It isn't the wrong type of crude. Forties pipeline was directly connected to a refinery. That refinery is now shutting down because of high energy costs, high general costs of doing business, and the investment outlook for UK North Sea. The solution even if this wasn't true is also simple: build more refineries. This is all within our control. You also said above it takes "energy" to pipe...do you have no understandi…

Grangemouth has been precarious for years and has received tens of millions in public subsidies

High electricity prices aren’t really a thing for oil refineries as they’re capable of generating their own as Valero Pembroke does

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#295

Post by pfdietz »

leonidasrup wrote: post #291
pfdietz wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Heat pump have problems to reach high enough temperatures for most industrial heat applications. They do if you start from ambient temperature, but they can be more effective if they are pumping heat out of the waste heat stream of a process. This requires different working fluids than lower temperature systems, though. Most industrial heat energy is not consumed at very high temperature. IIRC, 2/3rds is at less th…

For example Haber process used for ammonia production, requires a temperature of at least 400 °C to be efficient. This process is accounting for 1–2% of global energy consumption, 3% of global carbon emissions, and 3% to 5% of natural gas consumption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process Electric resistance heating generated from PV will supply energy only for few hours each day. Heating storage (also cold sto…

> For example Haber process used for ammonia production, requires a temperature of at least 400 °C to be efficient.

I should note that this process doesn't require external heat input (except at startup). The reaction is exothermic and the excess heat is used to make steam that either is used to make power or to provide steam to other processes. It does require pressurization, but that's an input of work, not heat.

It would be nice if the process could be run at lower temperature, but we just don't have the catalysts for that.

> Electric resistance heating generated from PV will supply energy only for few hours each day.

Electric resistance heat is very storable and can provide heat 24/7, possibly even 24/7/365 at high latitude with PV.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#296

Post by rsynnott »

phil21 wrote: post #186
roryirvine wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and the really important point is that you get to see the prices a day ahead, which is what makes it actually pretty easy to live with. For instance, if I know it's going to be expensive when I'd be cooking tomorrow's evening meal, then I won't make something that would need a long time in the oven. And if it's going to be particularly cheap around lunchtime, then I'll plan to do a big load of laundry then. I h…

> Basically, it's just another thing to factor in when planning my day. No more of a hassle than checking the weather forecast or glancing at my calendar. Sounds like an incredible hassle at a level I would pay hundreds of dollars per month to avoid. That sort of mental overhead is crazy to me. But I'm also someone who finds having a single event on my calendar for the day disrupts my productivity and mental peace to…

Some people enjoy this sort of hyper optimisation, even if they don't really need to do it.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#297

Post by gendal »

youngtaff wrote: post #290
gendal wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - the wholesale price of electricity can sometimes be very low (or negative), particularly when there is a lot of wind. And some tariffs pass that on to consumers. But I don't see how it works at scale. This is because the wind farms don't get paid the wholesale price. They get paid their guaranteed, index-linked CFD strike price. This means that, for every £1/MWh drop in the wholesale price, they get an exactly…

If it’s all due to the reliance on wind and the floor price CfDs set why does the price spike when oil and gas prices rise?

It's a good question. To be honest, I'm still trying to get my head around how the UK electricity market works. Its complexity is definitely a big part of why so many reasonable people can end up disagreeing so vehemently... vanishingly few people understand how the whole thing works (and pretty much none of those who do are listened to by the politicians...)

Your question is good for another reason: you say "price" without qualifying whether you mean wholesale or retail (and, if retail, what individual households pay or what is experienced by industry). A lot of commentators and politicians routinely conflate the concepts to serve their own agendas in order to confuse non-experts.

If one looks first at the wholesale price, you're right that - in general - one would expect it to 'spike' when the gas prices shoot up. But on days when wind is dominant this has a minimal effect on retail prices, because the extra money paid to the wind farms (everybody gets the clearing price) is exactly offset by a reduction in the CfD payment. To repeat: consumers pay the same (high) price for most wind-generated electricity irrespective of the gas price.

So the interesting question, I think, is: what happens on days when the wind isn't blowing and gas generation is dominant? And here's the thing: if the price for gas-generated electricity (with carbon tax to account for the climate externality) is below the CfD strike prices, we're still ahead, even if it has spiked above its average. And because the CfD strike prices are so eye-wateringly high, this happens far more often than not.

Indeed, it was only for part of 2022 that the wholesale price was above the CfD prices and so the wind farms were paying money in to the system rather than taking out.

This chart from David Turver (who I learned a lot of this stuff from) is eye-opening in that regard: https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/2031657347433603581 (edited to provide clearer chart)

If the renewables fleet is supposed to be protecting us from gas price strikes, we're paying a VERY expensive premium for that insurance.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#298

Post by gendal »

youngtaff wrote: post #289
Worksheet wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Norbury, CEO of E.ON UK said: "Some of the modelling we have suggests that you could get to a position by 2030 where if the wholesale price was zero, bills would still be the same as where they are today because of the increase in non-commodity costs." Fixed costs are enormous and are increasingly driven by paying for the CFDs that back up the economics of wind. The CFD scheme allows wind producers to de-risk f…

> I do think that wind has a part to play in the UKs long term energy mix, but by this point I'm happy to call the current scale-up a complete false economy. Household and industrial electricity bills are double what they were in real terms 15 years ago. The CfDs set a floor price when there’s lots electricity being generated by renewables but they also contribute to bills when the market price is over the strike pri…

The amount wind farms in the UK have contributed back over the last ten years is a rounding error compared to how much they have received. It's not even close: https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/2031657347433603581

And the scary thing: the wind farms aren't even making that much money! Some projects have been cancelled and others had to re-bid in subsequent auctions to get a higher CFD price than they originally received because they couldn't make the economics work. Worse, there are reasons to believe they're not even fully provisioning for their end-of-life decommissioning costs.

The UK's energy policy is unbelievably destructive :(

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#299

Post by xp84 »

jeffbee wrote: post #238
xp84 wrote: post #216

Can people in Britain post their actual electricity rates per kWh? I want us Californians to be able to see how badly we are (or aren’t) being ripped off by our utilities compared to you (mind you, these rates are approved by our regulator). We’re basically told we have to pay this much because of our lovely renewables requirements (they’re still far from 90% renewable though). We are on a ‘time of use’ rate designed…

The volumetric rate for electricity is almost totally irrelevant. California's bills are dominated by the fixed cost of the grid, and we use very little grid power compared to other states, so the volumetric rate has to be really high as a consequence. Electric power bills in California are in the middle of the pack compared to the other states, almost exactly the same as Texas and less than ten other states.

This isn’t convincing to me - our electricity rates in 2002 were 8 cents per kWh and none of those other facts were different back then. Inflation hasn’t done 5x since then, but our electricity rates have. We are being ripped off by the three companies that CPUC allows to do it.

They should have imposed a ruinous penalty on the utilities for their wildfire liability, and seized their assets for non-payment of it. And I say that as not a liberal and not a socialist.

People who live in cities that have municipal power are paying HALF the rates people with PG&E and SCE are.

Re: Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables

#300

Post by youngtaff »

gendal wrote: post #298
youngtaff wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do think that wind has a part to play in the UKs long term energy mix, but by this point I'm happy to call the current scale-up a complete false economy. Household and industrial electricity bills are double what they were in real terms 15 years ago. The CfDs set a floor price when there’s lots electricity being generated by renewables but they also contribute to bills when the market price is over the strike pri…

The amount wind farms in the UK have contributed back over the last ten years is a rounding error compared to how much they have received. It's not even close: https://x.com/7Kiwi/status/2031657347433603581 And the scary thing: the wind farms aren't even making that much money! Some projects have been cancelled and others had to re-bid in subsequent auctions to get a higher CFD price than they originally received bec…

Where’s his methodology?

How does he separate the CfD price from the market price that’s being set by renewables?

Where’s his evidence that using gas would be cheaper than renewables?

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