Aberthaw Power Station and Decarbonisation

[whole diary]

[TonyK]

Decarbonisation can't really be described as 'premature', can it? The transition should have been better-planned, and it should have started earlier, but it is overdue rather than premature. If only some of the eye-watering subsidies given to fossil energy companies had been directed into grid storage ten years ago we would be in a much better place today.

...the poster boy for wind power lives in a castle and owns a football team.

Boy done good! We don't have a problem with that, do we?

I don't, I just wish I had thought of it myself. The people complaining about the fat profits made from energy production seem a little more selective.

Are batteries the answer, as some proclaim loudly? All the batteries in the known universe wouldn't power this country for a day, but they could possibly help manage the load. As any builder will tell you, it's usually the battery that dies before the power tool, so they may not be the end of the matter. In any case, a lot of batteries are going to be needed for the millions of new electric vehicles.

It does seem a bit eccentric to use lithium-ion batteries for this. These are good for highly energy-dense lightweight installations, such as light vehicles or phones. Using them for grid storage is like harnessing a racehorse to a brewer's dray. Heavier less energy-dense solutions ought to do the job and, land cost aside, should be cheaper and more reliable.

Also, if you are looking to batteries to store excess renewable power, there isn't any.

Apart from massive amounts overnight on windy nights?

Going through the graphs on the excellent Gridwatch website that you referred me to so time ago, I struggle to find evidence to support that. Don't get me wrong - I am certainly not against reducing our fossil fuel use to a nice round zero, just a little more wary of the means of achieving that than some. There is no strategic thinking around this, or if there is, either I haven't spotted it yet, or it is wrong. The approach is always to identify a quick fix and throw money at it, which inevitably drives perverse behaviours. The priorities are a bit wrong too - I remember John Prescott telling us, last century, that he was going to ban standby lights on TVs and even the latest VHS video recorders, which would save enough power to enable us to close a dozen power stations. Fast forward a couple of decades, and you can still buy 60W light bulbs in some shops and online. I practise what you preach here, as the only thing that is incandescent at home is my wife. New lamps for old would be a cheap fix,and take us another small step towards nirvana.

[Bmblbzzz]

So the stability of the grid depends on generating companies of marginal solvency and is further put at risk by premature decarbonisation.

OTC

That looks about the long and short of it, OTC. Power generation used to be a publicly owned utility with an unenviable record of inefficiency and pollution. Then it moved to private generators who produced electricity and made a profit. Now the companies make a profit with electricity as a by-product. This isn't confined to the big six or the dirty industries - the poster boy for wind power lives in a castle and owns a football team. Each looks after their own bit, leaving National Grid to try to make it all work, sometimes using nearly everything in the country that will create a volt or two, and hoping it doesn't get too much colder.

Meanwhile, the government is considering bringing forward the date when fossil fuelled cars can't be built, and stopping the installation of gas boilers in new-build homes. What could possibly go wrong?

I see we're burning coal again, for 2.5% of our leccy as I write.

I don't think bringing this forward from 2040 to 2035 will make any difference. Both are far enough off that simple economics will have made most new cars electric by then anyway, especially if some other countries (France for instance) are planning on 2030. So the demand for electricity to charge vehicles is going to be much the same with or without legislation. Either way, and regardless of how much generating capacity we then have, we'll need to get busy installing charging infrastructure.

[TonyK]

Beg pardon to broadgage and TonyK; you are of course quite right. There may be regular wind surpluses one day, but not yet awhile. Unless they are emitted by me.

I beg your pardon too - I wrote my post above without reading this first. On a night where only one man in the USA thinks that Donald Trump won the election, it is a small matter, but indicative of the general feeling. If a learned squirrel such as yourself can be bewitched, then what of the wider populace?

Like the cigarette companies before them, the oil barons had billions to spend on advertising. It is still around in sponsorship if it isn't in London, but you don't see those TV ads urging you to "Put a tiger in your tank" or telling you that "You can be sure of Shell". It is irrelevant now that most fuel sales are by supermarkets. Renewable energy has a powerful lobby based on a movement that isn't against demanding something impossible or exaggerating the benefits. Energy companies can sell "100% renewables" tariffs in the warped maze that is the retail energy market by buying Renewables Obligation Certificates from anywhere in the EU^» (European Union - about). The company make make no electricity at all, or derive it from rendering down endangered species, but can call it 100% by buying the certificates on the open market. For an average home, the yearly cost is about ?1.00 per year plus the price of printing a picture of a wind turbine on the bill. If nobody signed up, no wind turbine or solar panel would be harmed, but I don't mind others going for it, because I would probably have to pay more if everybody got the cheapest deal in town. What comes out of the socket is produced by exactly the same mix of nuclear, virgin forest, crops grown for energy not food, gas, wind and sunshine, unless you live off-grid somewhere.

[ellendune]

It is premature without adequate, timely replacement. No one, Greens included, is prepared to sit in unheated darkness at this time of the year. The Carbon cycle is the basis of life and combustion is the basis of advanced human societies until better energy sources are acquired.

No it is the replacement that is late not the phasing out fossil fuels being premature.  It is the fossil fuels that is doing huge damage to our world. 

[grahame]

I find myself thinking of energy storage systems ... not really new; I recall taking a tour of the pumped storage system at Loch Awe as it came on stream many years ago. The more thought, the more parameters get involved

How much can it store?
How long can it store it for?
What is the effect on the countryside?
How efficient is it?
How quickly can it be turned on / off / around?
What does it cost to build?
How much maintenace does it need?
How long will it last?
Does it need to be staffed to make it work?
How much profit is in it for the builders and operators?
How reliable is it?
How acceptable is it to Joe Public?
What are the risks?
Will it become an problem at end-of-life?

No doubt there is a table somewhere that makes all these comparisons and puts them alongside need.

When I think about it, I am minded to think of power generation as being - in macro terms - purely the output stage of this complete cycle.  Fossil fuel was a natural investment into storage many ages ago (or slightly more recently perhaps with things like peak).  Wind and wave power is universe-al investment ...

[mjones]

Talking of energy storage, the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) has this article about using liquified air. Airbus liquified when there is surplus wind power, then used to drive a turbine when  demand peaks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

It claims an efficiency of 60 to 70%, which is better than using electrolysis to produce hydrogen and then a fuel cell to get electricity back.

[stuving]

Talking of energy storage, the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) has this article about using liquified air. Airbus liquified when there is surplus wind power, then used to drive a turbine when  demand peaks.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

It claims an efficiency of 60 to 70%, which is better than using electrolysis to produce hydrogen and then a fuel cell to get electricity back.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? But there are complications, due to the large heat flows in and out while operating. If you don't have a customer for hot and cold at just the temperatures and times your system does, and one that sees that as valuable, this is just a waste by-product. For stand-alone use, you may need to store heat at two temperatures as well as liquid air, which all adds to the running (or rather not runni9ng, just keeping) costs.

Efficiency, however, doesn't matter for the specific use of backing up wind power. If your need is for a source of X GW^▸ (Great Western) for ten days once a year on average, your concern will be the cost per GW of building it and keeping it charged and ready. Refilling it with energy will cost peanuts by comparison, it happens so rarely. So you'd probably ditch anything that just adds efficiency and cost, and put up with around 40% if you're lucky.

[broadgage]

The liquid air energy storage system shows considerable promise and may yet be adopted on a large scale.
A considerable amount of low grade heat is produced during liquefaction, and unless some paying demand exists for this heat it represents a loss.
Thermal sesalination of seawater, grain drying, and heated greenhouses have been suggested.

When air is liqueified, there will be a small fraction of gas that wont condense. Mainly argon with small amounts of helium, and other rare gases. It might be worth extracting the helium when other supplies become short.
Liquifying air to extract the minute proportion of helium would be hopelessly uneconomic, but when large volumes are being liquified in any case, the economics are different.
Liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen could be produced as an ancillary business to energy storage.

[stuving]

Here's a few straws in the ... wind:

1. From the Solar Power Portal:

Gresham House to finance c.485MW battery storage portfolio with new share issuance programme
Published: 10 Nov 2020, 11:43  By:   Alice Grundy



Gresham House Energy Storage Fund has outlined plans to ?significantly increase? its portfolio as it launches a new share issuance programme.

The programme is to be conducted over the next 12 months through a number of tranches, with the first of these to include an initial placing and initial offer for subscription, both of which launched today (10 November).

This funding is to go towards a new pipeline of up to c.485MW split between ten energy storage projects with a total consideration of around ?200 million. The initial tranche will be used to finance up to five near-term acquisitions totalling c.195MW.

Now, I'm not sure what that means because I don't understand what sort of a thing this Gresham House Energy Storage is. It's an investment fund, but talks as if is manages the businesses it owns, and I think it does the energy trading used to control when to buy and sell. But none of the words I can find make much sense.

The point, however, is that investment is going into providing short-term buffer storage, if not the longer-term storage discussed upthread.

2. From BP^» (Beyond Petroleum (Former name - British Petroleum) - home page):

bp and ?rsted team up on clean hydrogen project
Release date: 10 November 2020

Collaboration is the next step in bp?s aim to develop a new hydrogen business

How do you get one of bp?s oldest refineries to contribute to net zero? One answer is green hydrogen.

bp and ?rsted are joining forces with the aim of doing exactly that at the Lingen refinery in North West Germany.

Together the two companies intend to build wind-powered technology that can produce hydrogen from water.

When operational in 2024, the industrial-scale 50MW electrolyser ? which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gases ? could generate one tonne of renewable hydrogen per hour.

Hydrogen is widely used in refinery processes and is typically produced by reforming natural gas, which results in CO2 emissions. This is also known as ?grey? hydrogen.

The energy produced by the green hydrogen project could be sufficient to replace more than 20% of Lingen?s current grey hydrogen consumption.

Now, I think I can hear a faint damns of praise - after all, this just replaces additional CO₂ produced to make what is still fossil fuel go bang in a friendlier way for your car's engine. The real point is this being another step towards making this process work on a large scale..

3. The same article in today's Times also pointed out the O(e)rsted recently overtook BP in capital value, from a fifth as much only two years ago.

[TonyK]

bp and ?rsted team up on clean hydrogen project
Release date: 10 November 2020

Collaboration is the next step in bp?s aim to develop a new hydrogen business

How do you get one of bp?s oldest refineries to contribute to net zero? One answer is green hydrogen.

bp and ?rsted are joining forces with the aim of doing exactly that at the Lingen refinery in North West Germany.

Together the two companies intend to build wind-powered technology that can produce hydrogen from water.

When operational in 2024, the industrial-scale 50MW electrolyser ? which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gases ? could generate one tonne of renewable hydrogen per hour.

Hydrogen is widely used in refinery processes and is typically produced by reforming natural gas, which results in CO2 emissions. This is also known as ?grey? hydrogen.

The energy produced by the green hydrogen project could be sufficient to replace more than 20% of Lingen?s current grey hydrogen consumption.

A lot of question marks remain...

But seriously. 50MW of superfluous renewable energy can produce one tonne of hydrogen per hour, which will provide a maximum of 39 MWh of energy, less the energy needed to compress the 1 tonne in the first place. I read something from VW, who know all about measuring engine statistics (ahem) a couple of years ago that said the energy translated into actual motive power in a hydrogen car is about a third of the energy in the tank, so your 50MWh to produce a tonne of gas becomes 13MWh in the car. They didn't think it was worth it - whether that was to boost the image of their clean diesels by bad-mouthing the alternatives is not something I know.

Gresham House is an asset management company. They also invest in housing, infrastructure, forestry etc, and this is their energy storage arm. They are issuing shares to fund this program, with much of the cash raised being invested in containers full of batteries to generate income, which after deduction of Gresham's share will go to the investors. AIUI^▸ (as I understand it), GRID, as it is known, is a conduit for any private investor who wants a piece of the action. The battery units are modular, so I suppose it is relatively simple to add to the inventory.

I recently had a meeting with a financial advisor, the first man I have seen wear a suit to a Zoom meeting, to review certain investments. He told me that sustainable and responsible investments of this ilk are all the rage, and performing well. He suggested moving a certain proportion of the funds he manages that I have some control over (this is complicated) into such funds. Fifteen years ago, it was commercial property at the top of the heap. I agreed because I trust him based on his record to date, and it may be that the small portion went to GH via yet another middleman. This is not about ethics or science, purely return on investment. Battery banks like this have become more attractive to investors since planning rules were changed back in June 2020, making it easier to build.

There is no spare renewable energy to store, so I suppose it will be used for short-term grid balance, and get drained at the end of Eastenders to fuel kettles. That, or stand ready for a black start. Or it might just be to attract subsidies. I might buy some shares myself.

[mjones]

There is a very vocal hydrogen lobby, but as you point out, producing hydrogen from electrolysis (55 to 60%?)  to burn in internal combustion engines (30% to 40%) is a very wasteful use of renewable energy. Fuel cells aren't fantastic in efficiency terms (~60%?), however electrical traction is much more efficient than internal combustion (>90%) and has the benefit that regenerative braking can be used, recovering around 25% of the energy in congested traffic. Nonetheless,  turning electricity into hydrogen and back gives you maybe a third of what you started with,  compared with ~80% if you put it in a battery.

Producing hydrogen from electrolysis and then putting it into the gas mains to heat homes would also be wasteful. 100 units of renewable electricity give you say ~50 units of gas heating, compared with 100 as electrical heating,  or potentially 300 units of heat from a heat pump.

Nb - there is quite a range in quoted efficiency of fuel cells and electrolysis,  and the values vary according to whether net or gross calorific value is used, but the figures I've seen for current systems look more like 60% than 80% (net CV). I'd be interested if anyone has any reliable figures- manufacturers are rather coy about it.

[TonyK]

Nb - there is quite a range in quoted efficiency of fuel cells and electrolysis,  and the values vary according to whether net or gross calorific value is used, but the figures I've seen for current systems look more like 60% than 80% (net CV). I'd be interested if anyone has any reliable figures- manufacturers are rather coy about it.

You would think there would be a scientist with mad hair who could bang away at a blackboard and settle the argument. What works in a laboratory has to be translated to a factory, of course, so you would need an engineer too. In the end, the accountants decide the matter.

[Red Squirrel]

There is a very vocal hydrogen lobby...

There is, isn't there!

I've heard it suggested, perhaps rather cynically, that the biggest advantage of hydrogen is that it gives energy companies something to do with their distribution infrastructure. But it is worth bearing in mind that hydrogen is very energy-dense; 140 MJ/Kg, compared with around 40MJ/Kg for jet fuel and less than 3MJ/Kg for a lithium ion battery.

Moving on to grid storage: There have been some interesting developments in redox flow batteries irecently. Compared with lithium ion battery farms, these look to be much more scaleable. All explained here far better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyzQsVzKylE&t=574s

[broadgage]

I remain very doubtful about hydrogen to power vehicles, it is inherently expensive, bulky, hard to store, hard to transport and explosive.

Hydrogen MIGHT be viable for static energy storage, but I suspect that utility scale batteries will take much of that market.
Liquid air shows considerable promise.
A merit of liquid air is that large rotating turbines are used to generate the power. These assist in maintaining a stable grid frequency.
Batteries or fuel cells connected via static inverters contribut to INSTABILITY.

[stuving]

Remember that a large part of BP^» (Beyond Petroleum (Former name - British Petroleum) - home page)'s interest is in hydrogen for process use, not as a fuel. Cracking oil for petrol isn't hugely green, and you may turn up your nose at hydrogenating margarine, but there are other uses too.

Looking further, once you take on board thorough decarbonisation, several current fixed ideas have to change. If any use of oil and putting carbon into the air are struck of the "allowed things to do" list, affordability will never look the same again, and for example all incineration of waste becomes far less desirable than burying it. We may even need to dig more holes - for example using the spoil to defend our and others' coastlines, once we realise how much land we will lose to rising sea levels. Likewise, efficiency in the use of electricity becomes a minor matter, leaving concerns about capacity as more important. Resilience will also become a real headache if we don't have fossil fuel alternatives.

Oil is useful in part because it comes with built-in energy to help turn it into other things. Without that, even if plant materials are used (especially for plastics replacements), chemical processing still calls for a range of chemicals now derived from oil. Hydrogen may be an important starting point for that, as it too comes with built-in energy. For example, in principle we can reverse the current process so as to make methane from carbon dioxide, though other less saturated hydrocarbons may be more helpful. Of course real-world chemical engineering may involve quite different pathways to do the same thing.

If that sound fanciful, here's a quote from one of those groups working on it:

Based in Canada, Carbon Engineering?s Direct Air Capture system directly removes CO2 from the atmosphere, purifies it, and produces a pipeline-ready compressed CO2 liquid using only energy and water. This CO2 can be combined with non-fossil fuel-generated hydrogen, to produce ultra-low carbon intensity hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline, diesel, and Jet Fuel-A.