I don't know whether you've released any new material on UK 100% renewable options, but you may be interested in these. Apologies if you've already seen them. I'd be interested in your comments.
I don’t know if you’ve read FES2023 yet, but National Grid ESO have now got to
"… this leads to a significant hydrogen storage requirement of 10.9 TWh, which is equivalent to two thirds of the UK’s natural gas storage capacity at the end of 2022. All these highlight the importance of hydrogen storage as we decarbonise the grid and move towards net zero in 2050. "
I love this analysis. Could you repeat it if the requirement is 80% and 60% renewable energy? I imagine it gets exponentially harder to achieve the goal as we approach 100%. At the moment we have what 40% renewable electricity, and very little storage. It would make a really interesting graph, storage needed on the Y-axis and percentage of renewable energy on the X-axis.
Hi Chris, your facts and observations I find are the reality of where we are in the UK in respect of Renewables – Government and “Greens” should take note!
Hi Chris, just read through your "thesis" excellent, it encompasses all my thoughts and so much more. Please keep up the rhetoric, it needs to get through to the UK Government and so many "Green" organisations, that don't fully understand the consequences of their narrative. Tony
Hi Chris. Just spotted this work re Germany that parallels yours so you might find it interesting: https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1505466943343677443. They estimate German storage need of 36 TWh, making your estimate of GB storage need of 13TWh (13 million MWh) look conservative.
Excellent work, Chris! I had a look at the daily averages of wind power in 2020. The max was about 13.5GW, the minimum was about 0.1GW. If you order them from lowest to highest, the result is a straight line with equal amounts below and above the average of about 6 GW. The maximum demand of the UK grid is about 45GW in early evening, where solar is zero. Assuming no coal, oil or gas and also assuming that nuclear goes to near zero this decade, then we will need something like seven times more wind power for the average to be equal to our maximum demand and then the batteries you mention to even out the highs and lows. In addition, we are due to increase demand massively over the next 30 years. The government's white paper lady year stated it would double, though this required heroic assumptions on energy saving and a massive new hydrogen industry, started from scratch without the use of electricity. In reality, we will probably need 100 to 130GW or more so, without nuclear, we will 20 times more wind power. Only half our wind power comes from off-shore turbines and these are the only ones the government is committed to growing, so make that 40 times more turbines. And, of course, all the current ones will need replacing by then - it goes on and on .....
I wonder if there is an analogy with DB versus DC (no pun intended) pensions? By trying to deliver an almost "guaranteed" pension, DB schemes incur massive costs as a result of "excessive" prudence. Perhaps a move to DC (in the pension sense) power supply would greatly reduce the requirement for storage to cover intermittent supply from renewables? Essentially, if power demand could be made somewhat contingent on power supply, you wouldn't need as much storage as you would if power demand was fixed. Could industry/business, for example, greatly reduce it's power demand if power supply is low?
Interesting read Chris (as was the previous post). However I disagree with the opening sentence of the summary
"To decarbonise our electricity grid for current demand and recent (2020 and 2021) actual generation patterns, UK plc needs several times current wind generation (onshore + offshore), plus immense electrical storage capacity."
We do not need to do this to decarbonise it is one of the options we may choose.
The other obvious option is nuclear - and I don't understand why you limit mention of this here to fusion? Fission could also provide carbon free energy and is a known technology.
Ignoring nuclear due to long timescales (as is often done) doesn't seem logical since there would also be very long timescales to install the extra wind generation and more importantly the associated storage.
From your modelling is it possible to calculate how much storage would be required for an energy system made up solely of nuclear and storage?
I've often thought this number would be useful so we could compare the cost of 100% renewables plus a lot of storage to 100% nuclear and presumably a much much smaller amount of storage?
I know that you said we cannot predict demand next week never mind 2050, but the next stage in this analysis is surely to include ball-park estimates of demand from heat pumps and EV charging.
Heat pump demand is complicated by the amount of insulation that can be envisaged, but there are two extremes, i.e (a) insulation stays as it is, and (b) every property is retrofitted to "A" standard. The truth will be something in between these extremes.
David Braunholtz: hydrogen energy storage has poor efficiency. 70% electrolysis efficiency and 60% fuel cell efficiency = 42% efficiency, and I've not included gas compression/transport and electricity transmission losses.
Compressed air storage is said to be competitive, and could have 70%+ efficiency if compression heat is stored and used to warm up the decompressing air. In fact net zero supporters say no-one would consider battery storage on such a scale; compressed air is the way to go.
As you say, future offshore / taller wind turbines likely will have smaller 'lulls' ? I did also wonder if the data excluded renewable sources that had been turned off due to lack of capacity / storage? - but wouldn't expect this to change big picture much, as likely in winter.
But I suspect putting in more (ever cheaper) solar WOULD make a big difference - as it is most productive in the summer, ie exactly when wind generation falls.
It would I think be helpful (& not difficult) to look at the economics eg put in cost of extra wind , and solar, & extra storage (various options of which li-ion is one of the most expensive, including 'hydrogen' (or ammonia etc) generation for later use in electricity generation), & play with the balances to get an idea of what may be sensible.
Thanks for the update Chris. Re your estimate of likely costs for a renewables-dominated fully decarbonised GB grid there's been an interesting conversation on LinkedIn around a chart posted by Carbon Brief showing dramatic falls in costs (measured as LCOE) of renewables. Various commenters objected, on the grounds that ultimately it is total system costs - e.g. including all costs of storage / grid strengthening or any other system changes driven by particular generation technologies, and then agreeing how those "extra" costs should be apportioned between generation technologies to understand their "real" costs.
Thanks for your interesting & informative follow-up to Part 1.
Some observations from a quick read:
1. Wind lost - Just over a week ago the Renewable Energy foundation blog had a post “Constraint Payments to Wind Power in 2020 and 2021”:
“Large volumes of wind energy are being discarded in Scotland in order to preserve grid stability, with a fleet average of over 13% of generation constrained off in the years 2015 to 2021, inclusive, with a high of 19% of generation in 2020. Some wind farms have been discarding between 20% and 50% of their output, while being rewarded with generous constraint payments from the electricity consumer for doing so.”
Harvesting 50% of their subsidies to NOT generate!
2. Prof MacKay considered lulls in wind & mentions an Irish lull lasting 5 full days in 2007
Britain experienced a month-long 'lull' July last year during which our fleet of wind farms generated at an average Capacity Factor for the month of only 10%.
3. “ Gridwatch™ ... It has recorded power flows every 5 minutes across UK plc for the last ten years.”
Leo Smith's Gridwatch's data source is Elexon, and covers Britain rather than the UK. Leo's "Download" interface makes accessing Elexon's data much, much easier! ;-)
4. Interconnectors: In 2015 the EU called for all member states to achieve "By 2020 each Member State should have in place electricity interconnection capacity of at least 10% of installed electricity production."
That 10% of *installed capacity* would include Britain’s solar fleet generating at just 10% Capacity Factor.
The EU document listed numerous benefits. It forgot to mention that Germany, with its high proportion of highly variable wind capacity, subsequently destabilises some of its neighbors' grids by dumping its excess on to them.
I don't know whether you've released any new material on UK 100% renewable options, but you may be interested in these. Apologies if you've already seen them. I'd be interested in your comments.
https://100percentrenewableuk.org/wp-content/uploads/100_percent_RE_UK_Results_R2_final2.pdf
https://100percentrenewableuk.org/wp-content/uploads/100-RE-23-Dec-.pdf
Toby
I don’t know if you’ve read FES2023 yet, but National Grid ESO have now got to
"… this leads to a significant hydrogen storage requirement of 10.9 TWh, which is equivalent to two thirds of the UK’s natural gas storage capacity at the end of 2022. All these highlight the importance of hydrogen storage as we decarbonise the grid and move towards net zero in 2050. "
They’re getting closer to your numbers.
Regards
Toby
I love this analysis. Could you repeat it if the requirement is 80% and 60% renewable energy? I imagine it gets exponentially harder to achieve the goal as we approach 100%. At the moment we have what 40% renewable electricity, and very little storage. It would make a really interesting graph, storage needed on the Y-axis and percentage of renewable energy on the X-axis.
Hi Chris, your facts and observations I find are the reality of where we are in the UK in respect of Renewables – Government and “Greens” should take note!
Hi Chris, just read through your "thesis" excellent, it encompasses all my thoughts and so much more. Please keep up the rhetoric, it needs to get through to the UK Government and so many "Green" organisations, that don't fully understand the consequences of their narrative. Tony
Hi Chris. Just spotted this work re Germany that parallels yours so you might find it interesting: https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1505466943343677443. They estimate German storage need of 36 TWh, making your estimate of GB storage need of 13TWh (13 million MWh) look conservative.
Excellent work, Chris! I had a look at the daily averages of wind power in 2020. The max was about 13.5GW, the minimum was about 0.1GW. If you order them from lowest to highest, the result is a straight line with equal amounts below and above the average of about 6 GW. The maximum demand of the UK grid is about 45GW in early evening, where solar is zero. Assuming no coal, oil or gas and also assuming that nuclear goes to near zero this decade, then we will need something like seven times more wind power for the average to be equal to our maximum demand and then the batteries you mention to even out the highs and lows. In addition, we are due to increase demand massively over the next 30 years. The government's white paper lady year stated it would double, though this required heroic assumptions on energy saving and a massive new hydrogen industry, started from scratch without the use of electricity. In reality, we will probably need 100 to 130GW or more so, without nuclear, we will 20 times more wind power. Only half our wind power comes from off-shore turbines and these are the only ones the government is committed to growing, so make that 40 times more turbines. And, of course, all the current ones will need replacing by then - it goes on and on .....
I wonder if there is an analogy with DB versus DC (no pun intended) pensions? By trying to deliver an almost "guaranteed" pension, DB schemes incur massive costs as a result of "excessive" prudence. Perhaps a move to DC (in the pension sense) power supply would greatly reduce the requirement for storage to cover intermittent supply from renewables? Essentially, if power demand could be made somewhat contingent on power supply, you wouldn't need as much storage as you would if power demand was fixed. Could industry/business, for example, greatly reduce it's power demand if power supply is low?
Interesting read Chris (as was the previous post). However I disagree with the opening sentence of the summary
"To decarbonise our electricity grid for current demand and recent (2020 and 2021) actual generation patterns, UK plc needs several times current wind generation (onshore + offshore), plus immense electrical storage capacity."
We do not need to do this to decarbonise it is one of the options we may choose.
The other obvious option is nuclear - and I don't understand why you limit mention of this here to fusion? Fission could also provide carbon free energy and is a known technology.
Ignoring nuclear due to long timescales (as is often done) doesn't seem logical since there would also be very long timescales to install the extra wind generation and more importantly the associated storage.
From your modelling is it possible to calculate how much storage would be required for an energy system made up solely of nuclear and storage?
I've often thought this number would be useful so we could compare the cost of 100% renewables plus a lot of storage to 100% nuclear and presumably a much much smaller amount of storage?
I know that you said we cannot predict demand next week never mind 2050, but the next stage in this analysis is surely to include ball-park estimates of demand from heat pumps and EV charging.
Heat pump demand is complicated by the amount of insulation that can be envisaged, but there are two extremes, i.e (a) insulation stays as it is, and (b) every property is retrofitted to "A" standard. The truth will be something in between these extremes.
David Braunholtz: hydrogen energy storage has poor efficiency. 70% electrolysis efficiency and 60% fuel cell efficiency = 42% efficiency, and I've not included gas compression/transport and electricity transmission losses.
Compressed air storage is said to be competitive, and could have 70%+ efficiency if compression heat is stored and used to warm up the decompressing air. In fact net zero supporters say no-one would consider battery storage on such a scale; compressed air is the way to go.
As you say, future offshore / taller wind turbines likely will have smaller 'lulls' ? I did also wonder if the data excluded renewable sources that had been turned off due to lack of capacity / storage? - but wouldn't expect this to change big picture much, as likely in winter.
But I suspect putting in more (ever cheaper) solar WOULD make a big difference - as it is most productive in the summer, ie exactly when wind generation falls.
It would I think be helpful (& not difficult) to look at the economics eg put in cost of extra wind , and solar, & extra storage (various options of which li-ion is one of the most expensive, including 'hydrogen' (or ammonia etc) generation for later use in electricity generation), & play with the balances to get an idea of what may be sensible.
Thanks for the update Chris. Re your estimate of likely costs for a renewables-dominated fully decarbonised GB grid there's been an interesting conversation on LinkedIn around a chart posted by Carbon Brief showing dramatic falls in costs (measured as LCOE) of renewables. Various commenters objected, on the grounds that ultimately it is total system costs - e.g. including all costs of storage / grid strengthening or any other system changes driven by particular generation technologies, and then agreeing how those "extra" costs should be apportioned between generation technologies to understand their "real" costs.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6899813516484636672/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A6899813516484636672%2C6900023207567392768%29
This debate really matters, since the Carbon Brief chart of LCOE has been amplified by government.
https://twitter.com/KwasiKwarteng/status/1493924347781779460
Hi Chris.
Thanks for your interesting & informative follow-up to Part 1.
Some observations from a quick read:
1. Wind lost - Just over a week ago the Renewable Energy foundation blog had a post “Constraint Payments to Wind Power in 2020 and 2021”:
“Large volumes of wind energy are being discarded in Scotland in order to preserve grid stability, with a fleet average of over 13% of generation constrained off in the years 2015 to 2021, inclusive, with a high of 19% of generation in 2020. Some wind farms have been discarding between 20% and 50% of their output, while being rewarded with generous constraint payments from the electricity consumer for doing so.”
Harvesting 50% of their subsidies to NOT generate!
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog
2. Prof MacKay considered lulls in wind & mentions an Irish lull lasting 5 full days in 2007
Britain experienced a month-long 'lull' July last year during which our fleet of wind farms generated at an average Capacity Factor for the month of only 10%.
https://twitter.com/UK_WindEnergy/status/1421778320975450113
3. “ Gridwatch™ ... It has recorded power flows every 5 minutes across UK plc for the last ten years.”
Leo Smith's Gridwatch's data source is Elexon, and covers Britain rather than the UK. Leo's "Download" interface makes accessing Elexon's data much, much easier! ;-)
https://www.bmreports.com/bmrs/?q=generation/fueltype/current
4. Interconnectors: In 2015 the EU called for all member states to achieve "By 2020 each Member State should have in place electricity interconnection capacity of at least 10% of installed electricity production."
That 10% of *installed capacity* would include Britain’s solar fleet generating at just 10% Capacity Factor.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_15_4486
The EU document listed numerous benefits. It forgot to mention that Germany, with its high proportion of highly variable wind capacity, subsequently destabilises some of its neighbors' grids by dumping its excess on to them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-central-europe-germanys-renewable-revolution-causes-friction-1487241180