Energy infrastructure

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122306038#Comment_122306038

The gas interconnectors with the UK are currently one way only, UK to Ireland. There was a proposed project to change this, but never happened.

So there is no way to export gas from Ireland. Having said that Corrib is expected to run out faster then our gas demand drops. This would be more of an issue if we want to explore newer gas fields off the Irish coast.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122306432#Comment_122306432

BTW There is one idea that I totally forgot to mention that the government are considering to improve the security of our gas supply.

The idea is to pay the operators of Corrib to leave the remaining gas in the gas field, but continue to maintain the infrastructure, basically use it as a backup if something was to happen to the interconnectors.

Not only could you use the remaining gas, but you could potentially fill it with more gas and in future biogas and hydrogen. It would basically become our strategic reserve.

It is just one option of many being considered, others like a backup FSRU, reopening Kinsale as a backup, etc.

MightyMunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122312263#Comment_122312263

I thought you couldn't have more than some low percentage (like 1%) of hydrogen in the pipelines without having to rebuild the entire gas network

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122312780#Comment_122312780

According to Gas Networks Ireland the current network can handle 20% hydrogen mix and up to 100% with only some modifications required.

Most of the core transmission network pipes can already handle 100%:

"The vast majority of Irelands distribution gas network (including all pressure containing
assets) are compatible with hydrogen blends or 100% hydrogen. Some replacement programmes and targeted qualification
research for residual iron, gun barrel material and some polymer grades are required."

The 20% limit is more about limitations of existing residential gas boilers and meters. But come 2050, the expectation is that most people will have moved to heat pumps anyway and the core network can be used for transporting 100% hydrogen from storage facilities like Corrib to power stations to directly generate electricity.

On the other hand, some by 2050 might need to switch to 100% hydrogen boilers, but the cost of those is expected to be the same as existing gas boilers, so a good bit cheaper then heat pumps.

KrisW1001

I think domestic hydrogen is a non-runner for a variety of reasons, but using H2 to replace natural gas for generation or industrial CHP applications does make sense.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314492#Comment_122314492

So what are the batteries going to cost? You can not power an entire grid on nothing but renewables without massive amounts of storage.

Battery prices are falling fast… there's these sulfur lithium batteries that look promising…flow batteries…iron batteries…this rubbish doesn't cut it, they are not adequate answers. Put a number on it, what is it going to cost?

France doesn't have this problem, in 2023 they produced more zero carbon electricity than they consumed. The problem France does have are the crazy renewables zealots in the EU Commission wanting to punish them for not meeting renewables targets and committments.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314492#Comment_122314492

To be honest, I tend to agree, I’m cautious on the idea of residential use of H2. But as you say the core distribution network seems to be largely ready to use with H2 and could be used to carry stored hydrogen to power stations, heavy industry and perhaps district heating type systems around the country.

As an aside, I live in an apartment and I don’t see how I can fit a heat pump in here. Maybe air to air, but that still leaves hot water heating. Probably best served by district heating type system, but what is the reality of that happening, it gets discussed a lot but little real world action at least in Ireland.

josip

What exactly is the 2050 target?

Is it an Irish-set target or and EU-legislated target?

Is it net neutral or absolute? ie, is all non-renewable generation prohibited, or would 5% generation from gas be allowed if we exported 10% renewable surplus to elsewhere?

I'm particularly interested in the last part, because it seems to me that it will cost an awful lot to 'renewabilise' the final few percent of fossily generated electricity. And that money could be more productively spent elsewhere.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314761#Comment_122314761

Net Zero by 2050, it is a world wide agreement (almost), UN level, but backed by EU legislation for the same goal.

Net Zero means you can still produce some carbon, but it has to be actively balanced by pulling carbon out of the air (planting trees, carbon capture, etc).

I don't think our generation being 5% gas while exporting 10% renewables would work, as the UK and every other EU country we might export to has the same goals.

You could of course use biogas, biomass, hydrogen or gas + carbon capture and storage for the last 5%.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314657#Comment_122314657

I didn't say anything about batteries there.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314761#Comment_122314761

The EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050 – an economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. This objective is at the heart of the European Green Deal, and is a legally binding target thanks to the European Climate Law

It's unachievable - agriculture, for exaple - air transport - heating.

In our context it means zeroing CO2 emissions from Industry, transport, heating and electrical generation. This means a massive expansion in the grid and the electrification of as much as possible and the replacement of fuels with hydrogen where batteries won't work.

It was a stupid target from the get-go, brought about by the disjointed impractical thinking you seem to get at large gatherings of political elites who lose sight of reality as they succumb to peer pressure and competition.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122312780#Comment_122312780

20% by volume without having to do modifications.

Town gas contained a lot of hydrogen with the first underground gas mains in Dublin laid 200 years ago so it's not as if this is something new.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122314657#Comment_122314657

There is a debate going on in Australia now about Nuclear.

Dutton making a fool of himself as experts state that it could cost up to $600 Billion and supply only a fraction of the energy needed.

It seems, states with no Nuclear energy legacy, its simply too expensive to now deep dive into it.

Much better (and cheaper) to leverage Wind and Solar and supplement it with Gas.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122319524#Comment_122319524

Liberal party has 40 seats out of 151 in the House of Representatives and 26 of 76 in the Senate. So not quite ready to push the button. Also they are not in government at present.

The lowest cost in Oz is the bottom option. Firming means batteries. That's today's costs.

Renewables are getting cheaper. Interestingly geothermal is getting more expensive but that's probably just inflation though I'd have expected some technology transfer from fracking. By now solar costs will have dropped from the highest costs to the lowest ones.

Surprised at this one, I didn't think solar overruns would actually be that low.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122301607#Comment_122301607

What a shame that there's no other way to remove coal from an energy grid other than relying on gas to back unreliable renewables … yes sir … no other way. And whatever you do, don't look at France, or Sweden, or Switzerland, or the Ontario province in Canada.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122319838#Comment_122319838

... and it's been argued to death on the thread where it's on topic.

@Capt'n Midnight The rise in geothermal is because, while the technology is slowly getting cheaper, all the easy sites were exploited a long time ago, so each new megawatt is going to be more difficult to tap. This will eventually become true for wind (we're getting close in onshore winds in Ireland), but the untapped "easy" resources offshore are still pretty large.

I don't really understand why we're discussing Australian energy policy on such detail, but I suppose it shows a useful contrast with Ireland. Australia has got a load of coal, and it can be hard to wean yourself off such an easy option. We, on the other hand, never had any significant fossil fuel resources (two small gas fields don't cut it, and peat was horribly expensive), so we've never had to deal with that problem.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122320524#Comment_122320524

We are far from exhausting wind in Ireland as any long distance driving will show how far our wind farms are apart and how many non-touristic areas that still don't have them. NI has been getting nearly half it's electricity from onshore wind.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122319838#Comment_122319838

All of those countries have massive synchronous interconnection with larger grids and amounts of dispatchable hydro we could only dream of.

Perfectly suited for renewables and they've all investing heavily in them.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122320604#Comment_122320604

What I'm saying is that onshore wind now has a poorer return on investment than offshore, because the best offshore resources are still untapped, while the really good onshore sites have already been exploited. Investment is best made offshore at this point, and we can return to onshore wind once we've evened up the use of offshore potential.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122320827#Comment_122320827

I'd argue that there's still plenty of sites for onshore wind and most of the time demand will exceed how much we can generate so I don't think we are close to diminishing returns yet.

Offshore will take longer and cost more to develop as you first have to build something to put the wind turbine on, in the middle of the sea, weather permitting, so we shouldn't wait.

The capacity factor of offshore means you'd need backup for less time so need less batteries and fuel especially with more solar in the mix.

Capt'n Midnight

THE WORLD’S first industrial plant using solar heat to make fuels has been opened in Germany. … From 2033 it aims to produce fuels at around US$1/litre.

In the reactor, CO2, water vapour, and methane sourced from biowaste are
heated with the solar energy over a catalyst which produces a mixture of
carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas. This is then piped down
the tower to a Fischer-Tropsch unit which converts it into a synthetic
crude which a refinery would then process into kerosene for planes,
diesel or methanol for ships and trucks, and petrol for cars.

It's old tech, the new bit is using concentrated sunlight as the energy source. It gives another price point for future dispatchable energy. Of course the future plants would be based in sunnier countries.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122320975#Comment_122320975

And how would any of this help during - for example - a repeat of December 2010 when Ireland had what must have been a historical case of dunkelflaute - 2 weeks roughly of temperatures below -10C and an anti-cyclone meaning no wind anywhere.

It's not enough to have a power system that works most of the time. You cannot have an electricity supply that is literally dependent on the weather, so every watt of wind and solar will still have to be backed by traditional thermal.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122321944#Comment_122321944

The post directly above yours was about fuel to energy. "another price point for future dispatchable energy" A dollar a litre.

Also anything that costs more than two and a half times the price of surplus wind or solar won't be able to compete with stored hydrogen and it's ilk in old gas fields.

Stored heat has been demonstrated at 40% but could hit 50% efficiency with thermophotovoltaics in the future though I'd imagine that would be for weeks rather than months.

And apart from storage there's the interconnectors, the CHP, biomass and biogas, the waste to energy, the 20% of current emissions we can continue to use until 2050 and there's also demand shedding etc.

Also what dunkelflaute ? 2010 sunshine hours and mean wind speed (knot) from met.ie

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122320524#Comment_122320524

The Australian contrast is useful because those so against Renewables and Solar will often take things out of context and claim that Nuclear is the silver bullet to all issues.

However, we know it aint so.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122322670#Comment_122322670

It will be interesting to see how well this technology actually delivers on the idea, and if it will be able to scale up. But even if it does, we will still need many gigawatts of traditional thermal to cover dunkelflaute. As for 2010, perhaps you were not in the country that year but approaching Christmas time, temperatures plunged to figures well below -10C and at least where I was, there was no wind at all - dead calm. Literally, dead calm, as a lot of people could have died if the electricity had failed - as water supplies and water-based heating systems broadly failed.

As I recall, this started not long before Christmas Eve and temperatures did get back above freezing for at least a week or two.

This is not to say that such an event will happen again, per se, but the fact is that it can happen - and things will get really nasty if there aren't any plans in place. So there will absolutely be a need for traditional thermal power capacity to run the entire country, even if it's never needed. How is that going to be provided? Especially given the push to electrify all the trains, cars, have electric heat pumps (which will be fairly inefficient at -17C).

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122323426#Comment_122323426

Most renewable technology doesn't need to scale up. You just use more of it. More turbines, more panels, more hydrolysers, more batteries, more fuel cells, more synchronous compensators, more biomass digesters, more options, more redundancy.

The old gas fields already exist and could provide months to years of grid scale storage.

Yes I was here in 2010 but unlike Met Eireann I wasn't taking hourly readings so I'll refer to their data rather than hearsay.

The fact is, as you well know, we don't need to go fully zero emissions until 2050.

And even then if there was a dunkelflaute, despite the historical evidence, then we could use stored 'energy to fuel' or Carbon Capture or flow cells or maybe fusion will work by then or something else OR we could get a temporary emergency exemption and plant a lot of trees later.

josip

Is Tullabeg solar in Wexford now operational? It looks like it is according to Irish Energy bot and if so would have been one of the reasons for the June records (5th largest contributor).

https://twitter.com/IrishEnergyBot/status/1805586641890763021/photo/1

But I can't find a presser for it going operational.

And is 'Gillanstown', 2nd in that list, a duplication of Gallanstown?