Energy infrastructure

gjim

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The last week has been quiet enough just to take a current example. I believe there have been more extreme lulls where generation stayed below 5 percent for up to 5 days. See fig 25.4 here. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.115.8634&rep=rep1&type=pdf

It doesn't say that. It says that there were 5 days between October 2006 and Feb 2007 when wind turbines only generated 5% of capacity. The days are not consecutive at all.

I'm not a big fan of your source anyway - ignoring the strange tone, it's 15 years old and this is a massive issue if you're looking at green energy. It would be like reading a survey of the state of the computer industry from 15 years ago - it should be viewed as of historical interest only.

In the last 10 years alone, the cost of wind turbines has dropped 90%, PV panels by 85% and grid scale batteries by 80%. These trends haven't even stopped yet - for li-ion grid scale batteries the price drop is actually accelerating with a drop of 66% in the last 3 years.

Also in that time the amount of wind capacity in Ireland has increased by over 800% - providing a much better geographic spread.

This is a rapidly changing sector and even sources a couple of years old are probably useless now to get a picture of what's happening.

Ireland's wind story I feel is not heralded as much as it should be - we're in the top 3 globally in terms of wind energy usage. In the first two months of this year, wind provided 49% of all electricity consumed in the country - http://www.eirgridgroup.com/newsroom/record-wind-levels-feb-20/ - which I think is an amazing achievement. And this was done without any fancy battery technology.

gjim

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

That sounds great. But 1GWh is 330 MW for three hours. It’s very little in the overall context of the grid.

Compared to what? Turlough hill is a vital part of the grid while capable of delivering "only" 300MW for 5 or 6 hours a day.

In contrast, there are over 2 million ICE cars in the country. If all were replaced with battery operated vehicles (and they eventually will be), that would represent storage capacity of around 100 GWh - or on a daily basis about 50 Turlough hills.

But anyway you don't need anything like this level of storage for wind generation to work and be effective.

Capt'n Midnight

gjim wrote: »

In contrast, there are over 2 million ICE cars in the country. If all were replaced with battery operated vehicles (and they eventually will be), that would represent storage capacity of around 100 GWh - or on a daily basis about 50 Turlough hills.

I still don't buy this.

The old pattern was that peak demand coincided with people arriving home from work. Electric cars would add to demand rather than supply.

The economics didn't work out last time I checked. A 50 kWhr stores 50 units of electricity. But it won't be full when you get home from work and you don't want to totally discharge it so call it 25kWhr. And add 10% to the cost of the leccy as advertised as 92% efficiency.

You'd need to offer a good price to get people to deep discharge their cars unless they were planning to say in all evening. Charging and discharging wears out batteries and they aren't cheap to replace. 50 units x 1,000 charges x 10c per unit differential gets you five grand and IIRC the batteries cost eight grand.


The devil is in the detail. I could see the economic case for someone on day/night rate saving on their own power. I can't see it for grid level storage unless car owner was getting a good slice of the pie.

TBH there's a much better case for using load shedding of EV charging to load balance.

dubhthach

RandomViewer wrote: »

The replacement of ICE for electric leaves a huge tax hole to be filled, expect EVs to be taxed to limit once they hit 25-30% of the car pool

Well that or we bring in a proper property tax. For example in Denmark

Property tax is levied on properties in Denmark. Property value tax is levied on properties both in Denmark and abroad. The property value tax is 1% of the publicly assessed value for Danish properties up to DKK 3,040,000 (EUR 408,000) and 3% of the exceeding amount

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/dk/Documents/tax/Downloads/Deloitte-Working-living-in-Denmark-2020.pdf

In LA the yearly property tax is 1% of property value. Current Irish property value comes to €536billion. A 1% tax on that would bring in ~€5b/year compare to the measly ~€500m/year collected today.

I couldn't be arsed pulling out the current car tax/fuel excise figures, but here's some from a post I did on Boards.ie over 10 years ago...





1% property tax along with reasonable taxes on EV's would well offset the shift from fossil fuels. (It would also probably allow for higher tax bands as well)

RandomViewer

dubhthach wrote: »

Well that or we bring in a proper property tax. For example in Denmark


https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/dk/Documents/tax/Downloads/Deloitte-Working-living-in-Denmark-2020.pdf

In LA the yearly property tax is 1% of property value. Current Irish property value comes to €536billion. A 1% tax on that would bring in ~€5b/year compare to the measly ~€500m/year collected today.

I couldn't be arsed pulling out the current car tax/fuel excise figures, but here's some from a post I did on Boards.ie over 10 years ago...





1% property tax along with reasonable taxes on EV's would well offset the shift from fossil fuels. (It would also probably allow for higher tax bands as well)

If I'm paying 2k a year in property taxes I'll be expecting proper services like bins ,water and not a fuking pothole to be seen , any political party bringing in such a tax would never hold office again

loyatemu

RandomViewer wrote: »

If I'm paying 2k a year in property taxes I'll be expecting proper services like bins ,water and not a fuking pothole to be seen , any political party bringing in such a tax would never hold office again

this is why politicians avoid wholesale changes to the tax system. there's always winners and losers - the winners may or may not vote for you, but the losers definitely will vote against you.

loyatemu

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I still don't buy this.

The old pattern was that peak demand coincided with people arriving home from work. Electric cars would add to demand rather than supply.

The economics didn't work out last time I checked. A 50 kWhr stores 50 units of electricity. But it won't be full when you get home from work and you don't want to totally discharge it so call it 25kWhr. And add 10% to the cost of the leccy as advertised as 92% efficiency.

You'd need to offer a good price to get people to deep discharge their cars unless they were planning to say in all evening. Charging and discharging wears out batteries and they aren't cheap to replace. 50 units x 1,000 charges x 10c per unit differential gets you five grand and IIRC the batteries cost eight grand.


The devil is in the detail. I could see the economic case for someone on day/night rate saving on their own power. I can't see it for grid level storage unless car owner was getting a good slice of the pie.

TBH there's a much better case for using load shedding of EV charging to load balance.

I agree with this, the idea that EVs would become a great distributed storage system has always seemed optimistic to me. The challenge of balancing demand with encouraging EV owners to become suppliers is very tricky.

The govt could increase the subsidy for battery storage when installing PV panels, currently it doesn't make financial sense. They could also make it mandatory to install a battery to get the PV grant (or whatever it looks like when the system is changed this year) though they'd have to avoid making PV installation unattractive. They could also make it mandatory for new builds, though there are other considerations there around not increasing cost of housing supply. If every house with PV also had a battery it would do a lot to smooth out peak time demand.

Sam Russell

loyatemu wrote: »

I agree with this, the idea that EVs would become a great distributed storage system has always seemed optimistic to me. The challenge of balancing demand with encouraging EV owners to become suppliers is very tricky.

The govt could increase the subsidy for battery storage when installing PV panels, currently it doesn't make financial sense. They could also make it mandatory to install a battery to get the PV grant (or whatever it looks like when the system is changed this year) though they'd have to avoid making PV installation unattractive. They could also make it mandatory for new builds, though there are other considerations there around not increasing cost of housing supply. If every house with PV also had a battery it would do a lot to smooth out peak time demand.

The key to all of this must be the provision of smart meters and feed in tariff so that the grid decides when 'night rate' applies rather than an arbitrary clock.

For example, assume I am fully equipped with PV + battery, EV, smart meter and feed in tariff. I could decide that since I am unlikely to be travelling much this week, I allow my EV to discharge to the net if asked, but next week, not to allow it as I will need max range for a few trips.

Also, my PV/battery is adequate for summer use, but not so much for winter use, so I will be giving power in the summer but drawing power in the winter.

All this would be do-able for some of the population, and if working from home becomes the norm, EV will be an available resource for the grid.

Perhaps electricity rates will become much more complex depending on the flexibility of the user. The more flexible user getting the lower tariffs.

ted1

dubhthach wrote: »

Well that or we bring in a proper property tax. For example in Denmark


https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/dk/Documents/tax/Downloads/Deloitte-Working-living-in-Denmark-2020.pdf

In LA the yearly property tax is 1% of property value. Current Irish property value comes to €536billion. A 1% tax on that would bring in ~€5b/year compare to the measly ~€500m/year collected today.

I couldn't be arsed pulling out the current car tax/fuel excise figures, but here's some from a post I did on Boards.ie over 10 years ago...





1% property tax along with reasonable taxes on EV's would well offset the shift from fossil fuels. (It would also probably allow for higher tax bands as well)

Mortgages interest rates are 0.5%? You can get a 20 year fixed mortgage fir 1%APR.
People don’t mind paying 1% tax.

RandomViewer

ted1 wrote: »

Mortgages interest rates are 0.5%? You can get a 20 year fixed mortgage fir 1%APR.
People don’t mind paying 1% tax.

I% of a Dublin house would be roughly €5000 a year, mortgage interest rates are on the payment for the house ie. 5k a year mortgage payment = €50 , big difference,

Sam Russell

Mod: Can we leave taxation out of this thread please.

Sam Russell

Mod: Posts deleted - not following Mod instruction.

Apogee

Eirgrid running new consultation:

Irish Times wrote:

One proposal in the document – Shaping our Electricity Future, published on Monday – is that the State determines where all future wind farms will be built. Currently the developers choose the sites and Eirgrid is obliged to provide them with a connection to the grid.

A more radical plan involves building a sub-sea power line around the island, costing an estimated €2 billion, which would move electricity from wherever it is generated to areas where it is needed.This is the most expensive option on the table and one that Eirgrid regards as technically the most risky.

Another choice is to direct large energy users to build outside Dublin in areas where electricity demand is not as high. This is mainly directed at data centres, which consume large quantities of electricity. The number of such facilities now located close to the capital is beginning to put pressure on the grid. Eirgrid estimates that, by 2027, the number of new data centres in the Republic will, between them, consume the same amount of electricity as Dublin did in 2017, adding huge demand to the system.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/eirgrid-proposals-to-include-2bn-power-line-around-irish-coast-1.4503644

RTÉ had a few reports last week on energy generation via Robert Shortt:
https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1367216380643319809

https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1367474387436392449

https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2021/0305/1201081-data-centres/

gjim

Sam Russell wrote: »

The key to all of this must be the provision of smart meters and feed in tariff so that the grid decides when 'night rate' applies rather than an arbitrary clock.

Yes - I don't understand loyatemu and Capt'n Midnight's push back against the idea.

It's a very obvious one - it's called vehicle-to-grid technology - and has already being piloted by Nissan and E.ON for example. Here's the wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

ESB already pays a feed-in tariff to commercial customers who install a wind generator and who are producing more electricity than they are consuming. I can assure you that the ESB would much rather pay for dispatchable power - like that drawn from EV batteries - than be committed to paying a fixed price for intermittent supply which is more than likely to be dumped on the grid when it's needed least.

Many countries have a range of feed-in tariffs for domestic consumers who install solar panels and wind turbines - this technology is completely mature. Vehicle-to-grid is much better than fixed feed-in tariffs for intermittent domestic scale generation as it can be used to meet peak demand.

The other thing is it's clear you don't actually need a huge amount of storage to support a high share of renewable generation. If Ireland had a full electric vehicle fleet then even making a few per-cent vehicle-to-grid contributors would effectively obliviate the need to install huge centralised grid-scale batteries.

cnocbui

Vehicle to grid is a complete nonsense. Tesla don't want a bar of it and such use invalidates your warranty.

Tesla voids your warranty if you try to power your home with your electric car battery pack

Tesla voids your warranty if you try to power your home with your electric car battery pack

It's impractical pie-in-the-sky stuff.

RandomViewer

cnocbui wrote: »

Vehicle to grid is a complete nonsence. Tesla don't want a bar of it and such use invalidates your warranty.

Tesla voids your warranty if you try to power your home with your electric car battery pack

It's impractical pie-in-the-sky stuff.

The whole concept sound a bit off, not knowing how many vehicles would be plugged in at any given time and the multiple battery sizes,
a more likely scenario, technology permitting would be the installation of a storage battery in every new build/retrofit, this would also make storage heating more desirable as the battery backup would take away the fear of no power ,no heat

gjim

cnocbui wrote: »

It's impractical pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Right now in the UK you can order a V2G package from EDF for commercial fleets - https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-grid - including vehicles and V2G charging stations. So no, it's not "pie-in-the-sky" stuff.

cnocbui

gjim wrote: »

Right now in the UK you can order a V2G package from EDF for commercial fleets - https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-grid - including vehicles and V2G charging stations. So no, it's not "pie-in-the-sky" stuff.

There are only two Nissan models that are usable, and it seems restricted to commercial users. I stand by what i said.

“If we want to actually send energy back from the car to the electricity grid, this gets much more complex, and, you know, that’s something that I don’t see being a very economic or viable solution — perhaps ever, but certainly not in the near term. You know, the additional wear and tear and degradation on your vehicle battery has a fairly high cost, and many of the people and small businesses looking at this today, you know, don’t take into account fully that degradation cost, and also the additional interconnection cost, because if you interconnect your vehicle, you do have regulations that play a part — it has to interconnect in the same way that a solar system would on someone’s home or on a business, which have different standards so that they can protect line operators and people on the grid.”

Tesla CTO JB Straubel - https://cleantechnica.com/2016/08/22/vehicle-to-grid-used-ev-batteries-grid-storage/

Capt'n Midnight

gjim wrote: »

Right now in the UK you can order a V2G package from EDF for commercial fleets - https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-grid - including vehicles and V2G charging stations. So no, it's not "pie-in-the-sky" stuff.

Potential savings of £250 per year per charger for fleet users.

Versus the huge costs of replacing EV batteries early.

bk

Currently only Chademo charger supports Vehicle To Grid, CCS chargers don't support it.

Well Chademo is largely gone in Europe, almost completely replaced by CCS chargers in all new EV's. Even Nissan, the big Chademo supported is going CCS for their next EV.

People talk about V2G support being added to future CCS standard, but it is mostly talk and seems their is little appetite for it.

Charging and discharging your battery constantly will shorten it's lifespan, I feel the vehicle manufacturers don't feel that the battery tech is good enough to support it yet. Maybe in future with new chemistries like solid state batteries, that might change, but not at the moment.

But not all is lost, smart meters hooked up to smart EV chargers in homes could still help greatly with the grid. The smart charger can charger the EV's when electricity is at it's cheapest, usually when demand is low and the wind is blowing strong and turn off the charging at high demand times. It can still help balance out the grid.

bk

I feel that a point missed in this conversation, is that the short term goal for 2030 is to get to 70% renewables.

That really doesn't require any extraordinary technologies, like big battery banks, etc.

It just requires building lots of wind turbines / solar pv, a better grid to transport around the the renewable energy to where it is needed and interconnectors to export excess wind and import clean Nuclear power when needed.

Natural gas power plants can stay around, mostly offline, but quickly spun up when their is low wind power. Not ideal, but remember the goal is 70% renewables, not 100%, keeping around some NG plants to use as backup to that wind is fine in the short term.

In the long term, 2050, the goal is net zero and yes that will be more difficult.

One option is to develop carbon capture and storage technology, so we can continue to use NG to support the wind, but net zero with CCS.

I admit I'm a bit dubious about CCS, but 30 years is a long time for this technology to mature and potentially prove itself. It is all a long time for battery tech to continue to develop and mature and maybe that will be an alternative.

But I think our 2030 goal is very doable.

celtic_oz

bk wrote: »

That really doesn't require any extraordinary technologies, like big battery banks, etc.

I agree with the sentiment .. interconnectors are the way forward.

but I suspect big battery banks will be here quicker than we think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtMu9-d6kI

antoinolachtnai

celtic_oz wrote: »

I agree with the sentiment .. interconnectors are the way forward.

but I suspect big battery banks will be here quicker than we think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtMu9-d6kI

This is very poor analysis of the Texas problem.

A 100 MW battery is a nice thing to deal with short term instability. It just isn’t enough to deal with days of intermittency or in the case of Ireland, seasonal intermittency.

The idea that we can depend on European nuclear power is nice but France hasn’t built significant numbers of nukes in decades.

I can’t see the sense in shutting down Moneypoint and replacing it with a load of gas stations myself. We don’t really have a dependable gas supply anymore.

bk

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

This is very poor analysis of the Texas problem.

The Texas problem was one de-regulation and profiteering.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

A 100 MW battery is a nice thing to deal with short term instability. It just isn’t enough to deal with days of intermittency or in the case of Ireland, seasonal intermittency.

True, it is handy for levelling out expensive peaks in demand. If you are generating excess wind energy overnight, store it in the batteries and then use it next day during the evening peak.

We are building a 100 megawatt battery bank like the one in the Texas video to help with that. But you are correct that it doesn't really help with long lulls in wind generation.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

The idea that we can depend on European nuclear power is nice but France hasn’t built significant numbers of nukes in decades.

We are such a small grid, that the French Nuclear plants can easily help our grid without needing extra plants, etc.

Also it isn't just about French Nuclear plants, it is about plugging into the entire mainland EU grid and gaining the resiliency that comes with that.

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

I can’t see the sense in shutting down Moneypoint and replacing it with a load of gas stations myself. We don’t really have a dependable gas supply anymore.

LOL the last time I looked, we don't have a coal supply either! In fact we have far more local gas supply then we do coal.

The reason to get rid of dirty old coal plants are:

- It produces over twice as much greenhouse gases as a natural gas plant for the same unit of electricity.

- Coal plants produce significant amounts of other pollutants into the air, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, PM's, lead, cadmium, arsenic and other heavy metals. All pretty bad for your health.

By comparison, NG produces between 90 to 99% less of the above (depending on the one you look at) per unit of energy produced.

NG basically burns much cleaner then coal, this is why we have banned the burning of coal in our cities and moved over to mostly NG heating.

I'm old enough to remember how horrifyingly poor the air was when we use to burn coal for heating. In winter the air would be black with all the chimneys. Everything was dirty and the air stank and lots of coughing. It certainly wasn't healthy and I'm very glad we have switched away from it.

- Coal powered plants actually release radiation into the atmosphere. Ironically much more then Nuclear power plants.

- Coal power plants are a poor backup to wind. They are typically slow to fire up and slow to shut down again. They are poor to respond to the needs of the grid as wind increases and decreases.

By comparison, NG is very fast to start up and shutdown and thus perfect for supporting wind and quickly responding to grid demand.

Burning coal really makes no sense at all. Gas is pretty much the holy grail when it comes to fossil fuels. Half the CO2, fraction of other pollutants, easy to transport and a great backup to renewables.

Capt'n Midnight

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

I can’t see the sense in shutting down Moneypoint and replacing it with a load of gas stations myself. We don’t really have a dependable gas supply anymore.

Options include converting Moneypoint to gas. Running some boilers off the waste heat means you keep the high inertia generators on line for frequency stability and the energy store of high pressure steam provide some spinning reserve. Tarbert will be closing down too so you'll need something in the Limerick area. There is major grid infrastructure in the area so makes it handy for new power stations. Biomass isn't a great option but the area is coastal as it would be mostly imported.

Tidal might be an option - it's predictable.






The Kinsale gas field closed. And the Corrib field will run out soon but there's the Barryroe oil and gas field which should keep us going for another decade or so.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Tidal might be an option - it's predictable.

Tidal is one nut I would love to see cracked however I don't know if it will ever develop beyond a niche supplier due to the tiny amount of locations suitable for it.

cnocbui

My take on tidal is that the maintainance issues and costs are just next level. The marine biosphere just hammers anything that has submerged moving parts or relies on smooth water flow.

Perhaps some really large scale projects that are efffectively just marine versions of dams will be viable.

Wave power is equally fraught with the same problems

I wish Rolls-Royce would get on and build a test and evaluation example of their small scale nuclear reactors. That's the all round best bet.

cruizer101

In terms of energy storage for lulls in the wind, battery isn't really that practical yet, it is still around an order of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro or compressed liquid air storage.
It is good in that it has very fast response time for spikes in energy consumption but it still just a bit too pricey for large storage.

dubhthach

Statkraft is to provide market access and trading optimisation for battery storage assets being developed by RWE in Ireland.

The battery storage assets – with a collective capacity of over 68MW - are to provide rapid frequency response and reserves to the national electricity grid in the event of a sudden drop off in generation or supply, as part of Irish transmission operator EirGrid’s DS3 system services programme.

Statkraft has its own battery storage contracted with EirGrid though the DS3 flexibility market, completing its 11MW project in January 2020.

The company is to also trade RWE’s battery storage assets - located in the Dublin and Monaghan counties – in the wholesale energy markets.

Nick Heyward, head of energy storage for Statkraft, explained that a combination of advanced algorithmic trading, 24/7 expert trader supervision and the company’s automated trading platform UNITY ensures flexibility is deployed and traded “in the right markets at the right time”.

This could be in DS3 - which Heyward said is most valuable at times of highest renewable penetration - or it might be in the wholesale markets, where energy storage is well placed to support the balancing of the system at peak times.

In the UK, National Grid launched its own a frequency response service in October, Dynamic Containment, with Flexitricity and Arenko the first companies to participate following an interconnector tripping within the services first week.

Several frequency events have occurred on the UK grid over the past few years as a result of interconnectors tripping, with battery storage helping to restore frequency to the usual levels in June 2019 following the French interconnector tripping and in February 2020 when the Belgian interconnector tripped.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/statkraft-to-optimise-68mw-of-irish-storage-in-rwe-deal

The 11MW (5.6MWh) facility at Kilathmoy went live last April, it's colocated with 7 wind turbines.

Statkraft built the first grid-scale battery in Ireland at Kilathmoy. This is an 11MW, 5.6MWh lithium-ion battery which commenced operation in April 2020. The battery is contracted to provide DS3 System Services to the Irish Transmission System Operator, EirGrid. These are non-energy grid ancillary services which help support the grid at high levels of renewable penetration. Services include fast reserves and reactive power.

dubhthach

cruizer101 wrote: »

In terms of energy storage for lulls in the wind, battery isn't really that practical yet, it is still around an order of magnitude more expensive than pumped hydro or compressed liquid air storage.
It is good in that it has very fast response time for spikes in energy consumption but it still just a bit too pricey for large storage.

It's getting there though, we've had close on 90% decline in prices per MWh in the last 10 years

Hong Kong and London, December 16, 2020 – Lithium-ion battery pack prices, which were above $1,100 per kilowatt-hour in 2010, have fallen 89% in real terms to $137/kWh in 2020. By 2023, average prices will be close to $100/kWh, according to the latest forecast from research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).

https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-100-kwh-for-the-first-time-in-2020-while-market-average-sits-at-137-kwh/