Energy infrastructure

gjim

tom1ie wrote: »

I really do see hydrogen or as (I think it was bk?) said liquid air being the storage future.
Evs are a great idea for storage but you still have to distribute the electricity to the evs via the distribution lv network which may not be able to handle a massive amount of evs charging at the same time.

If the excess electricity generated is kept on the transmission network and stored commercially in the form of hydrogen or liquid air, you get rid of that issue.

Yeah but you'll only be charging your EV during off-peak periods when by definition the transmission network will siting idle.

Agree if we switched 100% to BEVs there's no way the network could handle simultaneous charging. Back-of-fag-packet calculation: peak dispatchable electricity for the island is about 10GW so charging 130GWh worth of batteries (2.7m vehicles with a 50KWh battery each) is not feasible even assuming the network isn't a bottleneck.

But we could certainly cope with having 10% of vehicles BEV in the next 5 or max 10 years and while that is going on the network should be simultaneously improved/developed.

Sam Russell

tom1ie wrote: »

I really do see hydrogen or as (I think it was bk?) said liquid air being the storage future.

I was talking about hydrogen as a fuel to be used added to natural gas. It could also be used in a fuel cell to generate electricity, though the technology is not there yet.

Evs are a great idea for storage but you still have to distribute the electricity to the evs via the distribution lv network which may not be able to handle a massive amount of evs charging at the same time.

This is where the smart meter comes into its own. Not only should it be able to match supply to demand, it should also be able to balance the grid. A flexible feed in tariff would help by allowing some users to be aggressive in maximising cost savings while others might prefer to be certain in maximising availability.

If the excess electricity generated is kept on the transmission network and stored commercially in the form of hydrogen or liquid air, you get rid of that issue.

It can also be kept in domestic batteries in the form of purpose storage or using the ev batteries.

Think how much telecommunications and computers have advanced in the last 50 years, and the changes that might happen in the next 50 years or even the next twenty years. We will see changes we cannot even imagine now.

tom1ie

gjim wrote: »

I agree on renewable sources of gas but it's not there yet.

Not sure about wave and tide - the idea has been on the go for a century by now and it's still always been just promising.

While it's interesting to hear about future and potential technical/engineering developments in the area, I also worry that such talk creates an impression that we're slightly helpless at the moment until some big technology breakthrough arrives. The opposite is the case - we don't have to wait to build for a carbon-free (or nearly free) energy future.

The tools are already there: develop and over-provision on-shore wind generation. It's unsightly in the countryside but it's the most economic for Ireland. It will mean a big excess of generation capacity but that capacity is not completely wasted if you actively encourage the adoption of BEVs. There may also be a market for excess electricity abroad via interconnectors. Turn off dirty power generation sources as soon as is possible except for combined cycle gas. Ensure a competitive supply of natural gas.

None of this effort will be wasted if there's a big breakthrough in the next decades in grid scale storage or other renewable sources.

Problem is, when that massive excess of renewables stops (ie wind stops blowing) you need generating plants that can ramp up insanely quickly to cover the demand or you release the energy stored or you use the interconnectors.
We don’t have adequate storage at the moment.
We keep gas generating stations on spinning reserve for this very reason.
The interconnectors are grand as long as there is excess to be got at that particular time from a neighbouring country and as long as they don’t ramp up the price which they’d be entitled to do under supply and demand.

So until we get the storage aspect sorted we are kinda stuck a bit.

bk

gjim wrote: »

Agree if we switched 100% to BEVs there's no way the network could handle simultaneous charging. Back-of-fag-packet calculation: peak dispatchable electricity for the island is about 10GW so charging 130GWh worth of batteries (2.7m vehicles with a 50KWh battery each) is not feasible even assuming the network isn't a bottleneck.

Keep in mind that most people would never need to fully charge their battery every night.

On average cars only travel 50km per day in Ireland (2016) *

So on average you are looking at most cars only needing to topup by about 10KWh per night, rather then 50KWh.

Add to that smart meters to help balance that charging out. So you could have one group of cars get their 10KWh between midnight and 2am, the next group between 2am and 4am, etc.

So you'd be more looking at 27GWh spread over 12 hours, so about 2.25GWh used. Relatively doable with even our current capacity.

* Of course there will be outliers like travelling sales people, etc. But from the grid perspective that doesn't really matter as they would be balanced out by cars that might even go without any use some days, or just doing the school run.

Sam Russell wrote: »

I was talking about hydrogen as a fuel to be used added to natural gas. It could also be used in a fuel cell to generate electricity, though the technology is not there yet.

If using Hydrogen to generate power for the grid, then you just "burn" it in gas turbines. An advantage that you can re-use the existing gas turbines and also mix hydrogen and natural gas in them at different percentages depending on availability and power demand.

tom1ie

bk wrote: »

Keep in mind that most people would never need to fully charge their battery every night.

On average cars only travel 50km per day in Ireland (2016) *

So on average you are looking at most cars only needing to topup by about 10KWh per night, rather then 50KWh.

Add to that smart meters to help balance that charging out. So you could have one group of cars get their 10KWh between midnight and 2am, the next group between 2am and 4am, etc.

So you'd be more looking at 27GWh spread over 12 hours, so about 2.25GWh used. Relatively doable with even our current capacity.

* Of course there will be outliers like travelling sales people, etc. But from the grid perspective that doesn't really matter as they would be balanced out by cars that might even go without any use some days, or just doing the school run.



If using Hydrogen to generate power for the grid, then you just "burn" it in gas turbines. An advantage that you can re-use the existing gas turbines and also mix hydrogen and natural gas in them at different percentages depending on availability and power demand.

I would say the outliers such as sales people wouldn’t be driving evs anyway as the range isn’t there unless your willing to pay 40k plus for a Tesla.

Markcheese

tom1ie wrote: »

I would say the outliers such as sales people wouldn’t be driving evs anyway as the range isn’t there unless your willing to pay 40k plus for a Tesla.

I'm not sure about that , there's the ioniq and niro ,and the long range leaf , all under 40k ( expensive but less than 40 k ) , and when you add in tiny fuel and maintenance costs and no BIK, I reckon sales reps will probably start heading en mass before the rest of the public do ...

tom1ie

Markcheese wrote: »

I'm not sure about that , there's the ioniq and niro ,and the long range leaf , all under 40k ( expensive but less than 40 k ) , and when you add in tiny fuel and maintenance costs and no BIK, I reckon sales reps will probably start heading en mass before the rest of the public do ...

All of those cars would only have a range of max 200k in worse case scenario though no? (Winter, 120kph driving etc)

Anyway sorry I’m bringing this off topic I think.

Capt'n Midnight

cgcsb wrote: »

A switch to combining gas and better storage in one plant could be another carbon saving. The ramp up time of gas could be covered by batteries.

Major wear and tear on turbines is stopping and starting and they are very quick to respond when they are already spinning. And yes there's a 10MW battery up north.

Eirgrid Operational Constraints
Page 5 - 2. Operating Reserve Requirements times
5 seconds Primary 15 Seconds Secondary 90 seconds Tertiary 1 5 minutes Tertiary 2 20 minutes.

Batteries would have to compete with the inertia of big spinning turbines. Open Circuit Gas Turbine operate at about 2/3rd's full capacity so they can be ramped up in seconds. Pumped storage in pumping mode can be turned off to shed demand. Interconnectors. And ramping up steam plant.

And for grid stability there's a good few generators that have to be on regionally so there's extra capacity at times of low demand.

Apogee

Irish Times wrote:

Belfast is set to receive Ireland’s first hydrogen-powered double-decker buses in coming weeks using fuel coming from wind energy generated in nearby north Antrim. The initiative is the first “green hydrogen” project on the island of Ireland and the first step to decarbonise Northern Ireland’s public transport by 2040, according to Mark Welsh, energy services manager with Energia, which is generating the hydrogen at its wind farm near Ballymena.


Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable electricity to power electrolyser technology that splits the hydrogen from water molecules. Energia’s electrolyser produces hydrogen on location, where it is stored in trailers before being transported to a new refuelling station in Belfast and it will soon fuel buses developed by Wrightbus for Translink, the transport operator in the city.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/ireland-s-first-green-hydrogen-project-to-come-on-stream-in-weeks-1.4399291

tom1ie

Apogee wrote: »

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/ireland-s-first-green-hydrogen-project-to-come-on-stream-in-weeks-1.4399291

This is great news.
Potentially this hydrogen was manufactured at off peak electricity times when we had an excess of capacity on the grid.
Conceivably the hydrogen could be converted back into electricity to match demand?

Markcheese

tom1ie wrote: »

This is great news.
Potentially this hydrogen was manufactured at off peak electricity times when we had an excess of capacity on the grid.
Conceivably the hydrogen could be converted back into electricity to match demand?

Conceivably ... But if you go to the trouble of buying and installing an electrolizer, you'll probably want to run it as much as possible , peak ,off peak ,to match demand .
otherwise,if you want to use off peak power predominantly, you'd have to install 2 or 3 times the capacity , at 2 or 3 times the capital cost ...

gjim

Talking of novel technologies, there's an interesting alternative to hydrogen which I hadn't heard of before which involves burning iron powder - there's no carbon involved in the process, in fact there's no exhaust gas at all. The burned powder can be regenerated using a process like electrolysis.

Here's a story about a pilot in a Dutch brewery: https://newatlas.com/energy/bavarian-brewery-carbon-free-renewable-iron-fuel/

It suffers the same poor round-trip efficiency as generating hydrogen with electrolysis but has some interesting advantages. It solves the biggest issue with hydrogen - where storage and transport is expensive, potentially dangerous and requires complex engineering. You can move this stuff around in a wheelbarrow. Also it's claimed, it should be relatively easy to retro-fit existing coal burning power stations.

tom1ie

Markcheese wrote: »

Conceivably ... But if you go to the trouble of buying and installing an electrolizer, you'll probably want to run it as much as possible , peak ,off peak ,to match demand .
otherwise,if you want to use off peak power predominantly, you'd have to install 2 or 3 times the capacity , at 2 or 3 times the capital cost ...

Well I suppose the question is if we are massively increasing our capacity of renewable energy to get to as close as possible to 100%, there will be a huge amount of time when supply outstrips demand.
Therefore that excess supply has to go somewhere so why not into creating hydrogen that can fuel the hgv fleet or be transformed back into electricity if that need should arise at peak time.

loyatemu

it was discussed elsewhere (on the Transport forum in the context of hydrogen powered buses vs battery powered) that converting electricity to Hydrogen is pretty inefficient compared to storing it in batteries - something like 25% efficiency vs 80% for batteries. On that basis it would only make sense to use spare capacity.

tom1ie

loyatemu wrote: »

it was discussed elsewhere (on the Transport forum in the context of hydrogen powered buses vs battery powered) that converting electricity to Hydrogen is pretty inefficient compared to storing it in batteries - something like 25% efficiency vs 80% for batteries. On that basis it would only make sense to use spare capacity.

Yes which is what I’m advocating.
Why waste the spare electrons at non peak times, when we can convert them into hydrogen and Power the hgv fleet or convert back to electricity at peak demand.
Although gjim mentions iron powder instead of hydrogen which sounds interesting/safer!

Sam Russell

tom1ie wrote: »

Yes which is what I’m advocating.
Why waste the spare electrons at non peak times, when we can convert them into hydrogen and Power the hgv fleet or convert back to electricity at peak demand.
Although gjim mentions iron powder instead of hydrogen which sounds interesting/safer!

Pumped storage is 80% efficient, and rapidly changes from storage to generation. We have a plant that is in operation for nearly 50 years, and has run without any problems. It is high cost to build though.

Batteries have a limited life and would only be good if they can be recycled/regenerated efficiently. At the present time, no one is talking about regenerating batteries.

riddlinrussell

Sam Russell wrote: »

Pumped storage is 80% efficient, and rapidly changes from storage to generation. We have a plant that is in operation for nearly 50 years, and has run without any problems. It is high cost to build though.

Batteries have a limited life and would only be good if they can be recycled/regenerated efficiently. At the present time, no one is talking about regenerating batteries.

Also with environmental legislation would be nearly impossible to build another...

magicbastarder

how is the hydrogen 'burned' on the bus? fuel cells? i think i read that fuel cells have to operate around 400-500C and are best suited to constant demand scenarios?

riddlinrussell

magicbastarder wrote: »

how is the hydrogen 'burned' on the bus? fuel cells? i think i read that fuel cells have to operate around 400-500C and are best suited to constant demand scenarios?

These (according to the Wrightbus literature) are Ballard Fuel Cells, which are PEM Fuel Cells, what that means in terms of operation I don't know, but I would imagine they are well suited to a bus operation, seems to be used by VanHool and a few other manufacturers also

Sam Russell

riddlinrussell wrote: »

Sam Russell wrote: »

Pumped storage is 80% efficient, and rapidly changes from storage to generation. We have a plant that is in operation for nearly 50 years, and has run without any problems. It is high cost to build though.

Batteries have a limited life and would only be good if they can be recycled/regenerated efficiently. At the present time, no one is talking about regenerating batteries.

Also with environmental legislation would be nearly impossible to build another...

I wonder if they used the sea as the lower lake, would they gain from high tide - pump up, and at low tide - generate, thus gaining the difference in potential energy.

I am not sure if there is a suitable granite mountain beside the sea.

riddlinrussell

Sam Russell wrote: »

I wonder if they used the sea as the lower lake, would they gain from high tide - pump up, and at low tide - generate, thus gaining the difference in potential energy.

I am not sure if there is a suitable granite mountain beside the sea.

Slieve Donard or Slieve Foy are both Granite, can't see doing it to a county/province high point being too popular though... but maybe somewhere in the Mournes could work, along Carlingford

Cookiemunster

riddlinrussell wrote: »

Also with environmental legislation would be nearly impossible to build another...

Isn't there a proposal to build one at a disused quarry in Tipperary?

gjim

Sam Russell wrote: »

I wonder if they used the sea as the lower lake, would they gain from high tide - pump up, and at low tide - generate, thus gaining the difference in potential energy.

Interesting idea but I think the gains would be relatively small. The likes of Turlough hill has a head of 550m. Without doing the proper maths, even if you saved 6m of pumping on each round-trip that's only going to shave 1% off the cost of storing the electricity.

And that would be assuming, like you say, you could find a site with suitable geography/geology. Doesn't seem like we're blessed with lots of suitable hydro-storage sites - finding one on the coast where there are strong tides would restrict the possibilities even further.

riddlinrussell

gjim wrote: »

Interesting idea but I think the gains would be relatively small. The likes of Turlough hill has a head of 550m. Without doing the proper maths, even if you saved 6m of pumping on each round-trip that's only going to shave 1% off the cost of storing the electricity.

And that would be assuming, like you say, you could find a site with suitable geography/geology. Doesn't seem like we're blessed with lots of suitable hydro-storage sites - finding one on the coast where there are strong tides would restrict the possibilities even further.

I think you might also have issues with corrosion from salt water affecting any savings there too...

magicbastarder

using tidal energy like that, you're also only gaining when the tide is in. ideally you should be able to capture the energy of the tide both coming in, and leaving?

riddlinrussell

magicbastarder wrote: »

using tidal energy like that, you're also only gaining when the tide is in. ideally you should be able to capture the energy of the tide both coming in, and leaving?

I think the point would be that the tidal effect is a side benefit, and the question is if it's a side benefit worth limiting locations and increasing wear on machinery.

There are already multiple technologies for actual tidal energy generation that would be more efficient. I think it would just be an incidental boost for this style of pumped battery.

Sam Russell

gjim wrote: »

Interesting idea but I think the gains would be relatively small. The likes of Turlough hill has a head of 550m. Without doing the proper maths, even if you saved 6m of pumping on each round-trip that's only going to shave 1% off the cost of storing the electricity.

And that would be assuming, like you say, you could find a site with suitable geography/geology. Doesn't seem like we're blessed with lots of suitable hydro-storage sites - finding one on the coast where there are strong tides would restrict the possibilities even further.

If it was a 6m tide, and it was a 550 m from mean low tide, then the lift would be 546m from high tide, and mean drop would be 550m, so a 1% gain.

Cost would be corrosion, and restricted times for pumping and generating to get best advantage.

It is a marginal benefit, that is sure. Advantage would be a very very large lower lake.

riddlinrussell

Sam Russell wrote: »

If it was a 6m tide, and it was a 550 m from mean low tide, then the lift would be 546m from high tide, and mean drop would be 550m, so a 1% gain.

Cost would be corrosion, and restricted times for pumping and generating to get best advantage.

It is a marginal benefit, that is sure. Advantage would be a very very large lower lake.

You would have some sight if they overfilled the top one though!

Markcheese

Cookiemunster wrote: »

Isn't there a proposal to build one at a disused quarry in Tipperary?

https://silvermineshydro.ie/

Haven't heard much of it recently , so don't know if it's dead or not ,
It was being projected to be 6 or 7 hundred million , but it'd be a damn big battery ... At 360 mw ,

magicbastarder

Cookiemunster wrote: »

Isn't there a proposal to build one at a disused quarry in Tipperary?

i've often heard that the turlough hill project came down to a shortlist of two, but have never heard what the rejected location was.