Random Renewables Thread

graememk

PepsiCo having the largest rooftop solar in Ireland

https://www.echolive.ie/corknews/arid-41132245.html

4500 panels, say 400w, thats roughly 1.8MWp.

paulbok

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120561172#Comment_120561172

@unkel is that not your gaff?

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120563533#Comment_120563533

I am expecting unkel's gaff to start appearing on bonkers.ie and similar sites any day now

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120568269#Comment_120568269

I'm honestly surprised it isn't listed here with all the panels he's installed

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland

the_amazing_raisin

Well this should be good for some comedy as it develops

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/0508/1381259-lack-of-understanding-of-new-eu-anti-greenwashing-rules/

The basic idea seems to be that a company can't claim their products are eco friendly without providing evidence and having their claims independently verified

Apparently 41% of Irish companies don't think they can provide the required data

Whatever could be the reason for that?

Could it be, perhaps, that their claimed green credentials were nothing but BS to begin with? 🤔

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120568330#Comment_120568330

I assume (and of course I wouldnt confirm or deny this publicly if I were him) that he hasnt applied for the NC7 and as such is strictlky speaking in breach of the 25A NC6 inverter limit and therefore wouldnt want this known or advertised. Just a hunch.

DC999

Good graph showing wind and solar per head of population from last year. Class to see Ireland well up there. Tis all from wind of course, which is 'our oil' :)

From Despairing about climate change? These 4 charts on the unstoppable growth of solar may change your mind (theconversation.com)

unkel

Solar is 25% better here than in the Netherlands. We also have 10 times as much space as them per capita. If we put in a modest effort and got as much PV as they have and increased wind as per the current plans, Ireland could easily be the best for wind + solar per capita in the world within the next 5 years at most for relatively very little cost

Now that would be a position to be proud of!

Jonathan

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/business/almost-quarter-workforce-grimsby-firm-8450302

Uh oh.

unkel

That's surprising.

Anytime I go to order something from them directly they seem to have sold out. There have been waiting lists and queues for years for zappis and eddis. Only this week did I manage to pick up 2 (the only 2) eddi add on boards from one of their distributors here in Ireland. Their margins are sound, their products are not cheap. The products have quickly established themselves as market leaders. People talk about zappis for car charge points and eddis for immersion diverters almost as much as they talk about hoovers for vacuum cleaners

It's very desirable to have their range of products, more so for their ecosystem than their individual functionality

Maybe they were beefing up too quickly expecting even higher growth?

silver_sky

I wonder if they're pouring too much into the libbi. I also think they're slightly late to market on that and too expensive.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120614503#Comment_120614503

Dunno, it's just a rebadged product and all they had to do is make a controller for it. It's very expensive (meaning super high margin for the company), but very tempting no doubt for a lot of people to stay within the myenergi ecosystem and finally have it complete

the_amazing_raisin

Okay, question for everyone, when estimating solar savings, do you compare to what you were paying before getting solar, or what you would be paying now if you didn't have any solar panels?

For example, I'm now paying a level pay of €60 per month with solar and battery (that's my estimate for the year, we'll see how we do in reality). Before getting solar I was paying €211 per month, so €151 saving per month

But that was based on the 41% discount rate from Energia which doesn't exist anymore. If I had no solar I'd be paying €250 per month on the current plan I've got, which also doesn't exist anymore. That would be €190 saved per month which is much nicer

And going by what's available today I'd probably be paying around €300, which is €240 saved per month

So which one do I use for calculating savings? I feel like I should calculate the savings based on today's prices because that's what I would be paying without solar (and also because it works out to the shortest payback period 😁)

But I also feel like that's cheating because I was never paying that much

paulbok

Not a very extensive research of PV panels, but some encouraging analysis of the loss of production from panels over time. 2-3% loss after 16 years, less than the manufacturers predicted.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/05/16/researchers-assess-degradation-in-pv-systems-older-than-15-years/

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120619227#Comment_120619227

You're not paying that much because of the solar panels. During their lifetime the cost for energy will go up and down (probably up mostly). Honestly I just took a fixed amount when working out my system. It will most likely save more than that but I went conservative with my calculations. My payback time is probably longer than most given I had no grant. Cost savings were not my only motivation though.

curioustony

Okay, question for everyone, when estimating solar savings, do you compare to what you were paying before getting solar, or what you would be paying now if you didn't have any solar panels?

For me I look at the best I could have done without solar, for sure I would shop around every year, and what I am spending with solar, best plan again. The difference is the saving. Changes every year. Working on an Android app to help do this. Load shifting not counted yet (next on the TODO), but here is a screenshot that show what I mean

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120619227#Comment_120619227

I track what is used from solar directly, what went to/from battery (after losses) whether it was on day rate it night rate,

Any diverts are counted separately and at night rate.

Needs a lot of logging to work all that out though

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120619539#Comment_120619539

At the moment I'm just comparing rae kWh compared to last year. I'm not diverting much between the battery and EV so I do see a significant decrease in night rate usage as well

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120619464#Comment_120619464

Yeah I worked out the payback based on what I'd be paying today without solar panels

It's arguably slightly unfair because energy prices are very high at the moment, however they've been forecast to drop for months and haven't so I think it's justifiable and gives me a payback period of 6.5 years

It probably means my payback period will go up slightly if prices drop but it's quite possible that I'll have paid off most of the upfront costs before that happens

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120619500#Comment_120619500

I've a similar view, I don't think I can realistically reduce or shift any consumption so my electricity usage is going to be the same.

I'm not going to switch to a petrol car or gas heating to lower the electricity bill, it would definitely be some dodgy economics there 😂

So the only solution is to make my own electricity, and as such it's fair to compare to the prices I'd be paying today without solar

curioustony

@the_amazing_raisin purchase shifting is the main reason for a battery for me. Need a good cheap, long night rate. Then the battery will pay for itself. In this example to the tune of €500 a year. The solar on it's own is the big winner, coming in at 1K€.

Of course mileage will vary and electricity prices will come down!!!

the_amazing_raisin

Bit of an interesting video, but I'm struggling to decide if it's a good idea or a terrible one

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=inQVdC2IZOg

The basic premise seems fairly simple. Offshore wind is good, but getting the power to shore is difficult because of the distances involved and requires a lot of very expensive underwater cabling and infrastructure near the shore

So you build an artificial island near the wind turbines which transforms the electricity to a much higher voltage and transmits to shore using an undersea cable

You can also link islands together so form more interconnections between grids and different wind installations

Why I think it's a good idea:

Cheaper installation costs for offshore wind, meaning more offshore wind gets installed

Offshore wind can be further out to sea, meaning more capacity and also the folks who are offended by the sight of turbines won't have to cover their faces with their tinfoil hats when going for a seaside walk

Moving the infrastructure offshore means you don't need a large substation close to the shore, it can be further inland which might be an easier sell

More interconnections between grids is good, allows for more use of renewables and also provides redundancy if individual generators go down

Okay, now why I think it's a bad idea:

Artificial islands are really bad for the sea environment, which is already heavily polluted with plastics. I'm not sure shoving more islands out there is the best approach

Also, unless someone is going to build a green hydrogen powered dredger, as well as somehow decarbonising the whole concrete manufacturing process, building the island is also going to be damaging to the wider environment. I realise that if the alternative is burning more coal then it's probably better overall, but it isn't free and I think alternatives (like a floating platform) should be explored where possible

Final concern, let's be honest we're living in a world with numerous security threats. Somebody blew up the Nord Stream pipelines and there's been numerous threats to undersea communication cables. So putting a load of generally fragile electricity transmission equipment on an offshore island seems like a bad idea. By taking out the island (don't even need to do significant damage) you can remove a significant amount of generation capacity. On top of that being offshore makes it difficult to repair the equipment, you could for example put sea mines around the island to destroy any repair shops

On the flip side of this, when a system of islands is up and running it would provide a lot more redundancy than currently exists in the European grid. But until that happens there's going to be several bottlenecks that could be targeted

Or they get wiped out in a storm, doesn't even need to be a bad actor

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631363#Comment_120631363

If we can have floating turbines, a floating transformer station should be easy? Far far more weight and stresses on a turbine than something that won't really catch the wind much.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631390#Comment_120631390

Yeah I'm pretty sure a lot of the larger offshore wind installations have a floating platform nearby which functions as a transformer station. I think one of the sites off the Netherlands has this

I assume the main reason for going with an island is the size of the infrastructure involved. One of the Danish islands has a theoretical capacity of 10GW when connected to other islands, which would require a fair amount of gear and probably requires more real estate than is practical for a floating platform

Building an island probably means you can use the same equipment you'd use on dry land whereas using a platform would probably require some degree of weight saving and miniaturisation to get into a platform

Also the areas proposed are relatively shallow, so construction costs aren't as high. I suspect if you looked off the west coast of Ireland then the economics would tilt more in favour of a floating platform

So it's going to be fun watching Ireland develop the capacity to manufacture an aircraft carrier sized vessel to support the Atlantic wind power industry

Maybe the French will sell us the Charles De Gaulle and we could anchor it off the coast of Clare to use as a power island. We'd have a handy nuclear reactor for backup, and they might throw in a few Rafael fighters for the defence forces 😂

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631456#Comment_120631456

Hmmm, that reminds me....I must look further into that proposal to buy F-16's that was floating about and see what happened to it.

I think the big thing with Belgium/Netherlands is that they have a shortage of real estate. Ireland on the otherhand has an abundance of low density land especially along the west coast to erect wind farms. Or in the case of the Irish sea, shallow water banks off Dublin/Wicklow that works to avoid the need for an island. If the turbines are 5-10km offshore and not 60Km offshore, transmission is less of a problem.

slave1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631390#Comment_120631390

We're going to have offshore rigs going out of service in coming years, if in the right location then a solution already in waiting

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120635360#Comment_120635360

I would say that's worse from the security of supply viewpoint, it's generally easier to sink a platform than an island

But it would be a simpler and less destructive solution for the environment

I'm actually coming around to the idea of the power islands more. Not so much the artificial island, but if it allows more offshore wind and interconnectors then it seems quite smart

For example the Belgian and Danish ones will theoretically allow them to interconnect their grids as well as the UK/Norwegian and Dutch grids. You wouldn't be able to do that without putting a load of HVDC cables across several countries in between which can generate a lot of local opposition

And having more interconnection options give you better system redundancy overall. Recall the power outages in Texas were partly because they have very limited connections to the other US grids

graememk

Are floating turbines easier to install?

Build in a dock, tow out and tie down?

Also the size of them has kinda blown me away a bit (of the biggest one). It was the swept area of the big one is 53,000m²

That's 5.3 hectares. Our "big" field is 4ha.(most are about 2 for better grazing)

https://youtu.be/83FqqfODmmg

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120636818#Comment_120636818

I think the general answer is that it depends on where the turbines are being installed

For shallow water like Dogger bank they seem to prefer fixed turbines, I guess because the biggest turbines haven't really been tested on floating platforms and the technology is well understood

For deeper waters then I guess floating turbines makes more sense since they're much easier to install. But since they're relatively new technology then I think there's still some lingering concerns that a big storm will capsize a bunch of turbines

jkforde

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120631363#Comment_120631363

immediately makes me think of 'rogue' waves off the west (storm waves at least x2 the size of surrounding waves).. any similar infrastructure in our EEZ would definitely need to factor them in... seems the marine institute has looked into it..

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/10/8/1073

106ft deep trough, reminds me of the Perfect Storm 😮🤯