Random Renewables Thread

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642304#Comment_120642304

I'd get it fixed either way as it will increase resale value if you go down that route.

SD_DRACULA

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120642266#Comment_120642266

I remember someone here had issues with 50a or similar limitations and they had to update the FW.

Dyness have a wifi dongle, I got one from failte solar thinking it would work with mine (it didn't so I sold it on) but I think the 48100s are supported.

My 4 dyness were working just fine since day one with the 6kw solis however, one time the Solis started to refuse to charge/discharge over 50a now that I think about it.

I called them up and they were able to manually push it back to 100a/100a where when I was doing it, it would revert back to 50a.

My advice is to kill the solis and get a sunsynk, should be able to do 200a no bother then, ask @unkel and myself

silver_sky

I'm an idiot... accidentally left the zappi in ECO mode and it drained the house battery to 20%. I'm running from the grid now. 😂

I need to build some failsafe automation to avoid me fecking it up again.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120675285#Comment_120675285

We all do oops! wtf!

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120675285#Comment_120675285

We all fuock up. You need a bigger battery🤗

the_amazing_raisin

RTE news : Saudi Arabia pledges big cuts to oil output in July

http://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0605/1387471-opec-oil-saudi-arabia

If there was ever a sign we need to get off this addiction to fossil fuels, then this kind of garbage is it

Saudi crown prince needs more money to pay for his dumbass vanity projects and decides to force everyone else to pay for it

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120680073#Comment_120680073

Yeah they don't want to sell it for cheap, now that they have got used to it being expensive.

Oh Just re read it, it's on top of the cuts opec have announced..

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120680111#Comment_120680111

It's interesting because it makes you wonder how much oil the world needs, the cuts so far amount to 5% of global demand which should be enough to have an impact if we're really using everything that gets pulled out of the ground

Since we aren't seeing curtailment of industries that use fossil fuels (i.e. all of them) then presumably they're being a lot more efficient in how they do things

the_amazing_raisin

https://electrek.co/2023/06/06/heat-pumps-will-warm-25000-households/

That's a whole lot of heat pump 😳

A Danish town is replacing a district heating system using a coal fired power plant as the heat source with a giant pair of heat pumps using heat from seawater and powered by renewables

On top of that they have batteries onsite and heat buffering, so the system can be used for grid balancing

It would be great to see similar systems being rolled out to cities in Ireland. I wonder what the practical limit for transmitting heat is, for example could you heat home in Lucan or Blanchardstown using a district heating system in Ringsend?

The other thing I really like about district heating is they can be used in the other direction for district cooling as well. Heat the water using a big data center for factory and then send it to nearby houses for heating

DC999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120686261#Comment_120686261

I was at a talk before on district heating, from crowd that run the Ringsend plant. Seemed there is a distance involved. So the Ringsend plant could ‘feed’ a geographic region close to it. And best suited to high density to get the greatest benefit. That would include the large office buildings on The Quays. Afaik it’s a planning reg that the new ones should be district heating ready. Or certainly some of the higher energy performing ones are district heating ready. Each of those new 5-6 story buildings on The Quays have 500+ desks. So much higher population density compared to the square footage of houses if they used the same footprint of the office building.

To transfer air a large distance I assume you need large pumps. Which adds to complexity and cost. Anything travelling a long distant takes more energy to move it the further it gets from the source. Water is somewhat easier than air in that you can have it leave from a taller height higher to increase pressure, or the weight of the stored water creates more pressure. 

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120686732#Comment_120686732

Presumably even if the transmission was almost free you'd also lose a lot of heat through the pipe walls. Even insulated pipes probably lose a decent amount of heat over the space of hundreds of meters

I hope they get that district heating system online in Dublin, it would definitely make a difference to the heating bills in that area. Too bad there's loads of offices around there probably wasting heat for 10% occupancy. Maybe they'll repurpose them into housing soon

Jonathan

https://twitter.com/CMacIver11/status/1666811631656124419

This thread is interesting, specifically the distributed generators. The increased inverter tolerances from ESB Networks (page 8, section 2.2) will have a similar effect over here.

redmagic68

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120680154#Comment_120680154

Now let’s get some substations built

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120700868#Comment_120700868

Damn right, I've never understood why the EU isn't investing in more interconnectors to North Africa and solar and wind energy in the Sahara desert

I imagine installation costs would be a lot lower compared to offshore wind and would generate a lot more power than in northern Europe

It would give North African countries a source of income, and diversify them away from oil, as well as giving them and Europe additional options for peak power.

For example, in winter extra power could come from North Africa to offset the loss of solar output in Europe. And vice versa in summer excess power could be sent south to help with the additional cooling load

redmagic68

Or set up massive green hydrogen production close by also for the hgv and plant machines and have them making income from that instead of oil.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120701464#Comment_120701464

bullit_dodger

A big problem with a getting energy from these places is that North Africa hasn't historically been a great place for Political stability. Pipelines and/or high voltage transmission lines going through places like Algeria/Tunisia or <shakes head> Libya.....we'll you can image that would be somewhat vulnerable to a shakedown by some "bad actors". Would I want my fridge down in Tesco's being subjected to some muppet with a lb of C4 in a country 3000km away? Probably not.

As much as engineering wise it would make sense, sadly we live in a different world. That said, I do think that interconnectors for example from stable states like Spain (if you can call Spain a stable state - LOL) with sun and like us/Scotland with wind, nuclear from France etc are the future.

unkel

A south facing panel in a good area in Ireland obviously doesn't make anywhere near as much as one in the best part of the world, but the difference is not that big either, maybe a factor 3. I'd say it's cheaper and simpler and indeed more stable to just have rooftop solar on most buildings and some large PV farms here in Ireland. With a lot of wind and battery too, we wouldn't even need an interconnector for our own needs any more.

But we could make considerable money exporting wind, if we get the hell on with it. Provide cheap wind to our neighbours, who then won't need to bother buying their own less efficient and more expensive renewable systems. Win-win for everybody Wind is Ireland's oil as an Taoiseach said...

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120702404#Comment_120702404

Honestly I think the bigger problem would be the fact that North African nations are generally a bit suspicious of Europeans bearing gifts. There is some historical context to back this up, colonial enlightenment tended to involve a lot of genocide of the native population

As for safeguarding energy supplies, here's some bizarre facts for you, currently any gas from Russia to Europe is being shipped via Ukraine, through active combat areas in some cases. Both sides have just sort of decided to leave the pipeline network alone mostly

Even more bizarre, Russia (or more accurately Gazprom) is still paying Ukraine transshipment fees to deliver that gas. Although I suspect that transaction amounted to Gazprom delivering a stack of rubles and their Ukrainian counterparts wiping their asses with them and sending them back with a "f**k you" note included 🤣

Anyway, my point is that even in unstable nations it's possible to safeguard infrastructure, particularly when it's bringing some money in

Bigger problem would probably be the government of the day stealing any income instead of spending it on improving the living situations of their citizens

EDIT: Also to be fair to the Spanish, they're doing better than the Italians for stability. IIRC Italy is on its 75th government in 60 years

bullit_dodger

Honestly I think the bigger problem would be the fact that North African nations are generally a bit suspicious of Europeans bearing gifts. There is some historical context to back this up, colonial enlightenment tended to involve a lot of genocide of the native population

True there is that, a history of abuse and exploitation. But currently these countries don't have the GDP or indigenous infrastructure to support the development of large scale solar farms for the likes of Europe. This would mean that investments would have to come from abroad and no country in their right mind would be spending billions of tax payers money in a foreign country, even if from an engineering perspective it might be the right way to go.

No, countries will at best spend money within their own boarders - and that's actually ok for us. It would be great to have the solar output of somewhere like Spain, but our wind as unkel mentions above is "best in class", possibly only beaten by Scotland.

Often wondered if there were other (viable) sources in ireland like wave, or tidal (Shanon estuary for example?). One thing about the tides is that it's as predicable as clockwork - no cloudy days, or high pressure systems with low wind. Tides are tides.....and you can get generation 16-18 hrs out of the day.

La Rance Tidal Barrage | Tethys (pnnl.gov)

Things like this are doable.....but wind is for sure cheapest/kwh, still it's good to have a mix in the generation matrix.

Edit: Came across this since. Looks like it's been thought of at least.

Tidal stream energy potential in the Shannon Estuary - ScienceDirect

unkel

I know it interests you a lot, @bullit_dodger , but we don't need any of that! Wind and PV and battery will do the trick nicely. We should not wait to look what might be around the corner next (and will probably not work anyway)

bullit_dodger

Nahh, it's effectively just hydro which we've had at Ardnacrusha on the shannon for nearly 100 years. It's old tech getting a revamp and with any tech as adoption happens total cost of ownership drops. Came across this a few weeks back

(695) Breakthrough Energy Source is 10X Better Than Wind & Solar!? - YouTube

Not a huge fan of his channel, but that one did spark my interest. Not saying it's a complete runner for Ireland mind you, only that these things should be looked at - and glad to see that they are. Wind at one stage would have been in the same boat, as was solar, 20-30 years back. If you don't look at these things and iterate, then progress is slow.

Wind is great in Ireland. Solar....is ok. Super for domestic, and the fact that most of us here have shelled out €10k + is a testiment to that, but it's not great grid wise when the country is 52-54 deg north. Physics works against us there so we have months of diminished production (i.e. winter). So wind will be the primary provider, but always good to look at alternatives when the wind isn't as bountiful.

Jonathan

It appears that Eirgrid have given the Smart Grid Dashboard a bit of a sprucing up and introduced a "Carbon Clock".

https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#roi/carbon-clock

User guide here. Perhaps more useful is the addition of forecast data to the CO2 intensity tab (previously only retrospective). Hopefully they've also fixed the longstanding bug whereby the dashboard shows nothing when the grid is emitting less than 200g CO2eq/kWh.

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120707675#Comment_120707675

The Carbon clock is interesting. I wasn't expecting the "Best time to use" as 6-7pm today. Thats generally against the norm of them telling us to avoid the peak hours when everyone comes home and fires up the cooker/kettle etc. Its also the opposite of what the smart peak tariff is currently encouraging which is to not use electricity during 5-7pm. Its all a bit odd isn't it!

I know its all dependent on the weather forecast and how much renewables etc we have. I guess what it does highlight is that hardcoded time-of-use tariffs are not what should be in play. What we should actually be doing is providing more realtime tariffs a day in advance and then utilise automation to use it like they have in the UK.

e.g. The Zappi can read data like the above and charge your car at those times and it reads that data a day in advance. In some cases you would then be able to charge the car for free.

Hopefully this Carbon clock and the current pilot system Eirgrid have in operation with some people, where they send text messages around this data, will be a precursor to providing realtime tariffs. The data is there, we just need to use it and get away from the current day/night/peak tariffs.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120709100#Comment_120709100

Yeah it'd be great if one could sign up for some agile which tracked CO2 emissions. So you could get a lower tariff for lower carbon generating times (generally when prices are lower anyway)

DC999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120707675#Comment_120707675

Interesting that ‘CO2 emissions from other countries are not included in these calculations. Imported electricity is considered as zero carbon from Ireland’s perspective as emissions are counted in the jurisdiction in which they are emitted’. That would cause their new ‘best times to use carbon clock’ to be incorrect emissions wise at times. I fully get they have no easy way to see that though. We buy from the UK interconnectors. At times that could be fed from a French interconnector, which is fed by a Germany interconnector…

We were importing ~20% yesterday (when renewables were at rock bottom). So if that interconnector’s grid is running that 20% from coal…..

At times yesterday it was well under 10% was Irish renewables (no wind). ~75% from ‘thermal generation (coal, gas, other)’. Rest was the interconnectors

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120709230#Comment_120709230

I suppose one fairly simple but lazy solution would be to take the average CO2 emissions for the country we're importing from. It'd probably be somewhat inaccurate but better than zero

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120715228#Comment_120715228

Yeah was pretty overcast most of the day.

And to give full context

We have issued a #System Alert due to low wind and solar and forced outages at a number of generators which has resulted in a reduced capacity to meet demand. We are working to resolve the issue. For more information http://EirGrid.ie/alerts

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120715228#Comment_120715228

I seem to remember Monday was cloudy?

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120715342#Comment_120715342

Turns out your in luck.

Panels work here very well already.

Even though it was overcast my 8kwp system still generated 30kwh ish that day.

Tree

Also in Limerick city, generated ~15kWh on Monday rather than the highs of 38 the week before.

AFAIK there's groups in UCD looking at the compounds in the panels and imrproving efficiency, and someone in UL recently posted a survey researching forecasts vs actuals.