Energy infrastructure

You could say the same about fusion. Still crickets after 50+ years of trying. I think lots of scam power would be more apt in this case.

That reminds me of my childhood, where I would cut apart dead dry cell batteries to get at their zinc casing and cut that into bits and drop it into hydrochloric acid to make hydrogen. I managed to make enough once, to fill a balloon with enough it rose into the air - about 8 feet, before the fine droplets of hydrochloric acid that went along with the hydrogen, ate through the skin of the balloon. Before some smart arse says I should have bubbled it through water to remove the HCL - I know.

No need for this magic powder, just mine zinc and ship it to where you want the hydrogen and dump it into HCl. Of course it might not make any economic sense, which is what I suspect of that nonsense powder.

The recent US bill, includes absolutely whopping subsidies for Green Hydrogen. As this article notes, it could end up being cancelled by future Republican administrations, but it's still expected to have a massive impact on investment in the tech.

It's a good thing offshore wind farms and solar farms don't cost billions to build - $1.3b for one LNG terminal in Wales, so billions, singular - and that those costs aren't passed on to the consumer, making electricity more expensive.

What energy infrastructure isn't funded by the consumer?

Not sure if it was this thread, or another, where it was claimed the strike price for Irish onshore wind is actually higher than that for Hinkley point nuclear.

JET in Culham in the UK was the main driver for ongoing research for decades and they eventually settled on the tokomak as the best approach. With fission there are the huge upfront costs, known waste issues and what people believe to be safety issues, all of which makes the case for it a lot more difficult. ITER will be a very long experiment in fusion power, during which all of these questions can and should be answered, certainly better than some seven year old article, where the author clearly has decided that it is bad.

From what I've read on the potential waste, the activity of it declines quickly, over a number of decades.

Yeah, but he won't be working on the experiment that is ITER and his credibility takes quite a nosedive when he talks about a risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons from fusion reactors. He is also described as a known critic of D-T reactors elsewhere. Experiments are not opinions and I tend to view ITER as a CERN-like approach that will answer many questions.

He's retired. He's also implacably opposed to it and that implies a certain mindset, certainly not an open, enquiring scientific mind. I'll take my information from the experiments to come as one tends to learn new things or it clarifies what is currently believed or understood. Gonna move on from this as it seems to be going around in circles.

Bord Na Mona is planning a pilot project for Hydrogen at its Mount Lucas wind farm in Offaly. On site construction has started on the Derrinlough Wind farm also.

https://www.offalyexpress.ie/news/home/887291/bord-na-mona-planning-offaly-hydrogen-project-as-new-wind-farm-is-switched-on.html

7GW capacity - brilliant!

How much of that 7GW nameplate capacity (and subsequently, the 30GW of additional capacity mentioned in that release) will this actually provide to the grid 365 days a year?

OK, and right now, that 4.4GW of wind is generating 279MW or just under 6% of our current demand of 4950MW.

Our demand is trending upwards throughout the afternoon and expected to peak at 5240MW at 1730 while the forecasted wind generation is trending downwards through the afternoon.

How will offshore wind fare in comparison? Will it too be producing a relative fraction of its rated output at the same time as onshore due to a lack of wind?

Capacity factors for offshore wind range from 40% to about 60%. The latter has been achieved in Scotland with newer installations. Taking the midpoint - a capacity factor of 50%, then 7GW of (power) capacity should deliver about 30TWh of electricity per year. We currently consume less than this amount.

Now that's promising. However the capacity factor has to take account of the ability to generate electricity to meet demand and not a cumulative figure across the year.

While we might consume less than 30TWh of energy a year, if most of that 30TWh is generated during the times of low demand, then we still face a significant capacity shortfall, unless we crack some means of storing that 30TWh using intermediary means, which is what hydrogen is looking promising (but still a long way off in development for scale terms).

Well, the term 'capacity factor' has a specific/technical meaning and it doesn't reflect responsiveness to demand. I was just answering your question, "how much energy is actually added to the grid" and the capacity factor allows you to calculate the question.

We all know that wind is intermittent, although offshore is less so and that except for de-rating does not respond to demand.

But adding this much capacity cannot make any hypothetical shortfall worse. And the stats show that offshore is much more consistent so I would expect that this sort of capacity to provide useful energy during high demand more often than not. It's not like all the NG back-up is going to be retired all of a sudden - it's well known that currently the de-carbonisation of electricity requires back-up with NG.

Modelling has shown that the grid can handle a lot more wind capacity without hitting issues. During times of excess production, exporting is an option - Ireland has finished a 5 year period of being a net exporter of electricity and have become a net importer so there's the opportunity to reverse that flow especially with the new interconnector capacity arriving in the next few years. Also a lot of future demand will be able to use demand response to avail of cheaper energy - this is already available and used by industrial consumers but will also become a feature for domestic consumption with EV charging, home heating, etc.

Kinda stupid then to locate it right next to a river with a long history of spate flooding