Interesting Links for 21-02-2016

[andrewducker]

See the Cast of 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' Then and Now (tags: FerrisBueller movies age ) Homeopathy successfully turns water into a placebo (tags: homeopathy placebo ) Global wind power capacity tops nuclear energy for first time (tags: nuclearpower windpower renewables ) CIA-backed rebels are now fighting Pentagon-backed militants in Syria (

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

One needs to apply a capacity factor adjustment to the windfarm installed  capacity for a "fairer" comparison. If installed wind capacity is a little bit more than installed nukes I'd estimate wind was at 2/5ths the usable value of world nukes.

Capacity factors for wind are improving as the size of the machines increases, blade design improves and siting gets better.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's going to take a while for them to be as effective.

I do wonder what the energy mix will look like in 10 years time. And 50.

[danieldwilliam]

You can probably hazard a decent guess at the energy mix in 10 years by looking at the current scheduled projects and announced retireals. (and I'm sure somebody does - it used to be the sort of thing I did at work.)

It takes about 5-10 years to plan, consent, connect and build a new power station. Nukes take much longer. On-shore wind and solar PV (especially domestic solar PV) can be done in shorter periods.

If you believe Rameez Naam then solar and wind will be significantly below the price of gas and coal soon and will keep falling. So, the energy mix in 50 years time would look like heaps of solar and onshore wind, large interconnected grids with some nukes providing baseload.

http://rameznaam.com/2014/10/05/solar-wind-plunging-below-fossil-fuel-prices/

[nojay]

Modern nuclear plants, including older plants that have been upgraded to digital control and such are running at about 90% availability with very high predictability for outages for refuelling, repairs, upgrades etc. Well-sited wind turbines on land can manage up to 30% of dataplate output (i.e. a 5MW turbine will produce about 13 GWh over the period of a year) with wide random fluctuations in output over any time period greater than three days. I've seen the British wind grid power generation output swing from 50MW total to 5GW in a few weeks, for example

[resonant]

Another factor to take into account is that storage costs are plummeting, which increases the effective capacity of wind farms.

There's a pilot project in Lake Ontario with big bags of air anchored to the bottom of the lake. When wind power exceeds demand, compressed air is pumped into the bags through a pipe. When the wind drops, the air is used to power a turbine and generate electricity. It's not as efficient as batteries (compressing air generates waste heat), but it is much cheaper to install.

[andrewducker]

Has that made mass production yet? I've been hoping that something like that would. Or LightSail.

[danieldwilliam]

Several different organisations have done some trials with battery storage systems (like the Tesla wall thing but bigger). One in Shetland or Orkney and one in France.

They've found that battery storage isn't economic in western european grids with current levels of renewable penetration. Surplus energy can be whisked off to other parts of the grid using existing infrastructure. What this means is that you don't need batteries to fit more variable renewables on to the grid when the grid is working well. We can already add more renewables to the grid.

This is good news for renewables.

It took several goes to explain this to a parliamentary energy front-bencher.

[resonant]

Natural gas pipelines can be considered an energy distribution grid, too.

In my province, there is a facility that converts electricity to hydrogen gas when demand is low and renewable production is high. The hydrogen is then injected into natural gas pipelines (up to about 4% concentration), where it can be transported elsewhere across the continent.

http://www.hydrogenics.com/hydrogen-products-solutions/energy-storage-fueling-solutions/power-to-gas

http://enbridge.com/Viewer?id=9F653B46A7F749B293BC4086336E4D8D

[danieldwilliam]

Absolutely. Big gas grids are helpful.

One of my tests for telling if I'm talking to a serious energy policy wonk is whether they get that you can store a moderate and useful amount of renewable energy by not burning the gas that is in the grid. (So long as you're prepared to pay for idle gas plants.)

I confess I'm personally a bit sceptical about injecting hydrogen in to the gas grid. I used to work an energy company than ran several gas plants and our Director of Generation was always worried that injecting hydrogen in to the main grid would end up embrittling his billion dollar gas turbines. I'm not sure how much of an issue it is at 4% concentration in the domestic supply. It's something I need to find out more about along with the operation of aluminium smelters.

[resonant]

Still a pilot project:

https://www.torontohydro.com/sites/electricsystem/GridInvestment/powerup/Pages/CompressedAirEnergyStorageProject.aspx

[danieldwilliam]

The large solar array that the Morocans are building uses some sort of heat storage system (I'm guessing molten salt?) to extend the generation period to several hours after sunset.

Which isn't quite solving the same problem as a battery or the Ontario Sea Bagpipe but is pretty nifty.

[resonant]

I love that nickname, and will use it frequently in conversation.

[resonant]

Offshore installation is also becoming cheaper, and deeper-water sites are opening up as technology develops. This also avoids some of the objections from people living near proposed land-based wind farms.

[danieldwilliam]

I think you're 30% capacity factor for wind might be a bit out of date. The National Energy Research Lab have a nice map showing the potential of areas in the USA for onshore wind with a capacity above 35%. The chart sitting next to the map is shows the area of land by capacity factor. With hub hights of 140m they are estimating neary 2 million square kilometers of area where you would expect a capacity factor of 60% or more

[andrewducker]

Thank you.

[resonant]

Solar PV is now cheaper than coal (amortized cost per GWh), and plummeting towards natural gas. The cost curve is unbelievably steep. I have no idea where it will bottom out. But it's already dropped so much that labour (which used to be a trivial portion of the cost of a panel) is now a significant portion of the cost; we're having to transfer some of my company's solar panel production lines to Thailand because of lower wages.