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

[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.

There's not a lot of efficiency slack in design and site choices left in wind power, the aerodynamics and engineering challenges are well-understood and it doesn't cost anything extra to make the current generation (pun not intended but willingly accepted) of wind turbines as efficient as they can be. The only cost savings are in volume production, already in process after two decades of rollout and the lower cost of installation due to experience and availability of personnel and equipment.

At some point soon the subsidies will stop, the guarantees of purchase of high-priced electricity from wind farms will go away and at that point we'll find out if wind is really part of the solution folks are willing to pay for.

[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.

http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/windmaps/resource_potential.asp

The Rameez Naam essays (linked below and from there to the other five essays in the series) are, to be fair, very optimistic about solar PV and onshore wind but it's a pretty meticulous examination of the technology and economic factors operating on the renewables industry.

http://rameznaam.com/2015/08/30/how-steady-can-the-wind-blow/

He's estimating an on-going learning curve effect of about 16%. Clearly there is no guarantee that this continues for either wind or solar but there's doesn't appear to be signs that it is abating in the near term.

And there are a few other links suggesting capacity factors of significantly better than 35%

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/07/27/wind-turbine-net-capacity-factor-50-the-new-normal/

http://en.openei.org/apps/TCDB/

I think where the technology movement is is in the materials used for turbine blades - making them strong enough to cope with the blade tip speeds experienced on very large turbines mounted on large towers and technology of getting those very large blades and towers from the factory to site safely and cheaply. The trick isn't to be able to build a 140m high tower, it is to build a 140m tower cheaper and easier than an 80m tower.

On-shore wind looks like it is pretty much already as cheap as the grid average and solar PV should be there soon.

I'd pray in aid the attempts by the Saudis to destroy renewables just before they become cost competitive and start putting a cap on energy prices.

[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.

[danieldwilliam]

Indeed. I was reading (somewhere) a nice article that was discussing how reduction in cost for the panels meant that the proportion of the cost of an installed domestic PV system had gone from 80:20 panel to balance of plant to now 45:55 panel to balance of plant. It meant that even though the cost of the panels was coming down just as quickly as before buyers weren't noticing because a 5% reduction in 80% of the cost of a system is 4% but a 5% reduction in 45% of the cost of a system is less than 2%. So it was about time that the people making inverters and racking and providing the installation labour did some work to reduce their costs.