Octopus … Is there method in this madness ?

[Martin of WickParticipant @martinofwick]

And tidal streams run for 18 to 20 hours of the day.  Solar for half that if you are lucky in the summer and SFA in winter,  with its peak generation at a time of day when not required (unless we all fit heat pumps and use then for AC in summer). Storage would help, but it all costs money and would push up electricity costs even more.

 

 

 

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Well, don’t expect renewable energy to behave in the same way as nuclear, gas, oil and coal!   Actually all sources of energy have pros and cons.  Nuclear is good, apart from cleaning up after decommissioning.  Coal power stations cannot respond quickly to rising and falling demand, and are polluting.  Oil provides better response but is more expensive.   Gas is excellent because turbines can be fired up and down very quickly. And since 1990, gas has been very cheap.   Unfortunately low cost of gas is not guaranteed in perpetuity, and some suppliers are politically unreliable.

Energy has always been provided by a basket of different methods, and the methods are changing.  In the UK Town Gas is long gone, and Coal is now miniscule.   Oil and natural gas are both problematic, unless the source is local.  We have to change.

Renewable energy is free in the sense that no-one has to be paid to extract and transport millions of tons of coal, oil or gas.  Fossil fuels require a lot expensive middlemen, services and infrastructure between consumer and source.  In contrast renewables are simpler, going straight to electricity, which can be fed into the grid.   Though connecting to the grid is expensive, renewable electricity is still cheaper than other sources.    And much less polluting than burning carbon.   Whilst many don’t believe in global warming, they are wrong.  Failing to understand a problem does not fix it.

The disadvantage of renewable energy is it comes and goes depending on the weather and the planet’s position – sunshine, wind, tides, rainfall etc.  Dirt cheap, but not necessarily available when needed.  Therefore, some form of storage is needed.  Nothing new in that:  Dinorwig exists because off-peak nuclear and coal power was used to pump water into a huge mountaintop reservoir, and  discharged to top up the grid later.   Though horribly inefficient it was cheaper to burn coal continually during the night and pump water than it was to crank large boilers up and down.

Many storage options.  Using excess electricity to electrolyse water into Hydrogen and Oxygen; making Ammonia or Sodium;  pumping water uphill; pressuring gas; heating cast-iron blocks; charging batteries etc.  Giant batteries need not be expensive.  Expensive Lithium is needed for cars because it has a high energy density, but lower density storage is OK in a fixed installation, where Sodium is good enough.  Sodium is dirt cheap, especially when made with surplus renewable electricity…

The high cost of fossil fuels makes negative prices unlikely, though it can and does happen.  Oil went negative in the US a few years ago because deliveries exceeded the available storage capacity,  making it necessary for those contracted to store it to pay someone to take it away!  How markets are organised is important, and it’s not right yet, nor is the technology fully developed, and nor is the infrastructure in place.

But, there is nothing in switching to renewables that’s beyond the wit of man, either technically or in the mechanisms used to buy and sell it.  It will be different though.

What Octopus are doing makes sense in the context of how they buy and sell energy.  They wish to attract new customers, and will almost certainly be offering variable rate tariffs (via Smart Meters) that encourage customers to consume electricity when it is available, by dropping the price.   Very similar to Economy 7, though more agile.  All suppliers are going that way, step by step, so as not to frighten the horses, or make a major expense.

One thing for sure – burning fossil fuels isn’t sustainable.   In only 30 years, oil and gas will run short.  Sadly prices skyrocket when demand permanently exceeds supply.  I’ll probably be dead before petrol become unaffordable but my children will have to find alternatives.   Coal, gas and oil did us proud in the past, but they are finite natural resources.  God isn’t making any more…

Dave

 

 

 

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

[MacolmParticipant @macolm]

Thanks for the useful explanation of how the grid is managed and continuously balanced. I do not wish to get into the philosophy of net zero policies, but government needs to come clean about the costs of the overall electricity generation system that they intend. Already, the high cost of energy in the UK has killed off many previously internationally competitive industries, and this process continues with the current closures in the chemical sector.

In the latter half of last century, average demand of circa 50 GW was produced by perhaps 65 GW of total generation capacity, which proved adequate to cover breakdowns and maintenance. The problem now is that the current rough average of 30 GW demand needs provision of that much thermal generation, the same amount again of wind power, and a further similar amount of solar, crudely three or four times demand. Then to feed the resultant large power flows from end to end of the country, the grid has also needed to be greatly reinforced, much beyond what once supported 50 GW nationally. All this CapEx seems suspiciously like the cause of our astronomic electricity prices, despite official denials. Trying to improve grid balancing slightly by targeted price reductions will do nothing to reduce general prices, already apparently too high to sustain a sound economy, and set to increase yet further.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

The average power consumption is fairly irrelevant – it is the maximum (peak) demand that is far more important.

Hence the situations where ‘power shedding’ is necessary (usually in the winter months) and periods of potential glut (where it is far better to utilise that power than simply not generate it).  The government, IMO, has got it wrong – it has been biassed, and lobbied, by the fossil fuel industry for far too many years, along with huge subsidies paid to that sector (these payments far exceed the constraint payments to renewables).

Hinkley C generation will be costing far more than either fossil or renewables, when it eventually comes on line.  Strike price was (originally in 2012 ) £92.50/MWh – but that already equates to well in excess of £150/MWh.  That is while renewables’ strike prices have diminished to about £50 for solar.  Most off-shore wind is currently guaranteed to sell for around £75.  I’m not sure how renewables, stored in batteries and fed into the grid later, is accommodated in all this quagmire of pricing structure!  Nor am I sure how the sea beds, which are bought/leased/rented from the government comes into all this.

[NealebParticipant @nealeb]

I am surprised that only this specific Octopus offer has been mentioned. I am an OVO customer, and although they have suspended their scheme for the summer, during the higher-consumption months I have been used to receiving this kind of offer fairly frequently. Maybe several times a month. Usually, it is a request to reduce consumption for one, occasionally two, hours at a particular time. You receive a bounty in the form of a discount off the next bill for energy saved. The saving is calculated by comparing energy use for that timeslot against the average for that timeslot over the last month. Rarely, the offer invites you to increase consumption instead. Seems like a perfectly reasonable way of encouraging domestic users to tailor energy use to suit conditions. In practice, as we are fairly economical in our use of energy anyway, we do not see much benefit but considered as an improved version of the old Economy 7 scheme that can make use of current technology (in the form of smart meters), why not?

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

The problem as I see it is that so few understand that the renewable s produce a type of electricity that we DON’T use, it is NOT 50Hz, or come to that 220V ! To make it usable needs for it to be converted into something that can be fed to the grid, certainly at 50Hz and within the spec to maintain synchronicity with all other generators – and this is where the trouble begins. What ever system is used MUST be reliable and at the moment that reliability is hanging by a thread – it will only want for a prolonged period of very cold weather to see the lights go out.

The relative prices are pointless if reliability is the real price we pay ! Has the current system been well thought out ? I think not !

I’m no expert but in the context of synchronicity a system based on a 50Hz RF transmission from a standard to all generators might work rather than trying to use a grid sampling, where by if the grid drops out it all stops.

Just a thought. Noel.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I wonder why wind and solar are called “renewable”? All the energy comes from the sun and is just redistributed. Once used it’s eventually reradiated from the night side of the earth. On the other hand the energy is always there as long as the sun shines. Any ideas for a better term?

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

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