Poor households face having to help foot bill for building Sizewell C...

[Mart]

Ken, just pointing out that your 10x statement is unnecessary and misleading.

But as I explained, we are well on our way to reaching a 100% low carbon figure by 2030, though I appreciate that will be 'net'.

After that we are simply rolling out RE and storage to meet demand which will grow, and the nuclear ageing out.

Focusing on the long term grand total is pointless, since there is nothing stopping us from rolling out more RE and storage.

Hence why I feel the future totals are irrelevant today, and only act as scare tactics. Some may even conclude the task is bordering on impossible, despite the fact that we are rapidly achieving it.

No reason why we can't have 5x wind is there? New CfD auction has 7GW of offshore wind, which at a 50%cf is 3.5GW, or roughly 10% of current UK demand. BTW whilst we are on the subject of CF's, I don't know why you've used that as a negative in your thinking. All of my figures given have been %'s, so the relevant RE cfs are included, so you can't sneak that one in. And intermittency is answered by my many, many, many inclusions of "+ storage" (which of course relates to nuclear too).

5x hydro, of course not, I expect very little new hydro, perhaps some PHS, are you basing your future impossibility on the inability to expand hydro, given it supplies about 2% of UK demand.

You really need to stop focusing on the negatives (such as cherry picked hydro), and try to look at the issue calmly. Can we get to 100% low carbon (net) by 2030, of course we can, that's actually where we are heading today. From there 100% genuine, and expand in line with demand.

PS What about interconnectors, we have about 7GW's now, aiming for ~17GW by 2025, and I believe 25GW's in the 2030's.

[Ken]

Germany wants to increase RE by 32GW PER YEAR to 2030

The government aims to roughly double the country’s onshore wind capacity to 115 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, meaning ANNUAL capacity additions will have to reach 10 GW as of 2025

Solar PV installations will total 22 GW PER YEAR as of 2026 to achieve a total capacity of 215 GW by 2030, up from about 60 GW in 2021.

Offshore wind additions are increased to reach a minimum of 30 GW per 2030, 40 GW by 2035 and 70 GW by 2045

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factshe ... gy-reforms


Compare that to our ambitions and we quickly see the problem

[Mart]

Nope, wrong yet again. Are you doing this deliberately?

Can we get to 100% net low carbon leccy by 2030? I've given you the numbers. Before any additions that means lifting RE from ~50% to ~80%, an increase of 30% of annual demand.

The CfD results today have offshore wind alone at 7GW by 2026/27 about 3.5GW at a 50% cf, so roughly 10% of current demand. Round 3 approved 5.5GW, so 8% across 2023/25.

[Edit - Assuming another CfD round for 2028/29 delivery, again with increased size (as per all previous rounds) then +12%, would give us a net delivery just from new offshore wind of ~30% (8+10+12) of current UK leccy demand. Before additions, I guesstimated at previously, that takes us to the 80% figure before 2030. M.]

You need to stop focusing on an end target, perhaps 2040-2050, and start focusing on what's happening today. perhaps working backwards, do you believe that in the 2030's onwards, UK RE leccy generation cannot grow in step to match rising demand? And if so please explain.

You might also want to compare percentages not GW's when comparing the UK to a larger leccy consumer like Germany.

BTW Ken, if you are suggesting we should do more and faster, then I'm totally with you, but suggesting we can't do, what we are actually doing, makes no sense. And going back to the start, if you want more, and faster, then that flies in the face of your arguments for nuclear, which will deliver less, and later for any monies spent on it. And in case my predictions and guesses aren't clear here, I believe that if SZC got approval today, and came on line by 2035, then it would add more low carbon leccy, at a very high price (displacing cheaper RE), to a grid that should already be 100% low carbon. Not sure how that helps anyone?

[Ken]

Yes we should do more and faster and been saying for decades.

But the question for me at least is do we we have the potential. Yes technically as you keep pointing out, financially quite likely but its the space thing which incidentally is the same reservation as expressed in "without hot air" I do see 5X PV but with low capacity factor i have reservations, I do not see 5X onshore wind because of nimbies, Offshore wind is there really 5X more space available/allowable. Definetly not 5X hydro or Biomass. Should we include interconnectors, i do not, but even if we do - 5X present capacity is that viable, certainly valuable in terms of demand management/ storage.

[Mr Gus]

Them surely we should run towards cheaper renewables that fill the space AND THEN the nuclear (or whatever matures) option as the more expensive "mop up"

Good insights both of you.

[Mart]

Yes we should do more and faster and been saying for decades.

But the question for me at least is do we we have the potential. Yes technically as you keep pointing out, financially quite likely but its the space thing which incidentally is the same reservation as expressed in "without hot air" I do see 5X PV but with low capacity factor i have reservations, I do not see 5X onshore wind because of nimbies, Offshore wind is there really 5X more space available/allowable. Definetly not 5X hydro or Biomass. Should we include interconnectors, i do not, but even if we do - 5X present capacity is that viable, certainly valuable in terms of demand management/ storage.

Ok, great to split the tasks up. So, as I see it, we are rolling out renewables at the pace needed to reach the 2030 target of 100%(net) low carbon. Hope you now see that that is not only possible, but actually happening. We only need one more CfD round like the last 4, with the typical increase in capacity, that we've also seen, to hit the 2030 target.

From there we would of course not need to increase offshore wind by 4x or 5x times, since it'll already be 2x bigger than today. Could we double it again, why not, we have vast potential, 10 to 100 times our future (all leccy) demand, and those numbers are based on thoughts from 10yrs ago.

The UK is the Saudi Arabia of wind energy

Onshore wind 5x more, don't see why not, the technology is still improving, though for the UK, perhaps we will start to stall now, as the ever larger WT's will become difficult to install, due to the transportation of the long blades, and also getting large cranes into very awkward places. Worth considering that improvements in costs, will allow for deployments in places where they wouldn't have previously been possible due to wind speeds v's economics.

5x more PV, absolute doddle! We have about 1m homes with PV, but about 20% are suitable under the south(ish) facing rule. Personally, I'd throw that rule out of the window, since PV gets cheaper with scale, so using 2 roofs (E and W) at 80% efficiency of south facing, should be about 80% of the cost per kWp. On top of that we have efficiency improvements. My system with 235Wp panels, would be roughly 57% bigger with 370Wp panels, and higher outputs are already available. Higher efficiency panels also open the door to smaller roofs, or ones with some parts shaded.

Sticking with PV, hopefully Perovskite/silicon panels will arrive. They should lift efficiencies by about 50%, say 20% to 30%, with 35%+ looking possible. Perovskite is cheap, so even allowing for the additional complexity of dual technology panels, the cost per Wp shouldn't rise. For a commercial PV farm, this means they'll be able to install 50% more KWp, for the same amount of land, frames, rails, labour etc. Only the cost of the panels (about 30% of commercial PV farm total costs) would go up 50%, plus some small increase for the larger cabling and inverters.

And just to let you in on a little secret - I utterly detest the solar section of 'Without Hot Air'. David MacKay states that the problem with PV in the UK is space, not cost, which he sees falling. He also uses an argument wrapped around PV as a singular solution, which is wholly unreasonable. But my real ire is due to his conclusions being based on these two things he states, firstly his numbers are based on 10% efficiency for normal, typical, standard PV, and 20% for high efficiency.

I assumed only 10%-efficient panels, by the way, because I imagine that
solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were
very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first.

Secondly he states:

Aren’t photovoltaic panels going to get more and more efficient
as technology improves?
I am sure that photovoltaic panels will become ever cheaper; I’m also
sure that solar panels will become ever less energy-intensive to manufac-
ture, so their energy yield ratio will improve. But this chapter’s photo-
voltaic estimates weren’t constrained by the economic cost of the panels,
nor by the energy cost of their manufacture. This chapter was concerned
with the maximum conceivable power delivered. Photovoltaic panels with
20% efficiency are already close to the theoretical limit (see this chapter’s
endnotes). I’ll be surprised if this chapter’s estimate for roof-based photo-
voltaics ever needs a significant upward revision.

But his roof based 10% reached 20% several years ago, and the cheap Perovskite/silicon hybrids could reach 35%+, so his claim of 'never' is already wrong in a short period of time, and his claim of 'significant' increase missed a roughly 100% increase.



Right, back from my MacKay rant.

5x hydro, of course not, as previously mentioned. 5x bio-mass, we could, but it's a questionable choice. Ukraine has utterly vast potential for sustainable bio-mass production, but I don't think we need to expand that, better to use it as a demand follower to help handle the storage issue. Or for Ukraine to build out bio-mass generation, and for Europe to use that as a demand follower via interconnectors. Ideally the Ukrainian bio-mass plants would be located where sequestration of CO2 is possible, that way they could be expanded into a BECCS role in the future, since we will need vast amounts of CCS after we stop emitting CO2, to avoid the worst of climate change. Air capture CCS is an economic nonsense, so bio-mass flue capture would be far cheaper, and a source of foreign income for the country if we all pay towards it.

What about seasonal demand differences, winter demand will be significantly higher than summer. Well, if we continue to roll out RE with a large (dare I say massive) weighting towards wind, then that too is managed.

Will this cause intermittency issues, of course it will, at times we will have too little, at others too much, hence the need to keep expanding storage in line with it, remember even at the intraday scale we now have batteries being deployed in 100's of MWh's, some crossing over into GWh's now.

What about when supply or demand is too great, then we have interconnectors which I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with you about including them, we are heading towards an interconnector capacity by 2025 of ~17GW, for scale, that's roughly 50% of our average current demand, with plans to 25GW's. that means we can share shortages and excesses, and even storage, with mainland Europe.

[nowty]

Them surely we should run towards cheaper renewables that fill the space AND THEN the nuclear (or whatever matures) option as the more expensive "mop up"

Good insights both of you.

Nuclear cannot be used to "mop up" because you cannot modulate the output like with a gas power station.

[billi]

Holy sh!t , not that book again ...
Wasnt it proven that his assumptions where wrong ? and that he was loyal to the Nuclear industry and did those a favor

Not that i have there a personal problem , but to quote that book nowadays is like ..... hmm talking about the first lightbulb

Enough studies and facts are made and proven , that we can life on renewables , and i am sorry to hear , that the land are in the Uk in relationship to the population might be critical , but ..... to be frank thats not the biggest worry of our global idea

That the EU yesterday decided to allow Nuclear and Gas Power being declared is a crime to me , and opens doors of investors that will have sad consequences onthe renewable idea , and pushes us back into ancient time

For sure that vote yesterday in the EU Parliament would have been difrent , without that war

I know , that RE can provide enough energy for Europe/World and for each individual country to keep their own "Pride" , there is no way arround that scenario in the end and David MacKay s book did in the end , did not help at all , as it was moer a math calculation , but no help how to deal with crises

[Mart]

Yeah, that book again. How someone can argue against technologies on the basis that they can't be a singular solution, is so frustrating. Forget PV because it can't produce 50kWh per person per day ..... yeah that's really logical.

Anyway, I assume Ken and I will have this exact same conversation in 6 months time, like we have for the last 5yrs or so.

At least now I don't have to project assumptions, I can just point to the fact that it's actually happening. Too much nuclear and too little onshore wind and PV for my liking, but it's happening.


Just for fun, but a good way to raise spirits whenever we doubt the land/sea needed for 100% RE, is to look at the Land Art site, but remember those maps are for 100% of future needs from just PV, or off-shore wind, are a bit old now, and only for reference, not a suggestion for a singular solution.

TOTAL SURFACE AREA REQUIRED TO FUEL THE WORLD WITH SOLAR

Another thought I enjoy is a golden oldie. The claim was that to produce the equivalent of 100% of current UK leccy annual generation, we would have to cover approx 2% of England with PV. I checked the maths, and it worked back when the norm was 250Wp panels. But the fun part is the claim that 2% of England is covered in golf courses, driving ranges and golf related space. So just cover the golf courses, what could go wrong ...... FORE!

[billi]

Mart , i admire your Courage and detailed Research and for sure , the Language skills too ...

there is no other option than RE , maybe i write a book about it one day , about the long struggle that RE can power that world, and the time wasted to do so , how should i name it ? Maybe " Who killed the electric RE idea ?"