EDF confirms funding for Sizewell C

[Oldgreybeard]

Interesting graphic from a BBC news article today:



Gives an idea of just how much needs to be done to remove our dependence on gas.

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2022-10-25 ... 55814.html

This a much better prospect for utility storage , but then there is iron batts,air batts,flow batts ...... no shortage of batts actually being produced.

Its no good looking back, need to be looking 5yrs in the future.

PS and where do think our uranium comes from -Russia.

As mentioned earlier, I ran NiFe (a.k.a. "iron" cells) for several years, running power in my old workshop. Very long lived, but absolutely dire in terms of efficiency and losses. Didn't bother me too much losing around 20% of the generated energy in battery round trip losses, as it was just a solar powered workshop used in the evenings, and the batteries were free.

Likewise I mentioned redox flow batteries earlier, they are still too immature a technology to roll out at scale, nearly 10 years after I first looked at importing a zinc bromine redox flow battery from Australia.

In 5 years time we won't have made a dent in the storage requirements, even with the big surge in interest and investment in storage over the past few months. For example, if the Red John project is completed on time it's going to be the best part of a decade before it's in service, and even then it's only going to add 2.3GWh of storage, barely enough for half an hours demand.

Even if we poured every single pound in the treasury coffers into building more wind, solar and storage we are not going to be free from gas use for at least another 20 to 30 years. Nothing much is going to happen in the space of the next five years, as with the best will in the world it takes a lot longer than that to build any sort of major energy infrastructure, let alone the capability to more than double our existing RE generation and provide several days worth of matching storage capacity.

[Swwils]

In the next 5 years 50% of the UK nuclear fleet will be offline.

Also in that same time period a non trivial amount of wind turbines will need replacing.

[dan_b]

It wasn't all that long ago that the UK was 80%+ reliant on coal, with nuclear and oil filling in the rest.

As someone else has said, the solution to net zero (at least on the electrical grid) is not technical. All the methods exist now. We don't need to wait for a magic woo woo invention (like fusion), the issue is deployment.

Deploy deploy deploy. As much and as fast as you can. Until we get to 90%+ renewables, then things get more challenging. But that doesn't mean we need to wait until the solutions to that issue are available.

Build more solar.
Build more wind.
Build more HVDCs.
Build more hydro.
Build a lot of batteries.
And yes, build some nuclear.

[Mart]

Just remembered, another downside of the LFP's for Tesla (any manufacturer) is the lower power output. I completely agree that Tesla's have more than enough power and speed, but the shorter range MIC vehicles do have a slower 0-60mph time, as they can't kWh for kWh of battery, supply as much power. I think the standard range TM3 went from 4.8s to 5.6s (too lazy now to look it up, but something like that). hardly the end of the world, but a consideration none the less.

I don't think that's right at all, LFP support very high charge and discharge rates. With regard to the TM3, they reduce the performance to increase the range from a limited capacity battery.

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/b ... -batteries

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/b ... ithium-ion

You may be right. But that was the explanation I heard when Tesla moved from Lithium ternary to LPF for their standard range vehicles, and the performance of the car went down at the same time. Ovrall the shift seemed very welcome, as the LFP's are expected to last longer and also (hope this is true) happier to be run to zero and charged to 100%, rather than worrying so much about mainly using 20-80%.

[Oldgreybeard]

In practice, the use of LiFePO4 cells in cars won't result in any longer battery life, as cycle life just isn't really a key factor. It will be unusual for any EV to do more than around 500 cycles over its lifetime (500 cycles for a 200 mile range EV is 100,000 miles), and the batteries will die from old age degradation long before they die from being cycled too much. Getting 500 to 1,000 cycles from chemistries like NMC is easy, and is plenty for 99% of EV use cases, so having the weight and volume penalty of lugging LiFePO4 cells around, to get maybe 5,000 cycles or more that just won't ever be used, doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of performance or lifetime. The shift by Tesla was a pragmatic one, based on the availability of batteries - they couldn't get enough of the Tesla/Panasonic cells to produce cars in China, so they just switched to cells they could get hold of in time.

[Mart]

In the next 5 years 50% of the UK nuclear fleet will be offline.

Also in that same time period a non trivial amount of wind turbines will need replacing.

Actually the wind turbine issue is really good news. Whilst the amount needing replacing in the next five years is trivial, as they are much smaller models, we should start to see the earliest offshore WT's start to reach end of CfD subsidy contract in about 5yrs. They should last another 5+yrs, but at zero subsidy. The same for on-shore wind, which will hopefully last 10yrs after subsidy ends.

This is good news as the oldest offshore wind CfD contracts are really high at around £150/MWh. Whilst the newest are ~£50/MWh, and closing in on the average wholesale price (before things went a bit crazy). So the short 15yr contract for RE means that we end paying the higher amounts soon, and trend towards net zero subsidy.

That's yet another problem with the nuclear CfD of 35yrs, as it locks us in to the high price for so long. As the wholesale price and RE CfD's trend towards £50/MWh, the actual subsidy cost trends towards zero, but HPC at £114/MWh, trends towards £64/MWh in subsidy support.

Also for offshore wind, the electrical work, grid expansion and monopiles represent about 40% of the cost. So when the WT's need replacing, that should mean only 60% cost v's a new deployment. [But, these WT's would be smaller than the latest and cheapest (per MWh) WT's being rolled out. Perhaps a compromise would be to stick with the electrical infrastructure, but install a smaller number of new and larger monopiles to upgrade the wind farm.]

I don't think these issues impact PV farms, as they should be good for 40yrs, so after the 15yr CfD ends, they just carry on, or if possible and viable, upgrade to higher efficiency panels.

[Oldgreybeard]

I don't think these issues impact PV farms, as they should be good for 40yrs, so after the 15yr CfD ends, they just carry on, or if possible and viable, upgrade to higher efficiency panels.

I think you're right, but in practice it does seem that solar farms change their panels before their end of life for other reasons. A solar farm not far from us, that's been there for around 15 years or so, changed all its panels last year. I believe they did this just because it made economic sense, with the newer panels having a higher output, and that being enough to make swapping them worthwhile. Good for the likes of people on this forum, as the second hand panels often seem to be for sale at good prices.

[Ken]

Octopus energy has taken on the task of renewing a lot of the old turbines/sites with the aim of doubling their output.

Whilst it will be good news to see the end of early high value CfD it would be even better when we get rid of those operating under ROCs, when is that?
This will release monies within the carbon budget for proportionally more of something else.

When considering the performance of this and that in the past and then extrapolating to the future it will undoubtly not take into account newer developments. Quite frankly things that seem the same are not or are not being used in the same way. Remember how everybody thought EV batts would only last say 3yrs -how wrong could they be.

One of the problems with RE has been that the "powers that be" have failed to predict its improved performance both cost and technical.

Another of the problems is lack of labour- how long to build HS2

[Mart]

Hi Ken, I'm not saying you are right, but you might want to look at the Gov's prediction for RE (and nuclear) costs for 2030. Note they are in 2012 prices (the baseline used for the subsidy contracts):

Th̲i̲s̲ i̲s̲ t̲h̲e̲ ̲G̲o̲v̲'̲t pr̲e̲d̲i̲c̲t̲i̲o̲n̲ f̲o̲r̲ 2̲0̲3̲0̲.̲ ̲(2012 pricing)
Onshore wind to be in the range £45-72/MWh
Offshore wind will be in the range £85-109/MWh
Nuclear, at £69-99/MWh.
For solar they predict £59-73/MW


These prices were actually criticised by the House of Lords when they were reviewing the HPC contract. They suggested that the Gov may be trying to flatter nuclear by not considering the rapid reduction in RE costs. Of course by 2017 offshore wind shattered the prices (with £74.75 for 2021/22 and £57.50 for 2022/23), and things only got worse for the Gov predictions each year later.

Here is a rough attempt to match up the list using the latest CfD results:
Onshore wind - £42.47
Offshore wind - £37.35
Nuclear - £89.50 (£92.50 if SZC isn't contracted)
Solar - £45.99


Edit - Oops! The ROC's subsidies are for 20yrs, and the scheme (for new contracts) ended in 2017. The scheme started in 2002, so presumably the various schemes start to end now(ish) through to 2037.

[Ken]

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/win ... -of-17-6gw

Curtailment raising its head again. People dont realise that this is going to become a regular feature.

Drax has recently submitted an application to construct and operate a new underground pumped storage hydro power station at its existing Cruachan facility in Scotland.

The 600 MW plant will be located in one of the most constrained transmission areas and will play a crucial role in supporting more wind power to come online to reduce energy bills and carbon emissions.