EDF confirms funding for Sizewell C

[Mart]

The numbers are correct and there is no mixing. These are the generally accepted way to report use and storage pa.

I have not even started on the technology readiness for chemical grid storage at this scale. Which does not exist.

Sorry, no offence meant, I was trying to put the numbers into context when we look at them from an annual point of view.

For instance an average UK home uses about 3,300kWh of leccy pa, so an 11kWh battery looks tiny. But if cycled each day to an 80% DoD, then it could process that whole annual energy demand.

Looking to what OGB posted (and an earlier discussion on this), then a 3kWh battery in each residence would significantly help to balance supply and demand from national RE generation.

[Oldgreybeard]

The main advantage from lots of distributed storage is that it makes managing the grid a great deal easier, because it will reduce the magnitude of the peak demand each day. That could knock perhaps 5GW or so off of our total generation capacity requirement, a useful saving as the impact would mostly be to reduce the usage of coal and gas fired generation, particularly gas, as those generators tend to be the ones used to provide the faster response generation needed to meet peak demand each day.

[Mart]

For fun, sticking with the 30GWh Tesla factory, and just assuming 10 such factories in Europe, though of course actual production will scale way, way past that, then we have an annual production of 300GWh pa, which if used for grid storage (purely an example for the purposes of the discussion), again cycling once per day, then we have ~110TWh (109,500GWh), or about 3.3% of annual consumption, so ~10yrs of production would provide for 1/3rd of the energy to be stored where demand and supply don't match.

Bad form I know to reply to myself, but I've just read an article looking at research in Australia, and whilst it is simplified, it finds that with existing hydro, plus 60% wind, plus 45% solar (so clearly some overcapacity (as I mentioned reports tend to suggest this as the cheapest solution)), it finds that only 10% of energy is via storage, 90% is supplied directly.

[I used an upto 50% in my examples, but suggested it should be much lower, so my offshore wind RE + (RE + storage) figure of £98/MWh, would at 10%, be about £58/MWh, v's the current £114/MWh for HPC (before storage costs).]

Using a live stream of electricity data from Opennem, he adjusted inputs to see what would happen if there was enough wind and solar energy to supply 60% and 45% of demand respectively. He added enough short-term storage, likely to be in the form of batteries, to supply average demand for five hours.

The results are encouraging. They suggest close to 100% of demand – 98.9% over a 61-week period – could be delivered by solar and wind backed by existing hydro power and the five hours of storage. Nearly 90% of demand was met directly by renewable energy and 10% had to pass through storage. Achieving it would require a major expansion of transmission, as proposed by Labor under its Rewiring the Nation policy.

Rather than an endlessly reheated nuclear debate, politicians should be powered by the evidence



And going back to the numbers provided by @Swwils, as they are so useful for context here, we have the EU annual energy figure of 3,300,000GWh, and as a great example, the planned annual battery capacity just from a single BEV factory, of 30GWh.

Applying the findings from the report, 5hrs of storage would be 1,883GWh.

So just ten factories of that size, producing stationary storage, would reach the required figure in only 6yrs.

Tbh, those numbers are far better than I'd expected, but I think I'll continue using pessimistic calculations in my waffle, as it's better to hope for the best, but plan for the worst.



I truly hope that all of these numbers, reports, articles etc, and my ramblings, are helpful, and place the issues we face into context. All the best.

[Swwils]

Chemical storage of this scale does not exist, nor does the technology required.

It's extremely expensive storage - a gigafactory on budget is 5 billion dollars

EU EV battery demand is predicted to be 350-750 GWh pa by 2030. Which is 10-15x the current production volume. This would give 60 ish days of storage for the grid - not enough to stabilise the grid from renewable inputs.

All this assumes you can even get the materials required.

We need energy miracles.

[spread-tee]

In any case they need not be mutually exclusive anyway, the GOVT could easily create all the funding needed for renewables and nuclear in an effort to decarbonise, it is only political will that is lacking......as ever.

Desp

I like that as it sounds uncontroversial.

I was thinking the other day how much have we spent on RE vs how much is the energy cap going to cost ?
There was talk of about £120 billion, but maybe that's before it got reduced from 2 years to 6 months for now.

Solar is about £1k / kW and wind is about £1.5k / kW onshore to £2.5k / kW offshore so lets call it an average of £2k / kW for wind. We can argue about the actual costs, but I think it's in the ball park. I'll have to put nukes into the mix to make it fair, Hinkley point C is about £8k per kW.

The UK has circa 13 GW of solar, 22 GW of wind and about 6 GW of nukes so lets call that about £105 billion.

So are we really saying as a country, we are going spend the same amount as we could doubling the amount of solar, wind and nuclear as we have now, just to save a few quid off our energy bills for a very short time.

I think that's the major question rather than shall we spend it on RE vs Nukes.

I've had a few, so apologies if I've got a decimal point wrong.

Absolutely, it just has to be better by far to spend the money on the longer term plan and if needed direct temporary help to those most in need.
Also I think we have long past the time when we had the luxury of deciding which technology we favoured, we need to urgently chuck everything including the sink at this problem. In fact I read that we are probably headed for more than 2 degrees C rise irrespective of what we do, and that sounds scary.

Desp

[Ken]

In addition to the kitchen sink we need at least 200GW wind,100GW sun, 10GW nuclear, 10GW other, 10GW/200GWh utility storage, 20GW standby gas, 20GW interconnectors(to export the excess). Thats the nature of the problem.

So when no wind and sun we have 20GW clean production, 10GW storage and 20GW gas. This will require serious demand shifting from evening peak.

When max RE we have 310GW production and this will require curtailment,flow batts, H2 production and demand shifting by price.

[dan_b]

When the UK was still planning on a much bigger nuclear fleet (before Thatcher scrapped it and we had the dash-for-gas instead) - there were plans for 2 more Dinorwig-sized pumped hydro schemes across the country.

Even Hornsdale is tiny when compared with the 35 year old Dinorwig storage facility, though, that has a capacity of about 9GWh IIRC. Some rough sums suggest we need at least 5 times the storage capacity that Dinorwig has, so we need roughly 56 of those 800MWh Scottish battery installations.

[Oldgreybeard]

When the UK was still planning on a much bigger nuclear fleet (before Thatcher scrapped it and we had the dash-for-gas instead) - there were plans for 2 more Dinorwig-sized pumped hydro schemes across the country.

The pumped hydro debacle has been going on for decades, with at least one site having been earmarked back in the 1970's and having been in limbo since then (although there have been rumblings over the past year that it might be getting looked at yet again).

The problem is just down to profitability, as I understand it. Like nuclear, the income from pumped hydro is many years after the bulk of the investment in the infrastructure, plus there are always long delays in planning and getting consents. Dinorwig only exists because the CEGB built it, before privatisation. I doubt it would get built today, unless the government were to do as they've done with nuclear and provide a guarantee of future income.

[Ken]

Unfortunately hydro storage gets charged for transmission charges on both the import and export unlike batts. If they had CfD that perhaps would do it.

[Oldgreybeard]

Unfortunately hydro storage gets charged for transmission charges on both the import and export unlike batts. If they had CfD that perhaps would do it.

That sounds like madness to me. Why on earth aren't pumped storage schemes treated in the same way as battery storage schemes? Makes no sense to me to discriminate against pumped hydro like this, especially when it looks to be one of the key things we need in order to have long term energy security.

Does reinforce my view that many of our energy related problems are down to allowing the free market to determine the nature of strategic assets like energy generation and storage.