Does the UK need more gas power?

[Saladin]

Batts can do quite a few things which pumped hydro cannot.

True Ken. I was thinking more in terms of scaleability and environmental fallout which heavily favours a "gravity battery".

It is true that in the industrial world there will be a large demand for green H2 but i do not believe this can just be run off EXCESS RE as the lack of consistency either time or place or amount is so sporidic that nobody could run a commercial operation from it and it must be debatable if a electrolyser can be run intermittently. I think it takes 30mins to get the plant up to speed ?

The production of green H2 will just become a load and be produced in countries which have vast amounts of potential for RE eg Australia.

...and we're back to the hammer-nail euphemism. Why aren't we forging steel in Africa using heliostats and solar lenses instead of furnaces in Germany?
Do we need an industrial complex churning out endless amounts of consumable manufactured obsolecence?
Can we build things to last and cease with materialised status symbols?

I think that there will be no green transition without a lifestyle change. Let's face it western society is entrenched in decadance, propaganda agents (aka marketing aka paying for our own corrupt biases) and middlemen.

If wealth was commodity backed, patents were abolished, the state was digitised, goods and services were traded at cost the profit being their productivity and engineering was open source then business as usual would be a downgrade.

***not having a go.. just my €0.02**

You are implying that there is a more energy efficient process, I'd be interested to know what that is...?

Methane cracking. Assuming someone else (taxpayers) assume the burden of cleaning up the mess (climate fallout)



Energy production isn't the problem. It's lack of stakeholder participation.

[Mart]

A national H₂ plant powered from what would otherwise be curtailed wind-power seems like an obvious way to make the inefficiency of electrolysis argument redundant.

Since when is electrolysis of water inefficient? You are implying that there is a more energy efficient process, I'd be interested to know what that is...?

In the near future this could be up to 90%+ but it really depends on what you do with the H2 produced. If the H is used immediately in an industrial process then great but if it has to stored at a cost and then somehow just burnt then it has inefficiency written all over it.

You read my mind. I was quite positive about H2 as a very large scale, long duration energy storage (LDES) method. But lost a little confidence now over the years. The electrolysis part is fine, but further losses to compress it. And then the efficiency when used be it a fuel cell or gas turbine, at around 60% efficiency. Overall perhaps 40%. I think that's the very low end of CAES, with some estimates at 50%+, and advanced CAES where the heat from compression is extracted, stored, and returned during expansion, might be ~70%.

40% is still ok, from super cheap, or negative priced leccy, but as Dan mentions, electrolysers are expensive kit, so their cost effectively increases the less you use them. Hence why I'm leaning more towards CAES, as they can use the same storage sites.

That's not of course to say that CAES is viable, just that if it is 'better' than H2 for LDES, then presumably H2 storage won't grow particularly large.

At this stage, I'm simply enjoying watching the show, and seeing what develops in the short, medium and long term energy storage world. Fun times.

[Moxi]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/m ... f8fe&ei=79

Just saw this and thought it lent itself to this thread.

Moxi

[smegal]

Since when is electrolysis of water inefficient? You are implying that there is a more energy efficient process, I'd be interested to know what that is...?

In the near future this could be up to 90%+ but it really depends on what you do with the H2 produced. If the H is used immediately in an industrial process then great but if it has to stored at a cost and then somehow just burnt then it has inefficiency written all over it.

You read my mind. I was quite positive about H2 as a very large scale, long duration energy storage (LDES) method. But lost a little confidence now over the years. The electrolysis part is fine, but further losses to compress it. And then the efficiency when used be it a fuel cell or gas turbine, at around 60% efficiency. Overall perhaps 40%. I think that's the very low end of CAES, with some estimates at 50%+, and advanced CAES where the heat from compression is extracted, stored, and returned during expansion, might be ~70%.

40% is still ok, from super cheap, or negative priced leccy, but as Dan mentions, electrolysers are expensive kit, so their cost effectively increases the less you use them. Hence why I'm leaning more towards CAES, as they can use the same storage sites.

That's not of course to say that CAES is viable, just that if it is 'better' than H2 for LDES, then presumably H2 storage won't grow particularly large.

At this stage, I'm simply enjoying watching the show, and seeing what develops in the short, medium and long term energy storage world. Fun times.

CAES still needs a fuel. One CAES company is looking at colocating a CAES plant with salt cavers storage next to hydrogen storage salt caverns.

[smegal]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/m ... f8fe&ei=79

Just saw this and thought it lent itself to this thread.

Moxi

This is why the previous government committing 2050 net zero into law was a mistake. We need to transition and these legal challenges aren't productive.

[Moxi]

and

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/b ... f8fe&ei=52

Arguably a biased Centrica article as they have a vested interest in making their gas grid Hydrogen resilient. The interest lays in the fact that they base their work on green hydrogen being available to blend with natural gas from the current 2% to 100% although the article seems to suggest closer to 40% max if I read it correctly.

Compression methods are briefly touched upon as is storage.

We appear to have consumed approx 63.5 billion meters cubed last year, so at 2% substitution that's1.27 billion meters cubed of Hydrogen (assumes the percentages in the article are volumes not calorific. The only figure I could get for 2023 for hydrogen was 4.5 million tonnes or 63.45 million cubic meters so already well short of the 2% and when you try to determine the split of blue and green hydrogen I came up against a brick wall.

You have probably seen the latest paper on the hydrogen economy but its here for reference
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... r-2023.pdf

So maybe we are better leaving the hydrogen for industrial applications rather than burning it in gas turbines as Ken said. We certainly seem a long way short of the picture painted by National Gas and Centrica for the gas grid and consumers.

Moxi

[Moxi]

Are there any figures circulating for the potential energy reduction achievable by retrospective upgrades of all of the UK housing stock ? Not the one option fits all style but a regulated and engineered approach to make each home power and water efficient.

Moxi

[smegal]

and

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/b ... f8fe&ei=52

Arguably a biased Centrica article as they have a vested interest in making their gas grid Hydrogen resilient. The interest lays in the fact that they base their work on green hydrogen being available to blend with natural gas from the current 2% to 100% although the article seems to suggest closer to 40% max if I read it correctly.

Compression methods are briefly touched upon as is storage.

We appear to have consumed approx 63.5 billion meters cubed last year, so at 2% substitution that's1.27 billion meters cubed of Hydrogen (assumes the percentages in the article are volumes not calorific. The only figure I could get for 2023 for hydrogen was 4.5 million tonnes or 63.45 million cubic meters so already well short of the 2% and when you try to determine the split of blue and green hydrogen I came up against a brick wall.

You have probably seen the latest paper on the hydrogen economy but its here for reference
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... r-2023.pdf

So maybe we are better leaving the hydrogen for industrial applications rather than burning it in gas turbines as Ken said. We certainly seem a long way short of the picture painted by National Gas and Centrica for the gas grid and consumers.

Moxi

Here's a new report ho how "they" could decarbonise the electricity grid.

https://nepc.raeng.org.uk/media/uoqclnr ... report.pdf

[Mart]

In the near future this could be up to 90%+ but it really depends on what you do with the H2 produced. If the H is used immediately in an industrial process then great but if it has to stored at a cost and then somehow just burnt then it has inefficiency written all over it.

You read my mind. I was quite positive about H2 as a very large scale, long duration energy storage (LDES) method. But lost a little confidence now over the years. The electrolysis part is fine, but further losses to compress it. And then the efficiency when used be it a fuel cell or gas turbine, at around 60% efficiency. Overall perhaps 40%. I think that's the very low end of CAES, with some estimates at 50%+, and advanced CAES where the heat from compression is extracted, stored, and returned during expansion, might be ~70%.

40% is still ok, from super cheap, or negative priced leccy, but as Dan mentions, electrolysers are expensive kit, so their cost effectively increases the less you use them. Hence why I'm leaning more towards CAES, as they can use the same storage sites.

That's not of course to say that CAES is viable, just that if it is 'better' than H2 for LDES, then presumably H2 storage won't grow particularly large.

At this stage, I'm simply enjoying watching the show, and seeing what develops in the short, medium and long term energy storage world. Fun times.

CAES still needs a fuel. One CAES company is looking at colocating a CAES plant with salt cavers storage next to hydrogen storage salt caverns.

That's interesting.

I thought that technically, CAES doesn't need a fuel, but you can raise the efficiency by using one. That's why I went for the lower CAES efficiency figure of 40% as comparable to H2. However with A-CAES you don't use a fuel for greater expansion, but instead use the heat energy that was extracted during compression, and stored ready for the energy discharge part. This could be ~70% efficient.

But .... the co-location with H2 sounds interesting, since there is a huge amount of heat given off by the H2, either when burned for gas generation, or processed via a fuel cell. So you'd get CHP from the H2 part, with the heat being used to boost the CAES.

As I said 'fun times' especially if some sort of hybrid H2/CAES energy system proves to be a winner.

[Acronym overload time, perhaps?]

[openspaceman]

I thought that technically, CAES doesn't need a fuel, but you can raise the efficiency by using one. That's why I went for the lower CAES efficiency figure of 40% as comparable to H2. However with A-CAES you don't use a fuel for greater expansion, but instead use the heat energy that was extracted during compression, and stored ready for the energy discharge part. This could be ~70% efficient.

The compression causes heat to be rejected, the recovery then takes that stored rejected heat and adds it back to the gas before it is expanded, theoretically allowing it to be exhausted at the same ambient temperature. The thing is that storing heat adds to the cost and it is lossy, whereas storing compressed gas can be for decades as long as the container doesn't leak.

So it makes sense to raise the temperature higher, expand the gas and get more work out of it and use the now hot exhaust to reduce fuel use. In effect you just have the power turbine of a gas turbine but no energy sapping compressor.

The internal pressure is limited by the storage pressure so likely much lower than a modern jet but the temperatures will be lower too so the power turbine will not be as costly