Beelbeebub

If we are going down the speculative route I would propose Amonia production from spare electric. Relatively easy to store at normal pressures and temperatures. It is toxic so the stores would need careful positioning. It can be burned as a fuel for turbines but also converted to hydrogen for high temperature industrial and chemical uses. It is also an important precursor chemical for fertiliser production.... As you point out the synthesis may be inefficient, possibly more than just to H2 but if we are talking summer excess elec that we wouldn't be using anyway then the efficency is moot. This is the point of overbuilding our capacity. My solar array is way oversized. It punts out over 10kw on a sunny day. And after I have filled my 10kwh battery by mid morning I'm limited to 3.6kw export. But it does mean that even on a fairly overcast day like today I'm still generating over 1kw, which is plenty for my house and trickle charging my battery for overnight. If I could figure out a way of using the summer excess, even if it was inefficent it would be great. If I could store that excess for winter use, even at 50% or less round trip efficency, I could probably never need the grid.

Good point.

As long as thr unit cannot output more than 800w (about 3a) will it be able to cause much damage to the grid. If it tried to distort the waveform by being put of phase it wouldn't be able to "overwhelm" the natural grid waveform. I wonder if that is why the plug in limit is so low. The biggest issues will be islanding but that would be covered by the prongs not being live whan unplugged, which would surely be covered by thr CE marking. That said, it would be sensible if the approval for being put on sale in the UK included some basic specs that make it suitible for grid connection. Eg can only be put on sale if the inverter is listed in the g98 list.

The problem is and always will be storage of the amounts of H2 required. Just doing a quick calculation (may be wrong so here's the working) A large LNG carrier has around 250,000 m3 of LNG 1m3 of LNG is about 6.8Mwh thermal which equates to about 2.7Mwh electric (roughly 40% efficient). So a very large LNG carrier has 250,000 x 2.7Mwh = 680,000Mwh or 680Gwh of electricity. The UK uses around 22,000 Gwh in a cold month (and that's before we electrify heating and transport!). Which is about 700 Gwh a day. So we would need about 14 LNG tankers of storage for a fortnight. The problem is H2 is much harder to store cryogenically - it needs to be at - 250C or so. But if it was, it's energy density is 2.7mwh thermal per m3 so roughly 40% of LNG, that meany ou now need to store about 35 liquid H2 carriers holding H2 at -250C. If we store it as a compressed gas, the figures are even worse.

If any coal stations were currently operational it would be wise not to shut them down. As I mentioned RoS was extended because of high gas prices. But my point is, they are shut down so it's water under the bridge. Two points to note are that the % of our total generation that used to be coal 30-40% in the late 00's early 10's is now supplied by renewables. So we have, in a sense, already replaced them. Secondly, coal prices are not immune to the current situation, so electricity from coal would be subject to the same price linkage as gas and oil. As for China. They are in a different situation from thr UK, their power demands are still growing. They are having to add more generation. Ideally all of this and more would be from renewables. Instead it is mostly (in the 4/5 range) from renewables and crucially the renewable addition is greater than the growth, so the proportion of coal is falling. It's not perfect but it is pretty good. Again they install more wind capacity that the entire UK grid every quarter. It's mind boggling - it also gives lie to the claim that renewables are a Chinese plot to cripple western industry....

I would say the gas should be peaker/backup load not any kind of base load.

The carbon capture brigade neglect to mention that capturing the carbon from a combustion process intrinsically requires energy. You burn about 25% more fuel per Mwh running a carbon capture plant as you do a "normal" plant. Of course this is a win/win for the fossil fuel providers, not only do they get to keep selling their product, but demand actually goes up....

My bet is commercial fusion before green hydrogen boilers and clean coal.....

If the centers were sited on the coast not only could the power from ofshore be brought to them easily but they could also have sea water intakes and outlets for the cooling system.

Force all AI data centers to fund new build renewable capacity and grid upgrades to handle it equal to their demand, up front. That way whwn the bubble pops, hopefully before the data centers get built, we get a load of free capacity. 😁

But we have the alternative in front of us. We have a road map of how to do it. The national grid have the plans and projects to upgrade the transmission. We have the generation technologies already proven. We just need to do it. It would be madness to spend as much money rebuilding a coal based infrastructure. You saw the report that the cost of a single oil crisis, like the two we have had already this decade, is equivalent to just following the plan we have.

Too slow or too fast?

There would be an interesting case for people with old style meters, they would just run backwards so any export would be effectively net metered, ie your effective payment per kwh export would be whatever you import unit cost would be! 😁

Via CE/UKCA marking? At least for the device and any requirements for it to operate safely. Obviously it can't control shoddy house wiring (eg not using an outdoor rated socket or just running a really long extension cable) but those risks exist with any electrical equipment.

China is reducing imports. Their goal is energy security through independence. Being reliant on coal and imported coal at that, is counter to that aim. So they are increacing local production whilst reducing reliance on coal as a %of their mix. Given the size of China it's going to take a while but they are driving in the right direction. So is the UK to be fair.