Why we need "Net zero"

[SteamyTea]

3 hours ago, Bramco said:

As a local, it will be the most exciting thing to happen around here for years.... 

I worked near Nottingham when they blew up so cooling towers. We all went outside to watch it.

It went foggy, so only heard the bangs.

Made our factory shake.

[Beelbeebub]

12 hours ago, Oz07 said:

Quarter of a century of reliable power while altering the grid and infrastructure for the next phase of power. Sounds great 👍 

Except we'd have to build a load more coal stations *and* all the infrastructure to supply them (coal trains from the mines, mines, miners) and, assuming they aren't on old sites, the new grid architecture. 

 

And then you'll have to get approval for new coal burners.  I imagine locals will be less than happy about a new combustion plant opening up next door. 

 

I remember going gliding near Radcliffe on Soar back in the late 90's during a mild inversion. As soon as you got to a certain altitude (towed) you got above the "cap"amd could see the brown fug surrounding the station. Lovely. 

[Beelbeebub]

I wonder if the instability contribution from rooftop solar was due to large numbers of inverters going off line at more or less the same time as the upper voltage limit was reached as they all have the same limit. 

 

Likewise if they all had the same reconnection timeout (the report mentions a 180 second delay plus startup check time) you could get a situation where significant (at least locally) chunks of generation is switching off then back on. 

 

Maybe if inverters were required to have  a subtle (say +/-0.2v) random variation to their nominal cutout voltage you wouldn't get whole blocks tripping out the instant a magic number was hit. 

 

Likewise if there was a random delay before reconnect (180-240sec) the capacity coming back online would be more gradual. 

 

IIRC there is something in the ethernet protocol about each node waiting a random time before resending is there has been a packet clash to avoid exactly this sort of unintentional synchronisation. 

[Beelbeebub]

9 hours ago, Tetrarch said:

 

There is disruption and disruption. The outage last April in Spain that disconnected 31GW of power for 10 hours was caused by renewables and the fact that renewable output isn't managed at the correct frequency as it isn't generated by tunable turbines

 

There is a balance to be struck here, the transition needs to be managed and needs to be proceed at a sensible pace. We have got too far over our skis

 

Regards

 

Tet

There is no reason that renewables (wind, solar and battery) cannot generate and maintain frequencies and voltages. It is just that in Spain they were mostly set to follow voltages and frequencies. 

 

Unlike a rotating generator renewables can produce voltage and frequency independently.  You could have an inverter provide a rock steady 50hz regardless of current and voltage. 

 

The dropping of frequency as the grid loads up is entirely a weakness of the old, spinning grid. 

 

If we were building a renewable only grid we could hold 50hz. In fact, I bet that adding spinning ac generators to such a system would be an issue as suddenly you have a device that might start to drag the frequency down in overload.. 

 

The iberian blackout exposed some weaknesses in the way Spain was integrating renewables into the grid not intrinsic issues with renewable generators 

[SteamyTea]

I seem to remember, back in 1973/4 that we had an energy crisis, and to save electricity, the three day week was introduced by the government.

Then, in 1984/5 we had the Miner's Strike.

Then, during the 1990's, we had the Dash for Gas, with 35 new gas turbine power stations being built.

 

I am not sure than 'home grown' energy security is any more secure than any other form.

But with wind and solar, we can, if we ignore NIMBYs, plug in to the existing infrastructure a lot easier and quicker.

 

There is a saying, “Steal a little and they throw you in jail; steal a lot and they make you king” (Eugene O’Neill), surely distributed generation is, by nature, more secure.

[Oz07]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

Except we'd have to build a load more coal stations *and* all the infrastructure to supply them (coal trains from the mines, mines, miners) and, assuming they aren't on old sites, the new grid architecture. 

Yeh as I say, its crazy we are destroying all this infrastructure. We had a lot of it there. 

 

Can they capture any more of the bad particles nowadays with coal?

[JohnMo]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

I seem to remember, back in 1973/4 that we had an energy crisis, and to save electricity, the three day week was introduced by the government.

Then, in 1984/5 we had the Miner's Strike.

Then, during the 1990's, we had the Dash for Gas, with 35 new gas turbine power stations being built.

 

I am not sure than 'home grown' energy security is any more secure than any other form.

 

Started a new job at start of March, offshore gas field, was originally built in late 80s by the government and originally owned by the government. Was used exclusively for gas turbine generators for peak loads.  But when British Gas was privatised it was also.

 

They did in the 80s, no reason why a government couldn't do it again. Drill for Britain, by Britain, and owned by Britain. Then worldwide oil and gas prices don't matter so much.

[Beelbeebub]

9 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Started a new job at start of March, offshore gas field, was originally built in late 80s by the government and originally owned by the government. Was used exclusively for gas turbine generators for peak loads.  But when British Gas was privatised it was also.

 

They did in the 80s, no reason why a government couldn't do it again. Drill for Britain, by Britain, and owned by Britain. Then worldwide oil and gas prices don't matter so much.

That sort of vertically integrated setup where the gas is never sold on the open market might work. 

 

Maybe you can answer this - can gas extraction beveadikybramled up and down. Ie is a gas well similar to a tapnonce drilled where we can turn the flow down to zero, then restart it again by opening the tap or once the flow starts do we have to keep it flowing. 

 

If the former then it could be debzibke to drill a new field amd connect it up exclusively to be turned on to supply some gas backup plants. 

 

That way the relatively small size if the reserve is less important as we rarely use it. 

 

Of course that implies we massively reduce gas demand - by the "Net zero" polices of heat electrification and increacing renewable generation. 

[Beelbeebub]

1 hour ago, Oz07 said:

Yeh as I say, its crazy we are destroying all this infrastructure. We had a lot of it there. 

 

Can they capture any more of the bad particles nowadays with coal?

From what I can tell the last coal plant built was 1995 and the newest undemolished coal plant is 1983, so they are pretty ancient. 

 

And as someone mentioned coal plants are not very flexible, which makes them a fairly crap and inefficient match for renewables 

[-rick-]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

I wonder if the instability contribution from rooftop solar was due to large numbers of inverters going off line at more or less the same time as the upper voltage limit was reached as they all have the same limit. 

 

Likewise if they all had the same reconnection timeout (the report mentions a 180 second delay plus startup check time) you could get a situation where significant (at least locally) chunks of generation is switching off then back on. 

 

This is a known problem with existing solar/battery/etc installs. The electrical regs were relatively conservative, preferring the new generation to cut out early and delay reconnection. Since new generation got bigger these limits started becoming problematic.

 

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

Maybe if inverters were required to have  a subtle (say +/-0.2v) random variation to their nominal cutout voltage you wouldn't get whole blocks tripping out the instant a magic number was hit. 

 

There's more noise on the line than 0.2v, also you might lose several volts on the connection from the grid to the inverter in local cabling. Having a window of 2-3v might help. (Each inverter choosing a value at random within that range every 24 hrs or similar).

 

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

There is no reason that renewables (wind, solar and battery) cannot generate and maintain frequencies and voltages. It is just that in Spain they were mostly set to follow voltages and frequencies. 

 

Yeh, that's the long term solution, making new energy inverters be grid forming not grid following. I believe this is already happening to a degree, though maybe this will never happen in residential solar, only commercial scale for the reasons of making sure grid workers aren't exposed to unexpectedly live cables. (Having said that they work on live cables an awful lot as it is so maybe worth evaluating exactly where the line should be drawn).

 

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

The dropping of frequency as the grid loads up is entirely a weakness of the old, spinning grid. 

 

It's a key signalling mechanism that is used by modern inverters too, so frequency modification is not going to go away. Victron inverters can vary the frequency of their output to control 3rd party inverters connected downstream. (I think this only works when they are working in a UPS mode, ie, not connected to mains).

[Roger440]

24 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

From what I can tell the last coal plant built was 1995 and the newest undemolished coal plant is 1983, so they are pretty ancient. 

 

And as someone mentioned coal plants are not very flexible, which makes them a fairly crap and inefficient match for renewables 

 

For some reason you have gone a rabbit hole of saying how useless new coal plants would be. Not sure how you got there as the discussion was about the daftness of knocking one, note, one, down. In the beginnings of an energy crisis.

 

Nobody suggested we do and you appear to be arguing with yourself?

[JohnMo]

33 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

a gas well similar to a tapnonce drilled where we can turn the flow down to zero, then restart it again by opening the tap or once the flow starts do we have to keep it flowing

You can switch on of at will, they do it the time. If you couldn't switch off it wouldn't be safe. A field or several field are connected to one offshore facility. But they are also connected to an onshore hub. They all work together, it's not a 5 mins task to start up a none producing asset,so quite a lot of forward planning is needed.

[Beelbeebub]

42 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

For some reason you have gone a rabbit hole of saying how useless new coal plants would be. Not sure how you got there as the discussion was about the daftness of knocking one, note, one, down. In the beginnings of an energy crisis.

 

Nobody suggested we do and you appear to be arguing with yourself?

The point is all the existing plants are old. The youngest is over 40 years old and Radcliffe is nearly 60. The oldest plant I can see on Wikipedia was not quite 70 years at end of life. So we can assume RoS had a few years left at best. 

 

 

[Roger440]

Just now, Beelbeebub said:

The point is all the existing plants are old. The youngest is over 40 years old and Radcliffe is nearly 60. The oldest plant I can see on Wikipedia was not quite 70 years at end of life. So we can assume RoS had a few years left at best. 

 

 

 

I know its a "modern" thing to believe that because something is old its no good. Not a line of thinking i use, or understand. In my world, one does maintenance at appropiate intervals to keep equipment working. Which wont be that much if its mothballed. Certainly wont wear out quickly.

 

My point was only ever to keep it as back up. Mothball it in some state of suitable readiness. Rather than blowing it up. Which is utterly dumb.

[Onoff]

Just loving my EV 😉

 

Jump in and look and the range. Then turn the heater setting up and watch the range drop before you've even moved. 

 

Green washing BS. 

[SteamyTea]

6 hours ago, Onoff said:

Jump in and look and the range. Then turn the heater setting up and watch the range drop before you've even moved. 

My diesel can do that as well, just mine makes a lot more noise.

[Beelbeebub]

8 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

I know its a "modern" thing to believe that because something is old its no good. Not a line of thinking i use, or understand. In my world, one does maintenance at appropiate intervals to keep equipment working. Which wont be that much if its mothballed. Certainly wont wear out quickly.

 

My point was only ever to keep it as back up. Mothball it in some state of suitable readiness. Rather than blowing it up. Which is utterly dumb.

There are half a dozen or so still to be demolished coal plants. 

 

How long and how much money do you think it wil take to bring them back online, even if we assume no equipment has been removed or demolished? 

 

We'd have to check and refurbish everything - where do we get the engineers and parts? 

 

We'd need to restock the coal - from where, how do we transport it? 

 

All this is doable but will take time, probably years and lots of money 

 

And then, we can't have coal plants sitting around doing nothing. We need, ideally to habe them as an active (if only intermittently) part of the grid.  But coal isn't very good (as mentioned previously) at occasional use. It's much better as base load - which is not what we need. 

 

The entirety of thr "let's use coal" argument rests on the idea we have vast reserves. But we don't. And we don't have an industry to get at those reserves anyway.  I wonder, even if you went back to a decimated coal town, how many people you'd get signing up to"work down pit" (said in Yorkshire accent). 

 

I can get the idea that gas could have a place as occasional use plants - especially in the nationally owned, vertically integrated with the gas fields model. 

 

But coal isn't a good fit. 

 

The money spent maintaining the coal plants would be better spent on upgrading the did to reduce capacity constraints, increacing storage (say another pumped storage facility) or building more renewable generation.

[Beelbeebub]

Alot of discussions focus on the intermittent nature of wind and solar. 

 

But if we build out a big capacity then even when the fleet is operating at a low % of the peak it's till enough.  Sure that means we have far too much on a good day but that's a good problem to have. 

 

Obviously we need to build out storage both at a grid level (hydrocand battery farms) and micro - home batteries. 

 

If every home had a 5kwh battery we'd have 125Gwh of storage. The evening peak would probably be eliminated. 

 

A 10gwh battery (not unreasonable) would do most homes for 24h non heating loads. 

 

I estimate you could build a standard mass build house with enough panels and batteries to make it a net generator over the year and not need grid power for half of it for under £10k extra. That frees up a huge amount of capacity for car charging and electric heating. 

 

We might need to fire the gas plants up over the winter - but that's still alot less gas burnt

[Roger440]

18 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

There are half a dozen or so still to be demolished coal plants. 

 

How long and how much money do you think it wil take to bring them back online, even if we assume no equipment has been removed or demolished? 

 

We'd have to check and refurbish everything - where do we get the engineers and parts? 

 

We'd need to restock the coal - from where, how do we transport it? 

 

All this is doable but will take time, probably years and lots of money 

 

And then, we can't have coal plants sitting around doing nothing. We need, ideally to habe them as an active (if only intermittently) part of the grid.  But coal isn't very good (as mentioned previously) at occasional use. It's much better as base load - which is not what we need. 

 

The entirety of thr "let's use coal" argument rests on the idea we have vast reserves. But we don't. And we don't have an industry to get at those reserves anyway.  I wonder, even if you went back to a decimated coal town, how many people you'd get signing up to"work down pit" (said in Yorkshire accent). 

 

I can get the idea that gas could have a place as occasional use plants - especially in the nationally owned, vertically integrated with the gas fields model. 

 

But coal isn't a good fit. 

 

The money spent maintaining the coal plants would be better spent on upgrading the did to reduce capacity constraints, increacing storage (say another pumped storage facility) or building more renewable generation.

You seem determined to miss the point, so ill leave it there.

 

[Beelbeebub]

12 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

You seem determined to miss the point, so ill leave it there.

 

The point (of this thread, started well before the current ME capers) being that it is unwise for the UK to rely heavily on external energy resources *and* the only sovereign energy resources we have in sufficient quantity are renewable ones. 

 

We must reduce fossil fuel reliance, which means 

 

- Reduce consumption (insulation etc) 

- Electrify transport and heating

- Increace our renewables generation 

 

And you can come to the above conclusion with no reference to "green stuff" 

Edited 13 hours ago by Beelbeebub

[Beelbeebub]

https://www.upliftuk.org/post/just-one-months-gas-supply-from-14-years-of-licensing-by-previous-government.

 

• From 2010-2024, the previous Conservative government handed out hundreds of new North Sea oil and gas licences across seven licensing rounds, which will lead to just 20 new and re-licenced fields. 

 

• These 20 developments have the potential to produce – in total, over their lifetime – less than six months of UK gas demand and less than eight months of oil.

 

•To date, they have produced the equivalent of just 36 days of extra gas. They have also produced just over two months (64 days) of oil, however, most UK oil is exported. 

 

Now to be fair, this report had been produced by an organisation(s) that is pro energy transition but, let's say they are an order of magnitude wrong.  That's still chicken feed. 

 

[Oz07]

1 hour ago, Beelbeebub said:

The point (of this thread, started well before the current ME capers) being that it is unwise for the UK to rely heavily on external energy resources *and* the only sovereign energy resources we have in sufficient quantity are renewable ones. 

 

We must reduce fossil fuel reliance, which means 

 

- Reduce consumption (insulation etc) 

- Electrify transport and heating

- Increace our renewables generation 

 

And you can come to the above conclusion with no reference to "green stuff" 

So surely you agree blowing up a functioning power station, when we still have coal in the UK is not a great idea?

[Beelbeebub]

1 hour ago, Oz07 said:

So surely you agree blowing up a functioning power station, when we still have coal in the UK is not a great idea?

At the point they are blown up they aren't functioning stations. 

 

If we had a functioning coal plant that was scheduled to shut down in the near future I would absolutely argue to keep it operating.  IIRC that is exactly what happened to Radcliffe on Soar, which had it's operation extended due to rising gas prices in 21/22

 

But at this point, today, the plants have been shut down for at least a year, often several.

 

It is unlikely they were shut down and "put to bed" with restart in mind. The shut down was probably more focused on decommissioning. It is probable that some equipment has already been removed or disabled so starting up (say) Radcliffe would be a massive undertaking. It's the difference between carefully putting a car away in a heated garage on stands hooked up to a trickle charger for the winter vs leaving it in a field for the scrapper to take away (and probably ripping out anything you can sell on ebay in the meantime) 

 

With hind sight having Radcliffe running now would not be a bad thing from an energy security pov, though it should be noted coal has risen 20% in price recently. 

 

There is nothing to be gained by pausing the demolition now. 

 

[Beelbeebub]

And the idea that we "still have coal in the UK" is not the whole picture. 

 

We have coal deposits in the UK, but we don't really have the skills, infrastructure or political will to extract it.

 

Who has recent expertise in coal mining in the UK? All the knowledge any coal miners had will be the better part of 40 years out of date. Who makes the equipment? How much does it cost? 

 

Which communities will welcome the return of coal mining with all the negatives it brings (subsidince, ground water contamination, spoil heaps, heavy machinery). 

 

Who are you going to get to work down the mines? I know modern mining is a lot less labour intensive but you still need some young people who want to do it. 

 

How do you get the coal from the mines to the power stations, rail is your only viable option so we'd have to build at least some some new rail lines. How long and how much will that be? 

 

And don't forget, once you have done alm that, trained up a work force, built a supply chain and logistics route, refurbished or built new power stations. It all comes to halt in 25 years when we run out of coal... 

 

 

[Oz07]

32 minutes ago, Beelbeebub said:

And the idea that we "still have coal in the UK" is not the whole picture. 

 

We have coal deposits in the UK, but we don't really have the skills, infrastructure or political will to extract it.

 

Who has recent expertise in coal mining in the UK? All the knowledge any coal miners had will be the better part of 40 years out of date. Who makes the equipment? How much does it cost? 

 

Which communities will welcome the return of coal mining with all the negatives it brings (subsidince, ground water contamination, spoil heaps, heavy machinery). 

 

Who are you going to get to work down the mines? I know modern mining is a lot less labour intensive but you still need some young people who want to do it. 

 

How do you get the coal from the mines to the power stations, rail is your only viable option so we'd have to build at least some some new rail lines. How long and how much will that be? 

 

And don't forget, once you have done alm that, trained up a work force, built a supply chain and logistics route, refurbished or built new power stations. It all comes to halt in 25 years when we run out of coal... 

 

 

There is a rail line into ratcliffe iirc