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A simple challenge 5

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GregLocock

GregLocock

Automotive
Apr 10, 2001
23,371
Rough out a fossil fuel free system for a given populated area to replace a 1 GW coal power station, at 2020-2022 prices. use 1 year of hour by hour weather observations

Rules

maximum of 1 month per year scheduled downtime

1 hour per year unscheduled dark due to lack of storage.

No extension leads.

No hydro using naturally occurring sites for both basins (they're already in use)

30 year design life.


I'm selecting a local power station, now gone, in Anglesea Victoria. It has fairly good windpower prospects, including offshore. I'm using the weather observations from a town just along the coast called Airey's Inlet, or Hairy Singlet.






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Greg Locock


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Tnoose, I'm going to divide it by plate capacity when I look at all the installations. it's a nice set of data anyway.

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Greg Locock


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Greg, I see the trolls have turned up. Get ready for major thread drift.


Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.
 
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Grins, I get scarier things than these trolls free with my breakfast cereal. As Douglas Adams didn't write.

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Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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Further thought is that although this is the best data I have, it is misleading to assume that the company producing it has any intent of building a good baseload fossil fuel free generating source. That is, offshore windpower is sited where it will maximise foreseeable income (etc) so they all tend to be clustered in the same areas, where inevitably their output will be somewhat correlated.

This is the offshore wind for all the offshore windfarms I chose in 2020 ( ones for which i have a complete record 2020 and 2021),as you can see, they are heavily correlated. I don't see any point in doing R^2 on this sort of stuff, it's pretty obvious that when its windy its windy everywhere, and when it isn't it isn't.

OFFWIND_UK_2020_nm7vh8.jpg


However, with a little bit more data manipulation I can now build a toy that has 4 knobs, offshore wind, onshore wind, PV, and battery size. Add in costs for each one and we can see what the cheapest way is to put a portfolio of PV ONW and OFW, and batteries together to provide 364/24 @ 1 GW power. I've changed the criteria a bit because maintenance on all those generators is done continually on individual units rather than an annual shutdown of the whole site. Then I can test the 2020 settings on 2021 and see if it is robust.











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Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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So one vital ingredient is the cost of each power source, and the battery

These are my estimates for installed costs, first 3 from wiki, last is Tesla battery*2

Code: 
	Solar	OFW	ONW		Battery
$/MW	8.60E+05	6.50E+06	1.60E+06	$/MWh	2.00E+05

I think that underestimates the social cost of onshore wind, but anyway.

To get to full net zero (0.5 days per 2 years downtime on the graph due to logs) the optimum mix is in the yellow boxes, note how little offshore wind is needed. It needs 4.08 days of battery storage, and would cost $33B. And to answer my original challenge as revised, 1 day per year of downtime would cost $27B and needs a 1.77 day battery, 43 GWh.

A less daft solution would be to get emissions down to 10% of the original, for $13B

uk_solution_iw8pta.jpg













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Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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We were taught West Coast Marine, back 60 years ago...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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Look up AMOC... could get really interesting...

Rather than think climate change and the corona virus as science, think of it as the wrath of God. Feel any better?

-Dik
 
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This was originally in the NYT, rapidly gaining a reputation as the lead publicist for the unicorn fart brigade.

TLDR - VCs aren't funding the battery startups that will have to happen if net zero, no nukes, is going to happen (which it won't)


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Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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Manhattan Contrarian has commentary on the same article. Sorry, not able to link it just now.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand
 
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I was just thinking about the abandonment of the USA's nuclear building program. (that and the non existence of Australia's). If we really are serious about zero CO2 then we need nukes. One thing often cited is that they are very expensive energy, eg this piece of propaganda, the LCOE.

440px-3-Learning-curves-for-electricity-prices_bqjwbi.png


I'm sure the numbers are justifiable in context, but as demonstrated further up the page, only if you ignore the cost of storage. In a system designed to operate 24/7 storage costs are a huge proportion (43%) of the cost equation in a wind and solar energy grid. So wind and solar should double in that graph. With the cost base I used, a 24/7/365 power supply using wind/solar/batteries is about $28 billon per GW, anything cheaper than that is, um, cheaper. I'm pretty sure that quotes of $56 billion for a 2GW nuclear plant would be greeted with laughter, yet that is what we are buying in to.






Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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I got it figured out. My idea uses Mineral oil that comes from deep with in the earth, I don't need to use any fossils or so called fossil fuel to get it. A fossil is essentially a rock.
 
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Have you seen crude oil or coal? They are often rocks at STP.
 
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I've just realized a flaw in this analysis, that may be a feature. This system is designed and costed around 1 GW 24/7. But it also generates far more than 1GW for much of the time. So we need to introduce despatchable dynamic pricing at the consumer level (you remember, why we paid for SmartMeters that do SFA?) and then you can buy baseload when you have to or wait for cheap electricity when the wind blows.

Looking at Australia, baseload power is say 25 c/kWh, of which 5 is generation costs, and I reckon the zero carbon system will add say 15c to that, assuming 20 year lifetime. So, you pay 40 c/kWh NOW, or 20 c/kWh but not necessarily able to use it for 3 days.

So we need (a) dynamic pricing (b) communication of current base and nonbase prices and (c) direct control over the electrical devices in our house (I can run the dishwasher 60% full now at 20c, or wait until tomorrow and run it full, but at 40c). I suppose a cynic would argue that that is more or less what the power retailers do, but a fine grained approach seems more sensible.


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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The random power it generates on average is 1.5 GW, baseload is 1.0 GW, (ie total output averages 2.5 GW) plate capacity is 4.2 GW solar and 7.9 GW Onshore wind, and 61 GWh of batteries.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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Greg, They say that those are global figures but I don't believe it.
Korea built 4 different Nuc plant designs for a total of 11 units.
This was late 70's-early 80's.
Some of these first ones have been shut down.
Developed a standard design and built 12 units.
Then updated the design and built another 6 units.
Some of these are under construction.
One training center for operators and maintenance.
One set of engineering.
The plants are bolt for bolt and wire for wire identical.
A lot of economy in that system.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
P.E. Metallurgy, consulting work welcomed
 
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Yes, watching the way nukes are built in most countries is baffling from beginning to end. Why do they keep solving the same problems in different ways?

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Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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Here's an hour long discussion of getting Australia to a 99% renewable electricity grid. I haven't watched it yet, i have little tolerance for youtubes

Getting to 99% Renewable Electricity in Australia | Engineering with Rosie Live Ep 15


Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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here we have what I was looking for, good Australian data.

The youtuber suggests 60% wind, 45% solar, 5 hours storage, plus gas peaker 1% of the time. I don't know how those %ages are defined, listening to engineers is boring.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376
 
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