Energy infrastructure

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118934214#Comment_118934214

Cos none of that "whataboutery" claims to be "green energy" or are you suggesting we should all go back to living in caves etc. ??🙄

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118937365#Comment_118937365

Tis a pity then we still need to keep burning coal, gas etc. to keep the lights on when the wind is not there or too strong. Another inconvenient fact the wind bluffers like to gloss over

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/ireland-to-get-nine-new-power-plants-by-2024-to-prevent-shortages-1.4794039#:~:text=Nine%20new%20gas%2Dfired%20power,of%20power%20on%20the%20island.

Sam Russell

Wind is one solution to renewable energy and alone it cannot supply 100% of energy needs 100% of the time and no-one is suggesting that it can or will. Solar has a part to play, as has bio-mass. We currently have wind supplying 40% of our needs, and we should be able to push that to 70% or more. To do that we intend going off-shore where it there is more wind, and having the turbines more dispersed, then more wind can be captured.

Solar will play a part, particularly in summer - even at our latitude and our cloud cover. Time will tell, but there are many roofs that can take panels that will be economic, particularly farm and commercial buildings - and more as prices drop.

We are still burning coal - on a reducing basis, but turf has stopped - at least for electricity.

Hydro and pumped storage is difficult given our geography, but we have some. Battery storage will also contribute, both at grid scale and the domestic scale.

I do not understand the hostility towards wind - it is only a contributor to the need for renewables.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118937586#Comment_118937586

As you well know we only have to reduce emissions by 80% by 2030. And then have another 20 years to reduce emissions by 1% a year. Solar alone won't be able to do that overnight. :pac:

Until we have more flywheels and other mechanisms to stabilise the grid island wide and locally we will still need a lot of fossil fuel for spinning reserve near the big cities where nuclear would never be allowed.

I've shown you that adding twice our existing wind capacity would meet the 2030 requirements (and that was not counting importing power exported earlier). And hydrogen storage in disused gas fields is a mature technology that could address the rest. At present they are the technologies to beat.

Anything more expensive or with a longer longer lead time, like new nuclear or solar power from space stations, isn't even worth considering until after someone else proves it works economically and reliably on a grid.

Solar can beat wind during daylight hours. Interconnectors allow revenue to be generated from a surplus so can make wind cheaper and provide backup at other times. So it's going to be just wind and hydrogen storage. But I'll say it again, anything that can't be proved to arrive sooner / cheaper than a baseline of excess wind + hydrogen storage is a distraction.

Our grid can take 75% wind and solar today. It could be argued that we've already gone well above 75% when we were exporting the fossil fuel power needed for grid stability (over 90% IIRC). Scotland are all intents and purposes there already.

The target is for the grid to handle 95% of non-synchronised generation. And the 5% can include hydro, pumped storage, waste to energy, CHP, biofuels, hydrogen etc. etc. so it's all on track.

The NeuConnect project is centered around subsea cables that will enable 1.4 gigawatts of electricity to pass in both directions between the U.K. and Germany.

The interconnector measures 725 kilometers, or just over 450 miles.

Monday’s announcement said financial close on NeuConnect was slated for the “coming weeks,” which would allow works to begin at some point in 2022.

NeuConnect is not the only project focused on linking the U.K. with other parts of Europe.

Last year, a 450-mile subsea cable which connects the U.K. and Norway, enabling them to share renewable energy, began commercial operations.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/huge-undersea-cables-to-give-uk-germany-first-ever-energy-link.html

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118938365#Comment_118938365

Alot of that is pure fantasy, nonsensical and hypocritical given what we know about grid likes Germany, France etc - doubling wind capacity makes FA difference in terms of addressing grid issues in periods of low wind speeds, it simply makes the whole system more expensive and less efficient. And thats before you get to all the planning issues, costs etc. associated with the extreme energy sprawl associated with windfarms and the vast amount of other grid infrastructure needed when they are imposed on an existing grid

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118941570#Comment_118941570

Well, if the expected wind farm off the Shannon estuary come into production with the connection to Moneypoint, the grid infrastructure will already be in place.

The one in the Irish Sea will also be close to existing grid infrastructure and close to large population centres.

The planning and approval systems are being worked on.

embraer170

Seems to be a very sunny morning in Germany with 43% of electricity production right now coming from solar.

Repo101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118938046#Comment_118938046

The big problem is most of the information in the media is completely misleading. Solar is constantly cited as being the cheapest source of energy, of course the people that tell you that statistic ignore the costs of having to build/import alternative energy. I agree with using 'renewables' but not solar panels and batteries that will have to be regularly replaced every 10/25 years. How exactly is that helping the envrionment... By fiilling landfills full of solar panels and batteries.

People have two options:

1) Get real with Nuclear and supplement it with wind, hydo and biomass

2) Stick head in the sand and pretend that 'renewables' (bit of an oxymoron when you include the lifespan of renewable infrastructure) can power the world despite the evidence that they cannot and will not in foreseeable future

The solar panel cultists should be banned from grown up discussion of energy as it's tedious arguing with people who don't understand how basic economics mean that solar panels will be a disaster for the environment and are nothing but ineffective toxic trash (lead, cadmium etc.).

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952340#Comment_118952340

I thought it takes solar panels 25-30 years to degrade by 10% ?

https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/how-long-do-solar-panels-last/

hans aus dtschl

The waste from batteries is an unacceptable environmental cost.

We need nuclear waste.

Repo101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952384#Comment_118952384

Most studies show that they will last 25-30 years. The latest ASU study suggests that newer panels can last longer (40-50) but most panels in-use will last 25-30 with a loss of about 12-15% of production by the end of their lifespan at which point most will fail. Billions of money is being pumped into research, particularly in the US, which has led to incentives for scientists to overstate studies. NREL are often quoted but their studies are typically outliers. The 10 years was a reference to the Lithium Ion batteries needed to store solar energy, which are also often dumped into landfill as the costs of recycling are much more expensive than ordinary production. Similarly, the US has some studies that show less than 10% of solar panels are being recycled although that data is up-for-debate.

This is regularly the type of nonsense you hear on Irish radio or read in the newspapers, this guy in particular is often on Matt Cooper:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/science/the-mindset-was-that-we-re-not-sunny-enough-for-solar-power-1.4609137

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118952340#Comment_118952340

1) Get real with Nuclear and supplement it with wind, hydo and biomass

Get real ? Renewables are nuclear's worst enemy.

If you want to use nuclear for anything other than baseload you need storage and if you have storage renewables will undermine nuclear most of the time.

In February we got 53% of out power from renewables out of a maximum of 75% and most of the other 25% is accounted for by large generators located near cities for grid stability. That would have left at most 22% for nuclear out of 75%, a capacity factor of just under 30%.

In the USA there's already been situations where nuclear plants have had negative prices when there's oversupply because they have to dissipate the energy. By the time you'd build a nuclear power station the grid here would be capable of 95% non-synch generation and there'd be three times as much wind as now meaning lots more power on calmer days. So there'd be no baseload demand worth talking about.

Repo101

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953464#Comment_118953464

Another crazy argument with no merit. If you have solar and wind, what do we do in the winter when the wind isn't producing enough energy, freeze? Turn on the gas? No the Captain wants to store the energy in lithium ion batteries....

Energy idealism is a cancer and the realisation that it is either coal, gas or nuclear when there is no wind or sun doesn't seem to reasonate with those that believe that the sun shines 24/7 and that the wind blows 24/7.

The idea that we can be energy sufficient with wind and solar is total nonsense and has been proven time and time again.

Thankfully most people of your ilk nothing to do with our energy policy.

Believing solar and wind can power Ireland is like believing the earth is flat. This nonsense needs to stop.

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953813#Comment_118953813

"Believing solar and wind can power Ireland" Power Ireland to what extent? I'm not sure anyone in this thread is advocating for 100% solar and wind. What everyone is saying is that instead of getting 40% of our power from these intermittent resources we could get 75-85%. This is absolutely doable with today's technology. It's the best way to reduce emissions quickly.

No one has cracked intermittent renewables without vast quantities of energy storage in the form of pumped hydro, which isn't a great option in Ireland. Given our current situation there's still much more room to invest in solar and wind, up to a point. Without significant improvements in energy storage technology our current course will max out around 75-85% renewables by around 2030/2035. That's a huge chunk of our existing problems solved.

The rest of the time we burn natural gas. It's really not that complicated.

Your straw-man arguments that 'solar and wind aren't a 100% solution to all of our problems' ignore the fact that neither is a 100% gas grid or a 100% coal grid or a 100% nuclear grid. None of those exist either for good reason. Grids are made up a combination of different technologies because each technology has its pros and cons.

Our combination 20 years ago was fossil fuel heavy with limited renewables. Our current combination is better with up to 40% wind and the balance fossil fuels. Our future combination, probably 2030, of 85% renewables with the balance in natural gas will be better than our current setup.

This is all about shifting the balance as the underlying assumptions behind our old grid configuration are no longer true.

If we sit around waiting for a silver bullet technology to arrive that solves all our problems we'll be waiting a long time. In the meantime let's make our problems smaller by investing in existing proven technology: wind and solar up to 75-85% of our electric power needs.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118954376#Comment_118954376

All of what you say is absolutely the way to go.

The only fly in the ointment i see is the fact corrib runs out in 2025, which leaves us completely reliant on the UK to allow gas into Ireland via the Moffat interconnector.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953813#Comment_118953813

No the Captain wants to store the energy in lithium ion batteries.... Might be worth your while re-reading the thread or brushing up on real world storage technology. Lithium is all about power not duration.

Lithium batteries are great if you are targeting the higher paying fast frequency response from under 150ms and up to 2 seconds when other generators start ramping up. If you are spinning the turbines in air then pumped storage can come on line in about 12 seconds.

At the other end of the scale the ESB have a project to store hydrogen in disused gas fields. 3TWh is about 10% of our annual demand so a good month's worth and more than the ENTIRE global lithium battery production for everything over the last decade.

https://smartgriddashboard.com/#all/snsp - at present we can only use 75% renewables on the grid. By 2030 we should be able to 95%. But we will have a lot more renewables then, up to three times as much wind which means that anything over 33% on the graph would be when we are running on renewables and storing energy for later use.

Also our emissions targets mean we can use up to 20% gas during the times when there's no wind or solar, and we should soon have enough interconnectors to supply 1/3rd of peak demand.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118953464#Comment_118953464

Oh dear - that old canard, very few energy experts are lauding Germany's decision to to shutter nuclear in favor of wind and Russian gas these days.,....

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118957924#Comment_118957924

Our looming energy security problems when Corrib runs dry are the same whether we invest more in renewables or not TBH. Corrib running out will essentially return us to the pre-2016 situation where we were importing more than 95% of our gas from the UK anyway. Though SEAI & GNI sees production at Corrib petering out over the years not suddenly stopping in 2025.

Source: SEAI Energy Security Report 2020

Interestingly the different between the upper and lower demand forecast in the chart above is about how quickly we replace some of the gas generated electricity with renewables (mostly wind). Electricity generation was about 52% of our gas usage in 2018. It's by far the largest chunk of our gas usage.

Realistically, seeing Corrib's supply drop off doesn't really change our energy security or the expected price of natural gas in Ireland. Corrib's gas isn't reserved for Ireland's sole use. Ireland sold off the rights to a private company who will sell it to the highest bidder. We're so tied into the global markets on that front that it doesn't really provide that much energy security anyway.

gjim

Most studies show that they will last 25-30 years. The latest ASU study suggests that newer panels can last longer (40-50) but most panels in-use will last 25-30 with a loss of about 12-15% of production by the end of their lifespan at which point most will fail.

The degradation rate of panels has been falling - panels installed in the the last 10 years have a rate of 0.4% which is a loss of 10% in 25 years.

No studies show that most panels will fail after 25 years - never mind “most studies”. the failure rate of panels is tiny which is not surprising given the lack of moving parts - and was a reason the technology was originally developed for applications like satellites. Current generation panels have a failure rate of about 0.05% per year. So after 25 years about 1.25% of the panels will experience total failure.

To criticize solar PV technology on the basis of reliability or longevity is truly bizarre as long before the low emissions became a thing, these were the biggest selling points for the technology. There are 45 year old panels still performing today and tech has improved considerably in the last few decades.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118959193#Comment_118959193

I do t think this is accurate.

Who would the Corrib developer sell this gas to, if purchasers in Ireland for some reason didn’t buy it?

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118959281#Comment_118959281

They will put the gas into the same gas network they always do in Mayo. However, that gas network is connected to the UK. If there are consumers of gas in the UK who are willing to pay more for gas than consumers in Ireland, then the gas will be exported to the UK via the existing interconnection to Scotland.

Talk to any energy trader who deals with gas in Europe. They all say that Ireland and the UK is one gas market because of the interconnection and the relatively small demand on the island of Ireland compared to Great Britain.

antoinolachtnai

Doesn’t work that way as far as i know. It’s configured with a one-way valve at Moffat. Major engineering change to allow exports.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118960833#Comment_118960833

That pipeline is one way flow as far as I am aware:

https://www.gasnetworks.ie/corporate/company/our-network/projects/projects-of-common-intere/physical-reverse-flow-at-/

Therefore the corrib gas only gets used in Ireland as far as I am aware.

When it starts to run out in 2025 (thanks for that graph) we become increasingly reliant on the UK feeding Moffat with gas for us to use.

This is not a good place to be.

Markcheese

Are there many other ( or any other ) proven oil and gas finds in Irish waters ? (Other than Barrymore ?)

And how long could it take to develope a find , in an emergency scenario - ? Also if for eg the the government part backed a proven project could the resultant production be prioritized for an Irish market ?

embraer170

A few weeks/months ago I recall someone posting a list of all the large solar power plants being planned in Ireland. Does anyone happen to have the link saved?

We should be hearing something soon on the Silvermines project. The planning application will be going in soon

Just a reminder for folks not familiar with it, Silvermines will be Ireland second major pumped hydro power station, with 1.8GWh of storage with 360MW export capacity and 360MW of pumping load. Due to be operational by 2026 but the usual caveats apply with that date

Some details

https://tyndp.entsoe.eu/tyndp2018/projects/storage_projects/1025

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118971205#Comment_118971205

Not sure if you mean the results of the RESS 1 auction? Table 3 of https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/RESS-1-Final-Auction-Results-(R1FAR).pdf has a list of all the successful bidders but includes both solar and onshore wind projects.

embraer170

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118976592#Comment_118976592

Thanks!

specialbyte

Extremely thought provoking episode of the Full Charged Show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRXT3832YBI

They are exploring JCB's new prototype hydrogen powered JCBs and 20 tonne excavators, except they aren't using hydrogen fuel cells but hydrogen combustion engines. Gist seems to be that electric batteries is too expensive / heavy. Hydrogen fuel cells struggled with the vibrations and dusty air JCB machinery works around every day.

JCB essentially use the main components of their diesel engine with other ancillary parts to manage feeding hydrogen into the combustion chamber, which means scaling up production shouldn't be too hard as it is just changing some components of existing assembly lines. JCB talk about a super lean engine using a hydrogen to air ratio of 1:100, which they say keeps the temperatures down and stops NOX emissions "at source" by not creating the high temperatures that produce NOX. I'll believe it when I see independent verification of that claim.

Not sure I'd ever be excited by a combustion engine as a climate solution. This looks like it could be one.