Energy infrastructure

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121968819#Comment_121968819

Importing electricity from the UK is absolutely better for the environment than the alternative - which is burning coal, gas or oil in Ireland - when renewables cannot meet demand. The former is, on average, 65% renewable while the latter is obviously 0% re-newable.

There's nothing nefarious going on here. At certain times, importing from the UK is both cheaper and greener than producing in Ireland. This isn't like shipping potatoes from New Zealand - electrons are clean and easy to move, once you've a pair of conductors between the two endpoints.

Paddico

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121968853#Comment_121968853

That makes perfect sense to me.

Apply carbon figures at source or have I missed something here?

_Puma_

https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/09/aws_resource_restrictions/

Amazon putting limits on eu-west-1 services due to electricity capacity supply problems at their Dublin datacenters.

The interconnectors with Britain are on high load and paying an absolute premium for importing currently.

Going to hammer domestic consumer prices in the long run.

In the US based regions AWS have started putting these things in beside nuclear power plants.

cnocbui

The government needs to ban any more data centres, with a particular focus on ones that are AI centric. This country will miss it's 2030 CO2 targets, and will cop large EU fines, just as things stand. The power requirements for AI are so large as to be out of the question for them to establish here, though they will likely try for the same cheap cooling reasons all the other data centres are here for. Let Denmark have them.

“If you were to integrate large language models, GPT-style models into
search engines, it’s going to cost five times as much environmentally as
standard search,” said Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI
Now Institute, a research group focused on the social impacts of AI. At
current growth rates, some new AI servers could soon gobble up more than 85 terawatt hours of electricity each year, researchers have estimated — more than some small nations’ annual energy consumption.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/nuclear-power-oklo-sam-altman-ai-energy-rcna139094

BKtje

Will the opportunity cost of losing these datacenters (jobs, taxes, reputation etc) cost more than the fines and/or the cost of building up the grid? That's what needs to be examined rather than just banning any more data centers.

Once that is done the relevant decisions regarding the grid can be made. It needs to happen quickly though or the whole economy becomes hostage to a pending decision.

If in the long term the economy is better off with the data centers even with the short term cost and pain of building the infra then that needs to be done. Long term planning is more important than short term elections imo.

cnocbui

Data centres employ feck all people and should be told to feck off. One of the objections to the proposed Apple DC in Athenry was based on how few permanent jobs would be created, touted as being 150, which is next to nothing for a beheamoth estimated to end up consuming 12% of the grid.

In 2015, the year Apple’s plans for Athenry were first announced, data
centres accounted for about 5 per cent of all electricity consumed in
Ireland. By the time the proposal was shelved in 2018, that consumption
rate increased to 8 per cent.

Last year, that rate had more than doubled to 18 per cent of all
electricity consumed in the Republic — about the same as all urban homes
in the State.

AI data centre power consumption is far higher than existing ones.

https://www.businessinsider.com/chatgpt-uses-17-thousand-times-more-electricity-than-us-household-2024-3?op=1

The headline is actually way off providing an inkling of the looming problem.

I'd say Ireland's reputation as stupid patsy is well and truly safe in the minds of those who site data centres.

There is one solution, though, if the planning permission required any prospective AI data centres to furnish their own zero CO2 power supply with no grid connection, then I wouldn't see a problem hosting them.

Capt'n Midnight

They had an eclipse in the US of A.

You can see the dip in solar on the 8th. Gas stepped in for most of it.

It was a nice test of dispatchable power.

Solar is the largest source of midday generation in California and the
second-largest source of midday generation in Texas, Florida, other
parts of the East Coast, and in the Southwest.

We are heading that way too, there's a good bit of solar north of Dublin Airport and some being build near the end of the south runway.

gjim

Interesting numbers I stumbled across from the EIA on new grid additions forecast/expected in 2024:

• solar PV 58%
• battery storage 23%
• Wind 13%
• natural gas 4%
• All others 2%

Yes it’s by capacity so adjust by capacity factors to get expected energy contribution. The “all others” category includes nuclear - yes after years of decades of nuclear contributing zero new capacity, the Vogtle reactors are finally coming on line after a bunch of company bankruptcies, nearly 10 years late, 20B over budget, etc. But with nothing seriously planned, it looks like these will be the last new nuclear ever added in the US.

The battery storage share growth is more dramatic than I expected - although inevitable given that it’s now considerably cheaper than open cycle natural gas. But like with wind, then solar, there are still people today shouting “it will never work!”.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122036996#Comment_122036996

if you follow battery developments, the speed that battery prices is dropping by is truly astonishing.

There has been a 40% drop in the cost of LFP batteries in just the past year!

In February of 2023, they cost €110/kWh, February 2024, €51/kWh, they are expected to hit €40 by the end of the year!!

LFP is particularly well suited to grid storage, versus Lithium Ion and then there is the Sodium Ion batteries coming online this year.

Most companies are now integrating battery storage into their new wind and solar developments, even if they aren’t officially a “battery plant”, they have gotten so cheap. They are staring to get so cheap that regular people are starting to buy them for their own homes, to pair with solar as they have excellent returns at these sort of lower prices.

If prices continue to drop like this, even closed cycle gas will start to struggle.

gjim

Yes but it's still amazing to witness - I first heard claims (sometimes disputed) that the TCO for battery beat NG for peaking purposes about 3 years ago. I would have expected that the market would respond but not as quickly? For batteries to have completely wiped out investment in open-cycle NG within such a short time frame is really impressive. It's exciting watching a genuine technological revolution occurring in realtime.

I find battery prices ($ per kWh) a little opaque - I find it easier to think in terms of $/cycled kWh - LFP can expect up to 5000 cycles. So the round-trip cost of buying an off-peak kWh and selling during peak is less than 2c/kWh. This is a fraction of the production cost of any electricity currently being generated and so has the power to transform intermittent sources into demand following sources for very little money.

@bk - yes it looks like most of the US installed battery capacity is being done as a component of solar installation. This is surely a winning combination - grid-scale solar PV in the US can produce a kWh for under 10c a kWH TCO, adding 2c per kWh cost to store it intraday and you have the ability to offer rapid response demand following for under 12c per kWh. No wonder the solar/battery share of new generation investment is over 80%.

josip

Objections to a windfarm I can understand but 300 'submissions' on a solar farm from a community of 250 has a whiff of gombeenism from it.

http://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2024/0419/1444601-solar-farm/

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122040959#Comment_122040959

There's an old joke (Robin Williams?)

Why did New York get all the lawyers, and New Jersey all the toxic waste sites?

New Jersey got first pick.

Entitled people shouldn't be supported by the rest of society. Nimbyism must have a cost. Sort of like a social score for a district. There's worse things to have locally like prisons, halting sites, refugee accommodation, incinerators, when you could have agreed to solar / wind / pylons when you had a chance.

Apogee

Both positive and negative news on interconnector front. Greenlink cable pull at Baginbun with project "on track to be commissioned by the end of 2024."

https://www.independent.ie/regionals/wexford/new-ross-news/500m-greenlink-energy-project-hits-water-at-co-wexford-beach/a1024773976.html

In UK, Ofgem signals its intention to reject both the Maresconnect GB-IRL and Liric GB-NI interconnector projects from the third application window for the cap and floor regime.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/interconnector-projects-rejected-third-cap-and-floor-window-ofgem/

Tara Mines owners secures planning permission for 18MW solar farm to supply future mine operations - one of the larger non-grid solar farms to date
https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/tara-mines-owner-boliden-gets-green-light-for-20m-solar-energy-plans/a624045637.html

Codling will use now use a smaller number of larger turbines offshore - from ~100 x 250M to 60-75 x ~300M

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/0405/1441625-codling-park-plans/

Finally, a nice summary of current battery capacity across ROI/NI from Irish Energy Bot

https://twitter.com/IrishEnergyBot/status/1784508282381451339