Energy infrastructure

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122138702#Comment_122138702

A liberal minister against a Renewable Project.

The Liberals are bought by the mining and resources sector, surely you know that?

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122138581#Comment_122138581

I agree that the issue is not with the Solar Panels/Farms themselves, but how to get that energy being generated from a desert to a developed region hundreds if not thousands of km's away.

Its really the last blocker to the issue. If or when that can be solved, it will unleash a tidal wave of cheap renewable energy.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122138655#Comment_122138655

FFS. There is no solar at night, which together with no wind amounts to literally dunkelflaute conditions for more than half of every single day.

Energy demand is also the lowest at night. Also, did you every hear of a thing called a 'Battery'?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122141182#Comment_122141182

You are a bit out of touch there. The sun cable project was originally a proposal put forward by Andrew forrest, a mining magnate who created Fortescue mining, who aims to de-carbonise the companies operations.

Mining giant Fortescue Metals Group’s Chichester Hub iron ore operations
are now being powered by solar energy, following the completion of the
60 MW Chichester Hub Solar Farm in the northern part of Western
Australia.

Woodside Petroleum.

Woodside submits plans for a million solar panels near Karratha

Woodside is seeking approval from the WA Environmental Protection Authority to install up to one million solar panels and a grid-scale battery near the Maitland Industrial Estate 15 kilometres ...

BHP is the world's largest mining company.

Two new solar farms and battery to help power mines at BHP's Nickel West

Rio Tinto is the second largest.

Rio Tinto pumps $2b to power Pilbara with clean energy

Rio Tinto will spend about $2 billion ($US1.5 billion) on wind and solar energy
in the Pilbara to slash its use of gas, marking the miner's first step
towards green steel that could eventually lead to the massive processing
facilities in WA's north being powered by renewable energy.

I see a few mining company sized holes in your assertion.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122141591#Comment_122141591

And none of them dismiss my claim that the Liberal party are in the pockets of the mining and resources companies.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122141214#Comment_122141214

Lowest at night now. You seem to have missed the master plan consisting of replacing all ICE with EV's - which are typically charged at night - and hydrocarbon based home heating with heat pumps, which also will be run at night.

And the thing that sparked this off was my posting about how French electrical demand at midnight was about 55 GWh, which was 15 GWh higher than at 10am the following morning.

We are headed for a likely scenario where there is no drop in demand at nigh at all.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2339237-too-many-electric-cars-charging-at-night-may-overload-electrical-grid/

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142195#Comment_122142195

This is a non issue. EVs charge at night because right now the generators have surplus at night and have priced accordingly. When that situation changes, pricing will change. EVs are a movable load, and that's a major positive for them. EVs can also be commanded to charge at different rates, and in future can coordinate with local grid operators to balance demand from charging.. the world changes, the grid adapts to change*

Domestic heating demand in winter peaks from 1800 to around 2300, with smaller demand from 0600 to 0800, regardless of fuel type. Overnight is lower uaage. If you're heating your home to 23 degrees at 3am, you're burning money and screwing with your sleep quality too...

__

*offer excludes Texas.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142452#Comment_122142452

You charge your EV at night because you drive to work during the day, is a pattern that will persist. It's not just because it's cheaper, it's the down time for all EV's used for commuting or commercially by companies.

Heat pumps need to be run near continuously in winter, you can't just turn them on and off for brief periods you find most convenient.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122138655#Comment_122138655

Since you posted that the cost of utility scale solar here has fallen 37% to €0.95 Billion per GW

KrisW1001

Heat pumps don't turn completely off often, but they can run at different rates: they are not running at maximum overnight, because heating load does not peak overnight. You also seem to neglect that battery plus solar plus heat pump is the most common installation type.

EV charging can happen during the day at employer premises, as well as any time between 1900 and 0700. One hour of 7kW domestic charging is sufficient for 40-50 km of range.. The average commute in Ireland is below 15 km. The concern about charging peaks is largely down to utilities providing heavy discounts for short periods every night. They do this because it helps the grid right now. Once that stops being useful, they'll re-price to spread demand.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142648#Comment_122142648

Looks like all that slave labour and maltreatment of Uighurs is really paying off. The Norwegians must be having nostalgic thoughts of the profitability of all the Irish slaves they traded in. Amazing cost reduction between Jan and Feb. They must have bought better whips.

It would take ten years to construct

Ha, Ha; thanks, I enjoyed the laugh. That's longer than something I can't mention, which only took eight years.

https://esb.ie/media-centre-news/press-releases/article/2024/01/09/contract-awarded-for-first-esb-utility-scale-solar-farm-project-in-ireland

The construction phase of the €13m project is scheduled to commence in
early 2024 and once complete, the solar farm will generate 8.5MW of
clean electricity which will provide enough capacity to power over 2,000
homes.

1000/8.5*13=€1.53 billion

gjim

And the thing that sparked this off was my posting about how French electrical demand at midnight was about 55 GWh, which was 15 GWh higher than at 10am the following morning.

lol - here you are pontificating about energy policy and you still don't understand or know the difference between power and energy. 🙄

You know that 55GWh is a lot over 10 minutes right? But not a lot over 10 hours? And over a year could be delivered by a single 15MW wind turbine?

After years of spouting energy policy, you don't know the difference between power and energy even though it's the same as the difference between speed and distance or flow-rates and volume, etc. It's like listening to a self-professed car expert not know the difference between range and top-speed and confuse 500km distance with 500km/hour top speed. The little "h" at the end of GWh and the "per hour" at the end of "km per hour" are actually significant.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142973#Comment_122142973

Malapropism/typo; I know the difference. Enjoy your feeling of superiority.

gjim

Except you make the typo repeatedly and have done in separate posts. Typos are accidents - so should happen randomly.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142605#Comment_122142605

Heat pumps need to be run near continuously in winter, you can't just turn them on and off for brief periods you find most convenient.

As someone in an A2-rated home with a HP and MVHR, this is nonsense.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122142937#Comment_122142937

Looks like all that slave labour and maltreatment of Uighurs is really paying off. The Norwegians must be having nostalgic thoughts of the profitability of all the Irish slaves they traded in. Amazing cost reduction between Jan and Feb. They must have bought better whips.

So, what is your point here.

Renewables in Ireland are shite.

OK, whatever its your opinion, entitled to it, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

You want what? Nuclear? More fossil fuel?

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122143489#Comment_122143489

The French interconnector via Cork will be backing up all this Greenwash via Nuclear etc. alot of the time. Not to mention what currently is imported via existing UK interconnectors

MightyMunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122143865#Comment_122143865

Isn't it great 👍

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122143865#Comment_122143865

As has been said many times before its built capacity so not using it would be just stupid.

But the French are investing heavily in renewables (far outstripping it's investment in new nuclear into the foreseeable future) so it won't all be nuclear.

markodaly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122143865#Comment_122143865

Isnt that a good thing?

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122146156#Comment_122146156

It sure is, not only will we benefit from their Nuclear power, but also their large and quickly increasing renewables, an astonishing 3.3GW of Solar added last year alone and 1.9GW of wind power!

But also more importantly it plugs us into the entire mainland Continental European grid, the largest grid in the world. So not only would we benefiting from supply from France, but also the rest of Europe, so Spain, Germany, etc. too.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122146281#Comment_122146281

Impressive but in the 13 months from 1/23 to 2/24 it looks like Ireland added 700-800MW of utility-scale solar?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solar-gets-map-despite-wet-windy-summer-ireland-grid-constraints-fei/

which would be per-capita much higher. Unless I've misinterpreted some of the numbers?

I would assume that French solar infrastructure has a higher capacity factor than Ireland though.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122143865#Comment_122143865

No one exports nuclear power. It's generally not dispatchable.

Renewables and fossil are what get exported.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122146397#Comment_122146397

Your numbers sound about right to me. Ireland is ahead of the curve in a European context in terms of adoption of modern (factory produced) generation technologies. Besides being one of the top users of on-shore wind, solar and battery storage deployment has exploded recently. Solar PV capacity reached 1GW back in Feb (split 60/40 between grid scale and rooftop) and storage capacity reached the same 1GW milestone a month later (split 75/25 between battery and pumped storage - i.e. Turlough Hill). Battery storage has basically gone from zero to over 700MW in little over 2 years. Solar has trebled over the last 2 years. The 2018 goal was 1GW of solar by 2030 - and we've reached that goal more than 5 years early - which demonstrates the unstoppable momentum solar PV globally.

Actually what is currently happening globally - exploding solar PV and battery growth - is making me consider whether wind is merely an interim technology and that eventually the solar PV/grid battery combo will be replace everthing. Even in the US, solar PV and batteries (often in combination) are now making up more than 75% of all electricity investment. All this has happened in about 2 or 3 years. The speed of the transformation of the entire electricity energy sector is breathtaking. Wikipedia articles written as little as a year or two ago are so completely out-of-date, it's hard to keep up.

CatInABox

Yes, all the while some people are still trotting out the line that China isn't doing enough, etc. The world is upside down from where it was just 3 or 4 years ago.

The only thing that could conceivably slow solar now is a round of international protectionism, i.e. the EU and US saying no to incredibly cheap Chinese solar and putting massive tariffs on it.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152041#Comment_122152041

In some parts of the world wind will still be worth having, we are in one of those places. It drastically reduces the amount of storage we'd need.

Globally the future is solar + storage. We can use wind while the rest of the world figures out storage. Storing hydrogen and hydrogen compounds in old gas wells is the technology to beat, in the sense that it allows months or even years of grid scale storage by re-using a lot of existing infrastructure.

For solar the main costs aren't the panels. Labour, land, fittings and supports. And even then the cells are only a small part of the cost, weight, volume and materials used in the panels. Gluing a roll of flexible thin film solar cells to a flat surface would only cost a fraction of what it costs now to deploy solar. Especially if done to roofing panels in the factory. (must lookup the solar roadmap again)

Geothermal would be nice if someone can figure out a cheaper way to drill deep holes.

KrisW1001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152600#Comment_122152600

That map shows why sceptics in Ireland should stop parroting opinions about wind power that they've heard from American media. The USA has a low wind climate; we are the opposite. It will work for us, and work very well.

Battery storage is looking more promising now that we're realising that Lithium chemistries aren't necessary for fixed storage applications, where weight and size are only minor concerns. Iron-air has huge potential for grid scale storage. It needs space, but the materials are abundant, cheap to use l, and it's entirely safe in use.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152159#Comment_122152159

Since China got into big time solar in 2006 the cost drops 40% each time global production doubles.

From International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic (ITRPV) 15th edition, March 2024 key findings & selected report presentation This is the price per Watt for a complete module/panel. So limited by the costs of glass, aluminium, copper etc. Future steel frames and overlapping cells will reduce demand for aluminium and copper/silver. Stronger glass means thinner glass.

Silicon usage should drop 22% from 1.8g/W to 1.4g/W so there's a 22% reduction there.

Tandem cells could increase efficiency from 21% to 30% in the next decade. That's 42% more power per m2. It might make sense to retro fit some solar farms then.

Bifacial panels on east-west ground mounts take next to no room. Technically you could fit half a mile of 3cm wide panels in a 25m2 allowance and it wouldn't even be the most expensive fencing option out there.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122152666#Comment_122152666

Really?? - wind has performed pretty poorly here the last few weeks while current battery tech comes nowhere near the dispatchable scale needed for a modern grid

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155564#Comment_122155564

I have no idea why you keep insisting that batteries are being used for long term grid scale storage.

Please take the time to read the operational constraints

Batteries can be used for at least the first SIX stages of providing reserve power.

0 - 5 seconds - 15 seconds - 90 seconds - 5 minutes - 20 minutes - 1 hour - 3 hours - 8 hours - 16 hours.

Note : The actual response time from batteries has been as low as 0.18 seconds vs the 0.3 seconds it takes to blink an eye, though synchronous compensators respond faster still.