Energy infrastructure

josip

Australia and Singapore have big plans.

https://newatlas.com/energy/sun-cable-australia-singapore-solar-undersea-powerlink/

Is there much difference between their cable that will transfer the power and an interconnector from Ireland ? They'll both still have to be HVDC?

3.2GW is a lot more than our 700MW Celtic Interconnector. Is there a practical limit on subsea interconnector capacities?

dubhthach

At the moment Data Centers are a convenient Bogeyman. I notice for example there's next to no discussion about how the ESB broke their contract and decided they weren't gonna build two gas peakers in Dublin area. They had to pay €2m in termination fees to Eirgrid. These would have come online in the next 18 months.

Back in 2019 the Irish Times was talking about how ESB were gonna put in at least 450MW of extra generation and 136MW of Battery storage in Dublin area alone by 2023.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/esb-could-spend-700m-on-plan-to-meet-surging-electricity-demand-1.3849983

Of course one could argue that the close to €1.3billion in dividend payments from ESB to the exchequer over the last 10 years could have been better spend reinforcing the system. But I do wonder is there not a role of 'Capacity planner' within relevant state agencies when it comes to planning the 1,3,5,10 year power needs and how they will be met.

dubhthach

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958060#Comment_117958060

Cost mainly I would imagine, the North Sea Link between Norway and UK is rated at 1.4GW and is 730km long (longest undersea HVDC int he world), construction finished during the summer and it's expected to go operation in next 4-8weeks. The cost of project was around €2billion, the Ireland France interconnector is estimated to cost around €1billion (mostly paid for by EU and French) and is ~580km long with 700MW capacity.

Ye do wonder given that construction hasn't started how easily it would be to uprate this, I'm assuming the biggest issue is the cable might already be under manufacture, though I don't think they've gotten as far as selecting vendors etc.

Rigor Mortis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117957504#Comment_117957504

Appliances sold in Europe since the 90s are capable of taking up to 20% hydrogen. Same with boilers.

Rigor Mortis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958011#Comment_117958011

Eirgrid has plenty of numbers on this. Also the 25% is at the lower end of their predictions. Data is the single biggest issue to be addressed in our energy supply to 2030.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958294#Comment_117958294

I'm still not convince on hydrogen to be honest. Even this 20% has to be considered in light of the fact that it refers to volume. Methane has 3 times the energy density by volume of hydrogen so you're really only talking about a 7% reduction in CO2 for the same amount of energy consumed. This just isn't enough in my mind to justify big government spending on hydrogen. The future, to me, seems obvious and involves electrifying the entire energy system (including industry, transport and domestic heating/cooking) while simultaneously lowering the average CO2 produced per KWh of electricity generated by massively expanding wind and solar generation.

It takes a lot of investment to produce hydrogen cleanly and has yet to be done at scale anywhere in the world and it seems to me the gain is too little, especially as we're moving towards less and less domestic heating and cooking being provided by natural gas. I believe a much more dramatic reduction in CO2 output can be achieved by progress in electrifying the energy system and expanding renewable electricity production (which you would need to do anyway if you want to produce hydrogen at scale).

By the way, here is an excellent and balanced (but very long) overview of the state of hydrogen energy at the moment - https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-does-the-world-need-hydrogen-to-solve-climate-change - it's probably a bit more optimistic on hydrogen's future than I am.

Energia starting surveys off the coast for up 1.6GW of turbines

https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2021/0929/1249727-licences-granted-to-energia-for-offshore-wind-surveys/

Rigor Mortis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117959100#Comment_117959100

In fairness, its only surveys. It's a long way from Foreshore Licence to making an application. Those Waterford wind farms will do well to be built before 2030. That still, the locals are going mad on FB groups.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117959317#Comment_117959317

What are they going mad about? They'll be at least 10km offshore.

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958416#Comment_117958416

Hydrogen is definitely still a long way off from being a large commercial industry. Though it has a lot of promise for the future. It will be an essential feedstock for some industrial processes as well as a way of doing long-term grid energy storage. It is the clean energy carrier we will need in the future to complete decarbonisation. You're dead right that electrifying everything possible should be the goal as that reduces the amount of energy lost through state conversions, which will keep prices low.

Using Hydrogen in the current natural gas network has only one benefit in my opinion. It can be used as a bridging step for the hydrogen industry. They have a serious chicken and egg problem right now. It is a non-existant / small industry and we need it to be huge in future. There aren't that many consumers of hydrogen so there are few producers. As a result there's little innovation on the production side to drive down costs. Allowing hydrogen producers to produce and sell hydrogen into the national gas network gives them a starting off market to build up their industry.

The other aspect of hydrogen production that isn't true now but should be in the future is the cost of the electricity used to produce the hydrogen. The predictions for 2035-2050 is that we'll have more intermittent renewables on our grid producing excess wind and solar electricity at particular times of the day. Currently we just turn off wind farms to prevent us from overloading the grid. We're effectively wasting potential marginal cost electricity because we can't use it. Through co-locating renewables and hydrogen production and the right market structures from EirGrid we could create a different situation. Instead of EirGrid ordering that wind farm operators to turn off their wind farms that the wind farm operators can sell their excess electricity below wholesale prices to hydrogen producers. That way the production of hydrogen is only done using very low cost electricity. We will need a large number of hours per day of this excess electricity though to create a viable investment product because hydrogen production facilities have high capex costs – so you want to run the asset for as many hours as possible a day to recover the investment in a reasonable time period.

The goal for 2030 is 70% renewables. We don't need hydrogen to do that. We should be using the next decade to ensure the nascent hydrogen industry is growing up to be ready for the mid 2030s.

josip

Great analysis. Especially the consideration you've given to the business case for someone investing in a hydrogen production facility.

Isn't that situation exactly the same as building a nuclear power plant whereby an (exorbitant) spot price is agreed before construction begins?

In the case of a hydrogen facility, won't the investors want to contract for X MW at a certain price daily/weekly. And could we end up in a situation that in order to fulfil the contractual obligations, a gas peaker has to be fired up during calm periods to generate electricity at a loss for the hydrogen producers?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958011#Comment_117958011

The existing ones use 1Mw a day out if 5Mw.

interesting grid here showing total usage and percentage that is renewable (mostly wind)

https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all

Today wind was high, nearly a record. Must have been 70-80% at one time.

Markcheese

I'd largely agree with specialbyte that a large scale hydrogen industry is probably a long way off , theres a lot of low hanging fruit out there yet ...

we've been talking about introducing smart metering for 15 years or so - it's slowly happening now (although there is a question about how "smart" the meters being installed actually are) , that could and should shift patterns of demand significantly

The coming influx of Battery electric vehicles and their ability to put stored power back to grid could also be a big deal..

And it'd be no bad thing to incentivise and triall hydrogen production - to start with it wouldn't need to be stored just introduced to the gas grid ...

Cookiemunster

Can someone explain to me the idea of BEVs returning electricity to the grid? I mean I understand the technology and how it would works, but not the why. If you use your car regularly then you need the charge in the car, not in the national grid.

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962580#Comment_117962580

Just say your car has a 50kwh battery ... But you know you're not going to use all 50 kw tomorrow ... But the grid has loads of cheap power now ... So you set your management system to store the cheap electricity ... And you're going to make that electricity available to the grid tomorrow (if it needs it) - you could be plugged in at work - or the cars on your drive or whatever - you might set the system so your car battery doesn't go below 15kwh , so you can get home - do a school run or just have some in reserve ,

For the grid or whoever it'd be a nightmare to manage each individual their preferences and battery and the times their car is plugged in ,

But as a large group people can be pretty predictable ,

A friend of my sister's in the uk installed a Tesla power wall , which is purely devoted to grid stabilization, he reckons he makes money off it - (effectively buy electricity low- sell high - ) And if you've already bought a whacking great battery in your car , then it could be a nice perk to get paid to store excess power for a day or 2 -

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962580#Comment_117962580

It's so the EV fleet acts as a grid scale battery. Good luck finding EV owners dumb enough to allow their expensive batteries to be wrecked with the cycling, but I am sure that's nothing a bit of legislation can't overcome.

It's really a well thought out idea: You drive your EV to work and plug it in and find you have a flat battery when it's time to drive home. Of course most people probably won't have the facilities to plug their car in when at work, so they will be spared, but that thought does put question marks on the idea, as they will be wanting juice going into their batteries at the cheap after 00:00 rate in the very limited time before driving off the following morning, not having juice taken from it.

liamog

It's really a well thought out idea: You drive your EV to work and plug it in and find you have a flat battery when it's time to drive home. Of course most people probably won't have the facilities to plug their car in when at work, so they will be spared, but that thought does put question marks on the idea, as they will be wanting juice going into their batteries at the cheap after 00:00 rate in the very limited time before driving off the following morning, not having juice taken from it.

The systems trialled don't work this way. User's set a minimum charge level and a time for the car to be ready. Whilst the car is plugged in, the charger will either charge the car or export the energy back to the grid. User's are also given the ability to override the regular scheduled charges and switch to a charge only mode.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962790#Comment_117962790

So basically the idea is a no-go, as I thought. Some interesting talk in another thread of taxing EV charging/mileage with an Irish company already working on software to do it. I doubt a company would be spending money on such a thing unless Revenue had asked them to.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962867#Comment_117962867

Private companies often spend their own money on potential opportunities without having a state sponsor. I'd be very surprised if they all don't at some stage or other.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117958197#Comment_117958197

I thought ESB weren’t allowed build anymore plants in Ireland due to EU competition laws.

bk

I'd agree that it is unlikely EV's will actually act as grid storage. However even without that they can still be very helpful.

An EV connected to a smart charger could decide to only charge when electricity prices are at their lowest (usually when the wind is blowing hardest and demand is at it's lowest/overnight). They would then stop charging when prices increase (high demand, low wind). This helps smooth out the peaks and troughs in demand. It helps make greater use of Wind power, improving it's cost to run and not leaving reneable energy go to waste, while helping to take strain off the grid during high demand times.

And of course, every EV is one less petrol/Diesel car on the road. When we talk about our carbon emissions, we are talking about our total energy consumption and not just electricity. Energy consumption includes oil for transportation and gas/oil for heating. Moving a car from oil to low carbon electricity is very much a net win.

CreadanLady

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117962691#Comment_117962691

Yeah, and probably effectively write off your car in half its usual lifetime. All that regular charging and discharging is going to murder the battery eventually, they have a short enough usable life as it is. Whatever money he thinks he is making off this he is probably losing out on again and more with it by way of the invisible wear and tear on the battery and its control system.

A car on the second hand market that is known to be used a lot as part of a grid stabilisation scheme is probably going to have its value halved versus the same car not used like this. And the Tesla power wall probably cost a bomb too, which would take a long time to pay back.

Besides, teslas will be worth next to nothing on the second hand market after a few years because they cannot be repaired by anyone other than Tesla at their astronmical fees and Tesla won't entertain the idea of providing parts or technical data to independent garages. Once they are out of warranty, they are an extremely risky buy and will be more or less worthless. The depreciation will be staggering on them.

I cannot see it all being worthwhile.

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117963772#Comment_117963772

There's a bit of truth in that , although there's apparently stacks of capability on most evs batteries in the "middle range " say 40 % to 80 %, it'll depend wether it's worth your while financially ... my sister's friend in England with the powerwall reckons it is ,(under their system ) and that's the only reason he bought the power wall ...

For a car that everyone reckons is crap and unfixable - used Tesla's seem to holding their value quite well , and that's before garages get the hang of / tools for fixing them .. it's an issue but there'll be guys fixing them ...

gjim

It (V2G - vehicle to grid) is available in the uk - https://www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/vehicle-grid - Nissan makes them.

It doesn't destroy batteries - otherwise you wouldn't have these cars offered under lease - the V2G breakthrough was the development of technology which carefully controls behaviour to ensure battery health. Nissan's system will only feed electricity back into the grid when the battery has 70% or more charge.

It's a tantalising idea given the huge numbers - if the entire vehicle fleet in Ireland were EVs then the 2.7m vehicles would contain between 130 and 200 GWh of battery capacity.

But regardless of V2G, this represents a great resource for helping to balance the load on the grid. What's (stupidly in my opinion) called V1G is when you're on a plan where electricity is priced variably (based on wholesale prices plus a margin) and the charger intelligently optimises to ensure lowest cost - which is when demand is lowest - helping balance the grid.

The problem with V1G is that once your vehicle's battery is near 100%, then there is no scope for contributing to balancing grid load, while V2G allows a vehicle's battery to continue to contribute to demand smoothing.

I argued for the tech earlier on this thread but I'm less excited about it now because of market developments: there has been huge falls in grid-scale battery storage costs. At the moment it's cheaper to provide demand following electricity with grid-scale batteries than with Gas peaker plants building from new. And that was before natural gas prices almost tripled. And the trajectory of cheaper and cheaper grid-scale batteries is continuing. Because of the incredible falls in cost, I think using grid-scale batteries will dominate in the near future rather than V2G because they can be and are being deployed right now while V2G can only contribute: once BEVs make up a significant share of the vehicle fleet and when truly smart-meters are installed everywhere and the regulatory environment is in place to support variable price plans for consumers.

gjim

I wish you could edit quotes.

bk: "And of course, every EV is one less petrol/Diesel car on the road."

I think the focus on electricity generation means you can easily lose sight of the gains coming our way from the switch from ICE vehicles to EVs. Globally transport is responsible for about a quarter of CO2 emissions. The emissions savings from a single vehicle switching from petrol/diesel to EV is much greater than you'd think because the best internal combustion engine can only achieve about 40% efficiency while even the cheapest EV is 90% or more efficient.

So even if all the electricity is generated by fossil fuels (natural gas), the switch would half CO2 emitted compared to running an ICE. As renewables contribute more and more to the generation mix, the benefits grow and grow.

CreadanLady

EV might be990% efficient, but that is 90% efficientcy on the electricity it draws in while charging. That electricity also has it's own efficiency trail back to the generating source. The vast majority of electrcity generation has an efficiency hardly much more than 40% either. The most modern combined cycle gas plants might be touching around the 50% mark at optimal conditions. And there isn't much way around that, it is just a feature of the thermodynamic principles that make these plants work.

And on the Teslas, Tesla want to run a totally closed shop. They are selling a premium status symbol product marketed at the more wealthy segment of society. They are never going to allow independent garages access to the parts and technical facilities required to service and repair the vehicles - because the ideal Tesla customers will warranty repairs only and even if there is non warranty work, they will be well able to afford the fees of the annointed repair services. End of warranty is end of life as far as Tesla are concerned.

Tesla are complete charlatans (moreso than most car manufacturers). They are only interested in selling new vehicles for profit, they don't give a toss that a 5 year old car which might technically be repairable and serviceable for many more years, goes to the crusher because a part cannot be got for it. An approach that totally wipes out much of the environmental gain of it being an EV. That a 5 year old car goes to the crusher is not an issue for them because their car is not really intended to have a life as a second or third hand car - they do not care about that. A typical Tesla customer is not going to be in the used car market - they are going to be a wealthy elite who purchases a new tesla because it is a new tesla, they are not restricted by the cost of a new car.

Sure Tesla can even shut the car down remotely or disable features if they detect that someone has interfered with the car or done work on it without their authorisation, and refuse to re-activate it unless what is essentially a ransom is paid to them.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117963620#Comment_117963620

We don’t change retail prices like that at the retail level.

gjim

"EV might be990% efficient, but that is 90% efficientcy on the electricity it draws in while charging. That electricity also has it's own efficiency trail back to the generating source. The vast majority of electrcity generation has an efficiency hardly much more than 40% either. The most modern combined cycle gas plants might be touching around the 50% mark at optimal conditions. And there isn't much way around that, it is just a feature of the thermodynamic principles that make these plants work."

Your CCGT efficiency number is wrong. The best achieve efficiencies of around 65%, with about 60% the average for a new plant during average operations. Furthermore to produce X joules of energy by burning petrol or diesel produces between 30 and 50% more CO2 than burning NG to produce the same amount of energy (before losses).

And the vast majority of ICE vehicles aren't even 40% efficient - that the best new modern diesel engine. The average value was about 20% 10 years ago - it's closer to 30% these days.

But anyway there's an easier way to look at it. Irish electricity emissions intensity in 2020 was 254 gCO2/kWh consumed and the average EV does about 6km/KWh. The average ICE car releases 120g per km - so on average switching to an EV will reduce emissions by about two thirds right now in Ireland. And benefits will only get better as more and more renewables get deployed on the grid.

bk

“We don’t change retail prices like that at the retail level.”

Sure not at the moment, but no reason why we can’t do in future as Smart Meters are rolled out to everyone (there has only been a limited rollout so far).

While not quiet the same, those with Smart meters can already get a special 5c per kWh time of use rate for 2 hours overnight, in addition to the more usual night rate, very handy for EV users.

Markcheese

I'd love to see a smart meter with a separate portable screen , so it'll have a big green light on it when there's cheap electricity in the system , and several different tariffs - something to freak out dad's everywhere when the red light comes on ( don't turn on the dishwasher now , get out of that shower ect. )