Coal...

'The Times' carried an article on Saturday headed "Britain heads for first day of power without old king coal". It starts 'Britain was on course last night to generate electricity for a whole day without burning coal for the first time since the Victorian era".

There's a graph showing that about 40% of electricity came from coal in 2013 and that this dropped to less than 10% last year. There are only 8 coal burning generating plants left, their average age is over 50 years, and they are all scheduled to close by 2025.

Coal has been replaced by Gas and Renewables.

In one way this is quite sad. The Industrial Revolution is British, and it wouldn't have happened without coal and steam. Coal may be dirty and polluting but we owe it a lot. Perhaps this is a good time to celebrate the men who mined it, and those who used it to create the modern world.

Dave

They can only claim this because some of the big old coal fired stations like Drax are using wood pellets to suplement the coal. Possibly they just used wood for the "coal-less" day. They claim this to be carbon neutral despite the fact that the wood pellet fuel is largely imported!

Sad indeed that Mrs T. killed off the coal mines. We are sitting on millions of tons of the stuff but it didn't suit the government of the day to develop it. If someone  had been less short sighted I am sure we could have found a way to use coal cleanly.

Coal is showing at about 3.4% at the moment *** National Grid Status ***

John

Edit: Spelling

Edited By Journeyman on 26/04/2017 18:24:19

Edited By John Rudd on 26/04/2017 18:26:02

What's John missed? Nothing, I feel. There's always going to be some cost. The footnote for Nuclear on the National Grid Status website says that the cost of fuel is 'insignificant'; true, but only if you ignore the cost of decommissioning. Those accountants are creative chaps.

Dave

To me it's more interesting that Solar peaks at around 7% of demand and wind is currently delivering 6.3% - with wind speeds mostly only around 10mph at the moment.

Neil

While the article was factual, we could have generated/imported all the energy required using the other technologies, on several other days (and likely can do for the rest of the summer months - all assuming no major breakdowns elsewhere in the electricity generation supply sector) without using any coal fired stations.

There were reasons why coal plants were needed to run in the past (synchronied start up in the case of a huge blackout) and just to keep some capacity running just in case.... but things are changing.

If you look at the grid status history, there are times when wind produces practically nothing, and if there is no wind across the country, more windmills won't help. Of course at night solar produces nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see a lot more carbon free, but until we have a method of bulk energy storage the only sensible answer is nuclear. SWMBO will not be impressed if I have to say 'sorry love we can't run the washing machine till the wind picks up'. Pumped storage like Llanberis simply doesn't store enough. It can produce 288 MW for 5 hours. Fiddlers Ferry can do 2000 MW indefinately.

It's 288MW per unit, with six units, Circa 1728MW for around five hours or 9GWh.

Total pumped storage capability in the entire UK (Dinorwig, Ffestiniog, Cruachan & Foyers) is around 27GWh, with a maximum output of 2.7GW, or less than 10% of demand at this precise moment (just gone midnight with 27.5GW of demand).

Total supply per annum is around 350TWh and decreasing year on year since about 2008 ish.

Total demand per day is around 800GWh at the moment

But:

Most of the coal generation built pre 1970 has gone

All the oil fired generation has gone

All of the Magnox nuclear generation has gone

The AGR nuclear generation will be gone in the period 2023-2030

Gas generation built in the early 1990's has gone or is coming to the end of its viable life.

To attempt to decarbonise and power a modern economy on wind turbines and solar panels is pure madness, as is the idea of tidal barrages, or even dozens of them. Pumped storage would require huge quantities of concrete and the loss of vast areas of upland.

Battery storage is simply not scaleable. For instance one weeks worth of storage for the UK in mid winter is around 7TWh, or one billion Tesla lithium battery powerwalls (rated at 7kWh) or around 40 per household, replaced once every five years or so.

The only viable engineering solution for the UK, with very limited geography for very large scale hydro is at least 90GW of nuclear by 2040 and ultimately around twice that to come even close to full decarbonisation for electricity and space heating. If you factor in road and rail transport with liquid fuel synthesis for air transport fuels and numeorus industrial processes then our entire energy requirements will be in excess of that,  maybe around 250GW 24/7/365 or around 2PWh (2 x 10^15Wh) per annum. To put that inperspective that is around 80 sites the scale of Hinkley Point C.

To rely on market forces to meet our future energy requirements is proving nearly impossible. Private capital needs huge carrots to commit to projects lasting over half a century, with another few centuries of long term waste storage. Some countries like Finland possibly understand this. Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository

To get someone in power to actually understand the issues is impossible. To actually get someone literate in science and engineering into government would be a start. To get long term planning and commitment (20, 50, 100, 500 years) that truly extends beyond the next opinion poll would be even better.

Edited By Martin 100 on 27/04/2017 00:36:55

If you look at Britain from an arms length perspective all we ever do is make do and muddle along, lurching from one policy wonk to the next, never looking further ahead than the political dogma of that decade

Unless there's a world war, then we get organised, otherwise forget about it

C'est la Grande Bretagne

The strategic significance of something is irrelevant, whether it's a massive rail network covering every corner of the country or an amazing post office network on every street corner or anything else, it gets trashed if that's the policy

It doesn't NEED to make sense, it's policy

British Universities have never done a degree in common bluddy sense

Edited By Ady1 on 27/04/2017 01:24:32

The Government could have funded Hinkley with 0.5% Government money

Instead they've reached some sort of secretive PFI type deal with the private sector via EDF and China and nobody is telling us diddly about the payback percentage on this one

It doesn't need to make sense, it's policy

It's not just Britain you know. There's a word for this ..... Oh yeah, I know .... politics.

+1 for Duncan & Martin's comments re nuclear.

...but I'd also like to see the UK continuing to fund research into fusion power. It's still some way off but progress is still being made.

My daughter lives a short walk from the Bristol channel, with one of the highest tidal ranges in the world.
Clean and free power.
The power station in sight of her house burns coal/biomass.
The UK gov was taken to court over excess emisions from Aberthaw.

It's not rocket science is it? Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to put some turbines in the tidal flow?

There are several sites where many houses in a town or village have been fitted with solar panels, connected to a central large battery, at no cost to the residents, in a trial of the system. One such is at Maltby, near Rotherham, I've seen it. For most houses, power consumption is low, like lights, fridge, tv... Only washing machines, immersion heaters and cookers have high consumption. So, we may be moving to a reduced dependence on the National Grid in favour of local Microgrids, producing low-cost power most of the day. And if we have to use the washer only at night, is this not worth considering? After all, people who are entirely off-grid manage quite well, I've interviewed a few.

Geoff

Between 2011 and 2015, Germany opened 10.7 GW of new coal burning power stations, that's 5 off Fiddlers Ferries. China is opening one new coal powered power station a week. We've only got 9 left, and one of those is burning wood. What difference does it make if we close ours? I want more than a warm glow of satisfaction to keep me warm in winter

The greenies are doing their best to stop fracking for gas, and despite Neil's protestations on another site, I bet they regurgitate all the old discredited arguments against nuclear when the time comes. The government paid for the building of the AGR stations, which have been a resounding success, they should just get on and build some more. We own all the drawings, we have a current safety case, we have many years of successful operation experience, just get on with it.

Edited By duncan webster on 27/04/2017 09:37:38

Anybody remember when nuclear power was first introduced ? It was so cheap that it would not be worth sending out the bill. Having lived next to a nuclear station I do not want to do it again, just listening to some of the stories kept me awake. The only real solution is to use less power, but there's no money in that.

Geoff,

Making more electricity than needed is relatively easy for many, but using only that power is far more difficult. Those people off-grid generally have sufficient space for some form of wind energy capture and some are lucky enough to have a micro water turbine. They invariably have energy storage and only turn on the washing machine at opportune times. Winter solar generation is not so good in the UK.

Martin 100 may well be correct that we require 90GW to go to an all electric economy (or sustainable liquid/gaseous fuels from surplus electrical generation) for home (and industry) heating/power and transport fuel. Even EVs (electric vehicles) are currently no more energy efficient than internal combustion engined vehicles - it is only local pollution that is considered (quite rightly so for urban areas). They are only less polluting, from a CO2 emission point of view, if the battery is charged using non-fossil burning generation.

Leaky housing (from an energy perspective) could reduce the home heating requirement in the UK by a huge amount if 24 billion were spent on it - and we would not need to build Hinckley C, let alone pay the high cost of its generation for 35 years (paid by our children and their children) which could be totally avoided. (That basically means we are borrowing the building costs of hinkley C at high cost for future generations - nothing more).

Perhaps huge areas of solar generation, in arid areas closer to the equator, coupled with high voltage worldwide distribution might be a better solution than building more potential disastrously polluting nuclear power stations?

Most cetainly roll on nuclear fusion, but remember there is far more solar energy arriving every second of every day than the whole human population requires....

Electricity consumption in domestic premises is around 30% of our total national electricity demand. In daylight, in summer it can mostly be met by those with suitable roofs. The reality is many live in high density housing or do not have a suitably sized or oriented roof. and the output rarely meet even local demand.

Our domestic electricity requirements are a fraction of our total domestic reqquirements, and a fraction of the UK's annual energy requirements.

The reality is that solar is not low cost for 'everyone else' The feed in tariff for the earliest adopters (2010/11) of solar panels is now £506.70 / MWh That is for all energy 'generated' regardless of local (personal) usage, plus 50% of that produced is deemed exported and reimbursed at £35.70/MWh regardless of any measured export.

So a total cost of £524.55/MWh, a figure massively subidised by all consumers. Indeed if that rate was reflected in the costs to every consumer we would all be having annual electricity bills of around £4000 per annum even for the lowest consumers. These subsidies for existing installations continue for a couple of decades to come. Unsustainable and a massive subsidy for the already rich by those in energy poverty.

In comparison to this £524.55/MWh Hinkley Point C is priced at around £90/MWh and there are wind turbine projects under construction at £160/MWh and more, see CFD Register While the the current wholesale rate over the past day in the UK is around £31/MWh, with short peaks of £158/MWh and £231/MWh, and retailing across the entire year, all 8760 hours of it, to the domestic consumer at around £100-120 MWh.

But going back to the concept of local solar with local storage, If you factor in a 7kWh Tesla powerwall, with its limited lifespan, you do indeed timeshift your solar towards the 5pm / 6pm peak and may have some for next morning, but realistically only in summer. In winter you have 10% of the daily solar generation you have in summer, so a 4kW solar array producing say 3500kWh/annum will only have a daily output of 2.2kWh per day in December. Your daily consumption will always be in excess of what the panel and battery can provide, typically 10kWh or more per day. Five days generation with zero demand will recharge the battery, that will last 16 hours, for that it costs upwards of £500 per annum for a five year life asset.

Offgrid only works if you seriously compromise on modern devices and have a massive excess of roofspace over the average, or have the 'garden space' to accommodate a large (multi kW) wind turbine, or live on a hillside in a very high rainfall area with the possibility of microhydro. it also helps if space heating is wood fired, a possibility in rural areas but increasingly becoming untenable in urban areas, with smokeless woodburner exemptions being retrospectively rescinded for many existing 'compliant' devices in the years ahead. Extremely high levels of insulation with passive solar gain works too, but with a replacement cycles of around 100 years or more for domestic premises we are a long way from that, plus the current build standard for new property is light years away from what is actually required.

The issue is who pays for this solar / renewable electricity? £500/MWh is unsustainable.

The average homeowner would far sooner spend 10-15k on a kitchen or home entertainment or a new car than spend the same on super insulation, triple glazing and heat recovery ventilation.

Local battery storage can timeshift to some extent in summer but is useless in winter and across 26 million homes would cost around 50 billion pounds. for timeshifting around 21 pence worth of electricity per day per household or less than £400 worth across five years worth of the life of the device. A 50 billion pound spend for around 10 billion pounds worth of possible benefit..

The level of storage for the average property requires in the region of 70kWh to cover a week of domestic consumption in winter. Plus generation to meet storage recharging and the current demand. 4kW solar PV does not come close to meeting those requirements, 40kW might, but we'd then need houses with some fifteen times the current roof area. Gains in efficiency from the current 20% would not come close to meeting that shortfall.

On top of that the space heating requirements need to be met in a decarbonised world, On an annual consumption of 10-12000kWh per annum (3 bed semi typical) a demand of 350-400KWh per week would not be unusual in midwinter. At one time the target of 2050 for gas being used in any domestic properties was mooted.

As ever get the facts, do the maths, and then realise the reality. The sooner we stop mucking about with solar panels, wind turbines and batteries for storage the better.

Bravo Martin - It's good to see some concrete numbers and rationale.

Jon

A correction or a more rational cost of electricity generated by solar roof systems.

Agreed, those early adopters are making a reasonable return on their investment. They are not making many megawatt hours of energy and the subsidies were to pay for those very expensive systems back then (£15,000 or more was typical at the time).

Current adopters receive a far lower tarrif for their production. Currently a tad over £40 per megwatt hour (yes, far less than £500!) There are far fewer early adopters, than later ones on lower tariffs. Secondly the FITS now state "up to 20 years", not in excess of two decades.

Consider, too, that around 5% of grid transmission energy is lost. Yes, a simple total loss. Local generation not only saves this transmission loss, but also reduces the need for transmission upgrades - a considerable capital saving.

Note also that the power retailers will be vey satisfied with the pricing arrangements for deemed export. They will be purchasing rather more than the amount they are paying for and will be selling on that extra bit for a healthy profit! I am sure that they would soon change to metered export payments if it was actually costing them money!

With regard to wind tariffs, these producers are paying out millions to install these units and they expect some return for their investment - that is business! Off-shore costs were horrendous but are now reducing rapidly. Without support, the technology would not progress anywhere as quickly a it might.

The 4kW solar limit (actually 3.68kW export limit) is one of the crazy limits. Injecting more than 3.68kW back into the grid is an arbitrary figure to protect the local supply lines everywhere. Fitting 10kW of panels, but only injecting that 3.68kW is not allowed by the regulations. Now outdated and an unnecessary limitation.

I'm afraid martin 100 has expressed a rather backward understanding of the system and perhaps has a very pro nuclear wish - which many do not. The government certainly did not react to the FITS level of payments early enough, but they knew that more adopters were needed to keep the lights on at the time and in the near future.

Renewable generation costs are reducing rapidly. Soon they will be far lower than the guaranteed hinkley cost of elecricity for the subsequent 35 years. And then there will still be the horrendously huge cost of dismantling the power station (and storing the radioactive waste for millennia) and its exhausted fuel rods - all providing there is no disaster before then. They have found defects in both the reactors currently being built to this design, so not a good foreboding....

Edited By not done it yet on 27/04/2017 11:51:45