What if, instead of paying for curtailed renewable power, NESO would use that budget to find the switch to individual heat pumps or heat pump fed district heating, possibly linked to (seasonal) solar or wind based heat storage? That could help absorb excess RES production locally while creating space on electricity grids.
Curtailment of renewable output will quickly rise to monstrous levels unless new markets can be developed for intermittent REe. A good candidate is massive thermal storage, heat reservoirs such as insulated waterproof pits, linked to district heating. Does not even have to be ultra-long duration interseasonal storage, as there is lots of wind output in the heating season. A short term answer that can sustain a fast roll-out is to use REe as available to displace gas heating, but Smart electricity tariffs need sorting. e.g. Low and negative prices at times.
We need to transition quickly from paying generators to curtail output to paying users for taking load in times of surplus. This would encourage the market for storage (including green hydrogen for burning in gas turbine generators in colder seasons), for electric steel smelters, industrial heat batteries where high process temperatures are needed, home storage heating, cheap EV charging, and countless other applications which would dramatically regenerate our industries. From being the highest cost energy market in Europe we could become one of the cheapest. The “curtailment problem” is a huge opportunity in disguise, if we only have the wit to realise it.
Yep with low voltage grid usage often below 30% there is a big opportunity to temporarily lower power prices by re-allocating tariff charges away from when there is too much wind and solar energy. Paying people to take intermittent power for at least a few years would result in investment in demand side equipment like heat pump/ boiler hybrids, electric flow boilers, big hot water tanks, underground thermal storage, leaving the more constant fraction of REe output to produce hydrogen.
This seems like you’ve estimated a future total annual demand and then estimated a future total annual supply using installed capacity multiplied by capacity factor. As long as the nuclear plus hydro plus solar plus wind exceed 95% of total annual demand you determine clean power was achieved. Am I wrong?
That is a very different approach to NESO which looked (albeit for only one year) at each half hour interval and generated the balance. Under this more realistic measure huge investment is needed at rates far exceeding current and historical build rates.
Which measure is “better” probably depends. Personally I believe NESO approach is more realistic of how the market will play out and what the resultant grid emission factor will be.
The difference re: ICE vs EVs was driven home to me by comparing the energy capacity of a sedan with a similar range as mine - with 110kWh vs. about 20 gallons of petrol. The energy embedded in the petrol is about 5x that of the battery.
Granted, the conversion efficiency of the fossil fuel systems powering the grid isn’t that much better, but as the renewable content starts to creep up, so does the cumulative impact of removing all those ICE engines off the road, especially in stop/start traffic, where their efficiency really craters.
The cities and towns seem wholly unprepared re: adding capacity to the grid infrastructure, only adding capacity when it’s absolutely necessary and then at the highest cost possible. See the largest underground switching station ever built just outside Boston, as an example.
In my neck of the woods, conversion to HP still doesn’t pencil out vs. a decent boiler or furnace. The cost of electricity is about 4x that of natural gas, so efficiencies being what they are, one might achieve parity with a HP.
seem to have completely ignored the fact that without viable, high volume long term storage, for which no known technology exists at the required scale, the electricity has to be produced when it is needed.
Your 86% renewables generation capacity will only result in about 73% usable electricity. The incremental value of adding more wind turbines reduces rapidly at renewables penetration levels higher than 50%, such that at around 86% penetration, the incremental capacity factor is less than 10%.
Interesting piece and with current rate of deindustrialisation its clear energy demand is going to be lower than expected. CEGB had a habit of over egging demand forecasts in the 60's and we really over built then although the delayed start of the first AGRs masked the scale of the excess. On this occasion we will now overbuild generation and transmission and no doubt people will say thats future proofing further decarbonisation but its coming at a cost we can ill afford in this country currently. Developers will see the risks here and demand a higher strike price and that won't help lower the cost. What really needs to happen first though is an honest conversation with the public that going green isn't going to save them any money but thats the price of decarbonisation. That may stall further expansion but we have done a huge amount to clean up our power system so take that benefit now and see how things evolve before embarking on full NZ.
Without running any numbers I’d kind of assumed that Ed would hold back on decarbonising heat up to 2030 so as to not jeopardise CP2030, but after 2030 (assuming they are still in power) would push for clean heat 2040
I'm not sure I understand what you say. I don't think holding back is going to help anything - I don't see how the NESO's clean power plan is going to be impacted.
no I don't think so - we need to power as much heat off electricity asap - usually via heat pumps or heat pump supplied district heating - as fast as possible. Even now it will be several times more low carbon than gas heating. For starters every years over 200k new homes are being built with gas boilers!
I totally agree, but more heat pumps now make Ed’s 2030 target harder to achieve while more heat pumps after 2030 don’t. More gas boilers now actually help Ed
It’s not being managed to decarbonise in the best way, it’s being managed to win the election cycles
What if, instead of paying for curtailed renewable power, NESO would use that budget to find the switch to individual heat pumps or heat pump fed district heating, possibly linked to (seasonal) solar or wind based heat storage? That could help absorb excess RES production locally while creating space on electricity grids.
Curtailment of renewable output will quickly rise to monstrous levels unless new markets can be developed for intermittent REe. A good candidate is massive thermal storage, heat reservoirs such as insulated waterproof pits, linked to district heating. Does not even have to be ultra-long duration interseasonal storage, as there is lots of wind output in the heating season. A short term answer that can sustain a fast roll-out is to use REe as available to displace gas heating, but Smart electricity tariffs need sorting. e.g. Low and negative prices at times.
We need to transition quickly from paying generators to curtail output to paying users for taking load in times of surplus. This would encourage the market for storage (including green hydrogen for burning in gas turbine generators in colder seasons), for electric steel smelters, industrial heat batteries where high process temperatures are needed, home storage heating, cheap EV charging, and countless other applications which would dramatically regenerate our industries. From being the highest cost energy market in Europe we could become one of the cheapest. The “curtailment problem” is a huge opportunity in disguise, if we only have the wit to realise it.
Yep with low voltage grid usage often below 30% there is a big opportunity to temporarily lower power prices by re-allocating tariff charges away from when there is too much wind and solar energy. Paying people to take intermittent power for at least a few years would result in investment in demand side equipment like heat pump/ boiler hybrids, electric flow boilers, big hot water tanks, underground thermal storage, leaving the more constant fraction of REe output to produce hydrogen.
This seems like you’ve estimated a future total annual demand and then estimated a future total annual supply using installed capacity multiplied by capacity factor. As long as the nuclear plus hydro plus solar plus wind exceed 95% of total annual demand you determine clean power was achieved. Am I wrong?
That is a very different approach to NESO which looked (albeit for only one year) at each half hour interval and generated the balance. Under this more realistic measure huge investment is needed at rates far exceeding current and historical build rates.
Which measure is “better” probably depends. Personally I believe NESO approach is more realistic of how the market will play out and what the resultant grid emission factor will be.
The difference re: ICE vs EVs was driven home to me by comparing the energy capacity of a sedan with a similar range as mine - with 110kWh vs. about 20 gallons of petrol. The energy embedded in the petrol is about 5x that of the battery.
Granted, the conversion efficiency of the fossil fuel systems powering the grid isn’t that much better, but as the renewable content starts to creep up, so does the cumulative impact of removing all those ICE engines off the road, especially in stop/start traffic, where their efficiency really craters.
The cities and towns seem wholly unprepared re: adding capacity to the grid infrastructure, only adding capacity when it’s absolutely necessary and then at the highest cost possible. See the largest underground switching station ever built just outside Boston, as an example.
In my neck of the woods, conversion to HP still doesn’t pencil out vs. a decent boiler or furnace. The cost of electricity is about 4x that of natural gas, so efficiencies being what they are, one might achieve parity with a HP.
seem to have completely ignored the fact that without viable, high volume long term storage, for which no known technology exists at the required scale, the electricity has to be produced when it is needed.
Your 86% renewables generation capacity will only result in about 73% usable electricity. The incremental value of adding more wind turbines reduces rapidly at renewables penetration levels higher than 50%, such that at around 86% penetration, the incremental capacity factor is less than 10%.
https://johnd12343.substack.com/p/a-simple-chart-that-tells-you-the
There are plenty of possibilities for long term storage, see website 100percentrenewableuk. My figures are for generation output, not capacity.
Interesting piece and with current rate of deindustrialisation its clear energy demand is going to be lower than expected. CEGB had a habit of over egging demand forecasts in the 60's and we really over built then although the delayed start of the first AGRs masked the scale of the excess. On this occasion we will now overbuild generation and transmission and no doubt people will say thats future proofing further decarbonisation but its coming at a cost we can ill afford in this country currently. Developers will see the risks here and demand a higher strike price and that won't help lower the cost. What really needs to happen first though is an honest conversation with the public that going green isn't going to save them any money but thats the price of decarbonisation. That may stall further expansion but we have done a huge amount to clean up our power system so take that benefit now and see how things evolve before embarking on full NZ.
Without running any numbers I’d kind of assumed that Ed would hold back on decarbonising heat up to 2030 so as to not jeopardise CP2030, but after 2030 (assuming they are still in power) would push for clean heat 2040
I'm not sure I understand what you say. I don't think holding back is going to help anything - I don't see how the NESO's clean power plan is going to be impacted.
If clean heat takes off now demand will rise and achieving CP2030 more difficult, so it needs to be kept ticking over but not pushed
no I don't think so - we need to power as much heat off electricity asap - usually via heat pumps or heat pump supplied district heating - as fast as possible. Even now it will be several times more low carbon than gas heating. For starters every years over 200k new homes are being built with gas boilers!
I totally agree, but more heat pumps now make Ed’s 2030 target harder to achieve while more heat pumps after 2030 don’t. More gas boilers now actually help Ed
It’s not being managed to decarbonise in the best way, it’s being managed to win the election cycles