Renew On Line 99
Extracts from the News section of Renew 199, Sept-Oct 2012
The full 36 page journal can be obtained on subscription (details below). The extracts here only represent about 25% of it.
This material can be freely used as long as it is not for commercial purposes and full credit is given to it as the source.
The views expressed should not be taken to necessarily reflect the views of all NATTA members. We don’t claim to be neutral (we are pro- renewables) but we do try to be critical and up to date..
Contents
1. Renewable Energy up: UK wind, PV and biogas
2. Energy Storage: heat and power options An Irish input?
3. Marine Energy: wave and tidal projects
4. ROCs, RHI and FiTs: DECC finally get it together
5. EMR policy challenges: Wind/RO battles
6. UK Energy Policy: ‘not just nuclear’
7. Local projects: Lancaster, Anglesey, Manchester
8. Global news : Climate Change and EU progress
9. Round the world: China, India, Japan, Mexico, US
10. Nuclear News: UK and France
11. In the rest of Renew 199
12. Renew and NATTA
Web Choice: Spanish pro-wind demo: =
1.UK Renewable Energy up
Renewables accounted for 11% of the UK's electricity in the first three months of 2012, compared with 7.7% from January to March 2011. And DECCs provisional estimates also say that renewable energy accounted for 4.1% of the UK’s total primary energy requirements in 2011, up from 3.3% in 2010, but only for 3.8% of energy consumption, as measured using the 2009 Renewable Energy Directive methodology. The latter is an increase from the revised 2010 position of 3.2%.
The amount of electricity generated from renewables in 2011was 34,410 GWh, a 33% rise on 2010. Wind generation saw the largest increases in output – offshore wind up 68%, and onshore wind up 45%. Hydro also saw a large rise, up 56%. Overall renewables generation capacity rose by 3.1 GW (33%) to 12.3 GW, led by solar PV (up 0.9 GW); folllowed by plant biomass (up 0.8 GW); onshore wind (up 0.6 GW) and offshore wind (up 0.5 GW). Load factors in 2011 were 27.2% for on-land wind, 35% for offshore.
www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/publications/trends/trends.aspx
Clearly wind is doing well. RenewableUK noted that in the first quarter of 2012 the UK’s wind fleet produced an output of 5,044GWh - equivalent to the electricity demand of over a fifth of the homes in the UK. Ian Mays, Chief Executive Officer of RES Group believes the rising demand for gas around the world will push its prices up favourably compared with wind. While onshore wind is a ‘little bit more expensive at the moment’ at around 8.5p per kilowatt hour (kWh) in the UK compared with the cost for a new gas station of between 7-7.5p per kWh, he said, ‘that’s not going to be the case in the future’.
Meanwhile, the UKs massive offshore wind programe continues to move ahead- with 18GW by 2020 as the aim. Work continues on the 1GW London Array (see below) and the government has given a green light for Centrica and Warwick Energy to build offshore wind farms off the north Norfolk coast, at, respectively, Race Bank (580MW) and Dudgeon (550MW), but the 500MW Docking Shoal project was refused over bird population impact fears. Next up, Mainstream is planning a 450MW array off Scotland. and plans are being developed for the 278 turbine Atlantic Array off the N Devon /S Wales coast, although, despite the number of turbines having been reduced from an earlier proposal, the National Trust has objected to it as being too invasive.
A YouGov opinion survey for EDF in June found that, although the public is generally in favour of wind energy, support for onshore wind now stands at 57%, down from 64% in 2011, while the 68% in favour of offshore wind farms is down from 74% last year. However, DECC recent Poll (see 5 below) found higher support levels for both- 66% (onland) and 76% (offshore).
*The EDF /YouGov poll also claimed that support for nuclear as part of the UK's energy mix had increased with 63% agreeing that it has a role to play, up from 61% last year. The proportion feeling that nuclear should not play any part fell to 11%, down from 15% in 2011. Net support for the construction of new nuclear plants to replace existing ones has risen from 46% to 50%, while opposition to building nuclear stations on the sites of existing ones has fallen to 22%, its lowest level since 2008. In March last year, shortly after Fukushima, it said, 30% of Britons were against the idea. But Energy Minister Ed Davey told the FT that he still had doubts on its economics: ‘Can nuclear consortia build power stations with no public subsidy? I don’t know, we’ll see.’
Offshore wind moves on: London Array
Work continues on the London Array, the 1GW wind farm in the outer Thames estuary, around 7 miles off the Kent /Essex coasts, in water up to 25m deep. When complete, it will be the largest in the world so far. It covers an area of about 230ksq m (90 square miles), and will have 341 turbines, each with a generating capacity of 3.6MW. The first phase, with 175 turbines, is about half complete, but the second phase, consisting of a further 370MW of capacity from 126 turbines, is currently awaiting studies of its effect on bird life, For a good account of progress so far, see
Solar PV gets big...
German developer Kronos Solar is considering a 25MW solar farm on 120 acres of Lower Wheatley Farm, north of Launceston in Cornwall. It would be about five times bigger than the largest existing UK solar farm. The local authority said Kronos was one of a number of firms considering 20-30MW farms in Cornwall, which already has 12, with permission for 24 more. Plans for a solar farm with nearly 30,000 panels have already been given the go-ahead in Devon. South Hams District Council approved plans from TGC Renewables for panels to be erected over a 37-acre area across five fields at Marley Thatch Farm, near South Brent.
Domestic scale PV is also rising again says to the Solar Trade Association. The reductions in the Feed-in-Tariffs for PV led to a slow down, but a total of 1,788 installations in the first week of June according to provisional figures from DECC.
The UK has now has 1GWof PV in place. DECC say we might even get to 22GW in the UK by 2050, but that opens up the issue of land use. Roof top mounting is much less environmentally provocative than ground- based systems, but there are economies of scale from installing large arrays in single projects on green field sites, and these can be community owned, like the Westmill Solar co-op's new 5MW array near Swindon. It's on farm land, next door to Westmill wind co-op’s 5 Siemens 1.2 MW turbines. Given the higher load factors /lower capital costs/ kW, the annual output from that is likely to be higher, and the cost of energy lower, than for PV. And do we want huge on-land PV arrays in the UK? If so should we just use marginal non-farmable land?
..but biogas bigger
Anaerobic Digestion (AD) already delivers four times more electricity in the UK than solar PV and could grow 800% by the end of the decade, the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association has claimed. And a new report published by the European Biofuels Technology Platform say the EU should back the implementation of Biomass energy with CO2 Capture and Storage (BECC) as it is the only large-scale technology that can result in carbon negative products. The report says biofuels can play an important role in the process; implementing biomass conversion methods like a bio-chemical biofuel production and/or biomass combustion for heat and power could be hugely successful.
2. Energy Storage
Imperial College London has produced a ‘Strategic Assessment of the Role and Value of Energy Storage Systems in the UK Low Carbon Energy Future’ for the Carbon Trust, using a holistic system-wide modeling approach. It concludes that storage would allow significant savings to be made in generation capacity, interconnection, transmission and distribution networks and operating costs. In all it says that storage could provide up to £10 billion of added value in a 2050 high renewables scenario. However, the relative level and share of the savings changes over time and between different assumptions. In the high renewables ‘Grassroots pathway’ used by the research team, the value of storage increases markedly towards 2030 and further towards 2050, so that carbon constraints for 2030 and 2050 can be met at reduced costs when storage is available. For bulk storage cost of £50/kW per year, the optimal volume deployed grows from 2 GW in 2020 to 15 and 25 GW in 2030 and 2050 respectively. The equivalent system savings rise from modest £0.12bn p.a in 2020 to £2bn in 2030, and can reach over £10bn per year in 2050.
The value of storage is the highest in pathways with a large share of renewables, where it can deliver significant operational savings through reducing renewable curtailment: see graph. Storage could also lessen the even larger curtailment requirement that would result if there was significant amount of inflexible nuclear capacity on the grid. However CCS scenarios yield the lowest value for storage: ‘adding storage increases the ability of the system to absorb intermittent sources and hence costly CCS plant can be displaced.’
Crucially Imperial say that ‘A few hours of storage are sufficient to reduce peak demand and thereby capture significant value. The marginal value for storage durations beyond 6 hours reduces sharply to less than £10/kWh.year’. So we are talking about short storage cycles, ready for the next demand peak- not long term grid balancing to deal with long lulls in wind availability. That makes sense: storage is expensive so you want to use the hardware regularly to capture excess energy (when it’s cheap) and sell it soon after to meet peaks, when energy prices are high. Another option for short term grid balancing is flexible demand (e.g delaying peaks), which Imperial say ‘is the most direct competitor to storage and it could reduce the market for storage by 50%.’
This may all be fine for short cycles. But how then do you deal with longer lulls? Especially in areas where there is a lot of wind capacity? Imperial say ‘Bulk storage should predominantly be located in Scotland to integrate wind and reduce transmission costs, while distributed storage is best placed in England and Wales to reduce peak loads and support distribution network management.’ Anther option though would be interconnectors. They are expensive but Imperial say that cross channel links (maybe 12GW or more) can help limit curtailment. And also the need for storage..
This is all about electricity. What about rival modes of storage/ transmission e.g. heat or gas, including green gas? Much easier to store! That might improve the overall efficiency of the system and perhaps even reduce costs. Imperial do accept that the round trip efficiency of conventional storage systems can be low. But they say ‘higher storage efficiencies only add moderate value of storage’ although ‘with higher levels of deployment efficiency becomes more relevant’. And overall they make a good case for storage, even if they do not specify which type: they say more research is needed . www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/administration/energyfutureslab/newssummary/news_5-7-2012-14-8-41
More Heat storage
DECC has launched a £3m competition in a drive to push heat storage technologies into commercial production. The competition will fund pre-commercial development and demonstration of storage devices. DECC wants to investigate how heat storage could even out demand on the electricity grid, which will become increasingly important with the growth of renewable heating. Under the renewable heat incentive (RHI), four million homes currently unconnected to the gas grid will be encouraged to switch from high-carbon heating sources, such as oil, to ground and air-source heat pumps, which rely on grid electricity. This will put greater strain on the electricity network, especially during peak demand in winter. DECC hopes heat storage will allow pumps to operate at off-peak times instead, such as at night. This could prevent the need to build new power plants to cover peak demands. However, its not clear if small domestic scale heat stores (or indeed heat pumps) are the best bet. Larger community-based schemes can be more efficient.
ETI backs energy storage
The Energy Technologies Institute is investing £14m in Isentropic’s gravel tank heat storage tech, to see if it can reduce strain on electricity sub - stations. A 6 MW unit will be installed at a Western Power Distribution substation in the Midlands. ETI says the system could be used at 5,000 more of them ultimately.
It’s long way to go...
Mainstream Renewable Power has ambitious plans for a 5GW wind park in Ireland to ‘plug the energy gap in the UK’. It says 900 eligible landowners have been found in the midlands area of Ireland who could accommodate the necessary wind turbines. The ‘Energy Bridge’ project would export £2.5bn of power annually via new dedicated undersea cables between Ireland and Wales, and be completely separate from Ireland’s existing electrical infrastructure.
Confusingly Element Power’s version of the scheme, which it calls Greenwire, is smaller- only 3GW, with ‘over forty onshore wind farms across the Midlands of Ireland...linked together through underground cabling to a central collection point in the Midlands’ and generating ‘up to 10TWh of renewable power annually for direct transmission to the electricity grid of Great Britain, independent of the Irish grid system’. There will be new dedicated HVDC sub-sea cables crossing the Irish Sea of 2.5GW capacity each ‘connected into existing National Grid transmission infrastructure in Pentir in north Wales and Pembroke in south Wales’. It explains ‘As the Greenwire project is entirely independent of the Irish electricity grid it involves absolutely no cost to the UK or Irish taxpayer. It will however, provide a secure delivery of wind generated electricity annually to the UK and enable Ireland to export in excess of more than €1.2 bn of wind generated electricity annually to the UK’. It says ‘Britain’s energy challenge should be seen as Ireland’s opportunity. We have an abundance of wind energy and it should be harnessed for the good of both countries.’ It adds ‘The first UK 2GW connection has been confirmed for 2017 and the second, a 1GW connection, confirmed for 2018’. The full investment cost will be €8 bn,.
3. Marine Energy
Environmental Monitoring
FLOWBEC (Flow and Benthic Ecology 4D) is a three-year, £1.2 million project that brings together a consortium of researchers to investigate the effects of marine renewable energy devices by monitoring environment and wildlife behaviour at UK test sites, the first of which is the tidal energy test area of the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney. FLOWBEC is a National Oceanography Centre led project, linking scientists from the Universities of Aberdeen, Bath, Edinburgh, Exeter, Plymouth, Queens Belfast, along with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Marine Scotland Science, the British Oceanographic Data Centre, EMEC, and tidal turbine developers OpenHydro Ltd.
The researchers from the Universities of Bath and Aberdeen, together with the expert acoustic and technical teams at Marine Scotland Science, have combined two state-of-the-art sonar systems on a seabed frame placed within 25-metres of an OpenHydro structure. This monitors fish and diving seabirds that pass through or feed within the location; in particular, the study is assessing how fish and seabirds interact with the installation.
These sonars, which are normally mounted on ships as separate units looking down at the seabed, have been adapted to operate looking up, autonomously in combination for several weeks. Collecting the data in this way allows imaging of a full `acoustic curtain' along the tidal flow and around the turbine in a highly challenging environment. A marine radar, deployed by the NOC, has also monitored activity on and above the sea surface, mapping the extreme currents and waves at the site and tracking the behaviour of birds and marine mammals in the immediate area. More at:
Tidal Summit
This years Tidal Summit in London in late Nov., will be run as ever by Tidal Today.com, and will review the field globally. In the run up their web sites has provided some interesting prelimary coverage of developments in the field. Propellor type devices like MCT’s SeaGen dominate the scene, but some new ones are emerging and are being tested,. However vertical axis designs are also making their mark. On Tidal Todays useful e-conference, Peter Scheijgrond, from MET-support, pointed out that, although Darrius-type veritcal axis rotors, or similar ‘cross flow’ rotor designs mounted on a horizonatl axis, are held to be less efficient than propellors, because the blades are performing at their optimum only during part of their cycle and they incur drag from the supporting arms, in fact high Capacity Factors in the range of 40% to 50% and even higher with pitch regulation have been reported. Moreover, unlike with vertical axis wind devices, which have to be spun up to start working, the high density of water compared to air, mean that start-up is easily achieved. And with relatively slow moving water, tip speeds are limited to 10-13 m/s, so that problems with high centrifugal forces are avoided. Vertical axis/cross flow turbines are also omni- directional: they require no alignment with the flow and can be easily mounted under a floating pontoon. So turbine operation is unaffected when the floating structure changes orientation due to local flows. We’ll cover Tidal Summit in Renew On Line next year.