Donate to Remove ads

Got a credit card? use our Credit Card & Finance Calculators

Thanks to johnstevens77,Bhoddhisatva,scotia,Anonymous,Cornytiv34, for Donating to support the site

Renewable + conventional trends

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#376481

Postby dspp » January 13th, 2021, 9:56 am

QUEST - UK - grid debottlenecking
"Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) said yesterday that it has been selected to provide active network management for flexibility management in the groundbreaking QUEST project in partnership with Electricity North West, National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO) and Schneider Electric. Once fully implemented, the innovative project will free up network capacity for more than 2GW of clean energy assets in the UK, saving over £250 million, said the company. "
etc
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/20 ... newsletter

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#376485

Postby dspp » January 13th, 2021, 10:02 am

Biden plan for Energy/Renewables and fixing world poverty
"President-elect Joe Biden brings a marked shift in U.S. energy policy priorities, with clean energy being central to his plan. The Biden Plan to..........."

plenty of word salad, but
"The plan calls for infrastructure investments resulting in a 100% clean energy economy and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050. Specifically, the vision includes a carbon free power sector by 2035."

however,
"At the end of the day, I’m still empty handed in my search for a roadmap for how the Biden Plan will result in a 100% carbon-free power sector over the next 14 years. The issues addressed appear to be more social in nature including topics such as equity, energy burdens, and job creation, rather than technical or engineering issues related to the grid itself. At the end of the day, I concluded that the plan isn’t really so much of a plan, but rather a lot of words resulting in a $400 billion dollar money grab for the clean energy industry."

https://www.tdworld.com/utility-busines ... 7613890F7N

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#379883

Postby dspp » January 23rd, 2021, 8:49 am

Buyers of brand-new homes face £20,000 bill to make them greener
Critics say the costs could have been avoided if ministers had agreed to bring in low-carbon standards sooner

"Householders buying brand new homes in the next four years are likely to find an unpleasant surprise awaiting them in the future: homes built today will have to be retrofitted with energy efficiency measures and low-carbon technology, at an average cost of more than £20,000...... Critics say the costs could have been avoided if ministers had agreed to bring in low-carbon standards sooner. The government this week set out proposals to change building regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but declined to bring forward its proposed future homes standard from the scheduled 2025 commencement date, disappointing advocates of greener homes."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... em-greener

My memory banks fail me, and the exact date is not in my head. I think this scandal dates back into the last Labour administration, and then was made even worse by Cameron's "cut the green crap", where both administrations were nobbled by the profiteering housebuilders and so watered down the agreed escalator of improving construction standards.

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#380543

Postby dspp » January 25th, 2021, 11:37 am

"BP's oil exploration team swept aside in climate revolution
Its geologists, engineers and scientists have been cut to less than 100 from a peak of more than 700 a few years ago, company sources told Reuters..... This is happening incredibly fast,” a senior member of the team told Reuters...Hundreds have left the oil exploration team in recent months, either transferred to help develop new low-carbon activities or laid off, current and former employees said. The exodus is the starkest sign yet from inside the company of its rapid shift away from oil and gas, which will nevertheless be its main source of cash to finance a switch to renewables for at least the next decade."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil- ... SKBN29U00C

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#380753

Postby dspp » January 25th, 2021, 10:46 pm

Renewables overtake gas and coal in EU electricity generation
In 2020, wind, solar, hydropower and biomass supplied 38 percent of the EU's electricity,
[beating fossils at 37%]

https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/pr ... eration-1/

- dspp

johnhemming
Lemon Quarter
Posts: 3858
Joined: November 8th, 2016, 7:13 pm
Has thanked: 9 times
Been thanked: 609 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#381456

Postby johnhemming » January 28th, 2021, 10:44 am

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Historic landmark, it seems as stated in today's Times.

There is, of course, a question as to the fossil fuel input into biomass. Still progress more generally.

spiderbill
Lemon Slice
Posts: 543
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 9:12 am
Has thanked: 155 times
Been thanked: 182 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#381629

Postby spiderbill » January 28th, 2021, 6:17 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:Fully agree. Chopping down trees in America to burn in a Yorkshire power station is just insane and can only exist through stupidly targeted subsidies. The sooner the burning of trees ceases, the better. We need more trees in the world, not less.
RVF


While broadly agreeing, particularly in respect of daft ideas like that mentioned above, there is no way we can just stop burning trees. Here in Slovenia in the mountains of the north west we rely on wood for most of our house heating, and I'm sure many other alpine areas are similar.

Slovenia, IIRC, has the third highest percentage of forest in Europe, and the wood burned is constantly replaced by new growth so is broadly neutral in terms of carbon, and in general it's a very green country. There is little alternative - oil heating is present in some houses (my own furnace can run both oil and wood) but is much more expensive, and the only alternative to that is electricity - some villages only got that about 20 years ago and before that there was only small-scale hydro. With temperatures dropping at night to around -9C from November to March we go through a lot of wood and a fair bit of oil too.

Short of massive investment in cheap electricity generation it would be impossible to live here without wood. The important thing is at least replacing them and preferably planting more than you cut down.

cheers
Spiderbill

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#382748

Postby dspp » February 1st, 2021, 12:56 pm

A useful discussion of curtailment trends. It happens to be Australia data but good read.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-a-whole ... ueensland/

"We don’t know what the future holds for asset yields. We expect system constraints to ease over time, as transmission investments are made. But economic curtailment may become more prevalent, as the number of negative price intervals increase, at least over the near term. This will hit solar farms disproportionately. Widespread storage is likely to help with both issues. But until we see significant storage volumes in the NEM, we may need to stick with a more conservative set of capacity factor assumptions."

"Coal plants still dominate price setting in the NEM. And while wind and solar generation has grown enormously, our view has been that for most states and most intervals, this will influence prices indirectly by driving greater competition.
It is likely to be a few years yet before we see VRE regularly setting the price. However, the GSD2020 shows us a clear trend towards wind and solar having a more active influence. The ‘Involved in price setting’ table in the GSD tells us how many hours per year each asset was part of the marginal price calculation......Across the NEM, VRE was involved in setting the price for 2,213 hours
[of approx 8,760 hrs/yr]. "

hydro pumped storage matters...
"the equivalent of pumping [pumped storage hydro] for almost two hours per day on average. And generation from this stored energy was also the highest since at least 2011, at 178,000 MWh. On the surface these stats imply a round trip efficiency of 67%, roughly what we expect from pumped hydro, although without knowing the starting and finishing values for storage volumes, we cannot make a solid conclusion."
and for time-shifting applications
"For a fully depreciated asset, it feels like a successful year, and it will probably only get more so as time goes on. But we don’t think this spread would be sufficient for a new storage asset, of any technology, given the need to cover the cost of capital." (yikes ! so basically pumped storage fails the economic test !!!)

then battery storage ...
"It cost A$33/MWh on average to charge the Gannawarra BESS during 2020, and the battery made A$98/MWh on average from generation. This gives an average spread of A$65/MWh for energy, slightly less than Wivenhoe. This doesn’t seem enough either – why so low? Well, as is so often the case, this sort of isolated number crunching may not help us very much – the funding arrangement for each specific asset will determine the spread it requires to be a success. And the fact is that Gannawarra’s FCAS revenue was almost double that of its energy earnings, making time shifting a less important part of the business case. But we remain convinced by two things: new storage assets will need to increasingly target time shifting, as the FCAS markets simply aren’t big enough for everyone."
....... I think FCAS is grid frequency support rather than time shifting ..... so directionally difficult but increasingly doable for mixed applications

and its coming
"we track over 850 MW of committed battery storage facilities, with a number of pumped hydro plants not far off, and of course the 2 GW Snowy 2.0. It’s going to be quite a while before we need them all."

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#383072

Postby dspp » February 2nd, 2021, 2:11 pm

"China seen using 6-7% more power in 2021, adding 140 GW renewable capacity
By Reuters Staff

BEIJING, Feb 2 (Reuters) - China is expected to use 6-7% more electricity in 2021 than last year, the China Electricity Council (CEC) forecast on Tuesday, despite concerns over a new coronavirus outbreak disrupting industrial activity.

China, the world’s second biggest economy, used 7.51 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) of power last year, up 3.1% from 2019.

The CEC also expects China to add 180 gigawatts (GW) of new power generation capacity in 2021 to push the country’s total capacity to 2,370 GW, up 7.7% from a year ago.

Total installed non-fossil fuel capacity is forecast to reach 1,120 GW by the end of 2021, with about 140 GW being added this year, accounting for 47.3% of China’s energy mix."


[so 140GW is the renewables addition, and 40GW is the conventional addition]

etc

- dspp

88V8
Lemon Half
Posts: 5769
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 11:22 am
Has thanked: 4098 times
Been thanked: 2560 times

Battery recycling.

#383155

Postby 88V8 » February 2nd, 2021, 6:34 pm

VeeDub opens a battery recycling plant.

'Volvo, Nissan and Renault are a few of companies that are repurposing their batteries in different ways. These devices typically last 8-10 years during initial use before declining to the point where they can no longer power electric vehicles, but can still offer enough performance for other energy storage applications, be it for the home or elsewhere.

Now Volkswagen is taking aim at batteries that can no longer serve these purposes either. Its first car battery recycling plant, opened in Salzgitter, Germany, over the weekend, is dedicated to recycling batteries that have deteriorated beyond a second life.


Large-scale recycling is not expected to be required until the late 2020s, meanwhile this pilot plant has a capacity of c3,600 units pa.
An important brick in the renewables wall.
https://media.vw.com/en-us/releases/1465#images

V8

spasmodicus
Lemon Slice
Posts: 259
Joined: November 6th, 2016, 9:35 am
Has thanked: 65 times
Been thanked: 117 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#385161

Postby spasmodicus » February 9th, 2021, 5:12 pm

NOCs are said to want "one last party" according to this article at HL

https://www.hl.co.uk/news/2021/2/9/state-owned-fossil-fuel-firms-planning-$1.9tn-investments

In the report, entitled Risky Bet: National Oil Companies in the Energy Transition, the authors made the dilemma clear: “Either the world does what’s necessary to limit global warming, or national oil companies can profit from these investments. Both are not possible.”

I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about this. My ex was an ecologist. Me? in the oil business. nuff said.
S

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#385166

Postby dspp » February 9th, 2021, 5:24 pm

spasmodicus wrote:NOCs are said to want "one last party" according to this article at HL

https://www.hl.co.uk/news/2021/2/9/state-owned-fossil-fuel-firms-planning-$1.9tn-investments

In the report, entitled Risky Bet: National Oil Companies in the Energy Transition, the authors made the dilemma clear: “Either the world does what’s necessary to limit global warming, or national oil companies can profit from these investments. Both are not possible.”

I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about this. My ex was an ecologist. Me? in the oil business. nuff said.
S


Indeed. I had been hoping for one last oil price cycle until the combination of Tesla's battery day and the Covid pandemic caused me to sell out of my overweight oils middle of 2020.

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#385392

Postby dspp » February 10th, 2021, 12:41 pm

What a disaster zone,

"Ninety-five per cent of the £1.5bn pot provided for householders in England to make their homes less carbon intensive remains unspent due to long delays in giving out grants to householders and making payments to installers.............

By 22 January, only £71m of the £1.5bn promised to householders had been given out – less than 5%. The grants have been extended to run until March 2022 because of the delays.

But in a parliamentary answer the business minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan revealed the £2bn available would not be rolled over into the next financial year from March."


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ite-delays

The absolute opposite of what should be happening.

regards, dspp

88V8
Lemon Half
Posts: 5769
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 11:22 am
Has thanked: 4098 times
Been thanked: 2560 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#385410

Postby 88V8 » February 10th, 2021, 2:08 pm

Govt action in suppressing energy prices is not helpful.
It does not conduce to people taking steps to up their insulation, turn down the stat draw the curtains or otherwise limit consumption.
And govt seems perennially incompetent when it comes to incentives, usually bogged down in red tape and/or resulting in installers upping their prices.

This disaster zone has a long heritage.

I recall when Prescott was minister for something or other, they had the excellent idea that if you applied for a building extension you would have to upgrade the energy performance of an equivalent footage. At least, I recall it being announced, no doubt a chorus of bleaters ensured it never saw the light of day.

V8

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#386881

Postby dspp » February 15th, 2021, 11:56 am

IMHO a fair compare & contrast of RDS vs BP on energy transition strategy: https://seekingalpha.com/article/440604 ... tisfactory

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#389536

Postby dspp » February 24th, 2021, 1:37 pm

Some comparative power plant cost/return info from US EIA

EIA publishes a ratio of revenues-to-costs to explain power plant additions https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46856

The cheapness of the solar vs the gas is striking

regards, dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#389938

Postby dspp » February 25th, 2021, 12:34 pm

"Drax has scrapped its controversial plans to build Europe’s largest gas power plant at its site in North Yorkshire following fierce opposition from climate groups. The electricity generator confirmed that it would drop plans to build two combined cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) in place of two old coal burning units at the Drax site, weeks after completing the sale of four other gas plants to a subsidiary of Vitol last month. "

etc

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... e-protests

- dspp

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#390166

Postby dspp » February 26th, 2021, 9:18 am

dspp wrote:What a disaster zone,

"Ninety-five per cent of the £1.5bn pot provided for householders in England to make their homes less carbon intensive remains unspent due to long delays in giving out grants to householders and making payments to installers.............

By 22 January, only £71m of the £1.5bn promised to householders had been given out – less than 5%. The grants have been extended to run until March 2022 because of the delays.

But in a parliamentary answer the business minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan revealed the £2bn available would not be rolled over into the next financial year from March."


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ite-delays

The absolute opposite of what should be happening.

regards, dspp


Trainwreck ongoing still ....

Green homes grant will meet only tiny fraction of target in England
Scheme will issue vouchers to just 49,000 people by end of March at current rate, analysis finds
The government’s flagship green homes grant scheme will help just 8% of its target 600,000 households switch to renewable energy by the end of March, analysis reveals. The £2bn for the scheme is being withdrawn at the end of next month. Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank reveals that at the current rate it will issue vouchers to just 49,000 members of the public by that time. This equates to an annual carbon saving of 26,000 tonnes, or 0.4% of UK residential sector emissions. In 2021-22 the chancellor has said a far smaller amount – £320m – will be available for the green homes grant programme.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... et-england

etc

88V8
Lemon Half
Posts: 5769
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 11:22 am
Has thanked: 4098 times
Been thanked: 2560 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#390191

Postby 88V8 » February 26th, 2021, 10:39 am

dspp wrote: In 2021-22 the chancellor has said a far smaller amount – £320m – will be available for the green homes grant programme.

Wellll, if they've spent 8% of £2bn that's roughly £160mio - or is it 8% of £1.5bn - so the finance for 21/22 is at least double the actual spend.

Perhaps next year it will be like clockwork.

Talking of which, I have a Horstmann time switch powered by clockwork. My contribution to energy saving.

V8

dspp
Lemon Half
Posts: 5884
Joined: November 4th, 2016, 10:53 am
Has thanked: 5825 times
Been thanked: 2127 times

Re: Renewable + conventional trends

#391411

Postby dspp » March 2nd, 2021, 10:16 am

thanks to JohnKempReuters

Global energy access and use - Selected indicators

https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/c ... %20USE.pdf

- dspp


Return to “Oil & Gas & Energy (Sector & Companies)”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests