Spiritofireland.org - suggests energy independence in five years and much more

[fiannafailure]

Pat, have you got any info you can give us on the location of one of these glacial valleys, maybe some overhead shots?

chadmikeymichaels

Best I can do, here is a ref for google maps of a valley that was mentioned in the local media as a possible site, I have no comment to make on whether it actually is under consideration from S of I, it may or it may not

cahirciveen, co kerry - Google Maps

You could always transfer those map refs into Google Earth, however you could also have a look at Glendalough in Google Earth, as an example of a glacial valley. And no, Glendalough is not under consideration, the monks got there first.

[fiannafailure]

If even the Minister of Energy from the Green party shows little enthusiasm for replacing coal with renewables, how do you think that serious efforts to back projects like yours will get started?

I hope they do, but it is hard to be optimistic.

Hurin
One must be practical, Moneypoint represents an investment by the state of an enormous amount of money, close to €1.5 billion to date, to close it while it still has a useful life might be considered silly by some or economic suicide by others, I cannot see it being economic to run past 2015

Pat is partially correct. But only partially, cost is a serious issue but so is reliability.

Based on the proposal as described by Pat there is no way that the wind geration capacity quoted can sustain supply, even if you accept the 40% load factor (which I dont)

700 MW capacity from the reservoir with 1800MW installed wind (even using Pats figures for load factpor thats 720MW output average over 12 monhts).

There is no way that you can guarantee security of supply on that unless your planned output is very short term (hour or two) peak load supply and even then I would have serious doubts.



Not if you consider the fact that the main reason for these capacity payments is the installed wind capacity. Wind power woudl not be possible without these capacity payments.....

Sparkey your insight into our figures is noted, but incorrect, you are looking at those figures in a purely theoretical light, the above mentioned Moneypoint for example is rated at just under a gigawatt, yet very rarely does it actually produce that, but if full output was required it could wheeze arthritically up to full output.

The first S of I Ireland HSR will be rated at I GW max output, a nominal output of 700MW and may in practice generate between approx 80MW and 1 GW depending on the requirements of Eirgrid at any given half hour segment.

[chadmikeymicheals]

chadmikeymichaels

Best I can do, here is a ref for google maps of a valley that was mentioned in the local media as a possible site, I have no comment to make on whether it actually is under consideration from S of I, it may or it may not

cahirciveen, co kerry - Google Maps

You could always transfer those map refs into Google Earth, however you could also have a look at Glendalough in Google Earth, as an example of a glacial valley. And no, Glendalough is not under consideration, the monks got there first.

thanks,
dont know much about this stuff but there looks to be a few nice spots around killary harbour aswell.

cahirciveen, co kerry - Google Maps

[fiannafailure]

thanks,
dont know much about this stuff but there looks to be a few nice spots around killary harbour aswell.

cahirciveen, co kerry - Google Maps

There are absolutely loads of possible sites, some will be ruled out for environmental or engineering reasons, even so we have an embarassment of riches to choose from.

[Civic_critic2]

I don't wish to derail your thread Pat but it's worthwhile setting the wind aspect of this project beside other quite realistic scenarios before committing 3 - 4 billion of people's money.

If, as seems likely, cheap roll-to-roll manufacturing of easily installed stick-on solar panels with up to 30% efficiency is commercialised, quite conceivably within a decade, then the following numbers are game-changers for Ireland:

250MW on average per square kilometre
300 private individuals across the country on any given day are installing cheap, easily deployable panels with 30% efficiency and doing so with their own money because it makes economic sense to do so.
It takes those individuals 2 days to cover their 75 square metre roof area, either by actually covering the roof or by covering parts of the roof, walls and patio.
This goes on for 300 days of the year.

Then 300 people covering 75 square metres equals 22500 square metres. It takes 2 days so half that, or 11250 square metres, is covered per day.
Doing this for 300 days a year equals 3.4 million square metres per year. That's 3.4 square kilometres a year.
Over a period of 5 years that 17 square kilometres.

The panels are 30% efficient and 250MW on average falls per square kilometre in Ireland. So that's 30% of 250MW which is 83MW.
After 5 years we would have 17 square kilometres to draw power from so that would be 17 x 83MW which equals 1.4GW.

In December those panels would generate 510MW and in summer they would produce 2.6GW. The current total installed capacity in Ireland is around 4.3GW.

And that's just what 300 individuals on any given day can achieve in 5 years when the price is right. On top of that there will be businesses pushing this as well as county councils, either voluntarily or compulsorily.

We will easily move to a situation of energy surplus, much like today where we waste between 70% and 80% of the energy inputs in making electricity. Only this time we'll have such a surplus of energy that we can think of using storage that is energy intensive yet still worthwhile to use because we now have so much energy to waste.

A big hydro-generation scheme might still be useful in all of this, I don't know. But people should take a look at the numbers.

[orbit]

As promised here is my analysis of the operation of the electricity market in Ireland, it may or may not make this thread easier to follow.

A simplified description of the Irish electricity market.

At the beginning of the decade Ireland faced some problems in our electricity market, we did not have enough efficient electricity plants to enable the growth of our economy, there was a need to integrate the markets and infrastructure of the Republic and Northern Ireland, EU required competition in the electricity market and wind energy was beginning to come on stream in quantity and needed to be integrated into the grid and market.

The adopted solution to the above problems was the Single Electricity Market, in the SEM, generators on both sides of the border fed their electricity into a central pool, from which the retail companies could purchase electricity to be sold to their customers. To address the the generation capacity problem and to encourage new entrants to the SEM, a market mechanism was devised to enable easier financing of new power stations.

A power station is paid for its electricity in two streams, the marginal cost of production (to cover the cost of fuel, labour and maintainance) and a capacity payment (to cover the cost of building of the power station) for providing generation capacity to the grid. Each day the grid operator issues a forecast of the amount of electricity needed at particular times,for the following day. The power stations submit a bid price (marginal cost) to supply a certain amount of electricity at a particular time of day, and everyone is paid the highest marginal cost. This ensures that if demand is high then older higher cost stations can afford to supply. In addition the power stations are paid annual capacity payments to enable them to cover their capital costs.

To encourage renewable energy onto the grid, certain tariffs were introduced for different forms of renewable energy, for wind energy the tariff is called REFIT, under REFIT the minister annually decides on an amount of money to put into a fund to pay REFIT, under the REFIT tariff a floor price is decided for wind energy, currently 6.7c a unit, however as there is also a ceiling on the amount of money in the pot, if the total wind energy produced, exceeds a certain limit, then the REFIT tariff ceases to be paid and instead the wind farm is paid the spot price on the day. A different tariff applies to wave, tidal and hydro although the same mechanism applies.

Renewable energy does not qualify for capacity payments.

All of the above, plus the costs of operating the grid, is financed from electricity bills and the market is operated by an organisation called SEMO and is regulated by CER

This is a very simplified explanation of a very complex arrangement however I believe it to be accurate.

I meant to come back to you on this. My understanding of the SEM is fairly basic, but there's a couple of things worth noting. First, you don't mention anything about dispatch priority, and the fact that renewables have (I believe) to be utilised ahead of thermal plants. That's the reason why renewables don't qualify for capacity payments - every kJ they generate gets utilised, whereas the poor thermal plants have to sit there idle, while the wind is blowing, and they have to be compensated for that.

The other thing I don't get, is how all generators are paid the same marginal price. Of course that makes sense if you want a single pool of electricity, and it's great for efficient generators, who get to keep all the profit resulting from their efficiency. But it doesn't sound like a great deal for the consumer, who's going to be charged on the basis of the least efficient generator in the pool.

In a normal market, efficiencies are shared between buyer and seller, not hogged exclusively by the seller.

How can there ever really be competition among electricity suppliers (to end users) if they are all paying the same pool price for electricity?

[fiannafailure]

Civic_critic

Thats an impressive collection of numbers, I do not know enough about the current state of R+d in the solar panel industry to comment on them, but I can see that one of your numbers is wrong, you have discounted the installed generation capacity in Ireland by about 45%, our demand peaks in winter at about 5.5 GW.

That however could have been a slip of a finger. I have said that I am not current with R+D in photo voltaic panels but I am current in my understanding of the practical engineering issues which arise in our use of electricity and the basic physics of how PV panels work.

We use electricity for varied tasks in the home from relatively low current uses, such as lighting to heavy current tasks like heating water or cooking, when you turn on the average shower in the morning you make a demand on the grid for an average of 15 amps of current, for the first milliseconds after you turn the switch this demand will peak at over 25 amps, meanwhile downstairs the kettle is on and possibly there is someone cooking breakfast on an electric cooker, maybe also the tumble dryer is getting your clothes ready. That scenario will result in about 40 amps of AC current flowing through your meter, thats nearly 9 kw and it needs to be available instantly.

A PV panel generates DC electricity when a photon of light impacts a suitably doped semiconductor crystal it displaces an electron, thereby releasing it for our use, a typical panel consists of thousands of these semiconductors devices all connected together, and they are typically connected internally to produce 12v DC, we can connect 20 of these panels together in series to make 240v and connect even more in parallel to give us more current, thats a lot of connecting together and as more panels are connected the wiring gets heavier and heavy cables cannot be printed, so installation is not simply sticking them onto a roof or wall, that wiring must be weatherproof and intrinsically safe and that is neither simple or easy. We are also still dealing with DC so the cabling must a lot heavier than its AC cousin.

Solar energy in Ireland will largely be generated during the middle of the day, therefore to be useful it will have to be stored, it could be stored locally, you mentioned domestic storage, but you will need a method capable of an extremely high energy density in order to cope with the 24 hour demand, and that too will have to be intrinsically safe and short circuit proof. And unless we also convert to DC appliances, this electricity must be converted to AC, another big expense.

The practicality of all of the above means that it will be longer than you expect before solar PV panels are the primary means of generating electricity, if ever.

What is more probable is that advances in PV technology mean that we can generate some of our electricity needs locally and reduce our reliance on the grid.

The first use of pumped storage to generate electricity was in the late 1800's and it has become more relevant as time has gone by, not less. If utility scale PV solar ever becomes commercially viable it will need storage, why not use the cheapest, most cost efficient method available. Pumped Hydro.

[fiannafailure]

[quote=orbit;2389181]

I meant to come back to you on this. My understanding of the SEM is fairly basic, but there's a couple of things worth noting. First, you don't mention anything about dispatch priority, and the fact that renewables have (I believe) to be utilised ahead of thermal plants. That's the reason why renewables don't qualify for capacity payments - every kJ they generate gets utilised, whereas the poor thermal plants have to sit there idle, while the wind is blowing, and they have to be compensated for that.

Renewables do indeed have priority dispatch, in a grid that doesn't have large scale storage that is unavoidable, however with large scale storage ???

Its even worse than you describe for the thermal plants, even when they run, a lot of the time they must reduce their output continuously and that has a real effect on their maintenance costs and usable life. Of course they must be compensated.

The other thing I don't get, is how all generators are paid the same marginal price. Of course that makes sense if you want a single pool of electricity, and it's great for efficient generators, who get to keep all the profit resulting from their efficiency. But it doesn't sound like a great deal for the consumer, who's going to be charged on the basis of the least efficient generator in the pool.

In a normal market, efficiencies are shared between buyer and seller, not hogged exclusively by the seller.

As I explained in an earlier post, the current market mechanism was designed to encourage both more generation capacity and competition to the state monopoly and it has been very successful in the former role and less so in the latter role. The country now has a decent fleet of modern power plants, though semi state companies still dominate the market.

Do we need to amend the market mechanisms ??

How can there ever really be competition among electricity suppliers (to end users) if they are all paying the same pool price for electricity?

That is the job of the regulator and the regulator is carrying out the remit given by the government. Should his remit be amended ??

There are a few question marks there.

[sparkey321]

I don't wish to derail your thread Pat but it's worthwhile setting the wind aspect of this project beside other quite realistic scenarios before committing 3 - 4 billion of people's money.

If, as seems likely, cheap roll-to-roll manufacturing of easily installed stick-on solar panels with up to 30% efficiency is commercialised, quite conceivably within a decade, then the following numbers are game-changers for Ireland:

250MW on average per square kilometre
300 private individuals across the country on any given day are installing cheap, easily deployable panels with 30% efficiency and doing so with their own money because it makes economic sense to do so.
It takes those individuals 2 days to cover their 75 square metre roof area, either by actually covering the roof or by covering parts of the roof, walls and patio.
This goes on for 300 days of the year.

Then 300 people covering 75 square metres equals 22500 square metres. It takes 2 days so half that, or 11250 square metres, is covered per day.
Doing this for 300 days a year equals 3.4 million square metres per year. That's 3.4 square kilometres a year.
Over a period of 5 years that 17 square kilometres.

The panels are 30% efficient and 250MW on average falls per square kilometre in Ireland. So that's 30% of 250MW which is 83MW.
After 5 years we would have 17 square kilometres to draw power from so that would be 17 x 83MW which equals 1.4GW.

In December those panels would generate 510MW and in summer they would produce 2.6GW. The current total installed capacity in Ireland is around 4.3GW.

And that's just what 300 individuals on any given day can achieve in 5 years when the price is right. On top of that there will be businesses pushing this as well as county councils, either voluntarily or compulsorily.

We will easily move to a situation of energy surplus, much like today where we waste between 70% and 80% of the energy inputs in making electricity. Only this time we'll have such a surplus of energy that we can think of using storage that is energy intensive yet still worthwhile to use because we now have so much energy to waste.

A big hydro-generation scheme might still be useful in all of this, I don't know. But people should take a look at the numbers.

I am not arguing with you on this (I don't know enough about the technology) but pricing strikes me as an issue.

1,000 per watt is 1,000,000 per KW or 1,000,000,000 (or 1 billion) per MW or 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion)per GW.

Prices would have to drop to a fraction of 1% of current prices to come even close to the cost of wind. Additionally would it not require high levels of transformation (with associated losses) to be of any use.

Also the 30% efficiency can you quantify exactly on how this is measured ? Is it site dependant ? If so what site generated 30% and what would the expected figures be like for Ireland ?

[Fortesbrand]

Long article in the New Yorker on China's investment in renewables.

David Sandalow, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy and International Affairs, has been to China five times in five months. He told me, “China’s investment in clean energy is extraordinary.” For America, he added, the implication is clear: “Unless the U.S. makes investments, we are not competitive in the clean-tech sector in the years and decades to come.”

China’s 863 Program, a crash program for clean energy : The New Yorker

Cheaper source for wind turbines?