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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 8:59 am
by Little waster
Has anyone ever considered keeping the hydrogen in a big bag and suspending the fuselage beneath it?

I haven't done the maths but I assume the whole "lighter than air" thing would provide some sort of lift.

I imagine the handling would be quite sluggish, reminiscent of a large aquatic mammal. In fact I might name my first one The Spoiler:

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 10:49 am
by TimW
Martin_B wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 11:55 pm
Elongating the fuselage isn't the bit I had concerns about. Both the A320 & A321 will have a centre of gravity somewhere around the wings and it won't change significantly between loaded and unloaded conditions.
Bjorn has done some blogging, complete with maths and diagrams, about this very issue

https://leehamnews.com/2020/12/18/bjorn ... iner-tank/ (and following entries)

We can see that the effects on the efficiency of having a rear-mounted LH2 tank system in a domestic airliner with a maximum range of 2,000nm are marginal.
[but]
As you prepare for a maximum range flight you have to include a forward movement of the Centre of Gravity with 13% during the flight

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2022 10:50 am
by Trinucleus
jimbob wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 12:10 pm
TimW wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 11:35 am
Some peeps are claiming to have developed hydrogen tanks for aircraft...
that have demonstrated a 75% mass reduction compared to existing state-of-the-art aerospace cryotanks (metal or composite).
...
enabling H2-powered aircraft and eVTOL manufacturers to store as much as 10 times more LH2 fuel without adding mass.
https://www.compositesworld.com/news/hy ... ogen-tanks

Could be bit of a game-changer.
An aircraft equipped with GTL dewar tank technology could achieve as much as four times the range of a conventional aircraft using aviation fuel, cutting aircraft operating costs by an estimated 50% on a dollar-per-passenger-mile basis.

This seems surprising:
"Based on our internal analysis of a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q300, which seats 50 to 56 passengers, the standard PW123B engine would typically support a range of 1,558 kilometers,” said Sergei Shubenkov, co-founder and head of R&D at HyPoint. “By implementing HyPoint's system and a standard liquid hydrogen tank, the same aircraft could achieve five hours of flight time or a max range of 2,640 kilometers. With GTL's tank, it could fly for 8.5 hours or a max range of 4,488 kilometers, indicating that this aircraft could fly three times further with zero emissions by using HyPoint and GTL compared with conventional aviation fuel," "That's the difference between this plane going from New York to Chicago with high carbon emissions versus New York to San Francisco with zero carbon emissions."
How is the hydrogen managing to achieve a greater range than kerosene? Even with a standard H2 tank and their "HyPoint system"?

If it works for aerospace, would that also work for other systems? I'm thinking marine engines.
Zero carbon emissions? You'd need to use a lot of renewable energy to generate the hydrogen

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:07 am
by Grumble
Trinucleus wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 10:50 am
jimbob wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 12:10 pm
TimW wrote:
Sat Apr 23, 2022 11:35 am
Some peeps are claiming to have developed hydrogen tanks for aircraft...
https://www.compositesworld.com/news/hy ... ogen-tanks

Could be bit of a game-changer.


This seems surprising:
"Based on our internal analysis of a De Havilland Canada Dash 8 Q300, which seats 50 to 56 passengers, the standard PW123B engine would typically support a range of 1,558 kilometers,” said Sergei Shubenkov, co-founder and head of R&D at HyPoint. “By implementing HyPoint's system and a standard liquid hydrogen tank, the same aircraft could achieve five hours of flight time or a max range of 2,640 kilometers. With GTL's tank, it could fly for 8.5 hours or a max range of 4,488 kilometers, indicating that this aircraft could fly three times further with zero emissions by using HyPoint and GTL compared with conventional aviation fuel," "That's the difference between this plane going from New York to Chicago with high carbon emissions versus New York to San Francisco with zero carbon emissions."
How is the hydrogen managing to achieve a greater range than kerosene? Even with a standard H2 tank and their "HyPoint system"?

If it works for aerospace, would that also work for other systems? I'm thinking marine engines.
Zero carbon emissions? You'd need to use a lot of renewable energy to generate the hydrogen
But it is possible, given the energy.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:40 am
by dyqik
You could also use nuclear power or carbon captured fossil fuel power.

The main point of hydrogen and batteries for transport is that they move the point of potential emissions away from the moving place where the emissions are currently released to centralized locations, where carbon capture or power source replacement with non-fossil fuel alternatives can happen easily, and to times when there's excess power available.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2022 12:06 pm
by EACLucifer
dyqik wrote:
Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:40 am
You could also use nuclear power or carbon captured fossil fuel power.

The main point of hydrogen and batteries for transport is that they move the point of potential emissions away from the moving place where the emissions are currently released to centralized locations, where carbon capture or power source replacement with non-fossil fuel alternatives can happen easily, and to times when there's excess power available.
Indeed, and sometimes it's more important to have high energy density than maximum electrical efficiency, ie aerospace and military and other high performance applications.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Tue May 10, 2022 9:48 pm
by jimbob
https://youtu.be/4vHuldVlpFA

Fully Charged Show - solar powered campervan 600km range which is 3 days charging in a Dutch summer, so getting to be useful

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Tue May 10, 2022 9:59 pm
by Grumble
We’ve been generating lots of wind and solar, and selling GW overseas. We can help Europe break free from Russian gas and oil. Maybe only by a few GW currently, but it’s a good long term aim.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 11, 2022 1:43 pm
by IvanV
Grumble wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 9:59 pm
We’ve been generating lots of wind and solar, and selling GW overseas. We can help Europe break free from Russian gas and oil. Maybe only by a few GW currently, but it’s a good long term aim.
About 10 years ago I managed a study for the European Commission DG-EN on the value of integration of the EU power sector. Imperial College carried out network modelling of scenarios of decarbonising Europe. This showed that putting renewable generation in places where it was more effective and transmitting it to the location of demand, saved gazillions of money. In particular, it made a lot of sense to put lots of wind turbines in the seas around the UK, and export the electricity to the continent, rather than those countries locating their own wind turbines in places of lower wind resource.

But, of course, EU countries didn't trust each other very much, so get worried about depending upon each other for power. And they really don't like paying the premium cost of renewable power (for, at least before the present gas crisis, there was a premium cost for such power, despite all the claims of it being the cheapest thing even before the gas crisis) if it is located outside their borders. So interconnection was sub-optimal for present day conditions, let alone future ones. And the institutions for making use of those interconnectors also tended to reduce trade to below efficient levels. And very little progress on a common approach to paying supplements for renewable power, regardless of country of origin within the EU. The "single energy market" that was built up did integrate things together better, but was far from being a nation-blind entirely free energy market across Europe - there were still borders of major effect in the energy market. In the course of that study, for example, I interviewed a major Belgian industrial company who said that in practical reality they could not buy their electricity from a supplier in one of the large neighbouring countries, as if they were in those countries, even though Belgium was just as well connected electrically to those countries as many regions within those larger countries were, yet were free to contract electricity across the country.

Since Brexit, the UK has not been permitted to remain in the single energy market. It won't be let in unless it becomes much more Norway-like in its approach to the EU. And since it was one of the main cheer-leaders for improving the integration of EU markets, I expect the EU will get less enthusiastic over this kind of thing.

So whilst it makes a lot of sense for the UK to expand its wind production to sell to the EU, and doubtless that will happen to a degree if serious decarbonisation should start, I doubt the EU is going to embrace purchasing British windpower with as much enthusiasm as it ought to, given how much money it would save their decarbonisation plans.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 11, 2022 2:13 pm
by Grumble
IvanV wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 1:43 pm
Grumble wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 9:59 pm
We’ve been generating lots of wind and solar, and selling GW overseas. We can help Europe break free from Russian gas and oil. Maybe only by a few GW currently, but it’s a good long term aim.
About 10 years ago I managed a study for the European Commission DG-EN on the value of integration of the EU power sector. Imperial College carried out network modelling of scenarios of decarbonising Europe. This showed that putting renewable generation in places where it was more effective and transmitting it to the location of demand, saved gazillions of money. In particular, it made a lot of sense to put lots of wind turbines in the seas around the UK, and export the electricity to the continent, rather than those countries locating their own wind turbines in places of lower wind resource.

But, of course, EU countries didn't trust each other very much, so get worried about depending upon each other for power. And they really don't like paying the premium cost of renewable power (for, at least before the present gas crisis, there was a premium cost for such power, despite all the claims of it being the cheapest thing even before the gas crisis) if it is located outside their borders. So interconnection was sub-optimal for present day conditions, let alone future ones. And the institutions for making use of those interconnectors also tended to reduce trade to below efficient levels. And very little progress on a common approach to paying supplements for renewable power, regardless of country of origin within the EU. The "single energy market" that was built up did integrate things together better, but was far from being a nation-blind entirely free energy market across Europe - there were still borders of major effect in the energy market. In the course of that study, for example, I interviewed a major Belgian industrial company who said that in practical reality they could not buy their electricity from a supplier in one of the large neighbouring countries, as if they were in those countries, even though Belgium was just as well connected electrically to those countries as many regions within those larger countries were, yet were free to contract electricity across the country.

Since Brexit, the UK has not been permitted to remain in the single energy market. It won't be let in unless it becomes much more Norway-like in its approach to the EU. And since it was one of the main cheer-leaders for improving the integration of EU markets, I expect the EU will get less enthusiastic over this kind of thing.

So whilst it makes a lot of sense for the UK to expand its wind production to sell to the EU, and doubtless that will happen to a degree if serious decarbonisation should start, I doubt the EU is going to embrace purchasing British windpower with as much enthusiasm as it ought to, given how much money it would save their decarbonisation plans.
Renewables being cheaper than other forms of electricity is true for those projects that were bid recently but haven’t yet been constructed. To my knowledge at least in the U.K. renewables generation is still subsidised, although there is also the whole cost difference pricing thing going on. The benefits will be felt in the next few years when those projects with cheap generation cost come online.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 11, 2022 3:01 pm
by IvanV
Grumble wrote:
Wed May 11, 2022 2:13 pm
Renewables being cheaper than other forms of electricity is true for those projects that were bid recently but haven’t yet been constructed. To my knowledge at least in the U.K. renewables generation is still subsidised, although there is also the whole cost difference pricing thing going on. The benefits will be felt in the next few years when those projects with cheap generation cost come online.
That's right - it is the bids for the future capacity that are cheap. And they did look surprisingly cheap at the time, to the extent that even I thought that Gordon Hughes (he who publishes rather cleverly dubious "economics" to "prove" wind turbines shouldn't be allowed) might be right for once that it couldn't possibly add up. But costs for off-shore wind have continued to come down to a greater extent than seemed assured at the time.

Recently the market price of electricity has been so high that the government has from time to time actually been making money out of wind CfDs. If gas remains expensive, building an off-shore wind farm becomes a privilege you have to buy, rather than a burden you are reimbursed for. In principle that money might be returned to consumers, but it just that just makes expensive electricity a little less expensive.

I had always felt that it would be so much easier to get decarbonisation going if electricity cost a lot more. Rather suddenly that has happened. Though the other impacts of expensive electricity are exceedingly unpleasant.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Fri May 20, 2022 10:23 am
by El Pollo Diablo
Update on BP Pulse - I managed to use one of their car charging points yesterday first time, and quickly. Not sure if they've changed something in their system, but it appears they have decided to allow their system to be at least semi-reliable, rather than totally sh.t.

No joke - turned up to Aylesbury, parked, plugged in, opened the app, pressed all the buttons, and 30 seconds later it was all connected and charging happily. No massive waits, no unplugging and plugging in again, no repeated attempts on the app, no reparking into a different bay because this one isn't working, no swearing at them. All good!

Also worth noting, they've upgraded the Odeon cinema in Aylesbury so all the seats are recliners. f.cking brilliant, it was.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 11:44 am
by IvanV
Proper green energy, as opposed to greenwash, is unavailable to new customers currently in Britain. My company tried to sign up for one of the two electricity suppliers whose "green electricity" actually means something like real green electricity, rather than being mostly greenwash. And those two suppliers both told us they are both not currently accepting any new customers, due to volatility in the market. Maybe in a few months they might be open again, but who knows.

So why did we actually try to do that? The government is forcing its contractors adhere to a "social value model". (We are supposed to be exempt from it, due to our small size, but they enforce it on you anyway.) There's various parts to it, but committing to a net zero plan is one part. Because it is "net zero", you can comply with greenwash. (And indeed you can socialwash most of the rest. In fact we have little choice, as it is so ridiculous and undeliverable by typical small enterprises in office-based services.) But we decided to try and do the energy properly. Because we have actually written published reports for government clients on the difference between various degrees of greenwash, and what definitions might to apply to proper green.

So we decided that we would put our money where our mouth is, and commit to buy some electricity that was more nearly proper green electricity than blatant greenwash. But blatant greenwash prevails in the market, as we see it. We found that only 2 suppliers were at all plausible. And they won't take any new customers.

So that's how easy it is to go proper green with your energy consumption at the moment. The government wants us to do that, but it's actually impossible. But maybe it's bait and switch. They get people to sign up to it, comply through greenwash, and then later change the rules for counts as green, and now they all have to go with that.

I still suspect that the government would get better value in other ways. It's basically funding its suppliers to engage with a lot of bureaucracy and not much actual social value.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 12:32 pm
by tom p
jimbob wrote:
Tue May 10, 2022 9:48 pm
https://youtu.be/4vHuldVlpFA

Fully Charged Show - solar powered campervan 600km range which is 3 days charging in a Dutch summer, so getting to be useful
Bollocks.
Just saw that the live EU show was right next to my work - I coulda gone on Friday on my lunchbreak or after work.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed May 25, 2022 7:11 pm
by Grumble
We’ve had a record amount of wind power today. Over 19 GW. Generators in western Scotland were asked to reduce the amount of electricity they were generating.

Diverting to long term storage can’t come soon enough.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon May 30, 2022 9:37 pm
by shpalman
Electric-hybrid general aviation plane recharges batteries in flight
Cassio aircraft use electric motors for all-electric power during taxi, takeoff, primary flight, and landing. The hybrid feature with an internal combustion engine comes into play as a range extender, recharging the batteries while in flight.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:25 am
by Bird on a Fire
According to a report by ECO, in 2021, when the European bloc progressively lifted Covid restrictions, emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) gases from fossil fuels in the European Union (EU) rose 6.3% compared to the same period of the previous year. Portugal and Finland were the only countries that did not follow the trend, with a drop in CO2 emissions of -5.5% and 1.5%, respectively.

According to Eurostat estimates, CO2 emissions grew in 2021 in almost all EU Member States, with the biggest increase in Bulgaria (18%), followed by Estonia (13.1% ) and Slovakia (11.4%). Italy, Poland, Spain and Romania also recorded emissions above the European average.

In 2021, the increase in CO2 emissions was mainly due to the increased use of solid fossil fuels (which contributed to more than 50% of the increase). Liquid fossil fuels accounted for more than 29% of the increase, while 21% can be attributed to natural gas. Reducing peat use slightly alleviated the increase in emissions.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/20 ... 27/06/2022

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2022 11:39 pm
by Bird on a Fire
Ruin the climate to protect jobs, they said:
At least in terms of the job market, 2021 was a good year for renewable energy. A report released earlier this week by the [US] Department of Energy found that nearly every part of the renewable energy sector added jobs last year. And despite a rise in fossil fuel production, the number of oil and gas-related jobs actually declined — with some industry workforces shrinking by as much as 12 percent.

Overall, jobs in the energy sector grew by about 4 percent, or about 300,000 jobs. But job gains in renewable energy markets were so strong that they effectively masked losses from several fossil fuel industries; the solar industry added tens of thousands of workers while fossil fuel industries specializing in petroleum and coal hemorrhaged nearly 40,000 workers.
Although
But some experts say the Department of Energy’s job 2021 numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Much of the U.S. energy sector is still recovering from the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, only the motor vehicle industry has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of employment. And when it comes to producing electricity, only the wind industry is outpacing its 2019 numbers.

It’s also possible that the trend of renewable energy job growth and fossil fuel job decline will not persist into 2022. With the war in Ukraine affecting global fuel markets and driving up gas prices, President Biden has pushed for more domestic fossil fuel production. That call could mean more fossil fuel jobs are on the way.
https://grist.org/economics/green-energ ... e-workers/

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 1:35 pm
by IvanV
EdF given development consent (ie planning permission) for Sizewell C. Govt announcement It's basically a clone of Hinkley Point C, ie 3.2GW (2 x 1.6GW EPR sets). At least there is some hope that in building repeat orders of the same design we get some reduced cost and improved performance. Though of course other EPRs under construction in Europe remain mired in problems.

That's only planning permission. There's the financial deal that needs to be done too, and I can't see that it has been done. That's the how-it-gets-paid-for deal. They have been looking at cheaper finance models than the private-sector-takes-all-the-risk model for Hinkley Pt C. Then there is the separate issue of how it gets financed. A few years ago they were talking about the Chinese taking 33% of it. More recently they have been talking about the govt taking 20% of it, I don't know if that means the Chinese have been kicked out.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:38 pm
by bjn
IvanV wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 1:35 pm
EdF given development consent (ie planning permission) for Sizewell C. Govt announcement It's basically a clone of Hinkley Point C, ie 3.2GW (2 x 1.6GW EPR sets). At least there is some hope that in building repeat orders of the same design we get some reduced cost and improved performance. Though of course other EPRs under construction in Europe remain mired in problems.

That's only planning permission. There's the financial deal that needs to be done too, and I can't see that it has been done. That's the how-it-gets-paid-for deal. They have been looking at cheaper finance models than the private-sector-takes-all-the-risk model for Hinkley Pt C. Then there is the separate issue of how it gets financed. A few years ago they were talking about the Chinese taking 33% of it. More recently they have been talking about the govt taking 20% of it, I don't know if that means the Chinese have been kicked out.
Michael Liebreich (of Bloomberg NEF) has Julia Pyke from EDF on his Cleaning Up podcast 2 weeks ago. Colour me unconvinced about them getting the costs down to anything reasonable.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 5:29 pm
by IvanV
bjn wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:38 pm
Michael Liebreich (of Bloomberg NEF) has Julia Pyke from EDF on his Cleaning Up podcast 2 weeks ago. Colour me unconvinced about them getting the costs down to anything reasonable.
When the French were delivering their current fleet of nuclear reactors, there were frequent and regular completions throughout the 70s and 80s. See List of reactors: France. They got a lot of practice and got the delivery slick. They haven't even got one EPR into regular production yet - Olkiluoto is in test operation, hoping to turn on properly later this year.

So I would agree that getting the costs down to something reasonable lies in the future, if it ever arrives. But it's a step in the right direction in comparison to series of 1 at Sizewell B, and there should have been some learning from Hinkley Point C, Olkiluoto and Flamanville 3. At least the importance of processes to get the welding right first time. Flamanville's final cost, for just 1 x 1.65GW set, is heading for €13bn, and Olkiluoto probably similar - it was reported at €8bn in 2012, and there has been around a billion over that which has been mentioned. So even Hinkley Pt isn't looking too bad in comparison.

But the killer with Hinkley Pt is not the raw construction cost, but the financing mechanism - that's what makes its output so expensive. Though it's suddenly looking rather more reasonable...

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:16 pm
by Sciolus
IvanV wrote:
Wed Jul 20, 2022 5:29 pm
But the killer with Hinkley Pt is not the raw construction cost, but the financing mechanism - that's what makes its output so expensive. Though it's suddenly looking rather more reasonable...
Exactly. A quick calculation suggests the construction cost is about 2p per kWh. The trouble is, you need to spend your $20b before you get a single penny of income, and the last of your income is 60 years off. So the actual cost is totally dominated by the cost of servicing the capital.

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2022 7:54 pm
by bjn
The cost of financing represents the opportunity cost of all that capital tied up for 10 years doing nothing. Getting the overnight cost down helps, but you don’t get to use that money for free for a decade.

EDF isn’t particularly a healthy company, according to that podcast they are supplying electricity below cost, their debt is larger than their market cap on top of which they have large unfunded pension obligations. They have also been saved from bankruptcy several times by the French Government. Not a glowing endorsement of the economics of nuclear power (pun unintended).

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2022 12:44 pm
by tom p
I remember reading an article by Will Hutton years ago about the stupidity of debt for nationally-important infrastructure in the UK at least 15 years ago.
He proposed a mechanism whereby the government provides the capital (essentially by printing more money) and then as the debt is repaid, the money is removed from circulation, thus there's not a net increase in the amount of sterling and thus, per the monetarist theory, there won't be an increase in inflation. That debt could be serviced at very low interest rates, 'cos it's a special fund set up by the government for this purpose & you aren't paying for the bank's profit or for their risk-hedging (since the government would have stepped-in to own an important national asset like a nuclear reactor if the operator went bust anyway)

Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Posted: Thu Jul 21, 2022 1:34 pm
by bjn
Governments can borrow at stonkingly low interest rates. Which is why PPPs are nuts, as the government is effectively purchasing public services and assets at commercial rates of borrowing.