The Death Of Fossil Fuels

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:08 am

There's batteries on site, so maybe the plan is to deliver a constant load 24 hours? Just a guess.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:16 am

Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
Looks like a win for everyone.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by dyqik » Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:19 am

bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 6:44 am
Which is the obvious answer. Convincing the ex-urban types to give up their cars will not really fly, though it is already working in dense urban areas with things like Zip-car and Uber. Uber can’t last though, without the magic of self driving cars.
For ex-urban, public transport is likely to be less efficient than an efficient car. You need a minimum passenger journey density on a route to make it worth it for a public transit vehicle (bigger and heavier than a car, with a driver) to make the two way journey, vs the one way journey for a car and driver. The two way thing applies for car shares as well - you have to get to the shared car. Car pooling is the most useful thing.

A minibus with an average of two passengers at any one time in one direction, probably isn't worth it, for example. And ex-urban traffic will be very largely tidal as commuters go to work, etc.

My town's* commuter shuttle to the train is marginally useful if it can be filled with 11 passengers (the main reason for using it is the lack of parking at the station), but to deliver 6 people to the station from various stops around town, it does 30 minutes of driving, in an inefficient vehicle, vs 5-8 minutes drive to the station door to door (and it's a mile to the bus stop, so I drive there if I'm taking the bus). Those people then get on a train for 20-25 miles, so there is a net benefit in it, but only due to the parking situation.

* A town of 10k people covering 5 sq miles, so not ex-urban really. But it's 3.5 miles from the nearest public transport, and most people work outside the town.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:00 pm

Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
Interesting that the cost is similar to that for Hinckley C nuclear, and with a similar power generation capacity.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by nekomatic » Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:37 pm

Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
A 3800 km subsea HVDC cable? That sounds absolutely mad. What are the transmission losses like?

Obviously the people involved with the project will have thought of that, because they look reasonably sensible, but I don’t see anything on their site about how they are financing it.

Bypassing Spain and France makes it a win for Global Britain, I guess.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:02 pm

nekomatic wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:37 pm
Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
A 3800 km subsea HVDC cable? That sounds absolutely mad. What are the transmission losses like?
Good question
the Wiki wrote:Depending on voltage level and construction details, HVDC transmission losses are quoted at 3.5% per 1,000 km, about 50% less than AC (6.5%) lines at the same voltage. This is because direct current transfers only active power and thus causes lower losses than alternating current, which transfers both active and reactive power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-volt ... Advantages
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:19 pm

Based on that, it would take about 1% of the Sahara to provide all of Europe's electricity. Maybe 2% to cover all energy. Of course Europe can generate plenty from its own wind and solar, so chuck in electricity for all of North Africa and the Middle East. Long way from Morocco to the rest of Africa though, use Namibia instead?

Probably best not to plan on using Libya or Egypt. If the extension lead is long enough to reach the UK in the far north, then Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria are nicely placed to sell Sahara power to Turkey, the Balkans, France and obviously Spain, Italy and Portugal.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:22 pm

It should be noted that they don’t actually have a contract from the government yet. The “will” in the Electrek headline is doing a lot of work.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:56 pm

dyqik wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:19 am
bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 6:44 am
Which is the obvious answer. Convincing the ex-urban types to give up their cars will not really fly, though it is already working in dense urban areas with things like Zip-car and Uber. Uber can’t last though, without the magic of self driving cars.
For ex-urban, public transport is likely to be less efficient than an efficient car. You need a minimum passenger journey density on a route to make it worth it for a public transit vehicle (bigger and heavier than a car, with a driver) to make the two way journey, vs the one way journey for a car and driver. The two way thing applies for car shares as well - you have to get to the shared car. Car pooling is the most useful thing.

A minibus with an average of two passengers at any one time in one direction, probably isn't worth it, for example. And ex-urban traffic will be very largely tidal as commuters go to work, etc.

My town's* commuter shuttle to the train is marginally useful if it can be filled with 11 passengers (the main reason for using it is the lack of parking at the station), but to deliver 6 people to the station from various stops around town, it does 30 minutes of driving, in an inefficient vehicle, vs 5-8 minutes drive to the station door to door (and it's a mile to the bus stop, so I drive there if I'm taking the bus). Those people then get on a train for 20-25 miles, so there is a net benefit in it, but only due to the parking situation.

* A town of 10k people covering 5 sq miles, so not ex-urban really. But it's 3.5 miles from the nearest public transport, and most people work outside the town.
Which points to a systemic thing, ex-urban and suburban sprawl commuting was only enabled by cars and without cars they are difficult things to sustain. Sprawling low density suburbs are one of the biggest blunders of the 20th century. Fight me (I grew up in one).

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:00 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:00 pm
Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
Interesting that the cost is similar to that for Hinckley C nuclear, and with a similar power generation capacity.
Hinkley isn't done yet, there's time for another couple of billion to be added to the bill.

To be fair, this project isn't done either, but the utility solar bit isn't going to blow its budget, the cables might.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm

bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:00 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:00 pm
Grumble wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 10:28 am
Solar power from Morocco is on!

https://electrek.co/2021/09/27/the-worl ... to-the-uk/
Interesting that the cost is similar to that for Hinckley C nuclear, and with a similar power generation capacity.
Hinkley isn't done yet, there's time for another couple of billion to be added to the bill.

To be fair, this project isn't done either, but the utility solar bit isn't going to blow its budget, the cables might.
Hinkley Pt C is 3.2GW in comparison with this 10.5GW project.

I was writing just the other day what Britain needs for serious decarb is a large solar farm with large transmission capacity in the NW Sahara. And then I thought that difficult because Spain and France are in the way and not very cooperative about such things. I had thought a direct cable all the way from Morocco a bit unlikely.

I hope they have learned something from the Western HVDC link from SW Scotland to NE Wales, which has been very unreliable and requiring frequent cable repairs.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:18 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:00 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:00 pm


Interesting that the cost is similar to that for Hinckley C nuclear, and with a similar power generation capacity.
Hinkley isn't done yet, there's time for another couple of billion to be added to the bill.

To be fair, this project isn't done either, but the utility solar bit isn't going to blow its budget, the cables might.
Hinkley Pt C is 3.2GW in comparison with this 10.5GW project.
As per the article, this is 2 x 1.8GW at the UK end - as discussed earlier, it is likely possible that the 20GWh storage will be to aim towards 24/7 supply.

As for the cost of Hinckley C, it's not long had another half a bill added to the cost - and I've just spotted that that was being priced in £££, whereas the Solar/Wind+HCDV was priced in $$$.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:30 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:00 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 12:00 pm


Interesting that the cost is similar to that for Hinckley C nuclear, and with a similar power generation capacity.
Hinkley isn't done yet, there's time for another couple of billion to be added to the bill.

To be fair, this project isn't done either, but the utility solar bit isn't going to blow its budget, the cables might.
Hinkley Pt C is 3.2GW in comparison with this 10.5GW project.

I was writing just the other day what Britain needs for serious decarb is a large solar farm with large transmission capacity in the NW Sahara. And then I thought that difficult because Spain and France are in the way and not very cooperative about such things. I had thought a direct cable all the way from Morocco a bit unlikely.

I hope they have learned something from the Western HVDC link from SW Scotland to NE Wales, which has been very unreliable and requiring frequent cable repairs.
The links to France and the like have been pretty good, the recent fire notwithstanding. Hopefully the ones to Norway and Denmark will be good too.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by dyqik » Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:53 pm

bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:56 pm
dyqik wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 11:19 am
bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 6:44 am
Which is the obvious answer. Convincing the ex-urban types to give up their cars will not really fly, though it is already working in dense urban areas with things like Zip-car and Uber. Uber can’t last though, without the magic of self driving cars.
For ex-urban, public transport is likely to be less efficient than an efficient car. You need a minimum passenger journey density on a route to make it worth it for a public transit vehicle (bigger and heavier than a car, with a driver) to make the two way journey, vs the one way journey for a car and driver. The two way thing applies for car shares as well - you have to get to the shared car. Car pooling is the most useful thing.

A minibus with an average of two passengers at any one time in one direction, probably isn't worth it, for example. And ex-urban traffic will be very largely tidal as commuters go to work, etc.

My town's* commuter shuttle to the train is marginally useful if it can be filled with 11 passengers (the main reason for using it is the lack of parking at the station), but to deliver 6 people to the station from various stops around town, it does 30 minutes of driving, in an inefficient vehicle, vs 5-8 minutes drive to the station door to door (and it's a mile to the bus stop, so I drive there if I'm taking the bus). Those people then get on a train for 20-25 miles, so there is a net benefit in it, but only due to the parking situation.

* A town of 10k people covering 5 sq miles, so not ex-urban really. But it's 3.5 miles from the nearest public transport, and most people work outside the town.
Which points to a systemic thing, ex-urban and suburban sprawl commuting was only enabled by cars and without cars they are difficult things to sustain. Sprawling low density suburbs are one of the biggest blunders of the 20th century. Fight me (I grew up in one).
The cost of housing in cities means that this was the closest to my work that we could afford to rent or buy a single family (i.e. detached) house, on two incomes, each close to double the median salary. And we had to have a detached property following issues with abusive neighbors in multi-family buildings.

This is not a sprawling suburb, but a Victorian mill town. It's just that it's too small to have a diversity of employers, or enough employment for the population.

I'd argue that specialism in employment is a major factor here as well. I'd have to travel a minimum of 15 miles to find an employer in my broadly defined field of expertise. And this is probably the densest area in the US for this industry.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by IvanV » Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:21 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:18 pm
IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
Hinkley Pt C is 3.2GW in comparison with this 10.5GW project.
As per the article, this is 2 x 1.8GW at the UK end - as discussed earlier, it is likely possible that the 20GWh storage will be to aim towards 24/7 supply.

As for the cost of Hinckley C, it's not long had another half a bill added to the cost - and I've just spotted that that was being priced in £££, whereas the Solar/Wind+HCDV was priced in $$$.
Thanks, I misunderstood that as a first phase, I don't know why as it is plain enough. What is odd, though, is that they are saying that the storage will have 5GW max output. Maybe that's so it can be used locally also. Clearly 20GWh at 3.6GW only runs for 5.5hrs. Though typically the behaviour of such storage is that you can't run it quite like that. But plainly they want to be able to have the output available for the evening peak and possibly also the morning ramp-up.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:54 pm

They could do pumped hydro in Morocco, it doesn't have to be fresh water, there are big enough hills near the sea there.

Costs and environmental impacts do need to be taken into account though.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Gfamily » Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:55 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 3:21 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:18 pm
IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
Hinkley Pt C is 3.2GW in comparison with this 10.5GW project.
As per the article, this is 2 x 1.8GW at the UK end - as discussed earlier, it is likely possible that the 20GWh storage will be to aim towards 24/7 supply.

As for the cost of Hinckley C, it's not long had another half a bill added to the cost - and I've just spotted that that was being priced in £££, whereas the Solar/Wind+HCDV was priced in $$$.
Thanks, I misunderstood that as a first phase, I don't know why as it is plain enough. What is odd, though, is that they are saying that the storage will have 5GW max output. Maybe that's so it can be used locally also. Clearly 20GWh at 3.6GW only runs for 5.5hrs. Though typically the behaviour of such storage is that you can't run it quite like that. But plainly they want to be able to have the output available for the evening peak and possibly also the morning ramp-up.
3.5GW is Wind, so isn't diurnal, so there's probably a reasonable expectation of 1 GW being supplied that way overnight, which gives typically ~10 hours supply from the storage.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:03 pm

IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
I was writing just the other day what Britain needs for serious decarb is a large solar farm with large transmission capacity in the NW Sahara. And then I thought that difficult because Spain and France are in the way and not very cooperative about such things. I had thought a direct cable all the way from Morocco a bit unlikely.
Ahem... grumble beat you to it.

I also think I mentioned it in the old place, the insolation available in the Sahara is nuts, doing a back of a fag packet calculation as LPM did coming to a similar conclusion.

The Australians are funding a similar thing from there to Singapore.

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:43 pm

bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:03 pm
IvanV wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 2:08 pm
I was writing just the other day what Britain needs for serious decarb is a large solar farm with large transmission capacity in the NW Sahara. And then I thought that difficult because Spain and France are in the way and not very cooperative about such things. I had thought a direct cable all the way from Morocco a bit unlikely.
Ahem... grumble beat you to it.

I also think I mentioned it in the old place, the insolation available in the Sahara is nuts, doing a back of a fag packet calculation as LPM did coming to a similar conclusion.

The Australians are funding a similar thing from there to Singapore.

Image
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by bjn » Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:57 pm

The UK doesn't have food or fuel independence at the moment, and it will always have to import food unless the population drops substantially. Why get antsy about electricity if you aren't antsy about food?

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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:09 pm

Can we run an extension lead to Iceland for their geo?

One to Spain for the highly unlikely event of the French beginning to dislike us?

An extension lead to the Baltic and Germany?

Surely even the UK can't make itself really unpopular with every European country? Oh wait.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by lpm » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:12 pm

The Faroes. They'll stick with us. They can send electricity from their nuclear program, we'll send loads of dolphins for them to kill.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Grumble » Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:34 pm

bjn wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 4:57 pm
The UK doesn't have food or fuel independence at the moment, and it will always have to import food unless the population drops substantially. Why get antsy about electricity if you aren't antsy about food?
Russia effectively controls our gas supply at the moment. I think this is a bad idea, mainly because of the scale of the problems they can cause us. Maybe it’s fine as long as it never gets beyond x% of our requirements being under the control of any single other country. Maybe it’s a good idea to have a stable trading relationship with Morocco which we probably don’t really have at the moment.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by jimbob » Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:33 pm

bjn wrote:
Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:19 pm
Going back to Ivan, we aren't finished yet on price reductions from either wind, solar or batteries. We won't see another order of magnitude drop over the coming decades, but the prices will still come down regardless of how close the technology is to thermodynamic limits because of things that have nothing to do with thermodynamic efficiencies.

Just looking at wind turbines, power scales with the square of the turbine radius. So doubling the length of the turbine blade gets 4X the power. However, costs of wind turbines don't square as you scale them up, even better, the higher off the ground you are, the more consistent the wind flow, so you get a higher capacity factor. So the larger the turbine, the cheaper will be the electricity it produces, whether it's at the Betz Limit or not. This is why we are seeing monster turbines come out like the Halide-X with blades over 100m. People are continually pushing material science and turbine design to make even bigger beasts. On top of that you have price reductions due to industry learning curves and the cost of capital for operators continuing to drop. It's going to get cheaper. (Nature article, PDF)
Also from the availability of depreciated manufacturing capacity.
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Re: The Death Of Fossil Fuels

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Sep 28, 2021 8:04 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:09 pm
Can we run an extension lead to Iceland for their geo?

One to Spain for the highly unlikely event of the French beginning to dislike us?

An extension lead to the Baltic and Germany?

Surely even the UK can't make itself really unpopular with every European country? Oh wait.
Iceland might work, as the fault line is conveniently far away from the UK.

And Portugal still seems to have a soft spot for the British and their variants. And a pretty pathetic level of solar at the moment (lots of wind though). Slosh some of your capital this way and I'll ensure it ends up on the right hands ;)

(Portugal's state energy company privatised their highly successful renewable outfit, EDP Renewables. It promptly moved to Spain.)
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