This week I had an opinion piece published in The Telegraph on the use of hydrogen as a means of energy storage which could help to manage the intermittency from weather-based renewable generation. It has attracted a fair amount of comment, partly around the title and image, neither of which I chose, but also because this is something of a hot topic. Hydrogen has largely taken over from Carbon Capture and Storage (“CCS”) as the silver bullet which will make all our net zero dreams come true. In the article, I explain why the physical characteristics of hydrogen make it one of the worst substances you could think of for the purposes of energy storage.
Despite the hype around hydrogen, it has yet to take off as a net zero enabler. Yes, hydrogen has been used for many years in industrial applications, and materials and processes have been developed for the safe handling of the gas. But what is proposed in the context of net zero is orders of magnitude larger than the current use of hydrogen. I remain of the opinion that the main benefit of hydrogen will be for heavy transportation – rural railways, aircraft, and potentially shipping, particularly over shorter distances.
I struggle to see hydrogen for heating being viable, and for many of the industrial applications proposed for hydrogen, small-scale nuclear might be a better option.
In the UK, the Government appears to be going cold on the idea of a huge hydrogen economy. More broadly, some elements within the ruling Conservative Party have identified that a softening of net zero ambitions might be a vote-winner in what otherwise looks to be a challenging General Election in the next couple of years. The surprise retention of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat in the recent by-election was attributed to a voter backlash against the unpopular vehicle emissions charging scheme in London. Only a clear government mandate would allow hydrogen infrastructure to develop at a scale that would make it a meaningful contributor to meeting the net zero target.
One hydrogen village trial has been cancelled and the other looks uncertain
The Uxbridge by-election result came hot on the heels of the confirmation on 10 July that the proposed hydrogen village trial in Whitby, Merseyside will not go ahead after significant local opposition. Lord Callanan tweeted to confirm that discussions regarding a similar trial in Redcar, Teeside are ongoing, and a decision will be made shortly. Whitby residents raised concerns over the safety of hydrogen and worried it would be less energy-efficient and more expensive than conventional gas or electric heat pumps.
Justin Madders, the Labour MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston in whose constituency the Whitby trial would have taken place, pointed out that asking people to try experimental new forms of domestic energy without reassuring them about safety, efficacy and cost would be difficult, and that giving them the impression it would happen without their consent “sent entirely the wrong message out about how we need to tackle climate change”.
“We need written, cast-iron assurances that this is the end of the matter and that the people of Whitby and Ellesmere Port will not have foisted on them at some later date a hydrogen village, a hydrogen town or some other variant. People have had enough,”
– Justin Madders, MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston
Unlike the residents of Whitby, the people of Redcar have not been given the ability to opt out of the trial if it goes ahead. Northern Gas Networks (“NGN”) has said it plans to operate only one gas network in the area, so if it is converted to hydrogen, the residents will have to accept hydrogen or electrify. Locals are calling for a vote on whether the scheme should go ahead. The Government has previously said it would not progress without local support, but NGN points to the 10 month consultation process, including an independent survey which found 95% of residents and landlords felt “positive or were neutral” about the proposals.
The trial will include around 2,000 homes, in which boilers will be replaced with hydrogen-ready models. Initially, blends will be tested, increasing to 100% hydrogen, to assess the practicalities of using hydrogen for domestic heating. The Government has said the trial is likely to go ahead over the original timeframe of 2025 to 2027, if approved, however, with the costs rumoured at £100,000 per household, it is not certain it will be sanctioned.
There are wider concerns about the potential costs of hydrogen for heating. Earlier this year, a meta-analysis of research in the field found that all 38 hydrogen studies analysed concluded that hydrogen would play no more than a marginal role in the provision of domestic heat. Not only will hydrogen be expensive to produce, its lower density means more of it is needed to generate the same amount of heat, compared with methane.
The cost concern also applies with heat pumps, whose manufacturers suggest that in colder climates, a ground source heat pump would be more effective (these are also more expensive) or that a “back-up” heat pump might be needed. In other words, you may need more than one heat pump to maintain adequate warmth levels, which of course doubles the cost. (Part of the reason that heat pumps are less efficient in the cold is that heat has to be diverted to prevent ice build-up on the out-door equipment).
Hydrogen is still being developed as a transport fuel
Hydrogen cars have been a bit hokey cokey – in, out….you get the picture. The very first four-wheel vehicle with an internal combustion engine ran on hydrogen and oxygen in 1807, with the hydrogen stored inside a balloon. The first practical hydrogen fuel cells were created in 1932 by Francis Thomas Bacon and used by NASA.
Japanese car makers have had a long interest in hydrogen fuel cells, but in 2021 Honda pulled out, leaving Hyundai and Toyota as the only makers of hydrogen cars. Shell committed to hydrogen filling stations in the UK but quietly closed them all also in 2021. In 2003, US president George W Bush offered US$1.2 billion in funding to get hydrogen cars on the road, yet across the entire United States there are only 58 hydrogen fuelling stations, all but one of which are in California. Lack of fuelling stations is a major reason for the low uptake of hydrogen cars, and while there have been similar concerns over electric charging stations, the rollout of those has been faster.
However, BMW believes hydrogen cars will make inroads with drivers who are unlikely to want an electric car, and has identified four categories of driver for whom this may apply: customers who do not have space for home charging, eg a garage or driveway; drivers who require high flexibility or travel frequently, for whom even fast charging is too time consuming; buyers in cold climates where battery life is very low; and those who tow heavy loads.
The company is trying to introduce models which will compete directly with Tesla, something which hasn’t been available in the past where a lack of prestige hydrogen cars held back its popularity. In many ways it was the desirability of Tesla’s first electric cars that drove the growth in EVs, with smaller and cheaper models backfilling the market, although it should be noted that conventional ICE equivalents are still much cheaper to buy. The recent development of the high performance Hyperion XP1 might boost the kerb-appeal of hydrogen cars, but the extremely high price tag will put it out of reach of all but the super-rich.
Hydrogen cars share some of the drawbacks of EVs, in particular lack of fuelling capacity and high vehicle weight. Although there are more charging points than hydrogen filling stations, by some margin, many EV charging points do not work, and/or charge very slowly. Absent a wider hydrogen infrastructure it’s hard to see how the challenge of fuelling would be solved in the car sector.
However, for larger vehicles, hydrogen still looks to be a more interesting and viable alternative than batteries. As with grid storage, the sub-optimal lithium-ion technology has stolen a march but is likely to lose out in the longer term to technologies better suited to the application. This may be the case with heavy vehicles as well, where the economics of fuelling infrastructure for a fleet of buses or trucks looks very different to that for individual cars, with on-site hydrogen production being a feasible option. Both have safety considerations that need to be addressed, as indeed do conventional fuelling stations, but it is likely to be economics rather than safety which provides the main barriers to progress, although the accident in California last week might give some pause for thought.
Hydrogen is also being developed for trains. In the UK, HydroFLEX, the first prototype hydrogen train has had trial runs on mainline rail infrastructure, while, hydrogen trains are already in commercial operation in Germany, and are due to go into service in France next year.
Several hydrogen powered ships have made test voyages this year, and Ballard expects to launch a 109.8 meter-long cargo vessel later in 2023, which will operate on the 240 kilometre route between Rotterdam, in the Netherlands and Duisburg, in Germany along the Rhine. Several companies have plans for autonomous hydrogen powered ships for short sea-journeys. Longer voyages will be challenging given the space requirements for the fuel.
Notwithstanding the Hindenburg experience, hydrogen is also being explored for air travel. Earlier this year a small hydrogen-powered turbo-prop passenger aircraft had a successful test flight in the US while in the UK, ZeroAvia, a similar turbo-prop, has successfully flown at 5,000 feet, paving the way for certification. Airbus in working on a hydrogen plane which it hopes to launch by 2035. The downside of hydrogen for planes is the amount of space the fuel tanks would take up, but hydrogen is likely to be more viable for aircraft than batteries which are both bulky and very heavy as well as having much lower energy density (about 200 times less than hydrogen).
It feels as if recently the shine has started to come off hydrogen, despite the slew of firsts in the transport sector. This is to be welcomed – hydrogen makes a lot more sense for trucks and rural trains than it does for heating or energy storage. Let’s hope policy-makers listen, and don’t commit £ billions of tax-payers’ money to an approach that is unlikely to deliver good value.
Dear Kathryn, thank you for a well constructed article.
There are several ways to use hydrogen in the automotive sector, including internal combustion engines.
However the effective energy and burn rate are so different from petrol or diesel, there is a substantial performance deficit.
This might work for low speed steady state applications such as construction plant, where any type of fuel has to be delivered on site in bulk, but for other uses the biggest hurdle remains access to the fuel and the combined cost of the BEV as well as fuel cell system.
Overall FCEV might be the front runner but it is in the same place as BEV was in the early 2000s – interesting, but not quite mainstream.
Hello Kathryn. It is some time since I saw any mention of hydrogen being added to the natural gas supply. Two or three years ago, Worcester Bosch (I think) announced success with developing a domestic boiler where the gases were blended. Unless I have missed something, this has gone quiet. Is this still a possibility? Of course, the hydrogen still has to be produced, stored and piped, where there are many challenges.
Dear Katheryn, I agree with your scepticism about the practicalities of hydrogen as a practical means of storage or as a general purpose replacement for heat and transport. The key to evaluating the practicalities, costs and externalities of any broad changes to large-scale and complex systems. In each use case if you look at the production side of energy in terms of infrastructure, water requirements and energy efficiency, let alone transportation of the fuel, it’s storage and efficiency of conversion back to electricity you will see an end to end efficiency of at best 40%. The implications in terms of electricity generation capacity to make enough unless this is pink hydrogen from nuclear are mind boggling. The cost of removing all steel (which goes brittle and leaks hydrogen) from the CH4 network as the proportion of hydrogen is increased, new pumps, compressors and storage shouldn’t be underestimated either. The politics of Net Zero are also scarily tyrannical and authoritarian. The current version of the Energy Bill going into a 3rd reading in parliament still gives the Secretary of State too much power to arbitrarily dictate how every class of user heats their home, how grid scale storage of energy is achieved and what powers transport the future looks darker with everything about CO2 emissions and little to no regard to the practical uses or impacts on industry, domestic users or the economy.
Thank you, Kathryn, for another interesting analysis. If I may pick a small nit, the Conservatives are the governing party, not the ruling party. I think it’s important to maintain the distinction.
Dear Katheryn, I would be interested to know what you think about production of Hydrogen and then conversion to Methanol, using Methanol as the ultimate storage vector, and where the Methanol is created from captured carbon dioxide?
Hi David. There is plenty of track record for steel pipelines conveying hydrogen, particulatly in the USA. There is more work to be done to demonstrate that the UK gas network is safe for hydrogen – but I believe they will get there in time. Some sections may have pressure limitations (in line with ASME B31.12 guidance), but most of the HP network is constructed with modern, high strength high toughness steel that is likely to be just fine for hydrogen.
The LP tiers are almost completely replaced with HDPE, which is also good for H2 up to 10 bar.
Our understanding of this phenomenon continues to improve, with molecular hydrogen (H2, as discussed here) seen as much less problematic than ionic hydrogen (H+). So if the hydrogen is reasonably cool and clean, so that moldecular disocciation does not occur, steel embrittlement is unlikely.
The pipeline network is not the issue – though it’s hard to dispute many of Katheryn’s other points.
Thanks. I think the devil is in the detail in terms of converting sections of the NTS CH4 network to H2.
Katherine and readers, in terms of long term costs (even if the H2 infrastructure can be put in place) look to the total end-to-end inefficiency of making, storing, transporting and burning hydrogen. You get back about 35% to 40% of the electricity energy you start with. Further if you make synthetic methanol that return drops to about 15%. These are limits that are difficult to shift by the laws of physics.
Here is a good talk which at one point talks about this.
https://tomn.substack.com/p/the-unpopular-truthabout-electricity
Hi Kathryn…..thanks indeed for another interesting post.
However may I raise a couple of points ?
Quote (Philip) “There is plenty of track record for steel pipelines conveying hydrogen, particularly in the USA. There is more work to be done to demonstrate that the UK gas network is safe for hydrogen – but I believe they will get there in time”
(1) Surely here in the UK we have one of the most extensive & best gas network infrastructure in the world thanks to natural gas, which is currently undergoing hydrogen proofing at pace; replacing or lining to existing steel pipework with polythene, lots of yellow tubing disappearing into excavations around the country. I was under the impression that there is a speedy directive to completely hydrogen proof the network to within 30 metres of properties by 2030. Tapped off the network are huge existing storage facilities in place. We are assured that the Rough storage caverns for instance are ideal for hydrogen storage, a third of capacity to be opened & recommissioned this year.
(2) Finally there was a massive transition to natural gas in the 1960’s. I recall the upgrading to millions of gas hobs & boilers across the country. Is this not a similar exercise ? As with lead water pipe replacement to properties funded by the consumer. Would similar not apply to hydrogen feeds & steel pipe replacement on the final connection to the network ?
Barry wright, Lancashire.
It seems strange that the residents of Whitby were firmly against a trial in their village, yet the residents of Redcar were “95% in agreement or undecided”
Were the two populations so different in outlook?
One wonders how the questions in the Redcar survey were framed.
@Barry – my comments about work need to repurpose steel pipelines relates to the high pressure transmission network: it’s not as straightforward as you think. Lower pressure tiers with new plastic pipe will be fine, once the old stuff is removed. (But even then, more work is needed to prove this.)
Yes, the – CH4-to-H2 conversion is not dissimilar to the Town Gas to CH4 transition that I also remember (just).
Phil
Correct. Things like valves and pig traps are much more vulnerable. Most of the existing hydrogen pipelines are in refineries and chemical plants, on pipe racks where monitoring and replacement is easy.
The answer to all energy storage systems is efficiency and lifecycle cost. Hydrogen is inefficient and costly to implement both for transport and domestic heating. Pumped hydro is the cheapest where geography allows. Then we should look carefully at thermal storage, both centralised and domestic, and then compressed/liquefied air.
Batteries work best for cars and trains run on electricity.
For industrial purposes, work is going on with very high temperature thermal storage.
We will still have gas for a long time and this should be best kept for industrial and emergency use.
I have never been fooled by the hydrogen lobby but there are those who still hanker after hydrogen internal combustion engines
A further nail in the hydrogen coffin seems to be coming from the discovery that after all wind really isn’t that cheap. Using expensive wind to power electrolysis is looking like a bigger and bigger stretch. Vattenfall has been in the thick of the news on wind, first for their withdrawal from the Norfolk Boreas project from AR4, priced at £37.35/MWh in 2012 money, currently worth £45.37/MWh. The terms allow them to withdraw with no financial penalty under the CFD contract (although they have had to write off over £400m on investments already made and contracts they had signed that will now not go ahead for supply and services, and leave them liable for penalties). In theory they get to miss out on the next CFD round as a penalty, but that is no penalty until the government is offering fungible terms. In practice, the delay to build out will mean that government will be desperate for anyone to build something: if it carries on much longer that will be gas fired power as quicker and cheaper and easier to connect.
The interesting element is that AR4 CFDs are similar to the earlier rounds in that CFD pricing only applies once a Start Date Notice has been delivered to LCCC, which can be long after the installation has been fully commissioned as we see with Hornsea 2 and Moray East. Moreover, Vattenfall is in the process of starting up Hollandse Kust Zuid, the offshore wind farm near Scheveningen/Den Haag (the view from the Scheveningen Kurort hotel must be quite spoiled and there will be an obtrusive background to the annual sandcastle sculpture competition). The big feature of HKZ is that it claims to be the first unsubsidised offshore wind farm, supported only by commercial PPAs with BASF and Air Liquide among others. The 40% surge in cost reported by Vattenfall for Boreas suggests they are not confident of making money at market prices – i.e. that can’t guarantee being able to compete with CCGT. Their quarterly report revelaved that they had been hedging their Swedish nuclear and hydro output at €30/MWh, and making a profit. The idea that wind is cheap just got a further knock on the head with the Swedish government turning down a Vattenfall application to build another offshore wind farm, nominally on environmental grounds,
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-rejects-vattenfalls-planned-stora-middelgrund-wind-farm-2023-07-27/
With AR5 set with a ceiling of £44/MWh in 2012 money (£58.85/MWh today) for offshore wind, and a requirement that the CFD be taken up as soon as the operation is commissioned – i.e. no market price alternative, and harsh terms on cancelling CFD payments any time prices go negative, leaving the projects as first in line to be curtailed potentially with no compensation it is hard to see that the auction will capture much, if any interest. Government policy is in a mess. Hydrogen is a long way off.
I found this to be very useful :
Energy and the Hydrogen Economy by Bossel & Eliasson
https://docslib.org/doc/476625/energy-and-the-hydrogen-economy
Hydrogen is a very popular fuel with transport industry, where battery powered lorries take too much capital for the liking of the managers, and apart from fuelling changes, all other servicing requirements are the same with hydrogen as a fuel, instead of diesel.
If you get one huge industry moving over to one fuel for economic and risk reasons, then volume will follow and so will the economics, and other industries may move also……who knows which ones?
Upgrading the gas transport network infrastructure to carry hydrogen carries no financial risks whatsoever. If it is upgraded, it might prevent the numerous gas leaks that occur annually and it actually represents the investment that is really needed to reinforce an aging gas network.
How can some people see investment in infrastructure that would make it more reliable and capable of carrying different gases as a negative? But if you only bemoan the cost of everything, you will never see the practical and financial benefits.
The gas network was getting old, it was needing significant investment anyway, so where’s the problem?
And for those people who haven’t worked it out, what happens when many (millions) of houses have CHP fitted?
We don’t have to suffer with 50% CCGT efficiency much longer with fuel cells and CHP. It’s going to be interesting to see how long centralised electricity generation lasts and what the remaining capacity will actually be in 20-30 years time.
In the last 20 years peak centralised power generation has reduce from 50GW peak down to 40GW peak…..how low will it go?
Do we really need 30GW of CCGT in the country that can burn through 60GW natural gas energy……..it isn’t efficient.
If all houses/businesses had solar PV and CHP running on hydrogen and battery storage we might not need as much centralised CCGT.
There are still many efficiency gains to be had.
Hi all…..excellent reply post IMO summarizing several salient points. Huge industries are moving to hydrogen committing tens of £ millions on the journey. The Bamford family (JCB), Sir Jim Radcliffe (Ineos Group) for instance. The Bamfords are developing an internal combustion engine (ICE) to burn liquid hydrogen. They are also developing shipping/berthing for the transport of hydrogen from Australia etc. & setting up contracts. Sounds like a major commitment to me.
Moving on to my pet rant; The UK natural gas distribution network supplying 28 million homes which need to be decarbonised by 2026. Established steel pipework well on the way to hydrogen proofing, but even in the present form can accommodate a 15/85% hydrogen/natural gas mix. The gas network industry urgently need clarification. Recent comments by Grant Shapps in the wake of the cancellation of the Whitby hydrogen village project have not been helpful resulting in heat pump proponents taking it as a decision made. Seems electrification is now seen by Westminster as the preferred option. How can the extensive UK gas distribution network & storage be sidelined to be left in the ground redundant & unused……crazy IMO ?
Finally CGT’s & CCGT’s, loved by grid system control engineers Pre privatisation the nationalised CEGB were never permitted to use natural gas. Gas was regarded a refined fuel to be used directly rather than indirectly to generate electricity. Privatisation gave rise to proliferation of these modular units kicking off as a CGT commissioned & generating income (2yrs), quickly followed by 2nd stage steam generation from exhaust gasses (2yrs) forming the final CCGT.
Thanks for your patience, I could go on…….Barry Wright, Lancashire.
The government is rapidly encountering reality that the distribution capacity to run heat pumps is lacking, and it would take many years of extensive investment to change that. Their aspirations have proven entirely unrealistic. The building industry is warning that this issue alone will prevent newbuilds unless unless they are permitted to connect to gas.
Hi again with apologises.
Major number error, decarbonised by 2026 obviously rubbish, should read decarbonisation by 2050…..Barry Wright.
I restate my comment from above that the amount of primary energy capacity to make enough hydrogen to stand a chance of backing up the intermittent grid and provide fuels for industry, aviation and maritime transport is crazy whether you plan to make this hydrogen from hydrolysis or super heating steam in a nuclear reactor. The engineering issues and costs are crazy too. What we really need is to clear the nonsense regulations and restrictions around fossil fuels. There is no emissions problem, co2 doesn’t control thevclimste or weather.
Hi again with apologises.
Major correction re decarbonisation of UK homes should read 2050 NOT 2026 as in my post above…Barry Wright.
For home heating, the most economic means overall, especially if there is a fuel shortage, is to generate electricity from the fuel at 50% efficiency, and then have heat pumps rated at 400% COP, which gives 200% overall, in every house and business
It might be that with CHP in the home, that the cooling for the CHP, if it is a fuel cell or even a microturbine, is the input into home heating as well, thereby the 50%, or whatever around 40-80% waste heat could be recovered and used as home heating, thereby theoretically achieving over 200% efficiency overall.
Home CHP and heat-pump system combined……It’s going to be more expensive than the old gas boilers, but if there is a fuel availability limitation combined efficiency is going to be critical.
I can foresee many people getting upset at the increased costs of home heating appliances, but if you could export some of the electricity and get income whenever you use your boiler, instead of using the electric yourself, you could get a significant return, just like with a roof based solar PV system.
Interesting times ahead.
Does that solve the problem if we can be working at 200-250% efficiency of fuel usage, generating heat and electricity simultaneously, rather than the separate 95% that we are at now for gas boilers and 50% we have for CCGT power plants.
But even just installing heat pumps in homes and businesses and having centralised CCGT power plants with hydrogen fuel would be more energetically efficient than using gas boilers, where theoretically we would be halving the fuel burnt for each kwh of home heating.
I can see that having a boiler rated at 95% efficiency (or whatever the highest rating is now) and CCGT centralised electricity generation rated at 50% efficiency at some point in the future will be seen as rather ancient technology.
When will the 95% efficient gas boilers be phased out completely, even hydrogen fueled ones?
A national network of hydrogen gas supply, what a great idea, even if it does take a bit of energy for electrolysis to create the hydrogen in the first place. Theoretically with higher efficiency of usage, a higher cost of the fuel per kwh possibly up to double the cost of natural gas wouldn’t necessarily make us any poorer unless the appliances are too expensive, as long as electricity generation wasn’t centralised, but if the hydrogen fueled combined CHP/heat-pump appliance is too expensive many people would reject the technology.
The structure of home heating and electricity generation in the UK could be completely different to what it is now. Will we still need so much CCGT in future?….time will tell.
To answer a couple of other points raised in this article.
Yes, the volumetric energy content of hydrogen (kJ/m^3) is 1/3rd of that of methane, so all you need is 3x the flow rate to achieve the same energy burn rate……..not difficult at all to achieve, but as stated above just burning fuel to get heat is now one of the most ridiculous, inefficient ways to do it. Isn’t this the 21st Century?
If we are generating heat more efficiently with a combination of CHP and heat pumps, where we have over 200% energy efficiency, we only need 1.5x the flow rate of methane to achieve the same heat output in a house.
If an engineer cannot design and build a system to achieve that, then I think they would need to be retrained or should get another job or retire.
It was suggested that we would need more than one heat pump……..Of course we will. Are we still going to have gas fires (75% efficient) or electric heaters (99% efficient) to heat specific rooms?
Before I fit an air source air-water heat pump for central heating, I will be fitting an air source air-air heat pump for heating my main room, and using my gas fire and central heating far less, I might even remove the gas fire altogether or keep it for back-up.
The comment about committing Billions to some sort of change is interesting, where it portrays a view that a sensible (low risk, low cost) transition cannot be achieved.
To achieve the transition to hydrogen from methane, there will have to be a period when appliances are designed for flexible fuel, i.e. can run on either methane or a mixture of methane/hydrogen or pure hydrogen. It’s either that or there would have to be a period when we go 100% electric when the gas flow through the mains is stopped and replaced with hydrogen……..Flexible fuel use is the sensible option, with a decreasing component of methane…… a seemless transition.
Before we had natural gas, we had town gas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen from coal. This was all produced in this country from the coal that was mined in this country. It was only with North Sea gas coming on stream that we converted to methane, where all gas equipment was converted between 1967 and 1977. This required, like it will with conversion to hydrogen a change in the burner jet sizing. Many unsafe appliances were discovered and removed from service during that conversion process 50 years ago.
It’s one of the reasons we had all the gas storage (gasometers) around the country, where the rate of production throughout the year was constant, and then when winter came the rate of usage would increase and we would burn through the stored gas at a faster rate than it was being produced.
Gas works were a major employer producing town gas, but just like the coal miners, were made redundant/redeployed as they closed.
Gas storage was seen as……unnecessary with being able to pipe it directly from the North Sea, where there was a massive store that we were tapping into.
If engineers cannot develop a cost effective/efficient means to electrolyse water to form hydrogen at the scale required………I give up, we would really need better engineers and universities if that is a problem, as a country we really would have gone to the dogs.
Yes it will take a bit of investment over time, and hydrogen production will need to be increased and adapted from the current methods, with gas storage re-instated, but the engineering, whilst there are challenges and adaptation necessary to move from methane, really isn’t that difficult.
The comment previously about 40% overall efficiency for making and then burning hydrogen may be pertinent for some industries, but not for home heating. Even if it takes the same energy to electrolyse water to form hydrogen, as is obtained from it, with heat pumps we should be back to around 100% efficiency overall.
The true cost of importing fossil hydrocarbons on the balance of payments deficit, and their effect on inflation has not been measured or accounted for, the environmental need is almost irrelevant when the economic necessity is far more pressing……climate emergency…..people really don’t understand the problems of being back to borrowing 100% of GDP, and the inevitable reduction of standards of living that is going to come, unless we get far more productive/efficient than we are currently.
We would then be self-sufficient for power and heating and not importing 10s of Billions of £ of gas and oil every year………so what if we do need to spend a few billions getting there, the investment will be worth it with the better economics of reduced financial deficit that the country is running currently, self-sufficiency for fuel and energy, not going to wars over the supply of oil/gas, the benefits will be in the 100s of billions or trillions over the next century.
If you want to know about waste, just look at HS2, for transporting a few rich people from London to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker than current trains……..£100 Billion………that’s a real waste!
One of the commenters mentioned wind electricity pricing. I’m currently paying about 30p/kWh for electricity due to the high price of natural gas/LNG, or whatever the current methane supply is, wind pricing at £40 to £60 per MWh, is equivalent to 4p to 6p per kWh……..(divide the MWh price by 1000 to get to the kWh pricing) yes please I’ll have that thank you very much. My electricity bills would never have been so low.
Perhaps the problem is that we are being taken for a ride at the moment, where if the government had actually separated out wind electricity pricing away from the price of electricity from gas generation, perhaps the electricity bills wouldn’t have gone quite so high, and it would have encouraged more people to stop using gas and convert central heating to heat pumps with the cheaper cost of renewable electricity…….4p to 6p per kwh, instead of 10p per kwh for gas that it is currently.
An opportunity missed to use market forces to shift from burning gas to heat pumps with 400% energy efficiency, instead of 95% gas boiler efficiency. When will people actually recognise the true costs, even just the economic ones, of continued importation of 10s of Billions of £ of fossil fuels? The economic blindness is astounding!!!
I think there’s a lot of education about the history of our gas supply in this country and the economics of this country that need to be taught to many people, even many of the politicians, where, this isn’t a “green” agenda, it’s primarily one of an economic necessity, but unfortunately the way that some projects are run, like the trial to convert a whole village only, and giving them a choice of hydrogen boiler or heat pump was done in a really bad way.
Really, we should be getting to heat-pump only, and it will need more than one, but of different types, which doesn’t have such a high cost, but gives greater flexibility and efficiency with being able to say heat just one room only. I’ve never had a 95% efficient boiler installed, but when my 70% efficient CH boiler stops working or cannot run on higher hydrogen content gas, I will be installing a heat pump for my central heating.
Tim, would it not be true to say that the real price of electricity is very rarely the price of the output from wind and solar? Only on the occasions when those technologies meet the whole of the demand could they really set the price. Perhaps, somehow, we could expect lower bills on those days? But, they would be infrequent. Most of the time, in order to meet demand and keep the system stable, the price is set by the other fuels and technologies. If I am missing the point, I am happy to be told!
It is almost never the price of wind and solar. Wind prices come in two main flavours: with ROC subsidy as an add-on, or via a CFD, where the price spike of last summer/autumn aside prices have consistently been above average market prices. Solar has mainly been subsidised by even more lavish Feed-in Tariffs. Here’s some history on what we actually pay for wind (excludes extra balancing, curtailment and grid costs):
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/8255dfeccc15c7d1ea7f6fb2adfe6d6cae99f32f1a2e3d7d7a3d686d96a50abd.png
CFDs and ROCs had a big inflation boost in April, but wholesale day ahead prices are back down below £100/MWh.
Also, if the SRMC of wind and solar started settigng wholesale prices, generators would need higher subsidies because selling electricity would never repay the capital costs. On the occasions prices are high it would be because there was little wind/sun so those generators would not be generating/earning.
It’s completely wrong to assume that replacing gas generation with renewables will lower prices. People will have to pay for generation to be built and maintained as well as the costs of managing intermittency, balancing etc. It’s so tedious when people keep mindlessly repeating this “renewables will make energy cheaper” narrative without thinking about how it will actually work in practice.
Kathryn, I totally agree. The whole climate change thing is an upside down world wheere you can almost take what is pushed in main street and the truth is the opposte. Everything driving our energy policy and use of public money is inverted.
There is no man made climate crisis. There is no issue with CO2 or CH4 emissions. The case presented to people is fabricated. The earth isn’t warming that much and in many ways extreme heat, cold etc is less now than a hundred years ago. However you have to look for the data as the principle data sets used in climate science mainstream are a fabrication now and not useful for much. Similarly the models aren’t worth much.
On the energy side of the coin things are very simiarl. We hear nonsense and lies about the effectiveness of renewables and storage, hydrogen and heat pumps or EVs. The fact is that they are all minerals, land and energy destructive. The amount of extra gridd, extra storage, extra land, extra mining, extra refining and trasportation all powered by effective energy-dense fossil-fuels to create an ineffective land-hungry intermittent production system is catastrophically stupid in engineer, economic and environmental terms for each person affected and the planet.
The climate scientists are paid only to promote a narrative and rewarded for altering data, producting crazy models and publishing outlandish data. If they do the opposite they get cancelled, lose all funding or tenure, can’t get published and are finished.
The media have learned that they get rewarded for exagerating this even further and publishing fear porn.
The policians have a messiah complex and want a crisis to take more centralised control and political and ecomomic power to themselves and so on the science side this destructive cycle of pseudo-science, political posturing for more funding goes around.
On the energy side it is similar. We have promotion of incorrect information about economic factors and environmental impacts of things. Yes wind is cheap at the source of production when the wind is blowing, if the government has subsidised much of your capital costs up-front and pays further subsidies when you operate andd the grid operator pays you when you don’t. But the grid consumer and tax payer picks up all these costs, the costs of the extra grid to deliver it and the back up fossil fuel generation for when you don’t generate which has to be paid a premium to keep spinning and waiting to run or maintained for a cold, dark, still winter which is really capitally inefficient. You litterally are paying for two grids. One that is capital and land intensive and doesn’t work well at hight cost and a second tht is very effective and efficient if it were allowed to run all the time that is just used for backup and top-up purposes. How stupid and evil.
The other issue is that this policy creates huge environmental damage and we are actually consuming more fossil fuels in the manufacturing of these short lived edifices to stupidity and climate god worship in the process.
Someone said that Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient. But again this requires optimal conditions in both temperatures of teh source site and destination as well as an optimal installation. The reall problem from a grid perspective is when you get below a freezing dew point at the outside heat converter is freezing. Then extra thermal load is used to defreeze it. This is at a time when it is icy cold and the wind may not be blowing. So you are well below 100% efficient across the grid with a single design when the grid is running out of power. How stupid would that be as a heting policy for the country.
Kathryn and It doesn’t add up, you are both missing an entirely new market dynamic that is completely separate to solar PV being a “Utility Scale Investment”
Solar PV is being added, in some instances by utility companies, but also by end users – the customers who are paying 30p/kwh for electricity, where they get paid between 2p to 15p per kwh. for their export of the excess that they don’t use.
If enough end users/customers/general population add solar PV, we will have an excess output during the day.
There are 28 million households, not all of which will install solar PV, but it is growing steadily, so say 10 million households install 3kw systems, would give 30GW output on a good day……..selling their electricity at 2p to 10p per kwh.
Who will buy CCGT output at 25p per kwh?…….if you allow 20% for profit/losses etc.
There are going to be days ahead when CCGT output is going to be reduced to a minimum.
It will probably get to the Houses of Parliament if it happens and becomes known that the general population are being charged 30p/kwh, when a significant proportion of them are selling to their suppliers at say a 1/3rd i.e. 8p/kwh or less median price.
If the pricing relationship doesn’t change as more and more solar PV is added then it will be rip-off Britain.
If enough solar PV is installed, the market dynamics will change……..there will be periods of cheap electricity……if the market is operated and regulated properly, and there will be periods of more expensive CCGT electricity.
It used to be Economy 7…….cheap overnight electric………It will become CHEAP DAYTIME ELECTRIC. Overnight electric prices will be higher where CCGT is needed.
Your analysis of the market appears to be stuck in the 20th Century, with the old market pricing structure, the old economics of power production and costings for the industry.
If the CCGT is used less often, it should last much longer……..the capital costs could be spread out over more years………instead of 25 years life, think of 50 years, 75 years, 100 years
Yes the costs of CCGT will proportionately increase, but there will be a significant shift in energy usage. Who wouldn’t use cheap daytime electricity?
What happens when battery storage costs reduce? If we get battery storage costs down, people will fit more solar panels and start to work off grid. People are already fitting battery storage with solar panels…….we might need even less CCGT.
With Solar PV, the investor who gets the greatest benefit is the individual householder, from lower bills……not the utility companies. You are both missing the major market shift from centralised generation to distributed generation.
What happens when there is not only a surfeit of power during the day, but people have fitted battery storage in their homes to reduce the increased cost of overnight electricity? As a country we use less electricity overnight. If the price of CCGT generation goes up to 40p or 50p per kwh, what if some people get offered 25p/kwh for their battery stored electric?………either their home battery or their car battery?
If CCGT output cost goes up, yes it will happen with the extra relative expense as we will be using it with a lower and lower load factor, its use will be pushed into overnight only during the summer and more during the winter when there is less sun.
As the relative costs of using CCGT increase because it is getting used less and less, there is going to be even greater economic pressure to stop using it altogether…….it’s going to happen.
I happen to have a very sharp mind.
Renewables will either stop the market from pricing gas/oil etc at exorbitant prices, with price spikes, or with the price spikes, will push economies more and more into renewables where there is greater price stability and greater efficiency.
The inefficiency of the hydrocarbon markets (especially when there is a significant shortage that pushes prices up 4x or 5x the previous level) is pushing all the major world economies to more efficient renewable power with stable pricing…….the inevitable/inate process where inefficiency is removed…….survival of the fittest.
Having non-dispatchable renewables where the costs are virtually fixed the day they are installed, yes, the next gas/oil price spike will make renewable electricity cheaper than CCGT produced electricity……….again.
Now the technical aspects of balancing a grid are completely separate, but what if we need 3GW of CCGT at 50p/kwh (to keep the grid stable and 27GW solar PV at 8p/kwh (ignore wind/nuclear for now)?………what would the price to the population be?…….i.e. the really very expensive CCGT……double price now?
easy calculation 10% (3GW) at 50p, 90% (27GW) at 8p = (27×8) + (3×50) all divided by 30 = 12.2p/kwh
If Ofgem cannot get this to work in the market, we need a better regulator…………if CCGT only provide a small proporption of the electricity, then the aggregate price should be nearer to that of the cheaper SOLAR PV.
Would you call me mindless if I say that with renewables electricity will becomes cheaper?
It is entirely dependent on who is installing them as to how it is changing the economics…….surely.
There is no more FiT for solar for the new installations for private residences, it’s SEG now………January prices between 2p to 15p/kwh from different suppliers.
The lasting effect of FiT and other subsidies will come out of the system in the next 10 to 25 years……..what will the pricing be then?
Yes we may be paying more now with all the subsidies from the last 10 years, where we had investment in solar PV before it was economically viable without subsidies, but what about long term? it’s economically viable without subsidies now.
Tim, you are missing the point. The amount you receive in feed-in-tariff for exporting solar to the grid is neither the time-varying and location dependant value of that electricity or the cost to either deliver it to a consumer or store it and then deliver it later. Further the grid is an inherently unstable thing. Large thermal power stations have a lot of rotating mass to provide inertia, stability and voltage regulations and whilst inverter technologies and requirements have come a long way,, the grid is getting lighter and inherently more unstable and difficult to manage. To suggest that we can just move to a roof-top solar and wind only grid in short order and that prices will come down significantly is to gravely underestimate the additional infrastructure, services and costs to shore up the grid. The operators will be asking network owners to install synch-comps, FACTs devices, storage – none of which comes cheap and is difficult to operate. System Operators are working as hard and fast as they can to move towards smart grids where either grid connected parties directly or controlled by an ‘aggregator’ are restricted ahead of operational timescales as to how much power they can export or off-take from the grid, or are controllable in real-time by the system operator to balance the grid and deal with local congestion (thermal, volts or stability) issues. Things would have to come a long way in terms of grid-forming inverters, roll out of FACTS and smart grid co-orperation between the DSO and ESO for your vision to be viable in engineering terms. But even if it were possible, and DEZNES is pushing industry to try to achieve it; the economic costs and supply chain issues on all this equipment is humungous. Solar and wind will always be expensive for a grid energy consumer and always be problematic in terms of keeping stable 24x7x365 supply everywhere. It doesn’t match up to a traditional turbine.
David, you are absolutely correct with everything you have said. The most interesting time is going to be in a few years time, by 2025, when as you say we get to an excess of wind and solar, when we stop using gas or it is a tiny part of electricity generation for extended periods of time……CCGT gas free electricity for periods will theoretically start from 2025 onwards by the rate at which renewables are being added.
The price of electricity supplied to consumers should be an aggregate price from each of the costs of the separate generators, not fixed to the price of the most expensive generator, which is gas at present, or the cheapest, and don’t forget there will always be nuclear in the mix.
At the moment there is a significant market inefficiency. Have you looked at the prices that they are offering for householders selling solar PV electricity? we are paying 30p/kwh now to buy our electric.
If you look at https://solarenergyuk.org/resource/smart-export-guarantee/
The prices that the utility companies are buying solar PV electric range between 2p and 15p per kwh as of January 5th 2023, depending on who you go to, where Octopus are offering the highest price at 15p/kwh, and even Tesla have weighed in at 10p/kwh, who are the next company after Octopus.
But don’t forget, there’s always the nuclear power to pay for, which is expensive as well. But with them buying solar PV at low prices, as that component increases it should, on aggregate, bring down the electricity prices. The government are dragging their feet on investing in SMR (small nuclear fission reactors). Why? because what happens if we can get plenty of power from wind and solar PV? If we start investing in SMR and it isn’t needed, it will be wasted investment, when what we may need is hydrogen production instead, for the periods of insufficient wind and solar, or to keep the grid stable.
In the SEG market, there has already been a price inversion compared with gas for some of the utility companies, they are buying from personal owners of solar PV systems, buying below the price of gas that they sell to customers and for many it’s costing them about 10% to 20% of the electric price they sell to customers, but this should feedback into lower prices to their own customers as they are regulated for the profit that they can make.
At the moment we use gas to generate electricity, i.e. hydrocarbons are the primary fuel, therefore the cost of that conversion shows up with electricity costing more.
But what happens when electricity becomes the primary fuel/energy source? With renewables when we get to an excess of wind and solar, and start generating hydrogen by electrolysis, there should be a price inversion, where burning fuels becomes more expensive……its inherently less efficient……renewable fuels will cost more to produce, but wind turbines and solar PV will become more cost effective. Oil, gas and coal will only get more expensive to extract from the ground, once larger deposits are emptied, the relative cost of exploration/transport increases or demand goes through the roof with India and China burning at the same rate per capita as America or Russia…….they cannot afford to stay behind us when we get to cheaper electric from renewables. Their economies will suffer and they will lose manufacturing if their costs are higher than ours.
The price inversion has already started to happen……solar PV is starting to set the price, or at least the utility companies are starting to set the average/median market price on solar PV electric for the most part below the market price of CCGT electric, and many are below the price of gas per kwh.
The cost to produce wind power went below the price of gas as the gas price spiked up.
When there is an excess of solar PV and wind, CCGT will not be able to operate…….uneconomic unless the price of gas comes back down significantly or it is only to keep the grid stable where a minimum would be used, but would it be methane or hydrogen gas as the fuel? The utility companies can’t buy more electric than they need, and if they are buying from homeowners at less than the CCGT electric prices, it should feedback into lower electric prices for everyone as you get utility companies getting more and more supply of cheap solar PV electric…….gas usage in electricity production is going to decline……the economics are nailed on, whether it’s methane or hydrogen being used as fuel.
A Smart meter is going to be very important because we will get to variable pricing, where when there is a vast excess of solar PV or wind, and CCGT plants are not operating or providing a very small output, we will all be paying less than when the CCGT plants are providing back-up…..unless the gas price drops back down to 3p/kwh or less.
This will help efficiency further by shifting some demand to periods of cheap electricity, away from expensive CCGT (well it is really expensive at present).
The gas suppliers know that their market is going to slowly dry up as they get pushed out of power generation as the solar PV and wind take over the majority of electricity generation.
But what becomes interesting then, is as gas gets relatively more expensive, people will willingly start to install heat pumps……..cheap electric and a 400% COP……..in a few years time you would be considered mad to still want a gas boiler…….uneconomic.
The rate of this change is still the major question, for example, how many people are willing to have solar PV installed on their roof, and at what rate is the capacity being added?…..the same question applies to wind also and other renewables that don’t have a fuel cost.
We are going to get seasonal pricing, and pricing that varies throughout the day, possibly negative pricing (they pay you to switch your appliances on) all dependent on the weather…….as long as the smart meters work and Ofgem actually sort out the regulations in such a way that consumers don’t get taken for a ride when the utility companies are buying solar PV electric and wind power way below CCGT electric producer pricing, and with National Grid, sort out the control mechanisms to keep the grid stable at 240v and 50Hz.
All I can say is I’m going to get a heat pump installed when my boiler dies.
One other question is how much longer will we have nuclear power (fission)?
But will it all change again if nuclear fusion works and replaces everything, even the renewables that we are currently installing?
It might be that in a few decades time that homes only have heat pumps and rely on centralised power and don’t use hydrogen gas or methane in the home, because we can get so much power from non-dispatchable renewables. Perhaps we won’t need hydrogen gas boilers with their 95% efficiency, and it may be better to just have it for fueling for CCGT power stations for back-up power or just to keep the grid stable…..who knows?……will gas hobs and gas ovens become a thing of the past?
If electricity gets to be cheaper than gas, it will happen.
I do recommend people look at this diagram on the efficiencies of using hydrogen as an energy store : creating hydrogen from wind-power (electricity) and converting it back again.
https://unpopular-truth.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Figure18.jpg
This is from this book and talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiHrCjqP4KQ
https://unpopular-truth.com/
https://tomn.substack.com/api/v1/file/a4aa0bf1-2452-40aa-a880-8535e9383cf8.pdf
David, thanks for the info I’ll definitely check it all out. About hydrogen, I wouldn’t convert it to methane (in your reference) because of the inefficiency. It can be pumped back into old gas or oil field out in the North Sea…..ready made storage. They’re doing it for CCS, but instead of CCS, hydrogen would be a better use, unless CCS is essential. But I would only consider that as a strategy if we did actually need to store huge volumes for whatever reason, such as supply for seasonal/intermittent demand. There is a cost of storage for everything, so Just in Time (on demand production) if possible is more economic.
Regarding the previous comment, the Feed-in-Tariff is now closed to new applicants, I know it is fixed and invariable, it’s now Smart Export Guarantee, where you have got a range of fixed values per kwh offered by different utility companies, most 2p to 15p/kwh are below the gas price (10p/kwh) to consumers. The FiT was up at 40p/kwh back in 2010, but dropped to below 20p in 2012 and dropped off further with time (fixed at date of installation to be paid for 25 years?) so it should be 2037 when all the 40p FiT tariff will finish, and the remaining solar FiT payments will then be on 20p or below………i.e. below the 30p/kwh we now pay for electricity.
In future the price should vary to consumers, depending on the aggregate price of the different suppliers being used to actually supply the electricity. I have done a calculation above (earlier reply/comment) as a simple demonstration……..briefly, if we get huge take up of solar PV by residential owners who are getting between 2p-10p per kwh, then that should feed through into lower daytime pricing against higher nightime pricing if there is a much bigger proportion of electricity supplied by CCGT working at night, which costs a lot more (30p/kwh at present). What you receive as a seller to the system will not vary, but theoretically our bills for electricity, if they get smart meters working properly and have regulation that takes the changing aggregate price of electricity from all the suppliers into account, should change on a time of day or even hourly basis……the technology is there or should be with smart metering, but will it be used to the greatest effect to help the consumer?
Regarding the investment needed in the Grid…….yes there always was going to be an additional cost with the changing nature of the grid. National Grid are investing in flywheel technology, as you mentioned about inertia.
What is happening is that to reduce imports of fuel/oil/gas/diesel, where we would be spending 10s of billions of currency and running a balance of payments deficit, there are some changes and costs that are, over time, lower overall. National Grid and all the companies involved will be gaining expertise at managing a more diverse grid with all the technical challenges, but fortunately the rate of new technology and new capacity addition will be such that one would hope that the people actually involved in running the whole system will have the technical ability to be able to deal with them as they arise.
I had a look at a GE website with some of the grid stabilization equipment/grid solutions and there’s a wide range available. I know that there are challenges, but that is how we develop, by overcoming challenges……new knowledge, new products, new services….yes, life and work gets more complex for many industries over time.
It may be billions needed to be invested, but when you are running 10’s of billions annual deficit with that sort of value of fuel/oil/gas imports, it’s the conversion cost of changing the system necessary to sort out the finances of the country. Any change can be stressful, especially with the challenges, but I firmly believe, and from my own calculations of every aspect that I can think of, and we can completely ignore climate change issues, because this is a fundamental economic issue with our reduced manufacturing industry and reduced manufacturing exports, that it’s got to be done.
We’ve got to 3GW of residential solar (1,000,000 homes), so it’s not big enough yet to help bring the price down, but if it does manage to grow 10x to 30GW in the next 20 years, so perhaps not in the next 2 years as I suggested earlier, it will have a significant effect on the market, as long as the current pricing structure remains. What that pricing structure will be in 20 years time, I don’t know, but can’t think it would be too different, unless we do get to variable pricing for residential electricity exporters.
With reference to the above discussion :
In June Labour proposed to make energy “cheap and secure” with “zero carbon electricity by 2030” by quadrupling offshore wind, doubling onshore wind and tripling solar. Using these proposals I have attempted to analyse and compare the energy and power generated with demand by downloading the variable demand, wind and solar data for 2022 from the Gridwatch website into an Excel file as the basis for the calculations.
I also calculate the additional renewable capacity required, together with some costings, to achieve a dispatchable (supply matching demand) system using either hydrogen or battery storage.
If anyone is interested in a copy of this analysis please contact me at jbxcagwnz@gmail.com
Quote “Also, if the SRMC of wind and solar started setting wholesale prices, generators would need higher subsidies because selling electricity would never repay the capital costs. On the occasions prices are high it would be because there was little wind/sun so those generators would not be generating/earning.
It’s completely wrong to assume that replacing gas generation with renewables will lower prices. People will have to pay for generation to be built and maintained as well as the costs of managing intermittency, balancing etc. It’s so tedious when people keep mindlessly repeating this “renewables will make energy cheaper” narrative without thinking about how it will actually work in practice.”
Hi all….Thanks Kathryn for introducing capital cost into the discussion of this lively topic.
Here’s my two penny worth.
I was part of the infrastructure build to establish a 400kv supergrid connection on the northwest coast in the 1970’s to cater for the new Heysham 1 nuclear power station output.
Construction was well over time & over budget, rumer had it, that based on a 40 year life span it could never repay the capital cost, further exacerbated by the reactor building stradling a seismic fault, hence no online refueling from the day of commissioning. Hopefully I’ll be around to witness Heysham 1 finally coming off line, fuel removal, & decommissioning etc. (latest est. 2026). At some point EDF hand back ownership to the UK government to deal with the final clean up no doubt at the British taxpayers expense; more £billions. A green field result is an illusion, we will likely be left with the 250ft high concrete reactor building on the skyline for ever more. Feel we need a few more columns on the spread sheet to highlight the real cost of clean energy & the green agenda.
Barry Wright, Lancashire.
Barry Wright :
Heysham 1, which entered commercial operation in July 1983, 40 years ago, was an early example of nuclear engineering. I would think in that 40 years there have been some big advances and if we are to reduce our CO2 emissions (not that I think this is necessary) then we must pursue nuclear as it is the only low CO2 emission source of energy which is secure, affordable, reliable and abundant. Renewables have none of these features.
Hi….totally agree, nuclear generation should always feature in the energy mix.
However I remain unconvinced that large Heysham style plants are necessarily the answer.
The green agenda gives rise to so many initiatives spinning off along the journey.
Clean nuclear energy, green renewables, wind, solar, etc. very much in favour.
All one trick ponies IMO, producing just electricity, leaving nothing at end of life but expensive clean ups.
There is a multifunctional renewable producing electricity as a by product.
Totally sidelined, starved of funding Tidal Barrages (TB’s) never stood a chance.
I sense rolling eyes & “not that one again” expletives.
I maintain that there are many estuaries around the UK that would be suitable.
Trust you will forgive me for using a local location as an example.
Morecambe Bay covers 120 sq. miles, much larger than Sydney harbour.
One billion cubic meters of water enter & leave the bay with each tide (twice every 24hrs) at a predetermined time; Thats a lot of energy.
A causeway with a dual carriageway atop linking Barrow & the west Cumbrian coast reducing the existing 2 hr journey via often congested A-Roads to just 30mins from Heysham.
Totally isolated from the main transport network, a huge area including nuclear submarine building at Barrow town & the multifunctional nuclear facility of Sellafield, a huge conurbation containing 1000’s of highly skilled workers.
It is envisaged that the causeway would house 132, 30MW tidal range turbines with a life span of 100+ years.
Tidal turbines are a proven technology of many years around the world.
We could have cherry picked & scaled to suit UK needs. If a fraction of the £billions allocated to renewables had been forthcoming.
Developing TB’s together with our own engineering expertise, IMO a potential world beater; A lost opportunity I fear.
At the end of electricity production, the infrastructure remains in place leaving the link to coastal communities, intertidal lakes for leisure, & control of the annual flood threat to coastal villages around the bay, to name a few.
Should any reader wish to see the full Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM) on the scheme prepared by Mott macDonald a major infrastructure & engineering consultancy commissioned by Northern Tidal Power Gateways (NTPG) in 2014 follow the link below:
http://www.cumbriachamber.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/NTPG_update.pdf
Apologises to labour the point but TB’s offer clean, green renewable energy at a predetermined time 365 days per year.
I am aware that a series of such massive projects around our coast is far beyond business needing central government backing.
Final comment; Way back I was fortunate to meet up with a retired civil engineer who had been involved in working up a major TB project linking Western Super Mare to Cardiff across the Bristol channel. He came across a 1930’s translated list of 20 priorities upon the German occupation of the UK. Several, mainly political topped the list but he recalls the 6th was a major TB bridging the Bristol channel including electrical generation.
Nothing new under the sun……Barry Wright, Lancashire.
Cheap and secure?
My biggest worry with Off-shore wind is the threat of sabotage. There’s supposedly increased surveillance to counter certain threats from other countries, but with critical infrastructure out at sea, the costs of protecting those assets is going to be vastly increased. Are we going to need a bigger Navy?
If we are going to use wind to create hydrogen, it would have been better onshore, but would not be very popular.
Unintended consequences of certain decisions are mounting up, but that’s what happens in a capitalist society, where the pursuit of profit and reducing costs and trying to make a living, you end up sorting out or trying to address one problem and then are faced with a new set of different problems. There are no easy answers….ever.
You need to be careful to ensure that the data are what you think they are. The Grid tends to use definitions of demand that exclude proper accounting of interconnectors, pumped storage pumping and embedded generation. Leo’s solar is taken from the Sheffield Solar PV which is as comprehensive as it gets. BMRS does have separate data on embedded wind and pumping, but not I think small scale embedded anaerobic digestion, diesel, etc..
See the drop down mouseover notes at Gridwatch.
If you want to see the progress about Hydrogen, go to Hydrogen UK…….just found it myself with looking for the plans/progress.
They are creating salt caverns and using old gas fields for storage……it’s obvious
TWh…….tera watt hour storage capacity is what they are talking about
https://hydrogen-uk.org/the-hydrogen-story/storage/
From their website:
“An Edinburgh University project has estimated that 150 TWh of hydrogen storage is required to replace the seasonal variation in natural gas production. The project also estimated that there is potentially up to 6900 TWh of hydrogen storage in gas fields and a further 2200 TWh of potential in saline aquifers[1]. In short, there will be sufficient storage capacity for hydrogen to replace natural gas within the UK energy system.”
“The HySecure project, for example, estimates that investment in salt caverns could result in storage costs of £1.2/kWh. This is approximately 10 times less than pressurised tank storage and over 70 times less than the current cost of battery storage.”
Wind + Hydrogen + CCGT……..it’s possible……looking forward to it running.
If you can store TWh of the gas, it’s going to be far more economic than battery storage. I was concerned that they couldn’t get the volume required, but they’re making good progress.
The problem with renewables, it’s not that it isn’t possible, it’s just a huge investment over decades to repurpose/re-engineer our national energy supply infrastructure.
I found your comment in the Telegraph about 30% losses of hydrogen when pumping through pipelines perplexing, which you have restated in an interview on the Naked Scientist, dated 1st August.
I would like to reassure you about the losses.
If you look at the original research https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/hyd_economy_bossel_eliasson.pdf
The 30% to which you refer corresponds to a pipeline ………..4000km long. It is the amount of gas that needs to be taken off and burnt to power the gas pumps to overcome the resistance to flow (pumping losses). It isn’t leakage.
In that research paper, it shows the losses of methane (burn rate) at gas powered pumps is about 7-8%…..I can’t see exactly from the graph, over that same 4000km.
This means that it isn’t really suitable to pipe from say Canada down to the US, or over great geographical distances, but it can be easily produced and consumed locally.
The paper gives the required burn rate to fuel gas pumps as 1.4% and 0.3% respectively hydrogen vs methane for a distance of 150km. This is a ratio of 4.67. Yes it is higher for hydrogen, but well within acceptable limits.
I don’t know about you, but from the energy required to liquify natural gas, taking the following source
https://www.cnbc.com/advertorial/2018/10/08/innovation-using-less-energy-to-liquefy-natural-gas.html
“As a result, a liquefaction plant can use up to 10 percent of the feed gas to pre-treat and cool the gas to be exported. Reducing this percentage is therefore a top priority from both a cost and an environmental standpoint.”
The energy required to overcome the pumping losses pales into insignificance with a small country like ours………Yes, we are currently paying up to 10% on top of the gas prices, not to transport it, just to get the cargo loaded, before it actually leaves port, so we are burning 10% of what we buy in the foreign port, wherever it is being loaded.
So if we say imported £100 Billion of LNG, we literally burnt £10 Billion to load it……..what would £10 Billion have paid for?……..did we do that last year?
There are so many inefficiencies in the current system that have built up as we have stuck with hydrocarbons for so long, and we are importing so much now.
Let’s say we pump hydrogen from London to Newcastle, we could use up to 3-5%, depending on a number of factors, but really in any new system, the planning of electrolysis sites strategically placed around the country would be critical to avoid or reduce any such inefficiencies.
I hope this reassures you that there is some sensible physics and engineering behind the switch to hydrogen, regarding the costs of transport within the UK, and the UK energy policy. For our country it probably is more applicable than America or other large countries where distance of transport could be a problem, but local production and consumption will always be more efficient.
I don’t work in government or have any political affiliations. I don’t work for any of the companies involved in any of the work either, but I can see what they are doing and why.
I do hope that you will be able to provide this reassurance and technical information to others.
The problem with hydrogen is the quantity of water it consumes, but that would have to be looked into in greater depth and depend on river flow rates.
Evening…..thanks for two great post’s (4 & 7 Aug) teasing out interesting detail.
A small windy island with massive storage caverns plus an extensive hydrogen ready gas network in place ticks many boxes.
Presume its possible to charge this network & eventually deliver 100% green hydrogen to 28 million end users already connected.
Transition from methane with minimum disruption & cost to customers will prove a winner IMO.
Barry Wright, Lancashire.
Great article as always Kathryn. Keep up the great work. Nice to see so many newcomers with magical ideas…! 🙂
This article and energy entropy / efficiency & losses flow diagram shows how the losses would add up to make this a costly and impractical fuel for most purposes.
Full article
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01585-8
Energy loss diagram
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01585-8/figures/1
Yes, nice graph and article. It would be worth looking at the equivalent for thermal storage, both industrial and domestic. A lot more efficient and much easier to transport!
Newsflash………..its 2037 and there have been growing reports of deaths of pensioners and people moving in together to keep warm. The loss of adequate supply of LNG from critical suppliers has crashed the economy and is now having devastating effects on so many individuals, we can only describe this as a catastrophe, an apocalypse.
House insurance isn’t needed……..until your house burns down, and you have to somehow get your finances and life working again.
If the government wasn’t doing this “magical thinking” I would be far more concerned, but, as long as they are taking it step by step and doing proper technical feasibility studies and indepth analyses of the technology and evaluating the financial costs with open eyes, they have my full support.
But this isn’t about whether this is a Conservative or Labour government, it is the realism that we now are dependent on rather vulnerable tankers that could be targeted by any number of terrorists/countries with whatever agenda/perceived grievance, and the supply rate has a maximum limit, which with increasing worldwide demand, that limit will be hit from time to time, increasing the prices as we have just seen with price spikes.
If you want security and things to keep running even if specific events occur, you have to be able to do a SWOT analysis Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, and come up with contingencies.
In the second world war, the loss of the number of ships in the convoys was immense, too many lives lost. To look at risks properly you have recognise the threats, and where your weaknesses are. If this is “magical thinking”, then it is exactly what we need. If the government/civil service/companies involved were saying “it’ll never happen”, with respect to the threat or the possible solution without a thorough evaluation, design and feasibility studies and then trials followed by scaling up as technical issues were resolved (as long as they can be resolved), we would need to replace the whole system of government and how engineers are trained.
It’s the less capable and some children who don’t learn from experience. You may not be old enough to have faced such horrendous challenges, but fortunately there is a collective memory and learning within the country as a whole that keeps these potentially significant/devastating events on the agenda, that whoever comes into power at No.10 has to face the realism that is normally outside of most people’s consciousness.
If you can think of a better solution, that delivers say 15,000kwh on average per household to 20,000,000 households, plus the use for industry, especially the generation of electricity = 22 Billion cubic metres of methane gas, then please let everyone know and I’m sure everyone will be grateful……..
Sometimes, when you think there is a choice, there actually is no choice at all. It’s predetermined, unavoidable, that if you can’t get it to work, because of a lack of ability to solve complex problems………survival of the fittest, you will not survive.
If there were fewer people in the UK, and more forests, we could depend on wood, as most of the coal fired power stations have been shut, there is a limit to how much power they could provide. So many people depend on electricity for home heating and hot water, where they don’t have the possibility of an open fire.
CO2 is building up in the atmosphere, even if you don’t believe in global warming, and if we got to using 10x the rate of fossil fuels that we use now, we could have problems in 60 years time. Yes we could open more coal mines, but our access to hydrocarbons is getting harder and relatively more expensive year by year smaller deposits, with greater demand if the renewable technologies weren’t available.
Yes it will be more expensive than getting LNG, there will be a price inversion, where the cost of burning fuels will be more expensive than electricity, but having a system that is dual fuel (methane or hydrogen or some blend) even if it is decided to keep importing LNG at the great cost of borrowing due to our poor balance of payments, where we can’t produce hydrogen fast enough or it is decided that financially we need to keep running on imported LNG for a while longer, at least we would be in the position to switch or blend at whatever ratio can be produced.
If we as a country are dependent on gas, and the North Sea is running dry, and we will have a vulnerable pipeline from Norway and LNG imports by ship, and this is what you call “magical thinking” I’m sorry but we can’t afford not to have it.
If you want the reality of the situation, go to
https://www.edie.net/in-numbers-the-uks-natural-gas-predicament/
“5) Gas accounts for almost 40% of the UK’s electricity generation
Gas accounted for 39.9% of the UK’s electricity generation mix in 2021, up from 35.7% in 2020, BEIS states. Challenges for low-carbon generation in 2021 included nuclear capacity undergoing maintenance and/or coming offline permanently, and poor conditions for wind generation, especially in August and September. In the gas generation sector, meanwhile, the completion of maintenance works enabled a boost.
Most of the UK’s gas demand and use in 2021 was for electricity generation, not for heating. 253,665GWh was used for electricity generation, compared to just under 28,000 GWh for heat generation.
6) UK homes use more gas than the private sector
When electricity and gas demand are combined, domestic buildings are a far larger source of demand than commercial buildings and industrial operations. Homes demanded 318,392 GWh of gas-based heating and electricity in 2021, up from 296,566 GWh in 2020. The demand for industrial users totalled just over 107,000 GWh in 2021, up from around 99,000 GWh in 2020.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) emphasised in its latest progress report to Parliament that progress to reduce homes’ gas consumption, by improving energy efficiency and electrifying heating, has been extremely slow.
7) New UK gas capacity could account for less than 8% of national demand
Oil and/or gas from six new North Sea fields that could get approval in a licensing round in Autumn 2022 would not start to be produced until 2026, and Stonehaven research commissioned by Highview Power estimates that their maximum output would be just 2.4% of UK demand – or just over half the level of imports from Russia. Their output would peak in 2028 and then decline.”
Just as a taster.
The numbers and scale are beyond the comprehension of many people, but fortunately there are many highly trained and capable engineers working their hardest to try to make it work.
Some choices are not easy, but sometimes there isn’t actually a choice, you have to try your hardest to make it work. If you understood the technical capabilities of each generating technology, and the impact that each generating technology has on the finances of the country and the demand for fuel with all the risks, you may have a significantly different attitude.
We are in a position where there is no choice, the supply of the quantity of fuel that the country consumes is critical. Yes some decisions only have costs as a consideration, but other decisions are far bigger than just a matter of cost.
It may turn out that generating electricity from burning hydrogen gas in CCGT is the most expensive option, and to make it economical for the country’s finances and the cost to every user of electricity (everyone of us) this has to be minimised, but if the storage isn’t available due to technical factors then other choices will have to be made.
But, I see no reason not to test large scale production and storage of hydrogen and its use in electricity generation, and all the technology and facilities that would be needed to do so.
The risks of not doing so are far greater.
There is a need to insulate homes to reduce the consumption of gas, either as methane with the CO2 linked issues or the inevitable higher cost of hydrogen gas produced from electricity (if it is able to work on a national scale), and a need to convert to heat pumps if the cost of hydrogen is even the same price of electricity (unless you are rich).
As long as “magical thinking” is tempered with hardnosed realism and economics then hopefully we will survive some of the challenges yet to come.
Time to get your own blog. I no longer bother to read your stream of consciousness uttering full of inaccuracies. I do not have time to spend on rebutting them. I guess many others feel the same way.
I don’t have the background information to provide a watertight argument, but if there is enough wind, nuclear and storage to cover our electricity needs including that for domestic heating in the coldest moths, and for transport, there is no point whatsoever in solar.
Ditto – hydrogen.
It should be for those who dispute this to come up with coherent arguments for inefficient hydrogen and solar energy when you don’t need it. Storage for domestic use can easily be provided by a completely modernised version of night storage when clearly we will have much cheap electricity from wind and nuclear.
One way to investigate this is to allow customers to contract separately for 7 hrs of night time electricity and the remaining 17 hrs day time use.
Nuclear and renewables do not really coexist well, because nuclear is not suited to the rapid short term ramping to cover for sunrise and sunset, or rapid changes in wind output as a weather front goes through. Nuclear output is best adjusted seasonally by scheduling refuelling and maintenance for low demand seasons in rotation across a fleet of stations. You can see this very clearly in the way in which nuclear is run in e.g. the US or France.
Running nuclear as baseload means that there are more renewables surplus periods when they must be curtailed or stored, even though it reduces the total renewables capacity needed. Of course renewables don’t correlate well enough with demand peaks either, so you are forced into reliance on storage rather than just curtailment (which is cheaper – store only what you must because it costs a fortune).
If you examine the solution envelope from all solar to all wind with the amount of storage needed to secure supply you soon find that both all solar and all wind require much more storage than a mixture of the two (all solar vastly more so because its seasonality is opposed to demand seasonality). There is no clear optimum, because the weather varies: solar this summer went from record levels in May to only the sort of output you get in late autumn during the supposed summer peak. Wind has disappointed at other times.
Best is to have a dispatchable rampable power source to handle diurnal demand fluctuation on top of a baseload, which is of course exactly what the French did, using mainly hydro and some gas for the balance, but also variable exports to neighbouring countries, saddling them with the problem of ramping, but bribing them with cheap power. We can’t all do that, just as we can’t deal with Europe wide renewables surpluses and deficits caused by large scale weather systems without having flex generation.
Apologies, my responses seem to have been mixed up somehow.
The point I am making and asking is, what makes the “best” storage? By best, I mean cheapest, most efficient and most responsive. Its unlikely that one technology will do but domestic thermal can do a lot coupled with central high temperature storage and compressed liquefied air. Until it runs out, North Sea gas should be wound down and kept for emergencies.
Domestic car batteries may have a place once they sort out vehicle to home connection. I use about 15kWh each day at peak rate and my heating, hot water and car all use off peak. I would love to transfer the remaining 15kWh to off peak with a cheap 24kWh Nissan leaf. If a third of the country did that it would help a lot. ETA – how much diurnal and longer term storage would the country need once electricity generation is carbon free
The best storage for renewables is no storage. Just curtail instead of trying to store surpluses – it’s much cheaper. If you have to store, pumped hydro is cheapest. The Coire Glas project is £1bn for 30GWh/1.5GW. However, it is restricted by geography.
Storage in a nuclear fuel road, or heap of coal is much cheaper. Likewise if you can simply vary production from a gas field, which still provides the bulk of our seasonal gas flex.
The point here is to measure hydrogen storage vs other forms of storage. Looking to future when carbon emissions are virtually nil and, before that, when carbon based fuels begin to run our we will need energy storage on a big scale. Domestic heating is needed when it’s cold, not when the sun is shining. In the UK, wind is likely to be our biggest energy resource but it doest blow all the time. So we need diurnal and longer term storage.
Agree CO2 doesn’t control the weather or climate. No other fuels come close to the cost effectiveness of fossil fuels, especially if storage, energy density and portability become important. It’s time to stop persecuting people with carbon restrictions and to stop promoting and publicly funding ineffective technologies.
Yes, nice graph and article. It would be worth looking at the equivalent for thermal storage, both industrial and domestic. A lot more efficient and much easier to transport!
There is this
https://polarnightenergy.fi/news/2022/7/5/the-first-commercial-sand-based-thermal-energy-storage-in-the-world-is-in-operation-bbc-news-visited-polar-night-energy
1kW per tonne, and up to 80kWh per tonne. Round trip efficiency is projected at 95% for a fortnight’s storage as heat, or say 55% for a six month period, but only in much larger projects, since surface area to volume ratio determines the rate of heat loss. Not really economic to convert back to electricity.
Indeed, there are many technologies falling under the description thermal storage. For industry, carbon blocks at 12 to 1500 deg C and some similar ones which can be used to power steam generators directly.
One of the most overlooked areas though is domestic thermal storage. My 35 yr old Nightstor 100 stores 100kWh as heat which transfers heat to conventional radiators. Similar systems are being developed. I would hope in the future that the storage is built into the house. These systems could be classed as approaching 100% efficiency.
This is like winning the first set.
https://www.current-news.co.uk/uk-government-to-cut-hydrogen-levy-plans/
How they could have thought that another £188 on energy bills so that a handful of companies could rub our faces in their green credentials would fly is a complete mystery. Of course, what they do spend will now come out of general taxation, but they no longer have ring fenced funding, so it will be easier to cut.