Energy Matters Global and Domestic

[NewcastleFalcon]

Good old Norway!

Europe's second largest oil producer after Russia with the "greenest oil in the World" , and the highest per capita use of electrical cars of all countries in the world - 42.4% of cars sold in 2019 were electric.

"Oil is a sensitive subject in Norway. The petroleum industry, majority-owned by the state, is credited with transforming the country from a poor fishing nation to the owner of the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world"

The young Norwegians taking their own country to court over oil

The oil industry has been around for some time now and it isnt going to go away quietly, and as well as its own vested interests, many States that have grown rich (or less poor) on oil and will not voluntarily let it's revenues go while posturing their "green" credentials.

The thing that will power a change is as ever economics. Solar and Wind (+ storage) appear to have it in their favour now hence the massive expansion in both.

On the other side of the coin Norway is one of the "world leaders" (NF-room101) in carbon capture, utilisation and storage. That's the technology that allows "greening" your fossil fuels and still keep digging them up business as usual.

REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

DRAX B was the subject of Powering Britain tonight on BBC2.

This was the subject of the very first post of this thread, the logistics of the journey from the USA to Liverpool and then by hugely long trains traversing the Pennines, transporting the carefully pressed and dried wood pellets to Drax.

Well in the course of further research, I found that once the pellets arrive at DRAX they are ground back to dust to fuel the biomass plant. Its a huge operation, and a very weak supply chain and logical madness...cut down trees in the USA, get the timber out the forests down to the port, dry the timber, process it into dust and form the fuel pellets, load them on ships, sail 2500 miles or more to Liverpool, get the pellets off the ship and process them into the specialised trucks, send them by rail to DRAX, unload them, grind them back to a dust and set fire to them.

Didnt get a mention on the programme, so I was a bit unimpressed. Then again perhaps the purpose of the programme was light entertainment and not so much hard investigative journalism or challenging the process.

Page 1 Post 1 Energy Matters Global and Domestic

Weighty matters indeed....news, views, information, and debate with random off-topic meanderings and humour if we are lucky, lets see.

So two category on-topics to start from me

Carbon Capture at Drax B

Familiar face on the forum Drax B, (if you followed POTD thread in 2016) in the news this morning

This is the gist
"The first carbon dioxide has been captured using C-Capture technology at Drax Power Station in their innovative bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS) pilot

This moves Britain further ahead in the race to develop BECCS technologies – essential in the fight against climate change

The project could enable Drax to become the world’s first negative emissions power station – reducing harmful greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere."

REgards Neil

[myglaren]

Seems rather like cracking eggshells with sledgehammers.

[CitroJim]

DRAX B was the subject of Powering Britain tonight on BBC2.

I rather enjoyed the first episode of this series so will be looking for it on catch-up this evening

So this thread has now come full circle Neat!

[bobins]

Not enough wind to drive your wind turbines ? No problem, they're now going to bottle it and store it on the shelf for use later

UK energy plant to use liquid air

"Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.
It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celcius.
The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

[CitroJim]

Not enough wind to drive your wind turbines ? No problem, they're now going to bottle it and store it on the shelf for use later

UK energy plant to use liquid air

"Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.
It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celcius.
The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

That's a good bit of lateral thinking

[NewcastleFalcon]

Theres always a bit of argy bargy about transmission lines. Overhead lines and pylons view-spoilers and nimby prone, burying them underground....pricy and still with significant nimby objections but what about conveniently laying them on the sea bed where no-one can see them...... Of course may revive the gutta percha industry.....

This is the plan

UK Energy Companies Plan Massive Undersea HVDC Cable From Scotland To Britain

Of course the US journo made a b*lls of the title for the article but this is the gist of it

This week, three of the UK’s biggest energy companies announced they will construct a massive undersea high voltage direct current “superhighway” from Peterhead and Torness in Scotland to Selby and Hawthorne Point in northern England. The so-called Eastern Link will carry up to 2 GW of electricity via some of the longest high voltage undersea cables in the world. That’s enough to keep tea kettles boiling in 4.5 million British homes. It will create hundreds of jobs during the construction phase and will cost several billion pounds.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Press release today, Green industrial revolution in the UK

Make your own mind up.....

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-o ... 50000-jobs

Its going to happen one way or another, so go for it, and take the gloves off "its a competitive world everything counts in large amounts" to quote Depeche mode!

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Press release today, Green industrial revolution in the UK

Make your own mind up.....

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-o ... 50000-jobs

Its going to happen one way or another, so go for it, and take the gloves off "its a competitive world everything counts in large amounts" to quote Depeche mode!

Regards Neil

A refreshing change to see Boris talking about a positive future without mention of Covid or Brexit!! Thanks Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Hydrogen: Up to £500 million, including for trialling homes using hydrogen for heating and cooking, starting with a Hydrogen Neighbourhood in 2023, moving to a Hydrogen Village by 2025, with an aim for a Hydrogen Town – equivalent to tens of thousands of homes – before the end of the decade. Of this funding, £240 million will go into new hydrogen production facilities.

On looking up a bit of H2 news, I find that Northumberland is part of the process. Probably one of the least visited/ "land that time forgot" corners Spadeadam.

https://www.h2-view.com/story/first-uk- ... -hydrogen/



This may look like an ordinary row of terraced houses in the UK, but these homes are playing a central role in a multi-million-dollar project researching and proving the safety of converting homes and gas networks to hydrogen.

Located at DNV GL’s Spadeadam, Northumberland Testing and Research facility, these three homes have been specifically designed and built for a project called ‘HyStreet’, conducting safety testing for both H21 and the UK Government’s Hy4Heat programme.

Boiler manufacturers Baxi Heating and Worcester Bosch recently installed hydrogen burning combi boilers into the houses, and they have been successfully providing heating and hot water.

Both Worcester Bosch and Baxi Heating have called on the UK Government to mandate only hydrogen-ready boilers on the market from 2025.

Regards Neil

[bobins]

Spadeadam. That's been used for decades for, amongst other things, rocket and big bang testing. Wonder if that's why they've put their experimental Hydrogen site there ?

[mickthemaverick]

Clearly if you go there to live don't buy number 101,

[RichardW]

Not enough wind to drive your wind turbines ? No problem, they're now going to bottle it and store it on the shelf for use later

UK energy plant to use liquid air

"Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.
It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celcius.
The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

It doesn't actually store any energy - the stored cryogenic air has a much lower internal energy than the gaseous air you started with. What it does is sink excess electricity by using it to compress the air - when this is liquified, the energy from the air and the compression is rejected back to the air. Once you want to make use of the liquid air it needs to be pumped back up to a high pressure, and then heat needs to be input to vaporise it before it can be used to drive a turbine. If you are rejecting / gaining the heat to / from the atmosphere then it's about 20% efficient. If you can use a source of otherwise reject heat (e.g cooling water from an industrial process) you can get the efficiency up to around 60%. Also whilst it can in theory power 50k homes, that's only for an hour! This is the major problem with all energy storage systems (other than fossil fuels which are astonishingly good at it!) - storing enough energy for a large number of users, for any meaningful run time is difficult, and ruinously expensive.

[CitroJim]

Speaking of homes using H2, I believe I heard that gas central heating is to be banned in new-build houses in the fairly near future...

My central heating will need a complete renewal soon and I'm seriously looking at modern storage heaters and Economy7/10...

I hope they never ban gas cookers... I'll be devastated if they do unless a modern electric cooker enjoys all the fast controllability of gas... Maybe the latest induction hobs do...

Can anyone who's a keen cook advise? My current and much-loved gas cooker is now in its twenties and may soon need replacing...

[Gibbo2286]

I'm a keen cook Jim................if it comes in a plastic tray and pops in the microwave for six minutes.

Your suggestion of night storage heating made me think back to the house I rebuilt, it had new night storage heaters installed, state of the art stuff at the time but damned expensive to run

When I sold the house the new owners quickly dumped it and installed log burning stoves (It backed onto the forest so plenty of free wood).

The novelty of collecting free wood went off quite quickly and they changed to an oil burning system.

My house here is on mains gas so that's what I use and is the least expensive option.