Finishline42
Finishline42's JournalBritain to set a record of not using coal for 2 months
Largest coal plant now burning wood pellets that come from the US.
Britain is about to pass a significant landmark - at midnight on Wednesday it will have gone two full months without burning coal to generate power.
A decade ago about 40% of the country's electricity came from coal; coronavirus is part of the story, but far from all.
When Britain went into lockdown, electricity demand plummeted; the National Grid responded by taking power plants off the network.
The four remaining coal-fired plants were among the first to be shut down.
The last coal generator came off the system at midnight on 9 April. No coal has been burnt for electricity since.
The current coal-free period smashes the previous record of 18 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes which was set in June last year.
snip
Two examples illustrate just how much the UK's energy networks have changed.
A decade ago just 3% of the country's electricity came from wind and solar, which many people saw as a costly distraction.
Now the UK has the biggest offshore wind industry in the world, as well as the largest single wind farm, completed off the coast of Yorkshire last year.
At the same time Drax, the country's biggest power plant, has been taking a different path to renewable energy.
The plant, which is also in Yorkshire, generates 5% of the country's electricity.
A decade ago, it was the biggest consumer of coal in the UK but has been switching to compressed wood pellets.
snip
Breaking it down, renewables were responsible for 37% of electricity supplied to the network versus 35% for fossil fuels.
Nuclear accounted for about 18% and imports for the remaining 10% or so, according to figures from the online environmental journal, Carbon Brief.
[link:https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52973089|
There's a bar graph showing the breakdown for low-carbon energy sources world wide in 2018 by EIA. Shows Wind to be 46% compared Nuclear.
New Tesla Plant
So a report broke last week that the new plant was going near Austin but then some sources came out and said Tulsa is also in the running (maybe just to get a better deal with Austin?)
Plant is for Model Y and the CyberTruck.
Both locations have plenty of wind power. I have read where in Texas a problem exist that there is an excess of wind at night. Guess who makes batteries? And will be a big user of electricity?
A source familiar with the matter told Electrek that Tesla has chosen Austin, Texas, for its next factory, and it’s going to happen quickly.
The race to secure Tesla’s next factory is apparently over.
According to a reliable source familiar with the matter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is set on bringing the next Tesla Gigafactory, or now Terafactory, to Austin, or at least close to the city.
The people familiar with the project said that Musk has tasked the engineering team working at Gigafactory Nevada to start the process for the new factory, which is expected to make the Tesla Cybertruck electric pickup truck and the Model Y.
Tesla’s CEO also reportedly wants to move extremely fast.
We are told that the decision for the site is not set in stone since Tesla was apparently given a few options in the greater Austin area, but Musk is said to want to start construction extremely soon and aims to have Model Y vehicles coming out of the plant by the end of the year.
It would be an even more aggressive timeline than Gigafactory Shanghai.
https://electrek.co/2020/05/15/tesla-factory-austin-texas/
Form Energy claims its aqueous air battery provides 150-hour duration storage
Game changer if this proves out in a cost competitive manner, although 'aqueous air battery' makes me think it's pumped storage?
The holy grail of energy storage has always been low-cost and long-duration. Form Energy intends on deploying a 1 MW/150 MWh system with a Minnesota utility before 2023, an unprecedented energy storage duration if successful.
Form Energy, a secretive, long-duration energy storage startup funded by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other investors is unstealthing — sort of.
The company has revealed that its fundamental energy storage technology is an “aqueous air battery system” that “leverages some of the safest, cheapest, most abundant materials on the planet” in order to commercially deploy a 1 MW/150 MWh long-duration storage solution.
Typical lithium ion battery storage systems provide four hours of storage compared to Form’s remarkable of 150 hours of storage. It’s not exactly the “seasonal” storage that Mateo Jaramillo, CEO of Form Energy, had spoken of in the past — but it’s a few orders of magnitude better than what can be done today.
(Although the term, “aqueous air battery system,” leaves us little more informed about the startup’s technology than when it was stealthed.)
The CEO, an energy storage veteran, has referred to the company’s product as a “bi-directional power plant” and claims that this level of duration allows for “a fundamentally new reliability function to be provided to the grid from storage, one historically only available from thermal generation resources.”
Form Energy’s first commercial project is a 1 MW, grid-connected storage system capable of delivering its rated power continuously for 150 hours with Minnesota-based utility Great River Energy.
Great River Energy is a not-for-profit wholesale electric power cooperative that provides electricity to 28 member-owner distribution cooperatives, serving 700,000 families, farms and businesses. It’s Minnesota’s second-largest electric utility.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/08/form-energy-claims-its-aqueous-air-battery-provides-150-hour-duration-storage/?utm_source=pv+magazine+USA&utm_campaign=05dfb07525-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_80e0d17bb8-05dfb07525-140219173
Texas could add 3.5 GW of solar this year
Texas could add 3.5 GW of solar this year
(just for reference ERCOT had 2,281 MW of solar at the end of 2019) (edited to correct GW to MW)
Solar capacity in the ERCOT grid region has the “potential” to reach 5.8 GW this year, said ERCOT in its annual “State of the Grid” report. ERCOT serves nearly all of Texas.
Solar capacity in ERCOT has room to grow, as it met less than 2% of the grid’s load last year. Wind power met 20% of the grid’s load, with wind capacity at 24 GW and potentially rising to 33 GW this year. Wind and solar generation developers submitted a “record number of interconnection requests” last year, the report said, and “with more solar projects coming online, wind and solar power have begun to complement each other.”
Solar additions this year should also help serve peak load, which exceeded 74 GW last August 12, and which ERCOT expects to reach just under 77 GW this summer.
snip
ERCOT also created a battery energy storage task force, and staff began exploring technical requirements, modeling needs and market rules for battery storage. Battery storage capacity in the ERCOT region stood at 104 MW in 2019 “and is on track to exceed 350 MW by the end of 2020,” said the report.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/04/texas-could-add-3-5-gw-of-solar-this-year/
Southern California Edison wants its new, huge 770 MW battery storage procurement online fast
Dispatchable wind and solar?
Southern California Edison wants its new, huge 770 MW battery storage procurement online fast
In an era of plunging battery costs, these awards point to the end of intermittent renewables and the dawn of dispatchable solar and wind.
Southern California Edison (SCE) signed seven contracts for a total of 770 megawatts of lithium-ion battery-based energy storage — to enhance the regional grid’s reliability and replace four large coastal once-through cooling plants.
It’s one of the nation’s largest energy storage procurements and an indication of utility acceptance of massive-scale battery storage. Late last year, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) urged California’s power providers and community choice aggregators to procure 3.3 GW of storage and PV-plus-storage systems to solve grid congestion and to compensate for gas and coal plant retirements.
Remarkably, SCE wants these energy storage resources online by August 2021, an aggressive timeline unthinkable for any type of fossil fuel project of this size.
Most of the winning storage projects are co-located with nearby solar power plants to charge the battery over the term of the contract, help integrate renewable energy into the grid, and furnish resource adequacy during peak demand.
In an era of plunging battery costs, these awards point to the end of intermittent renewables and the dawn of dispatchable solar and wind.
Can someone help me understand what this is?
replace four large coastal once-through cooling plants
Edited to add link:
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/02/southern-california-edison-wants-huge-770-mw-battery-storage-procurement-online-fast/?utm_source=pv+magazine+USA&utm_campaign=c54963e4aa-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_80e0d17bb8-c54963e4aa-140219173
Profile Information
Member since: Thu Feb 28, 2008, 10:49 AMNumber of posts: 1,091
