The Energy Transition and technologies

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Data table here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_o...city_by_source

There are a lot of other factors at play here.

If you take a cold climate province like Manitoba, with abundant hydro capacity, I have a hard time believing that solar is very feasible in comparison to hydro especially when you factor in added electrical needs because of winter.

Also, baseload power needs.

Wind & solar are not baseload capable. So again, cost per unit of energy production isn't a good measuring stick.

Alberta wind & solar weren't very helpful during cold weather nights the past few weeks while Manitoba Hydro capacity doesn't change regardless of the weather.

[Fuzz]

From there you can do the rest of the calculating if you want to look at a yearly cost based on averages for your region, storage needs etc.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Azure

There are a lot of other factors at play here.

If you take a cold climate province like Manitoba, with abundant hydro capacity, I have a hard time believing that solar is very feasible in comparison to hydro especially when you factor in added electrical needs because of winter.

Also, baseload power needs.

Wind & solar are not baseload capable. So again, cost per unit of energy production isn't a good measuring stick.

Alberta wind & solar weren't very helpful during cold weather nights the past few weeks while Manitoba Hydro capacity doesn't change regardless of the weather.

Solar (and wind) can work great in conjunction with hydro...they allow you to replenish the reservoir which can then be unleashed to meet evening/overnight demand.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Solar (and wind) can work great in conjunction with hydro...they allow you to replenish the reservoir which can then be unleashed to meet evening/overnight demand.

Well thats fine, and I'm a fan of utilizing in that way.

But the issue seems to be baseload capacity.

Also, adequate hydro capacity allows you to balance the different generating stations by making sure you have adequate capacity in times of need, such as building up for the winter months.

If I'm correct, provinces like BC & Manitoba buy cheaper electricity from the US during some months of the year which also allows them to manage hydro properly.

Either way, 0% effective power generation by solar & wind in Alberta during the cold days is not a very good look when it comes to future needs regardless of how much capacity is built into the system. Its obviously not feasible to spend so much money on something that can effectively provide 0% capacity just because, weather. From a risk management perspective, it makes zero sense.

Also, I believe Alberta has lots of hydro potential, so not sure why the experience and knowledge from neighbouring provinces isn't used to add that, when its quite clear what is working and what isn't. We're trying to reinvent the wheel in a lot of aspects, and yet the solution has been in front of us for 75 years. At least in Canada.

[GGG]

Same problems as nuclear - NIMBYs and Greenies.

Yes there should be discussion about wiping out habitat by damming and the impacts to fish migration and all sorts of things. These are acceptable sacrifices to make to the climate gods.

With Manitoba hydro they buy Nuclear overnight to consume base load and sell it back at peak day time prices.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by GGG

Same problems as nuclear - NIMBYs and Greenies.

Yes there should be discussion about wiping out habitat by damming and the impacts to fish migration and all sorts of things. These are acceptable sacrifices to make to the climate gods.

With Manitoba hydro they buy Nuclear overnight to consume base load and sell it back at peak day time prices.

I guess here in Manitoba people are out of touch with what is happening further north, but some of these multi-billion dollar hydro generating stations have been built with first-nations approval as well, something the rest of Canada has often struggled with.

At some point we need a government with some balls to push these things forward, but these days appeasement seems the only course of action.

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

You seem to imply that the AESO was acting poorly. Is that what you intended?

Sorry if it came across like that. I don't see how they could have come to any other conclusion than they did in that situation. They're doing the best job they can without the ability to plan forward generation like other provinces do.

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Considering most of Alberta's load is industrial I don't see electrification of households tripling demand. AESO certainly doesn't in any of their projections even with high electrification scenarios.

I don't think I've seen electricity consumption broken down by end use sector in Alberta. Could you share one if you've seen it?

Most of the industrial loads here are granted Independent System Status, and as such, generate their own needs. Sites with meaningful excess connect to export to the wider grid - cogeneration supplies just over 4GW for instance.

The regional loads for the NW and NE regions are roughly 2GW total, so I am not sure that Industrial demand is the bulk of total system load.

And I apologize for being sloppy with my estimates. That additional 25GW number was based on napkin math of what would be required to sustain fully electrified heating for 3 days at -40C (an extreme edge case), regardless where it comes from. This is another huge challenge of having these conversations and making these decisions - they tend to occur with annual or seasonal averages without considering the extreme but real edge cases that must be satisfied. Blackstarts at -40 would create a bodybag shortage, we can't let that happen.

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

Solar (and wind) can work great in conjunction with hydro...they allow you to replenish the reservoir which can then be unleashed to meet evening/overnight demand.

Within limits, and subject to seasonality. Wind and solar have not done very much to support reservoir levels in Ontario or Quebec, especially in summer. If we thought wind was bad here in AB, it has been absolute GARBAGE for ON. Quebec even withheld generation for many periods during 2023 to ensure they had enough for winter 2024.

One of the areas that Climate change is showing up already is changes in precipitation patterns and severity of droughts. Hydrologic flows are being impacted and that is showing up in reservoir height and generation data in BC, NT, ON and QC.

Originally Posted by Azure

Either way, 0% effective power generation by solar & wind in Alberta during the cold days is not a very good look when it comes to future needs regardless of how much capacity is built into the system. Its obviously not feasible to spend so much money on something that can effectively provide 0% capacity just because, weather. From a risk management perspective, it makes zero sense.

Also, I believe Alberta has lots of hydro potential, so not sure why the experience and knowledge from neighbouring provinces isn't used to add that, when its quite clear what is working and what isn't. We're trying to reinvent the wheel in a lot of aspects, and yet the solution has been in front of us for 75 years. At least in Canada.

Well said. If it is possible for VRE to contribute 0%, you need to have 100% of highest peak plus contingencies in place or pay the price in loss of life, limb and property. This isn't anecdotal, it happens. If AB was relying 100% on VRE during this past week, there would have been ~650TWh of shortfall to make up. Li-Ion batteries aren't practical for that, and they sure aren't practical for seasonal scale temporal shifting.

These things are ok at fuel saving, but never replacing. And not predictable enough to avoid massively overpaying everywhere else. To not attribute those additional costs to the accommodation of high penetration VRE feels a lot like being gaslit by a truly grandiose narcissist. Sick of it.

Edit: Hydro potential in Alberta is intriguing. The Peace is a mighty flow, and we also have serious drought risks to discuss. I often wonder what NW region hydro could contribute to not just power provision, but strategic water reserves and groundwater aquifer recharge contributions. Could be a combination of that being a very serious project in a very unserious place (akin to multi-GW scale nuclear), abundance of alternatives/incumbent interests, distance from markets/existing infrastructure, perceived consultation and environmental impact challenges (how seriously has it been studied?), and assumptions around water security being a non-issue (which is deeply untrue).

[Azure]

Proper water management is extremely important to protect our way of life and quite frankly our food.

And proper water management is impossible to do without hydro dams to build up reservoirs, feed canals, irrigation systems, recharge aquifers, etc.

The fact that you can get power generation on a big scale makes it a big win all around.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Azure

Proper water management is extremely important to protect our way of life and quite frankly our food.

And proper water management is impossible to do without hydro dams to build up reservoirs, feed canals, irrigation systems, recharge aquifers, etc.

The fact that you can get power generation on a big scale makes it a big win all around.

I really think we should be using the royalties from paid out oil sands projects to build government owned hydro. Manitoba built a huge dam for ~$8B according to someone above. There are sites along the Peace/Athabasca in Alberta that are suitable for large scale hydro, and if we added a couple of them as "Alberta Hydro" we'd add a huge amount of reliability to our grid. I also think we'd have a decent chance of getting some sort of transition funding from the feds.

[Street Pharmacist]

Uh oh (again)

https://www.theguardian.com/business...-35bn-says-edf
Hinkley Point C could be delayed to 2031 and cost up to £35bn, says EDF

The owner of Hinkley Point C has blamed inflation, Covid and Brexit as it announced the nuclear power plant project could be delayed by a further four years, and cost £2.3bn more.

The plant in Somerset, which has been under construction since 2016, is now expected to be finished by 2031 and cost up to £35bn, France’s EDF said. However, the cost will be far higher once inflation is taken into account, because EDF is using 2015 prices.

Truly becoming absurd at this point. My favorite? "This will absolutely not be paid for by taxpayers. This is a private business that needs to absorb the costs. Instead, we'll guarantee high prices for your electricity and have the tax payers pay the difference. Because that's tooooooootally different"


Edit: that's almost $80B in 2024 CAD for 3.2GW

[DoubleK]

I will suggest one might want to look at other news sources besides The Guardian.

That article seems to point the finger at EDF. I would suggest they inherited a problem and are making the best of a bad situation.

This particular project has suffered from a perfect storm of bad stuff, from Fukushima to COVID. It should not be used as a reference point for judging the prospects of a nuclear project going forward.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

I will suggest one might want to look at other news sources besides The Guardian.

That article seems to point the finger at EDF. I would suggest they inherited a problem and are making the best of a bad situation.

This particular project has suffered from a perfect storm of bad stuff, from Fukushima to COVID. It should not be used as a reference point for judging the prospects of a nuclear project going forward.

I'd agree there. CGN pulling out didn't help. It really does hammer home just how bad these things can go though

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

I'd agree there. CGN pulling out didn't help. It really does gamer home just how bad these things can go though

I don't have any project experience on the generation side of things, but I do know the interconnection business pretty well.

The scoping/order of magnitude estimates were +/-50%, progressed to +20/-10% at the proposal stage to +/-10% at the construction stage. In a worst-case scenario, the project would never ever double from the OOM estimate unless the project fundamentally changed.

To read about projects going 3x is mind-bottling. I'd really need to know more about the base estimate to opine on if the base estimate was remotely realistic or not.

[accord1999]

It's probably just another sign of the UK's (and much of the Western World) inability to build big projects on time and on budget. The other massive project in the UK, the HS2 highspeed railway has ballooned from under £40B to over £100B.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

I don't have any project experience on the generation side of things, but I do know the interconnection business pretty well.



The scoping/order of magnitude estimates were +/-50%, progressed to +20/-10% at the proposal stage to +/-10% at the construction stage. In a worst-case scenario, the project would never ever double from the OOM estimate unless the project fundamentally changed.



To read about projects going 3x is mind-bottling. I'd really need to know more about the base estimate to opine on if the base estimate was remotely realistic or not.

The 2008 estimate was £5.6B. Then in 2018 it was £18B.

https://twitter.com/DrSimEvans/statu...1EkwP6Abw&s=19

[SeeGeeWhy]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Uh oh (again)

https://www.theguardian.com/business...-35bn-says-edf
Hinkley Point C could be delayed to 2031 and cost up to £35bn, says EDF





Truly becoming absurd at this point. My favorite? "This will absolutely not be paid for by taxpayers. This is a private business that needs to absorb the costs. Instead, we'll guarantee high prices for your electricity and have the tax payers pay the difference. Because that's tooooooootally different"


Edit: that's almost $80B in 2024 CAD for 3.2GW

Absolutely disgusting and disappointing.

The rate payer should be protected by the strike price terms negotiated prior to start of construction, but I am also skeptical about the taxpayer or other stakeholders escaping pain in the long run.

I'll continue to track this and share more as I learn more, but early chatter that I hear from the inside is putting blame on UK regulators intervening more than necessary. All projects, especially mega projects, suffer from this phenomenon but there is no denying that Western nuclear builds bear these pains very acutely.

[Fuzz]

Climate technology startup Twelve took a major step towards producing sustainable aviation fuel on Thursday by launching its commercial-scale carbon transformation unit.
The company will generate carbon credits for customers including Microsoft Corp. and Shopify Inc., in addition to producing clean jet fuel for Alaska Air Group Inc.


Twelve is one of a number of emerging companies working on ways to transform captured CO2 into useful products. In the case of the Berkeley, California-based startup, its nascent technology will be critical to cleaning up one of the hardest-to-decarbonize sectors: aviation.


Twelve uses a technique called electrolysis that uses electricity to repurpose carbon dioxide and water into various products. When the electricity is generated from renewables, the process is essentially no-carbon. The company’s CO2 electrochemical reactor – called OPUS – will be at the center of its first commercial SAF production plant under construction in Moses Lake, Washington, that’s set to be completed later this year. The plant will run on hydropower and use CO2 captured from a nearby ethanol plant. That CO2 and water will be fed through OPUS and turned into synthetic gas, the basis of SAF. Twelve’s airline customers can blend it with traditional jet fuel. The resulting carbon credit can be bought by corporate customers like Microsoft to offset their business travel-related emissions.

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...up-fires-up-n/


This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They capture carbon from an ethanol plant, so they take something that had potential to be sequestered, and instead use green energy(could it have been used better elsewhere?) to run electrolysis ultimately creating a fuel that will be burned and release that captured CO2. Is this just a giant Rube Goldberg machine, or can they actually prove a net reduction in CO2(assuming the green energy could have been used elsewhere)? In a world of free surplus energy this would be one thing, and maybe they've done the math on this but it just doesn't make logical sense. Oh, and carbon credits, of course. Gotta grab those for green washing.

[Mathgod]

The obstructionists are winning.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...s/71841063007/

Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built
Elizabeth Weise
Suhail Bhat
USA TODAY
Across America’s power grid, there’s a growing gap between what we need and what we’ll allow.

As the planet warms and climate disasters grow more costly, the U.S. has set a target to reach 100% clean energy by 2035, a goal that depends on building large-scale solar and wind power.

A nationwide analysis by USA TODAY shows local governments are banning green energy faster than they’re building it.

At least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both, USA TODAY found. These limits come through outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...up-fires-up-n/


This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They capture carbon from an ethanol plant, so they take something that had potential to be sequestered, and instead use green energy(could it have been used better elsewhere?) to run electrolysis ultimately creating a fuel that will be burned and release that captured CO2. Is this just a giant Rube Goldberg machine, or can they actually prove a net reduction in CO2(assuming the green energy could have been used elsewhere)? In a world of free surplus energy this would be one thing, and maybe they've done the math on this but it just doesn't make logical sense. Oh, and carbon credits, of course. Gotta grab those for green washing.

It’s essentially energy storage. You take Energy from the sun and produce jet fuel. It’s no different than storing in batteries or pumping water for future hydro power.

It would reduce Carbon Emissions by reducing oil demand. This type of tech is an awesome solution for the areas batteries won’t work. Same as the green hydrogen concept.

You are correct that just powering the grid is more efficient but there is a need for fungible stored energy and fuel is a really good way to do that in terms of energy density.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/20...up-fires-up-n/


This doesn't make a lot of sense to me. They capture carbon from an ethanol plant, so they take something that had potential to be sequestered, and instead use green energy(could it have been used better elsewhere?) to run electrolysis ultimately creating a fuel that will be burned and release that captured CO2. Is this just a giant Rube Goldberg machine, or can they actually prove a net reduction in CO2(assuming the green energy could have been used elsewhere)? In a world of free surplus energy this would be one thing, and maybe they've done the math on this but it just doesn't make logical sense. Oh, and carbon credits, of course. Gotta grab those for green washing.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is unfortunately a necessity. Even if a feasible energy substitute was found for aviation today the fleet would take 30-40 years to change over. What we need is a drop in substitute until a solution is found.

Right now, there's SAF made mostly by fermentation of organic cellulosic waste (corn stalks, etc) as it's easier than making hydrogen, trapping CO2, then using more energy to combine them. The trouble is, of course, that there's nowhere near enough organic waste to make enough SAF. From a carbon budget perspective, it's far better to use carbon that's already in the carbon cycle than to add more carbon to the system from fossil fuels.