103 comments on Brown pretends to be tough on Russia
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103 comments on Brown pretends to be tough on Russia
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Jerome, I'd be interested to hear in your view of what Europe's preferred medium of storage and load shaping might be in the absence of natural gas. as far as i can tell storage/extrinsic value is a significant value driver for ccgts. i don't see how this role (seasonal and intraday load shaping) can be replaced with any baseload capacity (renewable or otherwise) and wondering what you'd envision in the place of gas, especially in areas with no hydropower.
As a matter of fact, I think that we should keep a significant fleet of gas-fired power plants - but use them on a partial load basis, as peakers or as temporary suppliers when renewables are less available.
What matters is to limit the number of MWh produced by gas, rather than the number of MWs of capacity from gas-fired plants.
Generally, the goal is not necessarily to eliminate gas usage, but at least to limit it - and certainly to avoid building it up.
"we should keep a significant fleet of gas-fired power plants - but use them on a partial load basis..."
Second this, the gas-fired power plants are generally the newest so better these than coal. Nowadays weather forecats are pretty accurate so we will know ahead of time if the wind is likely to be having a rest and thus will need more gas/electricity. It would be sensible for the UK to have much better gas storage facilities for winter peaks.
We need gas to manage wind intermittency.
Currently the UK has around 12 days storage for NG, and from memory France about 99 days and Germany 120.
We are not in a position to manage anything, whether a winter cold snap, a supply interruption or intermittency of renewables.
So Brown chooses to upset a major supplier.
I never thought I would say this about Alec Salmond , but at least one UK politico looks like he has a brain:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/-1000-new-hydro-schemes.44472...
1,000 new hydro schemes to power Scottish homes
By Jenny Howarth
SCOTLAND is set to enter a new era of hydro power after an influential report revealed untapped potential for more than 1,000 new schemes across the country, The Scotsman can reveal.
The study, commissioned by the Scottish Government, reveals enough extra hydro potential to power a quarter of the nation's homes.
It shows there are still 657 megawatts of financially viable hydro electricity schemes to exploit, which would power about 600,000 homes.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/02/water.scotland
Scotland hopes for big increase in hydro power
• Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
• The Guardian,
• Tuesday September 2 2008
• Article history
A new generation of large hydroelectric dams and smaller plants across the Highlands could produce enough clean energy for more than half a million homes, a ministerial taskforce has estimated.
A report published today by Scottish ministers suggests that up to 128 new dams and scores of smaller schemes powered by the natural flow of a river could be built across the western and southern Highlands, generating enough electricity for a quarter of Scotland's homes. Scottish executive officials said this would be a "significant step forward" to meeting the Scottish National party's ambitions of generating half the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
Yesterday, water began flooding into the reservoir for the largest new hydro scheme to be built in a generation after the first minister, Alex Salmond, ceremonially closed a sluice gate at Glendoe, a 200 megawatt scheme buried under a mountain near Loch Ness.