Synergy Module

If BMW are backing the H2 economy then I better look at it again! Air Products PLC are the UK subsidiary of the largest H2 company in the world. I left the following message on their web site. Again I will publish any reply I get.

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 I am researching the use of H2 as a motor fuel. Can you supply me with the following information:-

1) Capital cost of equipment to produce H2 from electricity at night and store same.
2) Maintenance and depreciation cost of same.
3) Efficiency of the H2 electrolysis production process.
4) Cost and availability of conversion kits for existing vehicles
5) Eqivalent motive output of H2 versus petrol or diesel.

My research is investigating ways to facilitate renewable penetration onto the electrical grid by consuming excess electrical energy at certain times for the production of H2.

One of the problems with renewable energy is the inflexibility of supply. This inflexibility is the very feature that requires EDM which is the topic of this blog. EDM can only go so far in balancing the supply and demand of electricity. Another technique is to builld supergrids that link broad geographical areas so that meteorological variations can be averaged.

In 2003 the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) was founded by the Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan (NERC). TREC in cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed the DESERTEC Concept of linking African, Middle East, and Northern European states electrical grids into one supergrid using high voltage direct current (HVDC) interconnects.

This is a fantastic idea. I recommend you visit http://www.desertec.org to learn more and to register your approval for the project in their ‘Give TREC Your Voice’ campaign.

My good friend, Aidan Lynch, asked an excellent question on my post about energy storage using pumped hydro. He asked, could you use surplus electrical energy from renewable sources to produce hydrogen and then use that as a fuel.

I am not a fan of Hydrogen as a fuel or as a way of energy storage. I am not well disposed to any fuel that burns the way Hydrogen does from a safety perspective. The efficiency of hydrogen production and consumption from power plant to wheel is around 22%. See the following report for an analysis.

http://www.efcf.com/reports/E04.pdf

And, this involves a new infrastructure and a new car technology. Electric cars and plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cars offer far greater efficiencies. If you want to use electricity to produce fuel, then use it to support biomass derived diesel.

Watch this movie to get a taste for why I feel that the diesel-hybrid car is the car of the future. The speaker shares my distaste for Hydrogen and even makes a case that Ethanol is not the direction to go.

So in the future I see us having small electric cars for short distances and hybrid diesel cars for medium and long distances. Both types of car will be charged using energy demand managed electricity. The diesel will be produced from cellulosic materials (not food) via synth gas using energy demand managed electricity as the heat source.

The author of the above report and the speaker in the presentation share this view of the future.

This is the best video on efficient energy generation and use I have ever seen. I first found it on youtube about a year ago but couldn’t find it again until today when I stumbled across it again.

I am fascinated by the new all electric Tesla Roadster. Electric and hybrid cars offer the opportunity to consume surplus energy from renewables such as wind and wave to replace our current dependance on fossil fuels for motoring.

www.teslamotors.com

Electric Car + Renewable Energy + EDM = Fossil Fuel Displacement

A company based in Cork is developing the technology to generate electricity from wave power.

www.oceanenergy.ie

Up to now I have focused on the need for EDM to solve the problem with wind energy penetration on the national grid. The requirement for EDM exists equally for wind and for wave generated power.

To get a good feeling for the state of the wave power industry watch the video below:

This blog is about how EDM can help the penetration of renewable energy sources into the electricity grid in Ireland. Another facilitator of renewable energy penetration is energy storage. For example, currently, there is significant interest in pumped hydro storage in Ireland. I have added the URL of the Electricity Storage Association http://electricitystorage.org/ to the blogroll of this site. This URL lists the many options for electricity storage and draws comparisons between them.

It would seem from the analysis that compressed air energy storage (CAES) is an option that might also deserve investigation in the Irish context. This technology uses underground mines or natural caverns to store large volumes of compressed air. During times of surplus electrical energy, air is pumped into the cavern. When electricity is required, the compressed air is used to improve the efficiency of a gas fired turbine.

Off the south coast of Cork in Ireland is the Kinsale gas field which is operated by Marathon. For full details read the following PDF.

http://www.cer.ie/cer04108.pdf

The Kinsale field is now nearly spent and is being used as a natural gas storage facility. The Seven Heads gas field which extends further into the Atlantic uses the pipline and infrastructure of the Kinsale field to land the gas on shore. I began to wonder could the Kinsale gas field infrastructure be used to implement a CAES system. I decided to send the following email to Marathon’s press officers.

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Dear Linda, Robert,

I would appreciate it if you could supply an answer to a technical question, please.

Question Background:  Ireland has a major problem with wind energy penetration due to the variable supply nature of wind generated electricity. Energy demand management (EDM) or energy storage, preferably both, are required to solve the problem. As I understand it, Ireland has 2GW of planning permissions for wind turbines for which grid connections are not possible for reasons of grid instability. I am interested in EDM and energy storage. While researching the technologies behind energy storage I grew a particular interest in the viability of compressed air energy storage (CAES). This form of energy storage is used in conjunction with natural gas to increase turbine efficiency. What is required is a large sealed natural cavern that can be used to store compressed air.

Question: I understand that the Marathon south west gas field, in Ireland, is now being used for gas storage. Could it be used for compressed air storage to help solve Ireland’s wind energy penetration problem?

____________________________________

I look forward to publishing their reply.

19th August 2007

I havn’t heard back from Marathon. I’ll try more local contacts and I will publish whatever reply I get. I think that natural gas wells may not be suitable for CAES because mixing air and natural gas makes an explosive mixture.

In the meantime I found the following two references to the two oldest CAES projects in existance.

Huntorf, Germany

McIntosh, USA

The work that Google are doing on solar energy and hybrid cars is fascinating. Reading the following blog from Google though adds a new element to the mix.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/clean-energy-update.html

Google are growing a fleet of plug in hybrid cars. These are standard hybrid cars with larger batteries fitted and the ability to charge from the electricity grid. The blog also mentions vehicle to grid (V2G) technology. This allows the bidirectional transfer of electricity between the electricity grid and the plug in hybrid.

In the context of Ireland’s need to consume surplus wind generated electricity, electric vehicle or hybrid vehicle batteries would be an ideal candidate for energy storage where the stored energy replaced fossil fuels when consumed on the following day. According to the Irish Examiner (19 June 2007), Toyota are selling 400 Prius hybrid cars per annum in Ireland. Obviously the installed base would have to be much higher to have a significant impact on grid stability.   

Last Friday, 8th June 2007, Eirgrid published a paper on Wind Powered Generation which was subtitled ‘An analytical framework to assess generation cost implications’.

http://www.eirgrid.com/EirgridPortal/uploads/Announcements/Windreportv.16.pdf

The report is a very competent analysis establishing the relative cost of electricity generated by wind energy versus by natural gas. The wild-card variable in this analysis is, of course, the variability in price of natural gas from now to 2025 the period of analysis in the report. I was very confused by the predictions for natural gas prices and so I sent EirGrid a question regarding same. The question and their answer are shown below. It’s very interesting that natural gas prices more than doubled and then halved again in one year. No wonder I was confused.

Question

I am studying the energy market in Ireland to identify business opportunities. I need your help understanding one issue. I just read your report about the relative cost effectiveness of wind energy.The report comes out very neutral on the topic. Wind is OK in small doses but we can’t have too much because it destabilises the network. Fair enough! But the whole case of the document was comparing wind to natural gas. The authors had to estimate what the price of natural gas is going to be from now until 2025 to do the sums. They had three scenarios, best, worst and most likely. A consultancy group, Popry, was quoted as a reference for these price estimates.By my interpretation of the natural gas price prediction graph in your report:-

The price forecasts are based on a period when there was a gas supply shortage in the UK. This had driven prices to historically high levels of 80 cent/therm. The forecast was that these prices would fall back again once additional gas pipeline capacity from Europe to the UK was commissioned in early 2007. So far the predictions have been correct with gas prices now down to 30 cent/therm or less (on the UK gas balancing market).  The low gas price scenario continues on at this low level based on the UK ‘s ability to tap into the global gas market through the construction of large scale LNG terminals.  In the long term if gas prices went to the higher levels quoted, you may see some switching to clean coal technology for electricity generation.

The paper identifies the break even price of gas to be above 80 cent. The reader can then take a own view on the probability of average gas prices over a year being in excess of 80 cent. In the long term as fossil fuels get scarce, it is fair to say that prices could be expected to rise, the unknown is by how much and when.