Green Energy, and the German Grid, from: Kiev Is Burning

[jmsaari]

News just got out a few hours back that we'll be (hopefully, if everything works out, fingers crossed & knocking on wood) getting a small 30-50 MW nuclear reactor in my town. First He-cooled pebble-bed reactor in EU that I know of since Germans shut down their research in 80's. Supposed to get >500 °C temperature levels and thus decent efficiencies eventually (the research & test unit will be for district heating only) 

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/22682-lut-is-planning-the-first-advanced-research-microreactor-in-finland.html

There's just something about the name of "Ultra-safe Nuclear Corporation" that just sounds... not the best name  

[Ssnake]

US Nuc, Inc.?

[Soren Ras]

Maybe USNC is a subsidiary of the Acme Corporation ?

[BansheeOne]

Yep, it's cold. Regulator notes that gas consumption is now just twelve points below the four-year-average if corrected for temperature, which spells trouble. Probably not for this winter, but the mandated 40 percent storage capacity minimum may be missed in spring, which would make it hard to restock next year without Russian gas.

On the positive side, the first regasification vessel with its own initial shipload of LNG arrived in Wilhelmshaven this week and is to commence operations today, supplying six percent of the national need with regular deliveries. Let's see if the other two planned for this turn of the year make it on time, too.

[Markus Becker]

In other energy news, the renewables have been contributing very little at best for two weeks. 

The installed capacity for wind and solar is about 130 GW IIRC, actual production is 15 or less because the sun's behind the coulds and the wind is mostly absent too. Right now it's 5. 

https://www.agora-energiewende.de/service/agorameter/chart/power_generation/09.12.2022/12.12.2022/today/

 

We are thus the EU vice champion in per capita CO2 emissions. 

[lucklucky]

Renewables here in Portugal are hovering between 60-70%'s . A very wet late October contributed to it.  Contrary to what our "Meteo"  scientists  predicted now in the hands of a rabid "climate change" administrator... nice he already got a black eye.

Bright Green: Wind

DarkBlue : Hydro

Grey: natural gas

Edited December 18, 2022 by lucklucky

[DB]

The weather turned here mid evening yesterday with a 12+ degree temperature swing outside my window here.

Over the last few days, wind has gone from the abysmal low of 0.5GW up to 14.5, the single largest contributor to UK electricity generation. As I mentioned elsewhere, we seem to be running between 1GW and 1.5GW of coal fired generation.

[jmsaari]

There was a bit of a social media storm in a teacup over here after yesterday Wärtsilä (big producer of marine and power plant IC engines) released their study of how wind energy is the cheapest way of producing base load electricity and substantially cheaper than nuclear (64 vs 72 EUR/MWh). The journalist then went to confirm the figures from a rabidly anti-nuclear German prof who's worked with Wärtsilä, to get confirmation that yes, absolutely, if anything the renewable prices are conservative and nuclear will get even more expensive because materials shortages will increase the prices in the future. Interestingly the same shortages apparently don't interfere with the prices of the huge amounts of wind power, electrolyser plants and hydrogen storages...

Anyhow, plucked the figures in excel to check how they got what they did and turns out the numbers do work out, if...
1) you count electrolyser & IC engine costs as only the equipment cost. Realistically the P2G plant might be 3-5 x that, IC engine PP maybe 2-2.5 x; with those figure price jumps to 80-85 €/MWh.

2) you completely ignore the hydrogen infrastructure and power grid improvements needed. Out of my field so won't take a guess how much it means except "not cheap".

3) you assume 25 year economic lifetime for the NPP. Put even 40 years (technical lifetimes are in the 60 to 80...100 year region) and you get 63-66 €/MWh.

4) you assume typical cost of nuclear is the EPR built in Olkiluoto. Take the APR in Barakah, nukes come down to 45-48 €/MWh...

[jmsaari]

And a side not: it's a sunny day in Finland today. Thus our 500+ MW_panel of installed solar PV produces now at noon a whopping .... 14 MW.

[DB]

Presumably the "base load from wind" involves electrolysis and then burning hydrogen in ICE power plants to cover low direct production periods (like the last couple of weeks). Is hydrogen storage on the same scale as natural gas storage practical at this time? I know that the Rough storage facility that makes up a significant proportion of the UK's pitiful NG storage is earmarked by the owner for conversion to hydrogen storage in the future, but I have no idea how practical that is. It's annoying when people out-and-out lie in this way. Doesn't matter which side is lying, discussing stuff with bad actors is pointless.

Accurate UK solar power aggregate figures are tricky to come by. I believe that small-scale grid-tie facilities aren't directly measured, or at least not recorded as part of totals. Perhaps that's a data protection issue - wouldn't want to be able to break down what your neighbour was making from feed-in tariffs.

Anyway, gridwatch.templar.co.uk uses estimated data from Sheffield University and currently we're seeing 0.21 GW, from what is apparently an installed capacity of 14.2GW, so about half the percentage of nominal capacity you're seeing with clear weather. It's mostly cloudy nationally, and there's probably still a fair amount of snow on the ground and therefore still on panels.

[jmsaari]

Yeah, their concept was to try and show how replacing 1.6 GW baseload nuke (i.e. a single EPR) with 7 GW wind, 2 GW electrolysers (~2 x more electrolysers than total global installed capacity today), 0.2 GW battery storage and 1.6 GW hydrogen-fueled IC engine PP's would deliver th same stable 1.6 GW production but almost 20 €/MWh cheaper...

Hydrogen storage & transport is a good question that seems hard to find good answers. No large-scale real-world experience, so far seems most of the hydrogen pipeline plans aren't much more than some lines drawn on a map, but based on my (very limited) understanding it's hard enough to store & transport safely and cost-effectively that it may very well end up being more practical to convert the H2 further to either methane or methanol and deal with that, even though there will be further efficiency penalties and additional investment. But sorting between the realistic evaluations, wishful thinking, and deliberate lies becomes hard when it's a bit off ones own field, and there's unfortunately no shortage of both bad actors and wishful over-optimists out there polluting the discussion...

We've got a pretty big national hydrogen project going on right now (i'm not involved but many colleagues are), will be curious to see what will come out of that in the end.

Edited December 19, 2022 by jmsaari

[DB]

Transport is less of a problem than storage, if you can collocate the hydrogen generation facility with the power plant. Not sure why they think that using reciprocating engines to burn hydrogen would be better than using gas turbines, except for the presence of a company that makes one of those types and not the other.

Just how much volume does (say) 30 days of hydrogen storage for generating 1.6 GW take?

[JWB]

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/porsche-synthetic-efuel-plant-opens-in-chile/?ftag=CAD-04-10aae9d

[jmsaari]

2 hours ago, DB said:

Transport is less of a problem than storage, if you can collocate the hydrogen generation facility with the power plant. Not sure why they think that using reciprocating engines to burn hydrogen would be better than using gas turbines, except for the presence of a company that makes one of those types and not the other.

Just how much volume does (say) 30 days of hydrogen storage for generating 1.6 GW take?

I'm sure if the company doing the "analysis" were GE, not Wärtsilä, it would've been gas turbines... the whole thing really seems primarily a way of an IC engine manufacturer to look for roles for their product beyond fossil oil & gas. But that having been said, there's some advantages, you tend to get better efficiency out of reciprocating engine than simple-cycle GT (though not as good as combined cycle). IC engine efficiency also doesn't drop much at partial loads, whereas with gas turbines the efficiency starts to plummet right away when at any reduced power, especially simple-cycle but also CCGT.

re: the storage, a quick couple of cells of excel suggests 30 days would be around 0.010 cubic km at 100 bar... not sure  how much suitable underground cavities might be and where for such. The fact that H2 tends to leak through just about everything, and is corrosive to metals, adds to the fun... 

[DB]

0.01 cubic km seems to be 1E7 cubic metres, or 10 million. The Rough facility mentioned earlier as part of the UK's NG storage reserve is claimed to have a maximum capacity of 3.11 billion cubic metres, of which apparently 20% is in use. That 20% provides about 2 days NG support for the whole UK, so would be oversized to support a single 1.6GW power station. Wiki does not give information on the storage pressure, so I have no idea what pressure one could achieve there.

Unless Wartsila is planning on increasing the size of their engine generators, I'm not sure throttling makes a lot of sense - their largest engine generates about 80MW. and if they need finer control than +/-5% then that's a bit weird. Is this for a very small country?

[BansheeOne]

On 12/3/2022 at 9:35 AM, BansheeOne said:

Actually as soon as temperatures went above zero at night there was a slight net increase of storage again, so there may be some more of that in the traditional warm spell for Christmas.

There it is. During the cold snap, storage actually dropped at record pace, which suggests reduced backfilling compared to previous years. Not only have temperatures risen though, but less gas has been consumed for power generation due to a high in wind energy production. Also, the regasification vessel at Wilhelmshaven has assumed regular operation; a tanker which will distribute LNG to smaller vessels for delivery through shallow waters to the terminal at Lubmin on the Baltic coast has arrived on station, too.

[BansheeOne]

Quote

In Nord Stream Mystery, Baltic Seabed Provides a Nearly Ideal Crime Scene

As investigators piece together clues, Russia has quietly taken steps to begin expensive repairs on the giant gas pipeline, complicating theories about who was behind September’s sabotage.

By Rebecca R. Ruiz and Justin Scheck

Rebecca Ruiz reported from Stockholm, and Justin Scheck reported from Germany and the Baltics.

Dec. 26, 2022

More than 15 years ago, when the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany was little more than an idea, a Swedish government study warned of the risks inherent in running a critical piece of energy infrastructure along the Baltic Sea floor.

The pipeline would be vulnerable to even the most rudimentary form of sabotage, analysts wrote, and underwater surveillance would be nearly impossible. The 2007 study, written by the Swedish Defense Research Agency, even posited a scenario:

“One diver would be enough to set an explosive device.”

Today, European investigators face almost exactly that scenario. The Swedish authorities leading a criminal investigation have concluded that a state actor was most likely responsible for a September blast that ripped through the gas pipes. Officials and experts say that explosives were probably dropped from ships or — just as the Swedish report warned — planted on the seafloor using submarines or divers.

The Nord Stream attack has been a wartime mystery, prompting finger-pointing and speculation about how — in an era of constant satellite surveillance, in the midst of an energy crisis and with Europe on alert because of the war in Ukraine — a vessel could creep up on a crucial energy conduit, plant a bomb and leave without a trace.

The Baltic Sea, it turns out, was a nearly ideal crime scene. Its floor is latticed with telecommunication cables and pipes that, as had been warned, are not closely monitored. Ships come and go constantly from the nine countries bordering the sea, and vessels can easily hide by turning off their tracking transponders.

“The key question is not what kind of surveillance there was, but why the lack of surveillance for this pipeline — and other pipelines and electric cables and the underwater cables on the seabed,” said Niklas Rossbach, deputy research director at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

The Baltic is also a giant graveyard for unexploded munitions and chemical weapons dumped after the World Wars. Expeditions to clear those obstacles are common, meaning the expertise to carry out underwater detonation is ubiquitous. Several countries along the Baltic, including Russia, have dive teams that specialize in seabed operations, officials in the region said. Russia, with a port along the Baltic, has small, quiet submarines that can move undetected, according to former military and intelligence officials in the region.

After the blasts, Poland and Ukraine openly blamed Russia but provided no evidence. In an interview, Daniel Stenling, Sweden’s top counterintelligence official, declined to speculate on a perpetrator. But he placed the Nord Stream attack squarely in the context of increasingly brazen Russian espionage.

“In the big context of the war in Ukraine that is ongoing, it’s very interesting and very serious,” he said of the blasts, repeatedly emphasizing growing threats from Russian spycraft and cyberattacks.

“We have seen increased acts from Russia for a long time now,” he said.

Russia, for its part, has blamed Britain, also without evidence.

Russia has a history of using energy to exert influence and has an interest in fracturing alliances within Europe. But the theory that Russia carried out the blasts, repeated often by Western officials, has only gotten more complicated.

In recent weeks, Nord Stream AG, which is majority-owned by a Kremlin-controlled company, has begun pricing out the cost to repair the pipe and restore gas flow, according to a person briefed on the work who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about it publicly. One repair estimate starts at about $500 million, the person said. Consultants for Russia are also studying how long the damaged pipes can withstand saltwater exposure. The inquiries raise the question of why, if Russia bombed its own pipelines, it would begin the expensive work of repairing them.

But like any good mystery story, the sabotage has layers of intrigue and multiple players with degrees of motive and ability. Even the decision by the Swedish government to keep details of its inquiry secret from Western allies has prompted whispered speculation that perhaps investigators have cracked the case and are strategically keeping quiet.

Not so, Mr. Stenling said. “We have no concrete evidence,” he said. “But hopefully we will.”

As for his government’s choice to keep its cards close, Mr. Stenling said: “The entire investigation is unusual.”

[...]

Many European governments and experts see Moscow as the most likely saboteur. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has used gas as a political lever in the past and there is evidence that he saw Europe as vulnerable.

In one Gazprom meeting, an executive dismissed the idea that Europe could leave Nord Stream II closed. “Wait for one cold winter, and they will beg for our gas,” one official told colleagues at a meeting with Russian policymakers and business executives last year, according to an attendee. The attendee spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting.

But Germany blocked Nord Stream II’s launch.

As European countries stockpiled natural gas this year, the Kremlin’s behavior changed. Russia took Nord Stream I offline in late August, blaming mechanical issues. In early September, the Kremlin said that the pipeline would be shut indefinitely. The explosions came a few weeks later, on Sept. 26. They severed both strands of Nord Stream I and one of the Nord Stream II pipes.

The explosion does not neatly benefit Russia. It must keep paying transit fees to Ukraine, it cannot easily use the promise of cheap gas to cleave Germany from its European allies, and it faces hefty repair costs.

But the sabotage all but guarantees that gas prices will be uncomfortably high for Europeans until spring. And it creates an incentive for E.U. countries to push Ukraine to negotiate a quick ending, since the war threatens the land-based pipes that bring gas west. The fact that one of the Nord Stream II pipes remains intact also means that, in an energy crunch, Germany could reverse course and allow that pipe to start pumping gas.

Sabotaging Nord Stream also creates uncertainty about what other infrastructure could be attacked. In addition to damaging the pipeline, the explosion came perilously close to damaging a cable carrying electricity from Sweden to Poland. “You are sending a signal,” said Martin Kragh, deputy director of the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the nonprofit Swedish Institute of International Affairs. “It’s signaling ‘We can do this, and we can do this elsewhere.’”

The fact that the pipeline was not carrying gas at the time of the explosions has contributed to that speculation.

“We are less certain that the primary aim was functional damage here, because the Nord Stream gas pipeline was not operational at the time,” said Kjell Engelbrekt, who teaches political science at the Swedish Defense University.

(The lack of gas at the time of the explosion also casts serious doubt on a theory that a bomb was sent through the pipe using an inspection device known as a PIG, or pipeline inspection gauge. “Nonsense,” said Stephan Harmsen, who designed the PIG for Nord Stream I. Those devices require gas flow to operate, he said).

Swedish investigators have recovered explosive residue from the blast site. But they have found the Baltic a difficult environment. Undersea photos showed little. Surveillance of such an enormous pipeline would have been incredibly expensive and was never a priority for European intelligence agencies. The best undersea surveillance in the area, security experts say, is by Russian sonar sensors along the pipeline. Western investigators have no access to that data.

With scant evidence from the seabed, a breakthrough may rely on intelligence service wiretaps and human sources. But so far, American and European intelligence agencies have not publicly shared any data that they might have collected.

“It’s very fascinating, but it’s very complex,” Mr. Engelbrekt said. “And it’s very difficult without access to some of these data points to start eliminating actors and motives.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/world/europe/nordstream-pipeline-explosion-russia.html

[rmgill]

On 12/21/2022 at 11:36 AM, DB said:

 

Just how much volume does (say) 30 days of hydrogen storage for generating 1.6 GW take?

Just keeping 30 days of hydrogen from escaping to the upper atmosphere is part of the problem. 

 

[BansheeOne]

Warmest New Year's Eve ever with almost shirt-sleeve temperatures. Now getting colder again, but not freezing, and there's still a slight albeit slowing net increase of gas storage. Wholesale prices have actually dropped to pre-war levels, though again it will be some time before consumers feel it due to the long-term nature of most contracts.

[Ivanhoe]

I don't agree with everything this guy says, but he makes some good points;

 

Ironically, I stumbled onto this guy because of the part of the Rogan podcast where he talks about the Mexican cartel situation.

 

[Ssnake]

What the ideologists (of any caliber) never understand is the fact that neither math nor natural sciences "have to" comply with their ideas. When ideology is on a collision course with opinions, it can crush them with ease. If the obstacle is not an opinion, there'll be a lot of societal collateral damage, but it won't make a dent in math, physics, chemistry. But to the ideologist, every counter-argument looks like one of those mere opinions that must be crushed. Which is why, eventually, they all beach themselves on the shoals of reality.

[BansheeOne]

Despite the drop in gas prices to pre-war winter levels, I wouldn't say further prospects for the German economy are just dandy yet, but agree with the overall message below.

Quote

Putin has lost the gas war against Germany

Andrey Gurkov
Commentary

14 hours ago

Russia can no longer use its natural gas to blackmail Berlin. Germany has filled its storage facilities without Gazprom's help, and it's prepared for next winter as well, writes Andrey Gurkov.

It would be premature to talk about Russian military defeat in Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin has lost the gas war against Germany — that much can already be said for certain. Germany has the largest natural gas storage capacities in the whole of the EU. And if these are still more than 90% full in mid-January, at the height of the heating season, it means the loss of Russian gas supplies no longer constitutes a threat.

When Russia invaded Ukraine almost 11 months ago, Germany was importing more than half its natural gas from Russia. Blackmailing Germany was therefore the centerpiece of the economic pressure Moscow piled on the European Union, aiming to undermine European support for the Ukrainian people and their army.

Germany is in its fifth month without Gazprom

The plan has failed. Germans are not freezing in their homes; they have not been forced to shut down their factories. Politicians in Berlin are no longer afraid that Moscow could take revenge on Germany and bring the country to a standstill. No — Germany itself renounced coal and crude oil from Russia as part of the EU sanctions, and since the end of August it has not received any natural gas from Gazprom, either.

In other words, Germans have been living without gas from the supposedly indispensable Russian pipeline for five months now — and Europe's largest economy appears to be coping well. Yes, a recession is still anticipated; that would not be surprising, given the collapse of decades-old supply chains and the explosion of energy prices. But indicators increasingly show that the downturn will probably be fairly mild. Even the record inflation is slowing.

Meanwhile, Berlin is expanding its military support for Kyiv, which can be seen as further, indirect evidence of the failure of Putin's "gas special operation." In early January — when Germany was storing gas for the third week in a row, most uncharacteristically for the time of year — the German government changed its position and was finally persuaded to deliver armored personnel carriers to Ukraine. Heavy battle tanks may follow; discussions are already underway.

Regulatory authority gives the all-clear

In further evidence that Putin has lost the gas war, the German economy and population have been given an unequivocal all-clear by two sources at the same time: the state regulatory authority, and an industry association.

First, the Federal Network Agency officially announced that "a gas shortage this winter is becoming increasingly unlikely." In a newspaper interview, the head of the agency, Klaus Müller, added that he now expects gas prices to stop fluctuating and stabilize around the current level. This is still considerably higher than before, but far lower than the record levels seen in the summer. At these prices, the energy-intensive sectors of German industry "could finally work on gaining ground again," Müller said.

Shortly afterward, INES, the Association of German Gas and Hydrogen Storage Operators, presented scenarios for 2023 at its monthly press conference. Assuming normal weather and temperatures, the fill level at the end of this winter would be 65%, he said. That would be an extremely comfortable starting point for gas storage during the summer months, and for ensuring fill levels of 100% as early as September.

In other words, industry experts are assuring German businesses and households that they need not expect any problems with gas reserves either this winter or next — provided "the current heavy reductions in consumption are maintained."

Gazprom has lost its largest sales market

However, INES experts also modeled the worst-case scenario: The weather turns particularly cold, the availability of liquefied natural gas drops massively as a result of sudden, very high demand from Asia, and Russia simultaneously halts all gas supplies to Europe, which requiries Germany to share its reserves in solidarity with other EU countries. Yet even in such a scenario, Germany does not need to fear gas shortages in either the current heating period or the next.

Essentially, these two all-clears are convincing confirmation that Putin really has lost his gas war. Germany is starting 2023 without Russian gas, and with no need to worry about the loss. This is precisely the Kremlin's defeat: Russian natural gas is no longer an effective weapon against Germany. This loss has even more far-reaching consequences: The state-owned company Gazprom has lost its most important foreign sales market. Just one year ago, a quarter of all its exports were sold to Germany.

https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-putin-has-lost-the-gas-war-against-germany/a-64387963

[glenn239]

Russia was 'blackmailing" Germany because they demanded payment in Roubles, was it?

[Ssnake]

"...or else" (=cutting off gas deliveries). It's not a blackmail without an "or else".

The contract said, payment in Euros. So it was a unilateral alteration of the terms of the contract. Funny thing is, both sides need to agree to make it legally binding.

Euro payments were not suspended. Of course, due to sanctions banks were no longer allowed to convert Euros into Roubles. But it's not as if German firms stopped paying for the gas.

 

So, it wasn't "blackmail", it was blackmail.

[urbanoid]

Also unilaterally lowering the volume of gas going through the Nord Stream, for months it operated on 10-20% of capacity.