The stars are aligning behind hydrogen

Here is a promising forward-looking article by Mark Newman at Sandvik regarding the future of power to gas using Hydrogen and energy storage. The take away is that a hydrogen-based economy is much more likely today than 15 years ago. The reason is the recent expansion of electricity generation via wind turbines and photovoltaic cells. According to the article, batteries have improved a great deal over the years but are unsuitable for most grid-scale applications over a long period of an electricity outage. So far, pumped hydro plants have represented the standard for grid-scale energy storage, but it is only available in some locations due to its dependence on suitable geography.

This is where hydrogen comes in, writes Mark Newman: "Like electricity, hydrogen is an energy carrier as opposed to fuel, since it needs to be manufactured. The fuel, in this case, is the wind or the sun which is used to make electricity that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. The part that I think is key is the fact that hydrogen doesn't always need to be used in conjunction with fuel cells in order to make electricity again when a demand peak occurs, but can instead be added into the natural gas grid and mixed with methane and be used in the same way as the methane would be used. There are numerous projects being undertaken around the world to investigate the feasibility and limits to doing this, for example, in Leeds, UK, and in Sydney, Australia, to mention just two."

"It very much looks as if the stars are aligning behind hydrogen. Some market assessments conservatively put growth rates in high single figures, but some large and credible companies are openly saying these estimates are much too low. Some have said the truth is more likely to be close to 10-fold growth by 2050."



Source: Full article LINK

Agerement made for the German coal phase-out

Reuters report, in German: LINK) that the German federal government has reached an agreement with the states and energy utilities companies on payments of several billion euros to finance the German coal phase-out (Kohleausstieg).

The compensation for the utilities companies for abandoning brown coal will amount to 2.6 billion euros in the West and 1.75 billion euros in the East, said Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) on Thursday in Berlin. 

 

"We will thus end the age of coal-fired power generation in a planned and economically sensible way. This is a great success", said Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU). 

 

 

 

The warmer than normal annual average temperature in Sweden since the 90s continues

The winter continues to be mild, and today Stockholm and other Swedish cities set their heat records for January, according to Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. The weather conditions are, according to SMHI's meteorologists, due to southwesterly winds that bring mild Atlantic air to Scandinavia. Although the temperatures for the season are high, it is not possible to connect a single mild winter to global warming. 

- But we have a climate indicator for winter temperatures for the whole of Sweden from 1860. We see a striking change since the 1990s, compared with the period 1961-1990. The cold winters are becoming increasingly unusual, says Erik Engström, a climatologist at SMHI, to TT.

Below you can see that the past two decaedes only one out of 20 years was slighly cooler than normal (2010).

The top maps show the annual average temperature deviation (in ° C) from the normal yearly average temperature (average 1961-1990) for the year 2000 to 2019. The analyzes are based on observations from all stations that daily report temperatures in Sweden. The lower map shows how much the average temperature for the period 1 January to 14 January 2020 deviates (in ° C) from the normal average temperature for the period (average 1961-1990). The analyzes are based on observations from about 200 stations that report daily temperatures (source SMHI).

Sweden electricity export to Finland booms due to delay in Finnish nuclear reactor completion

Swedish Radio reports (LINK) that Sweden exported record amounts of electricity to neighboring countries in 2019, according to new statistics from the industry organization Swedenergy.

It was up 50% last year compared to the year before and equaled about 15 percent of the total production of electricity in Sweden. 

One of the main reasons is problems with the electricity supply in Sweden's neighbors, with a delayed new nuclear reactor Olkiluoto 3 in Finland causing problems, and reservoirs in Norway have been emptier than usual. Once Olkiluoto 3 enters commercial operation early next year, OL3 will supply about 15% of Finland's electricity demand

 

 

'The Turning Point' explores the destruction of the environment, climate change and species extinction from differentperspective,by Steve Cutts

'The Turning Point' explores the destruction of the environment, climate change and species extinction from differentperspective. Music by Wantaways. Created in After Effects, Premiere Pro, Clip Studio Pro and Cinema 4D. Written, directed and animated by Steve Cutts

Music by Wantaways
Stream song on Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/track/6Or84r...
Download song on iTunes:    https://music.apple.com/au/album/the-...

Britain's electricity since 2010: wind surges to second place, coal collapses and fossil fuel use nearly halves

According to a report in The Conversation (LINK, republished below) by  Grant Wilson, Great Britain generated 75% of its electricity from coal and natural gas in 2010. Now a decade later, these fossil fuels accounted for just 40%, with coal generation collapsing from the decade’s peak of 41% in 2012 to under 2% in 2019. Today natural gas is in the lead at 38%, followed by wind power at 21% and nuclear at about 19%.

Chart created by Grant Wilson, Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Birmingham., University of Birmingham.

Full article re-publishe through Creative commons license:

Cheap and efficeint solar panles killed Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project before it came online

The 110 MW Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada was the world’s first utility-scale facility to use molten salt power tower energy storage. It has 10,347 tracking mirrors (heliostats) that follow the sun and reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a heat exchanger, a receiver, atop a 640-foot (200 m) tower. 

 

Crescent Dunes is designed for 10 hours of storage and was to deliver 500,000 MW hours of electricity per year, day and night, to 75,000 homes. In September 2011, SolarReserve received a $737 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for the project and broke ground. The project had a 25-year agreement with NV Energy for 100 percent of the electricity, but this was terminated by NV Energy in October 2019 due to the project having "failed to produce." Alleging a takeover by the DOE, SolarReserve has raised the possibility of this project filing for bankruptcy. 

 

Cost of Solar Technology in $ Per Megawatt-Hour (Source & credit: BloombergNEF) 

 

According to a recent article in Bloomberg (LINK), cheap solar panels have grown wildly more efficient in recent years, and that is a disaster for such companies as SolarReserve that can’t easily upgrade their dated components. As can be seen in the graph above, the current cost (2019) per megawatt-.hour is almost 2.5 times higher for the Cresent Dune plant as compared to a photovoltaic solar farm.

 

 

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project as seen from an airliner (Wikipedia) 

 

Background: SolarReserve (LINK)