The future of energy generation and storage

sptrawler said:

Sounds like the penny has finally dropped, well it isn't as though this wasn't predictable.

Click to expand...

And actually predicted by more than a few many years in advance.

Meanwhile in SA we should have a hydrogen fuelled power station up and running ~2 years from now. So far, so good, it looks a goer and there's some big names involved in the technical side including GE.

Plant capacity will be just over 200 MW so it's not massive but it's enough to be useful (SA peak demand is about 3400 MW).

Also means the SA government is back in the electricity industry, "Hydrogen Power SA" is the proposed name, and the focus is firmly on business consumers and lowering costs. The reasoning there being pretty straightforward - household bills are important, but having a job is even more important and realistically the state can't take on everything at least not all at once.

Cost of building the plant is budgeted at $593 million which includes the hydrogen production, storage and the power station. So the basic idea is the electrolyser runs when there's a surplus of wind / solar and store the hydrogen, then burn it when required. A process that's horrendously inefficient - but we just don't have any sites for deep storage hydro in SA, at best it could be done as short duration peaking plant, so it's the next best option.

Some hydrogen will also be sold to the Whyalla steelworks, hence building the facility next door. Otherwise, if it wasn't for that, then Adelaide or Port Augusta would've been more likely locations.

Smurf1976 said:

And actually predicted by more than a few many years in advance.

Meanwhile in SA we should have a hydrogen fuelled power station up and running ~2 years from now. So far, so good, it looks a goer and there's some big names involved in the technical side including GE.

Plant capacity will be just over 200 MW so it's not massive but it's enough to be useful (SA peak demand is about 3400 MW).

Also means the SA government is back in the electricity industry, "Hydrogen Power SA" is the proposed name, and the focus is firmly on business consumers and lowering costs. The reasoning there being pretty straightforward - household bills are important, but having a job is even more important and realistically the state can't take on everything at least not all at once.

Cost of building the plant is budgeted at $593 million which includes the hydrogen production, storage and the power station. So the basic idea is the electrolyser runs when there's a surplus of wind / solar and store the hydrogen, then burn it when required. A process that's horrendously inefficient - but we just don't have any sites for deep storage hydro in SA, at best it could be done as short duration peaking plant, so it's the next best option.

Some hydrogen will also be sold to the Whyalla steelworks, hence building the facility next door. Otherwise, if it wasn't for that, then Adelaide or Port Augusta would've been more likely locations.

Click to expand...

What are the economics of burning hydrogen vs a fuel cell?

Smurf1976 said:

And actually predicted by more than a few many years in advance.

Meanwhile in SA we should have a hydrogen fuelled power station up and running ~2 years from now. So far, so good, it looks a goer and there's some big names involved in the technical side including GE.

Plant capacity will be just over 200 MW so it's not massive but it's enough to be useful (SA peak demand is about 3400 MW).

Also means the SA government is back in the electricity industry, "Hydrogen Power SA" is the proposed name, and the focus is firmly on business consumers and lowering costs. The reasoning there being pretty straightforward - household bills are important, but having a job is even more important and realistically the state can't take on everything at least not all at once.

Cost of building the plant is budgeted at $593 million which includes the hydrogen production, storage and the power station. So the basic idea is the electrolyser runs when there's a surplus of wind / solar and store the hydrogen, then burn it when required. A process that's horrendously inefficient - but we just don't have any sites for deep storage hydro in SA, at best it could be done as short duration peaking plant, so it's the next best option.

Some hydrogen will also be sold to the Whyalla steelworks, hence building the facility next door. Otherwise, if it wasn't for that, then Adelaide or Port Augusta would've been more likely locations.

Click to expand...

I would be very surprised if W.A doesn't follow suit, if the project proves successfull, deep storage is W.A's stumbling block also, so H2 will probably be our goto solution also.

SirRumpole said:

What are the economics of burning hydrogen vs a fuel cell?

Click to expand...

The good bit is a fuel cell would achieve up to 60% efficiency at turning hydrogen into electricity versus 40% for the gas turbines.

The bad bit is it'd have added another ~$1.2 - $1.3 billion to the project which kills it financially.

It is however technically possible in a very proven "off the shelf" manner to add heat recovery steam generators to the turbines at a later stage. If that were done then it'll raise output by about 30% and increase efficiency to 52%.

So fuel cells would be more efficient technically, but not to the point of justifying the additional cost, bearing in mind this project is 100% state government funded not federal with revenue from the sale of electricity plus hydrogen sold to Liberty (the steelworks).

There's also the issue of managing technical risk given it'll be the largest such facility in the world and GE have already done the technical development and testing on their hydrogen fuelled gas turbine design. So it's a design that's already been developed and is backed by a major company which reduces financial and technical risk there.

Atco and BOC Linde are the other two major companies engaged on the hydrogen production side of it, with Epic Energy building assorted pipes, pressure vessels, tanks etc. So it's a government owned project albeit one being built by major private businesses.

On the technical side it's a 250 MW electrolyser, 3600 tonne hydrogen storage, and the generating plant is 4 x 51 MW under nominal conditions (actual capacity will vary slightly with temperature and humidity). That storage enables about 10 days' operation at constant full load eg during a period of low wind and solar.

Of itself that's only enough to meet 6% of SA's peak demand but it's a start, it's a decent step forward in that it's a real, functional plant it's not just a prototype or demonstration, it's big enough to be useful.

In terms of technical efficiency it can't match hydro but in SA there just aren't sites suitable for long duration storage unlike the eastern states. So in that context it's a case of doing what's actually possible with the available resources.

Smurf1976 said:

The good bit is a fuel cell would achieve up to 60% efficiency at turning hydrogen into electricity versus 40% for the gas turbines.

The bad bit is it'd have added another ~$1.2 - $1.3 billion to the project which kills it financially.

It is however technically possible in a very proven "off the shelf" manner to add heat recovery steam generators to the turbines at a later stage. If that were done then it'll raise output by about 30% and increase efficiency to 52%.

So fuel cells would be more efficient technically, but not to the point of justifying the additional cost, bearing in mind this project is 100% state government funded not federal with revenue from the sale of electricity plus hydrogen sold to Liberty (the steelworks).

There's also the issue of managing technical risk given it'll be the largest such facility in the world and GE have already done the technical development and testing on their hydrogen fuelled gas turbine design. So it's a design that's already been developed and is backed by a major company which reduces financial and technical risk there.

Atco and BOC Linde are the other two major companies engaged on the hydrogen production side of it, with Epic Energy building assorted pipes, pressure vessels, tanks etc. So it's a government owned project albeit one being built by major private businesses.

On the technical side it's a 250 MW electrolyser, 3600 tonne hydrogen storage, and the generating plant is 4 x 51 MW under nominal conditions (actual capacity will vary slightly with temperature and humidity). That storage enables about 10 days' operation at constant full load eg during a period of low wind and solar.

Of itself that's only enough to meet 6% of SA's peak demand but it's a start, it's a decent step forward in that it's a real, functional plant it's not just a prototype or demonstration, it's big enough to be useful.

In terms of technical efficiency it can't match hydro but in SA there just aren't sites suitable for long duration storage unlike the eastern states. So in that context it's a case of doing what's actually possible with the available resources.

Click to expand...

Can the turbines burn other fuels as well as hydrogen?

SirRumpole said:

Can the turbines burn other fuels as well as hydrogen?

Click to expand...

wind turbines are good at burning oil. thats why you need a constant base load power. when the wind doesn't blow the weight of the turbine will collapse the bearing over time, when the wind blows, causing the turbine to spin to fast and become to hot, this is why governments and mining companies love turbines,& solar governments, all the taxes they collect, and billions royalties from mining operations and commodities, mining companies an excuse to dig endless more toxic product from the ground. then the mindless drone activist and general leftist protest and have this utopian idea that they are saving the environment.
thats how stupid a society has become

Wind Farm Fires Far More Common Than Reported, Study Finds​

Technologies exist to increase fire safety in turbines​

investor13 said:

wind turbines are good at burning oil. thats why you need a constant base load power. when the wind doesn't blow the weight of the turbine will collapse the bearing over time, when the wind blows, causing the turbine to spin to fast and become to hot, this is why governments and mining companies love turbines,& solar governments, all the taxes they collect, and billions royalties from mining operations and commodities, mining companies an excuse to dig endless more toxic product from the ground. then the mindless drone activist and general leftist protest and have this utopian idea that they are saving the environment.
thats how stupid a society has become

Wind Farm Fires Far More Common Than Reported, Study Finds​

Technologies exist to increase fire safety in turbines​

Wind Farm Fires Far More Common Than Reported, Study Finds

Technologies exist to increase fire safety in turbines

spectrum.ieee.org

Click to expand...

We were actually talking about gas turbines not wind turbines.

A rundown on current battery technologies.

sptrawler said:

I would be very surprised if W.A doesn't follow suit, if the project proves successfull, deep storage is W.A's stumbling block also, so H2 will probably be our goto solution also.

Click to expand...

In the meantime I still think gas is the only real option and at some point you would think governments will say sovereign risk and take / reserve what's required suspect that will possibly happen under a Coalition government given the current political cycle.

Either way it may end up a lights out moment to force who ever is going blah blah (including the Greens) or individual states will implement what's required the unknown for me is how or if that works under the federation.

IFocus said:

In the meantime I still think gas is the only real option and at some point you would think governments will say sovereign risk and take / reserve what's required suspect that will possibly happen under a Coalition government given the current political cycle.

Either way it may end up a lights out moment to force who ever is going blah blah (including the Greens) or individual states will implement what's required the unknown for me is how or if that works under the federation.

Click to expand...

I agree the issue is how much sway the activists have, the longer building new gas plant is put off the worse it gets.
Collie power station is the newest plant, but it is tbe biggest unit at 340MW, so the turn down ratio isn't very good for our system.
The three units left at Muja are1x200MW and 2x220MW, but they are very old I was on construction of the 200's in the late 1970's and the 220 Toshiba's were put in straight after, in the early 1980's.
Then you have Blue Waters, which is privately owned and was built with price in mind, plus the taxpayer is funding supplying it with coal, therefore it staying on is very shaky and the owners have written off the holding value.
Add to that the fact the miners are broke and the coal seams are running out, so they need money to remove overburden, to expose more seams, but no one will lend them any money and you start and see that it is a cluster fl k that is being driven by emmotion not common sense.

How we are going to encourage manufacturing investment, when we are fast heading toward a very shaky somewhat 3rd World electrical system, it is somewhat like wishfull thinking IMO.

It's all well and good saving the World, but to do it by risking the backbone of your economy and society is somewhat immature, a more measured, thoughtfull and well designed plan was required before a timeframe was set.

As I've said on numerous occassions, well intentioned ideas, with absolutely no plan, other than a back of the napkin planning.
Which can be seen by even Kurri Kuri, demanding that it burn a percentage of H2 by a certain date, but with no idea where to source the H2, FFS.

Anyway time will tell if they manage to land it, the panic has obviously set in, as can be seen by the amount of money the Govt is throwing at the anyone who will take it, to drag them out of the manure.

The problem is, a lot of this renewable generation and storage will not be required 25/7, so it will be difficult to justify it on a cost base analysis, the Govt can underwrite the build cost, but if it can't turn a dollar and will have a life expectancy it wont add up. Lol
The Govt is going to have to build and maintain a lot of it IMO, but politicians aren't keen on being responsible for things they want to just be able to slide the blame, so IMO the timeline will continue to slide toward a disaster.
Only my opinion.

Apologies for the repetition and dodgy spelling in the last post, phone screens don't work well on long posts.

This technology is now commercial. Looks like a game changer in terms of cost and output of renewable energy in urban environments.

Bladeless wind energy innovation aims to compete with rooftop solar​

A compact, “motionless” wind turbine with a magnetic generator designed for large commercial rooftops provides 5 kW of capacity per unit. Aeromine Technologies secured Series A funding for scaling its innovative design.
May 24, 2024 Ryan Kennedy

• Commercial & Industrial PV
• Residential PV
• Technology and R&D
• United States

An individual Aeromine unit deplayed on a manufacturing facility in Michigan
Image: Aeromine Technologies

Share​

From pv magazine USA
A new bladeless wind energy unit, patented by Aeromine Technologies, has secured $9 million in Series A funding to accelerate the roll-out of its innovative technology. The scalable, “motionless” wind energy unit can produce 50% more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost, said the company.

Aeromine’s technology is primarily designed for installation on the edge of a large rooftop like an apartment building, a big box store, a factory or a warehouse, facing the predominant wind direction. The technology leverages aerodynamics like airfoils in a race car to capture and amplify each building’s airflow. The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy, as long as the wind is blowing.

Veriten, an energy research, investing, and strategy firm led the funding round, with participation from Thornton Tomasetti. The company said it has received nearly 11,000 inquiries from more than 6,500 companies and currently has a pipeline of 400 qualified projects. Its customers are primarily in industrial, logistics, automotive, commercial, and government sectors.

Aeromine said that, unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy, visually intrusive and dangerous to migratory birds, the patented system is visually motionless and virtually silent. And unlike large centralized onshore and offshore wind farms, the space-efficient systems are mounted on roofs, bringing power closer to where it is needed, and lessening the need for expensive long-distance transmission infrastructure.

“Distributed power is a key and increasingly strategic element to an evolving ‘all the above’ energy mix,” said Maynard Holt, founder & chief executive officer of Veriten. “We believe that distributed power innovation will play a vital role in helping companies fulfill their need for reliable, reasonably priced electricity and desire for low-impact power.

Here is a recent article on the issue you keep referring to @Smurf1976, it certainly shows the problem associated with inadequate long duration storage, unfortunately the anti gas lobby wont read and or understand it.

From the article

The last few days have seen another so-called wind energy “drought” – the second in as many months. Autumn is “traditionally” the season with lowest wind outputs, but the lull this year has pushed the combined output of renewables below its level of last year.

The graph above from ITK Services principal David Leitch, a contributor to Renew Economy and co-host of Renew Economy’s popular and weekly Energy Insiders podcast, shows that the share of variable renewable energy (VRE, or solar and wind), has fallen below last year’s levels.

Another data provider, OpenNEM, puts the share of wind over the last three days at just 4.1 per cent, and five per cent for the past seven days, compared to more than 13 per cent for the past year.

Even in South Australia, which leads the country – and the world – with an average share of 75 per cent wind and solar in the past year, the share of wind energy fell from its year average of 43 per cent to 9.9 per cent in the last seven days.

In Victoria, the share of wind energy fell from a year average of 22.5 per cent to just three per cent in the last three days. In NSW the year long average of 7.5 per cent comped to just 1.8 per cent wind energy in the last three days. Only Queensland seemed to be doing ok, with an average of 4.6 per cent in the last three days compared to its year average of 4.6 per cent.

SirRumpole said:

Can the turbines burn other fuels as well as hydrogen?

Click to expand...

The Whyalla project is intended as a "pure" hydrogen facility, hydrogen only, since at that location it's practical to do so. That is, there's enough spare wind / solar throughout SA that at times of high output can be used to produce sufficient hydrogen and there's no problem with physical space to put the storage and so on. So a hydrogen only facility is certainly practical.

Plus the reality that whilst natural gas is available at Whyalla, the supply is constrained to not much above present uses. That could be fixed of course, but at present it's a limited supply due to pipeline capacity. It's adequate, there isn't a shortage of gas in Whyalla, but it's not sufficient to supply any major new use. That being a constraint on pipelines not gas in the ground.

But putting that aside, in a purely technical sense yes it's very possible to set them up for operation on natural gas as well as hydrogen. Eg for a hypothetical future installation in WA, it could be located somewhere suitable and run initially from natural gas only, then just add the hydrogen production and storage alongside it as a second stage project.

The key is to make sure the site is suitable for that future expansion. It needs not just transmission to the power grid but also enough space to accommodate future hydrogen electrolysers and storage, plus also need a water supply both as the chemical feedstock to produce the hydrogen and also for evaporative cooling on the gas turbine intakes. The latter not being essential but it does improve performance especially in hot weather so is desirable.

Back to Whyalla, an other option that does exist is the nearby fractionation plant owned and operated by Santos. In layman's terms a single pipeline carries a mix of crude oil, condensate and LPG gases from fields in north-eastern SA and southern Queensland to this facility. The chemically complex mix of liquids is separated at this facility into crude oil, condensate, propane and butane and that being so, there are bulk quantities of these materials in tanks at this site from which they're shipped to oil refineries (crude oil, condensate) and distributors (propane, butane).

Technically it'd be straightforward to use propane or butane (which are the two component gases of what's more commonly known as LPG) as a supplementary fuel in the gas turbines. It's not planned to do this but technically it can be done. Would just need to add suitable tanks, pipes etc but it's a possibility in a technical sense.

sptrawler said:

The three units left at Muja are1x200MW and 2x220MW, but they are very old I was on construction of the 200's in the late 1970's and the 220 Toshiba's were put in straight after, in the early 1980's.

Click to expand...

This photo would be about that time. A, B and C all running but D not started construction yet. Photo would be circa 1980 give or take a bit.

For everyone unfamiliar - A & B on the left both now shut, C on the right is half shut, D is right next to C and from the outside looks pretty much the same.

Incidentally when Tas looked at coal all the cost estimates were based on Muja C. It was the most recently built similar sized facility in Australia at the time, and the overall quality of coal at Collie is not identical but it's very close to that found in Tas at near the east coast, so it was a good enough proxy for cost estimates. That never went anywhere though, there was no attempt to actually build it. Closest it got was identifying suitable sites.

Jeez that brings back memories, that photo is just about when I left, to work for the Yanks at Exmouth, then came back in 83 when they were commissioning stage D.
Stages A,B & C were all Parsons units, Stage D has the Toshiba's, which were 200MW the same as Stage C, but later were retro fitted with high twist blades on the first few rows to make them 220MW.
Stage C and D had identical boilers ICAL, which made the structures look identical from the outside, back in the day when Australia designed and made things like boilers.

SP looks like you haven't fixed the precips going by the brown fume coming out of the centre stack

basilio said:

This technology is now commercial. Looks like a game changer in terms of cost and output of renewable energy in urban environments.

Bladeless wind energy innovation aims to compete with rooftop solar​

A compact, “motionless” wind turbine with a magnetic generator designed for large commercial rooftops provides 5 kW of capacity per unit. Aeromine Technologies secured Series A funding for scaling its innovative design.
May 24, 2024 Ryan Kennedy

• Commercial & Industrial PV
• Residential PV
• Technology and R&D
• United States

View attachment 177683
An individual Aeromine unit deplayed on a manufacturing facility in Michigan
Image: Aeromine Technologies

Share​

View attachment 177684 View attachment 177685 View attachment 177686 View attachment 177687 View attachment 177688
From pv magazine USA
A new bladeless wind energy unit, patented by Aeromine Technologies, has secured $9 million in Series A funding to accelerate the roll-out of its innovative technology. The scalable, “motionless” wind energy unit can produce 50% more energy than rooftop solar at the same cost, said the company.

Aeromine’s technology is primarily designed for installation on the edge of a large rooftop like an apartment building, a big box store, a factory or a warehouse, facing the predominant wind direction. The technology leverages aerodynamics like airfoils in a race car to capture and amplify each building’s airflow. The unit requires about 10% of the space required by solar panels and generates round-the-clock energy, as long as the wind is blowing.

Veriten, an energy research, investing, and strategy firm led the funding round, with participation from Thornton Tomasetti. The company said it has received nearly 11,000 inquiries from more than 6,500 companies and currently has a pipeline of 400 qualified projects. Its customers are primarily in industrial, logistics, automotive, commercial, and government sectors.

Aeromine said that, unlike conventional wind turbines that are noisy, visually intrusive and dangerous to migratory birds, the patented system is visually motionless and virtually silent. And unlike large centralized onshore and offshore wind farms, the space-efficient systems are mounted on roofs, bringing power closer to where it is needed, and lessening the need for expensive long-distance transmission infrastructure.

“Distributed power is a key and increasingly strategic element to an evolving ‘all the above’ energy mix,” said Maynard Holt, founder & chief executive officer of Veriten. “We believe that distributed power innovation will play a vital role in helping companies fulfill their need for reliable, reasonably priced electricity and desire for low-impact power.

Bladeless wind energy innovation aims to compete with rooftop solar

A compact, “motionless” wind turbine with a magnetic generator designed for large commercial rooftops provides 5 kW of capacity per unit. Aeromine Technologies secured Series A funding for scaling its innovative design.

www.pv-magazine.com

Click to expand...

A quick heads up on this proposal. No normal industrial flat roof structure would be able to support these units. The proposal is to put up to 10 units on the edge of a building facing the prevailing wind direction.

Looking at the plans, I believe they will have a couple of RSJ's running along the the edge and supported at each end by another set of RSJ's sunk in the ground to take the weight of the proposed units. The units are about 400kilos each. The units would be bolted to the RSjs and whatever substructure they set up.

IFocus said:

SP looks like you haven't fixed the precips going by the brown fume coming out of the centre stack

Click to expand...

Yes that was the "good old days, before precips", they were retro fitted later.

Shows how times change.

These are the pictures I love, where the plebs think the steam is pollution from the boilers, with precips there is negligible smoke from the stacks as you probably know.

sptrawler said:

Yes that was the "good old days, before precips", they were retro fitted later.

Shows how times change.

These are the pictures I love, where the plebs think the steam is pollution from the boilers, with precips there is negligible smoke from the stacks as you probably know.

View attachment 177726

Click to expand...

I remember an argument at Worsley power station about repairing the navigation lights on the stack, managers wanted it done, EITs said no worries fix the precips I left before the outcome.