The Waterford power station will be out of action till the end of the year
Great Island combined cycle gas powered station (CCGT) was commissioned in 2015. The power station is one of the most efficient in the country and replaced the older fuel oil plant on the same site in County Waterford. On 25th October, it suffered a forced outage, and is expected to be offline till the end of December. Since Moneypoint is also offline at the same time, these are testing times for Eirgrid, the system operator.
The power station has a capacity of 464MW, which leaves a capacity margin of 1,329MW from now until the week before Christmas when it's expected that two of the coal powered units at Moneypoint will be back online.
This will be the lowest capacity margin in recent years (the capacity margin is the proportion by which the total expected available generation exceeds the maximum expected level of electricity demand, at the time at which that demand occurs). This blog recently reported that only 10% of our 2,000 or so wind turbines can be relied on over the winter period to deliver reliable power and therefore it will be fossil fuels that will be required to keep the lights on.
It is difficult to say exactly what may have caused the outage. It can be seen in the graph below that the power station was being cycled a lot in recent times which may have added to the wear and tear on the generator's turbines.
This will be the lowest capacity margin in recent years (the capacity margin is the proportion by which the total expected available generation exceeds the maximum expected level of electricity demand, at the time at which that demand occurs). This blog recently reported that only 10% of our 2,000 or so wind turbines can be relied on over the winter period to deliver reliable power and therefore it will be fossil fuels that will be required to keep the lights on.
It is difficult to say exactly what may have caused the outage. It can be seen in the graph below that the power station was being cycled a lot in recent times which may have added to the wear and tear on the generator's turbines.
Would those 'Forced' outages have anything to do with the increased ramping up and down of conventional power plants in response to the constant cycle of peaks and troughs of unreliable intermittent renewable wind energy? The ramping up and down of conventional power plants is a bit like constantly driving a car in 'arduous conditions' resulting in the need for increased maintenance and repairs, increased risk of breakdowns, great inconvenience and a possible shorter vehicle lifespan.
ReplyDeleteWhen there are 'Forced' outages are the 'Scheduled' outages then postponed? And if so does this increase the risks of an increase in future 'Forced' outages? A bit like skipping out on car maintenance? How practical and how sustainable is that in the long term? Who ends up paying for the eventual additional costs of running conventional power plants operating under 'arduous conditions'? Who pays for any potential accelerated loss of asset value of conventional power plants? Has the electricity generation system reached a crisis point? Will banks of Industrial diesel generators have to be deployed to keep the lights on and to keep the blades of the wind turbines turning? Or is it already happening with the current increased installation of diesel generation 'peaking plants' and Demand Side Units DSU's? And will the cost of using such carbon inefficient electricity generation ultimately be deemed to be insane and extortionate - socioeconomically and environmentally?
And all blessings on the EWIC and Moyle interconnectors to keep the show on the road. 40 free tickets remain available for online registration to the EWIC and Moyle Interconnector Customer Conference at the Clayton Hotel, Merrion Road on Wednesday next, 21 November 2018.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.eventbrite.ie/e/ewic-and-moyle-interconnector-customer-conference-registration-51326517997
This is an opportunity for an update on the commercial and operational aspects in relation to the EWIC and Moyle interconnectors. Topics will include;
> I-SEM and the Interconnectors
> European Code Developments
> Celtic Interconnector Update
A detailed agenda will be provided shortly.
The ECJ has ruled that the UK's coal and gas fired spinning reserve power subsidies constitute illegal state aid and must be halted forthwith.
DeleteCould this mean that EWIC and Moyle will be in one direction to the now capacity-strapped UK electricity grid, and what will that do to Ireland's capacity headroom?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/15/uk-backup-power-subsidies-illegal-european-court-capacity-market
For the benefit of less informed readers, it might be no harm to explain these plants. If there is steam involved, a boiler is necessary. The boiler of a steam train operates at below 200 lbs per square inch which is adequate for a reciprocating piston engine running at low speed. For a steam turbine, pressures in the region of 3,000 lbs per square inch is used. The boiler is a special pipe design to contain these pressures. It takes up to 9 hours to bring them from cold to operating temperature during which the energy input is lost. Repeated thermal changes must be avoided because they weaken the structure of the metal as it expands and contracts.
ReplyDeleteThe turbine is a series of rotating blades set an an angle which are divided by stationary straight intermediate blades. 3,000 lbs per square inch is the equivalent of the pressure inside a shotgun barrel on firing or 100 times the pressure inside a car wheel tire. It is the same pressure as a (top of the range) petrol driven power washer. There was an old saying, "the constant drop wears the stone". The metal turbine blades are a compromise between strength, thermal expansion and weight. Designing them for conventional generation use has been refined over the years as metal technology developed. Turbine duty controllers can plan to start and ramp up their plant and keep it running in a manner sympathetic to it's long life.
All of the advances in turbine blade development has now been stood on their head as the usage changes from constant consistent operation over long period of months and weeks to highly varying operation at short time intervals over hours, minutes and even seconds. It cannot be done without impacting the life span of the plant..
One only has to watch a TV programme on military history to see how the campaign must be matched to the most up to date technology and that the equipment must be fit for purpose, properly maintained with repair facilities close to the battle field. Same with the current situation.
It is doubtful if manufacturers will honour warranties for plant abused in this way, and we could well see an abandonment of steam plant altogether to be replaced by open cycle jet engines and diesel engines which drive emissions up even worse.
The Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) and AIB have committed investment in Temporis Investment Management, a fund to develop more than 1GW of pre-construction renewables projects and associated energy storage in Ireland over 12 years.
ReplyDeleteThe fund has a target size of €100m and a maximum commitment of €150m. Minister Bruton says: “The fund will play a critical role in stimulating private sector funding of renewable projects, which will be key to delivering on our goals at least cost and increasing the pace and scale of transition to low carbon technologies.”
The price of low carbon technology must have fallen dramatically to enable €100m to fund 1GW of development and storage. Solocheck tells us that "Temporis Investment Management Limited was set up on Thursday the 28th of June 2018. The company's current directors have been the director of 5 other Irish companies between them. This Irish company shares its Eircode with at least 11 other companies".
€100 million might just about buy an installed capacity of 'brand new' 400-500MW of Industrial Lithium Ion Batteries that together on a very good day might provide at best 4-5 minutes of emergency electricity to 1.8 million of the 2.2 million homes in the Republic of Ireland. Of course the costs to support the storage industry with energy infrastructure and the rate paid for the service per kilowatt hour to supply the national grid with stored predominantly fossil fuel generated electricity taken from the national grid in the first place will probably make the initial cost of installing the batteries insignificant by comparison. There is currently 3000 megawatts+ of proposed Industrial Lithium Ion Battery Energy Storage Systems in the Republic of Ireland. Planning permission has already been granted for about 1000 megawatts or 1 Gigawatt of installed capacity. That represents the biggest concentration of Industrial Lithium Ion Battery Energy Storage Systems in the World and far more than is being proposed for the whole of the United States of America. Oh the Battery Energy Storage Systems can be operated remotely and therefore there are zero real local jobs and for potential safety reasons alone that is probably a good thing! The Industrial Lithium Ion Batteries require constant charging and discharging to extend the relatively short lifespan of the batteries and they also require electricity from the grid for either the heating, cooling, air conditioning of them. How much will that cost in subsidies and by how much will 3000+ megawatts of proposed Industrial Battery Energy Storage Systems increase Ireland's overall national carbon emissions by and related EU per annum fines?
DeleteBattery storage is a media-coined fig leaf for the highly remunerative supply of DS3 "System Services". Diarmuid Foley posted the definitive analysis of renewable energy storage versus grid stabilisation services on Energy Matters back in May, and his detailed overview of technical initiatives to accommodate ever-higher levels of variable renewable energy onto the Irish grid whilst maintaining grid stability is a must-read.
DeleteCheck out http://euanmearns.com/beyond-the-spin-of-green-energy-storage/
If the alleged Irish Experts in the change over to wind generation looked at or researched the Danish Data. They would see two behavioural characteristics of wind turbines that must happen in Ireland but which are not acknowledged. One is wind turbine output declines as wind turbines age and the second is wind farms tend to be decommissioned pretty regularly.By not decommissioning wind farms when output performance is not of much use. Eirgrid keeps pretty useless plant on their capacity listings even though it is pretty useless.This has pretty significant implications for the use of thermal plant going forward. As forecast wind output will vary quite significantly from actual output. Meaning that thermal plant should see increased and more severe cycling. Causing increased risk of forced stoppages. This caused by metal fatigue created by the frequent heating and cooling of plant.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to understand, that no engineer or scientist worth their salt would consider storage of mains electric power. The method of storage is irrelevant. There is no point in generating fossil fuel electricity in order to store it. You might as well produce it as required from fossil fuel..
ReplyDeleteIf we consider a scenario where battery storage is installed on each wind farm site to store the wind electricity, during a month of good wind speeds, the stored electricity is not needed because wind is generating plenty. Next consider the 25th May, 2018 in Ireland after a month of good wind, it ended for four months. If the batteries discharged in 2 days, neither the wind farms nor the batteries are of any use for four months. The investment in the wind farms and in the batteries pays nothing back.
There is something in the human cognitive way of reasoning that prevents most people from understanding this obvious physical situation. If anyone can find a way of using this reasoning defect in reverse, they can fool virtually all the people all of the time and make a fortune. You can't fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool most of them, most of the rest won't challenge you leaving a tiny minority to blow the whistle. Whistle blowing does not work.
Google, valmartinireland you tube myth about wind energy video clib 9. Note a plan by Gaelectric to store energy in Larne Co. Antrim is failed, the company went burst. .
Re: 'It is important to understand, that no engineer or scientist worth their salt would consider storage of mains electric power.' And yet that is exactly what is being proposed in the Republic of Ireland for 3000+ Megawatts of Industrial Lithium Ion Batteries. Almost all Battery Energy Storage Systems BESS's propose to connect into the National Grid System in order to charge the batteries with predominantly fossil fuel generated electricity. The batteries also require grid supplied electricity for cooling, heating and air conditioning (HVAC). Energy is also lost in transmission. What a waste of energy! Almost all proposed and granted Industrial Battery Energy Storage Systems will increase Ireland's carbon emissions and hence the amount of EU EED emission fines. Also several existing substations have to be extended or new substations constructed to facilitate these proposed BESS's. And who pays for that?! And is the electricity supply to the BESS's be subsidised or supplied for free? Currently in Ireland the more electricity that industry uses the less is generally paid per kilowatt hour of supply. So where's the incentive for Big Industry to increase energy efficiency and energy reduction? Is it any wonder that Ireland has very high and ever increasing electricity prices? How much longer before everyone will be blowing their whistles when the lights finally go out?!
DeleteIt most also be remembered that when the price of a basic commodity like electricity increases, industrial and domestic consumers who cannot find an alternative energy source must work harder to earn the money to pay the bills. Working harder means using energy from fuel. Lorry drivers, taxi drivers, farmers, contractors, hair salons. bakers, fishermen, salesmen, builders all must work longer hours to earn the money to survive. The unemployed must get public help with their bills, Old age pensions must rise to avoid hardship in cold weather. Charitable organisation must collect more money to help impoverished people.
ReplyDeleteEven if some consumers switch to home generation and home storage (which would make more sense than large public storage) more fossil fuel will be used. This will defeat the whole purpose of renewable energy. In Ireland each electricity company employs special teams of callers to ring up bill payers to persuade them to pay their electricity bills. This adds even more costs to bills as these employees must pay tax, insurance, social welfare contributions and their employer must carry the administration costs of their debt collection efforts.
Did any government body bother to do a Poverty Impact Assessment PIA? http://www.welfare.ie/en/Pages/Poverty-Impact-Assessment.aspx
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