Electric boilers - how is this going to work.

[Selfmade]

? Thinking ahead a wee bit here, it looks like lots of people will be switching from gas combi boilers to electric combi boilers over the coming years. Most of the electric boilers seem to be around 12kW, while most of the gas boilers I've seen even in flats and small houses seem to be 30kW plus. So my main question is, how is replacing a 30kW + boiler with a 12kW boiler going to be sufficient to heat the place?

Secondly, what to do about about max demand? Many old domestic properties have 60A or even lower cut-outs, so how does that work with a ~50A boiler? Do we have to get the DNO to upgrade (in my past experience they are very reluctant to do so). And what about other large loads like showers? Do we have to fit some kind of selector switch so only one can be used at a time?

 

[Zerax]

Clearly, this isn't going to happen over-night. The cost of 'renewable' energy generation is ever decreasing; the strike price for recent off-shore wind farms (£57.50/MWh) is vastly less than that of the propose Hinkley Point nuclear plant (£92.50/MWh - in 2012 prices)
On the other side of the equation, individual consumption has dropped significantly with increases in efficiency.
Among the interesting proposals I see is the idea of constructing geothermal power plants in Iceland to supply the UK via underwater cables ....a couple of companies are investigating projects of this type. Tidal lagoons have potential; the Swansea Bay project seems to have found some investors and that may now go ahead ....that's a pilot project to prove the concept, with potential for a number of larger projects.

That's all good news... however...
Wind is not always blowing, so it cannot be relied upon... imagine a Christmas Day afternoon, with a large high pressure system sitting over the UK so there's not a breath of wind... and everyone puts the oven on to cook the turkey... whilst charging both family cars ?? We need other sources...

As to tidal etc... it's all in it's infancy and has been for years... we'd need thousands of tidal lagoons to make a difference ! Each one taking 10, 2o, 30 years to design, agree on and build....

 

[LightGEN]

That's all good news... however...
Wind is not always blowing, so it cannot be relied upon... imagine a Christmas Day afternoon, with a large high pressure system sitting over the UK so there's not a breath of wind... and everyone puts the oven on to cook the turkey... whilst charging both family cars ?? We need other sources...

As to tidal etc... it's all in it's infancy and has been for years... we'd need thousands of tidal lagoons to make a difference ! Each one taking 10, 2o, 30 years to design, agree on and build....

Wind generation is a part of the mix and can't be considered in isolation. It's a rare day when the wind isn't blowing adequately for the country's installed base of turbines to make a useful contribution, when considered as a network. Solar makes a contribution during the winter, even if it's suppressed by lower light levels and shorter days. Considered in tandem, wind and solar generation are fairly complementary - it tends to be windy in the winter and sunny in the summer.
Energy storage systems need further investment in the UK, to moderate the peaks and troughs of the solar/wind combination. There are a number of 'molten salts' storage installations, globally, which operate quite effectively; maybe a technology we'll see appear here.

Tidal current generation is certainly immature, however, tidal lagoon generation is far from so, there are a number of existing installations:
La Rance River, France (240MW) - opened in 1966.
Annapolis Royal, Canada (20MW) - opened in1984.
Shihwa Lake, South Korea (254MW) - opened in 2011.
Jiangxia, China (3.2MW) - opened in 1980.
Kislaya, Russia (1.7MW) - opened in 1968.
Uldolmok, South Korea (1.5MW) - opened in 2009.
Eastern Scheldt, Netherlands (1.25MW) - opened in 2015.
Plus a number of proposed schemes.

As for the number of tidal lagoons required to power the UK ....that clearly depends on how large they are and the number of turbines installed. The Swansea Bay pilot project is planned with 320MW installed capacity (530GWH/year), claimed to be able to generate 11% of the requirement of Wales. The Swansea project already has planning permission. The Cardif Bay project is almost ten times the size of Swansea, with a planned installed capacity of 3GW (5.5TWH/year) and plans for that are already quite advanced. It's suggested that the Cardif Bay lagoon would generate adequate electricity to power all the homes in Wales.
There are outline plans for additional tidal lagoon installations at Newport, Colwyn Bay, Bridgewater Bay and West Cumbria. The Newport installation being planned for an installed capacity between 1.4 and 1.8GW (2-3TWH/year). The other three are at an earlier stage of development, however, it seems reasonable to conclude, the proposals will be of similar scale to the Cardiff and Newport Schemes, in the 2-6 TWH/year range.
I don't have a figure to hand for overall UK electricity consumption, though I seem to recall something like 50TWH/year ....suggesting that twenty five 2TWH lagoons could supply the UK, not 1000s. Of course, it's unlikely that there are suitable sites for 25 lagoons ....but five could potentially supply some 20% of 'current' UK electricity requirement and, should those installations be 5TWH that would be nearer to 50% of requirement.
The December 2018 DBE&IS energy statistics report indicates that in Q3 of 2018 renewables accounted for 33.1% of UK electricity generation, 10% up on the previous year.
Timelines for lagoon projects ...of course, a number of projects would run in parallel. Construction - 2 to 3 years from 'go ahead', if memory serves. Time to 'go ahead', let's assume 5 years.

Home - Tidal Lagoon - http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/

 

[Zerax]

Excellent information LightGen... and good news that it's more advanced than I knew ! You've just saved me many hours of googling !

However... I still maintain that it's all many many years away... I've just checked on the current status of the Swansea scheme as I thought it was all canned due to lack of funding... but I see it is still an outside chance of being built... I did see though, that due to only two tides a day, it'll only produce power for 14hrs a day... lets hope we can re-work the tides to coincide with Coronation Street and kettles going on !

Large scale battery storage is definitely part of the solution... but again, we're many many years away from this.

I think it's great news that we're heading in the right direction with all this... but it's too slow and every year we're building another 200,000 'shoe-box' houses all with an electricity supply !

 

[Midwest]

Well, unless we gonna go extinct in the next 100 years, some clever boffin will come up with something. We are too reliant on electricity; there thats the new way forward.

 

[GBDamo]

Most of our gas network (I can't vouch for recent stuff) was designed for 'Town Gas' which is has alot of hydrogen in it... so in theory, it should be an easy transition back to what we used to have ?

No, no, no.

Predict lots of bangs do I.

Hydrogen is the smallest molecule and is far more searching that natural gas or town gas.

Just no, please don't try it.

I thought town gas was effectively obtained from coal, coal gasification, which if true would almost certainly contain little or no free hydrogen but I am no expert so glad to be proved wrong.

 

[LightGEN]

<Snip>
I thought it was all canned due to lack of funding... but I see it is still an outside chance of being built... I did see though, that due to only two tides a day, it'll only produce power for 14hrs a day... lets hope we can re-work the tides to coincide with Coronation Street and kettles going on !

Large scale battery storage is definitely part of the solution... but again, we're many many years away from this.

As the Swansea project stands, there are a number of large commercial consumers who have indicated a willingness to commit to a supply agreement; work is on-going to gain adequate commitments for funding to than be made available ....the project has changed from one seeking state funding to one seeking commercial funding, which could be regarded as a better outcome - if it can generate electricity at competitive enough rates to attract enough large consumers that it can gain funding, it's more likely to be successful. Tidal Lagoon Power hopes to have adequate commitments in place by the end of this year in order to move forward. Based on what I've read on the subject I'd say that 'outside chance' significantly underestimates the current position but we'll clearly see how it all plays out.
Lagoons generate as the tide flows in and as it flows out - there are four 2.5 hour generation gaps per 24 hour cycle, the timing of those being on predictable tidal cycle of course.
Differing generation systems can't be looked at in isolation - they work as a whole - like wind and solar, tidal lagoons would work in tandem with types of generation which can easily be switched in and out, as needed - such as pumped storage and gas turbines. Longer term, storage technologies will likely replace gas turbines but there's nothing to say that gas turbines can't be retained on a standby basis. The telly isn't going to go off just because a tidal lagoon is at a generating lull or the wind isn't blowing - no one would design a system which allowed that to happen.
As for energy storage, as I noted earlier, 'molten salts' thermal storage systems are already in operation - those retain heat in the form of 'molten salts' ...as the name suggests. The heat can be used for heating or to generate steam in order to drive steam turbine generators. Large scale battery storage is here now! In December 2017 Tesla commissioned a 100MW battery storage plant near to Jamestown, north of Adelaide, in Australia. That system can fully supply 30,000 homes for around an hour ...but it's intended to stabilise the supply from a wind farm and other sources, rather than work in isolation. Similar but smaller systems are installed in Southern California, Hawaii, New Zealand, here in the UK and on several Pacific islands. When it comes to battery storage, I suspect that some domestic level storage might become common in the future ....there as been some discussion about using people's own electric vehicles for this purpose but I'm not convinced about the practicality of that.
Anyway, this has become a rather lengthy and detailed side discussion ....it's something I tend to follow closely.

 

[Bobster]

I wouldn't like to see a fire at one of these large battery installations.

Does anyone have the lifespan info on the batteries they're using?

The little research I've done on electric car batteries (I suspect the large battery installations have a similar technology) are that they only last around 7 years before needing to be replaced. (In the case of a car, from what I have read, at a greater cost than the car itself at this point).

I read up on this a few years ago now mind, an with tech improving at the rate it does, is probably out of date information.

 

[LightGEN]

I wouldn't like to see a fire at one of these large battery installations.

Does anyone have the lifespan info on the batteries they're using?

The little research I've done on electric car batteries (I suspect the large battery installations have a similar technology) are that they only last around 7 years before needing to be replaced. (In the case of a car, from what I have read, at a greater cost than the car itself at this point).

I read up on this a few years ago now mind, an with tech improving at the rate it does, is probably out of date information.

Most EV manufacturers provide an 8 year/100,000 mile warranty on the battery - it seems fair to assume that most will outlast both of those figures by a comfortable margin.
EV battery replacement is still at a very early stage in the adoption cycle. A replacement battery for a Nissan Leaf will cost you USD
US$6,200 for 24 kWh, US$7,600 for 30 kWh and US$7,800 for 40 kWh. Nissan anticipates that recycling old batteries will help to reduce those costs.
I expect that third parties will eventually step into the EV battery refurbishment market, once volumes are adequate. No doubt increased manufacturer production volume will drive down the cost of replacement batteries as well ....and there's a race to both improve and find batteries based on lower cost materials, which should improve the position as well.
That 30kWh Nissan battery adds US7.8cents per mile to the operating cost (assuming it lasts for 100k miles).
Some manufacturers provide the battery on a lease basis, so you just swap it out and continue paying the monthly lease cost.

Actually, I see that Nissan is offering refurbished batteries for $2850 for older Leaf models now.

Electric Car Battery FAQ. Replacement, questions, and cost - Drive Green - https://drive-green.co.uk/ev-info/electric-car-battery-faq/

 

[Zerax]

Great information LightGen... I love reading your posts !

I really hope that we can get Tidal Lagoon Power working, but my 'guesstimate' is that even if all outstanding issues are resolved, it'll be at least 10 years away and probably more... one of the issues with all these schemes is that it's still way cheaper to produce power from fossil fuels ! If we tripled the price of electricity, you'd see a large number of schemes take off almost overnight !

Another issue with these renewable schemes is that most of them cannot be switched on when we want them... so when you're planning the entire supply, you need to look at the worst case scenario... i.e. it's dark so no solar, there's no wind, we're at slack water at half the tidal lagoons etc etc.... all this means that we need to maintain other reliable sources. Nuclear is not great at this as it's not easy to switch on and off.

Battery storage will certainly help, but it's mega expensive right now... I don't know of any grid-scale schemes in the UK right now. (I'm aware that there are some in the world, but the economics don't work for us)

I still think that we're decades away from where we should probably be right now !

A large new Lidl has just been built near me and I notice that it has a lovely large single sloped roof... ideal for solar panels ! Have a guess how many they have on it ? None !!! They haven't even oriented the building so that they could be fitted at a later date !!! As a country, we aren't even thinking about these things...

And don't forget that the population goes up by about ⅓ million every year ! We may never catch up...

 

[Zerax]

...Actually, I see that Nissan is offering refurbished batteries for $2850 for older Leaf models now....

I wish we could buy them for that in the UK !

 

[Intoelectrics]

One of the larger users of liquid fuel and gas are the motor trade. They have dabbled with hydrogen as an alternative fuel. As we all know, the exhaust from a hydrogen system or motor is warm water. The biggest problems with hydrogen atm is how cheaply it can be produced to compete with what's available, also the transmission of it. could the existing gas network be used?

Hydrogen can also be used to create fusion power. If this gets realised and becomes practical to achieve electricity produced this way will be far cheaper and have an almost unlimited fuel supply. The burning of fossil fuels will be a thing of the past and/or extremely expensive, so its more likely that homes will be all electric. Either way fossil fuels are being used up, so an alternative is required and I can't see any other alternative other than electric.
Unless of course someone comes up with a way to create enough anti matter to be practically useful. Anti matter & matter annihilation is 100% efficient, in that you get 100% energy release. It makes atomic reactions (atomic bombs) look like a fart in a breeze in comparison.

 

[Bobster]

Hydrogen can also be used to create fusion power. If this gets realised and becomes practical to achieve electricity produced this way will be far cheaper and have an almost unlimited fuel supply. The burning of fossil fuels will be a thing of the past and/or extremely expensive, so its more likely that homes will be all electric. Either way fossil fuels are being used up, so an alternative is required and I can't see any other alternative other than electric.
Unless of course someone comes up with a way to create enough anti matter to be practically useful. Anti matter & matter annihilation is 100% efficient, in that you get 100% energy release. It makes atomic reactions (atomic bombs) look like a fart in a breeze in comparison.

I know one of the engineers on the fusion project in France, it's going to be a while of yet, but they're getting closer.

As for anti matter, don't think I'll see it in my lifetime. An you 100% efficiency statment is close but recent studies whichever boffins are looking into it think there's a bias one way or another making it not 100%. Damn close to it though.

 

[snowhead]

A large new Lidl has just been built near me and I notice that it has a lovely large single sloped roof... ideal for solar panels ! Have a guess how many they have on it ? None !!! They haven't even oriented the building so that they could be fitted at a later date !!! As a country, we aren't even thinking about these things...

That may not be a Lidl failing.
It could be they've been refused a feed in connection by the local Network Operator due to capacity issues.

 

[Zerax]

That may not be a Lidl failing.
It could be they've been refused a feed in connection by the local Network Operator due to capacity issues.

So why didn't they at least build it in the right direction ? They could then have added them later when possible. Makes no sense. I think they did the arithmetic and the payback was too long.