Another great podcast Michael! But it frustrated me so much that car batteries were never brought up for solving peak demand and short term storage. We charge our cars during the day when the sun is shining and we're all at work, and then plug them into our homes when we get home at night to extract that energy during evening peak demand. There should be enough energy in our car batteries so that we don't need to build all that expensive grid storage. The problem with this is that it will shorten the lifespan of our car batteries. So that's why I'm a proponent of car battery swapping technology. If we can separate the battery from our cars, those electric cars will become a lot cheaper, and they will also live longer due to the fact that in a system of battery swapping, those batteries can keep being renewed for new ones with newer and more efficient battery technologies. We'll always have a good battery in our car. And the batteries that aren't sufficient anymore for our cars can still be used for home or grid battery storage. I really do hope you make a podcast on battery swapping technology soon. There are so many benefits... Please look into it if you can! One more thing that you should do a podcast on is related to the article that appeared in Science two months ago, about natural hydrogen. If we can find that hydrogen, we could ge to absolute zero. So I hope you dig into that one too some day. I had no idea that there could be so much natural hydrogen in the earths crust. It's truly amazing... www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel Keep up the good work! You're fast becoming on of my favorite people on the planet. Danny
Why bother with the car just use battery storage at each house. Swapping batteries is a complete non starter the installations to remove and replace batteries would be ridiculously expensive and require a ton of maintenance.
Always reassuring to learn of the best and brightest working on such topics. Any idea what UK's long-term storage requirement is as a proportion of total average annual demand (ie after batteries, over-build and transmission etc)?
A very interesting and useful episode, thanks. However, I'm afraid Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith is greatly underestimating the cost of wind energy at £35/MWhr. Firstly this is the 2012 price equivalent which is now £45.00/MWhr and far more importantly the true cost of wind is at least double to treble this figure as discovered by the examination of wind power company reports. I suggest Sir Chris needs to speak to either Professor Gordon Hughes at Edinburgh University or his colleague at Oxford University, Professor Sir Dieter Helm.
I wrote 3 months ago that I thought that Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith's £35/MWhr cost of wind energy was a big underestimate. Well, the UK Government having failed to elicit any fixed offshore wind bids at £44/MWhr at AR5 (Renewable Auction Round 5) (2012 prices) has now offered £73/MWhr (2012 prices) which works out at around £105/MWhr today. This price will increase further as floating wind will be needed as wind expands into deeper waters further offshore. Floating wind is £176/MWhr (2012 prices) and therefore around £253/Mwhr at 2023 prices. The report gave us useful information that we need to store 100 TWhrs of hydrogen (thermal) but I believe the estimates made for wind capacity factors and electrolysis and electricity generation from hydrogen efficiencies were too optimistic, even by 2050. Nuclear, which is affordable, abundant, reliable and secure is the correct low CO2 emitting energy source and will become ever cheaper with advances in technology, particularly with SMRs and smaller ANTs.
I suggest that Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith re-writes the section of his Royal Society “Large Scale Electricity Storage” recommending nuclear energy instead of chaotically intermittent renewables. Fixed offshore wind is now at £73/MWhr at 2012 prices, so just over £100/MWhr (3 times his estimate of £35/MWhr) at 2023 prices and floating offshore wind is now £176/MWhr at 2012 prices, so £242/MWhr at 2023 prices. Floating offshore wind will become necessary as the wind industry is forced to expand into deeper waters further offshore. Sir Chris needs to watch or read the HoC Energy Security & Net Zero Select Committee evidence session dated 15/11/2023 where RR SMRs gave a price to the Committee of £50-£75/MWhr and Dr. Fox of MoltexFLEX even gave a prices of £28/MWhr electrical and £8/MWhr thermal for the 2030s. Just as Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith believed large increases in wind capacity factors and hydrogen electrolysis efficiency by 2050 then it is not unbelievable to think that nuclear, particularly smaller nuclear plants, SMRs and ANTs, will not also drop in price as the problems are solved and the technology improves. Nuclear will eventually become the most important low CO2 emitting source of power since it is also affordable, abundant, reliable and secure. Note also that nuclear, unlike renewables, is reliable and can be load following thus reducing most of the requirement for electricity storage. It can be placed in existing nuclear sites thus reducing infrastructure costs and uses 1000 times less concrete and steel and 1000 times less area per unit of power than fixed offshore wind.
The question is what practical difference does it make if UK residents pay 3x for energy, when the rest of the world carries on regardless? The UK should use a mix of alternatives, there are too many energy transitions in this approach alone. If the hydrogen was also used as fuel to power vehicles it would make more sense.
Great article, I'm concerned that distribution of Renewables appears not have been considered. The addition of offshore wind in new areas like the celtic sea and hebrides is likely to increase the minimum generation when compared to today where a high over the north sea kills almost all wind power
How big would these salt caves have to be to store uncompressed hydrogen to provide the required backup? 1 cubic metre of hydrogen at ambient pressure stores 3 kwh. Hydrolysis is about 80% efficient. Then you need to convert it back to electricity at what sort of loss?
Delivering electricity through an undersized grid to power electric cars is wasteful. Relieve the pressure on the grid produce hydrogen direct for transportation. Grid improvements can follow.
These guys have no clue. What a joke. H2 is silly joke. Their battery costs are silly to the max. They have no idea what they are talking about. Reality is well over 60 cents/kwh.
Another great podcast Michael! But it frustrated me so much that car batteries were never brought up for solving peak demand and short term storage. We charge our cars during the day when the sun is shining and we're all at work, and then plug them into our homes when we get home at night to extract that energy during evening peak demand. There should be enough energy in our car batteries so that we don't need to build all that expensive grid storage.
The problem with this is that it will shorten the lifespan of our car batteries. So that's why I'm a proponent of car battery swapping technology. If we can separate the battery from our cars, those electric cars will become a lot cheaper, and they will also live longer due to the fact that in a system of battery swapping, those batteries can keep being renewed for new ones with newer and more efficient battery technologies. We'll always have a good battery in our car. And the batteries that aren't sufficient anymore for our cars can still be used for home or grid battery storage. I really do hope you make a podcast on battery swapping technology soon. There are so many benefits... Please look into it if you can!
One more thing that you should do a podcast on is related to the article that appeared in Science two months ago, about natural hydrogen. If we can find that hydrogen, we could ge to absolute zero. So I hope you dig into that one too some day. I had no idea that there could be so much natural hydrogen in the earths crust. It's truly amazing...
www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel
Keep up the good work! You're fast becoming on of my favorite people on the planet.
Danny
Why bother with the car just use battery storage at each house. Swapping batteries is a complete non starter the installations to remove and replace batteries would be ridiculously expensive and require a ton of maintenance.
Always reassuring to learn of the best and brightest working on such topics.
Any idea what UK's long-term storage requirement is as a proportion of total average annual demand (ie after batteries, over-build and transmission etc)?
Best episode yet. Best update that Hydrogen ladder. No. 1 use Energy storage for electricity.
No need to update the ladder. Long duration storage is already a B, ie very high up.
A very interesting episode. Seems like we should be building a trial plant to prove the principal asap.
Gravity storage is non starter it introduces moving parts that need maintenance.
It would have been great to get a sense of the LOLE and EENS they used (I guess I'll have to read the report)
A very interesting and useful episode, thanks. However, I'm afraid Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith is greatly underestimating the cost of wind energy at £35/MWhr. Firstly this is the 2012 price equivalent which is now £45.00/MWhr and far more importantly the true cost of wind is at least double to treble this figure as discovered by the examination of wind power company reports. I suggest Sir Chris needs to speak to either Professor Gordon Hughes at Edinburgh University or his colleague at Oxford University, Professor Sir Dieter Helm.
I wrote 3 months ago that I thought that Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith's £35/MWhr cost of wind energy was a big underestimate. Well, the UK Government having failed to elicit any fixed offshore wind bids at £44/MWhr at AR5 (Renewable Auction Round 5) (2012 prices) has now offered £73/MWhr (2012 prices) which works out at around £105/MWhr today. This price will increase further as floating wind will be needed as wind expands into deeper waters further offshore. Floating wind is £176/MWhr (2012 prices) and therefore around £253/Mwhr at 2023 prices. The report gave us useful information that we need to store 100 TWhrs of hydrogen (thermal) but I believe the estimates made for wind capacity factors and electrolysis and electricity generation from hydrogen efficiencies were too optimistic, even by 2050. Nuclear, which is affordable, abundant, reliable and secure is the correct low CO2 emitting energy source and will become ever cheaper with advances in technology, particularly with SMRs and smaller ANTs.
I suggest that Sir Chris Llewellyn-Smith re-writes the section of his Royal Society “Large Scale Electricity Storage” recommending nuclear energy instead of chaotically intermittent renewables. Fixed offshore wind is now at £73/MWhr at 2012 prices, so just over £100/MWhr (3 times his estimate of £35/MWhr) at 2023 prices and floating offshore wind is now £176/MWhr at 2012 prices, so £242/MWhr at 2023 prices. Floating offshore wind will become necessary as the wind industry is forced to expand into deeper waters further offshore. Sir Chris needs to watch or read the HoC Energy Security & Net Zero Select Committee evidence session dated 15/11/2023 where RR SMRs gave a price to the Committee of £50-£75/MWhr and Dr. Fox of MoltexFLEX even gave a prices of £28/MWhr electrical and £8/MWhr thermal for the 2030s. Just as Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith believed large increases in wind capacity factors and hydrogen electrolysis efficiency by 2050 then it is not unbelievable to think that nuclear, particularly smaller nuclear plants, SMRs and ANTs, will not also drop in price as the problems are solved and the technology improves. Nuclear will eventually become the most important low CO2 emitting source of power since it is also affordable, abundant, reliable and secure. Note also that nuclear, unlike renewables, is reliable and can be load following thus reducing most of the requirement for electricity storage. It can be placed in existing nuclear sites thus reducing infrastructure costs and uses 1000 times less concrete and steel and 1000 times less area per unit of power than fixed offshore wind.
The question is what practical difference does it make if UK residents pay 3x for energy, when the rest of the world carries on regardless? The UK should use a mix of alternatives, there are too many energy transitions in this approach alone. If the hydrogen was also used as fuel to power vehicles it would make more sense.
Great article,
I'm concerned that distribution of Renewables appears not have been considered. The addition of offshore wind in new areas like the celtic sea and hebrides is likely to increase the minimum generation when compared to today where a high over the north sea kills almost all wind power
I don't think I heard much about concentrated solar power eg with salt thermal stores, that then power steam turbines.
What's your view on them?
No one has really got them to work, and that's in countries where its actually sunny.
How big would these salt caves have to be to store uncompressed hydrogen to provide the required backup?
1 cubic metre of hydrogen at ambient pressure stores 3 kwh. Hydrolysis is about 80% efficient. Then you need to convert it back to electricity at what sort of loss?
You don't store in salt caverns at low pressure. The caverns in the Cheshire area operate at about 100 bar
@@plodderexup If you want to compress a gas to 100 bar, it takes energy to do it....
Hydrogen !!! Who would have thought it!
Delivering electricity through an undersized grid to power electric cars is wasteful. Relieve the pressure on the grid produce hydrogen direct for transportation. Grid improvements can follow.
This sounds like Tony Sebas analysis somewhat. Maybe more credible though?
Seba 🤣
Wrong direction
The have no clue
These guys have no clue. What a joke. H2 is silly joke. Their battery costs are silly to the max. They have no idea what they are talking about. Reality is well over 60 cents/kwh.