Project To Develop 20+ MW Floating Offshore Wind Technology Kicks Off
This is the introductory paragraph.
Denny Bros Completes Solar Scheme At Bury St Edmunds Factory
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the East Anglian Daily Times.
This is the sub-title.
An energy-hungry manufacturer has completed a huge £0.5m solar array across its roofs – which on a good day can power the whole operation and more.
This Google Map from a few months ago, shows the incomplete array.
A more recent picture in the article, shows the top building with solar panels on the roof.
According to another report in the East Anglian Daily Times, the company turns over about eight millions.
As Denny Brothers appears to be a well-run company, that is partly employee-owned, the numbers must add up.
Incidentally, the article was displayed with two adverts; one for a solar panel company and the other for the well-known employee-owned company; John Lewis.
I suppose that’s the way the cookie rumbles!
I certainly don’t regret installing solar panels on my flat roof!
What About A Couple Of Wind Turbines?
I ask this question, as some MPs want to allow more onshore wind, providing the natives don’t mind.
I wrote about onshore wind in Chancellor Confirms England Onshore Wind Planning Reform and I think that in the right place they are acceptable.
I know the Government has changed since September, but if you look at the Google Map above, I suspect a couple of turbines could be squeezed in and they probably would be in Germany.
The Secret Of The TwinHub
I was reading about the TwinHub, which is a pair of wind turbines, that are to be mounted on a single float.
There is an explanatory video on the TwinHub home page. Just scroll the page down and you’ll find a full page video, that is rather beautiful and slightly hypnotic.
But note how it stops and starts in the wind and turns itself into a position, so that it is generating the maximum amount of wind.
So how does it do that?
It is not by clever computers and a whole host of actuators, but by good old-fashioned aerodynamics.
Above the video, there is a picture of the sea, with these words underneath.
This demonstration project will be located at the Wave Hub site, and will consist of two floating platforms anchored to the seabed. Each floating platform will host two turbines with inclined towers. The total installed capacity will be between 30 to 40 MW.
Two words are the key to the design – inclined towers.
The wind will apply a force to each turbine and because the towers are inclined, this will apply a force, that will turn the turbines so they are facing the wind. This will maximise the power generated.
The design is elegant, efficient and enchanting.
I can see the TwinHub becoming an unusual tourist attraction in Cornwall.
Ukraine Tender Would Pair Hydroelectric Plants With Large-Scale Battery Storage
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Energy Storage News.
This is a must-read article, as it outlines the damage that Russia is doing to Ukraine’s energy generation.
It also reports how the World Bank is trying to help.
Innovative Hydrogen Energy Storage Project Secures Over £7 million In Funding
The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from the University of Bristol.
These two paragraphs outline the project.
A consortium, involving the University of Bristol, has been awarded £7.7m from the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) of UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to develop pioneering hydrogen storage.
The University, EDF UK, UKAEA and Urenco will together develop a hydrogen storage demonstrator, in which hydrogen is absorbed on a depleted uranium ‘bed’, which can then release the hydrogen when needed for use. When stored, the hydrogen is in a stable but reversible ‘metal hydride’ form. The depleted uranium material is available from recycling and has been used in other applications such as counterbalance weights on aircraft.
I particularly like this paragraph from Professor Tom Scott.
Professor Tom Scott from the University’s School of Physics and one of the architects of the HyDUStechnology, said: “This will be a world first technology demonstrator which is a beautiful and exciting translation of a well proven fusion-fuel hydrogen isotope storage technology that the UK Atomic Energy Authority has used for several decades at a small scale. The hydride compounds that we’re using can chemically store hydrogen at ambient pressure and temperature but remarkably they do this at twice the density of liquid hydrogen. The material can also quickly give-up the stored hydrogen simply by heating it, which makes it a wonderfully reversible hydrogen storage technology.”
It’s elegant and it certainly, is an unusual method of storing hydrogen.
I do see a problem in that depleted uranium is controversial because of its use in munitions; most notably in the Gulf War.
I also see its heavy weight being rather a disadvantage in storing hydrogen for mobile applications.
So, I will keep an open mind on this technology.
Plan For £8.25m Plymouth Energy Plant To Generate Power From Cream-Like Fluid
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on PlymouthLive.
These two paragraphs outline the project.
Plymouth’s Hemerdon tungsten mine has been chosen as the site of a pioneering £8.25m hydro energy plant which would see a cream-like fluid used to generate electricity. London-based renewable energy company RheEnergise wants to start construction of the High-Density Hydro storage system at the Plympton site as early as summer 2023.
The company has already spoken to the parish council and is to submit plans to Devon County Council soon. It hopes permission will be given and the site will be in operation by the end of 2023 and then trialled for two years before the technology is rolled out nationally and worldwide.
Note.
- RheEnergise has a web page, which describes how their High-Density Hydro storage system works.
- The system is sized at 250kW/1MWh and is described in the article as a demonstrator plant.
- In the future, rojects will range from 5MW to 100MW of power and can work with vertical elevations as low as 100m or less.
This sentence from the article lays out the potential of the system.
RheEnergise’s analysis of potential project opportunities has indicated there are about 6,500 possible sites in the UK, about 115,000 in Europe, about 345,000 in North America and about 500,000 in Africa and the Middle East.
This method of storing energy could be very useful.
Where Is Hemerdon Tungsten Mine?
This is a Google Map of the Plymouth area.
The red arrow indicates the Hemerdon Tungsten Mine, which has a Wikipedia entry as Drakelands Mine, where this is said about the last three years.
Tungsten West plc, which floated on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market on 21 October 2021,[49] have taken over the mine. They have conducted a review starting from the basics, of what is required to fix the problems that caused Wolf Minerals to fail. A better understanding of the mineralogy, with associated changes to the processing stream, and aggregate sales should lead to the mine re-opening at scale in 2022.
Tungsten West’s share price has had an up-and-down day. But are they adding energy storage to their income streams?
From the map, it does seem to be a possibility.
Reports: Ineos In Talks With Rolls Royce To Build Nuclear Plant At Grangemouth Refinery
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Chemical Engineer.
These are the first two paragraphs.
INEOS is reportedly in talks with Rolls Royce about using its small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) technology to power the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland.
The Sunday Telegraph first reported the story, citing sources with knowledge of the discussions who claimed that early-stage talks between the companies have centred on the technology and that commercial negotiations are yet to take place.
This paragraph, also gives a useful summary of how large scale chemical plants can use low carbon energy.
Ineos is not the first chemicals major to explore using new nuclear plants to provide low-carbon power to help decarbonise its heavy operations. Options include raising low-carbon heat for use in chemicals processing and electrolysing water to produce hydrogen for use as chemical feedstocks. In August, Dow announced it will install SMRs from X-energy to provide power and process heat for its chemicals production on the US Gulf Coast.
It is interesting to note that Dow are also exploring the use of SMRs to power a large chemical plant.
This paragraph gives an assessment of the possible view of the Scottish government.
Scotland has set a target to achieve net zero emissions by 2045 – five years earlier than UK legislation. While the Scottish Government is opposed to new nuclear using current technologies it has said that it will assess how novel technologies might contribute to Scotland’s low carbon future.
So perhaps it is not the total opposition, that some would expect.
In the 1960s, when I worked at ICI, I can remember reading an article in a serious magazine about nuclear plants being used in chemical plants and for steelmaking. This application has taken a long time to come to fruition.
AVL RACETECH Builds Hydrogen Combustion Engine For Motorsport
The title of this post, is the same as that as this article on Hydrogen Central.
This is the opening paragraph.
AVL RACETECH, the motorsport department of AVL, presents the prototype of an innovative H2 internal combustion engine. The power unit is a compact, hydrogen-powered 2-liter turbo engine, with intelligent water injection that enables it to achieve a totally new performance level. The prototype is the first racing engine that AVL RACETECH is developing and building in-house.
Note.
- The engine has a size of two litres.
- It generates about 150 kW/litre.
- It features water injection.
- It appears to be very interesting technically and has been designed with extensive computer simulation.
AVL RACETECH has a web site, which gives more information.
Highview Power In The Daily Express
This article in the Daily Express is entitled The Storage Sites Around The UK That Could Provide Cheap Power To Millions Of Homes.
Highview Power gets a large mention for its plan for twenty storage sites around the UK.
This is said about their planned sites at Carrington and on Humberside.
It is hoped that the first plant, a £250million Manchester station, will come online as early as 2024. It will have a 30megawatts capacity, able to store 300megawatt hours of electricity, enough to supply 600,000 homes with clean power for an hour.
The next plants will be even larger in scale, with four a five planned for Humberside with a 200megawatt/2.5gigwatt hour capacity. The CRYOBattery site would be able to store excess energy generated by the Dogger Bank, Hornsea and Sofia wind farms.
There is also a comprehensive map, with sites indicated at places like Aberdeen, Anglesey, Inverness, Liverpool, Montrose, Norfolk and Sizewell.
The sites seem to be following the wind, which is where excess power needs to be stored and released, when the wind is on strike.
Small Nuclear Power Plants To Replace Gas In Quest For Net Zero
The title of this post is the same as that of this article on The Times.
I was very much involved in the writing of project management software in the last three decades of the last century and if there’s one thing we’re generally good at in the UK, it’s complex project management.
Usually problems arise because of political or ignorant senior management meddling.
Our Energy Saviours
I believe our two energy saviours will be floating offshore wind and small nuclear reactors (SMRs) and both need good project management to be built successfully on production lines.
So I don’t see any reason, why we can’t build large numbers of floating offshore wind farms to supply our electricity.
They are also complimentary, in that the fleet of SMRs back up the wind.
Floating Wind First
Floating wind is likely to be developed at scale first, as certifying anything involving nuclear will take an inordinate time.
The electricity from floating wind farms will keep us going, but it is also starting to develop a nice line in exports.
This press release from Drax is entitled Britain Sending Europe Power Lifeline – Report, where this is the sub-title.
For the first time in over a decade, Britain became a net exporter of electricity to its European neighbours, making around £1.5bn for the economy in three months.
Note.
- The report was written by Imperial College.
- Two new interconnectors; Viking Link and NeuConnect between the UK and Europe are under construction.
- Several large wind farms are under construction and will be commissioned in 2023/24 and could add over 4 GW to UK electricity production.
Exports will only get better.
A Sprint For Wind
So we must have a sprint for wind, which will then provide the cash flow to allow the SMRs to roll in.
Or will that be too much for the ultra-greens, who would object to cash-flow from GWs of wind being used to fund SMRs?
The Anonymous Widower 