The Anonymous Widower

Is Sizewell C Needed?

I am generally pro-nuclear, but I am not sure if building a large nuke at Sizewell is the right action.

 

Consider.

  • East Anglia has 3114 MW of offshore wind in operation.
  • East Anglia has 6772 MW of offshore wind under construction, with Contracts for Difference or proposed.
  • Vattenfall are considering abandoning development of their large wind farms off the Norfolk coast, which are proposed to have a capacity of 3196 MW.
  • If the two Vattenfall wind farms don’t get built, it is likely that East Anglia will have around 6700 MW of offshore wind capacity.
  • Sizewell C has a proposed nameplate capacity of 3260 MW. Some might argue, that to back up East Anglia’s offshore wind power, it needs to be larger!
  • Norfolk and Suffolk no large electricity users, so are Vattenfall finding they have a product no one wants to buy.
  • National Grid is developing four interconnectors to bring power from Scotland to the Eastern side of England, which will back up wind power in the East with the massive Scottish pumped storage, that is being developed.
  • National Grid and their Dutch equivalent; TenneT are developing LionLink to connect the UK and the Netherlands to clusters of wind farms between our countries in the North Sea.
  • Kent and East Anglia have several gas and electric interconnectors to Europe.
  • Sizewell is well-connected to England’s grid.

These are my thoughts.

Energy Storage At Sizewell

Consider.

  • Sizewell is well connected to the grid.
  • It has the sea on one side.
  • It could easily be connected to the large offshore wind farms, thirty miles out to sea.

If large energy storage could be built on the Sizewell site or perhaps under the sea, then this energy could be recovered and used in times of low wind.

Perhaps the technology of the STORE Consortium, which I discussed in UK Cleantech Consortium Awarded Funding For Energy Storage Technology Integrated With Floating Wind, could be used.

In this system, energy is stored in 3D-printed concrete hemispheres under the sea.

A Small Nuclear Reactor Cluster At Sizewell

Rolls-Royce are proposing that their small modular reactors will have a capacity of 470 MW.

Perhaps a cluster of seven small modular reactors at Sizewell, with a building schedule matched to the need to back up wind farms would be better and easier to finance.

I also feel a cluster of SMRs would have less risk and would be less likely to be delayed.

Where Is Generating Capacity Needed In The UK?

These areas already have large amounts of offshore wind in operation or proposed to be built before 2030.

  • Celtic Sea
  • North Wales
  • Liverpool Bay
  • Cumbria
  • Scotland
  • Scotland’s Offshore Islands
  • North East England
  • Humberside
  • Lincolnshire
  • East Anglia
  • Thames Estuary
  • Kent
  • Sussex

Amongst the back up for these wind farms, there are only two modern nuclear stations; Sizewell B and the still-to-open Hinckley Point C.

If you look at a map of England and its power generation, there is a tremendous gap of capacity South of a line between Hinckley Point and Brighton, with little or no offshore wind and no nuclear.

There is probably a need for a large nuke near Weymouth.

Alternatively, perhaps several SMRs could be built underneath places like Salisbury Plain, Dartmoor and Exmoor!

Conclusion

We probably need the nuclear electricity from another Hinckley Point C-sized nuclear power station, so that we have adequate back-up for offshore wind.

But I am not sure that Sizewell is the right place to build it.

September 19, 2023 Posted by | Energy, Energy Storage | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Ireland To Develop National Industrial Strategy For Offshore Wind

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

Ireland’s Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Simon Coveney, has announced plans to develop a National Industrial Strategy for Offshore Wind which will set out how Ireland can maximise the economic opportunity arising from the production of offshore wind energy

Ireland’s current objectives for offshore wind are.

  1. To deliver 5 GW of offshore wind by 2030.
  2. A further 2 GW of floating wind to be in development by 2030.
  3. The target for offshore wind could rise to at least 37 GW by 2050.
  4. There is a target to provide 80 per cent of the country’s electricity to be from renewable sources by 2030.

The government appears to recognise collaborative approach between state and industry is needed.

Nothing is said about co-operation with Northern Ireland or the UK.

This is despite.

  • UK and Irish companies like ESB, Flotation Energy, Simply Blue Group and SSE have projects in both countries.
  • Irish company; ESB is developing the Malin Sea Wind wind farm in Scottish waters and landing the electricity near Derry City.
  • Scottish company; SSE is building biomass power stations in Ireland.
  • Some promising waters for wind power are shared between the two countries.
  • There are three interconnectors between the two main islands.

I would expect that there could be some multi-purpose interconnectors across the Irish and Celtic Seas.

These would connect windfarms between the islands to both the UK and Ireland. National Grid and TenneT are building the LionLink between England and The Netherlands, which I wrote about in World’s Largest-Of-Its-Kind Power Line To Deliver Clean Power To 1.8m UK Homes And Boost Energy Security.

I very much feel, that there will be a lot of co-operation between the UK and Irish governments as if they work together, the development of Ireland’s offshore wind and that of the West Coast of the UK could be more efficient.

 

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Energy | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

World’s Largest-Of-Its-Kind Power Line To Deliver Clean Power To 1.8m UK Homes And Boost Energy Security

The title of this post, is the same as that as this press release from the UK Government.

These are the three bullet points of the press release.

  • LionLink power line between UK and Netherlands will deliver enough electricity to power more homes than Manchester and Birmingham combined.
  • Agreement made as Grant Shapps leads delegation of leading businesses to key North Sea Summit.
  • Part of renewed Government drive to work with business to help grow the economy.

These three paragraphs outline the project.

The world’s largest multi-use electricity power line will be built under the North Sea, boosting UK energy supplies with enough to power 1.8 million homes – more than Birmingham and Manchester combined.

The new LionLink will connect the UK and the Netherlands with offshore wind farms, providing clean affordable and secure energy to Britain which will help cut household bills and drive Putin’s Russia further out of the energy market.

The cross-border electricity line will be only the second of its kind in the world, with the first having been built by Germany and Denmark. However, it will be able to carry more than four times the amount of electricity as its predecessor – making it the largest of its kind in terms of capacity anywhere in the world.

Note.

  1. I suspect the LionLink will go via the Dogger Bank, where Danish, Dutch, German and UK territorial waters meet an we are already building 8 GW of fixed foundation offshore wind. The other countries are also active in the area.
  2. The press release doesn’t mention, where the LionLink will make landfall in the UK.
  3. Much of the connection will probably use the cables being laid for the Dogger Bank wind farms.
  4. There is also no mention of the North Sea Wind Power Hub, which could be an artificial island on the Dogger Bank.

There is also a press release on the National Grid web site, which is entitled National Grid And TenneT Collaborate On Proposed First-Of-A-Kind Anglo-Dutch Electricity Link, which gives more details.

  • The capacity is stated to be 2 GW.
  • Like the current BritNed interconnector, the project will be a cooperation between National Grid And TenneT.
  • TenneT is a limited liability company owned by the Dutch government, that is a transmission system operator in the Netherlands and in a large part of Germany.

There is also a diagram, showing how the LionLink will work, which includes these components.

  • On the Dutch side, there is an offshore AC>DC Converter Station, which is connected to the Dutch electricity grid and one or more offshore wind farms.
  • Across the border between the Dutch and UK Exclusive Economic Zones, there will be a HVDC cable.
  • The HVDC cable will terminate in an onshore DC>AC Converter Station in the UK, which will be connected to the UK electricity grid.

No details of the two landfalls have been given.

More information is given in this article on offshoreWIND.biz, which is entitled UK And Netherlands Unveil Multi-Purpose Interconnector Plans.

  • This shows a map of the North Sea with an interconnector running in a straight line between possibly Rotterdam and Bacton in Norfolk.
  • A wind farm is shown connected to this interconnector.

This paragraph describes the windfarm and the interconnector.

LionLink, a multi-purpose interconnector that was announced today at the North Sea summit, could connect a Dutch offshore wind farm with a capacity of 2 GW to both countries via subsea interconnectors.

If the wind farm has a capacity of 2 GW, I would assume it can supply up to 2 GW to the UK and The Netherlands.

This is a classic system, that can be optimised by the application of sound principles.

All electricity generated by the wind farm must be used, stored or converted into green hydrogen.

Electricity will be distributed as to need.

Energy storage  or electrolysers could be sited at either end or even in the wind farm.

I would suspect that more wind farms could be connected to the interconnector.

The team, that write the control system for the grid will have a lot of fun!

BritNed

I have a feeling that National Grid and TenneT have taken a long hard commercial look at the electrical and financial performance of BritNed over the last year and decided, that a second connection would be to the mutual benefit of both companies, their customers and the UK and The Netherlands in general.

It would also be twice as difficult for terrorists sponsored by Putin to cut two cables.

Conclusion

This is a great leap forward for wind power in the North Sea and Europe.

April 24, 2023 Posted by | Energy | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

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