The Anonymous Widower

Energy In – Hydrogen And Carbon Dioxide Out

This article was inspired by this article in the Sunday Times, which is entitled ‘It’s A Slog’: Life Inside Britain’s Last Coal Power Station.

The article is about Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which is next to East Midlands Parkway station.

This is the first paragraph of the station’s Wikipedia entry.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Uniper at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, England. Commissioned in 1968 by the Central Electricity Generating Board, the station has a capacity of 2,000 MW. It is the last remaining operational coal-fired power station in the UK, and is scheduled to close in September 2024.

I took these pictures of the power station in 2019.

Ratcliffe-on-Soar is the last of a number of large coal-fired power stations, that were built in the area, mainly along the River Trent.

• Rugeley – 600 MW – 1961
• Drakelow – 1630 MW – 1964
• Willington – 800 MW – 1962
• Castle Donington – 600 MW – 1958
• Ratcliffe-on-Soar – 2000 MW – 1968
• High Marnham – 1000 MW – 1959
• Cottam – 2000 MW – 1968
• West Burton – 2000 MW – 1968

Note.

1. The date is the commissioning date.
2. That is 10,630 MW of electricity.
3. There are also a few large gas-fired power stations along the river, that are still operating.
4. Both coal and gas-fired stations use the water from the River Trent for cooling.

At the mouth of the river, there is the Keadby cluster of gas-fired power stations.

• Keadby 1 – 734 MW – 1996
• Keadby 2 – 849 MW – 2023
• Keadby 3 – 910 MW – 2027
• Keadby Hydrogen – 900 MW – 2030

Note.

1. The date is the commissioning date.
2. That is 3,393 MW of electricity.
3. Keadby 2 is the most efficient CCGT in the world.
4. Keadby 3 will be fitted with carbon capture.
5. Keadby 2 has been designed to be retrofitted with carbon capture.
6. Keadby Hydrogen will be fuelled by zero-carbon hydrogen.

As the years progress, I can see the Keadby cluster of power stations becoming a large zero-carbon power station to back-up wind farms in the North Sea.

• Hydrogen power stations will emit no carbon dioxide.
• Carbon dioxide from all gas-fired stations will be captured.
• Some carbon dioxide will be sold on, to companies who can use it, in industries like construction, agriculture and chemical manufacture.
• The remaining carbon dioxide will be stored in depleted gas fields.

As technology improves, more carbon dioxide will be used rather than stored.

Other Power Sources In The Humberside Area

In the next few sub-sections, I will list the other major power sources in the Humberside area.

Drax Power Station

Drax power station is a shadow of its former self, when it was one of the power stations fed by the newly discovered Selby coalfield.

These days it is a 2,595 MW biomass-fired power station.

Eastern Green Link 2

Eastern Green Link 2 will be a 2 GW interconnector between Peterhead in Scotland and Drax.

It is shown in this map.

Note.

1. Most of the route is underwater.
2. It is funded by National Grid.
3. Contracts have been signed, as I talk about in Contracts Signed For Eastern Green Link 2 Cable And Converter Stations.
4. It is scheduled to be completed by 2029.

This interconnector will bring up to 2 GW of Scottish wind-generated electricity to Drax and Humberside.

Drax has the substations and other electrical gubbins to distribute the electricity efficiently to where it is needed.

2 GW could also reduce the amount of biomass used at Drax.

In the long term, if the concept of the four Eastern Green Links is successful, I could see another Eastern Green Link to Drax to replace imported biomass at Drax.

I also, don’t see why a smaller Drax can’t be run on locally-sourced biomass.

Solar Farms And Batteries Along The River Trent

As the coal-fired power stations along the River Trent are demolished, solar farm developers have moved in to develop large solar farms.

Salt End Power Station And Chemical Works

These two paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry for Salt End describes the hamlet and its power station and chemical works.

Salt End or Saltend is a hamlet in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, in an area known as Holderness. It is situated on the north bank of the Humber Estuary just outside the Hull eastern boundary on the A1033 road. It forms part of the civil parish of Preston.

Salt End is dominated by a chemical park owned by PX group, and a gas-fired power station owned by Triton Power. Chemicals produced at Salt End include acetic acid, acetic anhydride, ammonia, bio-butanol, bio-ethanol, ethyl acetate (ETAC) and ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer (EVOH) with animal feed also being produced on site.

I wonder, if running the complex on hydrogen would give cost and marketing advantages.

Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage Facility

This page on the SSE Thermal web site is entitled Plans For World-Leading Hydrogen Storage Facility At Aldbrough.

This is the most significant paragraph of the page, that is definitely a must-read.

With an initial expected capacity of at least 320GWh, Aldbrough Hydrogen Storage would be significantly larger than any hydrogen storage facility in operation in the world today. The Aldbrough site is ideally located to store the low-carbon hydrogen set to be produced and used in the Humber region.

This is a hydrogen storage facility for a much wider area than Humberside.

Rough Gas Storage Facility

This is the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry for the Rough Gas Storage Facility.

Rough is a natural gas storage facility under the North Sea off the east coast of England. It is capable of storing 100 billion cubic feet of gas, nearly double the storage capacities in operation in Great Britain in 2021.

In Wood To Optimise Hydrogen Storage For Centrica’s Rough Field, I describe Centrica’s plans to convert the Rough gas storage into a massive hydrogen storage.

The Location Of Aldbrough Gas Storage, Rough Gas Storage, Salt End And Easington Gas Terminal

This Google Map shows between Salt End and the coast.

Note.

1. The river crossing the South-West corner of the map is the Humber.
2. Salt End with its power station and chemical works is on the North Bank of the Humber, where the river leaves the map.
3. Aldbrough Gas Storage is marked by the red arrow at the top of the map.
4. Easington Gas Terminal is in the South-East corner of the map.
5. According to Wikipedia, gas flows into and out of the Rough Gas Storage are managed from Easington.

Looking at the map, I feel that the following should be possible.

• The two gas storage sites could be run together.
• Salt End power station and the related chemical works could run on hydrogen.
• Salt End will always have a reliable source of hydrogen.
• This hydrogen could be green if required.

All the chemical works at Salt End, could be run on a zero-carbon basis. Would this mean premium product prices? Just like organic does?

Enter The Germans

The Germans have a huge decarbonisation problem, with all their coal-fired power stations and other industry.

Three massive projects will convert much of the country and industry to hydrogen.

• H2ercules, which is a project of OGE and RWE, will create a hydrogen network to bring hydrogen, to where it is needed.
• In Uniper To Make Wilhelmshaven German Hub For Green Hydrogen; Green Ammonia Import Terminal, I describe how Uniper are going to build a hydrogen import terminal at Wilhelmshaven.
• AquaVentus is an RWE project that will use 10.3 GW of offshore wind power in German territorial waters to create a million tonnes per year of green hydrogen.

These would appear to be three of Europe’s largest hydrogen projects, that few have ever heard of.

AquaVentus And The UK

This video shows the structure of AquaVentus.

I clipped this map from the video.

Note.

1. The thick white line running North-West/South-East is the spine of AquaVentus, that delivers hydrogen to Germany.
2. There is a link to Denmark.
3. There appears to be an undeveloped link to Norway.
4. There appears to be an undeveloped  link to Peterhead in Scotland.
5. There appears to be a link to just North of the Humber in England.
6. Just North of the Humber are the two massive gas storage sites of Aldbrough owned by SSE and Brough owned by Centrica.
7. There appear to be small ships sailing up and down the East Coast of the UK. Are these small coastal tankers, that are distributing the hydrogen to where it is needed?

In the last century, the oil industry, built a substantial oil and gas network in the North Sea.

It appears now the Germans are leading the building of a substantial hydrogen network in the North Sea.

These are my thoughts about development of the AquaVentus network.

Hydrogen Production And AquaVentus

This RWE graphic shows the layout of the wind farms feeding AquaVentus.

Note.

1. There is a total of 10.3 GW.
2. Is one of the 2 GW web sites on the UK-side of AquaVentus, the 3 GW Dogger Bank South wind farm, which is being developed by RWE?
3. Is the 0.3 GW wind farm, RWE’s Norfolk wind farm cluster, which is also being developed by RWE?

Connecting wind farms using hydrogen pipelines to Europe, must surely mitigate the pylon opposition problem from Nimbys in the East of England.

As the AquaVentus spine pipeline could eventually connect to Peterhead, there will be other opportunities to add more hydrogen to AquaVentus.

Hydrogen Storage And AquaVentus

For AquaVentus to work efficiently and supply a large continuous flow of hydrogen to all users, there would need to be storage built into the system.

As AquaVentus is around 200 kilometres in length and natural gas pipelines can be up to 150 centimetres in diameter, don’t underestimate how much hydrogen can be stored in the pipeline system itself.

This page on the Uniper web site is entitled Green Wilhelmshaven: To New Horizons.

This is a sentence on the page.

Access to local hydrogen underground storage at the Etzel salt cavern site.

An Internet search gives the information, that Etzel gas storage could be developed to hold 1 TWh of hydrogen.

That would be enough hydrogen to supply 10 GW for a hundred hours.

Note that the UK branch of AquaVentus reaches the UK, just to the South of the massive hydrogen storage facilities at Aldbrough and Rough.

It would appear that both Germany and the UK are connected to AquaVentus through substantial storage.

I am certain, that all country connections to AquaVentus will have substantial storage at the country’s hydrogen terminal.

AquaDuctus

This would appear to be the first part of the AquaVentus network and has its own web site.

The web site is entitled Nucleus Of A Offshore Hydrogen Backbone.

These are the first two paragraphs.

The project partners are focusing on a scalable, demand-driven infrastructure: By 2030, AquaDuctus will connect the first large hydrogen wind farm site, SEN-1, with a generation capacity of approximately one gigawatt. SEN-1 is located in the German EEZ in the northwest of Helgoland. The pipeline will transport at a length of approx. 200 km green hydrogen produced from offshore wind to the German mainland and from there to European consumers via the onshore hydrogen infrastructure.

In the next project stage, AquaDuctus will be extended to the remote areas of the German exclusive economic zone towards the tip of the so-called duck’s bill. By that, additional future hydrogen wind farm sites will be connected. Along its way AquaDuctus will provide interconnection points with the opportunity for linking of adjacent national offshore hydrogen infrastructures originating from Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and United Kingdom which opens the door for Europe-wide offshore hydrogen transport by pipeline.

There is also an interactive map, that gives more details.

This paragraph explains, why the Germans have chosen to bring the energy ashore using hydrogen, rather than traditional cables.

Recent studies show that offshore hydrogen production and transport via pipelines is faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly than onshore electrolysis with a corresponding connection of offshore wind turbines via power cables. The German federal government has also recognized this advantage and has clearly expressed its intention to promote offshore hydrogen production in the North Sea.

I suspect, that some UK offshore wind farms will use the same techniques.

Hydrogen Production For The UK

Electrolysers will probably be built along the East Coast between Peterhead and Humberside and these will feed hydrogen into the network.

• Some electrolysers will be offshore and others onshore.
• Turning off windfarms will become a thing of the past, as all surplus electricity will be used to make hydrogen for the UK or export to Europe.
• Until needed the hydrogen will be stored in Albrough and Rough.

Backup for wind farms, will be provided using hydrogen-fired power stations like Keadby Hydrogen power station.

Financial Implications

I reported on Rishi Sunak’s Manifesto Speech, which he made on June 11th. This is an extract

This document on the Policy Mogul web site is entitled Rishi Sunak – Conservative Party Manifesto Speech – Jun 11.

These are three paragraphs from the speech.

We don’t just need military and border security. As Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has shown, we need energy security too. It is only by having reliable, home-grown sources of energy that we can deny dictators the ability to send our bills soaring. So, in our approach to energy policy we will put security and your family finances ahead of unaffordable eco zealotry.

Unlike Labour we don’t believe that we will achieve that energy security via a state-controlled energy company that doesn’t in fact produce any energy. That will only increase costs, and as Penny said on Friday there’s only one thing that GB in Starmer and Miliband’s GB Energy stands for, and that’s giant bills.

Our clear plan is to achieve energy security through new gas-powered stations, trebling our offshore wind capacity and by having new fleets of small modular reactors. These will make the UK a net exporter of electricity, giving us greater energy independence and security from the aggressive actions of dictators . Now let me just reiterate that, with our plan, we will produce enough electricity to both meet our domestic needs and export to our neighbours. Look at that. A clear, Conservative plan not only generating security, but also prosperity for our country.

I can’t remember any reports about an energy security policy, which he outlined in the last paragraph of my extract from his speech.

He also said we would have sufficient electricity to export to our neighbours. As I said earlier some of this energy will be in the form of hydrogen, which has been created by offshore electrolysers.

If we are exporting electricity and hydrogen to Europe, this is likely to have three effects.

• An improvement in Europe’s energy security.
• H2ercules will improve and decarbonise German industry, using UK hydrogen.
• The finances of UK plc will improve.

It looks like there would be winners all round.

Rishi Sunak had the cards and he played them very badly.

It is now up to Keir Starmer, Great British Energy and Jürgen Maier to play those cards to link the energy systems of the UK and Germany to ensure security and prosperity for Europe.

August 5, 2024 Posted by AnonW | Energy, Finance & Investment, Hydrogen | Aldbrough Gas Storage, AquaVentus, Carbon Capture, Carbon Capture And Storage, Carbon Capture And Use, Carbon Dioxide, CCGT, Centrica, Coal, Coal-fired Power Stations, Derby, Dogger Bank South Wind Farm, Drax Power Station, East Midlands Parkway Station, Etzel Gas Storage, Gas-Fired Power Stations, Great British Energy, H2ercules, Hornsea Wind Farm, Hull, Hydrogen Storage, Jürgen Maier, Keadby Hydrogen Power Station, Keadby Power Stations, Keir Starmer, Leicester, National Grid, Nottingham, OGE, Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station, Rishi Sunak, Rough Gas Storage, RWE, Salt End, SSE, Ten Valley Power Stations, Uniper, Wilhelmshaven, Wood plc | 2 Comments