Wednesday 25 September 2019

Is Hinkley C going the same way as the French and Finnish EPR disasters??

As EDF announces major cost overruns and delays after having only recently started major construction works for Hinkley C, it seems that this project is heading for the same sort of financial disasters suffered already by the other two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) being built in Finland and France. Yet the Government is going ahead with a financial model, the 'Regulated Asset Base' (RAB) to finance the next EPR at Sizewell C, that would mean electricity consumers would have to pay for cost overruns over and above EDF's own ridiculously low estimates of costs.

EDF has announced cost overruns of up to £2.9 billion pounds and delays for HPC that almost certainly mean it will not be generating in 2025. This is on top of the already high cost of building EPRs - at a cost to the electricity consumer of £92.10 in 2012 prices (now over £100 per MWh), and even that is only so 'low' because the contract involves paying this price (inflation uprated) over 35 years!

EDF, in its statement issued today talks about the project being 'first of a kind' (in the UK). But the project is not 'first of a kind' at all when we look at similar designs being implemented in Finland (Olkiluoto) and France (Flamanville), still uncompleted over many years and with costs in these cases having risen to more than three times their initial estomates. Who would put any money on this being the last cost overrun announcement for Hinkley C from EDF? Certainly not me!

In fact EDF only started 'pouring concrete' on the base of the plant in Spring this year, so if there are cost overruns and delays projected now, much much worse is likely to come.

The most outrageous aspect of this affair is that EDF expect us to believe that Sizewell C will be substantially cheaper to build than even the projections EDF made before the latest cost overrun announcement. The Government has in effect agreed it will swallow such a projection by EDF and then undertake to saddle electricity consumers with cost overruns over and above these absudly low estimates.

With offshore wind costs having fallen to well under a half of the cost of Hinkley C, it seems especially odd that the Government should be giving financial preference to new nuclear power. Yet new nuclear power will make integration of renewables more difficult since the nuclear power will, according to their contracts, always run meaning more times that there will be excess renewable electricity generation. Of course, as suggested in the my last post, any excess renewable energy generation (which would happen even without nuclear power beiung on the system) could  be used to generate hydrogen (via electrolysis). This could be used in fuel cells to produce electricity when there was a shortage of wind or sun. This beggars the question, though, of why we are not investing in this technology alongside renewables rather than pouting more and more money down a nuclear black hole and slowing down the decarbonisaion process as a result.

See https://www.ft.com/content/92102452-df62-11e9-9743-db5a370481bc

Sunday 22 September 2019

How renewable energy can provide its own reserve power through hydrogen

A regular complaint about variable sources of renewable energy is that they need so-called 'back-up' when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow, but this problem can disappear if fuel cells powered by hydrogen are brought into play. When the electricity system is producing excessive quantities of renewable energy (as will happen as renewable generation increases) this energy can be stored in various forms, one form being hydrogen which can be stored and then used in fuel cells to produce electricity when it is needed.

An increasing number of demonstration projects are focussed on generating hydrogen from renewable energy sources using electrolysis of water. One project involves making hydrogen directly from seawater https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/1850034/floating-wind-to-hydrogen-plan-to-heat-millions-of-uk-homes These systems (renewable energy-hydrogen-fuel cell) are coming down in cost as their constituent parts (wind and solar farms, electrolysis and fuel cells) all come down in price.

Fuel cell deployment is increasing at a rapid pace around the world as an option to provide back up power for buildings, displacing the role that has been performed by diesel generators. A fuel cell, if you like, is a sort of reverse battery in that it converts a fuel into an electric charge rather than the other way around. Fuel cells are considerably more energy efficient in creating motive power compared to internal combustion engines.

Of course we can use lithium or other types of batteries to reduce the need for 'firm' generating capacity to complement variable renewable energy (especially as the increasing amount of electric vehicles can use their battery power to, in effect, store power to be used in the grid). However the need for any fossil fuel or nuclear generating capacity can be completely abolished by building up the volume of fuel cells powered by renewable (so-called 'green') hydrogen.

As the amount of renewable energy generated increases, so the amount of renewable energy (RE) that is sometimes surplus to demand will increase. - The other side of the variable RE coin of course is that often too much energy is generated -  This surplus renewable energy (which will be available virtually free of charge) can be used for hydrogen production.

Of course this doesn't mean everything can be powered by hydrogen - many services are better provided by electricity. For example, electric rather than hydrogen cars seem to be taking hold in the market. In the provsion of ordinary space heating it is certainly much more energy efficient to use (electrically powered) heat pumps, either in district heating or individual houses, to provide heat to domestic and commercial buildings.  But we do have the resources to produce for some specialised hydrogen markets, and (besides fuel cells providing reserve power as discussed) this can include some specialised industrial heat markets and also aircraft travel.

Hydrogen powered aircraft seem, as a futuristic proposition, to have the edge on electrically powered aircraft since their weight might be a lot lower than that provided by batteries. This weight issue is not quite so crucial on the land, where the refuelling infrastructure that exists in the form of the electricity grid gives electric cars an advantage over hydrogen powered vehicles. However aircraft hydrogen powered flight might take off quicker (joke?) than battery powered planes.

After all, for example, there's enough offshore wind resource in parts of the North Sea to generate over thee times the energy consumption of the entire EU. See https://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2019/06/offshore-wind-power-source-that-could.html

But there is a note of warning to be sounded - we should make sure the increase in hydrogen use comes from electrolysis of water, not from traditional means of obtaining hydrogen from reformation of gas or coal - that is the opposite of decarbonisation.

Clearly what needs to be done is that rather than shovelling a lot of money down a nuclear black hole (eg the Government's plans for giving a huge handout to EDF via their proposed 'Regulated Asset Base' mechanism), they should be putting some money into encouraging deployment of fuel cells, electrolysis and hydrogen production from renewable energy.






The real reason why the Government abandoned their plan to cut university tuition fees

The story emerging that the Government has abandoned its intentions to cut student fees (to £7500 a year https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/plan-shelved-to-cut-tuition-fees-good-university-guide-2020-vlnfv2cl9) does give a boost to Labour and the Greens in their promises to end student fees, but it also ushers in a load of nonsense about the alleged 'poor value' of university education.

We live in a captialist consumer society where few people turn a hair at the conspicuous consumption that captivates society, yet the right wing press cannot stop spluttering with rage at the thought that some students get the opportunity to study subjects which they don't deem economically or philosophically worthy.

Yet the reality is that far from university education being overvalued it is grossly under-valued, even on market never mind philosophical criteria. People may rail at the spectacle of the not-so-trendy universities charging the full rate of student fees, but meanwhile the top earners get a tremendous bargain by their children being able to go to the highest ranking universities for little more than £9000 a year.

The really odd thing, if you want to look at things on a market basis, is not that the University of somewhere in the shires charges £9,250 a year but that few seem to realise Oxbridge, Imperial, UCL and others could charge an awful lot more if there was a real market in university fees. Just look at the USA where if you want a place at Harvard you're looking at paying $70,000 a year!

It seems the Government has too much to spend on Brexit preparation plans. This will no doubt include paying for the farm produce tariffs that will accrue once we leave the EU in order to avoid lots of British farmers going bust and blocking up the roads woith theoir tractors in protest if the Government doesn't help them. Hence the Treasury refused to fund a drop in fees - the other option, of course, that of just ctting university income would have achieved an incredible policy outcome if actually implemented. - Chaos on campuses as protests erupted and the threat by leading universities simply to go private and charge their own fee levels - with the result that fees at the highest ranking universities would increase by large amounts, the opposite of what the Government wants.

At the back of this is quite a lot of upper middle class disdain at the thought that universities should be open to people they think shouldn't get in (ie people who don't earn as much as them) - but of course these upper middle class people don't want to pay the higher fees that a really free market in university tuition would generate.

Of course a left of centre Government that wouldn't have to spend all the money involved in ameliorating a hard Brexit could afford to scrap all tuition fees and deliver university education as the public good it should be - for free.


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/apr/17/oxford-cambridge-universities-private-raise-fees

Monday 2 September 2019

Has Johnson lost control?

Boris Johnson and his Government may be riding high in the opinion polls but two apparent decisions of  'strength' may, in retrospect, look like mad acts of self-destruction. As a result of prorogation and now, in today's news, a decision to effectively expel Tory MPs who back anti-no deal legislation, Johnson has at two strokes united the Opposition and formally divided his own Party. At practically any other time this would have been regarded as craziness, but in the unreality of Brexit politics to some at least this passes muster as 'strength and detemination'. With the benefit of hindsight this might look like the sheer madness people would have always thought such actions to be.

The Government, is being driven, (we're not sure exactly by whom - Boris Johnson or Dominc Cummings?) with their eyes mostly fixed on the rear view mirror trying to avoid being run over by the Brexit Party but not taking too much notice about what is on the road ahead. The cabinet membership meanwhile is (s)trapped in the back, incredulous at what they see, but unable to move or say much.

Of course we don't know at this point what will happen, with Harold Wilson's must quoted maxim 'a week is a long time in politics' looking extremely relevant today. Various people have drawn up flow diagrams to try to preduct at least the plausible outcomes; yet there are so many variables with unknown qunatities and interactions that in fact the outcomes could literally be 'off the wall'; certainly off the diagrams.

But in considering outcomes, we should bear in mind the base conditions and the rules of the game. It has been assumed up to now, that a pre-Brexit election was a big possibility with October 14th often beoing mentioned. This of course depends on the Labour Party playing along asnd agreeing to an election when Boris Johnson wants. But this isn't happening. In an unintended consequence of the Fixed Term Parliament Act (FTPA), Governments in general, and especially this Government, have lost control over the ability to call an election.

Johnson will need the support of Labour to get the two-thirds majority he needs to call a pre-'no deal Brexit' election, but Labour are now saying they won't sanction this unless there is not only a Brexit extension but also an agreement to hold another referendum. If they stick to this, Johnson will find it very difficult to call an election. He could order his MPs to con-confidence his own Government, but even in this weird scenatio he would have to wait 14 days before an election could be called. This would run the risk of a temporary PM being appointed by the Opposition, a prospect made more likely by the fact that quite a few Tory MPs will be efectively exp[elled from the Conservative Party!  In fact there won't even be 14 days in this prorogued Parlimentary session, and the no-confidence motion will fall because Parliament has been prorogued - so, Johnson would have to un-prorogue Parliament to trigger this procedure any time soon (???!).

Now Labour in (who in what has not been noticed so far) an act of prgmatism are saying that they now regard calling another referendum as the first option rather than election (and want an extension for that purpose). Many otherwise referendum-sceptical Labour MPs will be impressed by the argument that going for another referendum is a better bet to keeping their seats than calling an election now when some believe that Johnson will end the Brexit impasse in a 'clean' manner.

For Corbyn this is becoming much more a 'heads I win tails you lose' position. If, by his new strategy, the Government are forced to go for a 'no-deal' and there is an election after October 31st we are in new electioneeting territory. Here the Government has to own the consequences, including awakening the electorate to the fact that the problem of negotiating a relationship ith the EU is still there and which the Government currently appears to have no idea how to manage.

But if the Government is forced somehow to accept, through legislation, an extension to Brexit, it will begin to look a lot weaker, especially if the Opposition insists that there is another referendum.

Now I'm probably getting ahead of myself, because there are lots of ifs, buts, and chaos on the road to such outcomes....and lots of chaos to come in which the lawyers may prove to be as important as the politicians. But it is ironic that in the last week the Italians, often scoffed at as having perpetual government chaos, have formed, for the moment a stable Government, whilst allegedly stable Britain is plunging into worse governmental chaos than ever seems to occur in Italy.



fall in cost of fuel cells https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fact-month-april-2018-fuel-cell-cost-decreased-60-2006

big fall in cost of electrolysers predicted https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-21/cost-of-hydrogen-from-renewables-to-plummet-next-decade-bnef?utm_source=twitter&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=business&utm_medium=social

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/10/f19/ftco_early_mkts_fc_backup_power_fact_sheet.pdf

methane in fuel cells https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181029130939.htm

https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2018/06/new-fuel-cell-off-grid-power-solution-could-compete-on-price-with-diesel.html

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy17osti/67408.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Energy_Server#Usage

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/14/20804257/zeroavia-hydrogen-airplane-electric-flight

https://orsted.com/en/Media/Newsroom/News/2019/08/Orsted-and-partners-secure-government-funding-for-hydrogen-project

http://www.hydrogenfuelnews.com/construction-starts-on-hydrogen-electrolysis-plant-in-germany/8537764/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2019/09/09/fuel-cells-find-their-place-on-factory-floors/#709ae8855ee9