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Tom Brown Profile picture
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30 Mar, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Great to see this paper on long-duration electricity storage:

- Storage energy cost & efficiency critical

- Needs <= 50 USD/kWh to be relevant next to VRE, batteries, "firm" gen

- Needs <= 1 USD/kWh (e.g. salt cavern for hydrogen storage) to make serious dents in "firm" gen
I'd also be interested in the question posed the other way round: what is the value of "firm" clean generation in the presence of VRE, batteries and long-term storage?

E.g. how much does system cost reduce by adding nuclear/CCS etc. to wind+solar+batteries+hydrogen.
Either way, the system costs of all these options is in a similar ball park, which throws up the question:

What do we actually want?

What can we build quickly, with wide public approval?
This cuts also for VRE: in Europe there have been persistent and widespread issues with onshore wind forced without local consent, as well as overhead transmission. Less with offshore and solar.

Lots more discussion on socal licence, consensus building and equity to be had!
PS You can play with similar electricity models here:

model.energy

See e.g. these examples based on the US from the previous "firm" paper:

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More from @nworbmot

Tom Brown Profile picture
22 Oct 20
C. Darwin: an "admirable speech"

In 1863, William Armstrong advocates:

- end of coal
- efficiency
- electrification
- renewables (he developed first hydro power)
- open data
- technological learning ("tendency of progress is to quicken progress")

vimeo.com/75975295
You can read more about him here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A…

williamarmstrong.info

And in @henrietta999's biography "Magician of the North".

Don't know if there is a transcript of the speech floating around anywhere (if not, we should transcribe one!).

His speech inspired the first suggestion I know of for green hydrogen (renewables + electrolysis of water to make hydrogen):

Read 6 tweets
Tom Brown Profile picture
17 Oct 20
Last thread on history of renewables + hydrogen (promise):

TL;DR:

- Idea of using electrolysis of water & storing hydrogen is almost as old as electrolysis (1789)

- Already a lively debate in *1863* about combining variable renewables with electrolytic hydrogen to replace coal
The above quotation is from Jevons' (he of paradox fame) marvellous 1865 treatise "The Coal Question":

oll.libertyfund.org/titles/317#Jev…

(h/t @physicspod)

and refers to an exchange in The Times of London in 1863, started by this letter on page 10 of the 2nd Sep 1863 edition:
G.A. Keyworth of Hastings followed up a few days on 16th Sep 1863 later with an elaboration of his ideas:
Read 11 tweets
Tom Brown Profile picture
31 Jul 20
Despite the current hype, there's nothing new about electrolytic hydrogen.

- 100 MW electrolysers since late 1920s for fertiliser and heavy water

- 100 GWh salt cavern storage since 1960s

- 4500 km hydrogen pipelines today

What was missing was abundant low cost power.
From 1920s-1970s, 100+ MW water electrolysers were built across world to meet demand for ammonia for fertiliser.

Prerequisite: cheap power from hydro dams.

All were dismantled as other power demand grew and fossil gas became available to make ammonia.

books.google.de/books?id=bf3lB…
Electrolysis was also the means of making heavy water (D2O), a neutron moderator, from its discovery in the 1930s until the GS process replaced it in the mid-1940s.

Heavy water was crucial for making the atomic bomb.

This made electrolysis of great military importance in WWII.
Read 9 tweets
Tom Brown Profile picture
17 Feb 20
"wind and solar will always cannibalize their own market revenue"

"market value decline is an inevitable consequence of variability"

"market integration of wind and solar is impossible"

WRONG, WRONG & WRONG

THREAD! (1/infinity)
...based on a preprint (not through peer review yet) by Lina Reichenberg of @chalmersuniv and me:

arxiv.org/abs/2002.05209

@flexibledragnet's pithy summary:

"VRE cannibalisation is a policy artefact, not a physical system constraint"
Short version:

Some studies show that average revenues for wind and solar go down with rising share.

We show that the studies have an implicit assumption that variable renewable energy (VRE) are forced into the system, which depresses prices and their own market value (MV).
Read 29 tweets
Tom Brown Profile picture
5 Dec 19
Build your own clean energy system!

- wind, solar, storage + others optimized live while you wait

- works for any region in the world

- you choose your own technology assumptions

model.energy

thread with examples

reward at end
This toy model meets a constant demand over a year of weather data

The default setting is to use wind, solar, batteries and hydrogen storage only; further technologies can be added, as can H2 demand (for heavy transport and industry)
In this example for a 100 MW demand in Germany, when wind (blue) and solar (yellow) generation exceed demand (black line), electricity is stored (negative values) in batteries (grey) or used to electrolyse water to hydrogen (cyan), which is then stored underground
Read 24 tweets
Tom Brown Profile picture
26 Nov 19
In Oct 2019 @Equinor and @OpenGridEurope presented a feasibility study to produce blue hydrogen in Germany (from natural gas with CCS)

Aims for blue H2 at a cost of 2-3 EUR/kg (50-80 EUR/MWh), competitive at a CO2 price of 50-70 EUR/tCO2

Short thread

open-grid-europe.com/cps/rde/oge-in…
H2morrow would supply industry with H2 in west of Germany (NRW), importing natural gas from Norway.

Uses autothermal reforming (ATR) to produce H2. CO2 is captured, liquified, then shipped on Rhine down to Rotterdam and onwards to Norway, where it will be sequestered offshore.
Aim is to do further technical studies in coming years, and have the project operational by 2030.
Read 10 tweets

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