The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

[Cheerful Charlie]

The world’s largest green hydrogen plant will be built in Texas

To power planes and outer space rockets.

interestingengineering.com

The world's largest green hydrogen plant will be built in Texas
...
According to its website, GHI has seven projects that are under development with a combined output of one terawatt. The largest and the first one to get off the ground is Hydrogen City in Texas. Using onshore wind and solar energy, the project aims to produce 60 gigawatts of green hydrogen every year.

The Piedras Pintas salt dome in Duval County will serve as the hydrogen storage facility for the project which in its initial stages will see a 2-gigawatt production facility being drawn up. Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.
...
Green hydrogen is also an ideal replacement for natural gas in gas-powered power plants as well as the input ingredient for making fertilizers for farmers, who face high price volatility.

"Hydrogen City is a massive, world-class undertaking that will put Texas on the map as a leading green hydrogen producer," GHI's founder and CEO Brian Maxwell said. "Texas has been the world leader in energy innovation for over 100 years and this project is intended to cement that leadership for the next century and beyond."
...

50 years from now in Texas will be very interesting.

 

[bilby]

Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.
...

That's almost not a complete lie.

It will tap into:



"64% fossil fuel, 36% green" energy from the Texan grid.

So, mostly it will be generated from burning fossil gas, or coal.

Of course, over time we can expect coal to largely disappear, and be mostly replaced by more fossil gas.

The plant will be making hydrogen, not as a service provided to humanity out of a sense of duty, but as a profitable saleable commodity; It's unlikely that they will shut down or even throttle back production when the wind drops, because the saving from using only the cheapest electricity in that way will be more than offset by the inefficient use of capital equipment when it's not run 24x7.

This is greenwashing at its finest - a nugget of truth used to persuade fools that making profits by burning fossil fuel is "green".

They will even laud you in public without payment, defend you against people who try to reveal your villainy, and vote for politicians who want to give you fat subsidies from the public purse; All because you were able to pretend that using lots of electricity is "green", if a third of that electricity is generated without trashing the atmosphere.

 

[bigfield]

The world’s largest green hydrogen plant will be built in Texas

To power planes and outer space rockets.

interestingengineering.com

The world's largest green hydrogen plant will be built in Texas
...
According to its website, GHI has seven projects that are under development with a combined output of one terawatt. The largest and the first one to get off the ground is Hydrogen City in Texas. Using onshore wind and solar energy, the project aims to produce 60 gigawatts of green hydrogen every year.

The Piedras Pintas salt dome in Duval County will serve as the hydrogen storage facility for the project which in its initial stages will see a 2-gigawatt production facility being drawn up. Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.
...
Green hydrogen is also an ideal replacement for natural gas in gas-powered power plants as well as the input ingredient for making fertilizers for farmers, who face high price volatility.

"Hydrogen City is a massive, world-class undertaking that will put Texas on the map as a leading green hydrogen producer," GHI's founder and CEO Brian Maxwell said. "Texas has been the world leader in energy innovation for over 100 years and this project is intended to cement that leadership for the next century and beyond."
...

50 years from now in Texas will be very interesting.

"produce 60 gigawatts of green hydrogen every year"? Does GW/year even make sense?

The press release says that the facility will have 60GW wind and solar power on site, and that the plant will produce up 2.5 billion kg of hydrogen each year, relying not just on it's on-site generation but also the grid.

And 60GW of wind and solar? Isn't that several times the existing capacity of all wind and solar in Texas?

There are (at least) two things I can't work out:
1 .How much electricity can be generated by 2.5 billion kg of hydrogen, using it as a replacement fuel in gas turbines?
2. How much electricity does this hydrogen plant need to make that much hydrogen in the first place?

 

[Swammerdami]

Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.
...

That's almost not a complete lie.

You can't have it both ways, bilby. You complain that the wind sometimes blows when electricity is unneeded, and doesn't blow when electricity is needed. But when someone has a plan to utilize wind or solar on days or nights when there's an electricity surplus, you switch to an opposite complaint.

Does the GHI plan to run only when there is cheap electricity available? (I.e. when solar and wind are supplying more than normal needs.) I don't know. I assume they'll run the plant when the electricity price at that moment makes it profitable, which is just what we would want, no?

I still don't think you've acknowledged that nuclear power has the OPPOSITE problem of intermittency. While electricity from natural gas can be turned off when solar and wind are supplying cheap power, with the fuel thus saved for windless nights, nuclear plants cannot be turned off.

Yes, you've talked about future plants where stopping and restarting will not be problematic; but so what? You've told us that the fuel cost is irrelevant in these plants. That means that economically one would want to run the plant continuously and rely on some way to store any excess power (e,g, as pumped water or as H₂).

Unlike power from carbon fuels or from dams, which can be throttled when not needed, nuclear plants are kept running: throttling would be uneconomic even if feasible.

 

[bigfield]

Does the GHI plan to run only when there is cheap electricity available? (I.e. when solar and wind are supplying more than normal needs.) I don't know. I assume they'll run the plant when the electricity price at that moment makes it profitable, which is just what we would want, no?

It's been a long time since I did any accounting, but I'm pretty sure these decisions come down to marginal profit.

At any given point in time, the plant operator has two choices, and each has a marginal profit/loss figure attached to it:
1. Put the plant on standby.
2. Make hydrogen.

The first option is guaranteed to produce a loss. For every moment you aren't making hydrogen, you're paying the overhead associated with keeping the plant ready for the moment when the wholesale spot price of electricity comes down. The only costs you're avoiding are the cost of input materials and the electricity required to run your production.

The second option may or may not produce a loss, depending on the spot price of electricity. The only time you would not choose this option is when the cost of that electricity causes you to make a bigger loss than putting the plant on standby.

I suspect that number 2 is going to be the more profitable choice almost all of the time, even when the spot price is relatively high. And once you start to add in batteries to the grid, the spot price tends to stay down more often, even as wind and solar go offline, as batteries can instantly sell as soon as the price starts to spike.

While I agree that the plant will only run when it's profitable, I don't think there's good reason to assume that this will only occur when renewables are running and fossil fuel generators are not. I think it's more likely that the plant will run regardless of the mix of electricity sources at any given moment.

This is Australia, but it illustrates the relationship between spot price and generation source:




Let's assume* that there is some fixed electricity price at which the plant would simply go to standby. If that breakpoint is $100/MWh, then the plant would be stopping just momentarily on most days. If the breakpoint is $300/MWh then the plant will run basically all the time.

(*This probably isn't how it works in the real world, because the wholesale price of hydrogen probably moves around as well, constantly changing the plant's margin.)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Can someone explain H2-making electrolyzers to me? I get that this has industrial purposes where the H2 becomes something they use... but "Green Hydrogen" sounds like a terrible idea.

1) Let's generate green energy via solar or wind
2) Now let's use that energy to enact electrolysis to generate H2 at a loss
3) This is somehow going to help our energy sustainability?

If using H2, great. For energy? It sounds like we are using green energy to produce another energy at significantly lower efficiency, where as we could just pump the green into the grid and full efficiency.

H2 can be used for:

• Energy storage: one gets electricity back by running it into a fuel cell.
• Fuel: burning it.
• Feedstock for:
  • Synthetic fuels
  • A variety of materials, like fertilizers and plastics

From what I've been reading, it has applicable industrial uses, which is already being done by some. My question more regarded its use to generate electricity. Additionally, storage of the hydrogen is no joke and requires a substantial amount of infrastructure.

 

[thebeave]

Can someone explain H2-making electrolyzers to me? I get that this has industrial purposes where the H2 becomes something they use... but "Green Hydrogen" sounds like a terrible idea.

1) Let's generate green energy via solar or wind
2) Now let's use that energy to enact electrolysis to generate H2 at a loss
3) This is somehow going to help our energy sustainability?

If using H2, great. For energy? It sounds like we are using green energy to produce another energy at significantly lower efficiency, where as we could just pump the green into the grid and full efficiency.

H2 can be used for:

• Energy storage: one gets electricity back by running it into a fuel cell.
• Fuel: burning it.
• Feedstock for:
  • Synthetic fuels
  • A variety of materials, like fertilizers and plastics

From what I've been reading, it has applicable industrial uses, which is already being done by some. My question more regarded its use to generate electricity. Additionally, storage of the hydrogen is no joke and requires a substantial amount of infrastructure.

Yep, that's what I was thinking. Lots of people think nuclear energy is a non-starter because of the nuclear waste storage "problem", but seems to me storing hydrogen is far more a concern. Not to mention other energy storage mediums, such as grid scale battery storage.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.
...

That's almost not a complete lie.

You can't have it both ways, bilby. You complain that the wind sometimes blows when electricity is unneeded, and doesn't blow when electricity is needed. But when someone has a plan to utilize wind or solar on days or nights when there's an electricity surplus, you switch to an opposite complaint.

But if I plug in my television into the wall, I can't say I'm utilizing green energy from a wind plant somewhere in Ohio.

Yes, you've talked about future plants where stopping and restarting will not be problematic; but so what? You've told us that the fuel cost is irrelevant in these plants. That means that economically one would want to run the plant continuously and rely on some way to store any excess power (e,g, as pumped water or as H₂).

The entire plan sounds fishy. Even their own words sound managerial.

Green hydrogen production is expected to begin by 2026 and it will tap into renewable energy from the Texan electricity grid.

IE, they are just hooking up to the electric lines. Ignoring the issue that they are using the grid to make "green" hydrogen, in 4 years, they don't even plan to have any wind or solar on site?! Looking into it deeper, their 60GW green energy claim is that they are indeed going to "hijack" other people's green energy. There is nothing green about this plant.

Green hydrogen is also an ideal replacement for natural gas in gas-powered power plants as well as the input ingredient for making fertilizers for farmers, who face high price volatility.

But they are using natural gas to generate the hydrogen! This sounds like energy accounting fraud.

They also note they plan to generate 60 GW of hydrogen every year, but are shipping it for industrial uses. Any hydrogen making ammonia, is not generating electricity. So, they are plugging an electrolysis plant onto the grid and just calling it "green". WTF man?!

 

[bilby]

I still don't think you've acknowledged that nuclear power has the OPPOSITE problem of intermittency.

I haven't. Because it doesn't. Because it's not the 1970s anymore. Load following with nuclear reactors is routine in France; It's just unnecessary in most places because nuclear isn't a sufficient fraction of total generation.

 

[Swammerdami]

I still don't think you've acknowledged that nuclear power has the OPPOSITE problem of intermittency.

I haven't. Because it doesn't. Because it's not the 1970s anymore. Load following with nuclear reactors is routine in France; It's just unnecessary in most places because nuclear isn't a sufficient fraction of total generation.

It's not clear that you understand the point.

Load leveling with generation from carbon fuels is trivial and appropriate. But it is uneconomic with nuclear reactors. Instead, if sufficient energy storage (including H₂) is available to use the surplus, nuclear reactors should ALWAYS be run near peak output. If they're throttling nuclear reactors on windy nights in France, it means that they have insufficient energy storage to maximize the ROI of their nuclear reactors, and that they have insufficient carbon-based power — which CAN be throttled economically — to avoid throttling the nuclear. (Obviously mentioning ONE benefit of carbon-based power is NOT an endorsement of CO₂ emissions.)

 

[bilby]

Load leveling

Load leveling is a normal and well understood function of electricity grids. It's generally not difficult - loads vary both predictably and slowly, with a handful of well understood exceptions.

What you are lumping in to 'load leveling' is supply leveling in response to wildly fluctuating input from generation technologies that are externalising the low value of their intermittency onto the grid. This is a similar, but much larger problem; Fluctuations in supply from wind and solar are both far bigger and far faster than fluctuations in demand from consumers.

The easiest and best solution to this is to get the vandalism of fluctuating supply off the grid, either by banning it outright, or by making the generating companies pay the full cost of handling the problem they are causing.

The entire wind and solar industry is utterly dependent on both open and hidden subsidies. The hidden subsidy of externalising the cost of intermittency to the grid is absolutely massive, and frankly criminal.

But Putin adores it, because he not only gets huge amounts of cash from selling gas; He also gets massive international leverage. The Germans can't apply serious sanctions against him, because Energiewende has made them completely dependent on him.

 

[Swammerdami]

I still don't think you've acknowledged that nuclear power has the OPPOSITE problem of intermittency.

I haven't. Because it doesn't. Because it's not the 1970s anymore. Load following with nuclear reactors is routine in France; It's just unnecessary in most places because nuclear isn't a sufficient fraction of total generation.

It's not clear that you understand the point.

Load leveling with generation from carbon fuels is trivial and appropriate. But it is uneconomic with nuclear reactors. Instead, if sufficient energy storage (including H₂) is available to use the surplus, nuclear reactors should ALWAYS be run near peak output. If they're throttling nuclear reactors on windy nights in France, it means that they have insufficient energy storage to maximize the ROI of their nuclear reactors, and that they have insufficient carbon-based power — which CAN be throttled economically — to avoid throttling the nuclear. (Obviously mentioning ONE benefit of carbon-based power is NOT an endorsement of CO₂ emissions.)

Nope. You still have NOT acknowledged this point. We understand that there are trade-offs, and a wide variety of complicating issues. The fact that nuclear plants CANNOT be throttled economically may be a minor point in the big picture but you still haven't shown that you even understand the point. Just as a grid with more than 30% of power coming from wind and solar will need massive storage capacity to operate efficiently, so will a grid with much power coming from nuclear.

Load leveling

Load leveling is a normal and well understood function of electricity grids. It's generally not difficult - loads vary both predictably and slowly, with a handful of well understood exceptions.

What you are lumping in to 'load leveling' is supply leveling in response to wildly fluctuating input from generation technologies that are externalising the low value of their intermittency onto the grid. This is a similar, but much larger problem; Fluctuations in supply from wind and solar are both far bigger and far faster than fluctuations in demand from consumers.

The easiest and best solution to this is to get the vandalism of fluctuating supply off the grid, either by banning it outright, or by making the generating companies pay the full cost of handling the problem they are causing.

The entire wind and solar industry is utterly dependent on both open and hidden subsidies. The hidden subsidy of externalising the cost of intermittency to the grid is absolutely massive, and frankly criminal.

Whatever the preferred terminology, some leveling must respond over a period of many minutes or hours, and some must respond in seconds. I suppose there are lots of giant capacitors (and batteries) located throughout a grid. (Or flywheels??? A half-century ago when I worked with computers, I recall some mainframes had big motor-generator sets just to cope with outages measured in milliseconds.)

Is the "hidden subsidy" of wind and solar "massive" (how massive? "absolutely" isn't too helpful), and should a way be found to negate that subsidy? Maybe. But hyperbolic phrases like "frankly criminal" do call the messenger's objectivity into question.

In any event, economical energy storage and deliberate usage during off-peak hours are key to efficiency even if nuclear is to be the power of choice rather than intermittent renewables. H₂ production is one good way to store energy. Note that there's no inefficiency if the H₂ is needed anyway, either for transportation fuels or for fertilizer production.

As yet another example of off-peak usage, consider freezers. These can be super-cooled when electricity is cheap, and allowed to warm slightly during cloudy afternoons and windless evenings.

 

[bigfield]

I found this dashboard for France's energy grid:

eCO2mix - Power generation by energy source

Track real-time power generation in France per energy source based on remotely monitored data and forecasts.

www.rte-france.com

It appears that they rely on a combination of gas and hydroelectric to provide despatchable electricity. Both gas and hydro appear to ramp up around dawn and dusk, where solar output is low and wind output is below its peak, and yet demand is highest.

There is never enough nuclear to supply more than 100% of demand, so it is always on full. Adding more nuclear would instantly squeeze out some of the demand for gas power. It doesn't look like French nuclear plants are doing load following (in the sense that you don't see daily crests and troughs in nuclear output like you do with hydro and gas).

 

[bilby]

but you still haven't shown that you even understand the point.

You're a smart person.

Smart people frequently make the mistake of assuming that when people disagree with them, it's because they don't understand.

That's probably a good bet.

But sometimes, people will disagree with you, not because they don't understand your point, but because you are wrong.

This is one of those times.

 

[bilby]

I suppose there are lots of giant capacitors (and batteries) located throughout a grid. (Or flywheels??? A half-century ago when I worked with computers, I recall some mainframes had big motor-generator sets just to cope with outages measured in milliseconds.)

You suppose wrong.

Most grids operate with no storage at all; Or with a small amount of rapid response pumped hydro, typically as insurance against a cascade of failures - without such a plant, designed for black starting, it can take days to get a grid back up once it fails.

The problem here seems to be that you are assuming that it's a simple enough subject that you can make assumptions based on your experience in only slightly related fields.

But you can't, because it's really not as simple as that.

Grid scale electrical engineering is very complex. I am a very long way from qualified to understand all the details; But I do at least know enough to know that I don't know much.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In any event, economical energy storage and deliberate usage during off-peak hours are key to efficiency even if nuclear is to be the power of choice rather than intermittent renewables. H₂ production is one good way to store energy. Note that there's no inefficiency if the H₂ is needed anyway, either for transportation fuels or for fertilizer production.

As yet another example of off-peak usage, consider freezers. These can be super-cooled when electricity is cheap, and allowed to warm slightly during cloudy afternoons and windless evenings.

Yeah, this is the real answer to load leveling. Realtime adjustments to the price of power, communicated to the users so devices can optimize. Even at the residential level there is some optimizing that could be done--when do you charge that EV? When do you run that pool pump?

 

[bilby]

In any event, economical energy storage and deliberate usage during off-peak hours are key to efficiency even if nuclear is to be the power of choice rather than intermittent renewables. H₂ production is one good way to store energy. Note that there's no inefficiency if the H₂ is needed anyway, either for transportation fuels or for fertilizer production.

As yet another example of off-peak usage, consider freezers. These can be super-cooled when electricity is cheap, and allowed to warm slightly during cloudy afternoons and windless evenings.

Yeah, this is the real answer to load leveling. Realtime adjustments to the price of power, communicated to the users so devices can optimize. Even at the residential level there is some optimizing that could be done--when do you charge that EV? When do you run that pool pump?

Or you could just supply electricity whenever customers want it. Supply should follow load; You shouldn't be asking load to follow supply.

I mean, a pizza place can offer cheap pizzas whenever their quiet period are, but it's quite something else to tell customers to fuck off if they want pizza during busy periods. In the latter case, you add production capacity, you don't try to lower sales.

If your supply is intermittent, and you are as a result forced to turn away customers, then you are doing it wrong. You need to fix the supply side, not the demand side.

 

[bigfield]

Whatever the preferred terminology, some leveling must respond over a period of many minutes or hours, and some must respond in seconds. I suppose there are lots of giant capacitors (and batteries) located throughout a grid. (Or flywheels??? A half-century ago when I worked with computers, I recall some mainframes had big motor-generator sets just to cope with outages measured in milliseconds.)

Synchronous Condensers?

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Synchronous condenser - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I believe these systems are expected to react within six seconds, on the NEM in Australia.

Batteries are virtually non-existent, besides the couple that have been built in the last five years. They don't contribute much to anything.

 

[bigfield]

In any event, economical energy storage and deliberate usage during off-peak hours are key to efficiency even if nuclear is to be the power of choice rather than intermittent renewables. H₂ production is one good way to store energy. Note that there's no inefficiency if the H₂ is needed anyway, either for transportation fuels or for fertilizer production.

As yet another example of off-peak usage, consider freezers. These can be super-cooled when electricity is cheap, and allowed to warm slightly during cloudy afternoons and windless evenings.

Yeah, this is the real answer to load leveling. Realtime adjustments to the price of power, communicated to the users so devices can optimize. Even at the residential level there is some optimizing that could be done--when do you charge that EV? When do you run that pool pump?

That would be very difficult to implement for retail electricity, as each customer is usually contracted to a single retailer who then has the freedom to vary that price in real time, however they want. It would take a very diligent and data-literate customer to figure out whether they are choosing bad times to consume electricity or just getting cheated.

I would rather we just found a way to make the price of electricity less dependent on the weather. Or even better, let's stop creating that problem in the first place.

 

[Hermit]

Batteries are virtually non-existent, besides the couple that have been built in the last five years. They don't contribute much to anything.

Actually, they do.

The Hornsdale battery, along with another Tesla battery at Lake Bonney and the Dalrymple North battery, were asked to play a key role stabilising the South Australia grid during the 17 days that the state was “isolated” from the rest of the main grid, and it reaped a huge bonus in revenue and profits in return.

That key role delivered a one-off profit boost of €16.4 million ($A27 million) in the first half, allowing Neoen to more than treble its total earnings before interest and tax from battery storage to €23.2 million from €6.9 million, and contributed to a 58 per cent boost to overall earnings in the first half to €148.2 million.
...
It’s important to remember also that the Hornsdale battery has delivered savings to consumers already estimated at more than $A150 million, and played key roles in keeping the lights on in a number of major network events.

September 2020 figures. They are bound to have increased since then.