[Closed] Ecotricity

Most "environmentally sound" power generation requires significantly greater fixed costs that most carbon based ones. It's key economic advantage is it's relative marginal cost of production (other than finance) is extremely low. Most green electricity generation can only get the green light (so to speak) exactly [i]because[/i] of carbon energy inflation driving up all unit prices of electricty whether green or brown.

Another point you're missing is that the price of green energy is higher at the moment as any excess electricity sold back to the grid is undervalued. Users of alternative energy in Germany get about 4 times the price per unit that the UK pays.

undervalued

I wouldnt say it was substantially undervalued. I agree it's significantly less than in Germany, but the German price isnt it's value either.

Selling back to the grid will get you about 4.5p per unit. Buying from the grid costs between 4p and 12p I gather.
http://www.energyhelpline.com/energy-guide/Electricity-units.aspx
http://www.ecocentre.org.uk/selling-electricity-back-to-the-grid.html

I'll admit there's some slightly wishy-washy thinking going on with the German way of valuing electricity, which makes out that conventional electricity generation comes with massive hidden costs in terms of pollution and running expenses. That said, the UK rate is apparently going to get a big increase soon - whether this will kick-start a massive surge of interest in renewable energy remains to be seen.

"Can somebody reassure me on that basis that none of the money I spend on electricity is going towards building windmills if I'm not with them?"

All generation companies have an obligation to generate a certain percentage from renewable sources. Those that fall below are allowed to buy certificates from those who produce more than the requirement, such as Ecotricity. The problem for the consumer is that this creates double counting - "green" tarrifs are often not driving any addtional renewable generation.

Having said that, I'm with Ecotricity because unlike other electricity suppliers, their sole purpose is to build renewable capacity, which in my view is a very good thing.

As for the intermittancy thing - all forms of generation are subject to intermittancy (e.g. breakdowns, planned maintenance), which is why the national grid has reserve capacity. Whilst wind power is more intermittant than most, it's been estimated that wind power could generate close to 20% of our total supply without incurring significant extra costs in reserve capacity.

Can somebody reassure me on that basis that none of the money I spend on electricity is going towards building windmills if I'm not with them?

OP why do you object ?

As for the intermittancy thing - all forms of generation are subject to intermittancy (e.g. breakdowns, planned maintenance), which is why the national grid has reserve capacity. Whilst wind power is more intermittant than most, it's been estimated that wind power could generate close to 20% of our total supply without incurring significant extra costs in reserve capacity.

Note, I'm not at all against renewable energy - it would be great if we could rely on hydro like Norway. Just against doing it badly, and overhyping (and subsidising) things that don't actually work that well.

ChrisM, I've stayed in a holiday home where all the electricity was provided by photovoltaic cells. They are well-known as a rotten, inefficient way of generating electricity, and there was I think one of these things on the roof, with a couple of batteries in the garage. But this gave us more than enough electricity for lighting, watching TV when the weather was rubbish, and running the washing machine every few days. Appliance use had to be cut to the bare minimum but in the context of a holiday, at least, this was actually quite nice. Wind turbines are waay more efficient and if you had the right location, I reckon it would be perfectly feasible to run a low-energy house without even connecting it to the national grid.

On a small scale, using lots of energy storage, yes. The issue being that without the batteries, it wouldn't actually be a practical system either with solar or wind generation, and you'd need rather a lot of LA batteries to keep the whole grid going!

and don't forget, most of your children will have legs so if they want to watch telly or use the xbox, a turbo trainer with a generator will suffice nicely.

I've been "designing" a house in my head for the last year or so that will have a combination of groundwater heating/solar heating and wind turbine/photovoltaic cells.

The electricity production would run an inverter that generated Hydrogen from water and stored it in a large underground tank. The energy storage density of hydrogen in a tank would be much higher than SLA and I reckon cheaper.

Heating would be taken care of using the combination of grund/solar water heating with sold fuel (wood) booster.

So the only battery technology available is LA? 🙄

Why, what alternatives do you suggest which are more viable from an economic, or any other perspective?

Good plan, Stoner. Everybody should follow suit. Shame about the massive deforestation to fuel all the wood burners 😈 😉

Given prison is far too easy, what we really need are treadmills in prison to replace the windmills. Convictricity anybody?

Stoner beat me to it.

Chrism, I know **** all about renewable energy technology, but as an eavesdropper on nerdy night riding threads I do know that SLA batteries aren't exactly cutting edge.

Shame about the massive deforestation to fuel all the wood burners

Or the massive forestation when biomass becomes regarded as a commercially viable fuel. 😉

the other technology to look for are new carbon nano tube batteries. Carbon plates are good storgae media apprently but being plate sthey fracture when the are highly charged. the higgledy-piggledy fibre-like form that's being developed doesnt fracture but has huge energy storage density.

Another one is a new LiPo system that speeds up the charge rate massively making intermittent power supply storage a possibility, rather than the wasterful trickle charge of LA.s

Shame about the massive deforestation to fuel all the wood burners

I will be coppicing. 🙂

as an eavesdropper on nerdy night riding threads I do know that SLA batteries aren't exactly cutting edge.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've been trying to heat my home using an over-volted Cree XRE. 😉

Another one is a new LiPo system that speeds up the charge rate massively making intermittent power supply storage a possibility, rather than the wasterful trickle charge of LA.s

the new technology allows extremely fast charging meaning you can "capture" energy much more efficiently . Let me go find the article...

http://mb.com.ph/articles/200094/mit-develops-quickcharge-battery

http://www.lowcarboneconomy.com/community_content/_low_carbon_news/4970

Interesting technology, but I don't see the benefits for domestic energy storage, where you simply don't have the generating capacity to recharge your batteries that quickly (assuming you have sufficient battery capacity).

Even for the stated applications it's going to take some significant changes to other bits of kit - 300W mobile phone charger with 60A cabling?

Obviously not as green as they're making out then. I can't see how it's possible on that basis to supply their customers with green energy when the wind doesn't blow.

Any halfwit can see that wind isn't the whole solution. And absolutely no-one is saying that it is.

However the wind is almost always blowing somewhere, especially just offshore. So you can get a hell of a lot of energy from wind turbines for very little outlay.

The German scheme afaik is designed to encourage renewable energy and also micro-generation to build the industry and technology as much as anything. It's an incentive for a purpose, not a purely economic tool.

60A cabling

Yes, I too wondererd how they were going to flash that much juice down the pipe so fast without using 99.9999% copper rebar 🙂

IMO having superfast charging technology reduces energy waste. Bursts of surplus energy produced at a wind generator in a gust for eaxmple could be more efficiently captured.

What I would love to do, to satisfy the analyst in me, is calculate the diurnal/annual power consumption sycle of a 4 person house (excluding heating) and map that against the diurnal/annual energy production by PV cells/ wind generator of a given size and determine the maximum energy storage requirement. Then calculate the most efficient storage technology for that level of capacity, whether it be SLA, LiPo or Hydrogen gas.

The German scheme afaik is designed to encourage renewable energy and also micro-generation to build the industry and technology as much as anything. It's an incentive for a purpose, not a purely economic tool.

absolutley correct.

Here, we banned tungsten bulbs instead 🙂

Did they also ban incandescent bulbs in Germany?

As for charging a mobile that quickly - the charger would be a supercapacitor that discharges into an inductive charger. Put your phone on a pad, press a button and it's fully charged... The phone would weigh a bit though, you'd need a few small pieces of sturdy metal to pick up that kind of current mind. Unless of course it was really really fast in which case the conductors would not have time to warm up.

Any halfwit can see that wind isn't the whole solution. And absolutely no-one is saying that it is.

However the wind is almost always blowing somewhere

Did they also ban incandescent bulbs in Germany?

banned across the EU by 2012. Not all countries doing it with such haste as us though.

Then calculate the most efficient storage technology for that level of capacity, whether it be SLA, LiPo or Hydrogen gas.

Not that LA has significant issues with energy storage efficiency.

I dont expect LiPo to get there, but I reckon hydrogen could give LA a good run for it's money since the marginal cost of capacity is negligeable compared to LA. Just a bigger tank rather than more cells.

I don't think anyone at the moment installs a renewable energy system in their house because it's the most economical choice. Even a really simple, uncontroversial energy saving measure like insulating a home properly takes time to see some financial payback. There is a bigger picture you're missing here - idealism maybe, but also a degree of self sufficiency and cushioning against constantly increasing living costs. Not to mention that installing a renewable energy generation system probably adds a fair few quid to the price of your property should you decide to sell it.

It doesn't have to be for an individual household either - if you look at stuff like the Vauban development in Germany, it seems to be perfectly possible for like-minded people to come together and build a development with shared power sources from renewables.

I'm with ecotricity, of course the lights don't go out if it's not windy - as with all suppliers, you draw power from the grid, not direct from their turbines. Using them is the best way to ensure my money goes toward building more turbines.

If there was a nuclear tariff I'd be happy to sign up for that instead...

So ecotricity aren't even halfwits?

They're not trying to persuade people that wind only is good enough, are they? I'm a customer, they are a very sound bunch of people. Do you think that everyone's stupid apart from you? That people who work and spend their lives involved with renewable energy would miss something so blatantly obvious?

Wind power electricity is a big fraud. It works, sort off, but requires to be heavily subsidised. Plus it is destroying many areas of natural beauty so that pasty faced resource burning high-rise urban pseudo environmentalists can claim the moral high ground.

Simply wear more clothes, cut your heating bills.

Hydro, nuclear, yes. Anything but wind.

but I reckon hydrogen could give LA a good run for it's money since the marginal cost of capacity is negligeable compared to LA. Just a bigger tank rather than more cells.

Not entirely true that the marginal cost is negligible though - the generator and fuel cells still need scaling.

Having checked, the energy conversion efficiency is only ~40% for hydrogen storage (vs ~80% for LA), so you're wasting a lot there.

http://www.****/sciencetech/article-1033683/Fill-car--home-hydrogen-fuel-station.html

about £2k for the generator and small tank.

They're not trying to persuade people that wind only is good enough, are they?

chrism - nobody is saying that all electricity production should be from wind. Ecotricity use subsidies to build wind power capacity just as BNFL or whoever use subsidies to build nuclear capacity. As a nation we need a mix. As a consumer I choose a supplier who will help provide a better mix by building more reusable capacity.

nobody is saying that all electricity production should be from wind.

hydro-electric is the one that makes sense to me, well, in my mind at least.....

two dams, one above t'other
drop the water through the turbines
generate elastictrickery (one for the Terry Pratchett fans...)
Distribute most of the electric to the grid, store some on site.
Overnight use the power reserved on site to pump the water back from lower dam......
and repeat.

heck - maybe even use the energy of the water as it falls to drive some sort of mechanical system to pump water back up...

perfect, erm no, drought etc but then no system is infallible..

excellent use of selective quoting there Chrism....
the url address gives a little clue as to what EXACTLY they are talking about

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/about/OurFuelMix/

they are talking about the electricty that Ecotricity supply to their own customers NOT the national grid per se

Our Fuel Mix
The UK’s biggest growth in renewables
Each year our green % goes up as we build more and our brown % goes down as we buy less of that. In just four years we have increased the proportion of wind generated electricity in our mix to over 50% using wind energy we built ourselves.

We’re set for a 16% increase in our fuel mix this year, but our ultimate goal is 100% new green electricity sourced from our own turbines

marsdenman, whilst the sort of pump storage hydro has it's place as a form of energy storage, it should be noted that it actually consumes electricty.

but our ultimate goal is 100% new green electricity sourced from our own turbines

That's their goal for their own electricity supply. They're not saying that the entire UK supply should be from wind. Since that would never work and everyone knows that.

So if it wouldn't work for the whole of the UK, how come it will work for ecotricity and their customers? I hope you're stocking up on candles for when they do reach 100%.

marsdenman appears to have invented perpetual motion.

I don't think there's any single renewable energy type that will be able to supply the whole of the UK at present - especially not with our current attitudes to energy use. So what's wrong with starting off by expanding a proven, comparatively efficient method of energy generation? It sounds like you're just re-hashing the same tired old "renewable energy is rubbish" arguments that come up on here every so often.

Of course, if you're an expert in other types of renewables who finds his work marginalised becuase of the current focus on wind power, I apologise unreservedly...

So if it wouldn't work for the whole of the UK, how come it will work for ecotricity and their customers?

Chrism - All that has to happen is for ecotricity to supply the same amount of power to the grid (over some period of time) as their customers draw down from the grid over the same period.

Do you honestly think that if you change electricity or gas supplier they build new wires and pipes to your house?

Marsdenman, there is a mountain in Wales where they do what you describe, water is pumped uphill using off peak electricity and then during peak periods they let it downhill and put power back onto the grid. Obviously it doesn't generate any net power that way (in fact it loses some), it just stores energy for when it is needed (the end of eastenders probably) like a big battery.

the guy who owns ecotricity lives down the road. he has a merc sl55 amg, rangerover vogue and a host of fast bikes, hes no mug. great company to work for by all accounts(HQ is in my local town). i do also buy electric from them.

gonefishin - sorry you lost me on that one - pumping the water back up will consume electricity but that will be electricity that the system itself produced, a small amount surely compared with what can be supplied to the national grid.... kind of a 'closed loop' thing. Happy to ackn though that i am not an expert, not at all, just voicing an idea that crops up from time to time in my idle mind....

Chrism - All that has to happen is for ecotricity to supply the same amount of power to the grid (over some period of time) as their customers draw down from the grid over the same period.

So what's wrong with starting off by expanding a proven, comparatively efficient method of energy generation? It sounds like you're just re-hashing the same tired old "renewable energy is rubbish" arguments that come up on here every so often.

The German scheme afaik is designed to encourage renewable energy and also micro-generation to build the industry and technology as much as anything. It's an incentive for a purpose, not a purely economic tool.

absolutley correct.

Here, we banned tungsten bulbs instead

Well, without wishing to get all gtechnical in a nice discussion, the Renewables Obligation Order came into force on 1 April, bringing into force (among other things) a feed in tariff for micro generation below 3MW.

So, now we have both the ROC system, and a series of FITs (depending on technologu and output).

Ecotricity are one of many developers and producers in this country and, while many people decry wind (usually on a nimby basis), the potential of projects like Sheringham Shoal and London Array - not to metion the significant amount of output available through the new Round 3 offshore propjects - means that there is a real possibility of non-carbon sources of electricity positively benefitting the nation.

But, as many point out, wind is by no means the only solution (though it is the most well established, and best funded). Biomass is growing, and there are increasing numbers of - usually waste wood fuelled - power (and, better still, CHP) plants being commissioned. Anaerobic digestion is also becoming more viable, as are other technologies. including tidal and wave.

Even if you don't believe in clean energy, you probably would believe that this is one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK (and internationally), and so if you want to make some money, get into it.

(Oh, and I know onje of the directors at Ecotricity - thoroughly nice chap and, yes, they do give a sh*t about what they're doing.)

No one is saying that wind alone is the solution ...HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO SAY THIS CHRISM?
It does have limits but its main strength is it is renewable and [relatively]carbon neutral unlike the currently available alternatives at present.

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE NEED TO SAY THIS CHRISM?

which is what then?

*wonders how much coal has been burnt to power this thread so far*

😀

marsdenman the system you are describing would give you more energy out than is being put in.

If you start with the situation that the upper reservoir is full and the lower one empty. Water flows from the upper to the lower reservoir generating a certain amount of energy. The water in the lower reservoir is then pumped back up to the upper reservoir to return the system to its original state ready to generate more power. This requires energy to be put into the system and thanks to the laws of thermodynamics the amount of energy put in will always be more than you get out. The net effect is that such a system will consume energy.

which is what then?

"you get your power from non-renewables when the wind doesn't blow. Shame the non-renewables you actually rely upon keep burning fuel when you're getting your energy from the wind, so that they can step in when you need them."

"wind is only proven if you ignore the complete system, whereby it doesn't supply anywhere near the amount of power claimed, and still needs conventional power to back it up."

Chrism - we all know this (as do most people who are interested in such things). The point is that Ecotricity want to reduce carbon emissions NOW by building as many turbines as they can and supplying as much wind power as they can. Ecotricity won't take 100% of the market, and they realise this - that's why they want all of THEIR energy to be renewable so that they can maximise the amount of renewable energy on the grid. Most companies want to supply as many people as possible regardless, Ecotricity want as much renewable power as possible. If they did have 100% or even 50% of the market they'd have to re-word that pledge.

You might find it hard to believe that people who work in the power industry might maybe have thought for more than 2 seconds about it.. but it's true. There are clever people out there besides you 🙂

You might find it hard to believe that people who work in the power industry might maybe have thought for more than 2 seconds about it.

The water being pumped up hills is very popular... and the energy problem more complex than most people think. I have a few points that are interesting.
The pumping of water up hills is not a power producer, true, but hydro schemes work on flowing rivers from one height down to another and these are power producers but at the cost of reducing river flows and destorying areas of beauty in some cases.
The ones where the same water is pumped up and then let to run down is for a very different reason, during the day there is a great demand for power, huge and so all the power stations are all full stretch, during the night this demand is so small as we're all asleep, as mentioned before you can't just turn this things on and off it takes hours to warm up and prep these turbines and so what they do is use the night time to pump the water, the cost of pumping it knowing they can draw on it later is worth it considering the cost of having to shut the power down as and when its on demand. This also allows the flow to be levelled out, as the water then gives enough to average out the peaks and drops in the power supply. It is not really a true eco friendly method.

second point, when i worked at an electricity distribution company, i remember there was talk about having regional blackouts in areas, even to the point that the building we were working in was to run on diesel genny for a weekend and they were going to shutdown power to some areas, during this i was told the grid runs at 97% of its capacity and during this time two main power stations were down due to health and safety breaches...

of all the power produced in this country around 7-8% of it is from renewable energy (taken from uni lecture notes) and of that 75% of it is from biomass, wind, solar and hydro are great but they are pointless, they will never be able to provide for our needs truely they can assist but they will never manage it, the only way we can ensure future generations true supply is to invest in nuclear and to look into improving this technology as i believe the current nuclear fuel supply is about 70 years (unless they can get a way to use the rest of the uranium)
So wind farms and tidal energy really don't make a huge difference,

A lot of companies looked at wave generators and the like originally and decided not to invest as they were not economically viable and it is only due to the huge grants in this field that makes such projects possible,

I don't think we should be flippent but i do feel we are chasing a false hope here, even at best these devices will never provide the needed power.

Why can't we just take responsibility, and control what we "need"?
But no, the only solution people ever come up with is more Brute Force Engineering.
Did the Romans "need" nuclear power?

The point being that that 100% will be a lie

Mate, honestly, you need to read posts a little more carefully.

They're not trying to supply 100% of the UK market with wind power. That's not possible, and they know it. So why do you keep telling us what we know?

They are trying to supply their customers with 100% wind power, so that consequently a larger percentage of the total power consumed can be from wind. Can I make it any clearer?

As for the viability of wind - the wind does blow, they do turn, and they generate power. They are economically viable as far as I know. So what's the problem? Nimbies aside, of course.

Well I'm charging my iPhone while surfing the net, and listening to the radio. All via electricity produced from biomass.

Mate, honestly, you need to read posts a little more carefully.

As for the viability of wind - the wind does blow, they do turn, and they generate power. They are economically viable as far as I know. So what's the problem?

Well I'm charging my iPhone while surfing the net, and listening to the radio. All via electricity produced from biomass.

I work in a biomass energy plant. We are currently generating just over 1MW (due to one line being down) we generally produce between 3.5 - 4.5 MW. We burn mainly waste wood from skips that would otherwise end up in landfill. So IMO it's a win win. Less waste going to landfill and using it to make electricity.

it's not possible for them to supply ecotricity customers with 100% wind power

Why not? If their customers are say 2% of the population, they could receive 100% of power [i]aggregated over time[/i] from wind turbines...

that the wind doesn't always blow, and unless you want to crack out the candles when that happens, you have to keep just as much conventional generating capacity

Maybe I have read it and understood it, and am trying to counter the point (I don't know why people get so insulting on forums when having discussions.. I'm actually a very clever bloke and am pretty good at reading and understanding). The wind is pretty much always blowing somewhere, especially out at sea (as I mentioned). You would perhaps still need a full range of power generating options when available wind poiwer is low including wave, nuclear, coal, gas etc but you would not need to drive them as hard when the wind IS blowing and hence be able to save fuel etc. If you used lots of different renewable energy sources then pretty much you would be able to cover power demand most of the time. There are also plans (afaik) to extend our links with the continental power grids on the basis that there'll always be power being generated somewhere.

That's why people keep talking about the energy mix - they are looking for ways to generate power from lots of different renewable sources that will cover what we need. Most people are quite capable of realising that if there's no wind then there'll be no wind generated power. That's why the clever folk out there (there are some really) are working on how to make the system work. After all, the people that sell electricity don't want the lights going out any more than their customers.

So you see, I did understand your point that there need to be other sources besides wind.

PS did you really think I needed to be told that it's not always windy? I mean really? Not just in a grumpy frosty STW argument kind of way?

Oh dear. I was going to comment and add something, but there are some people who just don't get renewable energy or the energy crisis facing the UK, so I don't want to get drawn into an argument.
.
I may return to the thread when we all have our rolling power-cuts across the UK in the next few winters, or when the £billions of subsidy the nuclear lot will have needs repaying.
.

The way I think it works is that any electricity that the wind turbines produce gets exported to the grid. So ecotricity's customers do not recieve electricity solely produced by wind. So there is no more of a chance of their lights going out as npower or powergen customers. What I believe they are doing is the more profit they make they are making more wind farms. Therefore increase the amount of "green energy" they produce and customers they can supply

Why not? If their customers are say 2% of the population, they could receive 100% of power aggregated over time from wind turbines...

did you really think I needed to be told that it's not always windy?

The wind is pretty much always blowing somewhere, especially out at sea (as I mentioned).

If you used lots of different renewable energy sources then pretty much you would be able to cover power demand most of the time. There are also plans (afaik) to extend our links with the continental power grids on the basis that there'll always be power being generated somewhere.

Diving in here.. I 100% approve of Ecotricity and I buy my electricity from them.

So there.

There are also several really promising ways of storing energy which are up and coming, and there are much better ways than we have now of distributing it. I believe unless we ramp up production, and encourage much more investment, then none of this will get the backing it deserves either.

Chrism - read the bit you quoted again. You are ignoring the phrase "over time".

You are also confusing capacity with loading. Yes, we still need the capacity in other forms but they don't have to be consuming as much fuel when the wind blows if there are also wind turbines.

That said, we also need to build 10 or 20 nuclear reactors as well, and we need to start building immediately. Show me a nuclear only electricity tariff and I would sign up.

and have the reactor close to where you live....

I'd rather live near a nuclear power station than a coal one. Less radiation for a start.

Only if you have sufficient energy storage capacity - and we don't. Otherwise you're getting some of your energy from conventional power stations, which are burning more fuel than if you didn't exist.

You missed the word 'aggregate' there.

If you really think I'm so stupid as to not understand that it's not always windy, why don't you give me a call and we'll talk about it. I'm really not an imbecile. I'm all for a discussion of the subject, but can we leave out the abuse please?

You don't need to re-iterate the same stuff over and over again. Yes, we know that wind is inconsistent but we're trying to make our point that we (and a lot of other industry folk) think that it can be a useful option. You seem to think that because we don't agree with you that means we're idiots who can't read a post. But that's debate - we are presenting reasoning to show why we disagree.

Oh and yes, currently most of the traffic on the cross channel HVDC link is French nuclear power, but in the future that need not be the case. What we need along with loads more diverse renewable sources INCLUDING wind is a comprehensive grid allowing energy to be transported around Europe from where it can be generated renewably to where it's used. We're a long way from that tho.

If you really want to know where green generation is going you need to look at this Februarys white paper (yeah I know BORING!)and see where the gov. are putting ROC (Renewables Obligation Certificates) Credits for renewable power generation.
Also if you are having difficulty sleeping due to worrying about how your electricty is produced, it`ll help there too. yawn!

You missed the word 'aggregate' there.

If you really think I'm so stupid as to not understand that it's not always windy

You don't need to re-iterate the same stuff over and over again.

chrism, if we agree with you, will you go away?