Mainstream Renewable Power Blog

Continue reading ‘A Feasability Study on the Phase 1of the European Supergrid Part 2/2’

2012-02-07T09:17:54Z

Last week, in Part 1, I told you about my Master’s thesis and presenting it at the EWEA offshore event in Amsterdam. Here now below are some of the main conclusions of that presentation.

There are no technical barriers to the European Supergrid, and it could become economically feasible in comparison to the status quo, a series of point-to-point connections from individual wind farms to onshore load centres (the base case), for either a small increase in the cost to consumer, or by allowing other energy generators to use the network, whereby a cost to the new user could be charged. However, this small increase in either TUoS to the consumer or increase in grid usage, will give way to a far more efficient and effective transmission network.

The base case (a continuation of business of usual, with the absence of a long-term strategy) would require significant onshore reinforcements in order to utilise the full resource granted in the Round 3 zones allocated by the Crown Estate. These reinforcements are not possible with the onshore grids congestion levels and inability to handle the high penetration of renewable energy that would be required in this situation if all wind development was realised and no power was to be curtailed. The additional cost of such reinforcement was not included in the final cost of the base case as it was out with the scope of this study. In addition, with point-to-point connections the variability of wind power is ‘frozen in’ and expensive assets needed for transmission are under-utilised. Furthermore, they are under-utilised with no method by which to facilitate either; a reduction in the variability by means of collective smoothing, an increase in the utilisation, nor a reduction in the TUoS charge.

It was found that for the same cost to the consumer, an interconnected grid which was connected to a wider European market with increased security of supply and reduced variability could be built whereby some amount of wind power was curtailed. But, why constrain a free source of energy?

It was also found that a fully-developed Supergrid where zero wind power would be curtailed could be built with an increase in TUoS charge to the consumer, but a wider European market to allow for the trading of renewable electricity between EU member states is provided. Not to mention that a solution to onshore grid congestion is presented by means of bootstraps created by the interconnected offshore grid. Also, the interconnected grid has the advantage of allowing other sources of power to flow on the network – increasing the grid utilisation, reducing variability and reducing the cost to the consumer with every additional MWh that flows of the system. This is not an option with a BAU scenario and is only one of the many advantages of investing in new transmission when following a well thought-out strategy such as the Supergrid.

Overall, the key to ensuring a secure supply of energy for Europe in the future requires long-term thinking. A key message portrayed at EWEA Offshore 2011 Conference was that thinking towards 2020 is no longer enough. Longer term targets such as 2030 and more so, 2050 are the key to ensuring we stay on track to meet our emissions targets. The targets for 2020 can be met by continuing BAU, connection individual wind farms to shore in a point-to-point fashion, can be met by individual member states meeting an individual target which combined will allow the EU to meet its overall target. However, the more ambitious targets set for 2050 will, without doubt, require a cooperative effort, involving trans-national efforts in the generation, transmission and consumption of renewable energy. This is something that should be in our strategic plans now, in order for it to be cost effective and efficient in the future, when it will absolutely necessary.

Einstein said “We can’t solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used to create them”. We need to think differently. The Supergrid is the solution.

Please feel free to get back to me with your comments.

Heather

A Feasibility Study on the Phase 1 of the European Supergrid Part 1/2

2012-02-07T14:02:35Z

The EWEA offshore conference took place late last year in Amsterdam. This event was attended by over 8,000 people and is widely regarded as the largest offshore event in Europe. The event was to be my first foray into presenting and I delivered a presentation based on my Master’s Thesis: ‘A Feasibility Study on the Phase 1 of the European Supergrid’ on Wednesday, 30 November. (Phase 1 illustrated above).

For those of you unfamiliar with the European Supergrid, I’ve detailed a brief summary of the concept followed by my project outline and the key findings below.

“The Supergrid is the future electricity system that will enable Europe to undertake a once- off transition to sustainability. This 21st century high-voltage-direct-current (HVDC) network will make possible the generation and sale of renewable electricity across countries, replacing the 20th century AC networks that supplied fossil fuelled power to individual states. It will be the transmission backbone of Europe’s decarbonised power sector and will not be just an extension of existing or planned point-to-point interconnectors between particular EU member states. On the contrary, The Supergrid will allow future generation to be built where resources are optimal, are not constrained and can be transported to existing onshore grids at key nodes.

The Supergrid will be developed in stages, or as multiple smaller Supergrids to be interconnected at a later date. The Friends of the Supergrid (FOSG) have proposed a concept for Phase 1 of the European Supergrid; a North Sea Supergrid whereby geographically distributed offshore wind farm clusters are connected together to deliver electrical power to various different electricity markets.” For more information on the FOSG see www.friendsofthesupergrid.eu.

The project aims were threefold;

to obtain hourly wind speed data for the six key locations that were to be analysed in the study and to produce a power series from the wind speed data to create a portfolio of ‘virtual’ wind generator clusters
to design and run a power flow model that would record the power flowing on the interconnected grid cables
to cost (by means of a Transmission Use of System charge, TUoS) different sized scenarios each compared with a base case, and determine the most economic sizing of the interconnected grid.

To find out the main conclusions from the presentation, tune in to next week’s blog…..

Heather Laurie

Engineer at Mainstream

The World Future Energy Summit 2012

2012-02-07T13:40:22Z

The gardens of the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi are lush and extensive; an oasis in a city overlooked by futuristic skyscrapers that mark this region’s dramatic growth over the last decade.

I am here at a Reception to mark the UK’s contribution to the World Future Energy Summit. Hosted by Abu Dhabi, WFES has become the Davos of clean energy, bringing together heads of government, business and NGOs to drive forward the global transition to a sustainable energy future.

Enjoying the Ambassador’s canapés with me is a group of Scottish academics, here to support the Scottish Government’s framework agreement with Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s clean energy foundation. Sixty years ago British companies arrived here to prospect for oil. Today the UK delegation is prospecting for wind, solar and other clean tech opportunities in a region that has realised that refining its oil to burn to generate electricity no longer makes economic or sustainable sense.

The opportunity for the UK is reflected in the Agreement signed today by Masdar and Scotland’s Energy Technology Partnership. It puts Scottish universities at the heart of the development of the next generation of clean energy technology, building on the experience gained in developing wind and other low carbon plant at home.

Yesterday, the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, spoke of his country’s renewable energy ambitions. Over the last 3 years China has shut down 80 GW of old coal plant, more than the UK’s total installed capacity. It has already built 47GW of wind plant, and 3GW of solar plant, and its manufacture of wind turbines and solar PV panels is helping to drive down the cost of renewable energy in global markets. The development of renewable energy is at the heart of China’s growth strategy.

This represents another huge opportunity for the 900,000 people employed in the UK’s low carbon goods and services sector, selling those goods and services into China, and mobilising Chinese capital and technology to deploy in the UK.

My overall impression of WFES? The renewable energy sector is a global player. Last year it USD260bn of private capital was invested in the sector, up 5% on 2010. It provides a huge investment opportunity for countries and customers keen to protect themselves from volatile fossil fuel prices, secure their energy supplies, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, I need to join the queue to test the new electric Porsche.

Adam Bruce

Mainstream Renewable Power

Creative destruction

2011-09-23T13:08:29Z

by Nick Fedorkiw, Regulatory Affairs Manager.

Creative Destruction: that was economist Joseph Schumpeter’s phrase to describe how capitalism allows for innovative, more efficient technologies to take over their predecessors, sometimes in a violent fashion. Examples would be online films replacing DVDs (good for Netflix, bad for blockbuster), cars replacing the horse and buggy, etc. It is normally quite a messy process with the incumbents doing all they can to hold out before becoming obsolete. However, this only works where a natural market exits that values the qualities that new players bring independent of any government regulation of guidance.

Electricity is one of the most highly regulated industries and unique to electricity, the national markets themselves are artificial creations of governments. So when a disruptive technology comes along, like wind in the electricity market, there is no natural market platform for the invisible hand to get to work. And therefore the difficult but necessary creative destruction that needs to occur doesn’t.

I think this is the problem we have with the nuclear vs. wind situation at the moment. First, the UK electricity market is designed to work for nuclear, both in terms of the trading arrangements and the proposed CfD. But also the much lower risks that wind imposes on society are not valued in the market because governments generally take on the big risks associated with nuclear; construction cost risk, and catastrophic incident risk. If a proper market existed which internalised not only the environmental and security of supply benefits of wind, but also the additional uncosted risks of nuclear, I think the conditions would be set for renewables to “creatively destruct” the incumbent technologies including nuclear.

The Purpose of Price? In natural competitive markets for any particular good, price serves the function of sending signals to market players to produce the efficient quantity. No market participant needs to estimate what the efficient quantity of their output is. All they need to do is act in their own self interest, they vary their behaviour according to changes in prices, and the invisible hand does the rest. The purpose of price is to set quantity.

The price of energy and particularly electricity is seriously flawed due to all the externalities associated with it. The cost of carbon being the main one, (the greatest externality ever according to Nicholas Stern), but there are others such as the cost of security of supply and some other tertiary ones. This is how we find ourselves in a world where quantities are out of balance; there is too much traditional carbon based energy and too little renewables. One solution would be to fix the pricing mechanism by internalising the cost of the externality. This is the principle behind carbon taxes and if we were starting from scratch that might be a good idea.

However, the amount of renewable generation we have in the economy is so incredibly low, that we do not need a price to tell us that we need more of it. Only once we approach an equilibrium where we need to fine tune the relative quantities of renewables/nuclear/thermal generation, would a market price be necessary. Currently, a price on renewables serves no purpose.

This is why a pure FIT , where the level is set at the cost of production (not price), is the only reasonable financial mechanism for supporting the most rapid build out of renewables that industry can stably provide.

The UK’s offshore wind advantage. To end on a positive note! Everyone knows the UK should be a world leader in offshore wind. This is primarily due to its large offshore resource. But I think it has some other big advantages:

· The scale and complexity of offshore wind requires a global supply chain, especially the financial supply chain. The UK is probably the most open country in the world to foreigners and this will help in attracting that needed supply chain. A good example of this is probably the OFTO regime. Although it’s a nightmare for us as developers, it has definitely attracted a lot of interest in the financial community because it is a very rare example of transmission assets being made available to foreign owners.

· I think people underestimate how difficult it is to do anything offshore. Britain has a strong maritime history through its Navy and more recently oil and gas industry. There aren’t many countries that have been able to do anything comparable, Germany definitely not being one of them.

· The City of London, although currently not doing so well, has for centuries been the centre of innovation in the financial sector. Offshore wind is going to need the most creative financing to get anywhere near the UKs ambitions and the city is well placed to do that.

Learning on the job with the in-company project

2011-06-01T11:44:55Z

Part of the full time MBA at Smurfit includes an eight-week in-company project. Over this period we work with an external organisation to complete a business task or focus on a strategic challenge the company may be facing. This project is a great opportunity to set aside theoretical work for a few months and return to a work environment.

Given my interest in sustainability, I was keen to work with a renewable energy company, but I wanted to work somewhere visionary and innovative. I had one target in mind from the outset: one Eddie O’Connor.

Mr O’Connor was the founder of Ireland’s first large-scale renewable energy company and is an extremely successful entrepreneur. But it is his passion for a sustainable future and his vision for how we can get there that made me want to work for him for the company project.

But how do you get in touch with such a successful and extraordinarily busy man? With a bit of difficulty I was to find out. After hitting a few dead ends, I heard that he would be giving a speech at a dinner organised by one of the exec MBAs last January. So I threw my glad rags on, armed myself with my CV and a (slightly sycophantic) letter and headed down to a salubrious event in a country manor to door-step Mr O’Connor.

The following week I had a phone call set up with Eddie and had 10 minutes to convince him to take me on for 2 months… the choice in front of him was a company project or a barring order for stalking! Lucky for me he chose the former et voilà, I have been working with Mainstream for the past six weeks and loving every minute.

Eddie O’Connor and me

Mainstream Renewable Power specialises in developing and building wind (on- and off-shore) and solar energy plants. They are now one of Europe’s leading offshore wind energy developers and are actively developing over 12,000 megawatts of projects in eight countries including the UK, Canada, Chile, South Africa and the USA.

They are a relatively small and agile company with 100 or so staff globally. So far working for them is like seeing all the best bits of an MBA in action. Innovation and entrepreneurial spirit is encouraged and there is a constant drive to be a centre of excellence at every stage in the business.

Everyone I work with is unbelievably motivated, enthusiastic and proud of their company, and the passion of the top management team pervades the company. So far it has been an amazing experience to work here and I have learned so much about how to run a company.

All the case studies I have read and debates we have had in class, from HR to corporate finance to strategy and marketing, have come to life for me in Mainstream. The company project has been a great way of putting my new “MBA toolbox” to practical use instead of the course being a purely theoretical exercise.

The ticket to that dinner back in January might have been the best money I ever spent!

SMart Wind Community Consultation events

2011-03-07T12:29:50Z

SMart Wind was established by Mainstream Renewable Power and Siemens Project Ventures to develop the 4GW Hornsea Zone which was awarded through The Crown Estate Round 3 bid process. The company is seeking planning consent for Project One consisting of two offshore wind farms and associated offshore and onshore infrastructure. Project One will be located about 103km off the East Riding of the Yorkshire coast.

The SMart Wind team are now busy finalising a number of consultation events which will take place in March and April. The events will be informative and open and aim to provide an understanding to local communities of the development process and to encourage feedback on the proposals relating to Project One.

Chris Jenner, SMart Wind’s Environment and Consents Manager, and his team along with other key suppliers and organisations will be on hand to talk about the proposals for Project One and there will be a number of information boards and presentations made by the development team.

The Statement of Community Consultation (SoCC) for Project One, required in accordance with Section 47(6) of the Planning Act 2008 is also available for download from www.smartwind.co.uk and provides details including associated cable route and onshore infrastructure and explains how we will consult with the local community.

Changing Times

2010-11-05T16:13:42Z

A piece in the Times on 01 September on the changing nature of employment in the UK makes for interesting reading, and provides a clear indication of economic trends.

Over the last 10 years in the UK the number of people employed as "Assemblers of electrical products" has fallen by 69%, and "Assemblers and routine operatives" by 50%. I suspect this is less to do with a "decline" in UK manufacturing, and more to do with increased automation in manufacturing assembly processes.

The number of people employed as typists and telephonists have fallen by 56% and 66% respectively. Again, I suspect that this has much more to do with technology than anything else.

The advance of technology, and increased leisure time and affluence, has seen significant growth in what the article describes as "navel gazing" careers: beauticians (+60%); fitness instructors (+46%) and physiotherapists (+64%). We may be spending less time in libraries (library assistants -43%), but are outdoors more (sports coaches +67%, leisure park attendants +107%) and need looking after more in those wild outdoors, or perhaps those wild outdoors need more looking after from us (Conservation and environmental protection officers +188%). There are, apparently, now 34,000 more such officers in the UK than in 2001.

The renewable energy business is a growth industry on a global scale. Its massive employment potential perhaps demonstrates how innovative advances in technology can also create jobs across the world if the opportunities are taken.

Adam Bruce, Global Head of Corporate Affairs

Long live Shale Gas as long as it stays in the ground

2010-11-05T16:17:27Z

Surprise, surprise brothers and sisters; "Shale gas trend to "raise prices" Think Tank warns", reported in a BBC news story.

The fact that this will eventually happen is the worst kept secret in the world at this stage. Okay, there might be a lot of this stuff hidden around deep down under, however getting it out in an economic and environmentally responsible way is the problem. So far we have seen ground water pollution as a result of some extraction activities with serious implications for people living nearby.

It has proven far more problematic to extract the shale gas and this is beginning to be the major theme. The recession and lower demand has kept gas prices down, but the very positive expectation to shale gas extraction has also had an impact on this, helped by a powerful lobby. So we should start to see prices rise again as both the economic activity ramps up around the world and as we see the real cost of the shale extraction come through.

And in the meantime wind energy continues to flourish with 200GW projected by GWEC for the end of 2010. 400GW is projected for 2014 and close to 1000GW for 2020, let’s hope those numbers are right.

And the solar energy revolution is about to take off as well, happy days!

So maybe we should leave the shale gas in the ground?

Torben Andersen, CEO – Onshore