Bravo, Ireland!
This bodes well for the renewable energy transition around the world and it’s also a strong reminder that the companies manufacturing renewable energy technologies are putting them where are most profitable, rather than remaining within their borders.
So increase it further and once exceeding demand is the default in summer days allow companies to build storage right next to wind generation. The fact that they are only getting cheap renewable power for it’s actual price instead of prices of that broken energy market makes commercial investment into storage worthwhile. So free storage infrastructure for the public, paid by private money making a profit.
In recent years I’ve been following the development of the energy storage industry. The latest video by Just Have a Think made me realize that an energy storage facility should use a variety of different technologies. Some would store energy for a few hours, some for days and some technologies would be used for seasonal energy storage.
I really think we need to start building these facilities. Not just pilot plants, but actual production scale facilities.
What almost everyone seems to miss is it’s absolutely optimal situation to overbuild and waste electricity. Sometimes it’s just not worth storing, until demand exceeds a lot it’s not really worth storing large amounts.
Also HVDC currents.
to overbuild and waste electricity
Rather than waste the electricity, could we not put the excess towards energy-intensive but time-insensitive projects like direct-air carbon capture, green hydrogen production, or desalination of seawater?
At some point it has to be wasted. No one is going to built something that will use the last 1 hour of energy in a year that isn’t assigned to anything.
Most factories have a stable running value. I.e. when they run they run at 100%. Capital is wasted when that investment isn’t making money. So to have something that can absorb all excess is very difficult.
There will be some projects that ramp up and down. But it would be low capital cost high energy cost and I’m not sure what they would be. There might be some projects that also run for 6 months of the year. But even then I still see some waste happening
Excellent
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Wind power generation temporarily exceeded the total demand for electricity in Ireland for the first time ever this week.
Though Storm Agnes brought strong winds across the country, it isn’t unusual for it to reach this level.
What was unusual was the fact that it surpassed the demand on Ireland’s electricity grid throughout the entire island for the first time.
That meant that some of the energy was exported to Britain and Ireland had to meet the rest of the demand using fossil fuels.
In August, the amount of energy generated by wind increased by 71 per cent when compared to the same month last year.
The latest figures mean that in total, Irish wind farms provided 32 per cent of the country’s power over the first eight months of 2023.
The original article contains 438 words, the summary contains 131 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
