Member Info for littlegrandma

You have to wonder why a company which was clearly in financial distress by the end of 2020 then had three out of four of its turbines out of the water for a year, when they were just about the only thing generating cash for the company. The recent RNS suggesting that the other two turbines would be back in the water "within the next twelve months", seems to indicate a serious problem of some sort, ie. they will have been out of the water for two years if it takes another twelve months.

Posted 10th January in response to Strangy83
That was a busy Sunday afternoon in terms of posts. All deserve a response, so I'll respond, from memory at this stage, today.

Firstly, the point about electrical output "bridging" capacity / keeping the lights on etc.

Total electrical consumption for the UK, in 2019 is shown on government websites as 300,000 Gigawatt hours and decreasing over the preceding and recent years. Divide that figure by 365 to get daily usage and again by 24 to get average hourly usage. That gives an approximate average hourly usage of 33 GW. Gas fired generation capacity in the UK, mostly efficient Combined Cycle stuff which gives off less than half the greenhouse gases that coal (and the pellets) do, is approximately 39GW.

I'm not sure what % of the Gas generation capacity was used as I never investigated that thoroughly, but I do recall looking at the online live UK power consumption figures often over recent years and gas didn't seem to be anywhere near full capacity use.
Also, in this context it's worth remembering:-
The approx 25% of power consumption by renewables, of which Solar is obviously extra daylight power at times of most usage.
Schemes like Dinorwic, which used, from memory again, under utilised nuclear or Hydro night time power supply to pump water up a mountain so that it could be released through generators at peak demand times.
Power "storage" by other means such as batteries.
Huge increases in construction of wind and solar, both underway and planned. And, best of all imo, TIDAL.

It was just one of the three turbines that was to be redeployed in November, the other two were not ready.

Unfortunately, the record of turbines going in and out of the water regularly, often for long periods on shore, is not very impressive, but is perhaps what could be expected as "teething" troubles.

Tim was the man whose control of the rudder led to giving away half the old Atlantis in exchange for a broken down and closed power station. The reason that the Gupta stake has reduced is most probably because of the enormous new share issue to the creditors which would have reduced his percentage,

5001simon,
We will just have to agree to differ, as I don't post much and don't intend to get into prolonged disagreements. I've just bought some Costain shares and expect them to recover considerably over the next year, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

Is there any particular reason for the constant stream of posts blaming all Costain's ills on the current CEO? The last CEO bailed out just before the brown stuff hit the fan on the two disastrous contracts, I believe, and would have been well aware that all was not going well, surely. The selection of the replacement CEO may well have been influenced by availability of senior operational directors whose hands were not dirty - that is they were not involved in pre-contract negotiations for the two disasters.

Not sure what your post saying "which is not wood?" below means Strangy. But I think I've now found the exact extract from the Arden document which explains that the emissions from wood based product, provided it is at least 50% of the combustion material, are not counted, in my notes:-
By having a 50% biomass (paper and card) content, under EU law when
combusted, carbon dioxide emissions attributed to this element are not factored - as the content originated from recently living plants which had absorbed carbon from the atmosphere during their lifetime.

There must be others here who downloaded that report and could verify that. It was just about in the middle of the report. And the points about Drax are all on their website, so the facts stated are verifiable.

I accept that your statement about the future demand on the grid increasing 20% by 2050 is correct, but would point out that Gas fired is still way underused in the short - medium term, and the other sources mentioned, including small scale Nuclear should easily take care of the medium to long term. The one thing that I did like in terms of Simec was the small scale Hydro that they "dumped" onto SAE, as I think hydro could make a huge difference if the government slashed all the obstacles that impede it.

Yes Pablo, the Arden report was all about the N&P pellets.

OK Pablo, I'll have to answer your request without the document I would like to refer to, which I believe was a 65 page "research" document by Arden, waxing lyrical about Uskmouth, which SAE paid Arden to produce, I believe. That was published in late Summer of 2020, and was available on the SAE website, I believe at that time, but not anymore. As by then I had tried for some time to find out exactly why SAE were, in my opinion, being evasive about the Uskmouth project, I read the whole report carefully - it was an interesting one- and I made a few notes as I read.

The most relevant point was about in the middle of the document and said in effect that CO2 emissions from burning wood products such as card and paper, were not counted under European regulations because they came from plants which had absorbed the carbon in the first place. This applied where at least 50% of the material for combustion was wood based according to the notes I made of the Arden report.

Another source of information that I looked at extensively and found the same slightly evasive information provided on their website was Drax.
Drax was the biggest coal fired power station in the UK and has converted four of its six gen sets to burn pellets of almost complete wood waste. From the Arden report notes, 100 megawatts of generation by coal produces 1 million metric tonnes of CO2 (annually I assume). At Drax, they have 2595MW generation capacity using the wood burners. They declare that using the wood burners reduces CO2 output by 80% from using coal, so that would reduce the 25.95 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions expected from coal to just over 5 MMTs. But if you keep reading a few more pages at the Drax website, you find that:-
a) they are not going to convert the remaining two coal fired gen sets to wood fired, they are knocking them down - not a sign of great confidence.
b) They say that they are continuing to fund, with £40m this year, work on a carbon capture and storage design undertaking at Drax - note continuing. But the notes with that info make clear that they need assurances from HMG before any big expenditure.
c) They declare that the CCS plant should be in operation by 2030, which I have a feeling is close to the limit of their generation approval as they've been going for about ten years with wood fired, I believe. They declare that 2 of the four WF gen sets would be connected to the CCS system which would be able to take 8 MMTs of the emissions. Bit of evasion there perhaps? According to the info provided in earlier pages 2 Wood Fired gen sets would only emit 2.5 MMTs.

My expectation is that Drax are working as hard as they can to keep open by pushing this CCS story, with the added benefit that they are a very big generator in terms of overall UK generation. Their Website is definitely worth a look.

That was a busy Sunday afternoon in terms of posts. All deserve a response, so I'll respond, from memory at this stage, today.

Firstly, the point about electrical output "bridging" capacity / keeping the lights on etc.

Total electrical consumption for the UK, in 2019 is shown on government websites as 300,000 Gigawatt hours and decreasing over the preceding and recent years. Divide that figure by 365 to get daily usage and again by 24 to get average hourly usage. That gives an approximate average hourly usage of 33 GW. Gas fired generation capacity in the UK, mostly efficient Combined Cycle stuff which gives off less than half the greenhouse gases that coal (and the pellets) do, is approximately 39GW.

I'm not sure what % of the Gas generation capacity was used as I never investigated that thoroughly, but I do recall looking at the online live UK power consumption figures often over recent years and gas didn't seem to be anywhere near full capacity use.
Also, in this context it's worth remembering:-
The approx 25% of power consumption by renewables, of which Solar is obviously extra daylight power at times of most usage.
Schemes like Dinorwic, which used, from memory again, under utilised nuclear or Hydro night time power supply to pump water up a mountain so that it could be released through generators at peak demand times.
Power "storage" by other means such as batteries.
Huge increases in construction of wind and solar, both underway and planned. And, best of all imo, TIDAL.

Pablo, the truth is that the CO2 output is not measured for the burning of timber, but it is there. In the early days of SAE and Uskmouth I spent ages trying to find out the actual figures for CO2 released by the process from the SAE website, but found the information provided evasive. Exemptions created in the past to reduce coal burning by burning wood products are now likely to be dropped as CO2 is CO2 wherever it comes from.

Don't think it's anything to do with where the rubbish comes from. I believe that the Welsh Government will not give what would have to be long term, ie 20years at least? permission to burn pellets which release as much CO2 as a similar output coal plant, and higher levels of NOX, with just a vague promise of Carbon Capture, from a completely unproven method, by a tiddler of a company, at some unknown time in the distant future.

The problem as I see it is that there is plenty of capacity to keep the lights on without it, and other ways of using waste plastic and paper waste without environmental damage. Although currently we have a problem with gas cost caused by too much reliance on Russia, that will get resolved, I expect, and we have gas fired generation capacity which is drastically underused at the moment, probably equivalent to the average UK electrical demand. Gas fired power stations release less than half the greenhouse gases of coal fired stations or "pellet" fired. That, to me is the "bridging" capacity which would give time for local nuclear and a huge increase in smaller scale hydro as the 24 hour generators - perhaps giving very low cost overnight power to charge cars etc, with tidal, solar, wind etc taking a huge chunk of capacity requirements.

I believe N&P are the JV partners that SAE went into partnership with about a year ago after N&P developed the pellets for SAE that were used in the trials in Japan, so yes that is the fuel, which is perhaps being used in various industries as an alternative to coal or gas, on the basis that burning derivatives of trees doesn't count in terms of your CO2 output under existing legislation. But I think that will change soon and that is what makes Wales reluctant.

The point about the emissions "benefit" always plays on the use of wood products, ie. paper, in the pellets, and the fact that emissions from wood have in the past been discounted, but they are still C02 emissions, together with from memory higher Nitrous Oxide emissions. The SAE problem is that you cannot get CO2 down, as promised, using this technology, and the carbon capture thing is a distant dream. I think it was Nox emissions which went up, and that is a potent global warming gas.

The carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emmissions are definitely the problem with Uskmouth, I believe. The station burning pellets would actually give off as much CO2 as when it burned coal, and more of other pollutants. The Carbon Capture thing is probably many years from working, if at all.

On 16th December only one was ready for putting back into the water, according to the RNS, with the other two (Andritz, I think) being worked on for return to service asap.

The turbines were already in workshops in Nigg on 7yh April, iirc from the RNS at the time.

This "service" of the three turbines seems to have been seriously delayed, as it's now more than eight months that they have been out of the water. Not good!

So, that was last year in 2014 was it?