Member Info for toneman

I guess they're all walking to Davos this year then, eh?

I hope Dennis doesn't feel the need to 'kitchen sink' the report. Things must be really bad if he decides it's necessary to throw out even more bad news. If he checks the share price he should recognise that sentiment is already nearly rock bottom so he should feed us a positive vision of growing sales instead (as long as that's within his control to deliver). All the big hydrogen decisions should be taken by 2025 so all the demonstration plants should be operating before then which in turn means that 2023 and 2024 are critical delivery years for all the FOAK systems we've been fed for the past 4+ years. Somehow it just doesn't feel like that's what we're building up to. I don't really mind if I've got to wait a little bit longer, but just don't sell it all to Linde for £1 though, please.

I'm not a big fan of their gravity storage idea, but I like this one though.

That reads like the start of another man-made mess. I think the appropriate phrase is "two wrongs don't make a right".

Backing the piece of the puzzle that makes the serious money is tricky to get right...just ask IBM.

The UK government has a particularly bad record with choosing which technology to back. That bodes well for us assuming they've got it wrong again. But even if it is a hydrogen future, there's still choices to be made among backing the electricity generation, the electrolyser manufacture, the system construction, the hydrogen distribution chain, fuel cells, etc. It's almost never in the hardware, so expecting ITM to make us rich may be a tough ask. I suspect Plug Power have the better approach as they're in nearly every link of the chain...still it's not doing much for their share price right now either. 2023 should be an interesting year to join a few more dots. Maybe by the end we'll be able to make out what the picture is supposed to be. Happy to wait and see.

The reason I think it is not linear is like this example.
If from a nominal wind generating power of 10GW you found you had excess generation capability of 1GW (9GW used and 1GW excess), then you doubled the available wind generation you'd now have 19GW excess having just added 10GW to an already overcapacity period. So the excess hasn't just doubled to 2GW.

Sorry I added some confusion there. I didn't mean linear wind speed generation, I meant is it linear excess versus added capacity. i.e. If you double the number of wind turbines do you end up with double the excess?

I've been wondering for a while how to model the excess. I'd be surprised if it's as simple as linear. I've shared it before but, in case you missed it, this is the wind constraints table I use to gauge current excess generation.

https://www.ref.org.uk/constraints/indexbymth.php

I've wondered if we can relate that back to the generation demand from gridwatch and build a model of excess.

True Arthur. Operation during excess generation is definitely the point, but I'm sceptical that operating solely during those periods, which is what the article suggested, can ever be commercially cost effective. Operating outside of those periods is not green hydrogen, but they should maybe add another colour definition or simply call it grey. Their offtake customer is already using grey hydrogen so does it really matter that they get a bit of grey from this electrolyser source as well? They will still know exactly how much of it is green to calculate their decarbonising footprint.

It may be that I'm completely wrong and that the cheapest way to run this plant is 'only' during excess generation when you may even be getting paid to take their electricity so you've got no input costs either. I wonder though whether their estimate of having excess generation 64% of the time is a little over-optimistic.

This sort of thing drives me absoltuely mad. How on earth is this supposed to ever be commercially viable if it's only ever allowed to generate during periods of excess renewable generation? If it were allowed to turn on for longer that would also help drive the demand for even more renewables generation. They should either be allowed to purchase renewable supply from non-local sources or provide pro rata funding for additional solar/wind farms (even if they are not local either). If they don't, then electrolysers are simply being set up to fail as they can't generate enough hydrogen to justify their cost. This whole system is just backwards.

We've all felt this coming for quite a while. Now it'll be other countries that drive this forward and eventually demonstrate what our blinkered government are missing. Then we can simply follow as usual and import from the successful foreign companies. The history of the UK will repeat itself once again. So depressing.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/20/uk_hydrogen_report/

It says they've awarded the contract to Siemens Energy. So presumably it'll be their Siemens Gas and Power arm.

If you're right then you might have to act fast on trading release day because that sort of statement tends to have a knee-jerk large fall due to the 'kitchen sink' as you put it. But given the obvious positive spin he'd be forecasting for his own tenure the price can often end the day in positive territory as buyers look forwards rather than backwards. Nobody knows, so just play it as you see it.

My concern over a Linde man being put in charge is that it feels like a move towards full Linde integration and therefore a Linde buyout (perhaps that's even why Graham is stepping aside). I've discussed before that technically it doesn't make much sense for Linde to buy it all, but sense doesn't always play a part in company buyout plans. If that were to happen I'd hope that Snam would push for a price that at least gets their investment back (235p). Personally I think that anything under 400p would be undervaluing the position that current investors hold. I don't think ITM is going bust so it doesn't need 'rescuing'. A forced buyout at anything under 400p would simply rob current investors of the future they currently hold.

underestimate (autocorrect)

bilbs is right, but don't understand the ability of the current generation to leave the following generations with an almighty mess to clean up. Today's promises resulting in gigatonnes of leaking CO2 and a net zero dream left in tatters as a result of today's politicians believing another pack of lies from 'big oil'.

...GWh to be more precise.

I suppose if you've got to have rules then these are probably better than they could have been. But once again I can't help thinking 'double standards'. If you want to make clean hydrogen you have to jump through all sorts of hoops, but if you want to waste GW of energy mining for crypto-coins then just chuck another lump of coal in the furnace. Imagine how many wind farms would have been built already if crypto mines had been legislated to use green energy. Double standards.

For comparison Hornsea 2 is 1.3GW. Took 2 years from start of construction (even during pandemic) and cost about £5bn. It doesn't generate any radioactive waste and you don't have to buy radioactive fuel from Russia. Let's see how long it takes them to get Sizewell C operational and at what final cost.

Is that £20bn for only 3.2GW? What a waste of money.

I saw this post on Octopus Hydrogen which mentions Motive Fuels, but I can't see exactly what it refers to regarding all the named players 'partnering' up. Loose terminology perhaps? Anybody know anything more specific...?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/octopus-hydrogen_h2hgvmids-hydrogen-activity-7001967815817601024-Pk4f?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

"Great to see Octopus Hydrogen, Energy Research Accelerator (ERA), Motive Fuels Ltd, Hynamics and EDF (UK) all partnering up to try to decarbonise UK HGVs ??"