Court reserves judgement in climate activists' case against 3,000MW gas power plant

[Cosmik Debris]

Karpowership type vs OCGT/CCGT.

Karpowership is Internal Combustion Diesel Engine:

 

[Johnatan56]

Which is cheaper to buy/build, a 50MW turbine or a 50MW Internal Combustion Engine?

The turbine over time probably, but that's an iffy question as you need to factor in location, running costs, the mix of the rest of the system, etc.,
ICE is supposedly cost competitive with OCGT, can't really find anything as to exact cost, but haven't really searched. Very little of it has been deployed, basically just keep hitting articles from Wärtsilä talking about themselves, saying they secured a contract to build 2x50MW plants (not sure if complete).
Battery storage is cheaper than OCGT as of last year btw: https://www.energy-storage.news/bat...new-gas-peaker-plants-australian-study-finds/ but again depends on region and stuff, and that study is probably biased, but after the gas price increase it's highly likely to be true in pretty much every market.

Quote from here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-scale-battery-storage-is-on-the-rise

Batteries are beginning to reach a size that enables renewables to replace medium-sized natural gas generators.

That's an end of 2020 article, california is investing quite heavily into it.
The race to improve batteries for cars is also helping the grid (and vice versa).

Just busy reading from the beginning of the thread since I jumped in in the middle.

Battery storage is or can be effective, but capacity has to be something like 500% of demand to be truly effective and even then you’d need some flexible generation. South Australia is still in its infancy with regard to BESS but it is making strides. I’m not sure where you get your information from but they have little battery storage at present.

No, it doesn't, you'll need to back that claim up, especially battery. Also, what is "500% of demand", do you mean 500% of peak demand hour? 500% of total capacity? So 5 hours of peak? That seems highly unlikely. It would also highly depend on the "smartness" of the grid, e.g. requirements of smart thermostats that communicate with energy provider that can allow for a couple of degree of heating adjustment, etc., so you can't say. Places like here in Austria the norm is something like 80% hydro on most people's bills, something like 70% of the energy produced is hydro (gets higher since pumped storage is also hydro, usually gets bought with wind from Norway, my last bill was ~80% hydro, 19% wind, <1% solar).

South Africa, would highly doubt considering the area that it covers, and you can easily build a lot of excess wind/solar (including CSP).

I’m not sure what you are saying “no” to as I’ve covered a couple of points. But sorry it’s late and I’m also not reading all that

Suffice to say the article you link to is talking about turbines which I’ve already said are inefficient. When I talk about gas I’m talking about engines. Engines which can run at 10% or 100% as required. Like the Karpowerships.

"Inefficient" is a stupid argument, it doesn't matter if it's way cheaper, it matters the mix. Technically a combustion engine is something like 20-25% efficient, so your argument is actually consistency of output and not efficiency.

For many reasons, perhaps yes. But financially as an IPP they are delivering what they were asked to deliver in a price per kWh for the next 20 years. And in that respect their prices were cheaper or pretty similar to everyone else’s bidding in the programme.

I haven’t seen the same talk about price per kWh for the Scatec solar farm for example and the profits from that place are going to Norway for the next 20 years.

It’s what IPPs do. They give you power, we pay them for it.

So you know nothing of the topic, why are you commenting on it?
Most IPP have a fixed cost for power, the karpowership deal is open ended:

The RMI4P rules also provide for a minimum guaranteed “take or pay” element where Eskom has to pay for a certain amount of power, irrespective of whether it actually needs it.
This is equal to 70% of the maximum possible sales, ie, R7.9-billion per year or R158-billion over 20 years.
This is the revenue at the level of the local subsidiary Karpowership SA which is 49%-owned by a local consortium. All of that comes from Eskom.

These, however, are ballpark figures because the actual tariff Karpower and other bidders will charge is tied to reigning gas prices, among other conditions.

AMABHUNGANE: Karpowership SA: How much again?

The South African contract Karpowership is chasing could be a game-changer for the group, making Eskom its largest client globally. What will we pay and how much will the Turkish conglomerate pocket? AmaBhungane does the sums.

www.dailymaverick.co.za

This would put it in better context, remember these are Dec 2021 figures, gas price was a third of what it is now, and these figures are production without transmission (or admin costs):

We however discovered a chink in the otherwise comprehensive redaction when Nersa compared the powerships’ “effective” tariff to that of the existing open cycle gas turbines Eskom currently uses as backup “peaker” plants for emergencies.
That tariff is R4.80 per kWh, claims Nersa. It then asserts that this is between 69% and 73% more than the Karpowership projects’ “effective” tariffs – at least the one Karpowership itself claims is realistic.
To recap, that suggests “effective” tariffs of R2.77 per kWh at Karpowership’s Coega and Richards Bay projects compared to the “evaluation tariffs” of R1.47 and R1.50. At Saldanha the effective tariff can be inferred to be R2.84 compared to the announced R1.69 per kWh.
[...]
This number stems from Eskom buying less power than the minimum capacity it has to pay for but assumes that the “evaluation” tariff revealed by Mantashe is otherwise correct.
This is unlikely to be the case due to the gas pass-through. As a rule of thumb fuel constitutes 60% of the cost of a power plant like Karpowership’s using liquified natural gas.

AMABHUNGANE: Clumsy Nersa redaction reveals ‘higher’ cost of emergency power

A small slip-up in the extensive redaction of documentation around potential 20-year contracts with the controversial Turkish Karpowership group has seemingly revealed that South Africa will pay far more than advertised.

www.dailymaverick.co.za

That's without the lack of environmental impact study (hint, it would be terrible and would never get approval without extreme bribery, note as well how Langebaan is a tourist destination, all the towns around there the economy would be destroyed overnight), the lack of infrastructure there (grid connection there would still need to be built, unsure regarding the capacity of the grid there, the backbone would probably also have to be upgraded, etc.).

EDIT:

Some reading for you in the meantime. I built one of these…

StackPath

www.centrica.com

Centrica plc has completed construction of two new fast response power plants in Brigg, North East Lincolnshire, and Peterborough. Capable of producing enough power to meet the needs of 100,000 homes, the 50MW* facilities have been designed to respond to peaks in demand within two minutes.

StackPath

www.centrica.com

This is from your own link? Do you not read what you post? Kind of doubt you build grid-scale combustion engines.

 

[wingnut771]

Karpowership is Internal Combustion Diesel Engine:

I know, but natural gas.

 

[Cosmik Debris]

I know, but natural gas.

You can run an ICE engine on gas. The diesel injected into the engine is atomised into a gas in the cylinder by the injector. Same with petrol engines, injection or carburetor. The Afrikaans name for a carburetor is vergasser - Literally gasifier.

Petrol needs the spark because of lower compression and higher ignition temperature. Diesel ignites due to the high temperature created by the high compression when injected near the Top Dead Center of the piston compression stroke.

I've seen ICE engines running on the fumes of charcoal.

 

[Sapphiron]

That big battery? It caught fire and took three days just to get the fire under control. Lithium fires are extremely difficult to extinguish.

View attachment 1359521

A large blaze at Victoria’s “big battery” project has been brought under control by firefighters after burning for more than three days, allowing investigators to begin examining the site.

A Tesla battery bank caught fire while it was being set up in Moorabool on Friday morning, and then spread to a second battery.

The fire burned throughout the weekend and into a fourth day, before it was declared under control just after 3pm on Monday.

Tesla big battery fire in Victoria under control after burning more than three days

Firefighters say blaze that began during testing on Friday has been particularly challenging as it is the first mega pack fire in the world

www.theguardian.com

**** happens. but I bet the battery farm was operational within a week or two. How is Medupi doing?

 

[Sapphiron]

Sure. But the distribution lines have to be built to serve the areas most suitable for wind and solar which have little infrastructure due to being so remote and sparsely populated. High capacity distribution lines in those areas are rare. You're talking thousands of km of HV powerline.

I think the contra argument is that expanding or installing gas and fuel infrastructure is a similar commitments.

I think most reasonable strategies would have you do both where is makes sense to do so. For the west and south of the country, wind+solar+battery makes a lot of sense. For the north, solar+gas+battery. For the East, whatever they wont burn down.

 

[wingnut771]

You can run an ICE engine on gas. The diesel injected into the engine is atomised into a gas in the cylinder by the injector. Same with petrol engines, injection or carburetor. The Afrikaans name for a carburetor is vergasser - Literally gasifier.

Petrol needs the spark because of lower compression and higher ignition temperature. Diesel ignites due to the high temperature created by the high compression when injected near the Top Dead Center of the piston compression stroke.

I've seen ICE engines running on the fumes of charcoal.

I know. My question was which is cheaper to build, ICE or OCGT.

 

[Oldfut]

You can run an ICE engine on gas. The diesel injected into the engine is atomised into a gas in the cylinder by the injector. Same with petrol engines, injection or carburetor. The Afrikaans name for a carburetor is vergasser - Literally gasifier.

Petrol needs the spark because of lower compression and higher ignition temperature. Diesel ignites due to the high temperature created by the high compression when injected near the Top Dead Center of the piston compression stroke.

I've seen ICE engines running on the fumes of charcoal.

Gas engines I have seen use spark plugs (very, very expensive buggers at that). Gas is supplied at a low positive pressure and has no control other than safety (the "carburettor" butterfly stays full open at all power settings. Engine efficiency is in the higher 40% ranges as I recall, google will tell all. As you say, diesel is injector supplied and ignition by compression, double the spark ignition compression ratio requiring very heavy construction. Be interesting to see how a dual fuel (gas/diesel) engine operates.

Re charcoal; wood gas has long been a source of gas and even used in cars (google Sweden in WW2; amusing). Problem is the sticky sediments from the process and it tends to be high in sulphur compounds requiring some pre-treatment. From people that have worked on it; biggest headache is consistent wood calorific content and particularly moisture content. A lot of energy is spent drying the "fuel".

 

[Spizz]

Yes, when running already. Not from cold start:

Capable of producing enough power to meet the needs of 100,000 homes, the 50MW* facilities have been designed to respond to peaks in demand within two minutes.

The plants each comprise 5 x 9.8MW engines, delivering a total capacity of 49MW.

I would love to see any 9.8 MW diesel engine going from cold start to full on line 100% output in seconds.

Engines that size have electric motors the size of swimming pool pumps as oil priming pumps to pump oil around before and during starting as it takes a while for oil to reach all the working parts from the engine driven oil pump(s). They are also turned over with decompression cocks open to make sure there is no hydraulic lock in one or more of the cylinders before starting.

What was your function in the build of the plant?

Construction manager. I’m a civil engineer, not a mechanical, so I may be guilty of a few sensational generalisations while under the influence

 

[Spizz]

View attachment 1359759
Just stealing this from: https://www.wartsila.com/energy/lea...ns/combustion-engine-vs-gas-turbine-ramp-rate
The Wärtsilä is a combustion engine, they state 2 minutes, not seconds. Normal gas plants are over 5 minutes.

They are never

Fair enough. A reminder to myself not to post when drinking, but commissioning times are measured in seconds. It might add up to two minutes to full load perhaps but often under two minutes. Hence the seconds.

But certainly not 10s of minutes as you said.

 

[Spizz]

The turbine over time probably, but that's an iffy question as you need to factor in location, running costs, the mix of the rest of the system, etc.,
ICE is supposedly cost competitive with OCGT, can't really find anything as to exact cost, but haven't really searched. Very little of it has been deployed, basically just keep hitting articles from Wärtsilä talking about themselves, saying they secured a contract to build 2x50MW plants (not sure if complete).
Battery storage is cheaper than OCGT as of last year btw: https://www.energy-storage.news/bat...new-gas-peaker-plants-australian-study-finds/ but again depends on region and stuff, and that study is probably biased, but after the gas price increase it's highly likely to be true in pretty much every market.

Quote from here: https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-boost-for-renewables-grid-scale-battery-storage-is-on-the-rise

That's an end of 2020 article, california is investing quite heavily into it.
The race to improve batteries for cars is also helping the grid (and vice versa).

Just busy reading from the beginning of the thread since I jumped in in the middle.

No, it doesn't, you'll need to back that claim up,

I’m at a lovely hotel overlooking the waterfront just now, but I’ll show you the model I’m referring to if I can find it when I’m back at work on Monday.

especially battery. Also, what is "500% of demand", do you mean 500% of peak demand hour? 500% of total capacity? So 5 hours of peak? That seems highly unlikely. It would also highly depend on the "smartness" of the grid, e.g. requirements of smart thermostats that communicate with energy provider that can allow for a couple of degree of heating adjustment, etc., so you can't say. Places like here in Austria the norm is something like 80% hydro on most people's bills, something like 70% of the energy produced is hydro (gets higher since pumped storage is also hydro, usually gets bought with wind from Norway, my last bill was ~80% hydro, 19% wind, <1% solar).

South Africa, would highly doubt considering the area that it covers, and you can easily build a lot of excess wind/solar (including CSP).


"Inefficient" is a stupid argument, it doesn't matter if it's way cheaper, it matters the mix. Technically a combustion engine is something like 20-25% efficient, so your argument is actually consistency of output and not efficiency.

I guess I need to clarify that. Let’s say inefficient at altitude and big time as an adaptable base load for renewables.

So you know nothing of the topic, why are you commenting on it?

Lol.

Most IPP have a fixed cost for power, the karpowership deal is open ended:

I worked on the programme for nearly two years but I never read into Karpowerships contract. I’ll give you that.

But I do know what an IPP is. They have been customers of mine for years.

This would put it in better context, remember these are Dec 2021 figures, gas price was a third of what it is now, and these figures are production without transmission (or admin costs):


That's without the lack of environmental impact study (hint, it would be terrible and would never get approval without extreme bribery, note as well how Langebaan is a tourist destination, all the towns around there the economy would be destroyed overnight), the lack of infrastructure there (grid connection there would still need to be built, unsure regarding the capacity of the grid there, the backbone would probably also have to be upgraded, etc.).

EDIT:



This is from your own link? Do you not read what you post? Kind of doubt you build grid-scale combustion engines.

I don’t need to read it and backtrack like you on your 10s of minutes claim, I built one of the two plants in the link and assisted at the other one. Probably one of the smallest I’ve done to be fair at 50MW, but I’ve built several similar around the world. And sure, the memory might not be so good but I don’t need Google like you.

 

[Johnatan56]

Fair enough. A reminder to myself not to post when drinking, but commissioning times are measured in seconds. It might add up to two minutes to full load perhaps but often under two minutes. Hence the seconds.

But certainly not 10s of minutes as you said.

For gas it is tens of minutes, I posted a graph for you? 20-50 minutes or more depending on the type is tens of minute in my book.

 

[Spizz]

For gas it is tens of minutes, I posted a graph for you? 20-50 minutes or more depending on the type is tens of minute in my book.

The regulator Ofgas in the UK will fine Centrica if they cannot supply power within 20 minutes when needed. The reason they built this plant was to replace a 20 year old model which struggled to meet this. This plant, as I said, goes from cold to full load in 2 minutes. During commissioning when it undergoes weeks of stringent tests, it was usually less than that.

New fast-response power station opens in North Lincolnshire

Centrica's new plant has been built alongside its existing Brigg Power Station and is the first part of a four-phase £180m investment to meet the demands of the energy sector

www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

A new power station built to dovetail with the increasing scale of renewable energy generation has been opened in North Lincolnshire.

Centrica’s new fast response plant can provide electricity for 50,000 homes in less than two minutes, and is the first part of a four-phase £180 million investment in flexible answers to meet the challenging new demands of the energy sector.

Built beside Centrica's existing Brigg Power Station at Scawby Brook, which can be up and running in less than 20 minutes, five huge gas-fired engines – kept at a constant 60 degrees centigrade – wait for the call at peak times, with the first coming on Wednesday following commissioning trails that began in July.

Mark Futyan, Centrica’s distributed energy systems director, said: "This is designed to start very quickly, it starts in under two minutes.

"Most take 20 minutes to two hours from cold to run. This takes two minutes and can do it very efficiently too.

What was it you said? Oh yes, "So you know nothing of the topic, why are you commenting on it?"

As I said, I built the place.

 

[Johnatan56]

The regulator Ofgas in the UK will fine Centrica if they cannot supply power within 20 minutes when needed. The reason they built this plant was to replace a 20 year old model which struggled to meet this. This plant, as I said, goes from cold to full load in 2 minutes. During commissioning when it undergoes weeks of stringent tests, it was usually less than that.

New fast-response power station opens in North Lincolnshire

Centrica's new plant has been built alongside its existing Brigg Power Station and is the first part of a four-phase £180m investment to meet the demands of the energy sector

www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

What was it you said? Oh yes, "So you know nothing of the topic, why are you commenting on it?"

As I said, I built the place.

Why did you ignore the piece above what you bolded?

Built beside Centrica's existing Brigg Power Station at Scawby Brook, which can be up and running in less than 20 minutes, five huge gas-fired engines – kept at a constant 60 degrees centigrade – wait for the call at peak times, with the first coming on Wednesday following commissioning trails that began in July.

Are these cold starts or not?

 

[Geoff.D]

Why is it that every thread that CD responds to degenerates into a dick-swinging pissing contest?

Nothing to see here, gone.

 

[Spizz]

Why did you ignore the piece above what you bolded?

Are these cold starts or not?

Lol, desperate or what? I'm not interested in your semantics.

Jog on fella.

 

[Cosmik Debris]

Fair enough. A reminder to myself not to post when drinking, but commissioning times are measured in seconds. It might add up to two minutes to full load perhaps but often under two minutes. Hence the seconds.

But certainly not 10s of minutes as you said.

Seconds while spinning and warm at generation speed and already on line. 10 minutes or so from cold start to on line including pre start preparation.

I was once very unpopular for causing the suppliers to repeat the commissioning acceptance tests for the entire generating plant, which took three weeks. I refused to sign the acceptance due to some aspects not meeting the required and contracted output specs. But the customer was happy as they got an in spec plant.

 

[Cosmik Debris]

Why is it that every thread that CD responds to degenerates into a dick-swinging pissing contest?

Nothing to see here, gone.

Maybe because your experience and qualifications as a telephone technician are not what is required to accept or run a generating plant comprising multiple large diesel engines?

 

[Cosmik Debris]

Lol, desperate or what? I'm not interested in your semantics.

Jog on fella.

Spizz, can you reference where it states the 9.8 MW diesels are on line generating at full power within 2 minutes from a cold start? Warm diesels spinning already and on line can be ramped to that in 2 minutes. I have yet to see such a big diesel start from cold to on line full power in 2 minutes.

Is there no preparation required at all? No pumping oil around or checks for hydraulic locks?

 

[Spizz]

Spizz, can you reference where it states the 9.8 MW diesels are on line generating at full power within 2 minutes from a cold start? Warm diesels spinning already and on line can be ramped to that in 2 minutes. I have yet to see such a big diesel start from cold to on line full power in 2 minutes.

Is there no preparation required at all? No pumping oil around or checks for hydraulic locks?

They are gas engines in the plants that I have referenced and that I was talking about here. But all fuels in these type of reciprocating engines of dual fuel variety (HFO/LFO) would be stored in tanks at temperature. They wouldn’t be used for quick start projects such as these though.