Fracking in Sheffield?

[Flexo 10]

It's fairly straightforward! A £30k Tesla Model 3 might be say £10k dearer than a comparable petrol vehicle but can save £2000+ per year in reduced fuel costs, reduced need for maintenance and lower vehicle excise duty, depending on mileage. Ever taken a diesel Volkwsagen Audi Group engine for repair?

 

Fast charging is for occasional long journeys - most EV owners charge at home.

 

There are various projects in progress to make sure EVs can charge intelligently from the grid and even return power to it.

 

Batteries can get a second life as grid storage before being remanufactured.

 

It's expected that the use of gas will decline over time but we are still using lots of it now.

 

Ecotricity have one "green gas mill" in the build phase and two in planning. These convert grass into methane and this offers another supply of methane which can of course reduce the need for fracking.

[unbeliever 10]

It's fairly straightforward! A £30k Tesla Model 3 might be say £10k dearer than a comparable petrol vehicle but would save £2000+ per year in reduced fuel costs, reduced need for maintenance and lower vehicle excise duty.

 

Fast charging is for occasional long journeys - most EV owners charge at home.

 

There are various projects in progress to make sure EVs can charge intelligently from the grid and even return power to it.

 

Batteries can get a second life as grid storage before being remanufactured.

 

It's expected that the use of gas will decline over time but we are still using lots of it now.

 

Ecotricity have one "green gas mill" in the build phase and two in planning. These convert grass into methane and this offers another supply of methane which can of course reduce the need for fracking.

 

 

So they're only comparable with the high end petrols. That's not quite what you said. It's not useful to me as I've never paid more than £6k for a car. Have you?

I'm not convinced that the maintenance costs are lower, can you back that up?

Also, you'll have a job to save more than about £1k/year on fuel at a rate of a few pence per mile.

 

How many cycles do you imagine you will get on grid storage for the batteries?

What's the total cost per kWh for your grass nonsense?

 

Once again, I do not say that battery cars are far off competitiveness, only that they're not quite there yet. Even your example of a Tesla, which is certainly a step forward, is not available for over a year and still looks substantially more expensive.

I do say that batteries will remain prohibitively expensive for grid buffering for a long time to come.

 

I also say that generating electricity from grass is insane.

Edited March 24, 2017 by unbeliever

[Flexo 10]

Ecotricity's Green Gas Mills are in good company. There are presently over 250 anerobic digesters installed in the UK, totalling over 200MW output capacity.

 

They digest all manner of waste organic materials, from food waste and farm waste, through brewery waste and down to slurry and sewerage.

 

Most are CHP (combined heat and power) that heat nearby buildings and generate electricity.

 

A small proportion of them provide "gas to grid". Here we need to get a particular purity of methane so have to carefully regulate what's chucked in for digestion. Ecotricity are not alone in their choice of grass.

 

Other providers of gas-to-grid include Future Biogas, Green Lane, FLI Energy and Agraferm.

 

Green Lane are based on Meadowhall Road in Sheffield and have grown through mergers to become the world's largest biogas installer and upgrader. I wonder if they would get the contract for the Green Gas Mill if we could tempt Ecotricity up here? Built by a local firm and fuelled by local farms! This sounds like a nicer proposition than fracking which gets people so worked up.

[unbeliever 10]

Ecotricity's Green Gas Mills are in good company. There are presently over 250 anerobic digesters installed in the UK, totalling over 200MW output capacity.

 

They digest all manner of waste organic materials, from food waste and farm waste, through brewery waste and down to slurry and sewerage.

 

Most are CHP (combined heat and power) that heat nearby buildings and generate electricity.

 

A small proportion of them provide "gas to grid". Here we need to get a particular purity of methane so have to carefully regulate what's chucked in for digestion. Ecotricity are not alone in their choice of grass.

 

Other providers of gas-to-grid include Future Biogas, Green Lane, FLI Energy and Agraferm.

 

Green Lane are based on Meadowhall Road in Sheffield and have grown through mergers to become the world's largest biogas installer and upgrader. I wonder if they would get the contract for the Green Gas Mill if we could tempt Ecotricity up here? Built by a local firm and fuelled by local farms! This sounds like a nicer proposition than fracking which gets people so worked up.

 

 

So less than 1 MW per "digester".

I don't have a problem with disposing of waste in the productive way. You were talking about harvesting grass.

How much do they cost to build and run?

 

What's the total cost per kWh for your grass nonsense?

Edited March 24, 2017 by unbeliever

[Flexo 10]

There were around 50 similar plants operating in Britain by the end of 2015 so clearly they are economical.

 

Each 5MW plant consists of half a dozen farm tanks and some gubbins to pump scrubbed biomethane into the grid.

 

It's virtually carbon neutral.

 

Doesn't take land away from food production but instead helps improve farmland (the report goes into detail).

 

Low ambition 1000 mills supplying 20% UK households; high ambition 5000 mills supplying 97% UK households.

 

Each returns £1.5m/year into the local economy, £30m over the life of the plant.

 

Do have a read of the report.

 

With Brexit, EU farm subsidies are at risk.

 

It would be smart for government to show we are with the farmers by helping support the creation of this income stream for them. It would be very on message with the bold new freedoms and breaking away from EU agricultural policy.

 

It compares well with the costs of fracking...

drilling

+ pumping or trucking huge volumes of water

+ chemicals

+ pumping it all in

+ environmental and human harms that sometimes result from fracking

+ unknowns

and nowhere near carbon neutral.

[unbeliever 10]

Rubbish!

The energy cost from the collection and transport of the grass is going to be met by Diesel.

If the grass is being eaten by this technology the it can't be fed to animals.

 

What is the total cost per kWh produced?

[ez8004 10]

Grass for energy generation really?

 

Nuclear SMR will be the future for sure. It is far more economical for energy generation not to mention far better for our energy security compared to grass.

[Flexo 10]

Yes, some fuel is used for mowing and moving the grass. Imagine a big trailer full of grass - the amount of fuel needed is a trivial fraction of the total.

 

This compares very well with fracking which needs lots of truck movements, involves shifting huge volumes of water and chemicals plus drilling.

 

There have been concerns raised about biogas and bio-methane that if we get the incentives wrong too many farmers will stop growing food on their arable land and move to growing crops as fuel instead. Critics have for example pointed out that in 2014 almost a fifth of all maize grown in the country was for Anaerobic Digestion, and took up around 0.7% of England’s total arable land.

 

We think that they are right to be concerned – the UK’s farmland is precious and needs to be protected and improved for the sake of food production and the necessary environmental gains.

 

But we also think that if we put the right protections in place we can both fulfill the potential we have in this country for bio-methane, and keep growing the food we need. That is why Ecotricity is committed to never using energy crops and to making sure our feedstocks never contribute to a reduction in food crop production.

 

That means we focus foremost of growing grass on marginal or under-utilised grazing land and on arable farmland of reduced quality (i.e. often only capable of growing feed crops for livestock).

 

Firstly, the amount of marginal or under-utilised grassland is growing. For example, the area of grassland used for grazing cattle has almost halved since 1990 due to changes in farming methods and agricultural subsidies that have led to reduced beef and dairy herds. We are hopeful that as people opt to eat less meat to reduce their carbon footprints this will accelerate the availability of land.

 

Secondly, we can grow grass temporarily on arable farmland for two to four years as a break-crop in rotation with food crops. As we explained above, this can help to increase overall food production and quality by improving soil health and reducing disease.

 

What we need is a regulatory framework, which protects land which should be used for growing food for humans, but where appropriate allows us to maximise production on under-utilised farmland and improve its quality by growing feedstock for AD, like in our Green Gas Mills. In addition, the improvement in soil quality from the Green Gas Mills process will increase the amount of farmland that is suitable to grow crops for human consumption. As part of our recommendations for how Britain can fulfill our Green Gas potential, we set out some areas we think are important.

[unbeliever 10]

Absolute grade A nonsense.

No numbers at all.

The entire idea is as mad as a bag of ferrets.

 

Without numbers what makes you think you will even break even. It's very likely that collecting and transporting the grass will use more diesel energy than it produces in gas.

 

2 pages of writing and you've basically said nothing at all.

Edited March 25, 2017 by unbeliever

[Flexo 10]

It's very likely that collecting and transporting the grass will use more diesel energy than it produces in gas.

 

Absolute Grade A nonsense.

[unbeliever 10]

Absolute Grade A nonsense.

 

Then give me the numbers.

[Margarita Ma 10]

Not only does that advert for an American Injury Law Firm not answer the question, it relates to workplace injuries, and therefore has nothing to do with 'poisonous toxins' which your earlier comment alluded to.

 

Indeed, it actually states 'The researchers found that the most common fatality for energy workers was traffic accidents, followed by being struck by an object'.

 

These were work accidents that were associated with the industry. The Lawyers specialise in Workplace injuries. The point is if they are so careless about their employees welfare while onsite how much less are they going to care about people who will find it more difficult to prove that they are culpable when the toxins get into the water table.

This will be the same story we heard from Mining, Tobacco, Asbestos and other industries where toxins are present. Deny, Deny, Deny. Denial all the way.

 

---------- Post added 25-03-2017 at 16:40 ----------

 

The energy released from burning waste is to all intents and purposes b****- all. Waste incineration merely gets the volumes down to manageable sizes.

 

If you are going to discuss this with UB I'd suggest sciencing up and learning about it - and I don't mean the whackjob list of sites there I mean proper science. You are aware that Gaslands and the associated outrage is entirely faked yes?

 

 

The waste incineration in Sheffield heated all of Parkhill flats and Hyde park Flats. as well as some local government offices surely that is a bigger benefit than size reduction alone. I am not sure where the heat is directed now but I am sure you can find out if you want to put some time into that instead of trying to tear off strips of flesh from people on here.

 

---------- Post added 25-03-2017 at 18:00 ----------

 

So less than 1 MW per "digester".

I don't have a problem with disposing of waste in the productive way. You were talking about harvesting grass.

How much do they cost to build and run?

 

What's the total cost per kWh for your grass nonsense?

 

What is the total cost per KWH for Nuclear. inclusive of building the plant cost of fuel, disposal of spent fuel including transport, decommissioning of plant and security throughout the whole shebang. The price you pay at the meter is not the whole cost it is heavily subsidised by government, That means you and me through taxes. I this can be done for nuclear it can b e done for other energy production means too. But it would seem they would rather have the Chinese in charge of our energy production, or the French, or the Spanish, anyone but British companies. That way the profit goes out of the country when there is some and you can bet there is less tax paid on it too. I wonder how many Conservative MPs have their sticky little fingers in these hot pies.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Margarita Ma