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The race to all-electric vehicles

7 August 2018

Electrification

The practice laps are over, the lights have signalled and the race is well under way in the electric vehicle (EV) market. Some companies got off to a great start but teams from all the world’s biggest car makers have plans to catch up and take the lead.

Auto-manufacturers know fossil fuel-powered cars will eventually be a thing of the past, but which companies and countries are actually putting plans into action to shape the future of road transport?

Money follows ambitions

Today, the EV market is relatively small. Of the 90 million vehicles sold each year EVs account for just 1%. With sales in 2017 of 100,000 across its three models, Tesla was the dominant player in the field, thanks in part to ample press coverage and its outspoken CEO, but also its sporty design and performance setting it apart in a class typically concerned with economy and efficiency. To put that into perspective, Nissan’s Leaf, the best-selling EV of all time, has only ever sold around 300,000 cars having launched in 2010.

Compare these figures to the 1 million-plus Ford F-Series pickup trucks bought last year – almost entirely in the US alone – and it highlights just how far the EV market has to grow before it begins to push out internal combustion engines (ICEs).

Tesla Gigafactory 1 in Nevada (click to view)

But a massive surge in EV adoption has long been expected – the International Energy Agency forecasts a 24% increase by 2030 to 13 million EV sales. The fuel behind this growth includes improved performance, a greater range of choice, lowering prices and increased marketing spending.

For much of this the onus falls on manufacturers, however they will need the support of governments, electricity grids and energy suppliers to ensure the charging infrastructure required is in place to support the forecast growth. Making EVs mass-market will require significant spending from all parties.

Automakers globally now plan to invest as much a $90 billion into EVs and battery technology, according to Reuters. From the US to Japan, Germany to China, car makers are laying out the timeline for EV investment and sales.

🚗 Manufacturer ⚡️ Commitment 📅 Date
TeslaTargets annual sales of 500,0002018
VolvoWill no longer sell cars solely powered by ICEs2019
Nissan20% of sales will be zero-emission vehicles2020
Jaguar Land RoverAll new models will be electric2020
Ford 40% of global models will be electrified (hybrid and EV)2020
TeslaTargets annual sales of 1 million2020
DaimlerTargets annual sales of 100,0002020
SubaruWill launch first full EV model2021
FordWill have 13 new electrified models 2021
TeslaTargets sales of 100,000 electric heavy-duty lorries2022
Porsche50% of new sales will be electric 2023
Volvo Targets 1 million total sales of EVs2025
Daimler15-25% of cars produced will be electric2025
BMW15-25% of sales will be electric2025
VolkswagenWill have 30 new EVs, accounting for 25% of sales2025
Ford70% of vehicles sold will be electrified (hybrid and EV)2025
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi AllianceTargets sales of 2 million medium sized and SUV EVs2025
General MotorsTargets sales of 1 million EVs

2026
Aston Martin Targets 25% of sales to be electric2030
HondaTargets 2/3 of sales to be electrified 2030
(Sources: BMI Research & The European Federation for Transport and Environment)

Driving electric transformation

Consumer demand is one driving force in EV adoption, but it’s not the only one. Government action will play a pivotal role in forcing the move away from ICEs to hybrid and electric vehicles. Policy makers see the phase out of petrol and diesel cars as key to reaching Paris Agreement goals and many have begun to set ambitious dates for banning new sales of fossil fuel-powered vehicles.

Date of ban on new sales of
petrol and diesel vehicles		Countries
2025Norway 🇳🇴
2030India 🇮🇳, Denmark 🇩🇰 Ireland 🇮🇪, Israel 🇮🇱, Netherlands 🇳🇱*, Germany 🇩🇪**, Iceland 🇮🇸, Slovenia 🇸🇮, Sweden 🇸🇪
2035United Kingdom 🇬🇧***
2040France 🇫🇷, Taiwan 🇹🇼, Sri Lanka 🇱🇰
2050Costa Rica🇨🇷
* Ban on all non-emission free vehicles
** Resolution not yet passed
*** Under consultation to move from existing 2040 deadline (and to add hybrids)

China, the world’s largest car market, is also in the process of building a timeline to eliminate fossil fuel-powered vehicles having banned 553 car models in January as part of its efforts to curb air pollution. The country is also subsidising EV purchases and offers a potentially huge market for electric car makers. That’s if they can muscle past domestic manufacturers, which accounted for more than half of all EVs produced globally last year.

EV charging in China

Urban environments are the most affected by exhaust pollution and as a result, individual cities are setting their own, more ambitious standards for vehicles. Paris, Mexico City, Madrid and Athens have set 2025 as the date for a ban on all diesel vehicles from their city centres in the interest of public health.

Visible air pollution over Mexico City

Auto-manufacturers know they need to change, regardless of what some politicians may say, and this will mean tough competition to bring the latest and best electric and hybrid cars onto the market.

But ultimately it won’t just be rivalry that advances EVs further into the mainstream. Governments, the energy industry and car companies will need to work together to ensure infrastructure and policies are in place to move completely away from the petrol and diesel models that have driven the roads for so long.


This means rolling out EV charging infrastructure to facilitate millions of passengers getting from A to B as efficiently as they can with ICEs, albeit with lifestyles changes and commuting habits to allow for longer ‘fuelling’ times. Electricians, housebuilders, employers, retailers and local authorities will need to get busy, retrofitting domestic, public and commercial properties, so people can charge up when their vehicles are idle. And it requires smart regulation, smarter power grids, new services from energy companies, automation, investment in storage and behind the meter technology to ensure the necessary power is available when and where it’s needed.

The race may be on and there will be winners and losers along the way, but it’s one many people would like to see end in a draw.

Forestry 4.0

26 July 2018

Sustainable bioenergy

Around the world industries are undergoing profound change. The phrase ‘Industry 4.0’ describes this emerging era when the combination of data and automation is transforming long-established practices and business models.

Autonomous cars are perhaps one of most widely-known examples of ‘smart’ technology slowly inching towards daily life, but they are far from the only example. There is almost no sector untouched by this oncoming digital disruption – even industries as old as forestry are being transformed.

From smart and self-driving vehicles to data-crunching drones, Forestry 4.0 is ushering in a new era for efficient and sustainable forest management.

Drones and data

If the first industrial revolution was powered by steam, the fourth is being powered by data. Collecting information on every aspect of a process allows smart devices and machines to cut out inefficiencies and optimise a task.

In forestry, capturing and utilising huge amounts of data can build a better understanding of the land and trees that make up forests. One of the best ways to gather this data from wide, complex landscapes is through aerial imaging.

Satellites have long been used to monitor the changing nature of the world’s terrain and in 2021, the European Space Agency plans to use radar in orbit to weigh and monitor the weight of earth’s forests. But with the rise of drones, aerial imagining technology is becoming more widely accessible. Now even small-scale farmers and foresters can take a birds-eye view of their land.

Oxford-based company BioCarbon Engineering focuses on replanting areas of forests. It utilises drone technology to scan environments and identify features such as obstacles and terrain types which it uses to design and optimise planting patterns.

A drone then follows this path roughly three to six feet off the ground, shooting biodegradable seed pods into the ground every six seconds along the way. BioCarbon claims this approach can allow it to plant as many as 100,000 trees in a single day.

Gathering data on the health of working forests doesn’t necessarily require cutting-edge equipment either. In the smartphone era, any forestry professional now has the computing power in their pocket to capture detailed information about a forest’s condition.

Mobile app MOTI was designed by researchers at the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences at the Bern University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. It allows users to scan an area of forest with a phone’s camera and receive calculated-estimates on variables such as trees per hectare, tree heights and the basal area (land occupied by tree trunks).

Automating the harvest

Capturing data from forests can play a huge part in developing a better understanding of the land, terrain and trees of working forests, which leads to better decision making for healthier forests, including how and when to harvest and thin. But the equipment and technology carrying out these tasks on the ground are also undergoing smart-tech transformations.

Self-driving and electric vehicles are expected to disrupt multiple industries, including forestry. Swedish startup Einride, recently unveiled a driverless, fully electric truck that can haul as much as 16-tonnes of lumber and is specially designed for off-road, often unmapped, terrain.

There are some pieces of equipment, however, that will be harder to fully automate – for example, harvesters, which are used to fell and remove trees. Their long, digger-like arm normally features a head consisting of a chainsaw, claw-grips and rollers all in one, which are controlled from the vehicle’s cab.

Even as image recognition and sensors improve, automating these types of machines entirely is hugely challenging. An ideal use of artificial intelligence (AI) would be enabling a harvester to identify trees of a particular age or species to remove as part of thinning, for example, without disturbing the rest of the forest. However, trees of the same species and age can differ from each other depending on factors such as regional climates, soil and even lighting at the time of analysis.

This makes programming a machine to harvest a specific species and age of tree is very difficult. Nevertheless, innovation such as intelligent boom control – as John Deere is exploring – can help human operators automate movements and make harvesting safer and more efficient.

Forestry has always changed as technology has advanced – from the invention of the axe to the incorporation of ecology – and the digital revolution is no different. Smart sensors and deeper data will, ultimately, help optimise the lifecycle, biodiversity and health of managed forests.

With thanks to the Institute of Chartered Foresters for inviting us to attend its 2018 National Conference in May – Innovation for Change: New drivers for tomorrow’s forestry.

Does electricity have a smell?

20 July 2018

Electrification

Freshly baked bread, newly cut grass, sizzling bacon. Many of the world’s most evocative smells often need electricity to make them, but does electricity itself have a smell?

The short answer is no. An electric current itself doesn’t have an odour. But in instances when electricity becomes visible or audible it also creates a distinctive smell.

“The smell electricity emits is the contents of the gasses created when electricity conducts through air,” says Drax Lead Engineer Gary Preece. “In an instance of a failure on a switch board, for example, and there’s a flash of electricity, gasses are created from the charged air including ozone.”

It’s the same ozone gas that makes up the lower layer of the earth’s atmosphere and is often described as having a clean, chlorine-like, but burnt, smell. While it can sometimes be dangerous, ozone is also a very useful gas.

What is ozone?

Ozone’s scientific name is trioxide as it is made up of three oxygen molecules. While the normal oxygen we breathe is O2, ozone is O3 and is created by electricity in a similar way to how it forms naturally in the atmosphere.

There are large amounts of oxygen and nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere protecting life on earth from the sun’s intense UV radiation. These rays are so powerful they can ionise the oxygen, ripping it apart into two individual molecules. However, these lonely molecules are highly reactive and will sometimes collide and bond with nearby O2 to create ozone.

An electric current at a high voltage – given the right conditions – will conduct through the air, ionising oxygen in its wake and creating ozone, just as the sun’s UV rays do. When electricity behaves like this it’s known as a corona discharge, which makes a crackling sound and creates a visible plasma.

The most common time people may come into contact with a whiff of ozone is when a storm is approaching. Lighting is essentially a massive plasma that creates ozone as it conducts through the air, with the smell often arriving before the storm hits. It highlights quite how pungent ozone is considering humans can smell it in concentrations as low as 10 parts per billion in ordinary air. 

The concerns and capabilities of ozone

While ozone protects the planet when it’s in the atmosphere, it can be dangerous at ground level where it can also form through naturally occurring gases reacting with air pollution sources. High exposure to ozone at ground level can lead to lung, throat and breathing problems. However, because it also has a damaging effect on bacteria, ozone can be very useful in the medical field, and electricity is being used to deliberately create it.

In fact, ozone has been experimented with in medicine for more than a century, with its ability to attack and kill bacteria making it useful as a disinfectant. During the First World War it was used to treat wounds and prevent them becoming inflamed and was also found to aid blood flow.

Electricity plays an important role in almost everything we interact with on a daily basis, affecting all our senses, even smell.

The 8 biggest things in renewable energy

18 July 2018

Power generation

Powering a whole country is a big task. The equipment that make up power stations and electricity systems are measured in tonnes and miles, and pump gigawatts (GW) of electricity around the country. With the world’s electricity increasingly coming from renewables, this big thinking is key to powering long-term change.

From taller wind turbines to bigger batteries, these are the massive structures breaking energy records.

Germany’s giant wind turbine and the plan to beat it

As wind power becomes ever more prevalent, one of the key questions that needs answering is how to get more out of it. One way is to build taller turbines and longer blades. Putting turbines higher into the air sets them into stronger wind flows, while longer blades increase their generating capacity.

The world’s tallest wind turbines are currently in Gaildorf, Germany and stand at 178 metres with the blades tips reaching 246.5 metres. Built by Max Bögl Wind AG, the onshore turbines house a 3.4 megawatt (MW) generator that can produce around 10.5 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year.

However, turbines continue to grow and GE has announced plans for the Haliade-X turbine, which will ship in 2021. At 259 metres in total the offshore turbine is almost double the height of the London Eye and will spin 106 metre blades, generating 67 GWh per year.

China’s ‘Great Wall of Solar’

China has pumped substantial investment into solar power, including the world’s biggest solar plant in electricity generation and sheer size. Dubbed the ‘Great Wall of Solar’, the Tengger Desert Solar Park has a capacity of more than 1.5 GW and covers 43 km2 of desert.

The next largest, by comparison, is India’s Kurnool Ultra Mega Solar Park, which covers just 24 km2 and generates 1 GW. However, rampant investment by the country means there are several projects in the pipeline that will break the 2 GW mark and will set new records for solar power plants.

Morocco takes solar to new heights

Concentrated solar power (CSP) takes the technology skywards by using thousands of mirrors, known as heliostats, and focusing the sun’s rays towards a central tower. This heats up molten salt within the tower, which is then combined with water to create steam and power a turbine – like in a thermal power plant.

Morocco’s Noor Ouarzazate facility (pictured in the main photo of this article) is home to the world’s tallest CSP towers. At 250 metres tall, 7,400 heliostats beam the sunlight at each tower, which have a capacity of 150 MW and can store molten salt for 7.5 hours. Its record will soon be matched by Israel’s 121 MW Ashalim Solar Thermal Power Station when it begins operating this year.

However, never one to be outdone when it comes to tall structures, Dubai plans to build a 260 metre CSP tower in 2020 as part of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, which at 700 MW will be the world’s largest single-site CSP facility.

Three Gorges Dam

China’s monster mountain dam

The Three Gorges Dam on China’s Yangtza river might be the world’s most powerful hydropower dam with its massive 22.5 GW capacity, but a different Chinese dam holds the title of the world’s tallest.

Jinping-I Hydropower Station is a 305-metre-tall arch dam on the Yalong River. It sits on the Jinping Bend where the river wraps around the entire Jinping mountain range. The project began in 2005 and was completed with the commissioning of a sixth and final generator in 2014, which brought its total capacity to 3.6 GW.

Itaipu Dam and hydropower station

Brazil and Paraguay’s river arrangement

While it may be tall, at 568 metres-long, Jinping-I is far from the longest. That mantle belongs to the 7,919 metre-long Itaipu Dam and hydropower station that straddles Brazil and Paraguay and has an installed capacity of 14 GW.

The power station is home to 20, 700 MW generators, however, as Brazil’s electricity system runs at 60Hz and Paraguay’s at 50Hz, 10 of the generators run at each frequency.

Biomass domes that could hide the Albert Hall

Using a relatively new material, such as compressed wood pellets as a renewable alternative to coal in large thermal power stations creates new challenges. Biomass ‘ecostore’ domes help tackle storage problems by keeping the materials dry and maintaining the right temperatures and conditions.

Unlike cylindrical, concrete silos, domes also offer greater resistance to hurricanes and extreme weather. This is important in areas such as Louisiana where this low carbon fuel  is stored at the Drax Biomass port facility in 35.7 metre high, 61.6 metre diameter domes before it is shipped to Drax Power Station.

The power station itself is home to four of the world’s largest biomass domes. Each is 50.3 metres high and 63 metres in diameter – enough to hold the Albert Hall, or in Drax’s case 71,000 tonnes of biomass.

South Korean coastline takes the most from the tides

Beginning operation 1966, the Rance Tidal Power Station, in France was the first and largest facility of its kind for 45 years. The power station made use of the 750 metre-long Rance Barrage on France’s northern coast with a 330-metre-long section of it generating electricity through 24, 10 MW turbines.

It was overtaken, however, in 2011 with the opening of the Sihwa Lake Tidal Power Station in South Korea. The facility generates power along a 400-metre section of the 12.7 km Sihwa Lake tidal barrage and generates a maximum of 254 MW through ten 25.4 MW submerged turbines.

The battle to beat Tesla’s giant battery

South Australia has become a battlefield in the race to build the world’s biggest grid scale storage solution. Tesla constructed a 10,000 m2, football pitch-sized 100 MW lithium-ion battery outside of Adelaide at the end of 2017 which is connected to a wind power plant and can independently supply electricity to 30,000 homes for an hour.

However, rival billionaire to Tesla’s Elon Musk, Sanjeev Gupta plans to take on the storage facility with a 140 MW battery to support a new solar-powered steelworks, also in South Australia.

The excitement around battery technology’s potential means the title of world’s biggest will likely swap hands plenty more times over the next decade. This contest won’t just be confined to batteries. As countries increasingly move away from fossil fuels, bigger, wider and taller renewable structures will be needed to power the world. These are the world’s largest renewable structures today, but they probably won’t stay in those positions for long.

Balancing for the renewable future

6 July 2018

Power generation

It’s not news to say Great Britain’s electricity system is changing. Low carbon electricity sources are on course to go from 22% of national generation in 2010 to 58% by 2020 as installation of wind and solar systems continue to grow.

But while there has been much change in the sources fuelling electricity generation, the system itself is still adapting to this transformation.

When the national grid was first established in the 1920s, it was designed with coal and big spinning turbines in mind. It meant that just about every megawatt coming onto the system was generated by thermal power plants. As a result, the mechanisms keeping the entire system stable – from the way frequency and voltage is managed to how to start up the country after a mass black out – relied on the same technology. These ‘ancillary services’ – those that stabilise the system – are crucial to maintaining a balanced electricity system.

“Ancillary services are needed to make sure demand is met by generation, and that generation gets from one place to the next with no interruptions,” explains Ian Foy, Head of Ancillary Services at Drax. “Because what’s important is that all demand must be met instantaneously.”

In today’s power system, however, weather dependent technology like offshore wind and home solar panels are increasingly making up the country’s electricity generation. Their intermittency or variability is, in turn, impacting both the stability of the grid and how ancillary services are provided.

Running a large power system with as much as 85% intermittent generation – for example on a very windy, clear, sunny day – is thought to be achievable. It isn’t a scenario anticipated for the large island of Great Britain. But to deal with the fast-pace of change on its power system which recently managed to briefly achieve  47% wind in its fuel mix, there is a need to develop new techniques, technologies and ways of working to change how the country’s grid is balanced.

New storage tech takes on balancing services

One of the technologies that’s expected to provide an increasing amount of balancing services is grid-scale batteries. One stabilisation function offered by batteries (and other electricity storage options) is to provide reserve  at times when demand peaks or troughs. This matches electricity demand and generation.

Combined with their ability to respond quickly to changes in frequency, batteries can be a significant source of frequency response.

Batteries can also absorb and generate reactive power, which can then be deployed to push voltage up or down when it starts to creep too far from the 400kV or 275kV target (depending on the powerlines the electricity is travelling along) needed to safely move electricity around the grid.

The challenge with batteries is that the quantity of megawatt hours (MWh) required to compensate for intermittency is very large. The difference between the peak and trough on any day may be more than 20 GW for several hours (see for yourself at Electric Insights).

The significant price reductions in battery storage apply to technologies with short duration (or low volume MWhs). These are the technologies which have been developed at scale recently but will probably struggle to make up in any large quantity any shortfalls in generation resulting from prolonged periods of low intermittent generation.

A challenge currently being addressed relates to maintenance of battery state of charge. This is a consequence of battery storage having a cycle efficiency of less than 100%. This means that losses from continuous charging and recharging will have to be replenished from the available generation to avoid batteries going empty and being unavailable for grid services.

Ultra-low carbon advances

Rather than relying on batteries to provide ancillary services to support intermittent generation, technical advancements are allowing the wind and solar facilities – which are generating more and more of the country’s electricity – to do so themselves.

The traditional photovoltaic (PV) inverters found on solar arrays were initially designed to push out as much active, or real, power as possible. However, new smart PV inverters are capable of providing or absorbing reactive power when it is needed to help control voltage, as well as continuing to provide active power.

The major advantage of smart inverters is the limited equipment update required to existing solar farms to allow them to offer reactive power control. The challenge here is that PV is embedded in distribution systems and therefore reactive services they provide may not cure all the problems on the transmission system.

Similarly, existing wind installations have traditionally focused on getting the greatest amount of megawatts from the available resources, but with fewer thermal power stations on the grid, ways of balancing the system with wind turbines are also being developed.

Inertia is the force that comes from heavy spinning generators and acts as a damper on the system to limit the rate of change of frequency fluctuations. While wind turbines have massive rotating equipment, they are not connected to the grid in a way that they automatically provide inertia, however, research is exploring what’s known as ‘inertial response emulation’ that may allow wind turbines to offer faster frequency response.

This works through an algorithm that measures grid frequency and controls the power output of a wind turbine or whole farm to compensate for frequency deviations or quickly provide increases or decreases in power on the system. Inertial response emulation cannot be a complete substitute for inertia but can reduce the minimum required inertia on the system.

Even in a future where the majority of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources, thermal generators may still be able to provide benefits to the system by running in ‘synchronous compensation’ mode i.e. producing or consuming reactive power without real power.

However, what is vitally important for the future of balancing services in Great Britain is a healthy, transparent and investable market for generators, demand side response and storage, whether connected on the transmission or distribution networks.

A market for the future grid

One of the primary needs of balancing service providers is greater transparency into how National Grid procures and pays for services. Currently, National Grid does not pay for inertia. With it becoming more important to grid stability, incentive is needed to encourage generators with the capability to provide it. Those technologies that can’t provide inertia, could be encouraged to research and develop ways they could do so in the future.

Standardising the services needed will help ensure providers deliver balancing products to the same level needed to support the grid. It would also benefit from fixed requirements and timings for such services. Bundling related products, such as reserve and frequency control, and active power and voltage management, will also offer operational and cost efficiencies to the providers.

Driving investment in balancing services for the future, ultimately, requires the availability of longer-term contracts to offer financial certainty for the providers and their investors.

 

Bridge to the future

The energy mix -- table showing services which can be provided by different power technologies

Click to view larger graphic.

For the challenges of decarbonisation to be met in a socially responsible way, Great Britain’s power system must be operated at as low a cost as possible to consumers.

With new technologies, almost anything could be possible. But operating them has to be affordable. In many cases, it may take time for costs of long duration batteries to come down – as it has with the most recent offshore wind projects to take Contracts for Difference (CfDs) and Drax’s Unit 4 coal-to-biomass conversion under the Renewables Obligation (RO) scheme.

Thermal power technologies such as gas that has proven capabilities in ancillary services markets can at least be used in a transitional period over the coming decades until a low carbon solution is developed.

Biomass will continue to be an important source of flexible power. This summer, at Drax, biomass units are helping to balance the system. It is the only low carbon option which can displace the services provided by coal or gas entirely.


Drax Power Station’s control room. Viewing on a computer? Click above and drag. On a phone or tablet – just move your device.

In the past the race to decarbonisation was largely based around building as great a renewable capacity as possible. This approach has succeeded in significantly scaling up carbon-free electricity’s role on Great Britain’s electricity network. However, for the grid to remain stable in the wake of this influx, all parties must adapt to provide the balancing services needed.

This story is part of a series on the lesser-known electricity markets within the areas of balancing services, system support services and ancillary services. Read more about black start, system inertia, frequency response, reactive power and reserve power. View a summary at The great balancing act: what it takes to keep the power grid stable and find out what lies ahead by reading Maintaining electricity grid stability during rapid decarbonisation.

Drax: A rail history

5 July 2018

Power generation

Railways in Great Britain today are often seen as unreliable or chaotic, yet they remain a vital part of the lives of the population and the economy of the country.

When rail transport first arrived in earnest in the 19th century, it suddenly allowed goods from around the world, as well as people, to quickly cross the country. It reshaped perceptions of the country’s geography, unlocked the population and accelerated industries.

Over time, however, the role of the railways has diminished, owing largely to the massive rise in car ownership and the shifting of freight onto the road. But that is not to say it has completely lost its importance.

With 6,000 trains passing through Drax Power Station every year, rail is still integral to Drax and the region around it. In fact, since the very first introduction of the railways to the region it has played a major part in shaping the landscape.

A village with two stations

Before the construction of the power station or nationalisation of the railways, Drax village was well-connected, with two different railway lines running through it: the North Eastern Railway (NER) Selby to Goole line, and the Hull and Barnsley Railway’s Doncaster to Hull line.

Each of these lines ran through a different station with NER calling at Drax Hales Station while Hull and Barnsley called at Drax Abbey Station. But, following nationalisation and British Rail’s modernisation plans, Drax Abbey Station, which had closed to passengers in 1931, closed to goods traffic in 1959. Drax Hales Station followed suit in 1964 when it was closed as part of what became known as the Beeching Axe.

“British Rail chairman Richard Beeching famously carried out a review of Britain’s railways in the 60s and as a result closed vast quantities of – what he considered – uneconomical lines,” explains Andrew Christian, FGD & By-products Section Head at Drax Power Station and expert on the area’s history. “At that time oil was cheap, people were increasingly using cars and motorways were being constructed. Nobody really foresaw the rail demand that would be needed in the future to serve the power station.”

Daleks on a merry-go-round

In the 1960s and 70s, with the planning and construction of Drax Power Station underway, there was a new need for railways in bringing coal from the new Selby coalfield. This resulted in the reopening of a closed part of the Hull and Barnsley line for four miles from a reinstated junction at Hensall. Known as Hensall Junction it was renamed Drax Power Station Branch Junction and later shorted to Drax Branch Junction.

A rail system known as a ‘MGR loop’ was installed on the power station grounds, which allows trains to loop around the station and deposit coal – today also wood pellets – without stopping.

The ‘merry-go-round’ trains as they are known, were originally made up of 40, four-wheeled merry-go-round (MGR) hopper wagons. These were much smaller than the wagons that carry biomass from ports to power stations today, and more than 11,000 MGRs where built to serve coal power stations around Great Britain.

Photo by Andrew Brade, Railway Engineer at Drax Power Station

The open-topped wagons were each capable of carrying 33 tonnes of pulverised coal, which was automatically released thanks to a piece of machinery alongside the track colloquially known as ‘Daleks’ thanks to their resemblance to the Dr Who villain.

But as the power station began to change and evolved to fit the modern world, so too did the railway serving it.

Rail at Drax beyond coal

The original Drax rail loop was a single track, with three coal unloading points. By 1993 there was 14.5 km of track with 27 sets of points and crossings allowing trains to switch rails, thanks to the double tracked loop and extra tracks laid to serve traffic taking limestone in and gypsum out from the power station. This was further expanded with the introduction of biomass and a new double track and unloading facility in 2013.

The biomass trains are specially designed to keep compressed wood pellets dry and they are much longer than their MGR predecessors. At 18.2 meters long, their capacity is 30% greater than a coal wagon. It means the 23-wagon trains bringing biomass to the power stations from Tyne, Hull, Immingham and Liverpool’s ports are a quarter of a mile long.

It might be a far cry from the heyday in which the railways crisscrossed the region, but they remain a vital part of the area. And while the area’s original lines are now 50 years dormant, their remnants are still visible in the lasting impact they’ve left on the surrounding landscape.

Many of the embankments and bridges found in and around Drax stem from those first railway lines, while much of the A645 road that was constructed in the early 1990s runs along the track bed of NER’s route to Goole.

Photos by Andrew Brade, Railway Engineer at Drax Power Station

The trains might not stop in Drax Village anymore, but they remain a vital part of the landscape, and how it’s powered.

Northern Powerhouse Minister Jake Berry was in Yorkshire on 5 July 2018 to unveil the first Drax freight wagons with ‘Northern Powerhouse’ branding to deliver biomass to the power station. Read more.

The companies making coal history

26 June 2018

Power generation

Coal has been the backbone of electricity generation for well over a century – but times have changed. A growing understanding of fossil fuels’ contribution to pollution and global climate change means more energy companies around the world now realise their long-term success depends on moving away from coal. As a result, between 2015 and last year, construction of new coal-powered plants dropped by 73%.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance is an initiative helping facilitate this move. It brings together those working  moving completely away from coal, and is comprised of a number of governments, businesses and energy companies – including Drax. However, it isn’t the only initiative of its type – nor is Drax the only electricity generator fast moving away from coal.

Here we look at some of the other companies giving coal the cold shoulder. 

Avedøre is a high efficiency, multi-fuel combined heat and power plant in Denmark operated by Ørsted. Source: Ørsted

Ørsted

Denmark’s partly state-owned, global energy firm (once called DONG, an acronym for Danish Oil and Natural Gas) is one of the largest of the Alliance’s members leading the charge away from coal. The company is at the forefront of the energy sector’s transformation towards renewables.

It is the global leader in offshore wind, having installed more than one quarter of the world’s total offshore wind capacity.

More recently the company changed its name to Ørsted after the Danish scientist who first discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields.

The name change reflects the company’s move away from fossil fuels, including coal. The company has slashed its coal usage from 6.2 million tonnes in 2006 to 1.1 million last year, and aims to reach zero by 2023, as well as cutting its CO2 emissions by 96%.

This is thanks largely to the massive growth in Ørsted’s offshore wind farm business, as well as the conversion of six of Ørsted’s Danish coal-fired power stations to biomass. The company aims to have enough wind capacity by 2020 to supply 16 million people in Europe.

Denver, Colorado – Xcel Energy’s Cherokee Generating Station. Originally coal-fired, it is being converted to natural gas.

Xcel Energy

Coal is something of a controversial topic in the US these days. However, forward-thinking electricity generators in the country are quickly moving from contentious fossil fuels to renewables.

Mid-west-based Xcel Energy is laying out a timeline to switch the majority of its generation from coal to carbon-free sources. The company plans to retire 20 of its coal units between 2005 and 2026 – 40% of its total coal capacity – and expand its renewable portfolio in its place.

Xcel’s ambitions are perhaps clearest in Colorado, where it recently announced it will bring forward the closure of about a third of its coal fleet by a decade.

Alongside these coal closures, the company plans to construct 1,131 megawatts (MW) of new wind capacity, 707 MW of new solar power and 275 MW of battery storage in the state. Nationwide, Xcel says it is on course to hit a 50% reduction of its 2005 carbon emissions levels by 2022. 

Enel Generación Chile

Italian electricity giant Enel’s Chilean arm is one of the companies signed up to the Chilean government’s target of generating 70% of its electricity by renewable sources by 2050. In a positive move towards this, the firm recently closed a deal to build 242 MW of new solar, wind and geothermal generation, adding to its already growing roster of renewables.

Last year, Enel Green Power Chile and ENAP opened the Cerro Pabellón geothermal plant in the country’s Atacama Desert. Located 4,500 meters above sea level, it is the first facility of its kind in South America and uses Chile’s volcanic landscape to produce 340 GWh per year.

It comes as a part of Enel’s wider push to become carbon neutral by 2050. Chile’s energy ministry and the electricity power generators’ association have pledged to build no new coal power stations unless they are fitted with carbon capture technology.

Like Drax Group and the UK, companies and countries are quickly moving beyond unabated coal-fired power generation.

The night shift

21 June 2018

Power generation
Draw power station at night

Things are different at night. As darkness falls the familiar sights and sounds that make up daily life retreat, creating a strange yet familiar world. There’s less activity, but that doesn’t mean there is no activity.

While Great Britain sleeps, phones charge and fridges hum. Electricity is a 24-hour need, and so the stations generating it must be 24-hour operations. But the life of a power station by night is very different to that by day.

“Walking around the power station at night can almost feel like the Mary Celeste,” says Simon Acaster, Drax Power Station’s Generation Manager. “There may be as few as 50 to 60 people on site, which isn’t a lot when you consider the size of the plant and compare it to the day, when there are some 650 people around.”

Drax Power Station by day is a hive of activity. Alongside generation there are maintenance, engineering, trading and contract support. At night, this is all stripped back.

“Work is focused on the core production issues: looking after the asset and maintaining power generation output to meet our contract position, keeping the teams safe and making sure we stay environmentally compliant,” says Mark Rhodes, Shift Manager at Drax.

“It’s a quieter place,” he adds.

Keeping power flowing

The nightshift at Drax Power Station

Typically, teams at Drax swap over at 8pm and 8am on a cycle of day and night shifts. During the summer months, when one or more of the station’s six, 600+ megawatt (MW) units can be on outage and maintenance is carried out across the station, work often continues around the clock right through the night.

But during a period of normal operation, the night workforce is reduced to basic operations and maintenance teams, material handling teams receiving biomass deliveries – which continue through the night – and security staff.

Demand for electricity typically falls overnight, so Drax shuts down unneeded generation units around 10pm. As morning approaches teams prep them to restart in time for when people wake up and turn on kettles.

“Even when we shut the units down, the turbine is still turning throughout the night,” says Acaster. “All the hydraulic pumps and lube oil systems are still functioning. A lot of plant is in service even when the units are shut down.”

This means there’s still the potential, as during the day, for something to need maintenance or attention at any moment requiring the teams to jump into action.

“We aim to sort any short-term issues through the night,” says Rhodes. “But for any technical issues that can wait, we tackle them when the day team returns and we’re fully staffed. At night it’s more about safely managing the asset.”

The hardest part of a running the power station overnight, however, is not a technical one, it’s a human one.

“There’s no doubt about it, working nights is tiring,” says Acaster. “The biggest challenge is keeping everybody focused and aware of what’s happening.”

He continues: “Unit controllers regularly talk to their plant operators, checking in every hour so we know they’re safe. Supervisors need to be out on plant engaging and talking to employees, checking on what they’re doing and keeping them active and alert.”

The shifting of the night shift

The decarbonisation of Great Britain’s electricity system has changed the way Drax operates during the day, and the same is true of the night.

“Historically, we had six units and they would be baseload, generating 645 MW each,” says Rhodes. “They would operate continuously day and night.” But with the demand profile changing, lower power prices, and other methods of generation coming onto the system, that model is changing.

“Overnight is normally the time of least demand and when the price of power becomes most depressed,” Rhodes continues. “So we take units off and prepare them for the morning, returning when there is value.”

Regularly shutting down and starting the units takes a tougher toll on the equipment than running them continuously, which increases the need for maintenance teams on night shifts. There’s also a need for teams to be on standby to ramp up or down generation.

The increased volatility of the country’s power network, brought on in part by increasing levels of intermittent renewables, means National Grid can often ask Drax to increase or decrease generation at short notice to provide balancing services like inertia, frequency response or reserve power.

“Our units can come down to 300 MW and stay at that level,” says Acaster. “Across three units that gives National Grid 900 MW of spare capacity that can be turned up. It’s like a sleeping giant awaiting start up at any time.”

But unlike other sleeping giants this one is never truly at rest. The demands of the network keep it, and the men and women operating it, humming through the night, 24-hours a day. The power station at night is a quieter place, but it is never a silent one.

Appointment of new non-executive director

20 June 2018

Investors
RNS Number : 9248R
Drax Group PLC
(Symbol: DRX)

The Board of Drax Group plc (“Drax”) is pleased to announce that Vanessa Simms is to be appointed as a Non-Executive Director, with effect from 19 June 2018.

Vanessa is Chief Financial Officer at Grainger plc (1) and has a strong background in listed businesses, with more than 20 years experience working in senior leadership roles at Unite Group plc, SEGRO plc, Stryker Corp and Vodafone Group plc.  She has particular expertise in leading and implementing strategic change.

Philip Cox, Chairman of Drax, said: “The directors are delighted to welcome Vanessa to the Board. Her financial and commercial experience from a broad range of companies and industries will provide real value as Drax delivers on its purpose to help change the way energy is generated, supplied and used for a better future.”

Vanessa added: “I’m looking forward to joining the Board of Drax at this key time for sustainable energy in the UK.”

Vanessa has been appointed as a member of the Company’s Audit Committee.  She will work closely with the current Audit Chair, David Lindsell, in anticipation of her succeeding David when he steps down in 2019.

She has also been appointed as a member of the Company’s Nomination and Remuneration committees.

Enquiries:

Drax Investor Relations: Mark Strafford

+44 (0) 1757 612 491

Media:

Drax Media Relations: Ali Lewis

+44 (0) 1757 612 165

Website: www.drax.com/uk

Notes

  1. Grainger plc is the UK’s largest listed residential landlord.

 

END