Author: Alice Roberts

The different ways water powers the world

10 April 2019

Power generation

If the spectacular Roman aqueducts that still dot the landscape of Europe tell us anything, it’s that hydraulic engineering is nothing new. For thousands of years water power has been used to grind wheat, saw wood, and even tell the time.

Craigside in Northumberland

By the 19th century, water was able to go beyond performing rudimentary mechanical tasks and generate electricity directly. Cragside in Northumberland, England  became the first house powered entirely by hydroelectricity in 1878. By 1881, the whole town of Niagara Falls on the US-Canada border was being powered by the force of its eponymous river and waterfall.

Hydropower has many advantages: it’s predictable, consistent, often zero or low carbon and it can provide a range of ancillary services to power transmission systems. In Great Britain, there is 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of installed hydropower and another 2.8 GW of pumped hydro storage capacity, but it remains a small part of the overall electricity mix. In the fourth quarter of 2018, the 65% of British hydropower that is connected to the national grid accounted for less than one per cent electricity generation or 545,600 megawatt hours (MWh). By contrast, wind accounted for 14% of total generation that quarter (almost 9.5 million MWh).

While hydropower projects can be expensive to construct, operational and maintenance costs are relatively low and they can run for an extremely long time – the Lanark Hydro Electric Scheme in Scotland, which Drax recently acquired, has been producing power since 1927.

Today, hydropower installations are found at all scales, all around the world. But the term hydropower covers many different types of facility. These are some of the ways water is used to generate electricity.

Impoundment power plants

The simplest and most recognisable form of hydropower, impoundment facilities, work by creating a reservoir of trapped water behind a dam that is then selectively released, the water flows through a turbine, spinning it, which in turn activates a generator to produce electricity.

From the Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border, to the Three Gorges Dam in China – the world’s largest power station of any type, with a generating capacity of 22.5 GW – impoundment dams are some of the most iconic structures in modern engineering.

Three Gorges Dam, China

As well as having the potential to provide large quantities of baseload power, they can react extremely quickly to grid demands – just by opening or closing their floodgates as the power system operator requires.

Run-of-river generation

Rather than storing and releasing power from behind a dam, run-of-the-river generators channel off part of a river and use its natural flow to generate power.

Tongland Power Station, Galloway Hydro Scheme

Because it doesn’t require large dams or reservoirs, run-of-river can be less environmentally disruptive, as there is not always a need for large scale construction and flooding is less common.

Stonebyres Power Station, Lanark Hydro Scheme

While run-of-river facilities tend to be smaller and less flexible than impoundment, they still have significant generating potential – the Jirau hydro-electric power plant on the Madeira river in Brazil has a generating capacity of 3.7 GW.

Pumped storage 

Water can also be good for storing energy that can then be converted to electricity. Pumped hydro storage facilities operate by pumping water uphill to a reservoir when electricity is cheap or plentiful, then letting it flow back downhill through tunnels to a series of turbines that activate generators to generate electricity (in the same way as an impoundment dam) when electricity is in high demand.

Dam and reservoir, Cruachan Power Station

Their ability to both produce and absorb electricity makes them a vital part of electricity networks, playing the role of energy storage systems. In fact, a massive 97% of all global grid storage capacity is in the form of pumped hydro. Their function as giant batteries will only become more important as intermittent renewable sources like wind and solar become more prevalent in the energy mix.

Outlet and loch, Cruachan Power Station.

So too will their ability to ramp up generation very quickly. Drax’s recently acquired Cruachan Power Station in Scotland can go from zero to 100 MW or more in less than 30 seconds when generation is called upon – for example, when there is a sudden spike in demand.   

Tidal range generation

Swansea Bay

The sea is also an enormous source of potential hydropower. Tidal range generation facilities exploit the movement of water levels between and high and low tide to generate electricity. Tidal dams trap water in bays or estuaries at high tide, creating lagoons. The dam then releases the water as the rest of the tide lowers, allowing it to pass through turbines, generating power.

There are limitations – like wind and solar’s dependence on the wind blowing and the level of sunlight, operators can’t control when tides go in or out. But its vast generating potential means that it could be a valuable source of baseload power if it were to be deployed more widely.

Great Britain in particular has major opportunities for tidal generation. The Severn Estuary between England and Wales has the second highest tidal range in the world (15 metres), and a barrage built across the estuary could have a generating capacity of up to 8.6 GW – enough to meet 6% of the Britain’s total electricity demands. Some environmental groups worry about the impact such projects could have on wildlife.

Due to the level of public funding required, the government rejected that plan in 2010, in favour of pursuing its nuclear policy. A second attempt at securing a government-backed investment contract, known as a CfD, for a smaller 320 MW ‘pathfinder’ project in Swansea Bay was also rejected, in 2018. The Welsh government is however supportive of the project, which already has planning permission.

Tidal stream generation

Rather than building a dam, tidal stream generators work like underwater wind turbines. Sturdy propellers or hydrofoils (wing-like blades which oscillate up and down rather than spinning around) are positioned underwater to transform the energy of tidal streams into electricity.

While tidal streams move far slower than wind, the high density of water compared to air means that more power is generated, even at much lower velocities.

Not reliant on large physical structures, tidal stream generators are a relatively cheap form of hydropower to deploy, and make a much smaller impact on their environment than tidal barrages.

Wave generation

Unlike tidal power, which is generated by the gravitational effects of the sun and moon on the Earth’s oceans, wave power ultimately comes from the winds that whip up the ocean’s surface.

There are a number of different methods that turn waves into generation, including funnelling waves into a tube floating on the surface of the water that contains electricity-generating turbines, or by using the vertical bobbing movement of a tethered buoy to pull and spin a fixed generator.

An electricity-generating buoy awaiting installation in Spain

Wave power has yet to be widely implemented, but it has significant potential. It’s estimated that the waves off the coasts of the USA could have provided 66% of the country’s electricity generation needs in 2017 alone. Effectively commercialising wave power could provide another vital tool in developing a sustainable energy landscape for the coming future.

Tidal and wave power generation are less established generation technologies than their land-based cousins but they hold huge potential in delivering more sources of reliable, zero emissions electricity for energy systems in coastal locations around the world.

Supporting our employees’ mental health

19 March 2019

Sustainable business

It’s a free and confidential 24-hour service which offers support on anything from financial stress and family and relationship issues to addiction, housing concerns or legal information. There is a phoneline and an app and users can be referred for six sessions of counselling per issue, per year.

Opus Energy ran 15 voluntary workshops to help our leaders understand the benefits of this service and they were attended by 113 managers.

As a result of Opus Energy’s initiative first launched in 2017 to train Mental Health First Aiders, we now have 20 employees qualified to offer a first line of response across the business. They are available to all employees should they would want to speak with a peer about any mental health issues.

A further 16 employees will train as Mental Health First Aiders in 2019.

When would you need a battery the size of a mountain?

11 March 2019

Power generation
Turbine hall, Cruachan Power Station

What’s the biggest battery you can think of? A car battery? A grid-scale lithium-ion array? What about a battery the size of a mountain?

That’s what you’ll find on the banks of Loch Awe in Argyll, Scotland. Cruachan Power Station is a pumped hydro storage facility comprised of nearly 20 km of tunnels and chambers cutting through the mountain of Ben Cruachan.

Built in the 1960s, the site, known as ‘The Hollow Mountain’ entails a subterranean power station, a reservoir, a dam, and the loch itself. These components all work together to store a huge amount of energy, or enough to power more than 880,000 homes, at a moment’s notice.

This probably doesn’t fit your image of what a battery looks like. But the principle is the same. The purpose of any battery, from the AAs in your remote control to the one in your phone that you charge every night, is to store power for future use.

In an AA battery, that storage takes the form of chemicals within the battery which release electricity under the right conditions. In pumped hydro, the purpose is the same, but instead of being stored in chemicals, that energy is stored in the gravitational potential energy of 10 million cubic meters of water, sitting poised to spin Cruachan’s turbines and generate 440 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Such a huge amount of water is the equivalent of around seven gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy. If the reservoir is full, the Hollow Mountain can power a city for more than 15 hours.

How pumped hydro works

Cruachan Power Station is one of only four such storage facilities in the UK. Inside the mountain, 396 metres beneath the surface, is a chamber about the size of a football pitch, and the height of a seven-storey building. Here sit four electricity-generating turbines, each weighing around 650 tonnes.

A series of tunnels and channels connect these turbines to two enormous bodies of a water: Loch Awe at the base and the Ben Cruachan reservoir further up the mountain.

The turbines can function both as pumps and as generators. When there is an excess of power on the grid, and electricity is cheap, the turbines consume electricity and work to pump water up from the loch below to the reservoir 300 metres above.

Then, when electricity demand rises, the turbines reverse direction. Now the water flows down from the reservoir and through the turbines, which switch to generating electricity and supply it to the grid.

This is an extremely quick process. Unlike coal or nuclear stations, which can take hours to get up to full capacity, Cruachan can go from standstill to generating within two minutes – perfect for reacting to variance in grid demand at short notice.

Often National Grid ESO (electricity system operator) keeps one or more of Cruachan’s four units spinning in air. Compressed air is used to evacuate water from around a turbine to allow it to spin. When necessary, it can go from zero megawatts to 100 MW or more in less than 30 seconds.

In any given day, the system operator may call on Cruachan Power Station multiple times as the requirements to manage the grid constantly change.

Cruachan is a net generator of power across the year thanks to the large amount of water flowing into its reservoir from a system of aqueducts. However, pumped hydro is primarily about storing energy – not actively producing it in the way wind, solar, gas, biomass or conventional hydropower facilities might.

In fact, the UK’s four pumped hydro power stations are a combined net consumer of electricity. But this is the case with regular batteries as well, when construction is factored in.

Nevertheless, pumped hydro storage is still efficient – around 70% to 80% of the electricity used in pumping is recovered in generation. Sometimes, the convenience of getting access to power when it’s needed is more valuable than how much power is conserved.

The need for storage

But why store so much energy in such an improbable location to begin with?

There are two key reasons: The first is that the grid doesn’t operate under the same conditions all the time. Great Britain will use more or less electricity owing to its needs. For example, overnight there is a lower demand than at 5pm on a weekday evening. This means sometimes the grid is demanding more electricity than is being supplied, and sometimes vice versa.

Secondly, there’s the increasing level of intermittent energy sources, like wind and solar, supplying low carbon electricity. These sources are highly dependent on the weather and can’t be easily turned up or down in response to grid conditions.

Batteries can address these two issues. In times of higher electricity supply than demand, storage systems can absorb and store electricity from the grid, which helps balance frequency and prevent surges; and in times of high demand, then can quickly deliver electricity where it’s needed.

Pumped hydro is an important part of this equation – in fact, while other types of grid-scale batteries are receiving significant investment, they are still in their infancy. Pumped storage, by contrast, already accounts for 95% of all installed storage capacity in the world, around 130 GW.

What does the future hold for pumped hydro?

One of the challenges in installing more pumped hydro storage is finding suitable geography – places which are both mountainous, with nearby suitably large bodies of water.

However, there have been experiments into river and tidal-based pumped hydro storage projects. Senator Wash Dam on the Colorado River uses pumping to store water upstream from the Imperial Hydropower Dam so it can be released when needed, while the Rance Tidal Power Station in France pumps sea water behind the barrage to allow it to start up faster.

Storage solutions will become more important as electricity systems increasingly move towards renewable and low carbon sources. Pumped storage helps to meet peak-time demand and provide grid stability by making use of the landscape and gravity to deliver electricity when it’s needed.

Guided tours of Cruachan: The Hollow Mountain are available via VisitCruachan.co.uk

Meet the apprentices powering our future

4 March 2019

Sustainable business

“Different people do things different ways,” says Sam Stocks, an apprentice engineer at Drax Power Station. It’s a sentiment echoed by corporate administration apprentice Chloe Carpenter at Opus Energy. Asked to describe her role, she says, “[It’s] a very different kind of job.”

Chloe and Sam are just two of a number of apprentices at Drax Group who are working across the UK. And while they’re proud to do things differently, they do have something in common – they’re all hands-on, practical people who would rather get stuck in on a project than sit still and hear about it in the classroom.

“I chose an apprenticeship over higher education because I’m more of a doing person,” says Molly Fensome, a corporate administration apprentice. Sam agrees. “I like to be hands-on,” he says. “I don’t like being sat in a classroom.”

They are doing things their way – engineering their own futures while growing personally and professionally. And ensuring the future of our energy supply in the process.

Finding a strong sense of identity

For Sam, working at Drax wasn’t just a sensible career move, it was also following in his family’s footsteps. “My grandad worked in the power station industry all his life. [My family] know exactly what I’m like and they knew what type of place this was to work.”

Drax’s transformation from a coal-powered plant to a modern, sustainable electricity company means Sam’s work is building a power framework for future generations, while also paying homage to his grandad’s career.

Jake Dawson, an electrical engineer apprentice, followed a similar path into the power industry. Being born and bred in the area, Drax Power Station has always been a part of his geography. “Because I’m such a local lad it was perfect for me,” he says.

In his role, Jake can play a key part in the region where he grew up. A recent Oxford Economics report shows that Drax contributes £431 million to Yorkshire and the Humber economy and supports over 3,200 jobs.

A role in a team

Drax is a large organisation, but for Chloe finding role models within her team she can look up to and take guidance from has been easy. “Mentoring sessions are relaxed and you build a special bond with that person,” she says. “You can talk to them about work, outside of work – anything. They’ll always be there for you.”

Corporate administration apprentice Matt Donnelly has had a similar experience, adding that he’s seen his confidence grow, and feels he has made lifelong friends in his role.

Ultimately, it’s not just that they are given the right support, but that apprentices are integrated as a part of the company from day one. “My favourite part of my apprenticeship so far is being part of the team,” says Chloe. “Because you feel like you’re not just an apprentice, but you’re also one of them.”

Being part of something bigger

Sam remembers his first day at Drax Power Station: “It was overwhelming, you don’t actually realise how big it is and realise how many people work here. It’s just normal now, if I go anywhere else, I’m thinking, ‘That’s not as big as at work.’”

It’s not just its size that makes the UK’s biggest single site renewable power station stand out, but the potential for career development there. It’s this that Jake had on his mind when he first made the decision to become an apprentice. He was working in an unskilled job with little opportunity, but he knew he had it in him to find something bigger.

His outlook today as a Drax apprentice is very different. “My aim after the four years is to carry on growing as a person, increasing all my skills that I have, and maybe eventually becoming a supervisor or an engineer, who knows?”

This mindset of striving for better is evident across apprentices. It’s what drove them to join the programme in the first place. “Instead of going somewhere like uni and then possibly coming out without a job, you’ve got a job, and you’re actually learning as you’re doing it,” says Sam. “The skill set that I’ve learnt now – I’ll probably go anywhere in the world with it.”

Find out more about apprenticeships at Drax

Can Great Britain keep breaking renewable records?

15 February 2019

Power generation

How low carbon can Britain’s electricity go? As low as zero carbon still seems a long way off but  every year records continue to be broken for all types of renewable electricity. 2018 was no different.

Over the full 12-month period, 53% of all Britain’s electricity was produced from low carbon sources, which includes both renewable and nuclear generation, up from 50% in 2017.  The increase in low carbon shoved fossil fuel generation down to just 47% of the country’s overall mix.

The findings come from Electric Insights, a quarterly report commissioned by Drax and written by researchers from Imperial College London.

The report found electricity’s average carbon intensity fell 8% to 217 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated (g/kWh), and while this continues an ongoing decline that keeps the country on track to meet the Committee on Climate Change’s target of 100 g/kWh by 2030, it was, however, the slowest rate of decline since 2013.

It also highlights that while Britain can continue to decarbonise in 2019, the challenges of the years ahead will make it tougher to continue to break the records it has over the past few years.

The highs and lows of 2018

Last year, every type of renewable record that could be broken, was broken. Wind, solar and biomass all set new 10-year highs for respective annual, monthly and daily generation, as well as records for instantaneous output (generation over a half-hour period) and share of the electricity mix. The result was a new instantaneous generation high of 21 gigawatts (GW) for renewables, 58% of total output.

Wind had a particularly good year of renewable record-setting. It broke the 15 GW barrier for instantaneous output for the first time and accounted for 48% of total generation during a half hour period at 5am on 18 December.

Overall low carbon generation, which takes into account renewables and nuclear (both that generated in Britain and imported from French reactors), had an equally record-breaking year with an average of almost 18 GW across the full year and a new record for instantaneous output of 30 GW at 1pm on 14 June – nearly 90% of total generation over the half hour period.

While low carbon and individual renewable electricity sources hit record highs, there were also some milestone lows. Coal accounted for an average of just 5% of electricity output over the year, hitting a record low in June, when it made up just 1% of that month’s total generation. Fossil fuel output overall had a similarly significant decline, hitting a decade-low of 15 GW on average for 2018 – 44% of total generation over the year.

One fossil fuel that bucked the trend, however, was gas, which hit an all-time output of 27 GW for instantaneous generation on the night of 26 January. There was low wind on that day last year, plus much of the nuclear fleet was out of action for reactor maintenance. In one case, with seaweed clogging a cooling system.

This was all aided by an ongoing decline in overall demand as ever smarter and more efficient devices helped the country reach the decade’s lowest annual average demand of 33.5 GW. More impressive when considering how much the country’s electricity system has changed over the last decade, however, is the record low demand net of wind and solar. Only 9.9 GW was needed from other energy technologies at 4am on 14 June.

How the generation mix has changed

The most remarkable change in Britain’s electricity mix has been how far out of favour coal has fallen. From its position as the primary source from 2012 to 2014, in the space of four years it has crashed down to sixth in the mix with nuclear, wind, imports, biomass and gas all playing bigger roles in the system.

 

This sudden decline in 2015 was the result of the carbon price nearly doubling from £9.54 to £18.08 per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) in April, making profitable coal power stations loss-making overnight. With coal continuing to crash out of the mix, biomass has become the most-used solid fuel in Britain’s electricity system.

Interconnectors are also playing a more significant part in Britain’s electricity mix since their introduction to the capacity market in 2015. Thanks to increased interconnection to Europe, Britain is now a net importer of electricity, with 22 TWh brought in from Europe in 2018 – nine times more than it exported.

While more of Britain’s electricity comes from underwater power lines, less of it is being generated by water itself. Hydro’s decline from the fifth largest source of electricity to the eighth is the most noticeable shift outside coal’s slide. New large-scale hydro installations are expensive and a secondary focus for the government compared with cheaper renewables.

Hydro’s role in the electricity mix is also affected by drier, hotter summers, which means lower water levels. For solar, by contrast, the warmer weather will see it play a bigger role and it’s expected to overtake coal in either 2019 or 2020.

What is unlikely to change in the near-future, however, is the position at the top. In 2018 gas generated 115 TWh – more than nuclear and wind combined. But this is just one constant in a future of multiple moving and uncertain parts.

2019: a year of unpredictability

Britain is on course to leave the EU on 29 March. The effects this will have on the electricity system are still unknown, but one influential factor could be Britain’s exit from the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the EU-wide market which sets prices of carbon emitted by generators. This may mean that rather than paying a carbon price on top of the ETS, as is currently the case, Britain’s generators will only have to pay the new, fixed carbon tax of £16 per tonne the UK government says will come into play in April, topped up by the carbon price support (CPS) of £18/tonne.

Lower prices for carbon relative to the fluctuating ETS + CPS, could make coal suddenly economically viable again. The black stuff could potentially become cheaper than other power sources. This about-turn could cause the carbon intensity of electricity generation to bounce up again in one or more years between 2019 and 2025, the date all coal power units will have been decommissioned.

The knock-on effect of lower carbon prices, combined with fluctuations in the Pound against the Euro, could see a reverse from imports to exports as Britain pumps its cheap, potentially coal-generated, electricity over to its European neighbours. That’s if the interconnectors can continue to function as efficiently as they do at present, which some parties believe won’t be the case if human traders have to replace the automatic trading systems currently in place.

Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station

A reversal of importing to exporting could also reduce the amount of nuclear electricity coming into the country from France. Future nuclear generation in Britain also looks in doubt with Toshiba and Hitachi’s decisions to shelve their respective plans for new nuclear reactors, which could leave a 9 GW hole in the low-carbon base capacity that nuclear normally provides.

Renewables have the potential to fill the gap and become an even bigger part of the electricity system, but this will require a push for new installations. 2018 saw a 60% drop in new wind and solar installations and less than 2 GW of new renewable capacity came onto the system, making it the slowest year for renewable growth since 2010.

Britain’s electricity has seen significant change over the last decade and 2018 once again saw the country take significant strides towards a low carbon future, but challenges lie ahead. Records might be harder to break, but it is important the momentum continues to move towards renewable, sustainable electricity.

Explore the quarter’s data in detail by visiting ElectricInsights.co.uk. Read the full report.

Commissioned by Drax, Electric Insights is produced, independently, by a team of academics from Imperial College London, led by Dr Iain Staffell and facilitated by the College’s consultancy company – Imperial Consultants.

Electricity and magnetism: the relationship that makes the modern world work

30 January 2019

Power generation

Locked in a Parisian vault and stored in a double set of bell jars is a small cylinder of metal. Made of platinum-iridium, the carefully guarded lump weighs exactly one kilogram. But more than just weighing one kilogram, it is the kilogram from which all other official kilograms are weighed.

International prototype kilogram with protective double glass bell

Known as the International Prototype Kilogram, or colloquially as Le Grand K, the weight was created in 1889 and has been carefully replicated to offer nations around the world a standardised kilogram. But over time Le Grand K and its clones have slightly deteriorated through wear and tear, despite extremely careful use. In an age of micro and nanotechnology, bits of metal aren’t quite accurate enough to dictate global weighs and so as of May this year it will no longer be the global measurement for a kilogram. An electromagnet is part of its replacement.

An electromagnet is effectively a magnet that is ‘turned on’ by running an electric current through it. Cutting the current turns it off, while increasing or decreasing the strength of the current increases and decreases the power of the magnet.

It can be used to measure a kilogram very precisely thanks to something called a Kibble Balance, which is essentially a set of scales. However, instead of using weights it uses an electromagnet to pull down one side. Because the electric current flowing through the electromagnet can be increased, decreased and measured very, very accurately, it means scientists can define any weight – in this case a kilogram – by the amount of electrical current needed to balance the scale.

This radical overhaul of how weights are defined means scientists won’t have to fly off to Paris every time they need precise kilograms. Beyond just replacing worn-out weights, however, it highlights the versatility and potential of electromagnets, from their use in electricity generation to creating hard drives and powering speakers.

The simple way to make a magnet

Magnets and electricity might at first not seem closely connected. One powers your fridge, the other attaches holiday souvenirs to it. The former certainly feels more useful. However, the relationship between magnetic and electric fields is as close as two sides of the same coin. They are both aspects of the same force: electromagnetism.

Electromagnetism is very complicated and there’re still aspects of it that are unknown today. It was thinking about electromagnetism that led Einstein to come up with his theory of special relativity. However, actually creating an electromagnet is relatively straightforward.

All matter is made up of atoms. Every neutral atom’s core is made up of static neutrons and protons, with electrons spinning around them. These electrons have a charge and a mass, giving the electrons a tiny magnetic field. In most matter all atoms are aligned in random ways and effectively all cancel each other out to render the matter non-magnetic. But if the atoms and their electrons can all be aligned in the same direction then the object becomes magnetic.

A magnet can stick to an object like a paperclip because its permanent magnetic field realigns the atoms in the paperclip to make it temporarily magnetic too – allowing the magnetic forces to line up and the materials to attract. However, once the paper clip is taken away from the magnet its atoms fall out of sync and point in random directions, cancelling out each other’s magnetic fields once again.

Whether a material can become magnetic or not relies on a similar principal as to whether it can conduct electricity. Materials like wood and glass are poor conductors because their atoms have a strong hold over their electrons. By contrast, materials like metals have a loose hold on their electrons and so are good conductors and easily magnetised. Nickle, cobalt and iron are described as ferromagnetic, because their atoms can stay in sync making them a permanent magnet. But when magnets really become useful is when electricity gets involved.

Putting magnets to work

Running an electric current through a material with a weak hold on its electrons causes them to align, creating an electromagnetic field. Because of the relationships between electric and magnetic fields, the strength of the electromagnet can also be altered by increasing or decreasing the current, while switching the flow of the current will flip its north and south poles.

Having this much control over a magnetic field makes it very useful in everyday life, including how we generate electricity.

Find out how we rewind a generator core in a clean room at the heart of Drax Power Station

Inside each of the six generator cores at Drax Power Station, is a 120-tonne rotor. When a voltage is applied, this piece of equipment becomes a massive electromagnet. When steam powers the turbines to rotate it at 3,000 rpm the rotor’s very powerful magnetic field knocks electrons in the copper bars of the surrounding stator out of place, sending them zooming through the metal, in turn generating an electrical current that is sent out to the grid. The 660 megawatts (MW) of active power Drax’s Unit 1 can export into the national transmission system is enough to power 1.3 million homes for an hour.

Beyond just producing electricity, however, electromagnets are also used to make it useful to everyday life.  Almost anything electric that depends on moving parts, from pumping loud speakers to circuit breakers to the motors of electric cars, depend on electromagnets. As more decarbonisation efforts lead to greater electrification of areas like transport, electromagnets will remain vital to daily life into the future.

How to get more EVs on the roads

25 January 2019

Electrification

From school runs to goods deliveries, getting from A to B is crucial to life in modern Britain. However, a progress report by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) found that in 2017 transport was the largest greenhouse gas (GHG)-emitting sector in the UK, accounting for 28% of total emissions. Within domestic transport, cars, vans and HGVs are the three most significant sources of emissions, accounting for 87% of the sector’s emissions.

A zero carbon future relies on a major shift away from petrol and diesel engines to electric transport. A recent report, Energy Revolution: A Global Outlook, by academics from Imperial College London and E4tech, commissioned by Drax, examines the decarbonisation efforts of 25 major countries. The report found the UK ranked sixth in sales of new electric vehicles (EVs) in the 12 months to September 2018 and seventh for the number of charging points available.

The government’s Road to Zero strategy outlines the country’s target for as many as 70% of new car sales to be ultra-low emission by 2030, alongside up to 40% of new vans. It has, however, been criticised by the Committee on Climate Change as not being ambitious enough. A committee of MPs has suggested 2032 becomes the official target date for banning new petrol and diesel cars, rather than 2040 called for in the strategy.

Even as the range of EVs on the market grows, getting more low-emission vehicles on roads will require incentives and infrastructure improvements. Here’s how some of the countries leading the shift to electrified transport are driving adoption.

Expanding charging infrastructure

One of major barriers to EV adoption is a lack of public charging facilitates, coupled with reliability issues across a network that includes both old hardware and a plethora of apps and different connections. No one wants to set off on a long journey unsure of whether they’ll be able to find a recharging point before their battery goes flat.

According to the Energy Revolution report, there is one charger for every 5,000 people in the UK, compared to one for every 500 people in Norway, the leading country for charging points. The Scandinavian country’s government has invested heavily in its policy of placing two fast charging stations for every 50 km of main road, covering 100% of the cost of installation.

Government support has also been crucial in second and third ranked countries, The Netherlands and Sweden, respectively. The Dutch Living Lab Smart Charging is a collaboration between government and private organisations to use wind and solar to change vehicles. While Sweden has combined its ‘Klimatklivet’ investment scheme for both public and private charge points, with experiments, such as charging roads.

China, where half of the world’s 300,000 charge points are located, has issued a directive calling for the construction of 4.8 million electric charging points around the country by 2020. It’s also assisting private investments to make charging stations more financially viable.

The UK’s Road to Zero Strategy is to expand charging infrastructure through a £400 million joint investment fund with private investors.

Drax’s Energising Britain report found the UK is on track to meet its 2030 target of 28,000 installed chargers ahead of time. However, deployment still clusters around London, the South East and Scotland.

More direct government incentives or policies may be needed to balance this disparity and in the UK, the Scottish Government is leading the pack with a 2032 ban on new petrol and diesel cars plus a range of initiatives including public charging networks and the Switched on Towns and City Fund.

Charging points are necessary for electrified roads. However, it’s a chicken-and-egg situation –more chargers don’t mean more EVs. Getting more EVs on roads also requires financial incentive.

Money makes the wheels go around  

Putting infrastructure in place is one thing, but the reality is EVs are expensive, especially new ones and cold hard cash is an important driver of adoption.

Financial incentives have been a part of Norway’s policies since the 1980s, with the country’s high fuel prices, compared to the US for example, further helping to make EVs attractive. Current benefits for EV owners include: no import or purchase taxes, no VAT, no road tax, no road tolls, half price on ferries and free municipal parking. There are also non-financial incentives such as bus-lane usage.

Sweden, the second ranked country for new EV sales in 2018, is a similar case where high fuel prices are combined with a carrot-and-stick approach of subsidies for EVs and rising road taxes for fossil fuel-powered vehicles, including hybrids.

The UK has had a grant scheme in place since 2011, but last year removed hybrid vehicles from eligibility and dropped the maximum grant for new EV buyers from £4,500 to £3,500. EVs are also exempt from road taxes. In April 2019, Transport for London is implementing a Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) which exempts EVs from a daily charge.

Subsidies for both buyers and vehicle manufacturers have been a cornerstone of China’s policies, with support coming up to around $15,000 per vehicle. Chinese EV buyers can also skip the lottery system for new license plates the country has in place to reduce congestion.

Heavy subsidies have allowed the country to claim as much as 50% of the entire EV passenger market, however, it makes change expensive and the government is now preparing to find a more sustainable way of driving adoption.

Preparing for transport beyond subsidies

China isn’t afraid to strong-arm manufacturers into building more EVs. Companies with annual sales of more than 30,000 vehicles are required to meet a quota of at least 10% EVs or hybrids. However, the government has begun to scale back subsidies in the hope it will drive innovation in areas such as batteries, robotics and automation, which will in turn reduce the price for end consumers.

Norway, which owes so much of its decarbonisation leadership in low-carbon transport to subsidies, is also grappling with how to move away from this model. As EVs creep increasingly towards the norm, the taxes lost through EV’s exclusions become more economically noticeable. While the government says the subsidies will remain in place until at least 2020, different political parties are calling to make the market commercially viable.

There is also concern the schemes only pass on savings to those who can afford new EV models, rather than the wider population, who face higher taxes for being unable to upgrade.

It’s not just governments’ responsibility to make new markets for EVs sustainable, but for business to innovate within the area too. Drax Group CEO Will Gardiner recently said his company must help to “ensure no-one is left behind through the energy revolution”.

That’s a view welcomed by politicians from all sides of the political spectrum concerned not just about mitigating man-made climate change but also to ensure a ‘just transition’ during the economy’s decarbonisation.

Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry spoke at an Aldersgate Group event in London in January:

“It’s been very easy, in the past, for concerns about the climate to be dismissed as the worries of the few, not the many. Luckily, we’ve been able to strip out a lot of the myths surrounding decarbonisation and costs –but we have to be mindful that this is a problem which will have to be solved by the many, not just the middle class.”

Many countries have set ambitious targets for when the ban of new petrol and diesel vehicles will come into effect. Government involvement and subsidies will be crucial but may prove economically challenging in the longer term.

Explore the full reports:

Energy Revolution: A Global Outlook

I. Staffell, M. Jansen, A. Chase, E. Cotton and C. Lewis (2018). Energy Revolution: Global Outlook. Drax: Selby.

Energising Britain: Progress, impacts and outlook for transforming Britain’s energy system

I. Staffell, M. Jansen, A. Chase, C. Lewis and E. Cotton, (2018). Energising Britain: Progress, impacts and outlook for transforming Britain’s energy system. Drax Group: Selby.

 

The small devices that use lots of power and the big buildings that don’t

23 January 2019

Electrification

When Texas Instruments set about attempting to create the world’s first handheld calculator in the early sixties, it estimated that such a complicated device might require a battery as big and powerful as a car’s.

With some innovative thinking, the team were eventually able to power the device with just a five-volt battery, turning the calculator into a truly handheld device and kickstarting an electronics efficiency revolution. Continuous advances in the space mean that today’s super-powered smartphones run on more efficient, powerful – and smaller – sources than ever before.

But as more of our devices become ‘smart’ and grow in usage, their electricity demand is also increasing. On the other hand, many bigger objects that traditionally have used a lot of power are becoming more efficient and consuming less electricity than before.

The small devices eating up electricity

Think of the most electricity-intensive appliance in a home. Something constantly running like a fridge-freezer might come to mind – or something intensive that operates in short blasts like a hairdryer or kettle.

However, a surprising drain of electricity in homes is TV set-top boxes and consoles, which as recently as 2016 were reported to account for as much as half of all electricity usage by domestic electronics. This is because of how often they are left in standby mode, which means they are constantly using a small amount of electricity.

In 1999 the International Energy Agency (IEA) introduced the One Watt Initiative, which led to the electricity consumption of many devices on standby falling from around five watts to below one watt. And while this has helped reduce standby or ‘vampire power’, multiplied across the country – the electricity consumption becomes significant (in the UK there are an estimated 27 million TVs).

This is not just a TV-specific problem, however, it is symptomatic of many of the modern devices increasingly found in our homes, from smart lightbulbs to Amazon’s Alexa. These are constantly using small amounts of electricity, listening and connecting to the cloud even when not being directly used.

In 2014 the IEA estimated that by 2020 these networked-devices could result in $120 billion in wasted electricity. Adding to this is the increasing demand of the cloud and data storage, which has been estimated could account for 20% of the world’s electricity consumption by 2025.

Previous alarm bells surrounding the bitcoin network’s electricity usage highlights that it’s not just physical, connected objects that will put increasing pressure on electricity supply, but also entirely digital products.

Yet even as little things become smarter and require more electricity, some big things that have previously consumed huge amounts of electricity are becoming more efficient.

The big things becoming more efficient   

Buildings are a big source of electricity demand globally. Office blocks full of lights and blasting heating and air-conditioning units are among the main offenders, but poorly insulated homes that leak heat also have a significant impact.

Efforts are constantly being undertaken to reduce this via technological means such as companies generating their own electricity onsite from installed renewables. But cutting interstitial demand to a minimum doesn’t always have to be hi-tech.

The Bullitt Centre in Seattle is a 50,000 ft2office aiming to be ‘the greenest commercial building  in the world’. This is achieved in part through a rooftop solar array that allows the building to generate more electricity than it consumes, but is complimented by more straightforward steps such as maximising natural light and ventilation, collecting rainwater, and the use of geothermal heat pumps. On average the building consumes 230,000 kilowatt-hours (KWh)/year compared to the average of 1,077,000 KWh/year for Seattle offices.

Retrofitting can also make notable reductions to energy usage and New York art-deco icon, the Empire State Building, has been updated to consume 40% less electricity. This is largely thanks to straightforward renovations such as ensuring windows open properly and temperatures can be easily controlled.

Energy efficiency is even extending beyond the confines of the planet. The International Space station only consumes about 90 kW to run, which comes from a solar array stretching more than 2,400m2. When its solar panels are operational about 60% of their generation is used to refill batteries for when the station is in the Earth’s shadow.

The Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah

Technology like this will be essential if humans are going to put buildings on other planets where we will not have vast electricity generation and transmission systems we enjoy on earth. And if that is the ambition, continuously striving for ever more efficient devices on a smarter power grid is only going to help progress us further.