Micro-grids and local generation could reshape the UK’s energy landscape, writes Neil Robson, chief engineer at Bladon Micro Turbine
Electrification of transport is increasingly considered one of the most crucial ways to tackle air pollution. Governments and politicians worldwide are promoting the use of electric cars and developing other electric transportation.
The introduction by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, of an Ultra-Low Emissions Zone in London is the latest initiative. Launched in April, the scheme punishes heavy polluting vehicles with a fee for driving in the centre of the capital. Electric vehicles are exempt from all charges.
But should a panacea of cities filled with electric vehicles ever be reached, the grid could collapse. This isn’t as simple as plugging in on-demand. As the number of power-hungry electric vehicles – often needing 100kw or more – increases, they create unpredictable levels of demand on the grid and in a worst-case scenario, the lights could go out.
Generating electricity through fossil fuels is not a viable alternative; that would only add to the pollution. It is also likely to be politically unacceptable as the UK Government has committed to achieving measurable low-carbon targets in the coming decades. Instead, at least part of the answer lies in using micro-grids and energy generation at a local scale.
Businesses, small communities and even individuals would build their own local networks. They would get their electricity from a combination of, for example, solar panels on roofs, small-scale wind turbines and, one day, generators as small as boilers.
This ‘hybrid micro-generation’ would address the problems facing the grid over the next decade, when the use of electric vehicles is expected to increase more than tenfold. For example, it will help flatten the peaks in demand caused by charging electric vehicles. If a car can be plugged into the driver’s own source of electricity and other sources of micro-generation, there is no dependence or impact on the centralised grid at all.
Ideally, this would be done through using renewables alone. Government would certainly be pleased, given the target of getting more than 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030. Indeed, according to Energy UK, 30% of the UK’s electricity is likely to be provided by renewables by as soon as next year.
But there are hidden challenges to the electric future of transport if it is to be powered by renewables. The reality is that the existing grid infrastructure in the UK, and indeed the rest of the world, is not capable of supporting it.
Renewables do not provide the base load and stability of supply that allow the current grid to function. Except for hydro power, which is a very small part of the UK energy mix, renewables are not able to provide consistent, stable supply. Until recently, coal fired power stations played a major part in this but now they are being phased out, there is reducing base load.
Likewise, the future of nuclear power is uncertain, with the current base of nuclear power stations rapidly reaching end of life and investment in new generation either cancelled or delayed. The collapse of a proposed £16bn nuclear power station in Wales is ample evidence of this.
In recent years gas has been increasingly used to provide base load capacity but this is at best an interim solution as it still places a high dependency on fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion is that the existing grid faces risks of blackouts and failures when renewables cannot provide enough energy to meet spikes in demand when electric vehicles become more common.
In the event of a widespread failure in the grid, standard procedure is a ‘black start’. This means restoring the grid to operation by drawing power from other sources or generators – essential in order to keep key services across the country operational. With the rapid reduction in base load capability, the ability of the grid to recover is severely compromised and many renewable sources can only synchronise to an already stable grid.
A recent publication from a well-respected industry source has suggested that parts of the UK could take 5 days or more to recover from a grid collapse. In other words, the variations in the generation of electricity from renewables could cause life-threatening delays to grid recovery. The level of capital investment required to update the grid to solve these problems is too great to be quick or simple.
At Bladon, we have developed a generator that uses a specially designed microturbine engine to produce electricity from a wide range of fuels. It can operate efficiently, and with much lower emissions than a conventional engine, using bio-gas, biodiesel or almost any liquid or gas fuel stock.
We are currently selling this generator into the African telecom towers market to power widely distributed assets in places with either bad grid or no grid. This market requires an ultra-reliable, efficient and clean solution and our customers are committed to wide-scale deployment of Bladon technology. We can also see future application in developed markets like the UK, home to the world’s first electricity grid, as a potential power source for a micro-grid.
Britain’s existing grid infrastructure is not ready for the increased demand that it faces, nor able to cope with the change in methods of generation. Changes need to be made to avoid significant risks of failure.
Micro-grid and local generation of electricity, taken from a wide range of sources, is the disruption the market needs if the UK is to decarbonise without risking the lights going out.
Neil Robson is chief engineer at Bladon Micro Turbine
Could you at least tell is what power rating this microTurbine is capable of?
What’s its efficiency? (compared to petrol and diesel engines and considered before and after battery charging losses)
The articles from “The engineer” are frustratingly lacking in engineering details!
It needs to be part of the mix. We can no longer be dependant on big single sources of energy. Society will have to adapt and be prepared for the reduced ability to travel when and where we want at a moment’s notice.
Where does the waste heat go?
If you just chuck it out into the environment, it would simply be a niche solution where batteries are too small and conventional options are too large.
However if you can duct the waste heat into a heating system and it isn’t too expensive, it could be the answer to the UK’s looming energy problem.
Sell them as micro CHP systems to schools, offices and large houses. As you point out there isn’t enough electricity for everyone to have an eclectic car, so there certainly isn’t enough renewable electricity for everyone to switch from fossil fuel central heating to electricity (and cut emissions). So we are going to have fossil fuel heating fro some time. Micro CHP could fill the gap between our current generating capacity and what we need for a robust future capability.
Also being CHP the carbon foot per KWh print is a fraction of that from a powerstation where the heat is discarded.
Also the availability (at each time of the day) with Micro CHP is well aligned to electricity demand.
So the proposal is to replace large scale fossil fuel power generation with multiple small scale fossil fuel power generation and thus reducing the benefit of economies of scale. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.
Slightly puzzled about generating 50Hz from 100,000 RPM from the same shaft as the turbine. Do you generate DC and chop it up in an inverter to get 3 phase AC??
I think the proposal is to transform agriculture to produce bio-fuel. We can than have all the ‘clean’ energy we need, we just starve to death instead.
There seems to be some interesting technology there – or at least promised.
But details are lacking.
I would like to know what sort of gases the turbine can use – is it basically air & Co2 ? or can light gases be used? – which would make it interesting for regenerating from sensible thermal storage.
And what sort of power rating could it generate, as an engine, and at what sort of cost.?
If the engine could run off stored hydrogen then that might make it attractive for CO2 free fuel, rather than bio-fuels (though I expect that, for domestic solar power, one would need to look at size and cost of overnight storage)
If you Brits would just start making HOD (hydrogen on demand) from aluminum scrap, special catalyst, and engine heat, you could get total fuel burn in the ICE, and totally eliminate “dirty” automobile engines, and improve your general fleet fuel economy by 30%. This is a true statement, any doubts can be removed when you consider that an incremental amount of hydrogen is enough to increase fuel burn velocity in the engine, resulting in an efficient cycle.
This is potentially a wide ranging development as small gas turbines have been showing promise since power jets. The development of small gas turbine power has always been centred at Coventry, from automotive-drives to power. Wish this all the best, if the dry bearings are successful at 150,000 RPM and a low cost governor are proven it has a great chance of commercial success. Look forward to finding more technical details than are on the product data sheets; we need gas flowrate & temperature to look at possible applications in CHP.
The articles broad statements about ‘lights going out’ to support the author’s arguments for his generator design, are questionable, to say the least. The advent of efficient grid-scale battery technologies in recent years, the greatly lower cost of renewables in the same time frame and the introduction of sophisticated software for grid balancing, have all largely reduced that doom-laden proposition to history. In a professional journal, the article and its claims needs balancing itself, by thoughtful and informative counter facts.
Burning stuff isn’t the answer.
There are 3 things that are key to the future.
Smart charging, the ability to back off the charging of a vehicle for a few mins during high peaks in demand ego advert breaks on TV when people put the kettle on.
Short term Storage; vehicle to grid leveraging vehicle batteries and large scale batteries to smooth demand further.
Batteries at rapid chargers again to smooth demand, the batteries are charged at a lower continuous rate which then dump power into vehicle batteries quickly without stressing the grid.
Lastly we have large scale long term storage. The current front runner for this at the moment is hydrogen, you use excess power from renewables to power reverse fuel cells or electrolysis during the warm sunny summer months to create hydrogen. You store this hydrogen in large tanks. This is then used in the winter to create electricity. This isn’t as efficient as batteries but it’s much more compact and better at holding power for long periods of time.
With these and other methods combined the grid will actually be more stable than it is now.
Mr. Chapmanlaw. The instabilities in the grid that you refer to are entirely the result of the variability and unpredictability of wind and solar power. Batteries are not needed in traditional power grids anywhere in the world.
The use of plant to produce hydrogen on an intermittent basis would be foolish operation of a high capital cost asset. Hydrogen needs very expensive plant to produce it, and no-one would operate this type of plant to follow power availability: the power availability would be assured before it could go ahead.
Absolutely agree. Waste heat recovery is a must to get high efficiency. Our micro-grid solution is being designed for CHP from day one.
So is this that the system will use gas (and thence produce CO2) and the exhaust heat could be used for a follow on steam turbine (combined cycle) or directly into some heat storage?
The example mentioned in the article seem to be focused on supplying power – and there is no mention of CO2 elimination (as biofuels have extra CO2 costs in their production) – which is why I queried about hydrogen (whatever one may think about its cost issues) .
It does seem to be valid for places where there is effective isolation from the grid, in producing electric power, but, otherwise, it appears it is a replacement for more conventional gas fire power stations (including CHP)
“Burning stuff isn’t the answer”
Unless it is agriculture waste, thus not fossil-
I agree with “Burning stuff isn’t the answer” as a general rule.
The only justification would be if the “stuff” used was a fuel derived from the carbon in the air – directly rather than biomass which would be better kept in or returned to the soil to enhance fertility and as carbon sinks. (And of course the fuel derivation not to use energy derived from burning…)
A light weight article regardind Bladons own achievement. Their MTG12 is only 12kw how scalable is it? Microturbines have been tried a number of times before, only one world manufacturer has had much success that’s Capstone and they dominate the tiny market for such things. The MTG12 is big, clumbsey and heavy most of the prommissed advantages have been lost, remember the proposed Jaguar sports car? Watch Bladon over the next few years, Micro gas turbine history is against them!
Ian Bennett is fully correct that the history of small gas turbines has not been one of great success. I also remember the attempts at car engine development and Noel Penny Turbines. However, like fuel cells, the potential is massive for a successful developer. 12 kW modules would match many applications especially small scale CHP. I hope that they prove successful.
Vehicle to grid will provide relief for the grid and soak up excess power from renewables, incentivise EV owners to charge off-peak and even extend the lifespan of the batteries. This microturbine looks like a solution looking for a problem to solve….
I worry that everyone seems to accept that batteries are the best solution for short or long term bulk energy storage – batteries are horrible, toxic, limited-life things which will really damage the planet in the longer-term. There IS a totally sustainable, non-toxic and highly efficient solution: high inertia – low RPM flywheels. These can be used in the same way for hundreds of years without any loss of storage capacity or performance.
The only advantage I can see of a microturbine over a large unit operating at much higher efficiency is in the case where the grid cant cope with centralised generation. A large facility will always have lower emissions per kWh produced.
Its a pity that there is so much misinformation regarding storage. Even supposedly technical sources such as for example Climate Action report “50MW battery capacity” which just gives an idea of the peak discharge rate, the true energy storage capacity in MWh , is not revealed.
Underground pumped storage into a purpose built reservoir may be our bet for medium term storage. It would be interesting to see an article summarising the energy storage capacity of the various options.
I can see that this is the way to go for electrical energy supply and demand. We need to tap the energy from the sun on an ongoing basis, today and every day for all our needs. The birds do it , the bees do it, the plants do it, why not we? We did this with the steam engine and the internal combustion engine for transportation with fossil fuels (stored energy from the sun on this third rock from the sun) . The need for doing it with electrical energy is rapidly increasing.
Nice sales pitch – but lacking engineering details. Inputs vs outputs? Costs – capital & operating? Size at available output levels? For a moment, I thought I was reading a marketing magazine.
“ Electro Magnetic Wave capture and controlling device. ”
Most people would have heard of Nikola Tesla’s experiments in providing the world with wireless electrical power, unfortunately he did not show any practical way of achieving it. He may have been inspired by the Crystal Radio, first discovered in 1874 though it wasn’t put into commercial use until the very early 20th century. The great thing about a crystal radio is that it doesn’t need a separate power source, since all the power it needs is picked up from the antenna, with the power coming from the radio transmitter that originates the radio wave. There is a method of capturing and controlling the electro magnetic waves from the electro magnetic spectrum, from Radio, WiFi, 3G & 5G, Microwave, Infrared, Visible, Ultraviolet, X-Ray and Gamma Ray and provide the world with FREE wireless electrical power for all electric applications, Cars, Automobles, Planes, Ships and household applications.. All of the electro magnetic spectrum are forms of electrical waves. Electricity has waves, currents and other characteristics that govern its various attributes. While you may think of radio waves and electricity as being different, they’re actually the same phenomenon! Radio waves are just fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields that surround us at all times. They’re invisible to us, because they don’t react with us. However, a copper wire can “see” the waves because it’s a conductor of electricity! A crystal radio produces very, very little power, and is concerned with refining that power to receive sound while this invention is focused on obtaining the maximum amount of electrical power from the various electro magnetic spectrum wave lengths. The new antenna and electro magnetic wave capture and controlling device is subject to a provisional patent.
Nick. That is well said.
In our school years, we did a detector radio (Crystal Radio)
It is able to receive radio signals only the nearest radio station. The output signal supplied to the headphones in amplitude is only a few microvolts. Nikola Tesla, observing lightning between antennas in his laboratory, had the insane idea that in this way it is possible to transmit electricity over long distances without any loss. The energy of any radiation decreases rapidly depending on the distance. The radio antenna radiates a powerful signal, but it comes to the detector radio receiver very weak and requires amplifiers for the loudspeakers to work. Nikola Tesla had a crazy idea and therefore neither he nor anyone else can implement it. You have described our children’s well-known crystal radio. What for? What for? What for?
You have missed the point. If it is possible to transmit electric energy over long distances, (compared to using an extension cord ) which is proven by the crystal radio, it should be possible to transmit high currents wirelessly also. There is a big difference between the power sent through the air by radio ehen compared with the power sent by 3G or 5G, and they are already talking of 6G. There is far more electro magnetic energy in the air today than at anytime in the past. With a crystal radio, you are talking about the lowest energy on the electric magnetic spectrum, and only one frequency, there are millions of other frequencies in the air, and if they can be collected at the same time, it should deliver a meaningful electric current to provide electric energy for all applications, vehicles, household needs ect.
As an inventor you must be capable of thinking outside the square, and make the impossible by current knowledge, possible in the future.
From your specifications on line it would seem that the system has only 25% thermal efficiency at full power, thus unless it is part of a CHP system it is considerably less efficient, i.e. more emission intensive even after considering grid losses than centrally supplied electricity. At 12 kWe and 25% thermal efficiency the heat output is 36 kW. i.e. in many circumstances there would be an imbalance between heat and power requirements particularly in the warmer months, so even an effective CHP application is difficult to implement. It might well be very successful in remote sites or as part of methane digester systems but it is unlikely to play a big part in the whole system
Re grid collapse. The UK has been reducing electrical demand by about 7 TWh per year through energy efficiency and reduced industrial demand. Neither of those trends is likely to cease. Hornsdale 1 alone is likely to provide more energy in 2020 than coal does this year. With other projects coming on line there does not appear to be a shortage of energy. 7 TWh is enough to run 2.8 m EVs so EVs won’t pose a challenge to the generation any time soon.
So then there are two questions, grid capacity and peak demand. the UK grid was built to handle 350 TWh+ per year, current demand is around 260 TWh, so even if all the vehicles in the UK were electrified over night demand would only increase by about 70 TWh i.e only a little more than demand in 2012, so system capacity doesn’t seem to be an issue. The remaining question is will EVs lift peak demand. As the average EV only needs to be charged for 3-4 hours per day from a standard wall plug or 1-1.5 hours from a 6 kW level II charger, it would seem there is tremendous scope to get all the charging we need done off peak, so dynamic demand or demand response or smart charging of EV s whatever you want to call it, actually provides a huge opportunity to match demand to supply on the grid. V2G will probably mean that a highly electrified vehicle fleet will actually stabilise rather than threaten the grid