Interesting Links for 27-02-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Why firms are racing to produce green ammonia

(tags:farming globalwarming fertility )

2. It's official: Sweden to join NATO

(tags:sweden nato )

Comments

1

[danieldwilliam]

Very excited about this - in particular the flexibility of production for some of the processes and the small size of some of the units. The small units might sit nicely upstream of the grid connection for some renewables projects and help deal with grid congestion as well as moping up surplus renewable energy.

Re: 1

[andrewducker]

Yeah, if we can make these effectively self-running, with a local vehicle picking up the results and distributing it to local farmers, that would be perfect.

Not sure how close we can get to that in general, but I'm sure that a fair number of farmers would be delighted to be self sufficient for fertiliser.

Re: 1

[channelpenguin]

Yeah. At small market garden scale, it's possible to be self sufficient for fertility - but it doesn't scale for the big guys - much more labour intensive and expensive. Much though I'm a country wannabe hippie, I also want cheap, decent food for the masses, especially plant-based options.

Re: 1

[andrewducker]

Would these fertiliser units not allow that?

Re: 1

[channelpenguin]

I must have phrased things really clumsily.

For small scale, you don't NEED them. You can get by pretty happily with compost, growing stuff purely to add fertility (legumes as nitrogen fixers for example, or nettles for "teas"), manure, etc.

But I'm all for the local fertiliser units in the article, for whoever sees or feels the need!

Re: 1

[channelpenguin]

And of course for large scale commercial crops they will be great for local supply!

Re: 1

[andrewducker]

Ah, you seemed to be saying that the new tech wouldn't scale. Sorry I misunderstood!

Re: 1

[channelpenguin]

Reading back, my initial reply put too much of the job on "Yeah", and assumed background knowledge of art least garden veg growing. Since it is a big topic with me since a few years ago, I just didn't notice.

The local organic market garden that comes to our weekly market in town is self sufficient - I don't know if that extends to saving their own seed /using cuttings, but maybe. They say "without outside inputs", so I assume rainwater harvesting too (summers here are DRY!). I am pretty sure that have chickens which are a great help, because they eat scraps, scratch up compost to mix it nicely, and of course, peepoo* everywhere, which is incredibly rich fertiliser.

* I can't believe I only just invented this word to describe the combined excretion that birds do!

Re: 1

[danieldwilliam]

If you are a land owner with a wind farm on your agricultural land there's potentially a nice win here taking the energy you are producing from your own wind farm but can't sell because prices are low and the local grid is congested and turning it in to inputs to your agricultural business on site.

Re: 1

[bens_dad]

Any bets these things become available at the same time as the links to the grid ?

Re: 1

[armiphlage]

It'll encourage fair treatment from grids - if you charge excessive transmission rates, power producers will just start producing ammonia.

Re: 1

[channelpenguin]

Yeah, right now rates are not at all favourable to small producers.

Germany, power costs about 80c per KwH. For domestic overproduction, they pay you 8c, for dedicated production, 12c. Of course a network costs money in all sorts of ways, but it still seems ridiculous.

In Denmark, there's pretty much no domestic rooftop solar any more, as the law doesn't allow direct use at all, one MUST sell to the network, as far as I know at about the same differential. Danish Big Wind has definitely exerted some "lobbying pressure" (€€€€€€€€€). Sigh. So only "island" setups where you run off-grid from batteries make sense there, and I don't imagine you'd sell excess power if you could think of ANY other profitable use for it.

Re: 1

[danieldwilliam]

You pretty much need a link to the grid before you can build your power stations.

There are some choices you can make (depending on what jurisdiction you are in) about how firm and reliable your connection is. You might have a less robust physical connection with single loop and a contract that allows you to be switched off by the grid operator or you might have a double loop and an uninteruptable contract.

You do get power stations that are effectively onsite for their main off-taker but I think those are rare for renewables where it's harder to get the off-taker and the generation physically next to each other.

That said, having a behind the meter flexible demand site might help you accelerate your grid connection by making you happier to take a physically and commerically weaker connection available rather than wait longer for a more robust connection or it might help you require a smaller sized connection because some of your power is always going in to the ammonia production site.

I think, assuming these things work, the faster the renewables build out the more grid congestion there will be and the more incentive there will be to manage with things like behind the meter chemical plants.