OT Solar energy generated in the UK.overtook coal last Summer.

[dennis]

Tell that to the bloke on the ground floor of a block of flats. By the time you have used all the roof space for panels and divided it up he still wont get enough energy.

[tim...]

but there are

They are the same new storage mechanisms that the auto industry is "sure" that it will develop to make electric cars viable.

try telling that to the Automotive industry. They are investing million in it.

Personally I don't believe that their breakthrough is a close as they are claiming, but they are mamking some progress

I wasn't suggesting it as a viable method for the whole country.

tim

[Chris Hogg]

And these new storage methods are what? I'm interested. Different batteries, i.e. different combinations of electrode materials? Or some sort of fuel cell, or ICE cars running on hydrogen, or what? What power density are they talking about?

I've grown suspicious over recent years about claims for this or that technology that's 'being developed' or 'just around the corner'. It's always jam tomorrow, never jam today. And if jam today does eventually arrive, it's always much less tasty and spread very thinly and is generally disappointing compared to what was promised, even though packaged in a wonderful presentation jar with pretty ribbons (green ones, of course), and presented to the sheeple as a wonderful planet-saving development by a fat cat who's thinking only of the subsidies he's going to get.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In a millenium we will have solved the problem of how to conatain a sun and have fusion power, which will be stored in batteries made of unicorn horn and pixie dust, that will enable them us fly a passenger place three times round the world without recharging.

[DICEGEORGE]

I think solar panels should be on the roof of the big sheds in industrial e states, economies of scale over fitting the electronics to every little hou se roof. Lot more nasty chemicals and mining go into lead acid batteries th an solar panels. If I buy cheap waste motor oil for my heating and burn it who pays for the pollution and health care for those damaged? When Ed Davey was libdem energy minister he signed off a huge cable to Norway which give s us energy from their fjord water turbines, and when we have too much sun and wind energy exports it to norway to pump water back to the top lake.

[g]

[The Natural Philosopher]

Then you are en even bigger fool than you at first appear.

Why don't you pay for them then? Instead of expecting ME to?

[Chris Hogg]

Norway has no pumped storage ATM. Why would they have? Nature does all the lifting from the sea to the mountains, in the form of rain and snow. If we ever have surplus electricity, the Norwegians will buy it from us at a rock bottom price because it's a buyer's market (what else could we do with our surplus electricity; we couldn't store it once our pumped stores are full), and it'll save them having to use their water for their own hydroelectricity generation. Then they'll sell it back to us later, making a fat profit in the process. That's what happens between Norway and Denmark, when the latter has too much wind, and it's what will happen with us.

[Tim Streater]

From which we conclude that friend DICEGEORGE is yet another of these dreamy-eyed twerps who can't do sums.

Also a neat summary of why renewables are such crap.

[harry]

estates, economies of scale over fitting the electronics to every little h ouse roof. Lot more nasty chemicals and mining go into lead acid batteries than solar panels. If I buy cheap waste motor oil for my heating and burn i t who pays for the pollution and health care for those damaged? When Ed Dav ey was libdem energy minister he signed off a huge cable to Norway which gi ves us energy from their fjord water turbines, and when we have too much su n and wind energy exports it to norway to pump water back to the top lake.

Quite right.

[harry]

Sinclaire C5???? Riiiiight.

[T i m]

Firstly, it's 'Sinclair' (you can't even copy) and had I been referring to that I wouldn't have used the term 'Plug in EV' but 'Electrically assisted tricycle'.

Unfortunately for you (yet again, as mentioned elsewhere, you really do need to buck your ideas up) ... I was referring to my Enfield 8000 Moke, which *is* a 4 seater, plug in EV and probably ... 'sonny Jim', pre-dates *your* involvement in EV's by 10+ years.

Of course you wouldn't have known I'd got one because I not only paid for it myself, I didn't expect anyone else to pay for the electricity I ran it on either.

Cheers, T i m

[harry]

Ah yes. Sounds wonderful.

[T i m]

Not the point (no surprise there, you not getting the point) that I have had and run (daily) an EV for *much* longer than you.

And it's not as if you had a massive choice 20+ years ago.

Nor that I bought and ran it myself without doing what you do and as a means of screwing the maximum amount of money from the rest of us via the FIT theft 'scheme'.

That describes the FIT 'scheme' pretty well ...

"A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products or services. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal."

So if / when we leave the EU and with the government then realising we aren't exactly awash with electrical energy ... will reverse the FIT 'scheme', the whole FIT 'scheme' should be made illegal and then make users (as that is what they are) pay back (to us) any 'earnings' they have made and do community service in the hope they will learn some morals / ethics / common sense (that the whole PV thing always was just a big scam and environmental disaster).

So, tell us again about some electric car show where they *still* aren't demonstrating the 200 mile range Nissan Leaf? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , tim... escribió:

Yes. Tesla Powerwall.

There do exist large-scale battery storage banks:

"The largest grid storage batteries in the United States include the

31.5MW battery at Grand Ridge Power plant in Illinois and the 31.5 MW battery at Beech Ridge, West Virginia. Two batteries under construction in 2015 include the 400MWh (100MW for 4 hours) Southern California Edison project and the 52 MWh project on Kauai, Hawaii to entirely time shift a 13MW solar farm's output to the evening"

so it does seem to be economically viable, otherwise these firms wouldn't be doing it and it sure isn't "cat-belling", whatever the f*ck that is.

[Chris Hogg]

I remember it being suggested here a while ago, that every renewable energy installation should be made to have its own local battery storage with sufficient capacity to tide it over the hours of darkness, dull days, doldrums or whatever.

For small island communities, battery storage may be viable and the only way they can extend the availability of electricity, cost being of lesser importance in that situation.

But for a whole country such as the UK, you'd be looking to store very much bigger amounts of energy: 35GW times as many hours you expect renewables not to be performing. For example in the depths of winter and a 'blocking high' over Northern Europe lasting say three days, that's 2520GWh, or 25,200 of those 100MW Southern California Edison project batteries. And you'd actually have to have considerably higher output from the renewables in order both to re-charge those batteries and at the same time supply the grid in the normal way.

Whether that's a reasonable way to look at it, I don't know. There seems to be an increasing number of planning applications for diesel generation installations to cope with short-term peaks in demand on the Grid (STOR), see

. Massive battery capacity wouldn't be required there, any more than it is from the diesel generators, a few MW for an hour or so here and there would seem to be fairly typical.

Euan Mearns has a hard look at the possibilities of battery storage:

As for cat-belling, it's been explained here several times recently.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

cue howls of outrage from the consumer who would end up paying for it all via their bill.

cue howls of outrage from the renewables firms who would want massive subsidy for it.

That's a lot of lead and a lot of acid.

I don't think the suggestion was to be able to power the entire country off batteries, just to fill in for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. We'd still use gas and nuke for the baseline load.

Wouldn't you treat it like a UPS - use the renewables to charge the batteries, then feed the grid from the batteries? That way, you get a constant supply which is not dependent on whether the wind is blowing. If there isn't enough wind or sun, the batteries are charged, say overnight, from the grid.

It's a similar concept to hydro - it comes online at times of peak demand and is replenished using cheap overnight power.

Thanks, will have a read.

It was a gentle dig at Turnip, he's quite fond of the phrase when he wants to denigrate someone's idea. He's also used it recently in the comments section of this week's Blowout on Euan Mearns' blog.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Gentle dig my arse.

Its not my fault if your education is so limited that you had to look it up.

[Chris Hogg]

But if you had a decent number of nukes, you wouldn't have the gaps due to sunless, windless days and you wouldn't need the batteries. They're just a way of compensating for distorted thinking / bad planning in the first place.

He does some cost estimates for a 100% renewable grid with battery storage, and they're horrific. As I suggested, using batteries for peak lopping, to save having to use diesel generators or even OCGT's as part of the STOR, was considered a more sensible use for batteries. An interesting comment I noted in the discussion further down, was that renewables have, ironically, locked us inevitably into using fossil fuels to cover the gaps, whereas if we'd gone nuclear from the start, we'd be producing very much less CO2 than we do. A case of unforeseen consequences, if ever there was one.

[pamela]

I guess you mean this site .......

What name does Turnip use there?

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , pamela escribió:

I won't. His ignorance is plain for all to see. He's not worth engaging with. Full of swivel-eyed opinions with no facts to back them up.

I wouldn't even have seen his post if you hadn't quoted it.