OT Some good news on nuclear power

[Nightjar]

It seems the anti-nuclear lobby have lost this round:

[Ian Jackson]

In message , "Nightjar "@?.?.invalid> writes

On the other hand, it appears that wind continues to be our saviour. There are already a load of large wind turbines in that area (I think 15 when I last counted them last year). ?Figures this August showed that wind exceeded the rates of electricity production by coal on five separate occasions and overall generated 10 per cent of the nation's electricity in the month."

Was August a particularly warm and windy month, and were the factories all on holiday?

[Tim Watts]

Hooray!

[Chris Hogg]

Cornwall is littered with wind turbines (and solar farms). Singles and in groups. Wind (and solar) electricity generation always exceeds that from coal or other fossil fuel in the county, simply because we have none of the latter!

[The Natural Philosopher]

On 22/09/14 23:25, "Nightjar

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes.

and were the factories all on holiday?

sort of, yes.

And most of the coal stations were down because in August demand is at its lowest, and so are prices, and they have limited running hours left.

It is a classic example of renewable bollocks, which data being cherry picked and dressed up to look like something they are absolutely not.

>

[Dave Liquorice]

Five seperate occasions, wow... Greenie spin. How long was each occasion, a 30 min accounting period? By how much did wind exceed coal?

I was a bit windy but nearly all coal generation was not running. Coal stations take the summer off for maintenance so when they are needed in the winter they work...

July/August coal was down below 5 GW, it started ramping up to 10 GW by the end of August. Not sure what the capcity of coal is now something under 15 GW?

[Bob Henson]

On 22/09/2014 11:25 PM, "Nightjar

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Chris Hogg writes

But Cornwall is not (yet) a 'nation'!

[The Natural Philosopher]

give it time. It will then run into the problem that the rest of te world wont pay inflated prices for its windmill power, and they will all rust away.

SWMBO swears she will never go back to cornwall, because of the bloody nodding donkey wind follies everywhere.

[Tim w]

On 22/09/2014 23:25, "Nightjar

[The Natural Philosopher]

[Nightjar]

[Ian Jackson]

I've since done a download of the Gridwatch data for all of August (saved as an Excel spreadsheet).

When looked at the percentage of the wind contribution compared with the total demand, I have to admit that, at times, it did seem to have been doing extremely well.

If I've got my Excel skills sufficiently honed, these figures may be of interest:

Over the month, the average % wind power contribution to total demand was 7.7% (fairly impressive). [I note that it's 7.99% if you average the stated percentages.]

The maximum % wind contribution was 21.1% (extremely impressive). This was when the total demand at the time was 20GW. However, when the total demand hit a minimum (19.3GW), the wind contribution was only 4.4%.

The maximum total demand hit 37.7GW - but at that time, the wind was only contributing 3.6%).

Finally, where was the wind at one particular time when the total demand happened to be a moderate 25.9GW? It was only contributing around 0.37%.

So although the wind IS capable of making a significant contribution to our electricity requirements, I reckon you can make the figures show almost anything you want. Over a whole year, I would expect them to be even more variable than for the single summer month of August. One thing is quite certain, and that is no matter how may wind turbines you erect, when there is little or no wind, their contribution is going to be very small, and will need to be supplemented from alternative sources. Whether these are themselves 'renewables' (solar, waves, tides?) remains to be seen.