Ping TNP re gridwatch

[Tim Streater]

Are you sure about that? There is evidence of snowball earth AAUI, at times when the continents drifted over the poles.

[The Other Mike]

Well you might not, but the system operator does. Buying interconnect transfer is the same as buying generation from any other dispatchable source (i..e excluding wind)

Well 2 weeks and more ahead it is marked as available

Irrelevant. It's capacity, they know it's short term, its managed and dispatched that way.

Wiki isn't complete. It also doesn't always take into account the numerous reratings of 500MW plant, both up and down. Some 500MW units are in excess of 30MW above their original (60's/70's ) design rating.

Like I said, those figures are direct from BM Reports availability*. That is as good a source as you can get. It's declared availability, which means a price is already in the system.

* 2-14 Days Ahead Output Usable By Fuel Type (graph) 2-52 Weeks Ahead Output Usable By Fuel Type (graph)

[The Natural Philosopher]

really? That would be good news if so..last time I looked at the moyle site they were still cable dredging..

well no it isn't capacity. It is a link to someone else's capacity.

i'll take that as gospel..

and of course some of those big oil statins take a day to warm up, as well.

[Andy Champ]

I think you mean elusive (Difficult to find, catch, or achieve) not illusive (based on or having the nature of an illusion).

But I'm not sure...

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

I agree could be either.

But the more common term is 'illusory' which fits perfectly with just about anything claimed by the climate change cultists and their political wing, the renewable energy lobby...

[dennis]

Obviously roger doesn't. I asked a much easier question, "what considerations have been taken into account" , it isn't an open ended question like he thinks I should answer. It should be a simple case of looking at his favourite model and answering.

[The Natural Philosopher]

To be fair, the latest models have a LOT of stuff in them - solar flux is there, and basic albedo effects as well as atmosphere. But since MOST of this doesn't change MUCH with time, its sort of cancelled out when you take the derivative (or in fact a basic delta) to look at temperature RISE rather than absolute temperature.

Apart from the various oscillations, the only time varying thing the IPCC accepts as input is CO2 and solar flux, I think. There is something on aerosols too ISTR. They keep the rest in reserve to explain why the data doesn't fit the model 'extra dust from sandstorms' PDO, NAO, La nina, El Nino, Polar oscillation, cow fart, methane release from permafrost, deforestation etc etc etc. This is not MODELLED but its there in a hand wavy sort of way to 'explain' why their predictions are out by huge amounts at any given time, and so they can still claim its getting warmer, when essentially it hasn't got any warmer since 1998 or so.

That plus the general principle of 'if its a hot year its global warming, if its a cold year its weather plus global warming' sees them past all the data that shows they haven't got the thing nearly right enough to be reliable.

example

you want to plough through a lot of detail about what they haven't got right (allegedly) and what reliability you can attach to it all.

IF you plough through THAT you can see that there is ample opportunity to be wrong about loads of details some of which might be really significant.

[Martin Brown]

BEST (and the other US derived data) would seem to disagree. You have claimed elsewhere that 2008 was the hottest year. HADCRU is lower than all the rest post 2000. I hadn't noticed this until BEST did their recent comparison of all the global datasets.

Both sides do that, and the public are pretty gullible.

The late John Daly is a well known con-man on the AGW denial front.

The paper there might actually contain the odd valid point, but it is a synthesis of everything you can possibly spin in the wrong direction to absolutely play down the impact of CO2 and they still have to accept that around 40% of the variance is due to GHG forcing (and that most of that occurred in the past few decades). It will only take a few more decades before deniers for hire can be seen for what they are.

Either that or if it truly is a previously unknown cyclical behaviour then we enter a downturn and climate scientists have to eat humble pie. I fully expect AGW "deniers for hire" to be still operating when the sea is lapping at the steps of the White House.

You can't trust a thing he says. Although in this particular instance some of the points made in the screed could be valid criticisms they are all deliberately skewed to the most extreme possible denier interpretation and still they cannot make GHG forcing vanish.

Regards, Martin Brown

[The Other Mike]

But it could just be a continuous rolling 2 week ahead...

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think it is, because the Moyle site definitely says not by Xmas.

"Having taken account of delays to date and the potential impact of tidal currents and bad weather we now estimate that Moyle pole 1 (250MW) will return to service around the end of December. Some improvement to this time may occur depending on the coincidence of peak tidal currents with detailed work on the seabed. Work on pole 2 will begin immediately following pole 1 returns to service."

25/11/11

[The Other Mike]

The Irish Interconnectorat 500MW has finally made an appearance for

19th/20th Dec at bmreports.

Plus another 1.5GW of nuclear capacity returning in a similar timescale.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It may well have appeared there, but the latest news from the horses mouth is not reflected in it

"Having taken account of delays to date and the potential impact of tidal currents and bad weather we now estimate that Moyle pole 1 (250MW) will return to service around the end of December. Some improvement to this time may occur depending on the coincidence of peak tidal currents with detailed work on the seabed. Work on pole 2 will begin immediately following pole 1 returns to service."

I hope so.

Very hard to get any info out of the nuclear firms..they have so many security issues..

I think we peaked at about 8GW last winter ..but we've shut down one plant forever since then..

On a brighter note the french ICT appears to be fully operational again..

[Dave Liquorice]

I see that there is 277MW of oil come on line this afternoon(*). Presumably in response to the cold snap and coal being flat out at

22.41GW. Thought last night that there would be requirement to rescale the coal meter...

(*) That was about 1800 but I see that oil is back to 0.000GW now,

2100.

[Andy Burns]

Here's something to do with our Plutonium

[The Natural Philosopher]

peaked at 700Mw about 3 pm looking at the database..I don't graph oil

Phew. That's very rare. I would guess that a de mothballing exercise..we will probably need everything in these not so global warming days to come.

been a bit of OCGT as well the last few days but not much and not for long.

yes..that was probably to cover the afternoon peak in some way..I THINK we have 3 big oil stations left..

I'd guess that was Littlebrook D just flexing its muscles..

EU want to close it by 2015...

I get the impression of lots of men resembling Fred Dibnah spitting on bits of brass and polishing them with an oily rag..

[The Natural Philosopher]

we've been talking about it for years..talking..

[dennis]

We have been using plutonium in our reactors for years.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I dont think mox is being used at all at the moment actually.

[dennis]

Possibly, it was a few years ago when I actually saw a real mox fuel rod, just being taken out of its cardboard box to go in the reactor.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think its cheaper to buy new ones..

and that's why there's been all this kerfuffle over sellafield and whether we should turn 16 years worth of toxic radioactive waste into 16 years of free fuel, since we have to do something about it anyway.

Resisted by the anti nuclear lobby as it removes one of the Great Myths..

'no one knows what to do about the waste and it will cost a fortune anyway'

etc etc..

PRISM is juts one way of course..

beter article here

battle agains the anti-nuclear lobby is well illustrated by this

"While the UK government believes it has sufficient information to set out a direction, it is not yet sufficient to make a specific decision to proceed with procuring a new MOX plant."

"Only when the government is confident that its preferred option could be implemented safely and securely, that is affordable, deliverable, and offers value for money, will it be in a position to proceed with a new MOX plant."

"If we cannot establish a means of implementation that satisfies these conditions then the way forward may need to be revised."