The new unit of electrical power: 'the home'

[Terry Fields]

As we are all too painfully and expensively aware, so-called 'renewable energy' ('renewable' because it starts up anew after the sun comes up, the wind starts blowing again, and the tide turns) is always quoted in terms of the number of 'homes' it could power, carefully avoiding the question of whether this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed detached, or something befitting a subsidy-farm beneficiary.

On TV last night, a 20MW windmill was said to power 11000 'homes'.

This is about 1800W, or not enough to boil a kettle, operate the dishwasher, wash your smelly clothes, or cook a proper meal serially, let alone in parallel.

Better lay in that genny sooner rather than later, as green (as in 'green with envy at those countries that haven't bought into the dream') policies cripple us all :-(

Is there any sight of Global Warming starting up again, after a 15-year lay-off?

[Phil]

nergy' ('renewable' because it starts up

turns) is always quoted in terms of the

her this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

er, wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

with envy at those countries that haven't

Average, I guess. My 'home' is using bugger all right now. Phil.

[Tim+]

They always assume that you have gas/oil/coal heating as well. If these homes were all electrically heated, the numbers wouldn't look anything like as good.

Tim

[Martin Brown]

energy' ('renewable' because it starts up

turns) is always quoted in terms of the

this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

It is an average figure and probably not too wildly inaccurate. Take a look at your annual kWhour usage on a bill and divide by hours per year.

The correct number depends on the number of people daft enough to heat their homes or domestic hot water with electricity. Back in the days of nuclear electricity "too cheap to meter" some folk installed it!

You may well use a peak of over 3kW to boil a kettle (or twice that with a fan heater) but the proportion of time that you require peak power is low. At night and unoccupied during daytime you are likely down to the base load of under 100W consisting of the various mobile phone chargers, TVs, PCs, game consoles, videos, phones and routers.

The main power grid struggles a bit when a major sporting event synchronises everyones attempt to boil a kettle simultaneously.

envy at those countries that haven't

Yes. The rise of CO2 continues. We should be in a strong cyclical cooling at the moment but instead the temperature is holding steady. Accelerated warming will pick up again in a few years.

[Man at B&Q]

nergy' ('renewable' because it starts up

turns) is always quoted in terms of the

her this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

er, wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

If you want to counter the "renewable" argumantyou need to at least have a reasonable counter argument.

Hint: how many of those 11000 will want to boil a kettle at the same time?

Hint: Look up posts about diversity on electrical circuits in the home.

MBQ

[Terry Fields]

It's 570W average, so come the Green Revolution I can use three times as much!

I think that was based on a view of fusion research.

Absolute minimum load here is 97W.

Ah, was this the strong cyclical cooling not predicted by the models (anyone remember them?)

[Terry Fields]

I'm not countering it, it doesn't need countering as it's so flaky.

I'm just taking the p1ss.

Quite a few, if they all have an evening meal in the evening.

Don't need to. I was just glad to finally get a measure of 'the home' (someone did ask about it on here recently).

[Chris J Dixon]

('renewable' because it starts up

is always quoted in terms of the

this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

At least they gave the actual power figure, more often than not they only use the "homes" figure.

As to its accuracy, if you average over the year, it isn't too bad a number. My usage over a good number of years is not far from 4000 kWh per year, which works out at a little under 500 W, continuously.

Chris

[Martin Brown]

energy' ('renewable' because it starts up

turns) is always quoted in terms of the

this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

Cup Final interval or Wimbledon Mens final day every last one of them. Same for any other major TV event that has short gaps in proceedings.

Their number seems rather high to me but then I don't use electricity for either space heating or hot water unless the boiler has gone wrong. The number depends critically on the exact amount of heating allocated to electricity consumption in the home.

An average home isn't a bad power unit for public consumption. Far better than London double decker buses, horsepower or elephants.

[Broadland Wanderer]

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

That's about par for the course. Historical data on s/s maximum demands compared to number of properties gives an average admd of somewhere between 1 and 2 kva for planning purposes. They were figures I used when I was in distribution.

[Jethro_uk]

Vaguely reminds of the signage in lifts: "Maximum x Kg/y persons". There can be a wide variance in the ratio of x/y.

[Andy Burns]

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

The figure for the house probably *is* the average consumption, what's the betting the figure quoted for the windwmill is the peak?

[Martin Brown]

Virtually certain I would say! That is typically what they do.

Same with using installed capacity as the favoured measure for wind power rather than delivered useful kWhr to the grid.

[Bill Wright]

The windfarms would need to power peak demand, not average demand. Average demand over 24 hours is irrelevant. Obviously.

Irrelevant.

So how will windmills cope?

No there isn't. No sign whatsoever.

The rise of CO2 continues. That wasn't the question.

Bill

[Brian Gaff]

Ah yyes, I think this bit of rubbish is in a similar realm as Music power for amplifiers, and clinically proven for headache pills.

Brian

[Brian Gaff]

It also does not say all at the same time does it?

Brian

[meow2222]

energy' ('renewable' because it starts up

turns) is always quoted in terms of the

this is a 1-bed flat or a 4-bed

wash your smelly clothes, or cook a

envy at those countries that haven't

1.8kW is a fair estimate of average power consumption per (average) dwelling. But the sums indicate they've used peak windmill output versus average house consumption - so its miles out for that reason.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

"number of 'homes' it *could* power"..in a howling gale as long as they are all basically cut off because a tree fell across the power lines....

[alan]

remember them?)

They keep changing the model when the predicted results don't match reality, and then pretend that the new predictions are true.

Even in the short term the models don't work. Now that the TV broadcasters seem to think it a good idea to have local weather followed

30 seconds later with national weather we can often see that during those 30 seconds the weather predicted by the models has changed. The two forecasts don't match!

[alan]

Put an advert break in the middle of a popular soap opera and 11000 kettles go on.