There is no reason why we can't burn fossil fuels, at least until they run out. The argument that doing so causes global warming is a bit iffy. Scientists have actually acknowledged that the solar output has been increasing and that they don't know when it will peak and start to cool again. the best guess is ~2014 ATM.
Melt rock and use it to boil water when needed? Perfectly safe as long as they don't have a tsunami and the resulting steam explosion.
I was out sailing on Sunday, with my zero-carbon wooden dinghy.
The one that's painted with epoxy paints, has an aluminium alloy mast, and sails made from oil-based plastics.
Andy
Its a bit easier to predict when half time will happen than predicting the weather. You can spin up a few gas turbines/stored water systems a few seconds before it happens. You can't do that for wind turbines if there is a sudden lull.
I think the evidence is that the earth has been cooling sharply since
2008 or so.All to do with various cycles. Sun, pacific decadal, el nino, North Atlantic oscillation.Precession of equinoxes etc etc etc..blah blah..
Nope. In a closed universe negative numbers are greater than infinity.
Lets all chip in for a one way ticket
Exactly. The rest of us are paying for that.
I think you need to rethink this one.
Bzzzt wrong.
...and you were doing so well right up to that point.
If wind turbines were any better they would still be totally f*cking useless.
Indeed it is. Some years ago, not too long after privatisation, so keen was one very large coal fired power station to carry on generating right round the clock and effectively be always on base load, they routinely bid a very low price into the system - way below their actual cost. Payment at that time was made to all generators on the bars on an equal basis being determined by the cost of the last one required to meet national demand. Things were tweaked (can't recall how) to allow the nukes to carry on running round the clock to avoid xenon poisoning problems with step changes of loads on the gas cooled reactors. So it was only coal, gas and oil that effectively bid into the system. The underbidding kept efficiency right up, and their emissions improved a bit. Significant money was being made. Load factors were high and investors were happy.
Then one balmy night the shit hit the fan, the load dropped a bit more than normal, as someone got their sums really wrong. I'm not entirely sure how this situation was handled, but someone, somewhere, effectively made a few million quid that night (at say GBP20/MWh) on what had suddenly became a zero cost product across the country.
After that episode this generators always bid somewhere a bit closer to their actual generating costs.
That works for small amounts of wind generation, add a few GW of the things and it all goes Pete Tong.
Almost without exception, coal gas and nuclear generation is more efficient when operated at full output. Where design problems restrict output or there are plant problems, then efficiency can drop off significantly. For instance one coal fired power station has always been more expensive to run than another one just a few miles away built at about the same time. That it can only run at around 90% of rated output is the main factor in this, what makes it even worse is this lower efficiency increases cost, which means it is forced to run on a flexible basis, meaning costs are even higher as the plant wears out faster and efficiency drops even lower. Some of that flexible running and the consequent drop in efficiency and increased emissions can be directly attributable to the unpredictability of wind turbines.
I don't have a unique idea, but.... There is a lot of pressure on the motor industry to develop an electric car which can charge up all night and run round town all day. i don't know enough about it to say for sure it will become a reality but if it does it will have profound implications for this whole problem of delivering power when you need it, not when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining.
Tim W
I think the problem is that with current technology there isn't enough uranium to generate anything like the amounts of power we need in non- breeder Uranium-cycle reactors[1]. Fast breeders could get close to a useful sustainable energy output[2] but are still relatively unproven and expensive. Thorium looks promising (to the Chinese, who are not known for soft-headedness in economic matters) but is still pretty speculative technology.
Ironically what both (current technology) nuclear and wind (and many other renewables such as PV, wave and tide) have in common, when used for electricity generation, is that they really need some form of storage, or quick-response (and inevitably fossil-fuelled) fill-in generation capacity. However as oil gets more expensive we may find ourselves using electricity for oil-replacement technology such as hydrogen where storage over a period of weeks is much more feasible, and obviously renewables such as wind would be a good match for that.
Whilst the ideal major source of non-fossil energy is perhaps something like Thorium which would seem to avoid the problems of restricted supply, horrendous long-term (circa million years) radioactive waste management and proliferation potential, that's going to take realistically at least a couple of decades to develop and roll out[3]. In the meantime we *can* with today's technology generate useful amounts of non-fossil energy from renewables.
[1] According to Prof David Mackay in his 'Sustainable Energy - Without The Hot Air' we can't sustainably fuel our existing installed base of once-through Uranium fission reactors with existing land-based sources of Uranium:
its doable at about 30 grand a pop.And an uncertain battery life. fortunately the tme between midnight and 6 a.m. is one of low electricity demand, so its a good time to charge.
Wind however, dosen't tie itself to any demand pattern. Windy days are seldom very cold or very hot days.
I part agree. Therer almost certainly is enough uranium, and we have a lot of plutonium, not exactly lying about, but 'avaialable'
I really don't see large scale gas storage as being feasible. the energy density is too low. Liquids are a bit better, but we don't have much storage capacity for that either. Wheras coal can be piled up and we dont need so very much uranium. After all each reactor carries a year of fuel rods inside it anyway.
No we cant. Or rather, if we try, it will be less and less effective at reducing fossil fuel.
renewale can only work in symbiosis with hydro - which we don't have enough of - or fossil fuel. By themselves they are useless.
For every wind farm, you also need a conventional power station. Because nuclear can't dispatch properly, that means your a stuck with fossil fuel if you go with renewables. It weds you completely to fossil.
As I read it, that depends entirely on what you consider the reserves to be. Since uranium is barely worth mining at the moment no one is actively looking. So nop one actually knows. IIRC he als says 'abou 7450 years supply' in there somewhere.
That's total energy, not electrical. at an average of about 30GW we consume about 500W per head of electricity..so 12Kwh per day.
Or something as yet undreamed of.
Only if wind is economic, which it is on some occasions. e.g. we used a wind generator rather than pay for 10km of powerline to the main grid.
Here in NZ wind can be a good idea. We have vast hydroelectric power capability, with not enough rainfall to keep them running all the time. The power from wind generators means the power from hydro generators can be reduced quickly, saving the water in the large dams. Not an option in the UK I agree, but wind power can be economic in some places so let's not rubbish it completely.
Also, we should give newer technology a chance to catch up. Wnd and solar power are getting more efficient, and will become cheaper with economies of scale.
Wind generators can be supplied and installed quickly and generating power, while your large nuclear and other generators take years to build, with no income until they are finished years later.
Then there are transmission losses. The power from wind generators can be used locally, while everybody wants nuclear power stations and coal burning stations to be as far away as possible, hence high power transmission losses and expensive lines.
Oh fair enough.
If a wind mill and batteries is actually cheaper.
Then you need some atomics :-)
IF you have massive but not quite enough hydro ALREADY, yes, you can eke that out through the dry spells.
.Wind is near he theoretical max actually, and solar is not far off.
Maybe if you build even bigger ones..you might get 3W/sq meter in a windy place.
Don't you do forward planning down there?
You can build a nuke right next door to me frankly. But you wont be so keen once you have wind farm next to you, I am sure.
Yes, now I've looked into it I see that makes sense.
Its still profitable.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.