A chilling forecast.

[TimW]

See CPRE's campaign to stop wasting agricultural land with solar farms and to place them on rooftops and over car parks. TW

[TimW]

[...]

Nobody ever suggested just replacing coal with wind because nobody is that stupid. Obv a renewable energy system requires all kinds of changes in infrastructure, a mixture of different generation methods, storage, hydrogen, insulation, batteries, backups, reduced demand, all sorts of things.

TW

[Fredxx]

So what you're saying is we should ditch wind and retain coal?

[Fredxx]

It's expensive, because when the wind doesn't blow you still need all the fossil fuel generation hardware as well as all the windmills.

Unless you have nuclear in mind?

[Spike]

Well, the Germans ditched nuclear and opened lignite power stations instead. Completely barking.

[alan_m]

The "small" one I've seen in Northampton is approx 0.5 miles x 0.25 miles. There is one in Wales at around 0.8 square mile.

Multiple small solar farms (the size of car parks) are possibly not financially viable.

If placed above car parks they would probably need to light the area underneath during the day and have to make the structure vandal proof to stop the idiots climbing on top of the structure.

[Rod Speed]

Nope, not if there are gaps between the rows of panels as there has to be to be able to angle the panels as they need to be.

Wouldnt be hard to make it impossible to climb up the structure.

[Animal]

That is one of the UK's biggest problems, in area after area that's what's happening

[Animal]

plenty of people have and are

the necessary amount of storage is not doable. Work through the numbers instead of making handwavey assumptions and you'll see that rapidly

anyone that thinks H2 is going to solve anything really is clueless

would be good, but HMG has no clue how to achieve it. Rather it exacerbates the blockages to insulation.

Batteries are absolutely not a sensible approach to intermittent renewable sources. Again, work through the numbers instead of playing dumb

?

There is fat to be trimmed, but not a great amount. Beyond that cutting demand is really unmet demand, which results in all sorts of shortages and privations, leading to suffering, lost opportunity, illness and death. How is that a good idea?

but you don't know what. Art students should stick to art.

[Spike]

See how you cope with this, which uses real-world numbers:

Combined-cycle Gas turbine-powered generators are quick to start up (~45 minutes) compared to a coal-fired power station’s several days.

The combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) uses ‘waste’ heat from the turbine to provide steam pressure to run a second generator, thus improving the overall efficiency of the system.

During fire-up the turbines are very inefficient, from ~0% for the first 5 minutes, to 25% to about 45 minutes, when the second part of the combined-cycle kicks in.

With 60% efficiency, each GW of power output uses 1/0.6=1.67GW of gas.

Interestingly, if a 1GW CCGT was replaced by a 1GW wind farm, real-world data suggests the latter, over a year, would produce an average of 0.36GW, leaving 0.64GW to be supplied by the CCGT in an intermittent regime of stop/start and throttled-back running in which it might be only 40% efficient, as it now has to follow the variabilities of the wind.

So over the year the CCGT will use 0.64/0.4=1.6GW of gas, which is the same as if it ran in efficient mode and the wind farm didn’t exist, the latter having cost money and materials to no positive real-world effect.

Now multiply this single instance by 11000, the number of turbines in the fleet, and it becomes clear what a waste of resources renewables are.

The Republic of Ireland had an independent survey carried out of their employment of CCGT, which found that it was more efficient (which means it used less gas) to run them in flat-out mode all the time, and sell the wind energy to the UK.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you actually look at real numbers, instead of hand-waving ‘solutions’ that have no thought behind them.

[Tim Streater]

In other words, by building the wind farm and its CCGT backup, you've built two power stations and achieved the output of one power station. Now Pancho needs to explain to us why we should bother to do that.

[The Natural Philosopher]

This is all covered by the concept of a 'renewable grid' rather than a 'renewable power station'...and total lifetime costs versus total lifetime carbon emissions and TWh of *reliable* electricity generated.

Once you cost the total *grid* out renewable wind energy ceases to be the cheapest and becomes f****ng expensive. And not very good at saving CO2 emissions at all.

[Tim Streater]

Oh for sure. My bon mot was more in the sense of a slogan or bumper sticker to bring a particular bit of nonsense into sharp focus.

[charles]

So did the coal fired one in Edinburgh where I 'worked' as a studentb in

1960.

Then, the remaining heat was used by the outdoor sea water swimming pool, to make it comfortable. The North Sea is not very warm.

[Clive Arthur]

Was that Portobello? I was peripherally involved with its demolition, installing vibration monitoring equipment on nearby buildings. Up and down from LHR on the shuttle every few weeks to maintain the system and replace consumables.

[charles]

It was, indeed, Portobello. The loss of the swimming pool was a sad consequence. I'd had many happy days there as a teenager. An easy tram journey from home.

[Joe]

And as long as the heights of politics remain a very lucrative, lifetime-long career, nothing will change. We need people in government who have learned more than just how to stab each other in the back politely.

[Rod Speed]

Even with those, the fundamental problem is that govt is nowhere near a powerful as some fools claim it is.

Have fun listing what a govt composed of those who have learned more than just how to stab each other in the back politely could have done about the situation the UK is currently in, which is almost entirely due to circumstances completely outside the govt's control, with the electorate which is stupid enough to pull the plug on the current govt when they don't like the current economic situation.

[The Natural Philosopher]

In short, Politicians are, in every other field but the gaining of political power, complete f****ng *amateurs*.

And sadly so too are civil servants

[Pancho]

Thanks, I will have a read.

FWIW, I'm sure I have mentioned before energy density of wind and the area of sea surrounding the UK means very large amounts of electrical generation are possible. That energy density does not prohibit wind as a solution. Particularly floating solutions such as Hywind.

A sensible discussion shouldn't misrepresent this. You can quote economics or other factors, such as intermittency, but energy density isn't one of them. I also very sceptical of EROEI as a block. Concrete I suspect is also not a block, there are ways around it.

Most of the time they didn't want to talk to me. Very few attempted to understand my proposals, they just wanted to see something working. It was one of the benefits of doing rapid small projects. Less politics and the proof of the pudding is "does it work". More fun.

FWIW, As I always point out I am, and always have been, since the 1970s, a Fanboi of fast breeder nuclear rectors not wind.