Induced atmospheric oscilltions

In my case, the change over happens automaticaly. and will return to 'grid' once the supply is restored.

Yes we are still a long way off being able to provide all our electricity needs but we have come a long way in the 12 years I have had solar PV.

The car charging is a bit different as most domestic charging take place during off peak periods when AIUI wind turbines are often curtailed from lack of demand. My daughter has only used charging stations a handful of times in the last 10,000 miles and then only while on holiday.

My space heating is renewable all the time I can put the effort in.

Whole house, or selected circuits?

And a decent sized substation, and/or a small nuclear reactor.,...

One idea they are considering, is the usage of a battery at the station as a "smoothing reservoir". With the intention of providing a higher peak current, then after the auto is gone from the pad, the battery will recharge at a slower rate to refill itself.

And one of the reasons this is going to work, is that battery will be a different type than the one in the auto. It will also be a different kind of battery from the one in the picture below.

Something similar to this idea, except the battery has a lot more charging cycles in it [Porsche Charging Trailer 2.1MWh].

Paul

Whole house. It's happened once in the 2 years since I've had solar panels

- for about 2 minutes.

That is not going to work well at a UK motorway services where they may need a couple of dozen such chargers with little time between each car requiring charging.

When heavy goods vehicles (HGV) become electric the requirement for large amounts of energy will increase. Where as car may be 1kWh for 5 miles a HGV is more like 1kWh for 1 mile.

Everywhere you look the infrastructure to support net zero is becoming a lot more complex and expensive, and possibly far from net zero for the lifetime of all this extra equipment/infrastructure.

The equipment at the charging station may not be the overall problem. The National Grid needs a major upgrade to support all the future solar and wind farms.

Domestic usage of electricity is set to increase by at least 2x if around 20 million homes are going to switch from Natural Gas or oil central heating to "clean" electric heating, and we all switch from ICE vehicles to EVs.

It's not going to be a sudden break, though. 'Net zero' sounds, and is presented as, some sort of countdown, when suddenly everything kicks in. Two things:

Firstly, As heat pumps and EVs increase, so will electricity supply. If it doesn't, and demand outstrips supply, then yes, the use of electricity (buying EVs, electric furnaces, etc.) might have to be scaled back until things stabilise.

I think that's a possibility, if only because patterns of use and supply from renewables are hard (but not impossible) to predict. But it's not inevitable, and planning is needed. Now.

Secondly, people aren't (that) stupid, and plan their buying and use decisions around what's available. EV demand for example will hit the buffers when charging for various uses (commercial and residential) reaches capacity. That'll be when it becomes inconvenient (on site not possible, huge queues at public charging points), or too expensive. We're a way from that at the moment, but is I think the present defining variable of mass EV adoption.

I would have thought that's a very conservative estimate on current patterns of consumption. In any event, production has to increase, and/or consumption has to decrease. On the latter, retrofit. And as I say, plan.

The government has set a target of 600,000 heat pumps per year so that may indicate 30 years for the country to substantially come off natural gas for central heating. However, there is also a policy of financially penalising boiler manufacturers if they sell too many gas boilers rather than ASHPs. This could/will artificially push up the price of a gas boiler and persuade manufactures to ditch gas very much sooner sooner than 30 years.

The Government has already indicated when new ICE and hybrid vehicles can not longer be sold and it's still likely to be a 10 year period until then.

The present government promise is to double onshore wind, triple solar power, and quadruple offshore wind by 2030. A 5 year period. Solar 40GW by 2030 Offshore wind 60GW by 2035

The latter of these points means that we will be very reliant very soon on energy sources that are very intermittent and with a need to invest heavily in infrastructure and additional backup.

The supply from wind and solar are not hard to predict at all.

Solar will produce little in the short winter months and nothing at night.

Wind will do what it does now with years of real data for 10,000+ wind turbines. Day to day there can be a 30:1 variation in what wind generates and there will be periods when the wind hardly blows for a week or more. The same holds for the 10k wind turbines now as it does for 20k or 30k wind turbines in the future.

As for usage patterns the main one to consider is that people will want to heat there houses during the winter. You can devise all kinds of usage patterns when demand is low and generation is marginal but you have to plan for the worst case. A cold winter week when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine.

But that time there may not be anything but EVs in the market place. The same may true about alternative forms of heating.

Back in the real world, is electricity consumption going fall - not likely. What are we going to retrofit to decrease electric consumption?

Now what are we planning for, a couple of hundred billion to install batteries etc. because we seem to be going down the wrong path with intermittent generation or a more balance or different path for cleaner net zero generation?

I believe you are correct that the full change will not be in 5 or 10 years as reality will set in and goalposts will be moved. Part of this will be because of the cost of the extra infrastructure and backup that will be passed on to the consumer.

In the run up to the General election Labour promised up to £1,400 off the annual household (energy) bill by 2030 because "wind and solar were cheaper than gas". This promise has now been watered down to a target figure of £300, I wonder why?

Ultimately if you perform cost benefit analysis on electrical power and looks at viable solutions, the answer is very simple clear and unambiguous.

We will need small nuclear power stations to supply local demand hot spots, like service stations, electric trains, and industrial parks and data centres.

Renewable energy will simply not feature as it is far too expensive, not just in itself, but in terms of the ancillary kit to keep it useful at times of no wind and/or sun.

Fossil energy will rise in price and become too expensive also.

Several challenges face us:

1. The electrical capacity will need up to a ten fold increase. To do this without making the country look like a cats cradle of power lines involves building generation close to demand. Bye Bye wind and solar farms (and good riddance) and say hello to small modular reactors. In your back yard. Relax. They will be about as obtrusive as a Tesco's supermarket and of similar size.

1. Every single industrial process that involves coal or gas will need to be performed in a different way, or replaced with an alternative methodology. Smelting metals, making concrete and fertilizers...Only a very few instances of e.g. plastics use where cost is no big deal will remain with petroleum sources.

2. Cheap transport will probably be electric rail and fast nuclear ship. It is doubtful that electric aircraft will ever have the range, and they will be limited to synthetic fuel - probably very expensive kerosene.

1. As far as domestic transport goes, it is likely, though less certain, that it will simply become a rarity. Town dwellers will have everything delivered, and work from home, or use public transport - driverless busses and taxis. Suburbanites will have their own EV charging points.

2. Domestic hearing will be heatpump or plain ordinary electric heating. Economies of scale will have made nuclear cheaper than gas.

1. As transport costs rise, so the dynamics of manufacturing will change away from just in time globalisation towards more hi tech and local. Cheap labour in Taiwan becomes robot labour in Birmingham, If you need a spare part, its specification will be online and a robot will *make* it for you ...

2. The changes will take more than 30 years. To convert to coal from horse/wind/water took about 100 years, and from coal to oil around another 100. Significant progress will have been made by 2050 though.

1. Government has shown itself to be utterly incapable of selecting the right solution. The market will have to do it all. So a return to more laissez faire free market political flavours is indicated.

2. In a similar vein, it is abundantly clear that 'job creation' is probably the worst possible means of wealth distribution, and while money can be printed, real wealth in terms of tangible assets cannot, and the more likely future of society is one of a smaller population of leisured classes. Underpinned by some sort of universal pension.

And so on. It will be as radically different from today as the 1930s was. No one can second guess it, which is why government should simply deregulate where possible, patch any cracks in social welfare and let the market do the rest.

The people in the wheel house, have an entirely different perspective on the topic. They recognize some parts as potentially "hard" requirements, and other things that happen will be covered with "Oopsy" behavior.

Let's hope your ASHP runs often enough to keep you warm.

Your auto, not so much. The "plan" in more than one country, is to have as a vehicle target, half as many BEVs as there used to be ICE vehicles. And that's a "target", which means saying the word "Oopsy" and delivering less than 50% BEVs. More than one country knows of this plan, implying the report had wide distribution and approval around the world.

At least one country takes it seriously (their BEV transition), but not many others do.

For some, it's the sheer scale of the problem. The populous countries can never really address the transition. It would cost too much.

Paul

Just on that point, retrofit homes and businesses with insulation and (if needed) ventilation to offset the increase in ASHP electricity consumption. Yes, electricity consumption will increase, but not by as much.

So much for 'free' renewables.

Are we assuming that the AI data centres, which will be vital for proper government, will have their own private nuclear power stations built?

Do you REALLY think any commercial building and as many homes as can take it are NOT insulated up yo the hilt?

That boat sailed in 2000

Along with everything else, yes.

I see too many people who are not aware of the potential problems and if the existing energy policies are continued how much backup is required to make it work reliably.

Wind is unreliable so build more and more wind turbines as the wind must blow somewhere. Unless you have near 100% of the number of wind turbines to supply the country's needs at that particular location on the day the wind does blow it's not a solution.

You have the people who think by generation more solar than they use in a year is part of the solution. Unfortunately they are not storing the excess they generate in the summer months for use in the winter months.

Yes - even basic things like loft insulation. I don't know why. It's something I'm going to be looking at over the next year or so.

Nope. Feel free to contradict me. But first, a sample:

Loft Insulation: Around 7.9 million homes with lofts (31%) have less than

Solid Wall Insulation: This is perhaps the most significant challenge. At the end of December 2024, there were an estimated 8.5 million homes with solid walls in Great Britain. Of these, it is estimated that 876,000 (10 per cent) had solid wall insulation and 7.6 million (90 per cent) were uninsulated. This means 7.7 million homes with solid walls (90% of the total) do not have solid wall insulation.**

**Household Energy Efficiency Statistics 2024 | News | Solid Wall Insulation Guarantee Agency. Energy Performance of Buildings Certificates Statistical Release: October to December 2024 England and Wales - GOV.UK.

I thought Hydrogen was to be the great energy storage medium while replacing petrol into the bargain. Still seems a bit theoretical.

TW

Last year's solution, and maybe next year's, but not this year's.

(Apparently there are natural underground reserves of hydrogen.)