Not too surprising, if true. We used to cook on gas boiled out of coal, about half of which was hydrogen. Hydrogen being what it is, it is reasonable to believe there was once more hydrogen in the coal, and some leaked away. There might well be natural rock dome formations which might capture it, as it tried to travel ever upward.
"The big question that remains is where exactly all this hydrogen is located, which will affect whether it is accessible."
That's not the way town/coal gas is made.
The only flammable gas *in* the coal is methane. The hydrogen is produced by passing steam through red hot coke, resulting in hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
+1
Briefly and not exhaustively; it is the way it was done originally, from bituminous coal, with the resulting coke being sent on to the steel works. It also left a residue of various tars and creosote, some of which contaminated the site and made redevelopment difficult after they became redundant post 1967.
The producer gas and water gas methods were later and used in a "swing" cycle, the coke was heated up by blowing air through it to give off CO and nitrogen and once hot the steam was introduced for the endothermic water gas reaction. The carbon monoxide and nitrogen given off in the first reaction being used for process heat and to raise and superheat the steam for the second one.
This method reduced the amount of nitrogen getting into the town gas.
Go and look at the figures for January.
There's ***** all sunlight anyway at that time of year, and a couple of times we had windless days too.
Earlier today I read that the Govt have decided to put a whole load of plutonium in deep storage. Why aren't they using it for reactors?
Andy
Jesus Christ we've got one of these idiot greenies down the road from us shes quite adamant that the bloody wind will always be blowing from somewhere even if its just a couple of turbines!
Shes the sort of silly bugger that has the ear of some local councillors who think green is great nothing else matters!..
And Nuclear is the most dangerous power there is ever and is the most polluting!
How can you do that in reality you can't!..
We dont have any geared to use it
You live near my sister?
Modern reactors still produce plutonium.
25% of your consumption? Including heating?
The point with solar in the UK, is that most energy is needed in winter. Ignoring that is being disingenuous.
How does seasonal predictability help?
By identifying that solar is somewhat useless in winter so it might as well be ignored for a couple of months and all the generation for that period has to come from other sources.
It doesn't help with the problems of a intermittent supply for the grid.
It slightly reduces wear and tear on the gas power stations that are needed - they can run all the time in winter.
Not useless. It is of less use. And other renewables, and sources, are available when it is of less use.
Which is planned for. And so far, so good, in terms of a reliable supply. Albeit at a cost.
Not that I have great faith in the regulator or the industry management.
Solar is not completely useless in winter. I was in Germany in winter about 10 years ago and the host of the house showed me the results of his solar panels in December and they were not too bad.
But, yes, solar in itself is not the most efficient form of energy.
Similar here and up thread I said it was not a solution for 3 of the winter months in my case.
It was quite interesting to see, in those early years, that the 4kW array allowable was almost a perfect size for my roof and produced just the right amount of electrical energy to meet my net needs (a fraction under 3MWh/annum) in a far less than optimum situation.
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