OT: energy infrastructure

[Andrew]

But isn't it a free motability car, with all servicing and repairs done by KwikFit ?, so naturally you would use it (even though it supposed to be for your other half) in preference.

[The Natural Philosopher]

If I had a free BEC of course I'd use it for 99% of my journeys if in fact the electricity at the current 'we have to pay for renewables somehow' price wasn't in all probability more expensive or as expensive as diesel even given the 150% duty and VAT on road diesel.

The problem is it wouldn't be free, it would be f****ng expensive, and it would need maintenance and MOT and spare parts just the same as my existing Batmobile, and I still need that for *some* journeys

[Tim Streater]

That's simply because, unlike my set of Mac Minis here, and the software I'm writing, I get no noticeable benefit from an iphone and thus perforce don't use it to anything like its potential. Potential that a kiddywink uses, because kiddywinks (and it seems a lot of adults too) spend hours on their phones phoning (who, FFS?) and texting (again, to whom, and why) and generally fiddling about. Thus they are fully up to speed on the device, what it can do, and its features. Features which, for me, are largely a yawn. WhatsApp is a case in point. I put this on the phone and then joined a couple of family groups, expecting that some interesting posts might ensue. Did they? Did they hell. It was all "Went to the shops" and "took the dog for a walk, here's some pictures of it biting the heads off the local whippets". Dull dull dull. So that was the end of WhatsApp.

So TNP is right. We do tech stuff that a kiddywink wouldn't know how to. Others here do other tech stuff that *I* wouldn't know how to (or lack the tools, motor skills, etc, whatever). And so on.

[Animal]

Sounds like you've bought into peak oil. There is no good basis for thinking oil will get excessively costly.

If and when solar, wind energy etc are good ideas, people will do them. Govt subsidy is effectively an admission that they don't make sense. In reality in limited situations they now do, in most not. Sensible unbiased education would get a lot of pv implemented, as well as a lot of it poopooed.

[alan_m]

Much like subsidies for heat pumps. I suspect the soon HPs will start getting bad press. Rather than installing them only in properties where they could work well they are being advertised on social media by installation companies set up solely to to claim the 'Government' cash. They are being advertised as a straight swap for an existing boiler with no mentions that other components in the CH may need radical changes and/or extra insulation being required. Having milked the subsidies system these companies will be long gone when the shit hits the fan.

[bert]

C2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. Below 0.02% becomes critical for plant life Of the 0.04% about 10% is from human activity Of the 10% of the 0.04% about 1% comes from the UK Why are we trashing our economy?

See above. Go talk to India and China.

Miniscule - see above - compared to the earths interaction with the sun.

<Snip>

[Animal]

Not only is it miniscule, and not only do we have no way to affect what China does, there is also no serious evidence that reducing it to zero would do anything useful whatever. These measures will however cost a lot of lives. Stupidity only covers so much, beyond that insanity is a better descriptor.

[Vir Campestris]

I've been meaning to dig the numbers out, and you might be able to do it.

When I talk about reliability "Five nines" is a good number for a lot of critical things. That means it's available 99.999% of the time.

I think the grid is that important.

Suppose we turned off all the fossil stuff, and relied on wind. How many wind turbines would we need?

Somewhere the worst case output for the UK wind farm fleet must be available, and that would allow us to calculate the required fleet size.

I'm certain it's a lot less than the "25% of all power" the media keep waffling on about.

And I'm aware that the blades are all made out of non-recyclable plastic composites.

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

Without storage, so many that a unit of electricity would cost around £10

I did it years ago. The paper I wrote is on the gridwatch site somewhere.

The simple message you need to carray away is 'reneables are unsustainable and simply dont work without so many bolt on extras that the overall cost and energy required to build and maintain the system is never repaid over their very short lifetime by the energy they produce.

Nuclear is simply cheaper safer and better.

[Tim Streater]

Less than 3.5% as I type.

[Vir Campestris]

It would be interesting to have an update.

Andy

[Vir Campestris]

Funny, I was out for a walk this morning. I was thinking it would be a nice day to go sailing, a decent breeze, and I noticed that the whole of our local windfarm was running.

I'm sure that it's a lot less than 3.5% sometimes. How much less I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised to find zero. Rien, nada, nothing. SFA.

Andy

[Animal]

Round here there's a small windgen that spins most of the time. And that does not align with the basic realities of windgens. Makes ya think huh. How would you explain it?

[Tim Streater]

Wind is just under 41% this morning. And gas has been dialled back to match.

[The Natural Philosopher]

But they still have to man the gas plants and service the debt incurred building them and keep them maintained. Even though wind has pushed them off the grid

[Tim Streater]

Well indeed. But it makes the point that you have to back up the wind with an equal amount of something else.

[Andy Burns]

Oxford have upped the ante, from 25% of our electricity to every single Watt of power the UK uses for all purposes ...

"it’s entirely possible to power Great Britain on wind and solar alone"

Mind you, nobody would be able to afford two matchsticks to rub together afterwards ...

[Chris Hogg]

The Royal Society appears to differ. They say it can't be done without huge energy storage capacity, and we don't have the wherewithal to provide that capacity, either locations or finance.

The original Royal Society report is here

[Andy Burns]

I thought Oxford did say it would need massive grid upgrade and storage?

I interpreted their "could be done" as "could be done, provided copper and lithium were free" ...

[Tim Streater]

Well, that's the thing isn't it. That Oxford report just aggregates the potential output over a year and compares that with demand aggregated over a year. As several of us have pointed out, that doesn't cut the mustard, since at present there's no storage (apart from Dinorwig) and AFAIK no prospect of any at any scale. The Oxford report mentions storage, but only just.

As I have posted a couple of times, to have battery backup for a 5 or so day period when renewables produce next to nothing in winter, if built using batteries like the one that was installed in South Australia, would cost near enough £1000,000,000,000.00. Can anyone see that cost coming down by a factor of 100? Ever?

Such an installation would require quite a biyt of land, too, although that would probably be distributed across the country.