radio 4 costing the earth / germany energy policy

[sm_jamieson]

Interesting programme on radio 4 just now about windmills, nuclear and Germany's energy policy. Available on iplayer I guess. Simon.

[sm_jamieson]

Germany's energy policy. Available on iplayer I guess.

They are going to be 80% renewable by 2050 and when not sunny or windy import hydro from Scandinavia and solar from Africa (!) by a very fat cable. Oh and nuclear from France. But when they switched off the 8 nuclear stations recently they started burning more coal to make up for it. Hmmm ...

[Brian Gaff]

I was under the impression that soon after some studies on risk they will restart nuclear. I'm afraid it has to be used, at least in the interim between now and fully renewable. I personally think that when they start putting solar panels in the desert, they will discover that harvesting power from the sun changes the climate and also when the best places are covered by wind or wave stations, this will affect it as well as ocean currents for wave energy. I guess it should be no surprise as everything is interlinked and so what do we expect?

Brian

[Andy Burns]

solar panels in the Maghreb are just as vulnerable to being taken siege as oil and gas refineries ...

[Tim+]

I was disappointed that there was no discussion of "pigonomics".

It seems that one town in Germany is being held up as an example of the joys of renewable energy as it produces 4 times as much power as it consumes and is "off-grid" with regard to importing power. It does this thanks to tons of pig slurry driving a biogas plant.

On a small scale this is all well and good but it's surely not something that you could scale up? The town must produce many more pigs than they need for local consumption and if everyone did this, the price of pork would plummet and the "reliable back-up" to their wind and solar power would become ineconomic.

Tim

[whisky-dave]

I can;t see how that would work out, if teh suns rays are hitting the sand and tehn next minute they hit a solar panel I don;t see how that will change much. obviuouly the samd will be cooler than it was.Of courdse perhsps wind directions, but I still think the desrt will be pretty hot even the solar panels may get hot too.

I agree with wave power but that could alos be an advantage, say of you don;t want a cost line eroding into the sea maybe installing those slaters ducks would give energy and protect the costline for 'free'. Although obviously the general public will be taxed on it :)

[whisky-dave]

More vunerble I'd think as a bus load of pikies might nick them. I was quite amaazed that someone went into the sahara desert and tried to destroy the camera taking one shot a day for 356 days. Africa last night BBC1 9pm

[sm_jamieson]

Found this on the solar project:

[Theo Markettos]

According to the programme they generate '4 thousand megawatt hours per year'. But watt hour/yr is a peculiar unit to choose - on average 1Wh/yr =

114uW continuous. So 4GWh/yr = 450kW. Which is hardly a large power station. Plus don't forget that it needs to overproduce to support Frankfurt, Berlin, etc (not much space for pigs in the Potsdamer Platz).

I only caught the first 5 minutes though, so they might have addressed this later on.

I suspect if you were doing this on a large scale you'd want to use crops rather than animals, as they're more efficient per land area if you aren't going to eat the meat. I'm still not sure of the economics though (how much land area you need?).

Theo

[Brian Gaff]

They wont be using those ducks. there are several small scale tests being run upin the scottish Isles at the moment. The problem it seems is going to be the silting up of areas as the currents slightly change. One unique one is going to use the tidal race between two islands.

Brian

[dennis]

If you are exporting the energy to somewhere else then it will have some effect as there will be less energy to drive the local weather and more to drive the remote areas.

It could also be a disaster unless you can actually model the effects to see what they are. They can't even model climate change or weather reliably so there is almost no chance of predicting the effects of any of the large scale renewables.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Germany's energy policy. Available on iplayer I guess.

"You and Yours" today covered the green deal (apparently, it starts today). They had an assessor come and do a house. I was plesently surprised at what he said. He was quite honest that many of the measures people talk about (double glazing, external or internal insulation cladding for 9" brick walls, etc) would not pay back in the 25 year max period.

However, the big issue at the moment is that it looks like houses with green deals outstanding on them will be difficult to sell, and if you want to pay off your green deal early (e.g. so you can sell the house without having it outstanding), the early payoff penalty is that you have to pay all the interest payments which would have been due if it had run full term.

Other interesting things - IIRC, leaseholders have the right to do green deal, which will obviously stay with the property if they move on. In a few years time, even those renting will get the right to force their landlords implement energy efficiency measures, but it wasn't stated that this had to be via the green deal.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So its an ideal political solution. The government gets to be seen to be Doing Something About It, but no one wants it so it doesn't cost anything.

Result!

[Dave Liquorice]

Oi! I want it, well not the bit of Green Deal that involves adding insulation, installing DG etc but the bit that brings in the domestic RHI payments.

[Huge]

Germany's energy policy. Available on iplayer I guess.

Any advice given by them needs to be taken with a shovelfull of salt.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Germany's energy policy. Available on iplayer I guess.

They did a brief followup today with the green deal minister (can't remember his name), due to a large postbag about the topic.

The minister couldn't believe how low the savings were on things like double glazing, underfloor insulation, etc. Remarkable how clueless the minister is on field. Sadly, I'm not surprised.

If your savings don't match the extra cost, there's no automatic come-back. You can appeal, but it has to go all the way up to the minister's boss to be signed off - so there's no effective comeback against selling against excessive claims. Apparently many people in the industry itself are very concerned about misselling, because the assessors mostly work for the companies doing the installation work. The minister didn't recognise any conflict of interest there.

Something the assessor mentioned last time which I forgot to say is that with something like a new boiler, be careful over the repayment period. This is likely to be expensive and so could be offered on a 25 year loan, whereas the boiler is only likely to last half this time. Make sure the payback is not set longer than the expected lifetime of the measure it's paying for.

[Tim Streater]

We're spending a certain amount on insulation, new boiler, etc, and accept that the payback time will prolly exceed remaining lifetime. But if you have some capital, at the moment there's no point in saving it because of the low return you get. Better to spend on making the house more comfortable, and it should also reduce future outgoings later when any pension (and any remaining capital) will only be worth tuppence-ha'penny anyway.

[Chris J Dixon]

I think I can save myself the cost of a survey:

Cavity insulation - yes loft insulation - generous double glazing - yes condensing boiler - yes programmable room stat - yes TRVs - yes Solar PV - yes

I can't really think of any additional investment that would pay for itself.

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

That is high in effect, but also in cost

The highets cost benefit of all. definitely do.

Almost completely pointless: the major gains come from draughtproofing. In older houses windows are small and not huge contributors to heat loss, and decent curtains have more effect.,

again small gains for wuite hiogh costs.

very much so. The average UK outside temp is between 9C and 11C IIRC,. so reducing internal temps from 20 to 18 will make about 20% diffrence to heating.

possibly.

absolutely not if saving energy is what you want to achieve, rather than making money off someo0ne else.

underfloor insulation, draugfhtproofing or good carpeting..

[charles]

but you need a cavity to insulate.

at night I draw the curtains - but not during the day, Double glazing does cut down draughts.