semi OT.: How are the might fallen...

I thought he was dead?

Oh ok, he is.

Yes, sadly.

It'd be interesting to see how his (very nicely expressed and thought through) ideas have survived the test of time.

Indeed. So many Greens read that as a blue print on how to achieve 'renewable energy' whereas the actual text was a litany if how impossible it was.

Last time we spoke was at a party that was very Green infested and I asked him how we were going to fill the gaps in between the renewable energy spikes and he looked around to see if anyone was listening and said quietly '70GW of nuclear power?'.

AI cant make the sun shine or the wind blow.

No amount of technology can do that. Ergo all 'intermittent' renewable energy needs something added on to fill the gaps.

It just so happens that nuclear power is (much much) cheaper than renewables plus storage plus wide area distribution , overall.

So one has to ask why didn't we use nuclear instead?

And the answer to that is in the dusty annals of the German power industry, Russian funded anti-nuclear sentiment (buy gas instead) and the corrupt European Union that took their money to put a 'renewable obligation' in place.

It is incomplete. He wrote that before the intermittency issues really got obvious.

I did some work on that. And got shouted down as a 'climate denier'

Of course it was. pretend windmills for the greens plus filthy lignite and cheap Russian gas was the way to do it.

Until Russia attacked the West and threatened to cut it off.

Interesting speech by Mark Carny at Davos.

Only Miliband. Neither Reform nor the Tories are really fans of renewables, any more - they (Tories) just don't know how to admit how wrong they were.

Reform never were in favour and neither back in the day was the intelligent arm of UKIP.

Only the Greens and Lin Dims and the tossers in the SNP who CantDoSuns™ and are proud of it..

Have you considered a job as a communication manager? I'm sure The Whitehouse could use your skills.

The price of storage has reduced rapidly but the massive amount of storage required hasn't. If we all swap our gas central heating and vehicles to electric the amount of storage required may be x2 to x3 times that currently needed.

It's all very well people investing perhaps £5k to £10k in domestic batteries to make better use of their own solar or to charge up at times when there is a cheap over supply. Consider that if that every household in the country had to do this it would be an upfront cost/investment of at least £150 billion, and this doesn't take into account industry demand. It doesn't take into account that it will not store the over capacity of solar in the summer to use in the winter nor cope with the intermediate nature of wind which may fail to blow for a week or more.

Prices have fallen but I very much doubt if anyone in the UK can realistically live off grid for 365 days year. We currently have to run two systems to guarantee continuity of supply. Things are only going to get worse if we start relying more on intermittent renewable generation, as seems to be Government policy.

But many industries that were state owned in the past suffered from a serious lack of timely and ongoing investment. The same incompetent politicians who we have been complaining for the past 30 years would effectively would have been running these industries and would have raided the revenue they generated, as they did in the past to the detriment of investing in the future.

When many state owned industries were privatised the state couldn't actually afford the massive investment required to modernise or to maintain the infrastructure of these industries.

Application in the post . . .

'Intermittancy', in other words.

I believe things will change in terms of domestic. Domestic storage and PV installations will increase, and cost will come down - a decent install certainly <£10k. Off-peak top-ups and vehicle charging will become more common. Homes will be pretty much import off-grid for all but 2 or 3 months of the year. It's working out how that intermittency can be best be managed that's the issue. If SMRs take off then that could help - a lot.

Right now the sensible discussion isn't about 100% renewables. It's about consuming less and addressing the times renewables can't cope.

IMVHO :-)

And the privatised industries wouldn't invest while they had massive shareholder and management payouts to service.

We'll never know exactly how it would have turned out. My reflex is to support public ownership and investment. Maybe, yes, take the hit on efficiency. But long term, public ownership wouldn't have generated the wealth inequalities we see now.

Everything to do with policy, nothing to do with profits.

Old Labours heart still beats on. There are no massive profits in electricity generation except in the renewables line.

By far the better option.

Well of course it isn't. Its about how to scrap renewables at the lowest cost and get on with building nuclear power so we can make everything possible electric.

Since we cannot realistically 'address the times renewables can't cope' at all.

Although there have been abuses but if a private company issues shares to raise capital in order to invest the share holders who have provided the money expect a return on that money.

A lot of that "wealth" is propping up pensions. Pension funds invest their customer's money in these companies and expect a decent return in order to pay out pensions.

Also consider that many publicly owned utilities that were privatised were overseen by a Government appointed regulator. The Government should have been on top of any abuses or excesses.

Indeed. If you have a private pension its likely its invested in stable solid 5% ROI stock.

The failure of OFGEN has been dictated by the EU politics of thge Renewable Obligation. They were no longer responsible for sane modest profit traditional companies,. but for allowing horrendous subsidies to be handed over to fly-by-night 'renewable' companies who filled their boots and moved on, or disappeared.

It's not the privatisation of energy that is the problem - it is the politicisation of it.

I'm pretty sure Mary Whitehouse is not taking on any new staff.

(Or was there some other Whitehouse intended?)

I'm pretty sure Mary Whitehouse is not taking on any new staff.

(Or was there some other Whitehouse intended?)

There is a big difference between saving a handful of historic windmills and building perhaps another 30,000 on top of hills in what currently are natural beauty spots.

Even if someone wanted planning permission for a "traditional" windmill it's likely to be a single entity and not a field full of hundreds of them

Tinny vs Woody?

I haven't got any actual figures, but I suspect the hardware is a bit cheaper because the volume of uptake has increased, but with the budget increase in National Insurance and the freezing of taxation thresholds the installation and maintenance costs are likely to have increased significantly.