Solar panel wattage

There are some graphs of what you might expect from a panel at various times of the year. You should be able to work out how that fits with your chosen load.

In the UK panels do not output their 'rated' power! For max efficiency you would use a MPPT inverter to charge batteries, but unnecessary if the voltages match, ie 15-18V panel charging a 12V battery and use a simple regulator.

I learnt my lesson about engineering as a young graduate in his first jib, trying to make a battlefield laser rangefinder meet the requirements of the army.

I have related the story before but it bears repeating. I had spend about 6 weeks on it, and other people over a year. At best we could only get about a mile in clear weather against a highly reflective target.

One day a boffin wandered in and our team leader asked him to see if he could see what we were doing wrong. He took figures for laser power and opto detector noise figures, and came back two hours later to confirm that given that laser and that optodetector a mile in clear air against a reflective target was all it could deliver *theoretically*.

Half and hour on the back of an envelope against 18 months of skilled development showed me two things

Cf 'renewable energy'

The research phase of your project cost peanuts whereas the final purchase would be at a cost hundreds of times more. What your project needed was an optics expert.

The difference is your solution would never work as is. A real engineer would make it work, by applying the right optics to make it work. This is what happened when you employ boffins that only know of optical sources and detectors. Given how long ago you did any engineering I would expect this was a poor ancient gas laser.

"Renewable energy" does work, however much you wish it didn't. It is economic, again you wish it wasn't. Your hatred shows.

Fredxx snipped-for-privacy@spam.uk wrote

Optics can't fix the problem he referred to.

But nukes work much better and are cheaper too.

Not compared with nukes done properly.

And your ignorance shows.

It works up to a point.

Hydro works fine, so long as the rain keeps falling. And so long as you have enough alpine valleys.

Tidal varies in a nice predictable pattern. It might not generate when you want it to, but you do know within fine limits when it will.

Wind? Well, I've raced a sailing boat for 50 years, and I can tell you that the reason I keep doing it is because the wind is unpredictable. It varies from moment to moment, and it varies a lot within just a few metres.

Ask anyone running a corn mill if you don't believe me. There are still quite a few around, but they are now only heritage items and not commercial.

Andy

But not many location where it is viable with enough change in water height between low and high tide and not many places where it will not bugger up the local environment. After the complete success of the Rance River tidal power station in France why haven't they build many more in the intervening 50 years?

Environmental impact The barrage has caused progressive silting of the Rance ecosystem. Sand-eels and plaice have disappeared, though sea bass and cuttlefish have returned to the river.

It works to generate profits. Because its mandated and subsidised by law. It does not work to satisfy either the requirements for a reliable low cost source of energy to power a post industrial civilisation or as a means or reducing fossil fuel usage, overall.

It is completely uneconomic, as your electricity bills now show. Any claims to the contrary are effectively fraud. Which is what the whole renewable energy sector runs on. Lies, false accounting and economy of the truth

It is completely uneconomic as Germany's energiewende has shown

Do I hate it? yes. I also hate people who steal my cars, burgle my house, Mug me in the street and cause in general needless poverty and suffering through simple greed and total lack of concern for other peoples welfare.

"Reiner Blaschek, CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany and also responsible for the plant in Bremen. “As an energy-intensive industry, we are extremely affected. With gas and electricity prices increasing *tenfold* within just a few months, we are no longer competitive in a market that is 25% supplied by imports. We see an urgent need for political action to get energy prices under control immediately”.

So what? You still have to deal with its absence. Wind and solar are predictable, too.

This myth that tidal predictability somehow makes it better is bollocks.

If I were running a company and was told I had to employ people who might or might not turn up, either randomly or predictably, so that I had to maintain a fleet of permanent employees who I also had to pay, or contractors who would either require to be paid to be available, or paid whether they worked or not. Or build a massive warehouse to stockpile product against the day when no one showed up for work, I'd move my business to a country with sensible employment rules.

Because like all renewable energy, its expensive, unreliable, ecologically disastrous and f****ng crap.

And its absence happens four times a day. And could only be partially balanced by another similar tidal on the other side of the country where the tides are suitably out of phase. Which, in the UK, doesn't exist. And, en plus, requires a nice fat grid connection between them to make the more-even-but-not-perfect result available.

So, yet again, we build two power stations to get the output of a bit more than one.

Two power stations and an upscaled extension cable

The problem is that the west coast where all the really good tides are, is miles away from the east coasts where the tides are in antiphase, but pathetically weak.

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@greenbee.net writes

You don't do much sailing:-)

Have a look here.

Indeed. Plenty of discussion but no takers. It is not going to happen.

In the final analysis,and I hope its on Rees-Mogg's desk by now, you have to stack up on the one side ================== Green taxes. Windmill bird mincers Solar panels Interconnectors Storage using unobtanium batteries., high emission STOR backup Hydrogen Heat pumps Electric cars Massive grid upgrades to move huge amounts of power round the country. Electricity at 10x the pre pandemic prices.

and on the other ==========

Which do you think will be cheaper and more reliable?

So you accept that it is economic. Given your political stance you would endorse such sources of energy.

In the past yes, but not at the moment.

Agreed, but that isn't the issue at hand.

It is currently very economic. Windmill operators are raking it in. They get paid on the basis of gas generation. When gas is expensive, they do very nicely.

Yes, hopefully this element of the tariff will be removed.

That shows.

I presume you must hate any other benefit from taxes. You've never suffered from ill-health, or be a parasite (intending to) drawing / (draw) a pension.

As above, there is no need to subsidise if generation prices rise above cost.

I agree, but that doesn't mean finding alternatives to fossil fuels bad.

Not sure what you mean by this. Most sensible businesses would have an arrangement with an agency to fill in those gaps, possibly paying for these with a premium. You could call it the fossil fuel agency, for those dinosaurs who by Darwin selection don't have any chance of propagating their genes and so don't give a s*it about the future.

None at all if I can help it. Although SWMBO's rellies go in for it a bit, brother + family sailed around the world and then all over the Med, cousin got himself into a hurricane, lost the rudder, and had to call in the US CoastGuard.

So what are you going to dam up, what is the phase relative to the Severn, what is the cost and projected output, and how far is Scapa from the Severn?

In short, what's the Plan, Stan?

I think we stayed in a B&B at your tide spot. Certainly drove over Churchill's Barrage or whatever it's called. And of course the Royal Oak is a mile or two up the bay and in a few fathoms of water.

Only because of that link, which the Gumment seems to be intent on removing, and not a moment too soon.

No it is not without the EU mandate and subsidys and the stupid cost of duplicating everything so you have something to generate enough power when the 'renewables' have gone missing for a week or two, as they do every f****ng year.

Bullshit.

Corse it is with the soaring electricity costs.

Bullshit it is. It costs FAR more than nukes.

Bullshit they do.

More mindless pig ignorant bullshit.

And that's irrelevant to whether it makes any sense for the country as a whole anyway.

Won't fix the the now stupid price for electricity.

Nothing wrong with hating fraud and dishonesty.

More fool you.

Yes he has, repeatedly.

He is already doing that.

More of your mindless pig ignorant bullshit.

The alternative isnt fossil fuels, its nukes.

Yep, you actually are that stupid.

All sensible businesses would ensure that they have a reliable labour force.

No possibily about it, that is never free.

You never could bullshit your way out of a wet paper bag.

Snip

Me? Nothing. Especially now TNP assures us that Nuclear is despatchable after all.

There is some *tidal* flow experimentation going on where there is a suitable current but Scottish islands and no help to us.

I've not ventured North of Glasgow/Edinburgh.

That's the way it is with web pages. Hyperbolic from top to bottom. 50W at the top, 7W at the bottom.

I would think it could supply 7W via the cigarette lighter cable, but if you draw 5W from the stabilized supply, only 2W would remain on the unstabilized supply. The 12V voltage value would only be nominal. If you fully load the 5V output, the voltage will no longer be 12V on the 12V output. It'll be some lower value.

There's probably a ton of articles on your particular panel type. This would do as an illustration.

This means, in effect, that the unstabilized output might not be all that efficient in terms of charge transfer. You're not operating at the maximum power transfer point.

You would probably want a panel offering that included a "lead acid battery charger", so that the charger would adjust for the maximum power transfer point and adjust the charger output accordingly. And also, the battery charger would stop, if it thinks the battery is full. That's harder to do than it looks, considering what could happen to the setup in a fluffy cloud sky.

I have no experience with solar, so this is just a wild guess.

Paul