Solar PV now world's cheapest electricity.

How much power does an MRI scanner with its supercooled magnets need

More to the point how much power does the entire NHS use every year ?. Does anyone actually know ?.

why would its main use to be to provide something that it can't provide that you *didn't* have before

It's like saying that there's no point someone who doesn't own a car buying one because it can't fly you to France

tim

Better still how much does the super duper hadron collider with its superchill magnets use? It is the most inefficient machine on Earth, all that power to move teeny weeny particles...

En el artículo , Andrew escribió:

Yes. Battery farms.

Yes, they are. They use Powerpacks. And I'd expect they'll still keep a few of the diesel generators they used before, for emergencies.

Where did you read that? Somehow I think you'll be playing your cards fairly close to your chest ;-)

To my knowledge this was an open auction for a market supplier. And the subsidies of the past were for diesel - not counting the externalities.

If anything it's likely more expensive than a state operation, cartels and all of that.

Never heard of Powerpacks; looked them up; a Tesla system.

Assuming a UK power consumption of 55GW early on a cold January evening, and no wind or nasty CO2-producing CCGT power stations, it would take 1.1 million Powerpacks to tide us over for a few hours. Is that worth having? A matter of opinion, I guess, but I don't see anything about how much a Powerpack costs, nor do I see anything about their lifetimes (but I've not looked very hard for either).

I also see there's a company called Camborne* that's installing one of these systems in Somerset

Yes, and far more off-the-shelf in Ta'u:

You mean the two daily peaks in the winter at 06:00 to 08:00 and 17:00 to 19:00? How much PV is being generated at those times?

Currently wind power is providing 3% of our immediate need and solar slightly less. Where are you going to get the remaining 94% from?

En el artículo , Andrew escribió:

ps.

"about 500MW awarded to new storage plants being built by EDF, Centrica and smaller companies." But no mention of MWh capacity, i.e. how long they'll keep the lights on before they go flat.

Overall, that was rather depressing reading. We seem to be getting closer and closer to zero reserves. Perhaps it's govt policy to prove to the general population that renewables can't cut it when it's needed.

PS Mearns has a discussion on the Ta'u system here

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

'tis the Grauniad, so read with usual pinch of salt, and blood pressure medication to hand for the lunatic fringe in here.

Yup. Everyone knows only the Mail and Express speak the truth.

In article , Mike Tomlinson scribeth thus

Well is it? Are they? Lets see, a basic rudimentary calc from Gridwatch assuming the TNP's dials are reasonably accurate we have 25 GW of Gas,

So the other variables wind and solar?. Sod all wind barely a gig and a half, sod all Solar.

Demand goes much above 50 GW getting rather close to the available power eh?.

Bad cold winter, demand high suppose a station or two down for refuelling or whatever?.

Come back coal then as we have nothing else apart from demand reduction to fill the gap .. Haven't we?. More Green Leccy motors on the road?

En el artículo , Dave Plowman (News) escribió:

:)

I don't read either, and wouldn't wipe my arse with them. Might catch something.

I like the Guardian; it doesn't treat its readers as if they're stupid. But when reading news from /any/ source, a healthy dose of scepticism is in order.

There was a thread here recently about news sources. I get the impression most intelligent contributors in this group get their news from a variety of sources and form their own opinion.

Of course. Only those with no brain believe everything they read in a paper. But more often choose what they want to believe.

I'd hope so. But when someone quotes a newspaper article to back up their opinion, they presumably trust that source.

In article , Mike Tomlinson writes

All it shows that it is non-viable to build large gas plants purely as back-up t intermittent renewables.

I heard on a BBC program that there are two french nuclear power stations dedicated to providing power to generate the refridgeration needed cool all those super-cooled magnets and remove excess heat.

One supplies all the power, the other is hot standby.

Batteries do not store electricity. Electricity is the flow of electrons. Without a circuit, no 'electricity'. The battery stores the checmical potential to generate the electricity on demand.

Other storage devices store energy in the form of pressurised water (dams), heat (liquid salt) etc.