SOT Dunkelflaute

It might, if they were both cheaper than the single one. The devil is in the detail.

. . . and the 5.5kWh battery box is about the size of a large suitcase, the inverter a small suitcase.

And you don't die of cold in an indian winter

They are aspirations of the voluntary slave.

I will trade everything I own if you will simply look after everything for me.

It's not the plebs who are clamouring. It's the people who will fly overhead at 35,000ft dining on Kobe steaks and downing fine wines.

If you remove government intervention, the optimal transport will emerge.

Trains are very inconvenient.

Buses are even worse.

I remember the day in which I started on my bicycle for he neatest town and sqw the bus to it vanishing in the distance.

I arrived first.

Religious dogma is like that.

It might well be. That is where it is at in France. No one is really concerned about electricity costs.

Modern building regulations are about as good as it gets without going full on triple glazed passivehaus. Heat recovery ventilation and all.

But the cost...exceeds that of building the nukes, and once built they cost nothing to run really.

And even a passivehaus has a refrigerator stocked with food from a supermarket that ships in food in diesel trucks, and keeps it refrigerated on your behalf and even the passivehaus is built out of petroleum product insulation and concrete blocks, that uses natural gas.

People who are so proud of their 'personal footprint' never stop to think where all the solar panels, generators inverters insulation and so on comes from or how it arrived at their front door. Or the 'carbon cost' of getting it there.

Draught-proofing OTOH ...

But insulations IS effective if its complete. Cavity wall fill + double glazing + roof makes a HUGE difference to a

All that is left is the floor, but carpets and rugs go a long way there...

It's less easy to decide what to do with a Victorian solid wall terrace. Whose rooms are poky enough already without making them smaller with the internal insulation they desperately need.

Realistically you need to add any internal insulation you can even if its only 15mm of insulation plus plasterboard.

Just don't tell a building inspector. The rules say if you do it at all, you do it to modern specs. Which is more like 4".

Which it isn't, and which is why I went to the trouble of supplying a link to the Labour policy document.

No. I gave a list of 5 variables. You can't just pick one and expect the other

Well, obviously you can - and do. But that isn't what I'm suggesting.

The grid.

Again, you're completely missing the point of the 5 variables. Perhaps if you just go to the bit where I set out the role for low carbon non-renewables?

But again, if you fixate on one variable . . .

Sorry, typo! Degrowth:

Again, you're fixating on one variable and simply ignoring the others. An example:

If storage increases to say 10kWh per home, and a smattering elsewhere (1), and you mid-range retrofit, wear a jumper, heat only rooms you use, spend more time (eating, recreation) communally, walk or take a bus (2), you consume less and have the capacity to meet a good proportion of your needs.

Then, combine that reduced consumption with reasonable redundancy (3), diverse renewables (5), and sort out not just domestic but international - global even

- mechanisms of distribution (4).

My point is, you have to do them all. And believe in why you're doing it (in part, 6).

I of course agree that we're a way away from some of the proposals - distribution, say. But we're at least a decade away from any meaningful nuclear expansion . . .

Partly true. Once aspirations shift to UK levels, air conditioning will knock our heating figures into a cocked hat . . .

Nonsense. Well, 5 to 15% on the costs of construction:

And it's not cheap to deplete public transport.

Incidentally, can your arguments accommodate costs and benefits other than financial? Say, health benefits, reductions in crime, improved life chances?

Or do you prefer to focus on money, and predict that the benefits of improved health etc will trickle out evenly once you've spent less?

Privatisation.

New build - see above.

It's going to be a huge issue for older stock. I don't have a ready answer. I have ideas but they're too convoluted to set out here. But something needs to be done. We can't keep polluting, and wasting energy and money like this.

I'm not bursting with hope. We'll see.

Technically speaking, the devil is in the physics. The calculations below use real-world data:

During fire-up CCGT turbines are very inefficient, from ~0% for the first 5 minutes, to 25% to about 45 minutes, when the second part of the combined-cycle kicks in to give about 60% efficiency.

With 60% efficiency, each GW of power output uses 1/0.6=1.67GW of gas.

Interestingly, if a 1GW CCGT was replaced by a 1GW wind farm, real-world data suggests the latter, over a year, would produce an average of 0.36GW, leaving 0.64GW to be supplied by the CCGT which will now be operating in an intermittent regime of stop/start and throttled-back running in which it might be only 40% efficient overall.

So over the year the CCGT will use 0.64/0.4=1.6GW of gas, which is the same as if it ran in efficient mode and the wind farm didn’t exist, the latter having cost money and materials to no real effect.

Renewables are a waste of resources.

The Grid simply distributes energy. It doesn't make it.

Yeah, yeah, I was being hyperbolic.

Although, I do like a bit of fresh air. Don't houses without ventilation get smelly?

I've seen this strange idea that the grid is somehow a 'battery' that's 'just there'

Yes, but primarily they get wet. Condensation ("That's rising damp, guv, we can fix that...") and black mould are the result.

About 600ml of water per day is produced by an average person, varying a lot depending on weight, activity, air temperature etc. That's got to go somewhere.

I'm not connected to any source of generation directly, other than my own solar panels. The grid distributes the energy from a basket of generation sources, and serves to import energy from that basket if you so choose.

It forms part of the dreamworld that believers inhabit, that is used to magic away the actual problems that arise from their thoughtless ideas.

I replied to each of your points. Yes if they all happen then perhaps your view of utopia will happen but back in the real world it's likely they will not unless a vast amount of money is spent. Governments and Councils don't have any money of their own - it ALL comes from us.

I'm sure that you understand that if we carry on going down the road of more renewables that are intermittent and if the Labour party aim is to have zero carbon energy by 2030 then the grid will have no electricity to give you when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. It still could provide you with perhaps 30% if nuclear is running and maybe if our continental partners have some to spare. It doesn't really matter if your 5 point plan is met because it will not make any difference to how zero carbon intermittent generation occurs.

Except for the 3 months during the winter. This is still the same argument that if energy is generated in the Summer months from renewables to meet annual needs then we are free from fossil fuel generation. Your 10kWh battery stores enough for 4 days of average domestic usage (possibly less because you probably don't want to drain it to zero nor charge it above 80% too often). It is not going to store the energy generated in summer to use in the winter.

Obviously intermittent renewables are still going to generate some energy during the winter months but on some days it may be 200% of our needs, other days 100%, other days 30% and during Dunkelflaute less than

If we reduced our usage to that Of the average Indian citizen it doesn't overcome the problem of Dunkelflaute using wind and solar.

Just because the second or third best (worst) solution is quicker doesn't mean we have to go down that path.

And its all coming from coal, much the same as China with a growing middle class with aspirations greater than being a state controlled peasant farmer.

I'm not objecting to perhaps adding 5 to 15% to new builds but 90% of UK housing stock was build before 2000 and around 50% pre WWII. After WWII quite a lot of low standard housing was constructed.

It's not an insignificant cost to bring older properties up to the standards you are suggesting.

If all the changes you suggest are going to cost which other services are going to be cut to pay for them? NHS? Policing? You cannot shake the magic money tree any harder and expect the outcome to be better for most of the UK population. For some of us it's not "go green and forget the cost"

By reducing our energy needs we will also solve all of societies problems? Social engineering by centralised organisations seldom, if ever, works.

Rail, run down during WWII and with no investment for decades afterwards, and all under public ownership.

I fondly (not) remember having to commute to college for a couple of years and having to catch 3 trains each way and having to leave an hour early each morning than the timetables suggested because of the high level of cancellations. One of the lines I used was called the misery line, and for good reason. Rolling stock old and filthy.

While not necessarily defending all privatisation, name one Nationalised industry that was well run and didn't treat the public as though it was doing us a favour. Name one Nationalised industry that didn't have a major problem with adequate investment for decades. If some of the privatised companies were still nationalised they would have been run in the last dozen years by the same incompetents that were voted out at the last general election!

New builds per year is a very small proportion of the UK housing stock. There are already improvements to regulation with new builds such as the more stringent standard of insulation in exterior walls etc. The design of CH for new builds can accommodate the use low temperature heat pumps etc. I doubt if new builds are keeping up with the population growth and the need for housing so new builds do nothing for reducing our current energy consumption. They may reduce the rate of increase in overall future consumption.

Nothing wrong with advocating improving housing stock but there is no magic money tree and the people with the lowest incomes are likely to be living in properties that need most work. Even if the Government (taxpayers) foot the bills and our energy demands reduce dramatically it does solve the problem associated with building more intermittent generators. The more intermittent generators the bigger the problem.