Yes folks, its cheaper to heat with electricity!

In message , Mark Ayliffe writes

When it's 20 foot under water, and you have to go all the way around to get home ....

On or about 2008-05-02, geoff illuminated us with:

That's the one ;-)

Just build a pipe from Llanidloes to Borth and send the water down that. Any generating capacity from doing that????? :-)

That is against the laws of thermodynamics if you are referencing efficiency of generating electricity from fuel, unless structural materials that will work at elevated temperatures, and/or the heat sink on the condenser is cooled to near absolute zero.

More than 50% is difficult to attain.

If you are mainly selling heat, and not electricity, or are using mechanical power as your source, then the thermodynamic equation is irrelevant so you can get greater efficiency.

Generating mechanical energy from a heat source (including a nuclear boiler) depends on the percentage (absolute) temperature drop of the working fluid.

Have you been studying how the Corps of Engineers have buggered up the Mississippi? Looks like you want to follow their lead...

In message , Doctor Drivel writes

no idea, have you ?

In article , geoff scribeth thus

And theres all the other water wants to go home to the big sea;)

It doesn't just rain on Shrewsbury does it;?....

Maxie, not me, I am just the messenger. Have you made suggestions to these engineers?

In message , Doctor Drivel writes

So, just brochure quoting, as usual, without any understanding

Maxie, what is your solution, and where are they wrong? Maxie, do you wear flared pants?

Wigner (and he was an Austria-Hungarian Jew, rather than German, see

In one respect it was built very much with safety in mind. At a late stage in the construction of the Windscale piles John Cockroft insisted on the addition of high performance air filters in the coolant stacks, creating those iconic bulges. It's reckoned that "Cockroft's follies", as they became known, prevented the fire from becoming a major disaster.

He said "cogeneration" - i.e. combined heat and power - so 80% seems entirely plausible.

Ratio of heat to power would need to be high to get that efficiency.

But They aren't.Not anything like equal.

Some few hundred miles away in the baltic the mean tidal range is approximately zero.

The Severn is a special case of ultra high tidal range.

Not quite that good. 60% perhaps. the 80% is 'CHP' where the waste heat does something useful and is 'counted in'

However the point remains: with a steam turbine the fast spin up time is lost.

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

By that I meant the nations current electricity requirements. I don't accept that everything will eventually end up run by electricity and think the current requirement a more reasonable starting point than a hypothetical end point that is used merely as a cudgel to discourage any attempt to solve the coming energy crisis.

ISTM that the Baltic is more the special case. A narrow almost landlocked sea doesn't get the benefit of the Atlantic slopping about.

A quick look at the tide data for tonight suggests that a 50% mean might be a bit pessimistic but not by much.

Figures quoted are highs and lows above chart datum (in metres)

Barry 12.0/0.7 Liverpool 9.6/0.6 Morcambe 9.7/0.7 Hull 7.8/0.7 Hunstanton 7.6/0.7 Padstow 7.4/0.5 Southend 5.9/0.5 Rosyth 5.9/0.5 Falmouth 5.4/0.6 River Tay Bar 5.2/0.5 Cowes 4.3/0.5 Wemyss Bay 3.3/0.0 Strangford 3.6/0.3

WE either burn oil and coal to runs stuff, or we use electricity.

If coal and oil run out or get too expensive or deemed too (environmentally) dangerous, every other source of energy transforme more reailiy into electricity than into liquid fuel. Apart from Biofuel.

Ergo, once fossil fuel prices itself out, we WILL be all electric, with synthetic liquid fuels and a little very expensive biofuel where the power cables don't reach.

Look at the thread title.Its not a thread about alternative ways to generate existing demand, its about the fact that electricity is now cheaper than oil, and oil has gone up 10% since the thread started.

I was attending a summer trade show over the weekend..a straw poll of the traders suggested that the moajority will simply NOT be attending long haul shows as the transport costs will make them unprofitable.

So, given that no alternative technology is as cheap or reliable as nuclear energy, we are stick with having a lot of nuclear stations. This then begs the question of why bother to have anything else? Thats is mopre expensive with a greater impact on the environment.

I also think you will find that the efficiency is non linearly related to the tidal range as well..That the Severn, by dint of nature having done 90% of the work for you funnelling a strong atlantic tide right up into a funnel shaped tube, is about the only place that has serious economic potential.

The message from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Just how far are you looking ahead? The UK reputedly had 300 years of coal reserves before carbon became a dirty word.

You could class wood and naturally produced methane as biofuel but I am not sure how you justify the "very expensive" tag for either.