Author Topic: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.  (Read 28727 times)

madasafish

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #180 on: November 16, 2021, 08:23:38 AM »
This morning at 8.15am, Renewables accounted for 22% of the total demand of 37.85GW.

Coal was 4%.

Anyone fancy relying on renewables?

culzean

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #181 on: November 16, 2021, 08:51:43 AM »
When we had our first Dehumidifier many years ago ( on our third one now, we have only had compressor based ones, because it it gets below 5degC inside your house you have a bigger problem than humidity, and dessicant ones are quite expensive to run because the dessicant has to be dried out inside the machine using a heater  ) I was shocked by the amount of water it was collecting, we had to empty the 3 litre ( IIRC ) a couple of times a day for first few days,  then the time to empty the tank increased and eventually we could run the machine for over a week to collect 3 litres.  Ours is a modern house as well,  I hate to think how much moisture is locked up in the building fabric of older houses with solid stone walls, especially sandstone.   The contractors who were fitting insulation were supposed to do a survey of walls to make sure they were suitable to insulate, but they never seemed to, and just pumped the stuff in willy-nilly,  our walls already had the cavity partly closed off with expanded polystyrene boards when houses were built, so where the new insulation was going to go was anyones guess.   I think Pikeys were the main contractors and they were payed by the job by government,  so they took about as much care as they do when fixing potholes for the council or laying a new drive with an inch of hardcore and half an inch of tarmac.

If you look at my earlier post about loft insulation- where did the advice to put 300mm of glass fibre in the loft come from when the optimum is 150mm ( and maybe 100mm if insulation is sealed in with chipboard, which limits air movement.  300mm makes the loft pretty much unusable and is well past the point of diminishing returns,  it looks to me like lobbying from the insulation industry to increase their sales and gives no real benefit as far as heat loss is concerned.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2021, 08:53:23 AM by culzean »
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

culzean

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #182 on: November 16, 2021, 08:58:08 AM »
This morning at 8.15am, Renewables accounted for 22% of the total demand of 37.85GW.

Coal was 4%.

Anyone fancy relying on renewables?

Now wind is 14% and dropping and solar 0.5% - madness... still the farm operators will get paid, so they don't care. 
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

culzean

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #183 on: November 16, 2021, 10:03:34 AM »
A single anecdote is obviously useless to prove anything about the worth of insulation. If it weren't I could disprove these opinions with my experience.

Rather than insulation being 'not easy to do' it took one person one morning to insulate the wall cavities in my 110 year old brick and stone faced Yorkshire terrace. The result was around a 20% reduction in heating costs with no damp problems at all and the bonus that the tendency for the front rooms to get too warm on summer evenings as the heat soaked through is also better.

So far this autumn I've only needed my central heating on once.

The houses of our neighbours who saw no change in heating bills are detached ( as is our house ),  so more walls have external exposure than your terrace ( so you would expect any 'benefits' from extra insulation to be more apparent ), and were already built with insulation block interior walls and partly insulated cavity.  Untrained and unqualified people just going around spraying polystyrene beads into walls without a survey is madness, and asking for problems.   Problem is it is a massive job to get the stuff back out, and needing to ventilate the house more because of cavity insulation kinda defeats the object...  This is another case of 'diminishing returns' by trying to add more insulation to houses that are already well insulated, probably due to lobbying by insulation manufacturers.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2021, 10:39:17 AM by culzean »
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

JimSh

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #184 on: November 16, 2021, 11:01:34 AM »
This morning at 8.15am, Renewables accounted for 22% of the total demand of 37.85GW.

Coal was 4%.

Anyone fancy relying on renewables?

Yep.
What is required are smarter grids, more development of storage  and more development of alternative forms of renewable generation.
As with the development of renewables there will be no one-size-fits-all solution.
Unfortunately governments choose the short term cheapest solutions rather than sensible investment for the future.

https://www.energy.gov/oe/energy-storage
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2021/11/energy-storage-installations-expected-to-surge-through-2030/

culzean

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #185 on: November 16, 2021, 01:13:04 PM »
This morning at 8.15am, Renewables accounted for 22% of the total demand of 37.85GW.

Coal was 4%.

Anyone fancy relying on renewables?

Yep.
What is required are smarter grids, more development of storage  and more development of alternative forms of renewable generation.
As with the development of renewables there will be no one-size-fits-all solution.
Unfortunately governments choose the short term cheapest solutions rather than sensible investment for the future.

https://www.energy.gov/oe/energy-storage
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2021/11/energy-storage-installations-expected-to-surge-through-2030/

What was needed and more than 20 years ago was some kind of resolve for UK to have more nuclear, instead successive governments prevaricating ( fan - ing ) around - I t makes we weep to see how much money being wasted on HS-2 when we could have had a powerful and stable future-proof grid powered by nuclear for the same money.   Will be ironic if HS-2 cannot run because we do not have enough power  :o

Instead they banned coal and built some highly subsidised fans on sticks,  and solar, which is like a chocolate fireguard in UK.
« Last Edit: November 16, 2021, 01:14:50 PM by culzean »
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

ColinS

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #186 on: November 16, 2021, 01:51:52 PM »
What was needed and more than 20 years ago was some kind of resolve for UK to have more nuclear, instead successive governments prevaricating ( fan - ing ) around - I t makes we weep to see how much money being wasted on HS-2 when we could have had a powerful and stable future-proof grid powered by nuclear for the same money.   Will be ironic if HS-2 cannot run because we do not have enough power  :o
+1

madasafish

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #187 on: November 16, 2021, 01:56:53 PM »
This morning at 8.15am, Renewables accounted for 22% of the total demand of 37.85GW.

Coal was 4%.

Anyone fancy relying on renewables?

Yep.
What is required are smarter grids, more development of storage  and more development of alternative forms of renewable generation.
As with the development of renewables there will be no one-size-fits-all solution.
Unfortunately governments choose the short term cheapest solutions rather than sensible investment for the future.

https://www.energy.gov/oe/energy-storage
https://www.environmentalleader.com/2021/11/energy-storage-installations-expected-to-surge-through-2030/

What was needed and more than 20 years ago was some kind of resolve for UK to have more nuclear, instead successive governments prevaricating ( fan - ing ) around - I t makes we weep to see how much money being wasted on HS-2 when we could have had a powerful and stable future-proof grid powered by nuclear for the same money.   Will be ironic if HS-2 cannot run because we do not have enough power  :o

Instead they banned coal and built some highly subsidised fans on sticks,  and solar, which is like a chocolate fireguard in UK.


Charging EVs at night will mean HS2 would stop at 6pm . But, as charging will be via Smart Meter, the National Grid will use the SM to switch charging off. (Stated aim).

All very logical..

peteo48

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #188 on: November 16, 2021, 02:04:25 PM »
Nuclear a no brainer for me. It makes me weep when you think we were amongst the early pioneers in nuclear power for domestic energy use and all that expertise has been binned.

Sincerely hope the RR Modular Reactors are successful.

Jocko

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #189 on: November 16, 2021, 04:11:34 PM »
Now wind is 14% and dropping and solar 0.5% - madness... still the farm operators will get paid, so they don't care.
Wish I could see the data for Scotland on its own. At the moment it is blowing a gale and the turbines are going like the clappers. Perhaps the 14% is all from Scoland.

ColinB

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #190 on: November 16, 2021, 04:13:35 PM »
Sincerely hope the RR Modular Reactors are successful.

Much is being made of these modular reactors from RR, as if they are in some way new and thereby miraculous. They are not. RR have been building small modular pressurised water reactors for nigh on 60 years now, and sending them to sea in submarines. They are currently working on the 3rd generation of these plants for the Dreadnought class (next generation deterrent boats). What RR are doing is leveraging that experience to create land-based plants. They expect them to be "cheaper" (a relative term, they're still going to be expensive in real money!) because they can be built on a production line in a factory rather than having to construct them in the open air, but obviously mass production requires a decent production run to be economically worthwhile. And they'll still have all the site and certification costs that any other type of nuclear plant would have. Good luck to 'em though.

https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/

culzean

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #191 on: November 16, 2021, 04:31:49 PM »
Now wind is 14% and dropping and solar 0.5% - madness... still the farm operators will get paid, so they don't care.
Wish I could see the data for Scotland on its own. At the moment it is blowing a gale and the turbines are going like the clappers. Perhaps the 14% is all from Scoland.

Possibly,  it was very misty by us in centre of England this morning, and although there are some leaves still left on trees, not one of them was even twitching,  of course due to the mist / fog solar was also AWOL..
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

JimSh

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #192 on: November 16, 2021, 08:13:53 PM »
 Qatar to take £100m stake in Rolls-Royce mini-nuclear reactor venture Investment to help develop small reactors will deepen ties between the FTSE 100 engineering company and the gas-rich Gulf state.??

Anybody behind the Telegraph paywall know any more?

Edit Story's on Guardian site too
« Last Edit: November 16, 2021, 08:47:06 PM by JimSh »

richardfrost

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #193 on: November 16, 2021, 11:10:22 PM »
How about we park up some old nuclear subs in the Thames outside pParliament, fire them up and plug them into the grid. All funded by a friendly Gulf state with a great human rights record. Seem like a plan?

JimSh

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Re: Electricity generation. The pros and the cons.
« Reply #194 on: November 17, 2021, 07:46:32 AM »
How about we park up some old nuclear subs in the Thames outside pParliament, fire them up and plug them into the grid. All funded by a friendly Gulf state with a great human rights record. Seem like a plan?
It's OK. At the moment they are more than 400 miles from London (but only 30 miles from Glasgow.)

"Qatar is the smallest – and richest per capita – of the Gulf states, as well as the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas."

Edit added quote from Guardian article.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2021, 08:14:45 AM by JimSh »

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