Britain powers on without coal for three days

[frahkn]

4 hours ago, Stilllearning said:

It’s a shame the turbines are such an eyesore.

Just out of interest, have the actual costs in kgs of CO2 created in the manufacturing, transporting to site, erecting and connecting to the grid, been calculated and set against the expected lifetime of the pylon and turbine?

Back when I was a “professional green” this was a subject we often debated.

Don't know but Sodastream charge my more than £18 for 1kg of CO2 (not including the canister).

[bizzard]

And what about all the tremendous clouds of carbon dioxide emitted from the breaths, bodies, burps and farts after wolfing down their enormous greasy fry up breakfasts, of all the unfit, overweight workers, clad in all their protective H&S clobber panting and puffing, that make and errect these windmills and things.

Edited April 25, 2018 by bizzard

[mrsmelly]

2 hours ago, Detling said:

Wait till we have enough electric for 20 million cars to charge and 17 million homes to heat before you say fossil fuel is dead. Gas generates 40+ percent of our electricity and heats 75 percent of our buildings, coal may disappear but fossil fuel no.

Only nineteen years to go and all cars will be electric cos the government said so last year and stated it would be twenty years. ?

[peterboat]

Just to give you a laugh you all know how I feel about diesel cars? well I have a toyota Lucida 2.2 td 4 x 4 I run it on biodiesel because its cheap and near to me, the car was given me and really is to good to scrap! It really does smell like a chip shop when you are behind it but who cares as its relatively clean in comparison to full fat diesel. I also put the bio diesel in the boat, as the price difference between it and red is so small, and the boat does seem to be quieter on it same as the car. My real car is now a Honda Insight Gen 1 the first of the hybrids and it probably remains the best made Hybrid capable of running at 26 to 1 air to petrol ratio and it does up to 150 MPG! These were first put on the road in 1999 so it shows you how much car makers want economical cars doesnt it? [or is it us] Anyway the point of this post is the big stick is coming soon from the government [forced by client earth] so we will be all driving different cars because we wont have a choice [they wont be hydrogen as that is a dangerous non starter google hydrogen explosions] So rejoice at every wind turbine because that and tide plus as Ian says better insulation is the way we are going like it not

[mrsmelly]

2 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Just to give you a laugh you all know how I feel about diesel cars? well I have a toyota Lucida 2.2 td 4 x 4 I run it on biodiesel because its cheap and near to me, the car was given me and really is to good to scrap! It really does smell like a chip shop when you are behind it but who cares as its relatively clean in comparison to full fat diesel. I also put the bio diesel in the boat, as the price difference between it and red is so small, and the boat does seem to be quieter on it same as the car. My real car is now a Honda Insight Gen 1 the first of the hybrids and it probably remains the best made Hybrid capable of running at 26 to 1 air to petrol ratio and it does up to 150 MPG! These were first put on the road in 1999 so it shows you how much car makers want economical cars doesnt it? [or is it us] Anyway the point of this post is the big stick is coming soon from the government [forced by client earth] so we will be all driving different cars because we wont have a choice [they wont be hydrogen as that is a dangerous non starter google hydrogen explosions] So rejoice at every wind turbine because that and tide plus as Ian says better insulation is the way we are going like it not

To be honest  I think wind turbine look nice and dont have a problem with them. We do  however need about a billion of them to replace what we already use and cripes knows how many if/when cars go lectric.

[Robbo]

3 hours ago, Detling said:

Wait till we have enough electric for 20 million cars to charge and 17 million homes to heat before you say fossil fuel is dead. Gas generates 40+ percent of our electricity and heats 75 percent of our buildings, coal may disappear but fossil fuel no.

Fossil fuel died ages ago, kinda in the name.  

Edited April 25, 2018 by Robbo

[peterboat]

1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

To be honest  I think wind turbine look nice and dont have a problem with them. We do  however need about a billion of them to replace what we already use and cripes knows how many if/when cars go lectric.

They are going up quick Tim and getting bigger by the year 15MW are on the cards although like the 12.5MW they are for use on water where they have some give to protect them

[furnessvale]

1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

To be honest  I think wind turbine look nice and dont have a problem with them. We do  however need about a billion of them to replace what we already use and cripes knows how many if/when cars go lectric.

Won't all them wind turbines slow down the rotation of the earth?

I suppose we could always turn them round every night, power them with nuclear electric, and use them as fans to get the earth back up to speed.?

George

 

[Sea Dog]

9 hours ago, peterboat said:

I never thought I would see it but I suspect clean green energy is just around the corner.

If only it was "around the corner". I'm sick of seeing (often non-rotating) wind turbines plonked in beauty spots.

[peterboat]

4 minutes ago, Sea Dog said:

If only it was "around the corner". I'm sick of seeing (often non-rotating) wind turbines plonked in beauty spots.

Well they are stood still because mostly the lecce they could produce isnt needed, so they turn them off to save wear

[Sea Dog]

1 minute ago, peterboat said:

Well they are stood still because mostly the lecce they could produce isnt needed, so they turn them off to save wear

Ah, that makes sense - the saving wear, not the unneeded generating capacity.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Only nineteen years to go and all cars will be electric cos the government said so last year and stated it would be twenty years. ?

The thing is that is how it was portrayed in the media but the reality is quite different in that the ban will only apply to wholly petrol or diesel propulsion. Hybrids that use diesel or petrol will still be legal.

The move to wholly electric propulsion is still some way off. Not least because the infrastructure to support 100% electric propulsion is a good few decades away. Of course talk of banning diesel and electric cars made a great headline, but sadly for the green mob it's not going to happen for a long long time yet.

[cuthound]

Whilst wind generators are a useful part of the generation mix, this article explains why tbey will never be the major source of generation in that mix.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/10264185/The-wind-farms-that-generate-enough-power-to-make-a-few-cups-of-tea.html

[furnessvale]

13 minutes ago, cuthound said:

Whilst wind generators are a useful part of the generation mix, this article explains why tbey will never be the major source of generation in that mix.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/10264185/The-wind-farms-that-generate-enough-power-to-make-a-few-cups-of-tea.html

Occasionally the wind doesn't blow so a hack can find such data.  A website exists which shows the mix of generation in real time and on many occasions it shows a considerable generation by wind.  At other times nuclear or even coal has to help out.  IMO this doesn't mean we should give up on renewables or we may as well return to coal and London smogs and stuff the planet and our grandchildrens' futures.

Incidentally, this website has a caveat that states  much wind generation in small installations at farms, factories etc., does not show as generation but is counted as reduced demand.  Who knows just how much wind generation is going unrecorded by this counting method. 

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

George

Edited April 26, 2018 by furnessvale

[Robbo]

45 minutes ago, furnessvale said:

Occasionally the wind doesn't blow so a hack can find such data.  A website exists which shows the mix of generation in real time and on many occasions it shows a considerable generation by wind.  At other times nuclear or even coal has to help out.  IMO this doesn't mean we should give up on renewables or we may as well return to coal and London smogs and stuff the planet and our grandchildrens' futures.

Incidentally, this website has a caveat that states  much wind generation in small installations at farms, factories etc., does not show as generation but is counted as reduced demand.  Who knows just how much wind generation is going unrecorded by this counting method. 

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

George

I think this site is good; https://www.electricitymap.org,  unfortunately for solar & wind although we have a lot of installed capacity it's rarely can be utilised to it's max and it's overall average is fairly low.  Nuclear is near enough always runs at full capacity.   Gas has high capacity but average usage as it needs to cover for solar and wind.

[Machpoint005]

31 minutes ago, Robbo said:

I think this site is good; https://www.electricitymap.org,  unfortunately for solar & wind although we have a lot of installed capacity it's rarely can be utilised to it's max and it's overall average is fairly low.  Nuclear is near enough always runs at full capacity.   Gas has high capacity but average usage as it needs to cover for solar and wind.

The thing that annoys me is the naive idea many people have that the companies that put up and run wind turbines didn't realise what the likely on-time would be. It's vital to recognise the difference between the potential full output and the long-term average. If you invested on the basis of the former, you would lose you money very quickly.  

[cuthound]

16 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

The thing that annoys me is the naive idea many people have that the companies that put up and run wind turbines didn't realise what the likely on-time would be. It's vital to recognise the difference between the potential full output and the long-term average. If you invested on the basis of the former, you would lose you money very quickly.  

Indeed, when I worked BT some marketing man thought it would  a good idea to put wind turbines on every BT building. I led the project team to see if this was financially viable and we quickly discovered that the then BT owned earth satelite staction at Goonhilly Downs in Cornwall was the only site where the wind blew long enough and hard enough to generate a profit.

Small, inland with turbines are mainly for decoration or to show "green intent".

Best place for large scale, reliable wind generation is offshore, but then it increases design, installation and maintenance costs because it is such a harsh environment.

[peterboat]

On 26/04/2018 at 09:48, cuthound said:

Whilst wind generators are a useful part of the generation mix, this article explains why tbey will never be the major source of generation in that mix.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/windpower/10264185/The-wind-farms-that-generate-enough-power-to-make-a-few-cups-of-tea.html

Its just as well the clever people putting up all these wind turbines dont believe the crap put in newspapers isnt it?

[mark99]

There is a very big growth in rapid start, smallish and localish generation plants (gas fired mainly, say 5-20 MWe) to pick up on days / hours when it's not windy or sunny or to cover forecast errors.

This is a necessary safety net which  allows the non reliable renewables to satisfy more and more UK baseload. They kinda work had in hand - the use of targetted fossil fuel facilitates less blunt use of fossil fuel.

As Technical Director had over 40 inquiries on my desk for new little power stations in 6 months and have been directly involved in <gas> commissioning > 25. Got one to do next week. They do not run all the time - perhaps 1-3 hours per day @ peak times.

Some of you guys will know that this is called Short Term Operating Reserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 28, 2018 by mark99

[cuthound]

12 hours ago, mark99 said:

There is a very big growth in rapid start, smallish and localish generation plants (gas fired mainly, say 5-20 MWe) to pick up on days / hours when it's not windy or sunny or to cover forecast errors.

This is a necessary safety net which  allows the non reliable renewables to satisfy more and more UK baseload. They kinda work had in hand - the use of targetted fossil fuel facilitates less blunt use of fossil fuel.

As Technical Director had over 40 inquiries on my desk for new little power stations in 6 months and have been directly involved in <gas> commissioning > 25. Got one to do next week. They do not run all the time - perhaps 1-3 hours per day @ peak times.

Some of you guys will know that this is called Short Term Operating Reserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Indeed wind and solar are just not reliable enough to rely on 100% of the time.

The move to put more wind turbines off shore has helped improve renewable availability in the UK.

The only renewable you can rely on 100% is wave power which is an order of magnitude more costly than wind or solar.

Denmark generates a lot of its power from wave generators, but in this country they are considered too expensive at the moment.

[Bee]

I think all non essential road traffic should be banned or taxed at £1 a mile, especially people who are doing a 200 mile round trip to visit the mother in law this Sunday. Grrrr.

[Stilllearning]

On 25/04/2018 at 18:28, mrsmelly said:

To be honest  I think wind turbine look nice and dont have a problem with them. We do  however need about a billion of them to replace what we already use and cripes knows how many if/when cars go lectric.

The concensus round here is that turbines blight the area, making selling one’s house difficult and lowering its value.

The landowner gets a return from the fees for having a turbine on the land, but they should read the small print in the contract very carefully before signing.

[Machpoint005]

On 29/04/2018 at 08:41, cuthound said:

The only renewable you can rely on 100% is wave power which is an order of magnitude more costly than wind or solar.

Erm - what about hydroelectric generation and tidal power (neither of them 'wave power')? Tidal barrages, in particular, can produce enormous amounts of energy to a completely predictable pattern. 

On 29/04/2018 at 10:55, Stilllearning said:

The concensus round here is that turbines blight the area, making selling one’s house difficult and lowering its value.

The landowner gets a return from the fees for having a turbine on the land, but they should read the small print in the contract very carefully before signing.

Is the consensus in favour of coal-fired power stations outside one's back door, then? Or is it OK that plebs in industrial areas have views of cooling towers? What about an underground nuclear storage facility next door, is that acceptable? The 'me me me' attitudes of middle England sicken me sometimes.

House prices, by the way, are not a legitimate planning concern.

[Robbo]

53 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Is the consensus in favour of coal-fired power stations outside one's back door, then? Or is it OK that plebs in industrial areas have views of cooling towers? What about an underground nuclear storage facility next door, is that acceptable? The 'me me me' attitudes of middle England sicken me sometimes.

The land taken by a Nuclear power plant is in order of magnitudes less than the equivalent Wind or Solar farm.   The radiation from Nuclear power plants is lower than coal.

[cuthound]

58 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Erm - what about hydroelectric generation and tidal power (neither of them 'wave power')? Tidal barrages, in particular, can produce enormous amounts of energy to a completely predictable pattern. 

Is the consensus in favour of coal-fired power stations outside one's back door, then? Or is it OK that plebs in industrial areas have views of cooling towers? What about an underground nuclear storage facility next door, is that acceptable? The 'me me me' attitudes of middle England sicken me sometimes.

House prices, by the way, are not a legitimate planning concern.

True about hydro and tidal, but most large scale viable hydro installations has already been done in the UK and a large scale tidal barrage on the Severn is unlikely to  happen due to the environmental impact.

My point that is that of the viable large scale renewables, only wave power can generate reliably 24/7, and it appears that country isn't prepared to pay for wave power, so future base power will nuclear.