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Energy efficiency. That reduces demand. It's a shame that really good, relatively cheap schemes like retro-fitting existing buildings are so unfashionable.
It's as if putting the nations energy supply into the hands of private business has failed to produce a long term energy solution even with incentives, subsidies and tax brakes.
If privatly owned energy companies are failing it is time for the industries to be [b]taken[/b] back and the public's needs and interests to be put before those of "the city".
I don't see how there can be any proper investment or strategic planning when the country has no ownership of the system. Currently all that can be done is to give the suppliers more money and hope they do the right thing with it, which is an idiotic hope.
+1
[quote=mrlebowski ]Yep, please explain why the Severn Barrage would be environmentally poo..
bindun, but huge permanent changes to the existing environment. Loss of lots of natural stuff. No, it's not that easy to replace wetlands for birds or to dredge. Of course you'd also lose one of this country's most significant natural phenomena.
For what are you selling that level of environmental damage? Thankfully sense has been seen and it no longer appears to be on the agenda.
Energy shortages will be meaningless by the time the food wars start. As for competing with China, how is a little place like us going to compete with vast Chinese armies.
But so many people keep on breeding like it all be fine, blindly adding to the problem.
thestabiliser - Member
turn off STW
I read STW as Severn Trent Water ??
Ex-employee 🙂
Psst......... heard the one about importing hydro derived power from Norway ?
Loss of wetlands for migrating birds
intertidal wetlands for migrating birds are ****ed anyway over the next 50-100 years...the rate of sea level rise will overwhelm them faster than the ecosystem can re-establish inland. Time to start making hard choices in environment/mitigation sphere.
What we need is a bit less squeemishness about local environmental consequences and a few more big dams in Wales or the highlands.
I don't see how that's going to help England.
Nothing more that I'd like than an off grid, low usage home (well insulated/passive vent) etc, it can be done. The modern day hippy will prevail.
project - Member
Just for reference last months bill was £91,500
Thats a lot of power for a house in cheshire to be using for christmas lights.Obviously decimal point in wrong place
No Crimbo lights here 😉
We are mid table for our sites, our Edinburgh mill is £125,000 a month & Corby £144,000
Where do you plan to put these big dams anyway?
Ooh, can I suggest somewhere I don't live or like to go?
[quote=gwaelod ]Loss of wetlands for migrating birds
intertidal wetlands for migrating birds are **** anyway over the next 50-100 years...the rate of sea level rise will overwhelm them faster than the ecosystem can re-establish inland. Time to start making hard choices in environment/mitigation sphere.
Yeah, so let's just **** them now and get it over and done with. How much of that sea level change would a Severn barrage prevent when we're making our hard environmental choices?
In my opinion we should:
*Invest in energy storage in particular pumped hydro
*Invest more in tidal and hydro
*Build some reactors along the lines of the IFR (we have a huge stockpile of plutonium so lets start burning it)
*Invest in fusion development (we are but we should do more)
However I'm not worried about the lights going out yet we are not at that point.
It is easy and quick to create wetlands and environments that attract wildlife and birds. Near where I live there are alot of areas that have been used for various mining and industrial activities like open cast mining and gravel pits. In less than 20 years these now disused industrial sites have mostly been converted to 'natural' wetlands and have very quickly and easily become attractive habitats for much British wildlife and even have attracted some breeds of bird that have not been seen in the UK for decades due to a decline and lack of suitable environments.
It's as if putting the nations energy supply into the hands of private business has failed to produce a long term energy solution even with incentives, subsidies and tax brakes.If privatly owned energy companies are failing it is time for the industries to be taken back and the public's needs and interests to be put before those of "the city".
Quite.
It's almost as if the general public doesn't even know that a lot of gas/elec/water infrastructure is foreign owned already. Then we just need the Chinese to build a nuclear power station, that'll mean that we'll be ok for a few more years.
Or as above, they invade as it'll be less hassle for them.
The power of NIMBY is not to be under estimated, I'm trying to get a ESCO project through the planning system, it seems that people are more interested in being able to speed down the local roads and a minor visual impact than decarbonising their energy use
Don't get me going on the Green Party and their energy and agricultural policies, absolutely no idea how they can get away with peddling stuff reminiscent of southeast Asian policies of the 70's
Surely all this talk of alternative methods for generating power to meet demand is treating the symptoms, not the cause?
If energy usage continues to rise at its current rate, is there [b]any[/b] source that can meet demand in the long term (short of the holy grail of fusion)?
Yes I get that we need to sort something out in the short term. What worries me is politicians’ tendency to stick a plaster on something and think they’ve sorted it and can now ignore it (for the rest of their lives / careers, at least). But we have to look at how much we’re using, too. Do we really need that dishwasher, 4th TV on standby, or electric leaf blower?
STW wood-burners For The Win!
We need to do both, steve - reduce consumption and find alternative ways of generating what we do need.
PS dishwashers nowadays are actually more efficient than washing by hand.
[quote=Pz_Steve ]But we have to look at how much we’re using, too. Do we really need that dishwasher, 4th TV on standby, or electric leaf blower?
No, but whilst those are nice headline items, none of them have a significant impact on usage (usage for a dishwasher is quite high, but IIRC it's more efficient in terms of total energy usage than doing dishes the conventional way). We need to look at where the significant savings are to be made - it doesn't have a big impact on leccy usage as most domestic heating in this country is gas, but one of the biggest ones is home insulation.
Got a smart meter today - not telling me anything I didn't broadly know, but it gives instantaneous leccy consumption with single Watt precision (for total usage below 1kW), so will have a play around and see what's using what at some point when everybody else is out. So far usage has been dominated by electric oven for tea.
Edit: writing while molgrips posted, pleased to see confirmation of the dishwasher thing.
+1 for taking electricity generation back into the public sector.
We've had a quarter-century of lack of investment and we're going to be paying a shedload for electricity to make good in years to come.
Thorium reactors are a fantastic idea, but no-one has bothered making one yet. The current government seems to want to cosy up to oil companies, hence the falloff in green energy investment.
but one of the biggest ones is home insulation.
Problem is the research shows that insulation saves little as people still run everything the same as before.
aking electricity generation back into the public sector.
If there is still no government strategy and pandering to NIMBYS then it will make no difference.
[quote=dragon ]Problem is the research shows that insulation saves little as people still run everything the same as before.
eh? I presume most people have ch on a thermostat - what happens if you run that the same as before but add insulation?
Orbiting solar mirrors. Kills 4 birds with 1 stone.
1) Very efficient energy supply
2) Can be used to reflect/manage sun contact with earth
3) Kickstarts a heavy space industry which will help get us out of the current lack of forward-looking and ambition
4) The microwave downlink can also be used to shoot the inevitable godzillas caused by nukerlar radiation.
There's only one minor downside- we don't know how to build them yet, or even if it'll work. But that doesn't seem to worry people when they talk about new nuclear.
Media predict blackouts
Tories push for shale gas
I smell a rat
A blanket ban on halogen spotlights would be a good start, and subsidise the LED replacements. Every house I've been in has at least 10 of the blasted things, usually 50W.
Pretty sure knocking 25 million * 10 * 50W off peak demand will help.
Tripling the price per kWh for some businesses outside of office hours also won't do any harm, and might actually encourage them to switch off their lights / computers overnight.
Educating anyone who turns up a thermostat when it's cold outside. It's a thermostat, it knows what to do. Leave it alone.
Asking everyone to drop the temperature of their hot water tanks by 5C if electrically heated.
Whopping fines for people who waste energy (of any description). Looking at you, Mr Sales Rep sitting in Tesco's car park to eat your lunch while leaving the engine running. Although the above might be punishment enough anyway. But minicabberists never switch their engines off while they're waiting, and a one-off fine of, say, £1000 against all of them will bring in some cash.
Psst......... heard the one about importing hydro derived power from Norway
This thread topic is a bit like groundhog day on here but yes the supergrid will hopefully be the future. I've worked on the Norwegian and Icelandic hvdc interconnector projects.
Offshore wind too expensive.
If you think offshore wind is too expensive wait til you see the price they are demanding for our new nuclear power
If you think offshore wind is too expensive wait til you see the price they are demanding for our new nuclear power
Offshore wind - £121 per MWh.
Hinkley Point nuclear - £92.50 per MWh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22772441
On balance I prefer the cheaper nuclear option which also produces power when we want it, not when the wind happens to be blowing.
Pan-European lulls in the wind stretching from Spain in the South to Sweden in the North, Britain to the West and Germany in the East are commonplace. The combined wind capacity of these six countries is 97.9 GW. On occasions the output from this gigantic resource falls below 3 GW, a load of 2.9%. At present and for the foreseeable future the only way to mitigate for wind variability is back-up from other dispatchable power sources.
http://euanmearns.com/the-wind-in-spain-blows/
Statoil's Hywind project is interesting, if it works and it should, then offshore wind becomes more environmentally friendly and we can put turbines in deeper water.
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Useful to see the actual production of electricity:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-electricity-data-1920-to-2011
And we must be more efficient since the population has certainly risen since the late 70's but we seem to be using about the same - or maybe it's the reduction in heavy industry and/or 'inter-connectors?
bigjim - MemberOffshore wind too expensive.
If you think offshore wind is too expensive wait til you see the price they are demanding for our new nuclear power
the expensive new nuclear stuff is a stop-gap, using soon-to-be-oudated designs. it's expensive because we're over a barrel.
the future is (should be) small-modular reactors.
(each power station consists of dozens of small reactor cells, their manufacture can be productionised - reducing cost. Each module can be removed for maintenance / end of life - meaning decomissioning can be productionised. Watch this space)
It would be interesting if a mix of distributed power generation (e.g. local wind/water power for villages & houses) with a centralised mix of nuclear and offshore wind to provide the baseline.
It's been reported that in the southern US states the power companies are now seeing a drop in domestic demand.
b r - MemberAnd we must be more efficient since the population has certainly risen since the late 70's but we seem to be using about the same - or maybe it's the reduction in heavy industry and/or 'inter-connectors?
Maybe I'm misreading but we seem to be using almost 50% more? 225-ish twh in the late 70s, 325-ish in the early 2010s. (though, in decline since 2005)
We've been having these threads for years, the debate is always around how to produce more/enough power when the solution is to cut demand: domestic, commercial and industrial.
Three of us including a teenager, we're not on gas and our electricity meters installed in Sept 09 read:
Production: 20970kWh
Consumption: 11768kWh
consumed production: 0kWh
Insulate, solar PV, solar thermal, energy efficient appliances;
If you think offshore wind is too expensive wait til you see the price they are demanding for our new nuclear power
Offshore wind - £121 per MWh.Hinkley Point nuclear - £92.50 per MWh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22772441
On balance I prefer the cheaper nuclear option which also produces power when we want it, not when the wind happens to be blowing.
But does that include the cost of the nuclear constabulary, armed police guards, transportation and storage of nuclear waste, along with decommisioning and public liability when it eventually goes bang, which one day it will.
[quote=project ]when it eventually goes bang, which one day it will.
You seem very sure about that given the only one to have ever got anywhere near going bang in this country was the very first one, which not only was designed when we knew a lot less, it's purpose wasn't even to produce electricity.
Statoil's Hywind project is interesting, if it works and it should, then offshore wind becomes more environmentally friendly and we can put turbines in deeper water.
Indeed, the pilot park off Scotland has now got the go ahead too. I worked on that too - interesting stuff.
Offshore wind - £121 per MWh.Hinkley Point nuclear - £92.50 per MWh.
Certainly the electricity sale price is part of it, but with nuclear there is a massive hidden cost of decommissioning, which as a friend who works in decommissioning put it, means that essentially no one yet knows the true price of nuclear power generation. See the breakdown of costs (in millions of £) per site at the bottom of this page https://www.nda.gov.uk/what-we-do/costs/
The cost per MWh of offshore wind is also going down every year so could soon be in line with the cost of nuclear you have quoted there, but without all the other costs of nuclear.
By the way, I know the euanmeans website looks all fancy, but if you hadn't noticed he is basically massively biased against wind power, the king of the nimbys perhaps! Expect opinion disguised as fact anyway.
means that essentially no one yet knows the true price of nuclear power generation. See the breakdown of costs (in millions of £) per site at the bottom of this page https://www.nda.gov.uk/what-we-do/costs/
Classic mistake of mixing historic and future, the stuff referred to there is not compatible with future stuff.
In the short term throw up some cheap CCGT's to deal with the peaks
The latest generation efficient CCGTs are not particularly cheap to build at around £350k - £400k per MW of capacity (and unit sizes of anywhere between 400MW-1000MW. And to operate at its most efficiently (to give an appropriate return to the developer) would run as base load with moderate load-following. If you run it purely for peak management, guess what? The £ per MWh figure required to recover the fixed costs increases dramatically...
Lol plan A would be all nuclear, the renewables are just to appease the rest
A full nuclear solution isn't the 'magic wand' solution either...nuclear tends to operate best at base load (a relatively flat output 24/7/365). Although I understand that the next generation of nuclears, commissioning from 2024/25 will have some flexibility but not in any way appropriate for the extremes of UK national demand.
Comparing the UK to the US doesn't help - their operational models differ dramatically to the UK and their seasonal demand trends do not compare well to the UK either.
UK Winter Peak tends to be 52-55GW (52000MW-55000MW). UK Summer minimum demand has got as low as 17GW/18GW in the last couple of years due to a combination of recession, energy efficiency and the amount of embedded generation i.e. local wind / solar PV reducing demand (from National Grids perspective).
By the end of the decade National Grid forecast 'summer lows' to trough somewhere nearer to 5GW at certain times of the day as the amount of distributed generation continues to increase ...
...this will cause significant grid-operational issues as (a) one day could look extremely different to the next as weather (and therefore renewable generation output) changes, meaning grid will still need conventional, despatchable generation, connected and available 'in their back pockets' and (b) the MW demand may be significantly less than the 'must run' generation MW i.e. on a sunny breezy day we may have 10/15GW of Solar PV, a similar amount of wind and 10/12GW of base load nuclear...too much generation - requiring novel solutions to rebalance the equation.