Electricity bills !

[Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO]

A good read here- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedjnw8e85o

 

Including- 

 

 

 

no wonder our bills keep going up! 

 

[Craigieboy]

Read it, crazy isn't it and all the while they are trying to push us into electric cars. I would miby consider one if it was cheaper like they are in Norway.

 

I've watched a few videos of a bunch of microlight flyers and they always know when they've crossed the border into Scotland, because the wind farms start!

[Stuart]

4 hours ago, Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO said:

A good read here- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdedjnw8e85o

 

Including- 

 

 

 

no wonder our bills keep going up! 

 

Issue is that the grid is crap. So it's that or pylons everywhere. Great planning by our short term governments as always 

[Craigieboy]

I watched a bit of Simon Reeve in Norway on the BBC. Apparently before North Sea oil was discovered in 1969, it was pretty much a backwater with fishing the only industry. 

They however invested their oil money and now have a 13 trillion public bond. So they can fund all the public spending they want and however much they spend per year the interest on the bond is soo much, it still goes up. 

[Blatman]

6 hours ago, Stuart said:

Issue is that the grid is crap. So it's that or pylons everywhere. Great planning by our short term governments as always 

A little harsh. I doubt any politician or industry expert saw "this" coming.

We, like France, should have built more nuclear power stations but the same is true, no-one saw "this" coming so we didn't.

The nuclear nay-sayers might well argue that pylons are prefereable to plutonium (ok, Uranium, but I like aliteration...).

So we're left with "we must do something" and the government du jour will do something that the majority will object to and when voted out the next lot will fully or partially dismantle it for something equally unplatable. 

I think what we can agree on is net zero by 2030 is not going to happen in real life, but the numbers will say it has and it will be clear that we all payed for this **** show as usual.

If they could just all agree that hydrogen is the way forwards we could get some stuff done...

 

[corsechris]

V2G could help balance the grid and reduce the insanity, but that’s a long way off. 
 

More nuclear would be good, particularly the small local plants.

 

Quite how we managed to screw up the windfall of North Sea Oil so badly is no mystery really. Just see where the money went. 
 

Hydrogen has a place but there are some fundamentals that need solving before it’ll reach any scale. Green production being the first, then will come storage and distribution. Until we have way more electricity generation than we know what to do with, and a large scale process of production, hydrogen can’t really be much more than a curiosity I don’t think. 

 

 

 

[Euan Hoosearmy]

Your bills keep going up as you're paying for two sets of generating infrastructure and the crazy schemes to balance production and demand...

 

Wind and Solar are unreliable, when working at full output they can produce enough to meet a good proportion of demand.... but the sun don't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow so you need enough nuclear and gas stations to be able to meet the same demand when it's dark and calm. We don't actually have enough capacity so we have to import from various sources in mainland europe often at exorbitant cost.

 

Batteries - don't even go there.... just don't have the capacity to be able to keep the grid running for any period of time. The larger battery implementations in the US have a nasty history of fires and the locals in California are getting fed up with them : https://ctif.org/news/bess-fires-residents-sue-energy-companies-after-massive-toxic-battery-fire-moss-landing-power#:~:text=Monterey County%2C CA – Following a massive lithium-ion,of failing to maintain adequate fire safety measures.

 

Keep an eye on https://gridwatch.co.uk/ to see how often the renewables/unreliables aren't producing what's needed. 

[dvd8n]

37 minutes ago, Euan Hoosearmy said:

The larger battery implementations in the US have a nasty history of fires

 

They're building one of those just down the road from me at the moment.

[corsechris]

@Euan Hoosearmy

 

What do you propose as a solution? 

[Insuranceman]

Tidal and not let governments give away the revenue from oil in tax cuts.

[dvd8n]

It would make much more sense to use the intermittent generators (ie windmills) to do something like generating hydrogen on site and just use the reliable generators like nuclear to supply the grid.

[Euan Hoosearmy]

1 hour ago, corsechris said:

@Euan Hoosearmy

 

What do you propose as a solution? 

If you want low carbon, then Nuclear. SMRs look interesting. Otherwise natural gas. We're sitting on loads of it. Just have one set of reliable dispatchable generation capability. 

[Captain Colonial]

14 hours ago, Blatman said:

So we're left with "we must do something"

The problem here is that we always “do” the wrong thing, because it’s cheap, simple, and quick.  The process goes like this in business and in government:

 

1) We must do something 

2) This is something!

3) Therefore we must do this 

 

Which also proves that dogs are cats:

 

1) My dog is domesticated and has four legs and a tail

2) Cats are domesticated and have four legs and a tail!

3) Therefore my dog is a cat

[corsechris]

My solution would be renewables but base load covered by nuclear, a mix of large plants as well as plenty of SMRs spread about the place for resilience and responsiveness.

 

Ideally, surplus renewables would be stored in something better than batteries. Gravity, salt, even converting to hydrogen despite it being horribly inefficient. Better than turning off the turbines and paying folk to NOT generate power. Madness.

 

Burning stuff is last resort.

 

But, I've no 'skin in the game' the saying goes. I'll be dead soon enough and have no "legacy" to worry about.

[evosteve]

When thinking about nuclear the costs rarely include decommissioning, and the UK has all the waste its ever generated in storage!