The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[alfaspecial]

LongQ said:

So what power consumption do you minimise? And who decides?

Does using the Internet for everything use more or less power than, for example, communicating by snail mail?

What effects do stop-start engines have on energy consumption?

Should we be restricted to maximum house temperatures?

Lower workplace temperatures?

Bans on air conditioning systems?

No car engine larger than 1litre?

Smart showers (no baths) that can only be used in Hot mode on alternate days?

As for home insulation standards (why stop at homes, offices and commercial units are probably the larger consumers) with so many being a long way from such standards and retro-fit likely to be impractical for a number of reasons (cost and resource availability for a start - huge CO2 output doing the work being another) it might be easier to simply demolish existing building and build anew.

All of it.

Of course there might be a few economic repercussions but, heck, this is about saving the planet right?

Isn't it?

"a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Personally (because I'm mean!) I try to minimise power consumption. In addition to trying to find unlimited 'green' sources of energy doesn't it make sense to minimise power consumption?
This is a car forum and we all know the way to go faster: POWER but there is an alternative to more power
Colin Chapman: "Simplify, then add lightness"
"Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere"

[feef]

alfaspecial said:

LongQ said:

So what power consumption do you minimise? And who decides?

Does using the Internet for everything use more or less power than, for example, communicating by snail mail?

What effects do stop-start engines have on energy consumption?

Should we be restricted to maximum house temperatures?

Lower workplace temperatures?

Bans on air conditioning systems?

No car engine larger than 1litre?

Smart showers (no baths) that can only be used in Hot mode on alternate days?

As for home insulation standards (why stop at homes, offices and commercial units are probably the larger consumers) with so many being a long way from such standards and retro-fit likely to be impractical for a number of reasons (cost and resource availability for a start - huge CO2 output doing the work being another) it might be easier to simply demolish existing building and build anew.

All of it.

Of course there might be a few economic repercussions but, heck, this is about saving the planet right?

Isn't it?

"a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Personally (because I'm mean!) I try to minimise power consumption. In addition to trying to find unlimited 'green' sources of energy doesn't it make sense to minimise power consumption?
This is a car forum and we all know the way to go faster: POWER but there is an alternative to more power
Colin Chapman: "Simplify, then add lightness"
"Adding power makes you faster on the straights; subtracting weight makes you faster everywhere"

Rather than just saying 'use less power' or have shorter showers, there is an argument to be made to make all our electrical devices more efficient. An LED light can use 80% less power than an equivalently bright tungsten filament. I'd be interested to see what research grants and subsidies are out there for making appliances more efficient rather than just the power generation end.

[RizzoTheRat]

bearman68 said:

Well something along the lines of trees, but artificially. My point is that there is a natural mechanism for converting sunlight and Co2 into Carbon even at cold northern latitudes. The 'trouble' is with plants dong the job, it's relatively slow and inefficient. It might just be possible to have an artificial system that does the conversion. You wouldn't need to go through the fossilisation route, as the carbon would appear as carbon already, not as a plant compound. (Actually thinking about this it would probably arrive as a sugar, but that's a different question)
As far as high levels of Co2 - well the plants manage it at the current level.

There are people working on artificial photosynthesis, but I believe at the moment the simpler solution is using bacteria to create hydrocarbons fuels from plant matter. Still need to grow the plants but can use great growing ones and don't have to wait a few million years for then to turn in to oil.

[alfaspecial]

feef said:

Rather than just saying 'use less power' or have shorter showers, there is an argument to be made to make all our electrical devices more efficient. An LED light can use 80% less power than an equivalently bright tungsten filament. I'd be interested to see what research grants and subsidies are out there for making appliances more efficient rather than just the power generation end.

I'm in complete agreement with you, hence my Colin Chapman quote. The car (because this is car forum) analogy is pertinent:
Performance is not merely derived from power but the power to weight ratio ie efficiency.

If all buildings were built to increasingly high standards of energy efficiency in all aspects of design then total power consumption would, over time, drop significantly.

Specifically? Siting buildings to make best use of solar gain. Use of trombe walls. As you say LED lighting. A power system giving greater incentives to off peak consumption (which would mean a drop in power capacity).

Rather than merely try & come up with new power generation we can all make changes to the way we use power.
I hasten to add that I'm not a thick woolley jumper wearing environmentalist, mind!

[garagewidow]

feef said:

An LED light can use 80% less power than an equivalently bright tungsten filament.

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.
look at the massive industry and research that has gone into making ever more powerful LEDs compared to that of making a simple wire and glass bulb.
i'm not against the advancement of tech,i use led bulbs and other modern technology as much as the next person but lets not fool ourselves that they are really as efficient and good for the planet as we would like to think they are.

look at cars,i drive old ones mainly,now most people would just see an old smelly polluting vehicle if it was a Cortina or allegro for example but if it was an E type or an Aston then people just see a nice looking car but the point is they are both better for the planet than someone who buys a new car every 3 or 4 years.

have you seen the peasouper smogs in china?thats where all 'our' pollution is going.

we have to keep advancing purely for the economy to work.

[XM5ER]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

[silentbrown]

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.
.

You're right there there's obviously an energy cost with developing something like LED bulbs, but it's a one-off that's spread over all the millions of unit made. (And there's also been continual development of old-fashioned filament bulbs, too,)

LED bulbs obviously cost more to manufacture, but with a typical power usage of maybe 5% of a filament bulb, and a lifetime of 5-10x it's a no brainer that these are a big benefit overall. As far as I know there's no subsidies involved which is a good clue that it's pretty unambiguously beneficial!

[feef]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

Fair point well made, but I assume that people don't want to use the full accepted "Wind Turbine Generator" or WTG.

(I just know that WindMills is generally used by the dismissive)

You're both right.

Technically a windmill is a mill powered by a wind turbine as a turbine is a rotational device with vanes that produces power by the movement of a fluid (and a gas is technically a fluid) over the vanes.

A 'wind turbine' is an electric generator powered by a wind turbine

So both have turbines.

[LongQ]

silentbrown said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.
.

You're right there there's obviously an energy cost with developing something like LED bulbs, but it's a one-off that's spread over all the millions of unit made. (And there's also been continual development of old-fashioned filament bulbs, too,)

LED bulbs obviously cost more to manufacture, but with a typical power usage of maybe 5% of a filament bulb, and a lifetime of 5-10x it's a no brainer that these are a big benefit overall. As far as I know there's no subsidies involved which is a good clue that it's pretty unambiguously beneficial!

No direct subsidies perhaps but ...

Incandscent bulbs waste lighting energy by producing heat. Not good in hot countries or in the summer but quite useful as a dual benefit in northern locations (and a few places in the southern hemisphere) in winter conditions.

General Electric Corporation of America were a big player and brand owner in light bulbs but suffered competition from cheaper (and mostly poorer quality shorter life bulbs) from China. GE's CEO, Immelt, also had "save the planet" CFL technology in his portfolio but no wanted it because it was poor in so many ways. It could possibly be improved but there was no drive to do so unless there would be a guaranteed market from which to recover the development costs.

Having gained an unwelcome press on first release making it sell by re-marketing the technology would likely be expensive.

However, if one could pitch to "Law Makers" about the benefits of lower power consumption and suggest they could all be heroes by banning Incandescent bulbs, GE could sidestep the the impending threat from the cheap old technology and dominate, for a while, the new complex, hi-tech market with the buying public carrying most of the cost one way or another.

And so it happened, with the "Law Makers" falling for it and banning incandescent bulbs with seemingly very little need to be persuaded. It suited part of their wider purpose in places like the EU.

Whether GE realised that they would open a door to other technologies that would rather quickly swamp CFL for home use is another matter. We seem to have leapt through CFL to Halogen and on to LED very quickly.

I have no problem with LED lighting and power saving as it stands. It the product life claims are generally validated then it makes sense form a number of points of view - providing one doe not go overboard and install more lighting devices and use them all because they are so cheap to run.

What the changes imply, when fully implemented, for the electricty generation market is yet to be worked out based on measured results.

As with many things a huge amount of up front investment (and CO2 output) is required in order to "save" stuff somewhere in the future.

Maybe.

One has to wonder, for example, what happens to costs if oil production is suppressed to the point that oil and its by products (for example plastics) become much more expensive. How might that re-balance the cost effectiveness models?

In effect, one might argue, any legislation enacted that changes the market is a form of indirect subsidy from "government" and a direct subsidy by the consumer, a lower cost (at point of purchase) option having been eliminated at some point.

[V8 Fettler]

feef said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

Fair point well made, but I assume that people don't want to use the full accepted "Wind Turbine Generator" or WTG.

(I just know that WindMills is generally used by the dismissive)

You're both right.

Technically a windmill is a mill powered by a wind turbine as a turbine is a rotational device with vanes that produces power by the movement of a fluid (and a gas is technically a fluid) over the vanes.

A 'wind turbine' is an electric generator powered by a wind turbine

So both have turbines.

Should the machines not be described as "combined wind turbine generator air circulator motors"? To accurately include reference to the motoring function when powered from the grid.

[qube_TA]

One project I was working on that I found interesting was 'Dynamic Response' for power management.

As pointed out in this thread a lot of power generation likes a stable flat load, fission reactors cover the base load and your fossil generation covers the dynamic component on top. However the more dynamic the load the lower the base component is, and they have to keep generation on warm standby to jump in when needed, wastes a ton of coal and gas.

To combat this you take a large aggregate of power users (malls, manufacturing, cold stores, fridges, data centres etc) and they monitor the power coming in. Ideally it should be at 50Hz all the time, however if the grid is under load it'll drop a smidge, maybe 49.8hz or if it's under load then 50.2hz.

Under conditions of high load equipment that can be shut off temporarily without causing a problem will automatically do that, if you walk into a Supermarket, the heater that blows hot air on you won't, chances are you won't notice it's not running. Similarly in periods of low load then compressors will fire up, mechanical cooling will be used instead of free cooling etc. These blips only last for a few minutes but if you can modulate a 20Mw load you can offset the rises and falls and keep the overall demand stable. If something goes out of spec as in a cold store warms up a little then that will start back up again, but the net result is that peaks and troughs are countered.

As this saves the national grid a ton of wasted power and they give you a very reasonable rebate (£100k / 1Mw / year). Also if any of your sites have their own generation that can feed back into the grid and help further then they'll pay you for your trouble again.

'Renewables' will come into their own when storage becomes viable, at the moment they have expensive people who have to determine in advance how much power to expect from a farm at a particular time to ensure it's usable, if they get it wrong and it's too little or too much then they have to either waste it or pull power in from elsewhere (not to mention reliability). The UK uses 2249 TWh so to rely on renewables you'd need to be able to store 2,249 TW of energy for when it's dark and the wind isn't blowing to keep the lights on for 1 hour. The biggest battery in the world can deliver 400MWh so to scale that up to 2,249,000,000,000MW/h is going to need some serious engineering. But even then if it's still dark and not windy then after an hour you power goes off, in addition when the renewables are producing electricity again then they need to be sufficiently oversized so that they can provide the 2249TW of power and charge up that monster of a battery again quickly.

[Shakermaker]

V8 Fettler said:

feef said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

Fair point well made, but I assume that people don't want to use the full accepted "Wind Turbine Generator" or WTG.

(I just know that WindMills is generally used by the dismissive)

You're both right.

Technically a windmill is a mill powered by a wind turbine as a turbine is a rotational device with vanes that produces power by the movement of a fluid (and a gas is technically a fluid) over the vanes.

A 'wind turbine' is an electric generator powered by a wind turbine

So both have turbines.

Should the machines not be described as "combined wind turbine generator air circulator motors"? To accurately include reference to the motoring function when powered from the grid.

If we were in the car together, and I said "Hey look at that windmill!" whilst driving along, I would not expect anyone to reply back with "What windmill? I see no such thing" and then I point at it and you go "Oh, you mean that combined wind turbine generator air circular motor?" I wouldn't go "Yes, that's what I meant" I would probably kick you out of the car...

[XM5ER]

Shakermaker said:

V8 Fettler said:

feef said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

Fair point well made, but I assume that people don't want to use the full accepted "Wind Turbine Generator" or WTG.

(I just know that WindMills is generally used by the dismissive)

You're both right.

Technically a windmill is a mill powered by a wind turbine as a turbine is a rotational device with vanes that produces power by the movement of a fluid (and a gas is technically a fluid) over the vanes.

A 'wind turbine' is an electric generator powered by a wind turbine

So both have turbines.

Should the machines not be described as "combined wind turbine generator air circulator motors"? To accurately include reference to the motoring function when powered from the grid.

If we were in the car together, and I said "Hey look at that windmill!" whilst driving along, I would not expect anyone to reply back with "What windmill? I see no such thing" and then I point at it and you go "Oh, you mean that combined wind turbine generator air circular motor?" I wouldn't go "Yes, that's what I meant" I would probably kick you out of the car...

You mean "kick you out of my semi-autonomous, motor-powered, quad wheel perambulatory device".

Back on topic, Paddy any comments on the hidden carbon costing used in power generating economic models?

[rovermorris999]

qube_TA said:

Lots of interesting stuff

Agreed, renewables will become technically viable when viable storage on the scale required is cracked, if ever. They're mainly becoming 'viable' financially now thanks to subsidies and taxes on 'carbon'. Production cost decreases are also helping but I'd take a punt on the cost of materials going up as demand increases. I have absolutely nothing against renewable energy, it would be wonderful if it can be made to work, with the proviso that I don't have to look at the bloody things!
Places like Drax though are gesture politics at it's very worst.

[s2art]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

Wrong. May have been correct a few hundred years ago. All those windmills in Holland didnt do much grinding, neither did all those mill towns in the north of England. Windmill/mill became a generic term long ago.

[XM5ER]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Back on topic, Paddy any comments on the hidden carbon costing used in power generating economic models?

Not something I am aware of - which first.y does not mean it does not exist, just not something I have knowledge of or heard of in my day to day.

Can you shed more light on what it is exactly and I'll try to answer best I can

Its to do with the levelised cost of electricity.

"For example, the EIA uses a $15-per-ton carbon price when it calculates the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) generated by coal fired power plants. An EIA table lists the LCOE is $95 per MWh, without an asterisk to guide the reader to the note in the text that a price of carbon has been used when calculating the LCOE."

from here
http://ddears.com/2017/05/19/energy-forecasts-are-...

I don't know if we use the same methodology here in the UK.

[V8 Fettler]

Shakermaker said:

V8 Fettler said:

feef said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

garagewidow said:

sure it does,but again like solar panels and windmills the energy saving has already been spent in the development and manufacture processes.

Wind turbines


Mills grind. Turbines generate.

If you want to be pedantic, turbines spin, mills grind, generators generate. Therefore, wind driven generators would be a more correct term.

Fair point well made, but I assume that people don't want to use the full accepted "Wind Turbine Generator" or WTG.

(I just know that WindMills is generally used by the dismissive)

You're both right.

Technically a windmill is a mill powered by a wind turbine as a turbine is a rotational device with vanes that produces power by the movement of a fluid (and a gas is technically a fluid) over the vanes.

A 'wind turbine' is an electric generator powered by a wind turbine

So both have turbines.

Should the machines not be described as "combined wind turbine generator air circulator motors"? To accurately include reference to the motoring function when powered from the grid.

If we were in the car together, and I said "Hey look at that windmill!" whilst driving along, I would not expect anyone to reply back with "What windmill? I see no such thing" and then I point at it and you go "Oh, you mean that combined wind turbine generator air circular motor?" I wouldn't go "Yes, that's what I meant" I would probably kick you out of the car...

I doubt if there would be much likelihood of any conversation in your vehicle, I generally refuse to travel in a minicab.

If the correct description of "combined wind turbine generator air circulator motor" is not favoured, there is always the default description of "eyesore", or possibly "blight on the landscape".

[Likes Fast Cars]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

No Idea - but as a scale comparison type thing.
(approx dimensions across brands)
3MW = 110m Diameter
3.6MW = 120m
5.0MW = 150m
the current biggest 8MW = 164m

This is being tweaked / for sale as a 8.4, and up to 9MW

I've seen the blueprints of 10MW at 220M diameter, and thought thats big enough.... (actually initial comment was 'fk Off")

read two months ago about 12-14MW turbines and thought WTF.

Read last week that Vattenfall have based their Borealis field off the Norfolk coast (Part of the East Anglia cluster of sites) using a 20MW turbine for 2025.

Go Figure what that'll look like !

The Vattenfall strategy - and prices - are interesting. I assume you read what their CEO had to say? That will be a benchmark.

[silentbrown]

LongQ said:

Incandscent bulbs waste lighting energy by producing heat. Not good in hot countries or in the summer but quite useful as a dual benefit in northern locations (and a few places in the southern hemisphere) in winter conditions.

Not just light bulbs. Basically energy from all sources eventually winds up as heat. Computers, cars, refrigerators, whatever,

Aside from the problem that the heat released is usually in the wrong place (ceiling) and often at the wrong times (summer!), the real issue is that electrical energy is a vastly inefficient (and thus expensive) way of heating things. http://www.withouthotair.com/c11/page_71.shtml

[Sylvaforever]

LongQ said:

Sylvaforever said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Afternoon all - as chief protagonist to several of the tin foil hatters / hater on the CC thread, I'm tipping my hand in here too.

I'm by no means stating that Wind (Specifically Offshore Wind) is the answer to the prayers, but have a reasonable knowledge on the industry - from inception with the Blyth Demo's / Horns Rev in the early 2000's to the current, and future plans.
I broke cover on the CC forum to firstly correct broad brush sweeping assumptions and statements being made - based on bad info and out dated monetary, political, technological details.

To briefly summarise where I believe Offshore wind is heading :
Within 5 - 8 years, if not sooner, the industry (projects) will not require any subsidy / taxpayer input - (USA being the exception, and I am largely talking about Europe / UK here)
Turbines will be 15MW each.
Offshore over the horizon and with HVDC to the shore
This was met with huge derision elsewhere on PH and some chest puffing, but I think that its actually largely accepted.

The scale, (wind turbines if nothing else) the speed of the LCOE reduction has seen the 2020 target price already met.

A balanced portfolio of power generation is required, as are good networks of connectors - and some education / personal initiative harnessing of energy would be the sensible way forward in my humble opinion.

So - any questions on Offshore Wind, I may be able to answer.

Nice to see a bit of positivity re wind generation, I've always said creating power from wind is pretty good, it's the way power generation has been seen a a political pawn rather than a national priority that is wrong.

With power (i.e. Electricity because it can be sold to people as "clean",, but only if connected to seemingly "clean" technologies.) as a key national priority what would be your preference for generating the levels of dispatchable, reliable power at night in the middle of a winter high pressure event when it tends to be naturally cold and demand will be at its highest?

Note that these events can last for several hours or several days.

That's an easy one, from whatever source provides the greatest amount of energy security for the UK coal or shale gas spring to mind...