The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

[turbobloke]

According to an online calculator there are 155.5 days to Chrstmas - here's something for the list:

"The False Promise of Green Energy" by A P Morriss et al.

Non-believer blog review 1 said:

What green energy promises to provide is just so alluring-more jobs, a cleaner environment, a more stable economy, clean and bountiful electricity, fewer toxins and pollutants and, of course, the gratitude of generations to come. There's just one problem. It isn't going to happen that way. This book critically and realistically evaluates the claims of green energy and green jobs proponents who argue that we can improve the economy and the environment, almost risk-free, by spending billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars in return for what are ultimately false promises.

Non-believer blog review 2 said:

As the backlash against green snake-oil peddlers mounts, so does the number of intelligent critical discussions of the topic: among the latest in this genre is a work by the economists and legal scholars Andrew Morriss, William Bogart, Roger Meiners, and Andrew Dorchak, The False Promise of Green Energy. These authors provide an accessible and sufficiently comprehensive survey of the perennial technical problems and uneconomic character of solar- and wind-power generation, biomass-derived fuels, battery-powered cars, and rail mass transit, and they mince no words in describing what can be seen when they lift the green veil under which special interests—corporations, politicians, and environmentalists—have long concealed themselves while securing taxpayer-funded subsidies. They also document how, long before self-described “green visions” came along, market incentives were spontaneously fostering the development of the ever more efficient use of costly inputs in all economic sectors so that very few green bills were left lying on the energy sidewalk in the first place.

The book’s real value, however, lies in the authors’ application of basic political economy concepts to their subject—from opportunity costs and rent seeking to the Bootlegger-and-Baptist framework and the inherent opposition between the maximization of human welfare and the creation of artificial jobs through government fiat. Like other economists before them, they observe that pouring taxed and borrowed money into green-job schemes destroys more jobs than it creates. To their credit, they are blunter than most critics. My favorite one-liners from the book are: “[O]ne man’s (bio)fuel is some child’s meal” (p. 68); “[S]elective technological optimism in the green jobs literature is so omnipresent that there is almost no bad news anywhere except related to fossil fuels” (p. 97); in the eyes of green visionaries, what makes a job truly “green” is the “inefficient use of labor within a production process” (p. 149); and green-energy proposals typically rely on “bad data used in poor quality models designed with flawed assumptions about economics producing unreliable analysis upon which unsupported recommendations are based” (p. 198). Indeed, the authors argue, the fact that the green-jobs literature “contains so many basic economic errors is not accidental but reveals that it is built on a thinly concealed hostility to market-ordered societies, a hostility that strongly influences its policy recommendations” (p. 124).

Something for everyone to enjoy - reality

[wc98]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

and those fearful of change ??

i think we have quite enough brexit related threads without bringing remainers into this one thank you

[turbobloke]

Sauce for...

[Gary C]

Is looking likely that China will buy into us, so they think there is going to be a chance to build. Would be interesting to see their analysis of the U.K. market, but they must think we are going to need to build some large facilities.

[LongQ]

First they bought Africa.

Now they are going for other third world economies.

[LoonyTunes]

turbobloke said:

Never mind any other meaning, what does that gibberish mean?

You appear to have a very selective understanding of posts Mr Turbo - as on the Jeremy Corbyn thread you understood something that hadn't even been explained by the poster. I suppose it's a case of 'perfectly understandable' if it's a post from someone with your viewpoint, but it's 'gibberish' if not.

[andymadmak]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Well, despite the prophecy of Rolando - recall he said there was not future for renewables - the world economic forum {edit - in fact everyone } disagrees :

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/head-of-un-...

But you still, after all these months and months on the forum, have yet to provide a comprehensive answer to the problem of the intermittency of renewables.

Sure you've given waffly broad brush answers like "balanced supply grids, inter-connectors and such like. But the detail, in which the devil so cunningly lurks, is as sparse as the availability of renewable energy on a still dark night.

In simple terms, yes we can use less energy by having LED bulbs to light our houses, and triple glazing to keep the heat in.... using less is always good, especially as our capacity to generate energy from non intermittent sources continues to shrink...but we still need to produce the amount of energy that we need, reliably, 24/7, under all foreseeable conditions.

In simple terms we can nab some energy from our neighbours by way of inter-connectors ...right up until the point that they themselves need that energy and the connection is switched off.

Yes we can add huge amounts of wind capacity, at significant cost to build and maintain, all in the hope that it will at least be windy somewhere.... but on a still day across the country it's still not contributing anything.

Yes we can have solar power...except at night we cannot.

So what this says is that there are times when renewables generate humungous amounts of power, sometimes far far more than we can use at that point. But also there are times when all that infrastructure, all that investment actually produces nothing...or worse, actually consumes power due to the parasitic load.

But, for all the time we over produce we have no way of storing any meaningful amounts of that over production, and for all the time we have little or no production we have to have other facilities/technologies available to fill the gap, keep the lights on, heat our homes and power our businesses.

We've proved we can build a humungous battery in the desert, that can keep things running for 30 minutes ( or however long it is ) but let's not kid ourselves that represents any kind of solution to intermittency beyond the masturbation of Elon's ego.

So, it's the year 2030. Jan /Feb time. The coal plants are all long gone. Gas has been scaled back too. New nuclear has just about replaced the old nuclear we closed down in the same period (am I being too generous here?) and it's a very long, cold winter, with little opportunity for significant solar and wind generation.
We, as a nation are in energy poverty ( we need more than we can generate) Sadly the french and the norwegians are in a similar position, so the inter-connectors are switched off..

What happens next?

[Jinx]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

So what do we do about it ?

Build some coal fired plants (and open up a couple of mines to support them) . HTH

[Toltec]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Couple of points :

andymadmak said:

But you still, after all these months and months on the forum, have yet to provide a comprehensive answer to the problem of the intermittency of renewables.

Sure you've given waffly broad brush answers like "balanced supply grids, inter-connectors and such like. But the detail, in which the devil so cunningly lurks, is as sparse as the availability of renewable energy on a still dark night.

Which are clearly working ? or did I miss the power cuts ?

That is the past, the thing you like to dismiss when looking at existing renewables, we are talking about the future. The reason we do not have power cuts is because there is sufficient nuclear, gas and coal to supply the country without any renewable input. What renewable source will keep the lights on?

[Ali G]

Very FAR offshore and Very, VERY HIGH

With extra batteries.

And connectors.

And smart meters to cut demand when the supply fails.

[Ali G]

Let's hope we all get to experience it - and that this is not a costly exercise to kick the can as far and as high into the wild blue yonder as possible - before anyone notices.

[Gary C]

andymadmak said:

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Well, despite the prophecy of Rolando - recall he said there was not future for renewables - the world economic forum {edit - in fact everyone } disagrees :

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/04/head-of-un-...

But you still, after all these months and months on the forum, have yet to provide a comprehensive answer to the problem of the intermittency of renewables.

Sure you've given waffly broad brush answers like "balanced supply grids, inter-connectors and such like. But the detail, in which the devil so cunningly lurks, is as sparse as the availability of renewable energy on a still dark night.

In simple terms, yes we can use less energy by having LED bulbs to light our houses, and triple glazing to keep the heat in.... using less is always good, especially as our capacity to generate energy from non intermittent sources continues to shrink...but we still need to produce the amount of energy that we need, reliably, 24/7, under all foreseeable conditions.

In simple terms we can nab some energy from our neighbours by way of inter-connectors ...right up until the point that they themselves need that energy and the connection is switched off.

Yes we can add huge amounts of wind capacity, at significant cost to build and maintain, all in the hope that it will at least be windy somewhere.... but on a still day across the country it's still not contributing anything.

Yes we can have solar power...except at night we cannot.

So what this says is that there are times when renewables generate humungous amounts of power, sometimes far far more than we can use at that point. But also there are times when all that infrastructure, all that investment actually produces nothing...or worse, actually consumes power due to the parasitic load.

But, for all the time we over produce we have no way of storing any meaningful amounts of that over production, and for all the time we have little or no production we have to have other facilities/technologies available to fill the gap, keep the lights on, heat our homes and power our businesses.

We've proved we can build a humungous battery in the desert, that can keep things running for 30 minutes ( or however long it is ) but let's not kid ourselves that represents any kind of solution to intermittency beyond the masturbation of Elon's ego.

So, it's the year 2030. Jan /Feb time. The coal plants are all long gone. Gas has been scaled back too. New nuclear has just about replaced the old nuclear we closed down in the same period (am I being too generous here?) and it's a very long, cold winter, with little opportunity for significant solar and wind generation.
We, as a nation are in energy poverty ( we need more than we can generate) Sadly the french and the norwegians are in a similar position, so the inter-connectors are switched off..

What happens next?

but we know what the answer is don't we ?, large amounts of gas generators ready to pickup the load and all the costs involved in paying for it. So we can't scale back gas.

[V8 Fettler]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

-
-

V8 cites a winter like that verbatim - but it wasn't. One of the other posters predicted that with the cold spell this February but that also was not the case.

-
-

Once again, you appear to have forgotten that we started to run out of gas after a couple of weeks of cooler weather and some snow earlier this year; how is the current model robust?

As previously: to bring out the important elements of the gas deficit warning in 2018 https://www.utilitywise.com/2018/03/06/gas-deficit...

Article dated 06/03/2018

utilitywise said:

With high demand across Europe, supplies via flexible pipelines from Belgium and the Netherlands fell significantly. Through most of February, these pipelines were providing around 60mcm of supply a day. However, since the ‘Beast from the East’ began to bite, this fell closer to 30mcm.

utilitywise said:

Medium range storage was sending out at over 70mcm a day to meet the higher demand. Storage began the week 65% full with just under 1,000mcm in storage. The week saw 500mcm of this stock used and if this continues at the same rate, supplies will be empty by the end of this week (9 March).

utilitywise said:

There is now only 220mcm of gas stored at the UK’s three LNG terminals (Grain, Dragon, and South Hook), yet during the cold snap sendout peaked at over 80mcm/day. Were that rate to continue, LNG stocks would be empty within a week. This gas will have to be replenished but there are currently no tankers booked for the UK.

utilitywise said:

There is enough gas around to make it through the current cold snap, but if it is prolonged or there is a further spell of cold later in March, this could be very troublesome.

[bobmcgod]

Here in the north east we're going to burn everyone's rubbish to keep warm.

https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/w...

I think this is Teessides 6th Energy from waste plant?

There's another energy plant deal that's meant to be getting announced for the old SSI site ut I don't know what it is.

[Ali G]

http://euanmearns.com/the-national-infrastructure-...

In conclusion article said:

In my opinion, the Government ought to have the work of AURORA audited by a competent organisation, assuming that such an organisation exists.

[rscott]

Ali G said:

http://euanmearns.com/the-national-infrastructure-...

In conclusion article said:

In my opinion, the Government ought to have the work of AURORA audited by a competent organisation, assuming that such an organisation exists.

It's strange how some seem to accept the word of Mearns as the "one true way" toward our future power generation plans. What makes his views so special?

[Toltec]

rscott said:

It's strange how some seem to accept the word of Mearns as the "one true way" toward our future power generation plans. What makes his views so special?

There is nothing special about his views, if you run the same analysis you get similar results.

I ran the Gridwatch figures for last year to get some idea of how much storage would be needed to allow wind and solar from last year to match demand and put the results in this thread.

[LongQ]

rscott said:

Ali G said:

http://euanmearns.com/the-national-infrastructure-...

In conclusion article said:

In my opinion, the Government ought to have the work of AURORA audited by a competent organisation, assuming that such an organisation exists.

It's strange how some seem to accept the word of Mearns as the "one true way" toward our future power generation plans. What makes his views so special?

You need to re-read the "By" line.

Then try the comments for a range of views, many, though not quite all, made by people with related experience to the generation industry or its supply chain in one form or another.

Taking your viewpoint and looking at it form the other direction .... what makes the Aurora work so special that Governments should accept it without question as the basis for planning several decades ahead? Have they announced plans about how they expect to review the report and perhaps question some of the recommendations. Maybe the National Audit Office (or whatever it is called these days) can provide some observations as a starting point.

[Evanivitch]

LongQ said:

You need to re-read the "By" line.

Then try the comments for a range of views, many, though not quite all, made by people with related experience to the generation industry or its supply chain in one form or another.

Taking your viewpoint and looking at it form the other direction .... what makes the Aurora work so special that Governments should accept it without question as the basis for planning several decades ahead? Have they announced plans about how they expect to review the report and perhaps question some of the recommendations. Maybe the National Audit Office (or whatever it is called these days) can provide some observations as a starting point.

Aurora team disclose their education and experience.
https://www.auroraer.com/about/our-team/

Roger Andrews is a geologist.

Edited by Evanivitch on Wednesday 25th July 14:30

[Toltec]

Evanivitch said:

Aurora team disclose their education and experience.
https://www.auroraer.com/about/our-team/

Roger Andrews is a geologist.

Edited by Evanivitch on Wednesday 25th July 14:30

The three people that appear to hold positions related to renewable technologies are economists or lawyers, one of the directors has a Mathematics PhD, but seems to use it for economics.