The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
turbobloke said:
The event which followed BFTE in late Feb 2018, called the Mini Beast from the East (mid-March) really describes both as they were 'Mini' compared to what happened in 1962/63 which those who experienced the 60s will know only too well.
Remind me, is that the one with gale force winds and blizzards, or the one where all the coal froze solid and couldn't be moved by rail?speedking31 said:
fter a few cycles, all of the predictive switching on will have evened out demand through the night so electricity will cost the same whatever time you purchase it and we're back to where we started but with the overhead of a lot of computing power with nothing to do.
But instead we will have a grid demand profile that is ideal for Nuclear generation!turbobloke said:
The event which followed BFTE in late Feb 2018, called the Mini Beast from the East (mid-March) really describes both as they were 'Mini' compared to what happened in 1962/63 which those who experienced the 60s will know only too well.
Known as the ‘The Big Freeze’ it's seen as the worst British winter of the modern era. The coldest weather for 200 years was recorded. The sea froze in some parts of the country. Seawater doesn't freeze above ~ 2 deg C below zero. The cold weather began in late December 1962 just before Christmas and persisted through to March 1963. The 'mean max' for January 1963 was -2.1 deg C. It was also a time of sharply declining solar activity (as per this year's Brief Beast). During this transit from solar cycle 19 to 20 there were 227 days with no sunspots and overall low solar eruptivity (not just irradiance). At such times of lower UV activity cold air forms high above the tropics affecting atmospheric circulation patterns, bringing winds from the east as a cause of very cold winters in the UK and other parts of northern Europe including Germany.
The relevance here is prolonged bitterly cold weather with significant cloud cover and not much wind - and our ability to stay warm with the lights on if it happens again for a period of over 2 months rather than 2 weeks (excluding the Mini Beast). In another thread I've mentioned peer-reviewed science on this topic from Bucha and Bucha, a level of detail which needn't be repeated here, but it's been known for decades.
Its like a broken record in this place, no matter what (ir)relevance it has to do with anything, we seem to end up back in the 1960s.Known as the ‘The Big Freeze’ it's seen as the worst British winter of the modern era. The coldest weather for 200 years was recorded. The sea froze in some parts of the country. Seawater doesn't freeze above ~ 2 deg C below zero. The cold weather began in late December 1962 just before Christmas and persisted through to March 1963. The 'mean max' for January 1963 was -2.1 deg C. It was also a time of sharply declining solar activity (as per this year's Brief Beast). During this transit from solar cycle 19 to 20 there were 227 days with no sunspots and overall low solar eruptivity (not just irradiance). At such times of lower UV activity cold air forms high above the tropics affecting atmospheric circulation patterns, bringing winds from the east as a cause of very cold winters in the UK and other parts of northern Europe including Germany.
The relevance here is prolonged bitterly cold weather with significant cloud cover and not much wind - and our ability to stay warm with the lights on if it happens again for a period of over 2 months rather than 2 weeks (excluding the Mini Beast). In another thread I've mentioned peer-reviewed science on this topic from Bucha and Bucha, a level of detail which needn't be repeated here, but it's been known for decades.
Despite all the rose tinted spectacles, nostalgia, and coal which was dug literally below the power stations, and not to mention that most people used electricity for just lights, a fridge, and a TV, 'power cuts became the norm' during the Big Freeze, partly due to cold weather, and partly due to industrial action.
'Militant union action aggravated the situation with 'work to rule' orders to the staff of power stations. The result was power cuts that closed cinemas and theatres, darkened streets and traffic lights. It became necessary to carry a torch and also to keep matches and candles readily to hand at work or at home.'
http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2008/...
So... what point are you trying to make? In the 1960's we had cold weather for 6 weeks, and the country nearly shut down. In the 1970's we had rolling blackouts and 3 day working weeks. Since the 1980's to present power cuts have been few and far between, and while last year things got a bit tight, lights stayed on for everybody.
EDIT - to be more constructive, I think where you're coming from is that we should keep plenty of stations in reserve in case of cold weather. Which is fine, but on the other hand you complain about the subsidies given to renewables. To keep enough stations available in case of the coldest weather in 200 years (aka 1963/64) would cost millions and millions in subsidies to keep inefficient and uneconomic power plants sat there for 199 years out of 200. I'm struggling to understand how subsidies for renewables are bad, yet subsidies to keep coal stations available even though they might never generate are good? Surely its all about balancing risk and cost?
Edited by Condi on Monday 10th December 20:01
LongQ said:
Quite a few documents in the link but I'm wondering if any of them explain the economics of the potential savings vs the cost of implementation. If there are any could you point to them please? I'm guessing that they may not be directly accessible from the landing pages.
I'll have a look, it's quite likely that information is on the internal network so can't be shared though. Condi said:
turbobloke said:
The event which followed BFTE in late Feb 2018, called the Mini Beast from the East (mid-March) really describes both as they were 'Mini' compared to what happened in 1962/63 which those who experienced the 60s will know only too well.
Known as the ‘The Big Freeze’ it's seen as the worst British winter of the modern era. The coldest weather for 200 years was recorded. The sea froze in some parts of the country. Seawater doesn't freeze above ~ 2 deg C below zero. The cold weather began in late December 1962 just before Christmas and persisted through to March 1963. The 'mean max' for January 1963 was -2.1 deg C. It was also a time of sharply declining solar activity (as per this year's Brief Beast). During this transit from solar cycle 19 to 20 there were 227 days with no sunspots and overall low solar eruptivity (not just irradiance). At such times of lower UV activity cold air forms high above the tropics affecting atmospheric circulation patterns, bringing winds from the east as a cause of very cold winters in the UK and other parts of northern Europe including Germany.
The relevance here is prolonged bitterly cold weather with significant cloud cover and not much wind - and our ability to stay warm with the lights on if it happens again for a period of over 2 months rather than 2 weeks (excluding the Mini Beast). In another thread I've mentioned peer-reviewed science on this topic from Bucha and Bucha, a level of detail which needn't be repeated here, but it's been known for decades.
Its like a broken record in this place, no matter what (ir)relevance it has to do with anything, we seem to end up back in the 1960s.Known as the ‘The Big Freeze’ it's seen as the worst British winter of the modern era. The coldest weather for 200 years was recorded. The sea froze in some parts of the country. Seawater doesn't freeze above ~ 2 deg C below zero. The cold weather began in late December 1962 just before Christmas and persisted through to March 1963. The 'mean max' for January 1963 was -2.1 deg C. It was also a time of sharply declining solar activity (as per this year's Brief Beast). During this transit from solar cycle 19 to 20 there were 227 days with no sunspots and overall low solar eruptivity (not just irradiance). At such times of lower UV activity cold air forms high above the tropics affecting atmospheric circulation patterns, bringing winds from the east as a cause of very cold winters in the UK and other parts of northern Europe including Germany.
The relevance here is prolonged bitterly cold weather with significant cloud cover and not much wind - and our ability to stay warm with the lights on if it happens again for a period of over 2 months rather than 2 weeks (excluding the Mini Beast). In another thread I've mentioned peer-reviewed science on this topic from Bucha and Bucha, a level of detail which needn't be repeated here, but it's been known for decades.
Despite all the rose tinted spectacles, nostalgia, and coal which was dug literally below the power stations, and not to mention that most people used electricity for just lights, a fridge, and a TV, 'power cuts became the norm' during the Big Freeze, partly due to cold weather, and partly due to industrial action.
'Militant union action aggravated the situation with 'work to rule' orders to the staff of power stations. The result was power cuts that closed cinemas and theatres, darkened streets and traffic lights. It became necessary to carry a torch and also to keep matches and candles readily to hand at work or at home.'
http://www.thamesweb.co.uk/windsor/windsorhistory/...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2008/...
So... what point are you trying to make? In the 1960's we had cold weather for 6 weeks, and the country nearly shut down. In the 1970's we had rolling blackouts and 3 day working weeks. Since the 1980's to present power cuts have been few and far between, and while last year things got a bit tight, lights stayed on for everybody.
EDIT - to be more constructive, I think where you're coming from is that we should keep plenty of stations in reserve in case of cold weather. Which is fine, but on the other hand you complain about the subsidies given to renewables. To keep enough stations available in case of the coldest weather in 200 years (aka 1963/64) would cost millions and millions in subsidies to keep inefficient and uneconomic power plants sat there for 199 years out of 200. I'm struggling to understand how subsidies for renewables are bad, yet subsidies to keep coal stations available even though they might never generate are good? Surely its all about balancing risk and cost?
Edited by Condi on Monday 10th December 20:01
Why have coal on standby when it's more effective as baseload?
Condi said:
EDIT - to be more constructive, I think where you're coming from is that we should keep plenty of stations in reserve in case of cold weather. Which is fine, but on the other hand you complain about the subsidies given to renewables. To keep enough stations available in case of the coldest weather in 200 years (aka 1963/64) would cost millions and millions in subsidies to keep inefficient and uneconomic power plants sat there for 199 years out of 200. I'm struggling to understand how subsidies for renewables are bad, yet subsidies to keep coal stations available even though they might never generate are good? Surely its all about balancing risk and cost?
Subsidies are not bad but the problem with subsidising wind is it's unreliable, at the moment it's contributing about 1.6gw a real power station needs to be on standby to fill any gaps , so we pay for the wind turbine along with its backup and possibly a cost if the wind picks up overnight,Edited by Condi on Monday 10th December 20:01
I see the cost of the backup is directly connected to the use of wind turbines, the need for backup is proportional to the amount of wind turbines,
if it was only about risk and costs we wouldn't have wind turbines.
LongQ said:
So at my current rates that's about 14.5p per wash. A little less come January.
I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
I had a flick through the most recent UN IPCC climate report thingy that came out in October and stumbled across a section that suggested one course of action would be to do away completely with income tax and substitute it with a tax on energy. I might have that wrong but I remember thinking at the time that it seemed a little ill-thought out, for me who pays lots of income tax but uses little energy it would be great, someone on a low income and a few kids probably less so.I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
Here we go again, looks like the ABWR at Wylfa might be going the same way as the failed Moorside project.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...
jurbie said:
LongQ said:
So at my current rates that's about 14.5p per wash. A little less come January.
I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
I had a flick through the most recent UN IPCC climate report thingy that came out in October and stumbled across a section that suggested one course of action would be to do away completely with income tax and substitute it with a tax on energy. I might have that wrong but I remember thinking at the time that it seemed a little ill-thought out, for me who pays lots of income tax but uses little energy it would be great, someone on a low income and a few kids probably less so.I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
Daft policies based on climate fairytales can be very good at hitting the poor and benefiting the 'rich'. Ask Macron, then take renewables=unreliables as another example.
jurbie said:
LongQ said:
So at my current rates that's about 14.5p per wash. A little less come January.
I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
I had a flick through the most recent UN IPCC climate report thingy that came out in October and stumbled across a section that suggested one course of action would be to do away completely with income tax and substitute it with a tax on energy. I might have that wrong but I remember thinking at the time that it seemed a little ill-thought out, for me who pays lots of income tax but uses little energy it would be great, someone on a low income and a few kids probably less so.I might save 40% of that, although given the much higher likely use of a 2kW fan heater during colder days, (both washing machine and fan heater usually being operated by my wife so no say over that) and the probability that the day time consumption would be at a higher rate per kWh, the likelihood is that the bills would go up.
I doubt my wife would be in any way interested in saving not more than 5p on the wash and ending up with a load of crumpled washing in the machine to deal with in the morning.
I think it would quite difficult to explain the background reasons why, in the 21st century in a first world country, the electricity supply is to be subjected to management methods that, at best, have no immediate customer benefits but are projected to be possibly useful to as yet unborn (and maybe never born) people 80 to 100 years into the future.
It may be that they base this on their own earning experiences perhaps, for some of the proposers, not realising that such experiences may not be typical around the world nor really viable for supporting their organisation as it is currently funded.
They presumably assume that all wealthy people, just like Al Gore and many of their Ambassadors, consume a lot of energy in their lives and would therefore pay a lot more tax. However as the ownership of multiple properties and a fleet of energy consuming toys is somewhat discretionary rather than necessary spending there is no guarantee that their model would work nor that they could avoid circumvention in some way.
What they could do is run it as an experiment in a selected country for a while - say 20 years - to see how it works out in reality.
Merry said:
LongQ said:
Quite a few documents in the link but I'm wondering if any of them explain the economics of the potential savings vs the cost of implementation. If there are any could you point to them please? I'm guessing that they may not be directly accessible from the landing pages.
I'll have a look, it's quite likely that information is on the internal network so can't be shared though. Condi said:
EDIT - to be more constructive, I think where you're coming from is that we should keep plenty of stations in reserve in case of cold weather. Which is fine, but on the other hand you complain about the subsidies given to renewables. To keep enough stations available in case of the coldest weather in 200 years (aka 1963/64) would cost millions and millions in subsidies to keep inefficient and uneconomic power plants sat there for 199 years out of 200. I'm struggling to understand how subsidies for renewables are bad, yet subsidies to keep coal stations available even though they might never generate are good? Surely its all about balancing risk and cost?
Or you wonder why there is so much money being ploughed into renewables when the backup is necessary anyway and would be much more efficient working regularly.Forget the fuel source but think only in terms of whether a supply of the "fuel" can be guaranteed and if so should that be the main influence for investment decisions that have at their core a need for a 21st century society that is so reliant on electricity to have a guaranteed supply constantly. The further one looks into the future the more important that would seem to be (barring major humanitarian disasters that take us back to the normality of a few hundred years ago).
On the ther hand if you attempt to engineer renewables - based on available and realistically likely to be available technology for deployment in the period covered by the plan in development - to a level whereby they can provide a guaranteed level of generation that can be matched to demand you end up with overbuilding significantly in order to deliver the peak demand in any annually occurring worst case plus a bit more for any possible even worse worst case.
So a lot of redundancy one way or another. All of which consumes energy to create and undermines the economics of the strategy in just about every way. Probably to the point where no matter how cheap the "fuel" is the infrastructure costs will be economically destructive.
V8 Fettler said:
Why have coal on standby when it's more effective as baseload?
Because it's high carbon which has been deemed a bad thing and worth avoiding even if that needs additional investment.Appreciate there is some disagreement with carbon output being an issue but the government, regulations, trading markets and customers all believe it so the industry has to work on that basis.
Gilhooligan said:
Here we go again, looks like the ABWR at Wylfa might be going the same way as the failed Moorside project.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...
Was speaking to one of the guys working on that a few years ago and they were planning the biggest earthworks in Europe to shift a hill so it made space for the station and reduced noise to the local town. Sounded like a pretty vast undertaking. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/...
Wasn't the govt trying to back away from giving a strike price guarantee on any other stations to some other funding approach now?
turbobloke said:
Your recollection of the unadopted comic may well be accurate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46447459I fail to understand how someone can argue that black is white and white is black. Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change. Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
So, rightly (IMO) carbon has a price on it. Coal produces 3 times as many carbon emissions as gas and so coal is far too expensive to run baseload against alternative fuels.
Condi said:
turbobloke said:
Your recollection of the unadopted comic may well be accurate.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46447459I fail to understand how someone can argue that black is white and white is black. Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change. Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
So, rightly (IMO) carbon has a price on it. Coal produces 3 times as many carbon emissions as gas and so coal is far too expensive to run baseload against alternative fuels.
Condi said:
Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change.Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
You're talking about grey lit presumably - articles and papers that are not peer-reviewed, such as the IPCC uses in their climate reports. Also, the respect issue is neither here nor there. Whose respect matters? Where is the pecking order published, and who decided what the order should be? Beyond the grey lit aspect, that comment "every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet" is easily shown to be dogma/propaganda/uninformed nonsense.
Firstly not every scientist works in the field of climate change, the majority do not. Those that do so in the UK cannot get public funds for research which aims to refute agw only to support it. This is in writing in Hansard. There is no agreement within IPCC scientists either, you only need to read Climategate emails written and sent between them to see this very clearly.
Secondly there are many climate scientists in the peer reviewwd literature who don't subscribe to the 'dangerous permanent manmade warming' notion which is ramped by alarmists. Take Dr John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and an IPCC Lead Author. A peer-reviewed paper he co-authored which was published this year examined the output of climate models (which are based on agw) against observational data and found that the agw hypothesis had to be rejected. It's the data that matters, not the people.
Thirdly, appealing to authorities ('respected' organisations you approve of) is a logical fallacy.
Fourthly you offer no evidence that any organisation has surveyed its full membership with an appropriately worded and constituted survey to find out what they think obout agw, and what the result was. What you parroted above in the quote is doggerel, and it has no basis. What happens is that a relatively small number of activists elbow their way onto committees and into positions which are public-facing. They then emit information pollution which does not reflect the range of their colleagues' views. The fact that they don't represent anything like the full membership is shown clearly by resignations e.g. Dr Chris Landsea, Dr Ivar Giaever and Prof Hal Lewis, together with open letters of objection written and published by e.g. former NASA staffers complaining about NASA's unscientific approach to agw and Royal Society Fellows along the same lines.
Your post reflects strong commitment to The Cause but lacks any shred of evidence for its wild claims.
Condi said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-464...
I fail to understand how someone can argue that black is white and white is black. Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change. Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
So, rightly (IMO) carbon has a price on it. Coal produces 3 times as many carbon emissions as gas and so coal is far too expensive to run baseload against alternative fuels.
Can you ignore this sI fail to understand how someone can argue that black is white and white is black. Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change. Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
So, rightly (IMO) carbon has a price on it. Coal produces 3 times as many carbon emissions as gas and so coal is far too expensive to run baseload against alternative fuels.
t and get over to the Crypto thread to collect your prize before it becomes even more worthless, thanks 
turbobloke said:
Condi said:
Carbon emissions are inextricably linked to global warming and climate change.Every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet - anyone with a keyboard can write a paper without necessarily knowing anything about the subject.
You're talking about grey lit presumably - articles and papers that are not peer-reviewed, such as the IPCC uses in their climate reports. Also, the respect issue is neither here nor there. Whose respect matters? Where is the pecking order published, and who decided what the order should be? Beyond the grey lit aspect, that comment "every single respected scientist and government body across the world has reached the same conclusion - and I deliberately said 'respected scientist', not whatever paper you can find on the internet" is easily shown to be dogma/propaganda/uninformed nonsense.
Firstly not every scientist works in the field of climate change, the majority do not. Those that do so in the UK cannot get public funds for research which aims to refute agw only to support it. This is in writing in Hansard.
<snip to restrict query below>
On Condi's use of the phrase "respected" scientist. Who defines and what is defined as respected?
I've a strong suspicion this is going down the road of the "97%" and "concensus" fallacies.
I appreciate we are once again veering from topic but, also once again, this illustrates how connected the issues are - if it weren't for the demonization of CO2 and thus fossil fuels there'd be no need for the investment in alternative generation means.
Just think of all that money being available for the NHS/schools/tax reductions. Delete as applicable to your favoured need/political position
Drive a V8. Feed a tree.
jet_noise said:
Just think of all that money being available for the NHS/schools/tax reductions. Delete as applicable to your favoured need/political position
Why would you otherwise be paying for the NHS from your leccy bill? But anyway, despite all the comments about how expensive it is, our power is cheaper than the European average.
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