The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain
Discussion
Gadgetmac said:
Condi said:
turbobloke said:
FWIW which is a considerable amount in this context:
Could you please explain the quote? What is 'base science'? And how does it relate to the power system. Mark P Mills Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute said:
You have to recognise what the physics permits and doesn’t permit. New discoveries will come from basic science, not from subsidies for yesterday’s technologies. We didn’t get the internet by subsidising the rotary dial telephone.
EVs were ditched a century ago for good reason, windymills have been replaced, now both are back in a different guise with subsidies to go.FYI, The Manhattan Institute, despite obviously wanting to be associated with the Manhattan Project, is actually a right wing, free economy think thank with links to the Koch brothers, and was cited by 19 US senators as promoting 'phoney climate change denial'. Mark Mills is also a partner in an oil technology fund.
You'd think the shame would get to him at some point.
rscott said:
Gadgetmac said:
Condi said:
turbobloke said:
FWIW which is a considerable amount in this context:
Could you please explain the quote? What is 'base science'? And how does it relate to the power system. Mark P Mills Senior Fellow of the Manhattan Institute said:
You have to recognise what the physics permits and doesn’t permit. New discoveries will come from basic science, not from subsidies for yesterday’s technologies. We didn’t get the internet by subsidising the rotary dial telephone.
EVs were ditched a century ago for good reason, windymills have been replaced, now both are back in a different guise with subsidies to go.FYI, The Manhattan Institute, despite obviously wanting to be associated with the Manhattan Project, is actually a right wing, free economy think thank with links to the Koch brothers, and was cited by 19 US senators as promoting 'phoney climate change denial'. Mark Mills is also a partner in an oil technology fund.
You'd think the shame would get to him at some point.
Gary C said:
robinessex said:
Nationalise the countries energy supply systems, then the government can fix it.
Yes !Then I can go back to sleeping on a night shift because there are so many staff each of us only have to work for 30 minutes a shift.
Gary C said:
Yes !
Then I can go back to sleeping on a night shift because there are so many staff each of us only have to work for 30 minutes a shift.
Then I can go back to sleeping on a night shift because there are so many staff each of us only have to work for 30 minutes a shift.
You were obviously on PH on nights last night! I think most of us either manage a nap or some good TV time at 3am... Private or public enterprise, there isn't much doing at 3am either way!
Gary C said:
robinessex said:
Nationalise the countries energy supply systems, then the government can fix it.
Yes !Then I can go back to sleeping on a night shift because there are so many staff each of us only have to work for 30 minutes a shift.
Evanivitch said:
LongQ said:
Based on the similar expectation for existing technology deployed in the past 2 or 3 decades I would be very cautious amount accepting the claimed life expectancy.
And how long does a traditional heating setup last? There is at least one house nearby that, afaik, still uses the original gas boiler. Others have changed in more recent time but got about 30 years out of them.
Would have been more of course but, as usual, service parts become unavailble.
Our version of that boiler was always problematic partly due to poor servicing by a number of different suppliers. it only lasted a few years before a couple of serious failures tempted us to swap for one of the then new and heavily promoted and somewhat subsidised "condensing" units and a larger hot water storage tank. (The original unit was a sort of partial on demand system with a small tank which was also the main boiler heating container somehow. It was interesting when it split.)
The first condensing boiler took some time to get right for various reasons but I was looking forward to the savings on the gas bill and there was a govt. price subsidy that made it affordable at the time. With some hassles along the way it lasted about 8 or 9 years before the heat exchanger split.
Whatever the gas savings might have been (there seemed to be little evidence of any) they would not have paid for a replacement unit after 8 or 9 years.
As the easiest replacement meant fitting the latest (and even more complicated) version of that boiler (almost no re-piping required and it was the middle of winter so time was critical) we just took the new version. Which took a while to get set up and then had an expensive component failure after 18 months - just out of warranty. Over complexity again and in some part due to the constant tempering with the tech and spec and changing component suppliers which meant that the product was unlikely to mature.
After about 7 years we had some further issues with it and on speaking to the manufacturer's service desk they expressed surprise that it was still working.
It seems that expected life of a gas boiler - something that should be a fairly simple device - is now very short and I cannot help but think that the cost involved with attempting to save a few % of gas usage, partly driven by policies intended to reduce some notional "carbon footprint", is neither a saving nor cost effective (on balance considering manufacturing and shipping costs for the products and the cost of servicing something that is complex and not very reliable).
Along our street our experience is not in any way unique.
However, at least most of this system, bar the pipes, is readily accessible and local issues about the chemical makeup of the water supplies and supply pipes under the ground are well known.
Burying heat exchanger pipes that may need to be regularly replaced would presumably mean that to replace them one would need to dig up the old ones and install new. Not a trivial task and not at all trivial in an urban environment I would imagine. And all for what?
Of course we have been doing the same thing with cars which most likely, in part, has been why people have rushed to personal finance rental models rather than ownership. That and other regulation seems to be putting the car industry into a form of recession.
I note that a Ford executive has been quoted as foreseeing a near future where no one owns cars - they just rent an autonomous self driving pod of some sort when they feel they can afford to do so for travel. (Simple logic has been pointing in this direction for some time but it's interesting to see a representative of a major player saying so publicly.)
These things will be like taxis working 24/7 and needing replacement every 4 years at best. It could be close to happening within a decade. They will be electric powered. And presumably as utility vehicles, most will be simplified as far as possible to keep the manufacturing and maintenance costs down and profitability up.
How would such a change (alongside the abolition of Gas fired space heating) affect the power generation requirements of the UK?
Can we afford the level of investment required for the change? If so, how?
robinessex said:
Gary C said:
robinessex said:
Nationalise the countries energy supply systems, then the government can fix it.
Yes !Then I can go back to sleeping on a night shift because there are so many staff each of us only have to work for 30 minutes a shift.
The CEGB was huge, really huge. I lost count of all the research sites we had, all the investment in new designs and tech, only to drop it and move on.
The print industry is a good example as was allowed to be 'protected', with similar results.
Yes, some of it was the spirit of the age, but a lot wasn't. Anyone who thinks nationalisation is a panacea for giving the country effective and cheap industry is in for a shock.
However, at least the money ends up in our pockets rather than bosses
Lancashire fracking: 2.9 magnitude tremor recorded
third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
Halb said:
Lancashire fracking: 2.9 magnitude tremor recorded
third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
That's what happens when the fracking process releases existing pressure built up over time, preventing future events of larger magnitude, and 2.9 is approximately lorry-over-speed-hump territory.third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/lorries-...
Halb said:
Lancashire fracking: 2.9 magnitude tremor recorded
third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
never felt a thing !third earthquake in a week
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-4...
To longq re boilers;
I run my boiler temp very high and have a 1’c hysteresis on my set points. This means it comes on works hard and the goes off for an hour before coming on again. It wont spend much time condensing in that time, but you get the maximum delta t. between the rad and the room.
Before, it used to be set lower and constantly cycling on and off the every few minutes - which must contribute to the early demise of many boilers.
Also i use a system boiler, not combi - which again means in the summer it comes on twice a day for 30 mins or less for hot water and that’s it.
I run my boiler temp very high and have a 1’c hysteresis on my set points. This means it comes on works hard and the goes off for an hour before coming on again. It wont spend much time condensing in that time, but you get the maximum delta t. between the rad and the room.
Before, it used to be set lower and constantly cycling on and off the every few minutes - which must contribute to the early demise of many boilers.
Also i use a system boiler, not combi - which again means in the summer it comes on twice a day for 30 mins or less for hot water and that’s it.
eliot said:
To longq re boilers;
I run my boiler temp very high and have a 1’c hysteresis on my set points. This means it comes on works hard and the goes off for an hour before coming on again. It wont spend much time condensing in that time, but you get the maximum delta t. between the rad and the room.
Before, it used to be set lower and constantly cycling on and off the every few minutes - which must contribute to the early demise of many boilers.
Also i use a system boiler, not combi - which again means in the summer it comes on twice a day for 30 mins or less for hot water and that’s it.
Sounds like a sensible way to run a system boiler, which is what ours is.I run my boiler temp very high and have a 1’c hysteresis on my set points. This means it comes on works hard and the goes off for an hour before coming on again. It wont spend much time condensing in that time, but you get the maximum delta t. between the rad and the room.
Before, it used to be set lower and constantly cycling on and off the every few minutes - which must contribute to the early demise of many boilers.
Also i use a system boiler, not combi - which again means in the summer it comes on twice a day for 30 mins or less for hot water and that’s it.
In the summer, assuming the weather is somewhat summer like, I run the hot water for about 45 mins early morning and mid afternoon and nothing else will create demand so that's much the same as your settings. 2 reasons - wife likes a bath in the morning (hates showers) and our ageing washing machine is one with a hot water intake so the PM burn tops up for both. It also means we have an effective airing cupboard and I am told these things are important.
In full winter mode, unless the wife is having an "I'm feeling like I'm cold at any temperature" day, it will come on and modulate nicely for several hours at a time in conjunction with the radiators that have thermostatic valves installed. Spring and Autumn and their in-between temperatures are a bit more difficult to achieve balance - especially if the wife decides a few hours of electric fan heating are required.
The main problem - and possibly one of the reasons why complex boilers have high failure rates or take the blame and are replaced when other problems are the root cause - is crap in the micro-bore system which, over time, results in poor return flow and eventually triggers the boilers protection systems. That tends to result in more crap reaching the heat exchanger and settling there with no easy way to get it out completely. There are historic reasons for the sludge build up the most recent of which was supply pipe burst in the road that was fixed but on re-pressuring supply instantly pumped a whole load of grit into the water system including the CH header tank. At the time we did not realise just how far the grit had reached.
Problems prior to that had everyone suggesting that the boiler was due for replacement from about 7 years of age which seems like a very poor return overall, in an ecological sense, for the energy expended in making the thing and installing it. But then I know of people who have changed after only 2 or 3 years based on advice provided - usually by people who fit heating systems.
Of course cars are in much the same situation. The manufacturers would much prefer people to buy a new box on wheels than to have to provision of parts supplies and workshop activity on older ones. So we end up with a high manufacturing energy waste situation made worse, usually, by government policies that, we are told, are based on making changes that are "good" for some notional future target.
My current boiler is now 17 years old. Whenever it starts to play up there will be a short period of dodgy performance usually coinciding with first autumn heating use and sometime around the spring as things warm up and system balance vs the safety settings become marginal if flow is reduced and the thermostatic valves are doing their thing. At that point I dig my industrial scale filter out of the garage and connect it for a day or two with some cleaning chemicals in the system. These days the system is mostly good but once in a while some historically deposited sludge is freed up from the depth of a radiator somewhere and can be just enough to cause a flow problem. Yes know it would make more sense to take the rads off and flush them - especially the older ones - but my wife fails to accept that logic in any way shape or form and the poor old heater unit takes all of the blame.
That said we are now actively looking at changing the boiler and the older rads that have not been changed and some bits of the existing microbore pipework that may not have been the best invention known to the world of heating system engineering though they were hailed as an excellent economic and ecological step forward in their day.
Why change now?
Well some of the rads and their badly fitted valves are 40 years old and are probably due for a change before they have some sort of catastrophic failure. So that's a chance to clean the system more deeply than just filtering can achieve, given its history. And if doing that then the internals of the boiler need to be cleaned and realistically its age suggests a change make more sense since the cost of any of the main internal components, assuming they are still available new, seem to be almost the same as buying a completely new boiler unit. Which, come to think of it, is much the same as running an older car.
However at least with a boiler you only get one year of instant depreciation rather than several years.
Plus it has taken me years to get my wife to listen to the logic and to reduce the number of objections she raises to doing anything about changing the older radiators so it seems like the opportune time to make the change although if it were left to me I might stretch things out for another year or two with an emergency "sudden failure" plan in place. I'm not convinced that the modern hi-tech units are as effective as people would like to claim nor likely to be as reliable and long lasting as one might wish. And of course the size and suggested heat output of radiators have changed and thus there are no direct replacements for what we have - which possibly makes the job a little more complicated than it needed to be and may give a less satisfactory aesthetic result.
All of which entirely parallels what we see in the world around us at a wider level. A sales pitch for economy and ecology that may not be entirely transparent at the point of delivery and some misunderstandings about cause and effect that help no one to make useful decisions.
Meanwhile Wind generation seems to be in the middle of an extended hiatus and there is a significant electricity import coming through the interconnects. Even some coal based generation though not enough to be significant unless its for balancing frequency in some way.
It's a good job the UK does not make extensive use of air conditioning. At least not yet. And that the manufacturing base has been significantly reduced in recent times. With the growing population things could be getting tricky if demand was still at the same level as, say, France (Currently France demand 54.21GW, UK Grid 37.35GW. Population of both countries more or less equal when I last checked.)
This looks interesting, I'd not heard of cryogenic air storage before.
https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/
https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/
LongQ said:
Evanivitch said:
LongQ said:
Based on the similar expectation for existing technology deployed in the past 2 or 3 decades I would be very cautious amount accepting the claimed life expectancy.
And how long does a traditional heating setup last? There is at least one house nearby that, afaik, still uses the original gas boiler. Others have changed in more recent time but got about 30 years out of them.
The engineer had bought up a lot of Baxi parts at some point and said with new pumps the boiler would go on for years as it has. One new pump failed shortly after fitting. Otherwise problem free the last 16 years.
Not as efficient as a condensing boiler but allowing for a new boiler depreciating at £100-£200 a year probably not much in it cost wise. As for saving the planet? It's probably outlasted two or three modern boilers.
I was watching the Quest channel program called MEGA Shippers this morning, Quest is only repeating stuff they bought from the Discovery Channel so likely circa 10 years ago.
[shane warne voice]Shipping wood pellets from the US to Drax, the volumes where astonishing, now if only the ship ran on so called 'renewable wood pellets' we might be on to a winner.[/shane warne voice]
Who is planting the new trees?
[shane warne voice]Shipping wood pellets from the US to Drax, the volumes where astonishing, now if only the ship ran on so called 'renewable wood pellets' we might be on to a winner.[/shane warne voice]
Who is planting the new trees?
JustALooseScrew said:
I was watching the Quest channel program called MEGA Shippers this morning, Quest is only repeating stuff they bought from the Discovery Channel so likely circa 10 years ago.
[shane warne voice]Shipping wood pellets from the US to Drax, the volumes where astonishing, now if only the ship ran on so called 'renewable wood pellets' we might be on to a winner.[/shane warne voice]
Who is planting the new trees?
I don't know exactly, but if it's waste from a lumber yard (I can't imagine chipping a tree to be profitable) in Canada or the US, I'd expect it would be the lumber yard.[shane warne voice]Shipping wood pellets from the US to Drax, the volumes where astonishing, now if only the ship ran on so called 'renewable wood pellets' we might be on to a winner.[/shane warne voice]
Who is planting the new trees?
Quick google suggests British Columbia, for example, planted ~260 million trees each year in 2016/17.
Edited by glazbagun on Tuesday 27th August 23:31
Talking of trees why is it that cutting down forests in the USA , turning them into woodchips, shipping them across the Atlantic, then burning them at Drax counted as carbon neutral electricity while farmers clearing forest in the Amazon by burning to create farmland is a climate disaster?
https://theecologist.org/2018/apr/16/hardwood-fore...
https://theecologist.org/2018/apr/16/hardwood-fore...
Witchfinder said:
This looks interesting, I'd not heard of cryogenic air storage before.
https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/
Ambrose Evans Pritchard has a write up about them in the telegraph today. Seems quite promising. If they can really scale it up hopefully it will make wind and solar more viable. https://www.highviewpower.com/technology/
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