The Future of Power Generation in Great Britain

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I once titled my Degree thesis the same, how ironic that very little has improved since I wrote it 25 years ago.

Anyway, I proposed to bring the wind generation discussion out of the Climate Change thread for the purposes of opening up to the wider PH audience (I know a lot of people don't venture in there anymore since it is so polarized). I also want to open it up beyond the renewable discussion as so much has gone wrong since I wrote my thesis all that time ago.

To state my position, we should be building CCGT plant (combined cycle gas turbines) and fracking for all we are worth. At the same time we should be piling research into modular small fission nuclear power plant and putting long term research into fusion (hot or cold). I do not believe that wind power has more than a minor contribution to be made due to it's intermittency (is that a word?) and therefore the need to have back up plant that costs a shed load of cash to be just sitting there idling. As for solar? Give me a break, it barely warms my skin for more than a few days a year, it sure ain't gonna charge my Tesla.

Lets try to keep the discussion factual and non insulting. Speaking as a fkknuckle, I don't worry about name calling on the internetz but I know a few special snowflakes take unkindly to being accused of onanism, plus it doesn't add much to the debate.

Paddy! LongQ etc. You're up.

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feef said:

Something that's worth pointing out for those that don't know about solar,

Full-Spectrum Photovoltaic Material draws power from the full spectrum (as it's name suggests) which includes UV, the visible spectrum and IR (infra-red which is what is the feeling of warmth).
With more than half the 'power' of solar coming from UV and visible light, the lack of heat/IR isn't a big deal.

Existing photovoltaic and amorphous cells use only the visible spectrum, so less than 10% of the solar 'power' is useful, but again, don't use IR so the lack of heat is a red herring

As solar gets more and more efficient, we need less and less direct sunlight to make it more useful

I agree that it'll never solve all the problems, but I don't think it should be written off just yet

I'm aware of that FEEF, I was being facetious. Once full spectrum PV material becomes viable then the landscape will change, however like fusion, that always seems to be 20 years away. Worth posting though for the less informed.

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rxe said:

98elise said:

Unless my sums are wrong you could easily change a Tesla (for an average driver) from a decent home PV system. The main problem would be that if your an average driver then your car is probably at work during the day, however that PV would be available on the grid.

You cant, apart from a few days in the summer. Even then you don't get much. Using real data from my SSE facing 4 kW array, which is about as good as it gets in the SE of England:

Jan average - 4 kW/h. Jan peak - 11 kW/h Total 125 kW/h
Feb average - 5 kW/h Feb peak - 14 kW/h Total 207 kWh
.....
May average - 9 kW/h May Peak - 25 kW/h Total so far 237 .... likely to be 400.

Now it looks pretty good. You could charge your Tesla maybe twice in the whole of Jan, and maybe 5 times in May (so far). But - this is simple generation by the array. Whatever load you have in the house blunts this, and creating hot water using the immersion wipes it out completely in the winter. We probably export about 4 kW/h a day at the moment - and that is on a good day. It would take a long time to charge your Tesla if you were using it.

Now sure, if you didn't use any PV for hot water and the rest of the domestic daytime load, you could charge a Leaf as long as you were pottering to the local village to go shopping. But not much more than that.

This is exactly the kind of real world actual figures we never see. Thanks for that.

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Just throw some additional data into the mix that people may have missed the first time around

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable...

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it...

I don't want the CO2 stuff to be discussed on this thread if at all possible but as a proxy for affordability it is relevant to the discussion.

It is interesting as was noted above, that we built 10 fission reactors in the 1950's but don't seem to be able to now. What has changed in the intervening 50 years.

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mcdjl said:

We got all the weapons grade plutonium we needed and are still wondering what to do with the left overs.

sad but true.

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loafer123 said:

I agree about small modular reactors.

Very simple to site them on military bases, thereby getting the security thrown in for free.

Careful now, you're making too much sense. There's no future for you in government.

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Very interesting reading about hidden costing assumptions.

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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Wayoftheflower said:

Hmm so you didn't bother to follow the LINK describing the funding of Wattsupwiththat? Here's another.

Absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about linking from wiki, if it tells you something you don't like, deal with it. If it's inaccurate, correct it.

But if you'd like everything directly then HERE is the 273 page report on the blackout, the conclusion of which is, well the short version is, you should read Wikipedia.

WOTF, your links are utterly outdated and have been debunked thoroughly. That's why nobody is listening to you.
HTH

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Wayoftheflower said:

XM5ER said:

WOTF, your links are utterly outdated and have been debunked thoroughly. That's why nobody is listening to you.
HTH

Have they? PLEASE LINK TO THIS DEBUNKING!

How about, NO!

Shouty weirdo.

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Wayoftheflower said:

AH! I follow the evidence, wherever it leads. That's the lovely thing about science, the most dearly held belief can evaporate with one solid fact. The entire scientific consensus on climate change could disappear overnight should new data emerge, wouldn't that be nice.

Interesting wiki on Desmogblog, I didn't know they were award winning.

Please continue this discussion in the CC politics or Science thread. I specifically started this thread to avoid these kinds of shenanigans.

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Wayoftheflower said:

FT article from January.
"Small gas and diesel-fired plants — each generating up to 20MW of electricity — have become an important part of the UK energy mix as old coal and nuclear plants shut down. Their growth has been aided by lucrative payments for generating at times of peak demand without the hefty transmission charges faced by large power stations." Article

Why excessively subsidise small producers? Which is really better for the end-user? As of several pages ago the data from Gridwatch says to me the UK already has a huge (>6GW) over capacity in peak transient generation, ten percent is idled full time and a third is turned off every night.

You've highlighted the issue that we on these threads have been talking about for many years. STOR is hugely costly and only necessary because of the dash for wind and solar, so a market distortion caused by a market distortion. Another "hidden" cost caused by "cheap" wind.

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Wayoftheflower said:

XM5ER said:

You've highlighted the issue that we on these threads have been talking about for many years. STOR is hugely costly and only necessary because of the dash for wind and solar, so a market distortion caused by a market distortion. Another "hidden" cost caused by "cheap" wind.

But surely the "hidden" cost has always been there when you're turning off a third of generation every single night and peak annual maximum demand is more than double the minimum. That's what I was getting at in an earlier post, that nearly half of all generation capacity is only needed for lack of storage.

All figures from 2016 Gridwatch which appears legit but I've not done more than a cursory check against other public numbers.

I see what you are getting at, that's why you have Economy 7 tariffs at the consumer level. However, this is scheduled in demand side consumption drop, very different to generation side intermittent issues. The latter is far more difficult and expensive to deal with.

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Paddy_N_Murphy said:

A

It IS happening, and the huge investments, financial deals and infrastructure money is on Interconnectors currently.

Who pays?

[XM5ER]

Greenpeace up to no good again. A very interesting piece about South Korea that is very relevant to this debate

http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017...

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Paddy_N_Murphy said:

XM5ER said:

Greenpeace up to no good again. A very interesting piece about South Korea that is very relevant to this debate

http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017...

Im informed they are on the march for the dreaded Wind Energy too these days.

If you mean they campaign against it, then you'll have to point me towards thatas i haven't seen it. That said, I'm not surprised as they seem to have been taken over by a bunch of marxist loons hell bent on destroying capitalism (whilst enjoying the benefits of it).

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Einion Yrth said:

Ali G said:

Harnessing the power of wind has been proven to be an exercise in futility due to variability and intermittency.

It's fine for grinding grain, when you have decent leeway on delivery times; pretty crap as baseload electricity generation though.

Actually it isn't fine for grinding grain. There are recorded times in medieval history where prolonged periods of drought (see water mills) and lack of wind have caused widespread famine due to an inability to produce enough flour. Only the introduction of the potato mitigated these periodic famines, in fact the famines drove the acceptance of the potato.

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Australia walk back to reality.

https://amp.afr.com/news/goverment-walks-away-from...

The Clean Energy Target as proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel will be overhauled and replaced with a policy that will place much greater emphasis on coal-fired baseload power and possibly a slower transition to renewable energy.