HS2

[black and decker boy]

40 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

Sorry, but how is expensive heat pumps driven by intermittent electricity an inprovement over cheap gas boilers?

Gas = CO2 = bad

 

you have clearly not noticed the climate emergency, extinction rebellion, COP21 summits etc. Maybe they need to be more vocal.

[billbedford]

Maybe we need to call them out for their pseudo-science...

 

Gaia knows Best. 

Edited December 9, 2020 by billbedford

[melmerby]

50 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

What struck me on visiting California has been the lack of obvious renewables. The US electricity infrastructure is well known to be piecemeal and poorly invested 

 

we saw little evidence of solar on our statewide trips.

 

wind is not the only renewable in use in the U.K. with many others less problematic plus new nuclear for baseload. 

Try Las Vegas:

https://inhabitat.com/americas-largest-rooftop-solar-array-completed-in-las-vegas/

 

https://sustainablebrands.com/read/defining-the-next-economy/city-of-las-vegas-now-powered-by00-renewable-energy

 

Plus there's loads in the deserts.

Edited December 9, 2020 by melmerby

[Ron Ron Ron]

57 minutes ago, melmerby said:

........Plus there's loads in the deserts.

 

Indeed.

A few 10's of minutes wasting your life looking at Google maps, will show the extent and number of solar farms across California, particularly in the desert areas.

There's loads of it.

 

 

.

[Ron Ron Ron]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

Maybe we need to call them out for their pseudo-science...

 

 

Never mind Bill. Once the microchip has been injected into you, sometime in the next few months, all will be well.

 

.

[corneliuslundie]

Both solar hot water and electricity generation panels on roofs require roofs of roughly the right orientation. So few houses will be able to be anything like self sufficient. We have solar hot water heating panels covering one side of the roof. They produce almost enough hot water for washing in the summer, less in winter. Admittedly some houses will have greater areas relative to total floor space. It will be much the same with PV generation.

There are several farmers near here and in the Marches who have turned fields over to PV generation. Probably a lot more profitable than sheep, especially post Brexit, though with good design they can share the fields.

We also have plenty of wind turbines in mid Wales, There is one we see on our daily walks. Today it was not rotating at all.

So yes these can make a contribution, but all three are weather dependent. And a lot of concrete etc goes into wind turbine installation, to say nothing of improvements to roads so they can deliver the blades, access roads from scratch etc. I would like to see the total energy and resource calculations. It is noticeable that without subsidies few land based wind turbines get installed.

Re the Grid, the main issue is that it has been designed to get power from the power stations to the users. Now we are asking for power to flow in different directions. But if total electricity use happens it will need strengthening regardless of the sources, and the lobbies against new pylon routes are usually  pretty ferocious. Remember that batteries only store electricity, they do not produce it.

And nuclear? Which century shall we see another nuclear power station on line in the UK?

But back to HS2. Very encouraging to see the progress in the videos and flyovers - and thanks to lmsforever for his reports. I am afraid that when one  builds infrastructure in a crowded country such as ours, there will always be those who are inconvenienced while work is being done. As that report made clear, it is a matter of balance between public gain and private pain.  At least now, unlike in the 19th century, there should be reasonable methods of providing suitable compensation. But I too wouldn't want to live in a flat next to Euston station.

Incidentally, an odd thought struck me recently. In the days of steam engines most power stations were coal fired, and they were more efficient in their use of coal than steam engines, so electricity made sense as a source for railways. Then we switched to diesel as the motive power for the railways. In primary energy terms this is more efficient than electricity from oil fired power stations, mainly because of the distribution losses. So there was not really an argument for electric railways in primary energy terms. Of course electricity can deliver higher power for short periods than diesel, which is useful, and regenerative braking can put power back into the system, so the calculations are very complex. What none of this takes account of is pollution, especially particulate generation by diesel engines. And now that we are not using fossil fuels so much for generation the whole calculation changes again. I am not trying to make a point for or against any of these approaches, merely that it is not at all simple.

Anyway, I have rambled enough. I just hope that one day I shall find a reason to travel on HS2 - though actually I rather like the Chiltern route from Birmingham, and certainly prefer the stations at both ends to New Street and Euston.

Jonathan

[Northmoor]

6 minutes ago, corneliuslundie said:

Incidentally, an odd thought struck me recently. In the days of steam engines most power stations were coal fired, and they were more efficient in their use of coal than steam engines, so electricity made sense as a source for railways. Then we switched to diesel as the motive power for the railways. In primary energy terms this is more efficient than electricity from oil fired power stations, mainly because of the distribution losses. So there was not really an argument for electric railways in primary energy terms.

The Grid is surprisingly "loss-ey"; having more small and distributed power sources will help in this respect.

 

Oil-fired power stations never made up a major proportion of UK generation; one of the few periods when they did contribute was during the Miners' Strike in 1984-5 and even then the coal-fired plants kept burning and turning (Arthur wasn't smart enough to notice the size of the stockpiles at the end of the previous winter).  Pembroke, Tilbury and Fawley certainly ran but nowhere near contributing to the baseload while I believe Inverkip was never used to generate commercially; it was kept on a Care and Maintenance basis for its whole life.

[frobisher]

6 hours ago, billbedford said:

Anyone who thinks we can afford to have enough battery storage to cover the sort of 10-14 day calm period we've had recently is living in cloud-cuckoo land.

 

What 10-14 day calm period is this you talk of?  Nobody told our wind turbines up here about it...

 

[RJS1977]

Energy supplies for the November, courtesy of Gridwatch. Wind is light blue:

 

 

Whilst there's been a lot of electricity generated from wind on some days, there have been other days on which wind contributed almost nothing to the energy mix.

[Zomboid]

It would be interesting to see that graph with wind in the place of whatever the orange is.

[phil-b259]

2 hours ago, Northmoor said:

....during the Miners' Strike in 1984-5 and even then the coal-fired plants kept burning and turning (Arthur wasn't smart enough to notice the size of the stockpiles at the end of the previous winter). 

 

That wasn't an accident you know...

 

Thatcher was determined not to suffer the same fate as her predecessors and was determined that she would break the miners not the other ways round. Thus in the year running up to the strike (there were enough indications that industrial strife wasn't going to be long in coming), miners were encouraged to produce extra coal under the guise of making the coal board more profitable and safeguarding future jobs etc producing that large stockpile - not realising it would end up being used against them...

[RJS1977]

31 minutes ago, Zomboid said:

It would be interesting to see that graph with wind in the place of whatever the orange is.

 

Orange is gas turbine.

[Northmoor]

16 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

That wasn't an accident you know...

 

Thatcher was determined not to suffer the same fate as her predecessors and was determined that she would break the miners not the other ways round. Thus in the year running up to the strike (there were enough indications that industrial strife wasn't going to be long in coming), miners were encouraged to produce extra coal under the guise of making the coal board more profitable and safeguarding future jobs etc producing that large stockpile - not realising it would end up being used against them...

That's what I was hinting, perhaps too cryptically!

 

I'm not a fan of Margaret Thatcher or Arthur Scargill, but I'm absolutely certain of who was the more intelligent of the two.

[APOLLO]

Try this link for up to the minute power production

 

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2020-12-07&&_k=0rs6ve

 

Mostly gas right now. 9/12/20  21.22

 

'twill be interesting to see how we will eliminate both the domestic (heating / cooking) and power generation gas burn load.

 

Here's the daily gas load. Convert it to KWH and someone work out how many windmills / solar panels etc will replace this lot - hundreds of millions of cubic metres of gas per day - look at the graphs.

 

https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/

 

Stock up on wooly jumpers folks - the lunatics have took over the asylum !!!!

 

Brit15 

[Zomboid]

29 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

'twill be interesting to see how we will eliminate both the domestic (heating / cooking) and power generation gas burn load

Presumably by building lots of generation and storage capacity which uses a different fuel. Aided by improving efficiency.

 

The end of domestic gas consumption is decades away. Electricity generation not relying on gas is probably nearer, but that's not imminent either.

[APOLLO]

The only alternative "different fuel" realistically is nuclear. Will it happen ? - Talk of Rolls Royce developing small units - they have the know how as they build the nuclear power plants for the UK submarine fleet. Good news.

 

As to storage - mega /giga watts of batteries ? - Perhaps tech will rescue us here, perhaps not. Dan Dare stuff. 

 

Digest this.  

 

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/corporate/pdfs/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2020-full-report.pdf

 

I agree the end of domestic gas consumption should be decades away, but the gov is starting to state deadlines. We will see.

 

There are no free lunches in the energy industry.  Our leaders need to gen up on chemistry, physics and engineering. Thick as mince the lot of them.

 

Brit15

 

 

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by APOLLO
typo

[Edwin_m]

6 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

And nuclear? Which century shall we see another nuclear power station on line in the UK?

There's one under construction at Hinckley Point.  I imagine they expect to finish it in less than 80 years.  

6 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

Then we switched to diesel as the motive power for the railways. In primary energy terms this is more efficient than electricity from oil fired power stations, mainly because of the distribution losses. So there was not really an argument for electric railways in primary energy terms.

...

And now that we are not using fossil fuels so much for generation the whole calculation changes again. I am not trying to make a point for or against any of these approaches, merely that it is not at all simple.

When diesel was the preferred power source for trains, the preferred power source for electricity was still domestically-mined coal.  An electric railway was a more efficient way of using coal than a steam railway.  Today there is a wide range of possible power sources and we don't really know which ones will dominate in the future.  But all of them will probably work best when producing electricity, so an electric railway can use any of them.  

 

[Edwin_m]

9 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I don't know what the political situation in the US is with regard to this. They would certainly be "able" to do this in California but they may not be willing to make the financial investment. I understand that, despite it being the wealthiest state in the Union, California is a bit of a basket-case where public finances are concerned.

The cost of renewables has fallen sufficiently that private investment has shifted towards them and coal production and use has reduced even while Trump has been trying trying to encourage it. 

 

That isn't really the case with batteries or other energy storage yet, which are likely to be need alongside renewables, but the move to electric cars presents opportunities.  For example their owners might be happy to be paid for the car battery to be used as a buffer against supply fluctuations while it's charging overnight, as long as they are left with enough charge to cover the next day.   And electric car batteries that are older and losing efficiency might still be good enough to be re-used in static "battery farms".

[melmerby]

What we need is to use the electricity to produce hydrogen which is then burnt to produce steam and it has no pollution!

Then use that steam to drive turbines to produce electricity.

Simples

[Northmoor]

8 hours ago, melmerby said:

What we need is to use the electricity to produce hydrogen which is then burnt to produce steam and it has no pollution!

Then use that steam to drive turbines to produce electricity.

Simples

MUCH more efficient to use it in a fuel cell than in a steam turbine.

[jamie92208]

34 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

MUCH more efficient to use it in a fuel cell than in a steam 

Roger Ford has done some articles in Modern Railways about this, along with his colleague Ian Walmsley. IIRCthe use of electricity to produce hydrogen is not a very efficient process. With further losses in the fuel cell, the overall efficency of hydrogen powered trains is not very high. The only saving grace of the process is to run it at night to absorb the base load from Nuclear as a form of energy storage, though storing hydrogen in quantity does produce some serious safety and handling problems.

 

Jamie

Edited December 10, 2020 by jamie92208

[Joseph_Pestell]

9 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

The cost of renewables has fallen sufficiently that private investment has shifted towards them and coal production and use has reduced even while Trump has been trying trying to encourage it. 

 

That isn't really the case with batteries or other energy storage yet, which are likely to be need alongside renewables, but the move to electric cars presents opportunities.  For example their owners might be happy to be paid for the car battery to be used as a buffer against supply fluctuations while it's charging overnight, as long as they are left with enough charge to cover the next day.   And electric car batteries that are older and losing efficiency might still be good enough to be re-used in static "battery farms".

 

As I wrote earlier, and I apologise for not being able to give figures due to commercial confidentiality, owning a battery storage facility is extremely lucrative and an excellent investment. I wonder if there are any RMWeb members who own land adjacent to a National Grid substation.

[Joseph_Pestell]

11 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Try this link for up to the minute power production

 

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2020-12-07&&_k=0rs6ve

 

Mostly gas right now. 9/12/20  21.22

 

'twill be interesting to see how we will eliminate both the domestic (heating / cooking) and power generation gas burn load.

 

Here's the daily gas load. Convert it to KWH and someone work out how many windmills / solar panels etc will replace this lot - hundreds of millions of cubic metres of gas per day - look at the graphs.

 

https://mip-prd-web.azurewebsites.net/

 

Stock up on wooly jumpers folks - the lunatics have took over the asylum !!!!

 

Brit15 

 

You make a good point, if not in the right way.

 

It is not just about substituting one energy source for another. We have to use less energy, primarily by making our homes a lot more energy efficient. For instance, I care about heritage buildings but how absurd is it to prevent people from installing double-glazing just because they live in a conservation area or live in a house which has been listed for some dubious reason.

[melmerby]

6 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

As I wrote earlier, and I apologise for not being able to give figures due to commercial confidentiality, owning a battery storage facility is extremely lucrative and an excellent investment. I wonder if there are any RMWeb members who own land adjacent to a National Grid substation.

And Mr Tesla (Elon Musk) is a leading supplier of battery storage facilities

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Northmoor said:

MUCH more efficient to use it in a fuel cell than in a steam turbine.

Oh Dear

Humour doesn't work on RMWeb