shady

I took part in the Eon tests that ran at the same times on the same 2 days as the Octopus tests (I assume other providers were also involved). I have received one email to confirm results , but it does not state which day it relates too and does not agree with my figures. It should be noted that it will not be cheaper to keep the heating on all day V only using it when required. All buildings leak heat , the greater the differential between the internal and external temperatures and the longer the differential is held the more energy is required to do so, which equals a greater cost. This effect will be more profound in badly insulated homes (which is the bulk of the UK housing stock), but even the best insulated home will still use more energy if the heating is on all day. Whilst it is possible to test this it requires the atmospheric conditions to be identical for all tests and the UK weather is not very helpful in this reguard. I have my central heating on the most economical setting possible, it's isolated at the main breaker, and will only be used if its gets below freezing,having an electric boiler in a rented park home , means it's not economical sensible to even try to keep all of the place warm, not gone below 7.5 so far this month and I aim to keep it above 5C . I use a butane catalytic heater in the lounge as even using the expensive 15KG cylinders works out at about 23p per kWh rather than 35p for electricity. Its worth pointing out that temperature alone is not as good a measure as temperature and relative humidity , 10C at 80% RH feels colder than 10C at 45% RH, to tackle the humidity I am using a desiccant dehumidifier which works better than a condensing one at lower temperatures and whilst it uses more electricity than a condensing dehumidifier it also warms the air more and as my alternative is to use electricity for heat it makes more sense in my case, which is also probably the case for most unheated model railway rooms/sheds etc.

I think Hayfields view on the benefits of smart meters is distorted because like a lot of people he never used to pay attention to the amount of energy used prior to having a smart meter, any savings made have been due to paying more attention to his energy usage and the same results were possible with or without a smart meter. The actual smart meter does not tell you anything , its the remote display that shows the info (and it is possible to have the same info from a wireless clamp meter display and has been for years). The remote display is the weak link , the energy provider does not have to replace them if they fail , and some of them do not show the real prices , (mine has still not changed to show the October prices , and I have seen others this year that were not showing the April increases). Whilst I dont personaly care that the pricing info is correct , the fact that most of the remote displays seem to default to showing the daily usage in pounds and pence rather than in kWh means some people are being lulled into a false sense of security as they are actually using more than they think they are. Even knowing how much you are using at any point in time, does not tell you WHAT is using the power, for that you need much more detailed info than a smart meter can provide. We have all been screwed over by the smart meter program as we have all had the costs added to our energy bills, whether we have one or not. A lot of people dont seem to realise that not only can the supplier remotely change the tarrif or change to a prepayment meter , they can also remotely cut off the supply. This means that it only takes one mouse click, one computer glitch or one hack and you have no supply. Whilst due to lack of forward planning it is possible we will have rolling blackouts this winter, people dont need to have a smart meter to help reduce the chance, a simple national news item asking people to reduce power usage on certain days/times can help. The only reasons I decided to have one fitted during the summer was , my existing meter had no decimal places so only showed whole kWh's* , I guessed that either better tarrifs or load shifting options would be available this winter and as I am in a rental property I wont be living here long term. * Living in an all electric rental property with many intergrated appliances that I can not measure the actual individual power usage and needing to confirm what was using more than it should be, only being able to see whole kWh was not accurate enough (it was the Fridge Freezer). Long term the fact that smart meters can be switched off remotely would enable a more targeted power outage rather than the current system of EVERYTHING within in a connection area (some people have rather quaint ideas that Hospitals and other important users would still be connected if rolling blackouts have to happen this or any other winter). At present its not possible to get a better tarrif as the "price cap" tarrif is the best one available. In the future it looks like smart meters will offer better tarrifs as a carrot to get more people to use them, those not on a smart meter will simply be charged higher prices. I think the kindest thing I can say about the UK's plan for future electricity provision would be "You mean we actually have a plan".

I am not so sure that they were either diagrammed or regular workings to Manchester in the 80's or 90's . In the late 80's there was a M-S Paddington to Manchester Pic , that worked Padd-Pic , Pic -Stafford, then Stafford Paddington , it was booked for a 47 but did produce a 50 on occasions I never made it to or from Pic but had 007 from Wolvs on Saturday 30/01/88 (on the Stafford Padd part) and 50024 on Wednesday 10/02/88 from Stockport to Stafford and Stafford Oxford (a points failure between Stockport and Pic meant I had to Leap at Stockport rather than get to Pic which was rather annoying , but I had already done 37053 from Carlisle to Warrington earlier that morning as the wires were down so not a bad day). After the May 1990 timetable change 50's were rare on the Paddington Oxfords let alone going any further north. The Last working on a Padd- Oxford and Oxford Padd that I had (and as far as I know it was the last) was 50001 on 26/03/1991.

Any form of plug in electric heater is practically 100% efficient , so swapping for one type to another will not make any difference to your bills. The first thing I would do is get one or two of the plug in kWh meters (you can get them them for £10-15) so that you can see how many kWh of heat you are using from both heaters, if nothing else it might focus your mind on just how warm the shed needs to be!! If electric heating is the only option then a heatpump would be the cheapest to run , but with a large initial cost and assuming you already have a layout in there the installation might be rather disruptive. Bottled Gas heaters are currently cheaper to run than electric heaters, but probably not ideal for a railway room due to the water vapor. If you happened to have Oil heating then a 12v or 24v vehicle diesel heaters would be cheaper to run than an electric heater. Otherwise your best option is more insulation on the floor and warmer clothes!!!

If /when so called smart meters actually become smart meters then I might have one fitted , at present I cant see any advantage for most people in using them (if someone is blind or disabled in a way that prevents them from reading their meters then fair enough they get an advantage). I don't find it very difficult to open the meter box , take a reading and submit it online. (The "useful" info of what is being used at any one time has been available via either free or cheap meters (wireless clamp meter) for well over a decade anyway ). When people ask the question of could the existing electrical infrastructure cope with everyone going fully electric , the answer is a very simple not a cat in hell's chance (it will vary from place to place). Generally speaking a residential property will have a 60, 80 or 100 amp main fuse , obviously when this was done no one expected a residential property to be drawing the full load , let alone doing so for any length of time, let alone the thought of all/many in the same street trying to do so at the same time, the "last mile" as it stands simply wont cope. The "Last Mile" was built on the assumption that approx a max of one third of the "capacity" would be used at the same time. When local underground cables overheat and break , depending on how long ago they where installed and the complexity of the local situation the existing records of what cables are exactly where/feed into each property is not always as accurate as it could be. (though some cowboy road crews do seem to "find" pipes and cables very easily !!) This morning Gas was trading at £6.50 per therm , that's 22 pence per Kilowatt Hour or over 3 times the cap increase that comes in on 1st April , and that's the wholesale price!! I have seen it suggest that roughly speaking any gas fired power station that was forced to buy at that price would mean its cost of gas per Kilowatt hour of electricity would be 65p!!! Before the current Ukraine situation , practically everyone was expecting another increase in the cap prices in October , now its just a question of how large an increase.

Probably not as effective for them now since EDF has had to shut down 6GW of Nuclear plants in France in the last month due to "issues" not clear when they will be back on line or if other plants will have similar issues. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/edf-shares-plunge-after-faults-found-french-nuclear-power-station-2021-12-16/ The main channel interconnector is down to half capacity and not expected to be fully back by next winter either. https://www.energylivenews.com/2021/10/15/fire-struck-ifa-interconnector-not-fully-operational-until-2023-national-grid-says/ Just before christmas the best fix my supplier could offer was a 2 year fix of 37.97p per Kwh and a daily charge of 35.9p , not taking that as I am presently on the tariff cap of 20.6p per Kwh , this time last year I was only paying 10p per Kwh, come the next cap change I expect 25p per kwh to seem cheap , it will probably be set at whatever the highest figure that is deemed politically acceptable rather than what the companies need to cover their costs, the same with gas. Wholesale gas prices might not have been making the news , but have still been at levels that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. one source has told me that some business customers are being offered electricity at £1.10 per Kwh!!!!!!! Lidl have thermal base layers on Thursday !!!

Look at as a good bit of greenwashing , one report suggests that porsche have only invested $24 million in that plant , their north american advertising budget is at least $100 million . They plan to run a GTR racing program with that fuel and can scream look at us we are green , most people wont know any better. Porsche currently plan on building 50% of their cars as ICE into the 2030's. It would be interesting to be on live TV and ask the question (accepting that lots of the worlds population could not even point to Chile on a map!!) "given that approx 60% of Chile's electricity is generated by burning , oil, coal and gas , would it not be more green to use the wind turbines being built for this project to simply put green electricity in to the Chilean grid ?" For the record I like 911's and lots of other sports cars (I don't own any), but I will not try and claim they are green. From an acceleration and handling point of view (you can spread the weight of the batteries) I can't see how you could beat an EV, but there is just something about the noise of an engine and the whine of a turbo that some of us would miss, the younger generations wont miss what they never had.

It probably comes as no surprise that the Porsche plan is in partnership with both ENAP (chilean state owned petrol company) and Exxon Mobile , it's main purpose is to produce fuel to enable Porsche to keep selling ICE sports cars. From an energy usage point of view its even worse than using hydrogen+fuel cells. If you happen to own a fleet of sports cars then fuel cost is probably not your main concern. EPetrol is not much use for running diesel HGV's or heavy plant and nobody expects it to play any significant part in any future transportation method, not even Porsche. Given that the plant is yet to be completed let alone up and running ,actual costs are not known , but so far every similar plant has cost a lot more than expected to build and the cost of the fuel produced has also been much more than expected. Large scale production (in the next few decades) would be a joke .

pure comedy gold in 2021 , if we are talking pure fantasy then why not go straight for matter-antimatter, you wont get better than that.

There will always be peaks and troughs in both available renewable electricity generation and user demand, we cannot change when the sun shines or the wind blows , there is no point in switching on lights at midday just because the sun is shinning , we need/want the lights on when its dark , we need/want the heating on when its cold (which is also normally when its dark as well). The vast majority of car owners in the UK do not need to fuel up every day , some EV owners that can't charge at home will be persuaded by price to fuel up when either its a very sunny day or a very windy day, obviously this will not be practical for everyone so demand will not perfectly match availability , but variable pricing will make for a better match than none variable pricing. Regardless of whether you look at it from an energy efficiency , carbon footprint or pure financial (not surprising that there is a good correlation between all three) it makes sense to get the most use out of your renewable energy generation plant and your energy storage options either as an individual with PV on your roof and EV on your drive or as a nation. Even those that have neither PV or EV will still gain (granted not by as much) as efficient use of the assets reduces the overall cost of the nations electricity generation (granted you might not think that with the current UK prices !!) . Today in the UK you can be paying 4 times the price for the electricity you import from the grid as you would get paid for any you export to it (in some cases its much worse). It would be madness not to utilize the battery packs of EV's , this also helps with grid transmission as the more demand that can be powered by generation the same side of the substation the less the impact on the grid (it gets a bit more complicated than that , but the principle remains the same). The objective is to reduce the need for curtailment by better use of what we have , this has the effect of reducing the amount of other fuels that we need to burn and import, its a win win for everyone except the fossil fuel supplier. Below are links to the UK's first two medium scale direct grid battery storage facilities that have gone live this year, there are also a lot of small scale that added together will make a difference. https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/pivot-power-50mw-battery-the-first-tertiary-connection-to-export-to-the-grid https://www.energy-storage.news/uk-battery-storage-developer-pivot-power-switches-on-second-project-in-2gw-rollout/ of more general interest regarding EV's is the creation of superhubs. https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/europes-most-powerful-ev-charging-hub-to-see-300kw-chargers-installed-in-oxford Despite all the plans the UK will still be burning hydrocarbons in 20 years time , but at least we will be burning less of them. I think it is safe to say that whilst you are happy to suggest that those of us who do understand the situation and are prepared to change the way we do things suffer from parochial views, you seem to be suffering from both a lack of understanding and real parochial views . I get the impression that what you really wont, is for solutions that happen to lead to the creation of copious amounts of cheap alternative fuels for flying (you need to be realistic and understand that this will not be happening any time soon), the average UK electricity consumer wants solutions that both ensures their supply of electricity and keeps their electricity costs down, if someone cant afford to heat their home the cost of a flight that someone else will be taking is not on their radar.

You are both hitting the nail on the head. (as an aside if you ever get the chance its very interesting to walk along side a complete Saturn V to see the pure scale of the whole package v the size of the command module) The EROI of crude oil and its refined products is very positive, storage of electricity (or converting electrical energy to hydrogen) is always negative even with the best battery you could make, which is why efficiency is very important. My "main problem" with hydrogen is that there is a widely held view that you can simply take what we do today, swap the fuel for hydrogen and the jobs done , in reality its a lot more complicated than that. My "2nd problem" with hydrogen is just where the spare renewable generating capacity is going to come from (in the near future) to actually use to "create" the hydrogen on a large enough scale to make it viable. The following 2 links show the basics of grid frequency stability , why renewables are more difficult to manage and some of what is being done to meet that challenge https://www.drax.com/power-generation/great-balancing-act-takes-keep-power-grid-stable/ https://www.nationalgrideso.com/news/how-our-new-spin-grid-stability-boost-renewable-generation The aim (in the UK at least , and parts of Europe are moving the same way) is to be able to use a much greater proportion of the available renewable generation plant at any one time , whilst also increasing the demand via EV's and heat pumps etc and reducing the amount of none renewable plant a the same time. We are not even building nukes on a large enough scale/ quick enough timescale to replace the existing nuke plants that are nearing the end of life. We could have a large solar farm in say Australia and create hydrogen and ship it to the UK , but that's not as straight forward as it sounds as due to the low energy density by volume of hydrogen even if you took the largest LNG ships and assuming that all parts are compatible for hydrogen you could only transport less than a 1/3 of the quantity of hydrogen as you could LNG (basically your transportation costs will be much higher and you would need 3x as many ships for the same volume). I don't know how practical it would be to build the same size ship , but with pressure vessels suitable for 3x the pressure ,but if it was that easy we would probably do it for LNG. In principal you could run a cable from Australia to the UK , after all we did it with the old telegraph network , but to run a thick enough cable and at a high enough voltage to get a meaningful amount of energy out the other end is a heck of a lot more complicated. I am not saying it can't or won't ever be done as some of the current proposals are quite impressive and technology is improving, but it is not easy. The other problem is even if you transport energy generated by renewables from one country to another , if the original country is still using fossil fuels for its own electricity generation (a lot is coal in Australia) , it would make more sense to use the renewable energy in the country of origin instead. Yesterday in the UK (assuming the figures are not in error ) we were (unusually for the winter) exporting up to 1.2GW of electricity to France , but at the same time we were using coal plant to generate 1.5GW of power , effectively we were exporting 1.2GW of coal generated electricity during our evening peak (not sure of the reason why, assume something has gone wrong in France). Realistically the world will be burning hydrocarbons for decades and that is not likely to be very good for climate stability , I would not advise buying a timeshare in the Maldives!!!! as having to use scuba gear to even access it in the future brings a whole new meaning to a diving holiday!!!

Without running the numbers , but assuming its not likely we will use liquid hydrogen in commercial jet liners then taking the windows below the cockpit as being the passenger area and the rest being the size of hydrogen tanks , then that's probably a lot closer to reality than say a current 787 .

Perhaps if every time I post something , usually giving you a reason why , including actual figures as an example, even asking you a question , you could be bothered to actually look at it and reply in kind rather than your usual one liners , I would continue to respond more politely. I took your "why would you think it isn't" as a complete piss-take as I struggle to see why anybody (particularly someone who uses that statement to directly question a question) would think the specific energy of hydrogen v lithium batteries was in anyway relevant. The term specific energy refers to the energy by weight , and as I even stated in my first post hydrogen (on its own) is great on this score , the problem is that is a red herring If you want to create a large scale energy storage plant , then the actual (total) weight of the storage medium is not really that relevant , you could use lead acid or a number of other battery chemistries as you wont be expecting to move it (for one thing, you are going to need a good size grid connection). For transportation obviously movement is essential so the total weight is relevant , the problem is you cant compare the weight of free floating hydrogen to the weight of lithium batteries, that's not even comparing apples to oranges . For hydrogen to be any use as a fuel , clearly it has to be inside a container , unfortunately the energy density of hydrogen by volume is not great , so to have any useful amount of hydrogen it has to be compressed (which involves using yet more energy) and stored inside a pressure vessel, these are both large and heavy (relative to the weight of the hydrogen). (Note I have ignored storing liquid hydrogen as keeping a mobile fuel tank at -253C "would be problematic to say the least") from a random hydrogen tank link https://www.mahytec.com/en/compressed-hydrogen-storage/ "light weight" hydrogen storage tank for 4.2kg of hydrogen at 60 bar empty tank weighs 215kg external dimensions without supports 84cm x 187cm "light weight" hydrogen storage tank for 9.5kg of hydrogen at 500 bar empty tank weighs 260Kg external dimensions without support 49cm x 307cm the best I have seen quoted is the Toyota mira tanks , which claim a weight of 87kg (not sure if that is full or empty ,most likely empty , but I will assume its the weight when full) and can store 5.6KG of hydrogen at 700 bar (other weights for parts taken from quotes for the same vehicle) so at a minimum the real weight that can be compared to a lithium battery pack would be 87kg not 5.6kg ie the weight of the hydrogen is at best approx only 6.5% of the real weight. that shows why the 200 to 1 statement is not relevant , but a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (pretty much only Lord Bamford seems to think burning hydrogen in an ICE is a good idea) needs other parts that a pure EV does not need. fuel cell stack at 33KG ??? (cant find a quick confirmation of this weight) dc to dc converter (between fuel cell and motor) at 25.5Kg so to actually store and use our 5.6kg of hydrogen the weight is a minimum of 87+33+25 = 145kg , it also needs a lithium battery at another 44.6Kg roughly speaking the hydrogen system will be at best 2.5 times lighter than an equivalent battery pack (note the actual vehicle weight will obviously not be 2.5 times different), it gets more complicated as building round hydrogen tanks gives you less options than building round battery packs (its just not practical to have hundreds or thousands of small interconnected 700 bar containers!!). If and its still an if some of the proposed battery chemistries with greater energy density by weight actually work then the weight differential could be negligible. I have never said that you cant use hydrogen as a storage medium or as a transport fuel , I have tried to show you why we don't . If you look at the projects underway or proposed you will see that the majority of the world is going towards batteries and cables not hydrogen and tanks , its not because everyone is anti hydrogen , but that most firms are anti bankruptcy. If you can get a research grant or a government to throw millions of pounds/euros/dollars at you or you decide that a good bit of green washing makes you look good ,then that changes what you do and what gets built, it does not mean that what gets built or done is actually green or even a good idea. No one is saying you cant fly a jetliner using hydrogen , its just whether many people will be able to afford it. Hydrogen being more expensive than Jet A and the aircraft will have a smaller amount of cargo weight V fuel weight Below is a directly lifted quote on hydrogen v jet fuel that I have not run the numbers on myself, and note this is for liquid hydrogen and does not include the weight of the tanks. (ignoring the questions of just where all the hydrogen would come from and how you would keep the tanks at -253C). "Hydrogen has higher energy by mass than jet fuel, but it has lower energy by volume. ... The energy density of liquid hydrogen is only about a quarter of that of jet fuel. This means that for the same amount of energy it needs a storage tank four times the size."

I don't think anything I KNOW why its not relevant. The fact that you don't seem to actually understand anything about the concepts of using hydrogen , yet at the same time always claim that it is the solution says a lot.

Perhaps you would care to explain why and how you think that is relevant for using hydrogen as either a storage medium or a transportation fuel ?