Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[openspaceman]

36 minutes ago, Craig Johnson said:

slightly off thread, at night when we don't need as much electricity, make all the north see wind farm produce hydrogen, by electrolysis, pump it into the natural gas field for storage, change the jets in the gas generators, not quite that simple I know, but i like the idea.

Hydrogen is a small molecule and escapes from most containers (It's one of two molecules that Brownian motion can boot  fast enough to escape earth's gravity) so it's best not stored.

 

Electrolysis isn't the most energy efficient way of splitting it from water but the surplus, intermittent supply is what makes it interesting.

 

Combining it with syngas from biomass to make a cleaner burning diesel fuel looks interesting to me but I have no idea of the economics. The excess carbon then being re interred.

[Canal Navvy]

Battolysers are looking promising for the storage of energy from renewables in the future. Basically an old fashioned Nickel/Iron  Edison cell but with the electrolyte at high pressure so that the evolved gas comes off at storage cylinder pressure. 

When there is a surplus of energy the battery bank is fully charged and is able to feed back into the grid if needed if not it gasses Hydrogen off that is pure enough to use in a fuel cell. The Edison cell is very abuse tolerant and doesn't use any exotic or hazardous materials 🙂

[Stere]

Read flywheels might be the future also.

[Canal Navvy]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

Read flywheels might be the future also.

With the added advantage that they would restore some of the lost rotational mass that keeps the network stable 🙂

[Billhook]

Taylor Wilson

 

 

 

 

[Billhook]

I see that Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, is pinning his hopes in the Met Office forecast of a mild wet Winter and the hope that heating demand will not be great from the general population. As I have said many times as a farmer, if I had farmed by the weather forecast, I would have been bust years ago.  They have not even been close on a daily basis let alone half a year away

At the height of wheat harvest here on a Friday they predicted heavy rain on the Sunday so everyone went mad on Saturday bringing in wheat at a high moisture content causing massive drying costs.  Of course no rain here in the Sunday.

There are so many variables to the weather, particularly long range weather forecasts.  So I will make a prediction that it will be the coldest Winter for twenty years due to decreased solar activity, increased cloud cover, larger hole in the ozone layer ( funny that we have not heard much about that recently) volcanic activity causing more cloud and blocking of sunlight 

Buy my firewood now!

[Stere]

Do you buy in much fertililizer?

 

Price has gone up abit recently

 

Fertiliser prices still climbing in tricky market - Farmers Weekly

WWW.FWI.CO.UK

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Nitrogen prices are continuing to climb due to tight supply, rising gas prices and some panic-buying, say traders. Urea is...

 

 

 

 

[Billhook]

2 hours ago, Stere said:

Do you buy in much fertililizer?

 

Price has gone up abit recently

 

Fertiliser prices still climbing in tricky market - Farmers Weekly

WWW.FWI.CO.UK

---

Nitrogen prices are continuing to climb due to tight supply, rising gas prices and some panic-buying, say traders. Urea is...

 

 

 

 

If you ask me everyone around farming,   the machinery, the inputs, general professional charges, all look at the price of wheat and adjust upwards regardless of supply or cost of production !  So we farmers (moaning as usual) end up with the same low profit.

So I am banking on fire wood to pay for Christmas!

[openspaceman]

27 minutes ago, Billhook said:

If you ask me everyone around farming,   the machinery, the inputs, general professional charges, all look at the price of wheat and adjust upwards regardless of supply or cost of production !  So we farmers (moaning as usual) end up with the same low profit.

So I am banking on fire wood to pay for Christmas!

I'm all for sustainable farming but the regulations around farming are bewildering, I left working dairy farming 45 years ago and wonder if I would have been able to keep up. The old farm is now a golf course and an academy. Given all the conservationist eulogising rewilding and loss of all Knepp's arable acres I do wonder how we are going to compete for food on the world market as we fall back to the interwar  50% dependence on food imports.  I think we produce 60% currently and even during the war only got to 70% plus the population has doubled since.

[Billhook]

Confucius say

“ People ask me about the future .  I say to them, if you want to know the future, firstly you must examine the past “

 

By 1984 we were about 80% self sufficient but as you say it has been reduced to around 50%
 

It will always be the case that if people are hungry, they will not give a damn about the birds, the bees and the herbicides as long as they have their food, and if they are cold they will not give a damn about the birds, the.bees, the trees or Climate Change as long as they have their fuel.