Making the news today....

[GarethM]

Sounds like you've swallowed the huge renewable lies, if you want to supplement the grid with solar, wind etc that's to be encouraged but you need base load to actually allow that.

 

Without sufficient base load and storage your renewable energy delusions are not even possible. You need storage for atleast 24 hours not minutes, batteries are not the answer, hydro maybe but they turn wind off when it blows top hard.

 

You need to be using that power however hard it blows!.

Edited August 19, 2022 by GarethM

[trigger_andy]

12 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

this whole crisis is being caused by our dependance on fossil fuel? 

 

This 'crisis' has nothing to do with dependence on fossil fuels. Its caused in its entirety of pushing and pandering to a green agenda with nothing in place to replace the fossil fuels we currently require. Its the short sightedness (that Trump warned about) that has resulted in Europe paying lip service to Green Energy yet letting Russia do all their dirty work thats come back to bite us all in the Ass. 

 

This has resulted in Operators in the North Sea both in the UK but also Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands being given an almost free reign fast track the development of Fields that would otherwise have not gone ahead or would have faced more red tape. 

 

The company I work for has been given the contract for 185 new Wells for AkerBP in the Norwegian Sector alone. We have so much work coming up we're no longer looking for new work all the way up to 2025 as we need to be able to supply the contracts we now have in place. Its the new Oil Boom for us. 

 

There is no crisis other than Oil Companies using a disruption in the flow of O&G that we already used and required from Russia to hike their prices up. Brent Crude is not even $100 a barrel ffs.  We're been punished for strangling our own ability to be self sustaining all in the name of being 'Green' and so many are blinded to this. 

[GarethM]

Yeah, the green Germans.

 

Let's close perfectly good nuclear power plants in favour of gas and renewables whilst also burning the most foul polluting coal which is barely even coal it's akin to burning soil/peat!

[GarethM]

If you really want to see how much of a cock up the renewable industry is in go have a look at Australia. A country so blessed in sunshine they are facing actual blackouts!

[Woodworks]

 

Agreed we need a base load but no need when it's windy, no need when it's sunny not when there is excess in countries we have interconnects with. Keep our nukes going as they are brilliant for base load, Short term store natural gas for domestic heating but dont be burning it to make electric when we really dont need to be.

 

 

This looks like a good explanation of the whole mess and its not the costs to generate or subsidise renewables thats the problem.

Opinion: Renewables are cheaper than ever – so why are household

WWW.UCL.AC.UK

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Renewables and nuclear make up half of UK power but a new market that cuts energy bills at the same time as decarbonising the system is needed, says Professor Michael Grubb (UCL...

 

 

[GarethM]

You need base load regardless, you need to be using the renewable to do something such as hydrogen when it's excess.

[eggsarascal]

On a lighter note, Frankie Boyle nailed it, "you're not in the middle of a recession, you're in the middle of a robbery".

[Commando]

18 hours ago, eggsarascal said:

I do love it. Rishi and Boris have raised tax more in two years than Brown and Blair managed in 10. 

 

Yes, it is avoidance, perfectly legal.

 

 

Hardly comparing Eggs with Eggs there (see what I did there😉). Do you think the geopolitical and economic situations are similar? FFS😂

[GarethM]

In that Frankie Boyle it's a robbery, all that comes to mind is the pulp fiction restaurant scene.

 

So is it Liz, Angela or that daft green screaming it ?

[openspaceman]

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

Sounds like you've swallowed the huge renewable lies,

What lies?

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

if you want to supplement the grid with solar, wind etc that's to be encouraged but you need base load to actually allow that.

 

Without sufficient base load and storage your renewable energy delusions are not even possible. You need storage for atleast 24 hours not minutes, batteries are not the answer, hydro maybe but they turn wind off when it blows top hard.

 

If you are talking in general yes you are right, the cheapness of fossil fuels and the vested interest in producing them has meant the urgent need to deal with the external costs of them hasn't allowed the renewable energy business to develop as far as it could have from when problems became apparent 50 years ago. It is a basic human trait to live for today.

 

At the domestic level an individual can comfortably do without the grid for most of their electricity with a battery that only stores a days worth. I could even do without  the grid  for the last 450kWh I fall short of from Mid November to March with a simple chp system which would  make better use of the thermal energy of gas. Of course we are going to rely on fossil fuels for a long time yet but no need to continue with such profligacy and those living in high density housing will have to rely on what is provided, and pay for it.

2 hours ago, GarethM said:

 

You need to be using that power however hard it blows!.

It's simple O level physics that show why this is not practicable;energy in the wind is the mass flow times the square of the velocity, mass flow also contains a velocity term as it is mass  passing per unit time, hence the energy varies with the cubic power of the wind velocity. So if you design the hardware to make use of the wind  and produce a return on the hardware at an average 7 metres per second then double the wind speed to 14m/sec and you need to cope with producing 14 times the average amount of power, it is simply not worth investing the equipment for such a range  so cheaper to produce the power around the average speed with machinery optimised for it and shut down when the windspeed is too high for the equipment to absorb the energy.