Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Viral_Jim on 03 May 2017, 11:13:18
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I was stuck at home yesterday dog-sitting the new pup and got to reading/watching some stuff on renewable energy, an industry which the UK Gov't are doing their damnedest to kill incidentally.
The interview was with the head of on-shore wind for General Electric and he was making the point that EV's are likely to play a key role in renewable energy as a way to load balance the network (a key criticism of renewable energy in general). His view was that the technology is coming down the track to allow 2 way communication between the national grid, EV chargers and EV cars. This will allow the grid to vary the rate of charge on EV's (or even draw a small amount of power back from them) to balance loads on the grid.
Currently load balancing is done either by cranking up or down fossil power stations or by Hydro Electric storage. Even further down the track (20yrs+), he suggested that excess electricity could be used to split water to make hydrogen to fuel vehicles less suited to electric (like HGV's). This process apparently already goes on to feed gas into the grid in some parts of the world.
I guess what I found most interesting is that it was the first time I'd heard someone talk sensibly and credibly about renewable energy in a way that "hung together" rather than just some disjointed ideas about being "kinder to the environment". ::)
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Oh great, which wind bag at our company was it?
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A guy called Charles Haworth - Operations Leader for Onshore Wind.
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A guy called Charles Haworth - Operations Leader for Onshore Wind.
Sales and Marketing man for Renewables UK......enough said ;D :D :y
A few hard facts are that renewables are a joke without energy storage, that said, it will be a tough challenge to get car chargers backing off charge rates when it risks them not being fully charged when needed.....plus it ages the owners battery if you then grab a bit of power from them and who pays for that.....then there is the question of who pays for the transmission quality inverter to transform the battery DC back to AC....
Get some Nuclear built!
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Get some Nuclear built!
And start digging some bloody deep holes to hide the waste for future generations to deal with. ::)
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Yep, it seems to me that the battery is already limiting what an electric car can do in a massive way, and always will. To put the additional burden of balancing the grid onto it makes that problem much worse.
I suppose if you're talking really short term injection of only a few percent of the charge into the grid, it might work without disadvantaging the car owner too much once electric cars are widespread (but how much will the extra cycling wear the battery?).
However, that's not what the grid needs. The grid needs a couple of dozen more Dinorwigs, and that's patently not going to come from electric cars happen.
So yes, build some nuclear and scrap all the giant desk fans. :y
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Get some Nuclear built!
And start digging some bloody deep holes to hide the waste for future generations to deal with. ::)
Plenty of redundant oil wells out at sea.......plus there is no other real alternative available at the moment.
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I can't get on board with nuclear. The cost of the latest one would have funded the Cardiff tidal lagoon project twice, with a £bn or two in change. Meaning we could have powered most of Wales with clean energy, not created a vile problem for future generations to deal with and also not handed over key pieces of infrastructure to the Chinese :(.
My fundamental problem with nuclear is that it follows the 3000 year old model of digging stuff up, burning it and creating foul byproducts to get our energy.
I'd agree that batteries are a seriously limiting factor, but very little had been done with them in the 20-30yrs since Mr Goodenough invented the lithium ion battery in the 70's. The past 5-10yrs has seen big advances and will continue to do so. Battery life for EV's is already set to outlast the realistic life of the car, particularly as these lives are getting shorter all the time.
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I can't get on board with nuclear. The cost of the latest one would have funded the Cardiff tidal lagoon project twice, with a £bn or two in change. Meaning we could have powered most of Wales with clean energy, not created a vile problem for future generations to deal with and also not handed over key pieces of infrastructure to the Chinese :(.
My fundamental problem with nuclear is that it follows the 3000 year old model of digging stuff up, burning it and creating foul byproducts to get our energy.
I'd agree that batteries are a seriously limiting factor, but very little had been done with them in the 20-30yrs since Mr Goodenough invented the lithium ion battery in the 70's. The past 5-10yrs has seen big advances and will continue to do so. Battery life for EV's is already set to outlast the realistic life of the car, particularly as these lives are getting shorter all the time.
I was on the side lines of the Swansea bay project team (awaiting government approval), its generating capability is 320MW peak....just over half a single genset at Drax
Cardiff Bay is a peak of 3GW which is just less than the Drax output.
Trouble is, none of them can run continuously at peak.....and you don't want to be turning cities off for an hour or two during slack tide.....
From memory Wales consumes about 80,000 GWh per year which is 2-3 times more than Cardiff can supply alone!
Forget batteries, the laws of physics mean the capacity will never get to where we really need it, Hydrogen fuel cells are a much better bet!
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When I come into Power, Im going to insist every Household has a Zirk Eco FanTM fitted to their Toilet, basically its a fan fitted below the Waterline which is mechanically linked to a Generator, so that everytime the Loo is flushed it feeds Volts back to the National Grid System.
Its still in its development stage at the moment but when its finished I reckon the Shit really will hit the Fan.
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Are you going to include a stick for when it gets jammed? :-[
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When I come into Power, Im going to insist every Household has a Zirk Eco FanTM fitted to their Toilet, basically its a fan fitted below the Waterline which is mechanically linked to a Generator, so that everytime the Loo is flushed it feeds Volts back to the National Grid System.
Its still in its development stage at the moment but when its finished I reckon the Shit really will hit the Fan.
;D ;D ;D
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Are you going to include a stick for when it gets jammed? :-[
Ah, you see your one step abead of me here Kevin, Stick and Plunger (Zirk Anti Blockage SystemTM) will be optional extras, or available for hire. Now thats where the real money is. ;)
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Are you going to include a stick for when it gets jammed? :-[
Ah, you see your one step abead of me here Kevin, Stick and Plunger (Zirk Anti Blockage SystemTM) will be optional extras, or available for hire. Now thats where the real money is. ;)
Where thas muck thas brass lad! :y
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how hard can it be to dam up a few upstream valleys? it stops flooding as it holds back the peaks of flow, and can be opened up as corrie finishes and everone puts the ketttle on.
or when the tidal barrage hits slack water?
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EROEI (Energy recovered over energy invested) is the dominant factor in all of our lives. This defines the cost of the energy production with energy company profits being decided by supply v demand. The reality is if the green fantasists had their way, we will quite literally be going back to the stone age with massive famines and starvation.
For every calorie of food, you consume, 10 calories are used in producing it. If we go down the limited very expensive renewable energy route then we will need millions of volunteers and their families in the UK to go on to TB's cull list, that way for the more sensible among us we won't go short and starve to death with them!
We have already lost most of our high energy industries to lower energy price countries. This includes glass making (Pilkington were a world leader and are no longer UK company with any UK production), cement making, steel production, our chemical industry and petrochemical industries. All manufacturing are high earning one-to-many industries that could afford to pay much better than the minimum wage. The jobs have been replaced by, minimum wage, one-to-one service ones, like social care, burger flipping, coffee pouring, retail assistant type of jobs. The jobs market is becoming more and more polarised with well-paid degree level jobs and the minimum wage rest.
What I have read about Cardiff Bay boondoggle is that it is taking energy costs and subsidies to a whole new level of absurdity (like biomass madness) and subsidy.
Yes, we will eventually go over to renewable energy, so we don't run out for 3.1billion years, but I suspect to create and mature the technology for a smooth costable transition it will take around 100 years.
If you want to compare the problems, difficulties and cost of variable cyclic energy production, just look at food production, so we can store the energy when it is available to when we want to consume it. This includes canning, bottling, drying, pickling, smoking, freezing, specialist storage, global transportation from where it is in season etc, etc, etc, and the best efficiency we can currently manage is 10:1 against. Saudi oil is the cheapest where about 5% is used in extraction and production, so it has a ratio of 20:1 for. Because of the erratic nature of food production also think about the short, medium and long-term reserves. All of these food issues apply to renewables. So a few immediate awkward questions, that you never ever see being asked let alone discussed are: With current technology what is the projected EROEI including storage? What are the short-term storage technologies and capacity? What are the minimum strategic reserves to stop regular energy famines and with that size of the reserve, how often can we statistically expect an energy famine?
Until there is a coherent, sensible route ahead for affordable renewables, thank goodness as part of #Brexit the next Tory government is committed, to cut right back on these EU energy madness subsidies, so we can create the wealth, so we can afford them as and when they have matured and fallen in cost enough to compete with fossil fuels.
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was that a yes? ;D
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how hard can it be to dam up a few upstream valleys? it stops flooding as it holds back the peaks of flow, and can be opened up as corrie finishes and everone puts the kettle on.
How many do you think there are? Dams are hardly enviromentally friendly either and all of the UK's rivers have lots of towns along them. Sudden increases of water flowing downstream already causes all sorts of problems!
We need to accept that renewable sources of electricity are not replacements for the traditional industrial means(fossil fuels, hydro-electric and nuclear), but if used intelligently complement them. Unfortunately when politicians, the public and industry get involved with environmental concerns intelligence is the last thing that is used.
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When I come into Power, Im going to insist every Household has a Zirk Eco FanTM fitted to their Toilet, basically its a fan fitted below the Waterline which is mechanically linked to a Generator, so that everytime the Loo is flushed it feeds Volts back to the National Grid System.
Its still in its development stage at the moment but when its finished I reckon the Shit really will hit the Fan.
Just make sure the sparkie installing your invention wires it up the right way round.or :o :o :o :o ;D
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What I have read about Cardiff Bay boondoggle is that it is taking energy costs and subsidies to a whole new level of absurdity (like biomass madness) and subsidy.
Yes, we will eventually go over to renewable energy, so we don't run out for 3.1billion years, but I suspect to create and mature the technology for a smooth costable transition it will take around 100 years.
I find it funny that subsidies are only ever mentioned when it comes to renewables. Fossil fuels are also heavily subsidised, we just don't call it that. Tax breaks and government backing for fracking (to circumvent planning), paying power stations to sit idle and not produce electricity, U.K. plc covering the cost of nuclear cleanup. It's all our money going to fund it, but we only use the dirty S-word if it's renewable.
100 years in this country maybe, because yet again we're well behind the curve. Some of the nordics for example are looking to do it within 25 yrs and that's only because they're running off their nuclear power. I appreciate their geography is very different to ours, but at the moment we're firmly going in the wrong direction.
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When I come into Power, Im going to insist every Household has a Zirk Eco FanTM fitted to their Toilet, basically its a fan fitted below the Waterline which is mechanically linked to a Generator, so that everytime the Loo is flushed it feeds Volts back to the National Grid System.
Its still in its development stage at the moment but when its finished I reckon the Shit really will hit the Fan.
Just make sure the sparkie installing your invention wires it up the right way round.or :o :o :o :o ;D
OMG! I didn't even think of the hazards if it starts "motoring". :o
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What I have read about Cardiff Bay boondoggle is that it is taking energy costs and subsidies to a whole new level of absurdity (like biomass madness) and subsidy.
Yes, we will eventually go over to renewable energy, so we don't run out for 3.1billion years, but I suspect to create and mature the technology for a smooth costable transition it will take around 100 years.
I find it funny that subsidies are only ever mentioned when it comes to renewables. Fossil fuels are also heavily subsidised, we just don't call it that. Tax breaks and government backing for fracking (to circumvent planning), paying power stations to sit idle and not produce electricity, U.K. plc covering the cost of nuclear cleanup. It's all our money going to fund it, but we only use the dirty S-word if it's renewable.
100 years in this country maybe, because yet again we're well behind the curve. Some of the nordics for example are looking to do it within 25 yrs and that's only because they're running off their nuclear power. I appreciate their geography is very different to ours, but at the moment we're firmly going in the wrong direction.
Perversely, gas and very inefficient diesel backup plants are getting government subsidies to provide backup for unreliable renewables to stop widespread power brown and blackouts. The solution if you don't want these subsidies is to get rid of the unreliable renewables and then they won't be necessary. :y :y :y
Nuclear decommissioning is subsidised but personally, I would much rather we used the uranium and then return it to the ground, rather than let is decay in the ground without being used. :-[
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Not really. They're necessary because that's the model we're choosing to pursue. Other countries magically do without them while making much bigger use of renewables than we do. I guess they must use different electricity to us...
I totally agree that decommissioning should be done correctly, but these plants are hugely profitable enterprises (hence why big corporations will get involved) so why not make it an up-front condition of tendering for the plant?
The bottom line is that renewables use a free generation source, and that's not much good for big. Business
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Not really. They're necessary because that's the model we're choosing to pursue. Other countries magically do without them while making much bigger use of renewables than we do. I guess they must use different electricity to us...
I totally agree that decommissioning should be done correctly, but these plants are hugely profitable enterprises (hence why big corporations will get involved) so why not make it an up-front condition of tendering for the plant?
The bottom line is that renewables use a free generation source, and that's not much good for big. Business
As I explained in my previous post, energy costs are directly related to EROEI. Oil and gas are both cheaper 'free' energy sources which in past times have converted previous sunshine energy into oil and gas. No human intervention. until it comes to harvesting, this 'free nature created energy resource' has been required. The only major issue that we need more of it than it is freely generated by nature and so we will eventually run out, but as we are finding more and more which innovation and technology is making more and more commercially harvestable we currently have about 200 years of reserves, so there is no point in creating mass poverty and starvation along with energy famines by rushing to convert to very expensive, very unreliable renewables.
EROEI - The bigger the number, the cheaper the energy. EROEI = Gross energy yield / energy expended
Hydro 100
Coal 80
Nuclear 75
Geothermal (with water heating) 32.4
Oil and gas (1970) 30
Wind 18.0
Oil and Gas (2005) 14.5
Geothermal (no water heating) 9.5
Photovoltaic 6.8
Shale oil 5.0
Oil tar sands 3.0
Solar collector 1.9
Biofuels 1.3
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Not really. They're necessary because that's the model we're choosing to pursue. Other countries magically do without them while making much bigger use of renewables than we do. I guess they must use different electricity to us...
I totally agree that decommissioning should be done correctly, but these plants are hugely profitable enterprises (hence why big corporations will get involved) so why not make it an up-front condition of tendering for the plant?
The bottom line is that renewables use a free generation source, and that's not much good for big. Business
As I explained in my previous post, energy costs are directly related to EROEI. Oil and gas are both cheaper 'free' energy sources which in past times have converted previous sunshine energy into oil and gas. No human intervention. until it comes to harvesting, this 'free nature created energy resource' has been required. The only major issue that we need more of it than it is freely generated by nature and so we will eventually run out, but as we are finding more and more which innovation and technology is making more and more commercially harvestable we currently have about 200 years of reserves, so there is no point in creating mass poverty and starvation along with energy famines by rushing to convert to very expensive, very unreliable renewables.
EROEI - The bigger the number, the cheaper the energy. EROEI = Gross energy yield / energy expended
Hydro 100
Coal 80
Nuclear 75
Geothermal (with water heating) 32.4
Oil and gas (1970) 30
Wind 18.0
Oil and Gas (2005) 14.5
Geothermal (no water heating) 9.5
Photovoltaic 6.8
Shale oil 5.0
Oil tar sands 3.0
Solar collector 1.9
Biofuels 1.3
Errr...you forgot to mention that, as well as it being a finite source of energy, it also kills the planet when used.
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Obviously, a localised Wakefield issue as the planet is fine all around the area where I live. Green meadows with plenty of wildlife, healthy heathland, plenty of tree and flowers like an English landscape should look like. :y :y :y
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Rods, that EROEI calculation, in no way accounts for the damage which is done by those forms of energy. All that digging stuff up and burning it is doing is selling future generations down the river. Another stock in trade for the uk.
The damage in both obtaining and using fossil fuels is well documented and has Arguably contributed to the poverty and instability in a number of regions in Africa.
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If we don't invest in clean energy now, how can we develop it into a reliable cost effective source of energy for future generations? ???
We can either stick our heads in the sand and carry on digging stuff up and burning it, which we all know is slowly but surely destroying our planet. Or we do something about it. ::) :y
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Those countries all using clean energy .. are they as densely populated as the UK?
Do they have the same geography as the UK?
The answer, I am pretty sure, is no to both.
Norway is vastly unoccupied beside the coastal regions, has oodles of natural water courses that enjoy a large 'fall' - it's perfect for hydro and/or wind.
Germany is a lot bigger than us last time I checked, their population density is about a third of ours - it's perfect for wind
England.. well, we could cover the whole of Scotland with wind farms, I suppose, until they follow wee Jimmie and slice themselves off from us. We could surround our entire coastline with tidal barriers and cut ourselves off from the rest of the wo.. hold on, that one sounds like an excellent plan. Where do I sign? ;)
I seem to remember reading that, had we not wanted our nuclear reactors to provide a steady stream of by-products that just happen to be suitable for sticking in warheads, we could have developed much cleaner Thorium reactors back in the 60s..