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UK Energy Needs

Discussion in 'General Chat' started by trevor, Feb 12, 2022.

  1. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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  2. Aaron Baker

    Aaron Baker Impact Sub

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    This is good news. It comes with the four standard follow up questions when it comes to these things.

    1. How much
    2. How long
    3. Are local people accepting of the schemes
    4. Is the storage good enough so that we don't need to import gas during down times?
    It a massively positive bit of analysis but those 4 bits are always the question marks when it comes to viability.
     
  3. Offcomedun

    Offcomedun Important Player
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    Doesn't answer all four points but is nonetheless informative.

    It surely has to be cheaper to build wind farms than fracking, which isn't guaranteed to work, has big environmental issues, doesn't address the need to reduce fossil fuel use and wouldn't produce any results for years, if not decades. Since doing nothing isn't an option now, the government needs to go all in on developing renewable energy capability and storage, which they stupidly cut back on, asap.
     
  4. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    If we starve or freeze pensioners to an early death the need for gas will go down accordingly, Our Chancellor is a smart guy
     
  5. Aaron Baker

    Aaron Baker Impact Sub

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    And I completely agree and his points about the running costs are completely valid and positive. Whether setting up 649 individual projects and undergoing the complicated process of integrating that infrastructure to the grid is cheaper than the alternatives is currently anybody's guess. We need that information to have an informed position about the viability.

    Changing the planning laws are also positive although it does also need to take into account that in rural areas it might only be a handful of homeowners who are closely affected and others might actually have an interest in the area from further afield. That's a tricky one but we need to be able to get around it.

    The storage - to a degree like tidal power - is the major fly in the ointment as the technology just isn't there even the guy with the original tweet has said this.....



    So even with 649 schemes potentially up and running costing God knows how many billions - guess what's generating the power on cloudy and still days?
     
  6. Fuzzy

    Fuzzy Impact Sub

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    False economy, we won't reduce our dependency on gas if we have to cremate too many people!
     
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  7. SimonW

    SimonW Administrator
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    The big problem with wind is the footprint needed. Not only do you need them spaces far enough apart so they don't crash into each other but the turbulence from each can impact how efficiently each works so the more you place the worse they all perform. Supposedly the ideal between limiting space use and keeping efficiency as high as possible means placing them on average 1/3rd of a mile away from each other. The bigger they are the more you have to space them out, the smaller the closer. There is also the ecological issues, while there are some animals that thrive around them there are others the noise can scare them off and the blades can also pose a threat. For example in Scotland there has been a fair few deaths of the bigger Birds of Prey, especially Golden Eagles, White-Tailed Eagles and Buzzards around wind farms. The more turbines you have and the bigger area they take up then the greater that threat is

    As for the bigger size needing less wind to create energy, that's not that unusual. Anyone who has ever built a PC or been involved in building any electronics will tell you that the bigger the fan you put in the slower you have to run it to create the required airflow and this is just the reverse of that as it's about the surface area, the bigger the surface area the more air it can catch so it spins it spins it easier than one with less surface area. As above though the problem is the bigger you go the more space you need and that's where so many large scale renewables have issues, they just need too much space needed with the ecological issues they bring that you can't just decide to replace conventional energy production with them on a whim.

    As you mentioned IMHO we have been missing a trick for decades now. If at the very least for the last decade or two every house builder had been required to put solar panels onto roofs. And couple that with better government incentives for existing homes to install them, even when they were giving grants the after grant price was beyond most peoples reach. That increase in demand would have driven prices down, making more people able to afford them thus increasing demand further and driving down the costs further and if we were then one of the countries which had the most solar panels on homes and business in the world then that's a decent amount of energy produced without resorting to as many expensive, large and ecologically problematic renewable farms
     
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  8. SimonW

    SimonW Administrator
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    The problem is a lot of the things you list are things that are more about making people feel superior rather than actually doing anything helpful.

    Take you buying an EV. Is running it more environmentally friendly? Sure but that's only half the story. To make an EV is significantly worse on the environment than a combustion engine care, a big part of that is the batteries but there are other factors because EV cars usually have way more electronics in them which like the batteries require a lot of rare earth elements which require not only a large carbon footprint to acquire and refine but mines for these do great damage to the environment and the process of mining it can have toxicity issues. With current batteries only having a 5-10 year life span its debatable if by the end of their life that you have offset the carbon footprint to make those batteries (and that's assuming all your electricity to charge it comes from renewables). And what happens when the batteries need replacing. Batteries are expensive and make up a significant chunk of EV prices. The cost of a Tesla Model 3 in the US is $44k, the battery array alone is $14k. And Tesla's batteries are actually on the cheaper side of the EV market, some of the others the cost price is over $20k. It actually limits how cheap EV's really can get and kind of makes them disposable as replacing the battery doesn't make a great deal of financial sense. It almost makes more sense not just for you the buyer but also the manufacturer just to write it off as the resale value isn't much more than the battery cost. It's not even as if you want ti risk getting cheaper 3rd party batteries because they aren't something you mess with as lithium-ion batteries are no joke if they explode/catch fire. And dead batteries have a high environmental cost to dispose of.

    I suspect that overall we would be better off moving to engines that are able to operate with fuel with an even higher ethanol content than the recently introduced E10 until we have battery tech that has a longer life, is more efficient with its energy usage, is smaller so it needs less rare earth elements and is easier to dispose of in a environmentally safe manner.

    And as I've mentioned a couple of times, renewables that don't require to take up vast amount of currently used natural habitat at the expense of the ecology because what use is improving our impact on the environment if to do that has us damage our local ecology as its swapping one form of damage for another. It's why I would like to see more effort into using all that roof space we have on buildings, the building being there has already impacted the ecology and the roof is just sitting there unused when it could be exploited. Be that by better incentives for all of us to have them installed, or either by the gov or the power companies installing them and then paying homeowners 'rent' for having them on their homes
     
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  9. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    We need to invest in Fusion technology which will be an endless supply of cheap safe power, Along with this a bigger investment in Hydrogen will largely eradicate the need for battery cars,
     
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  10. Stafford Bantam

    Stafford Bantam Captain
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    Absolutely.
     
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  11. Stafford Bantam

    Stafford Bantam Captain
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    If I manage to complete my plan the things on my list will certainly be helpful to me. I believe that, on balance, they are environmentally friendly as well.

    Let's start with the EV. My car (a 2021 Zoe) does the equivalent of approximately 150 miles to the gallon and that's based on the daytime electricity rate from April 2022. Once I switch to overnight charging that will increase to the equivalent of approximately 600 miles to the gallon. Ultimately, when I have driven my electricity rate down to zero or less (see below) then it will be free fuel.

    Also, your information on batteries is out of date. The batteries used on the Zoe, according to a recent independent study, degrade by 1% or less per annum, so a 250 mile range will have only fallen to 225 miles after 10 years. Replacement batteries are falling in cost rapidly as well (sub £5,000 and falling for a Zoe), should anyone wish to replace one after the 8 year warranry expires. I believe most other electric cars are similar (high end vehicles excepted).

    I agree with you regarding roof spaces and all new buildings should now be built with a solar roof. That said, retrofitting solar panels onto a roof is not particular cost effective, which is why I opted to join with others in sharing the electricity from our own wind farm. We will benefit from ecomomies of scale, whilst our electricity will be supplied to us by a number of selected energy providers.

    The batteries will be key part of the plan, because they will allow me to switch 100% to overnight electricity. I will benefit by getting electricity at a rate below the credit I will receive for my share of the wind farm, so I will end up being paid to "use electricity". The country will benefit by being able to reduce peak electricity demand (due to all those using this model).

    The final part of the plan will be to ditch my gas central heating, so that my house and car will run off 'free' electricity. Based on current prices I'm looking at a return on up front investment of around 5 years (although it depends how you factor the cost of the car into the equation - I've based it on the extra cost for my Zoe compared to the ICE equivalent, the Clio).

    It's a shame that the government don't seem to have a coherent energy strategy, because much of what I'm doing could be incorporated into new builds and if a scaled up retrofitting plan was developed, it could be a win-win strategy.
     
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  12. SimonW

    SimonW Administrator
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    If you actually believe the 1% a year drop you clearly don’t understand how batteries work. They decline on a curve, the average year 1 drop might be 1% but it will be more in year 2. And there is a point where it suddenly drops off. And a battery under about 80% health be it in a phone or a car will warn you it needs to be replaced when it drops under 80% as that’s where the drop off is going to really start kicking in. Tesla's warranty for example only protects you for 150,000 miles which sounds a lot but with a 450mile range on the model s that’s under 350 total charges. In your case your Zoe is guaranteed for 100,000miles so that's about 400 full charges. And how you look after the battery has a big impact as well. Heat is the biggest enemy to batteries and while using them the airflow helps cool them but charging itself produces heat and you are charging while stationary so the only cooling is the ambient temperature. And if you are fast charging all the time that’s more heat and more degradation. Also if you let the battery get below 20% charge it damages the battery more, same if you charge it over 80% (which is why phones have started using smart charging, they now learn your schedule and will charge to 80%, stop charging and then an hour before you normally unplug it will top up to 100%. But that itself is bad for batteries, batteries can’t just hold a charge, they either have a charge going into it or are discharging so when it reaches the set amount be it 80% if the software and charge circuit supports smart charging or 100% if it doesn’t it will stop charging, the charge amount will then drop a little and it will then charge it back up, this is called trickle charging and that’s actually bad for the battery, especially if the charge is over 80%. The cold also isn’t great for it either, if it’s too cold a battery both struggle to take a full charge and also deploy the full power, a lot of the time in the U.K. that’s not a major issue but we have both the situation where the ambient temp can be too low to charge and deploy power correctly but also in the summer it’s too high for the heat produced to good for the battery. Phones are starting to combat some of the heat issues with the use of heatsinks over all the heat-generating parts including the battery and then using vapour chambers or as is starting to be used water cooling systems but scaling those kinds of things up for cars is much more complex and can add a fair bit of weight which is obviously not good for a car (the heavier the beefier motor it needs to achieve required speeds which means more energy consumption which means either more batteries needed and more weight or reduced ranges)

    Really before batteries with their massive ecological impact are fit for use in EV's and also in battery stores for renewable energy we need brand new types of batteries that are less susceptible to the issues of the current ones and certainly have a much longer life. It shouldn't be the case that you are looking at under 400 full charges in a car before they hit 80% and then have a steep life dropoff (and for that matter batteries right now will often fail to hold a charge by the time their health reaches 50% which is why they recommend replacing batteries when they reach 80% as you can quickly get to the point where suddenly you get stranded as it wont take a charge) for something people might need to charge every single day.

    And I noticed you totally ignored everything about the ecological impact. What good is it in reducing emissions if that means having to mine more rare earth elements where the deposits are often in areas of ecological importance? We might help the wildlife by reducing the human impact on global warming but if doing so means having more toxins enter the food chain to produce the batteries and other things we need to reduce our carbon footprint which can then have a negative impact on the ecosystem is that really helping or just swapping one issue for another? Same thing with Wind and Tidal farms. If a tidal farm means destroying an ecosystem and perhaps disrupting the breeding of fish thus reducing fish stock, which then impacts the wildlife that feeds on these fish does this actually help. Or if you look at things like Golden Eagles and White-Tailed Eagles. Alot of money has been spent on increasing numbers in the Scottish Highlands but we currently have no Golden Eagles in England (we had a pair at Haweswater in the lake district for decades and there were rumours of a pair in Yorkshire but the Haweswater female died and wasn't replaced and then after a few years the male also died and the rumour of the Yorkshire pair hasn't been doing the rounds since the early 2000s) because unfortunately too many of the Lowland scots are sub-human pieces of shit* who shoot and poison any that make it down there which limits their ability to move south. It's because of this they stopped trying to reintroduce White-tailed eagles to southern Scotland and instead are entering the 3rd year of releasing them on the Isle of Wight with tentative plans to release them in Norfolk, Wales, The Lake District, Northumberland and the Peak district being talked about. Now if we throw up too many wind farms which seem to both largely discourage large birds of prey and both here and in Europe kill a decent number that do approach then what is the point in spending all this money to try and reintroduce species we hunted either close to or into extinction in the UK in an attempt to rebalance the eco-system that we damaged.

    It's ultimately a balancing act, we need to reduce our carbon footprint and find cleaner energy but we can't just rush into things with a very narrow viewpoint, we need to understand and consider the bigger picture so again we aren't just swapping one problem for another. TBH that's the whole problem with the whole save the planet movement, every different grouping of people latch onto just a small subsection of the issue without considering the bigger picture and the consequences if they got what they are wanting. Sure it's not helped by so much of the world have spent the last few decades sleepwalking into the issue where things are more critical which helps push people into being desperate to feel like they were helping (Although the UK is certainly one of the more progressive in this area. There are things people can dislike Thatcher for but certainly not the environment. She was the first world leader to really start pushing Green issues including speeches to the UK which helped spearhead the green movement and under her rule, we started down a greener route before most nations which is the reason that despite Greta wanting to constantly single us out see's us right at the front of the queue of countries when it comes to making changes) BUT but it needs a thoughtful joined-up approach, especially when the tech isn't yet anywhere near where it needs to be and is often just robbing Peter to pay Paul


    * Not that there aren't any English who are just as bad. Some of the IOW released White-tailed eagles have been killed. The Forest of Bowland has a major issue with GameKeepers killing (or just intentionally disturbing) the nesting hen harriers which are a species of Bird of Prey that's on a knife-edge. There have also been pairs of Eagle Owls there that have been disturbed from their nests there and the young then going missing (and sometimes the adults going missing) and they don't even get legal protection aren't considered native as the origin of these is disputed, they are in both mainland Europe such as Holland or over in Scandinavia but people argue they don't like crossing water even though there are reports of them landing on Oil rigs in the middle of the ocean so they say the English ones can only be from captive birds that escaped. Or you have the Ospreys up in the Lake District on Bassenthwaite where last year someone in the middle of the night took a chainsaw to the nesting platform while they were on the nest
     
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  13. Stafford Bantam

    Stafford Bantam Captain
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    Apologies I didn't touch on the ecological issues regarding the batteries; I accept there is an impact with their production. Perhaps the solid state batteries currently being developed will improve matters.

    However, examination of 5 to 6 year old Zoes has returned typical degredation of 4% or 5% and other similar cars have returned similar figures (Nissans don't do as well due to their lack of thermal management). And early 10 year old Zoes are still returning very healthy figures. This is why a number of manufacturers have significantly extended their battery warranties, as the real life results are now far exceeding early expectations.

    Oh and the problem with European Eagle Owls not being accepted onto Category A (or C) of the British List (that is not being accepted as wild birds) is a complex one.

    As for the IoW White-Tailed Eagles, I was lucky enough to see G466 last month, as it crossed Staffordshire.

    And don't get me started on problems with shooting estates and gamekeepers but, if it's of any interest to you, I suggest getting yourself a copy of 'Inglorious' by Mark Avery.
     
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  14. Bantam Begins

    Bantam Begins Squad Player

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    Just watched a Harry’s Garage review on a BMW iX (basically an electric x5). He had the top spec one with a 350 mile range. All good you may say….costs £115k and takes two days to fully charge on a normal plug! This electric car route is becoming more and more like a gimmick!
     
  15. Tony Wilkinson

    Tony Wilkinson Squad Player
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    Saw a snippet in the paper that claims China have a car battery that fully charges in 9 seconds......
     
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  16. trevor

    trevor Squad Player
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    why not cover Scotland and Wales with wind turbines, Loads of hills and wind problem solved
     
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  17. Hoochy-Min

    Hoochy-Min Squad Player

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    giphy (4).gif
     
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  18. Fuzzy

    Fuzzy Impact Sub

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    It's a slightly different metric but Tesla data shows ~90% capacity after 200,000 miles with a linear drop off after the first 25k miles. The data covers sales from 2012-2020 with no steep decline... yet...
    [​IMG]

    I'd be interested to know why the decline is steeper earlier in the battery life, is it chemistry or maybe caused by new Tesla owners (or those who don't drive much) not optimising their charging compared to more experienced users.
     
  19. Kevin1954

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    Thatcher!
     
  20. Kevin1954

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    I wanted solars, plenty of roofs and space to put them along with batteries etc to power the house, sell to the grid and charge my car.
    The cost would be pretty scary with payback time many years. At our age our next move will be to a one floor building so just not feasible
     
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