Renewable Energy Discussion thread

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

Nothing more than 5% of grid requirements from wind turbines since Friday 10th April, Solar has improved and reaches above 20% for about 8 hours a day. but without a cloud in the sky from dawn to dusk that is to be expected. Still almost totally reliant on gas and nuclear for most of our electricity supply - bring on the all electric houses and all electric cars.....

With a high pressure stuck over the top of us it's unsurprising that the turbines are idle, it's also relatively rare to have one stationary for so long. I note that you never mention the electricity generated when it's windy, a far more common occurrence in the UK. Storm Bella allowed the turbines to generate record amounts of electricity.
Turbines aren't supposed to totally replace other forms of energy generation they supplement it and reduce the amount of fossil fuel being burned. Yes, we still need gas and nuclear although gas will need to go eventually. It's not an ideal situation but the alternative is to watch the world burn whilst saying: "pity we couldn't fix it".
The question we should be asking is: "Have we left it too late?" We should have been doing this 25 years ago when we were told it was too expensive.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by Seeker

With a high pressure stuck over the top of us it's unsurprising that the turbines are idle, it's also relatively rare to have one stationary for so long. I note that you never mention the electricity generated when it's windy, a far more common occurrence in the UK. Storm Bella allowed the turbines to generate record amounts of electricity.
Turbines aren't supposed to totally replace other forms of energy generation they supplement it and reduce the amount of fossil fuel being burned. Yes, we still need gas and nuclear although gas will need to go eventually. It's not an ideal situation but the alternative is to watch the world burn whilst saying: "pity we couldn't fix it".
The question we should be asking is: "Have we left it too late?" We should have been doing this 25 years ago when we were told it was too expensive.

Trouble is that we need 100% backup of renewables for times like this, and those backup systems cost money to keep in working order and ready to produce power - the renewables are no more than 'fuel savers' when they do produce - but are unreliable, their output is totally at the whim of nature. They sometimes do produce over 40% of our needs, but the next day they can be back to 5% - the last high we had was cloudy and windless - so nothing from solar or wind for over a week. Can we really run an all electric zero carbon country relying on fans on sticks ? Solar in UK winter is not a good prospect ( when we will need all the power we can get ), max 4 hours a day of decent production even on a cloudless day. The way politicians are dragging their feet over nuclear we will be decommissioning older stations before we get new ones running, and at the moment nuclear can only provide up to 8GW, which is about 20% of what we need at the moment, and we are not into the politicians 'all electric' pipe dream yet.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

the problem is with subsidies is that the windfarm owners make money whether or not the wind blows, so with no wind and their turbines not wearing out they are still quids in, and guess who is paying ?

That is a good point regarding lots of subsidies. Take solar panels for instance, are people who can't afford to install them in the first place subsidising those who can ?!

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by svenrico

That is a good point regarding lots of subsidies. Take solar panels for instance, are people who can't afford to install them in the first place subsidising those who can ?!

Yup - and people who cannot afford to buy a mega-expensive BEV are seeing their taxes used to subsidies people who can afford them - somebody left the keys to the asylum in one of the inmates cells.

[Seeker]

Fossil fuels subsidies were £10.5 billion in 2019 in the UK, whilst renewables were £8.3 billion. The insanity is in fiddling while Rome (and the rest of the planet) is burning. There is no way to fix this without realising that our current lifestyles cannot be maintained.
Personally, I think it will take a major climate catastrophe before significant change happens. Worldwide food production is based on the assumption that the climate will remain as it always has been. We have, in the west, never seen famines, yet. Parts of the US midwest (ie: grain belt) are already abnormally dry: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Curre...r.aspx?Midwest
(We buy US wheat)

[SV650rules]

Wales is gonna build a floating 70GW windfarm LOL On the face of it that is 350,000 x 2MW wind turbines working at 100% capacity all the time LOL................ Today and for the last 6 weeks the 10,000+ wind turbines installed on and off shore in UK have been producing about 1 to 2 GW, a really really, really low capacity factor of <7% - at that factor Wales will need over 3.5 million turbines. If fossil fuels did one thing they freed us from the vagaries of nature which blighted earlier humans to subsistence existence, disease and early death.

[redtrummy]

Do we have a right to electricity 24 hrs a day 7 days a week? There could be an argument that for the good of the planet sacrifices and compromises may have to be made.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

Wales is gonna build a floating 70GW windfarm LOL On the face of it that is 350,000 x 2MW wind turbines working at 100% capacity all the time LOL................ Today and for the last 6 weeks the 10,000+ wind turbines installed on and off shore in UK have been producing about 1 to 2 GW, a really really, really low capacity factor of <7% - at that factor Wales will need over 3.5 million turbines. If fossil fuels did one thing they freed us from the vagaries of nature which blighted earlier humans to subsistence existence, disease and early death.

I think you're missing the point. Yes, it would be nice if we could find an alternative energy source that would free us entirely from fossil fuels and maybe tidal energy should have more money put into it. We don't have an alternative energy source that fits the bill yet neither do we have the luxury of sitting on our hands and saying "crisis, what crisis?" If one single rotation of a wind turbine blade reduces the amount of fossil fuel that would have been burned, isn't that a good thing?

You like to quote wind turbine electricity production during calm periods; that's cherry picking data. How much electricity has been generated over the year by alternative energy that would have been totally produced by fossil fuels in previous decades?

I'm a pessimist and I suspect that we have left it too late to avoid the massive climatic disruption that is coming - I suspect the Gulf Stream disruption will be one of the first disasters. (see Atlantic cold blob: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_b...ing%20of%20the)

I am also old so many of these disasters will not affect me but does that mean as an old pessimist I think we should stop trying to fix the problem? No, of course not - I wish we would, as a species, put the planet before profit. Rant over.

[daktulos]

It's all about storage and transportation. If we can store and transport energy efficiently, then it can work - it's a simple fact that fossil fuels are both of these. Big batteries can smooth out supply/demand inequalities and may be a big part of the future, but we still dig things out of the ground to make those.

I used to work with data centres, and they put as much energy into cooling them as is used by the servers. All of that energy used to pipe the heat to chillers on the roof, which basically just heats the atmosphere as waste heat. With such a concentrated heat source, imagine using what is otherwise waste heat to generate electricity, or even just heat homes. But you can't just store heat until the winter.

You can't cover the UAE with solar panels and store/transport the energy back to the UK in the same way, so generation is mostly local right now. But, I'm sure there are solutions, like converting electricity to hydrogen for transport - hydrogen may not be practical in a car, but in a power station?

The problem I have is that I really want a fossil fuel-free future, but there's no way the infrastructure will be in place by the deadlines. The latest was to ban gas boilers globally by 2025 - it would focus the mind, but right now we just don't have any alternatives.

[DJ123]

Originally Posted by daktulos

It's all about storage and transportation. If we can store and transport energy efficiently, then it can work - it's a simple fact that fossil fuels are both of these. Big batteries can smooth out supply/demand inequalities and may be a big part of the future, but we still dig things out of the ground to make those.

I used to work with data centres, and they put as much energy into cooling them as is used by the servers. All of that energy used to pipe the heat to chillers on the roof, which basically just heats the atmosphere as waste heat. With such a concentrated heat source, imagine using what is otherwise waste heat to generate electricity, or even just heat homes. But you can't just store heat until the winter.

You can't cover the UAE with solar panels and store/transport the energy back to the UK in the same way, so generation is mostly local right now. But, I'm sure there are solutions, like converting electricity to hydrogen for transport - hydrogen may not be practical in a car, but in a power station?

The problem I have is that I really want a fossil fuel-free future, but there's no way the infrastructure will be in place by the deadlines. The latest was to ban gas boilers globally by 2025 - it would focus the mind, but right now we just don't have any alternatives.

Solutions all exist, the bigger issue is the companies who find solutions get bought up by those who currently run & own the existing market. Why would you want to have all your consumers switch, when your industry can still operate and make billions. You buy up the competition, and bring it into play when it suits you.

How many patents/plans/companies who have designed Hydrogen/electric/alternative fuel vehicles been bought by OPEC, and other Gas/oil companies? I'd bet there's a few.

Money runs this world. And what happens/changes is what fits the needs/desires of those who run it and can profit from it.