Solar panels

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by timwilky

My personal thoughts on all of this, bearing in mind I have spent the last 35 years associated with the power industry, mainly nasty coal and nuclear fueled power plants.

Tidal power, unlike wind, tides are predicatable and can be calculated for at least the next 500 years. turbine farms off the UK where we have the right locations to enhance tide velocities. Battery farms will enable stored power from renewables. But my preferred would be to use excess renewables for the generation of hydrogen,
Use the hyrdogen as a clean fuel, local heat/power using fuel cells etc.

Fill the sahara with solar farms to generate huge amounts of the above hydrogen. we can power clean engines with it. at worse there are now hydrogen gas turbines for power generation

Lot of sense in this IMHO. I've never quite understood why tidal hasn't had more support in the UK.

(My working career only includes c.15 years in power sector, all for electricity transmission and distribution network owners or operators. I spent a lot of that dealing with connection applications to the grid - we had to be neutral on generation technology but it was clear that the dominant renewable technology for generation connections was wind, both in numbers of applications and capacity sought.)

Originally Posted by ethariel

...
Wind - absolute eyesore ...

Good commentary in general, ethariel, but slightly tainted by this one point that will never be anything except subjective opinion. I think it's more a matter of age and/or upbringing than anything else.

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by Ruffy

Lot of sense in this IMHO. I've never quite understood why tidal hasn't had more support in the UK.

simple... blowjobs for the boys.

[SV650rules]

Originally Posted by ethariel

Wind - absolute eyesore and acoustic

have a look at this, been using it for work for about a decade now -
Gridwatch

It's a really good, almost live graphical representation of the energy production on the UK

Funny how the greenies were so vocal about pylons yet will worship wind turbines ( which are much more of an eyesore, make a noise and kill birds ), they were quite happy to tear down pylons and use underground HV cables at a million times the cost per mile and associated reliability and maintenance problems.

I have been looking at gridwatch for quite a while, and frightening how on still cold days in winter when demand around the 40GW level neither solar or wind contribute very much to grid. I have read articles saying that the cost of incorporating and controlling the 'chaotic' energy sources like wind and solar into grid is pushing energy costs up. Read articles years ago from German power industry about if renewables were <25% of your power requirements they were OK and you could allow for their unreliability, but as they become a greater part of the network they were difficult to control and blackouts would become inevitable as well as costs spiraling out of control. At night in California 80% + of their electrical power comes from fossil fuels ( just when all those shiny electric vehicles will be charging ).

Look out for huge rises in cost of electricity in future due to costs of incorporating renewables into grid and having to supply grid storage to make solar worthwhile.

Putting large areas of black solar panels in deserts could well increase global warming due to absorbing heat and re-radiating / convecting it into atmosphere ( or like scattering soot on snow ), with hydrogen being an 'energy carrier' rather than a fuel the production of it is always going to be very inefficient compared with using electrical energy in electric vehicles.

[tigersaw]

Yes but over demand can be managed in the future with smart meters by using penalising smart tariffs or localised black outs. You knew that when you agreed top have one right?

[timwilky]

I don't yet understand why in this era of universal smart meter why we don't yet see a universal variable tariff based on demand. It costs me no different for the wife to put on the the dryer at 10am as it would cost at 3am.

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by timwilky

of universal smart meter

But they are not though. SMETS1 meters needed a mobile phone signal, so many rural areas ruled out. The new SMETS2 meters are even worse, as some areas rely on an O2 mobile signal (no roaming SIMs) and the rest of the UK needs some propriety radio network that has not been built to cover rural areas.

I've been trying to get on to a time of use tariff for the past 7 month. I'm told SMETS2 meter doesn't work here, so I asked for a SMETS1 meter instead (just take over the working one I have) but they messed up the install of that and now won't come to fix it because of COVID-19. Its a **** show if you do not live in a city - as per ****ing usual.

Time of use tariff was intended to see how much I can lower my bills by to see if solar was worth it.

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by tigersaw

Yes but over demand can be managed in the future with smart meters by using penalising smart tariffs or localised black outs. You knew that when you agreed top have one right?

Nothing technically wrong with exploring demand-side balancing. Likely to be implemented at industrial scale, though. E.g. no real issue taking factory cold stores off supply for a short period, more complex to arrange to take-off lots of domestic fridges or other power hungry devices. Defining the commercial arrangements is probably more problematic than the technical ones, although dealing with the morals of possibly leaving some without lights has technical implications - dual supply house wiring anyone?

Originally Posted by timwilky

I don't yet understand why in this era of universal smart meter why we don't yet see a universal variable tariff based on demand. It costs me no different for the wife to put on the the dryer at 10am as it would cost at 3am.

Originally Posted by Luckypants

Time of use tariff was intended to see how much I can lower my bills by to see if solar was worth it.

Whilst it's I agree it's a laudable idea, I'm very cynical about the likely commercial reality of this concept, in that in this pseudo-competitive supply market it's probably going to result in 'peak' unit prices going up rather than 'off-peak' going down, with net effect of cost increase for all but the most wasteful of users. Be careful what you wish for!

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

But they are not though. SMETS1 meters needed a mobile phone signal, so many rural areas ruled out. The new SMETS2 meters are even worse, as some areas rely on an O2 mobile signal (no roaming SIMs) and the rest of the UK needs some propriety radio network that has not been built to cover rural areas.

Didn't the old 'Economy 7' dual rate systems use radio trigger signals embedded in Radio 2/4 MW/LW? Wonder why something so simple can't still be used (except they can't then siphon off real-time usage data of course)?

[Luckypants]

Originally Posted by Ruffy

Whilst it's I agree it's a laudable idea, I'm very cynical about the likely commercial reality of this concept, in that in this pseudo-competitive supply market it's probably going to result in 'peak' unit prices going up rather than 'off-peak' going down, with net effect of cost increase for all but the most wasteful of users. Be careful what you wish for!

Well the tariff I was going for (Octopus Agile) was capped at an expensive 33p/KWh but the average was much lower. In times of low demand and high wind the rate quite often turns negative and you get paid to take from the grid. It suited my use pattern and by shifting heavy power draw to cheaper times I may save more. However, I was expecting that over time the cheaper low demand times would get less and less as time of use tariffs became more common and other people joined in to spread the load.

Originally Posted by Ruffy

Didn't the old 'Economy 7' dual rate systems use radio trigger signals embedded in Radio 2/4 MW/LW? Wonder why something so simple can't still be used (except they can't then siphon off real-time usage data of course)?

AFAIK Economy 7 type tariffs are simply straight forward cheap time periods, most often 00:30 until 04:30. Your dual tariff meter needs to be updated with any change to these time periods, via the data link if it is a smart meter.

[ethariel]

Smart Meter's = Total waste of money, the cost of them in payback terms will never, ever materialise in any meaningful way, shape or form.

However they do have one really important use - The ability to start billing customers Triad charges.

Just wait and see, they don't do it now but in the not too distant future they will and simply justify it by stating they will charge more at certain times to educate people to spread out thier energy usage and voila your 1600 - 1900 electricity will suddenly cost 5x as much, just when you pop the heating on when home from work, have a cuppa and make the dinner.....

Also on Tidal Power back around 2010 they did look into Tidal Barrages in places like the Severn Estuary, giving a daily 10h worth of generated power, with a possibility of generating some 4,000 to 8,000 megawatts. However due to the impact of no ships passing the Barrage (if its not bank to bank it really does not work very well at all) and the destruction of the mud flats and wildlife associate with it, the whole idea was shelved but in theory at least it could have provided some 20% of the Uk daily energy consumption over the regular 10h tidal period.

Additionally several other sites could have a similar barrage built but suffer similar issues with shipping and wildlife so they are a no go too.