Green energy that isn't.

How do we meet the needs of that December evening?


At the risk of appearing to advocate that only the rich will be able to afford "on demand availability", metering with variable tariffs for both Maximum Demand and kWh usage will I'm sure be implemented after a few "blackouts".


I know that at least 30 years ago, several of my 100 kVA plus customers had rates that differed not only at different times of day and night but also by month, December and January being higher than November and February than the remaining 8 months.


On the same theme, perhaps somebody will be so radical as to consider the introduction of Toll roads/bridges/tunnels in the UK? Or even having a "three day week"?!!!!!!!


Regards


BAD

perspicacious:

 Or even having a "three day week"?!!!!!!!


 

Where do I sign up ?


OMS

Where do I sign up


You'd be bored senseless OMS.......


There's only so much wood you can fell and stockpile!


Regards


BOD

You can never have too much biomass in storage ?


Regards


OMS

To be fair though, this is about useful productivity rather than hours served - much of Europe works less hours but is essentially more productive than the UK - particularly as we tend to follow the American long hours culture.


Essentially we work longer and achieve less


Regards


OMS

To rely on variable sources like wind and solar you need a lot of storage - I;d suggest perhaps 2 weeks worth of generation. That is quite a practical volume with coal and oil, less so with electricity I suspect interest in generating gas by electrolysis, storing very cold or very compressed gasses, and other things that are a bit cleverer than just  big battery or two.

I know we can have quite miserable weather at times in this country.  But when was the last time we went for 2 weeks without either sunny or windy days?


But if we intend to go all renewable, we will need to think properly about energy storage.  We currently have a handful of pumped storage hydro stations, and a tiny amount of battery storage.  There are all sorts of possibilities (flow batteries, compressed air, hydrogen, and so on), but we don't seem to be taking much interest in any of them in this country.

The energy storage requirements are vast. They can be achieved today by storing fossil fuels as Mike says but the energy density of the current alternatives is simply too low. They again will require large amounts of resources which have to come from somewhere. It is interesting in the current climate discussions any pollutant that does not have a CO2 equivalent is ignored. Heavy metal and particulate pollution from mining to get the resources to build renewable systems doesn't count as long as it happens in someone else's backyard.


Best regards


Roger

So what happened to this 'new' green revolution in solar roof tiles. Every roof (approx 27,000,000) covered with photosensitive tiling all generating small amounts of green electrical energy. This was over 10 years ago and then lost momentum because nobody believed in its long term strategy or wre unable to design and build a reliable 'lego' type roof tile. shame.


Legh