Beelbeebub

If we are going down the speculative route I would propose Amonia production from spare electric. Relatively easy to store at normal pressures and temperatures. It is toxic so the stores would need careful positioning. It can be burned as a fuel for turbines but also converted to hydrogen for high temperature industrial and chemical uses. It is also an important precursor chemical for fertiliser production.... As you point out the synthesis may be inefficient, possibly more than just to H2 but if we are talking summer excess elec that we wouldn't be using anyway then the efficency is moot. This is the point of overbuilding our capacity. My solar array is way oversized. It punts out over 10kw on a sunny day. And after I have filled my 10kwh battery by mid morning I'm limited to 3.6kw export. But it does mean that even on a fairly overcast day like today I'm still generating over 1kw, which is plenty for my house and trickle charging my battery for overnight. If I could figure out a way of using the summer excess, even if it was inefficent it would be great. If I could store that excess for winter use, even at 50% or less round trip efficency, I could probably never need the grid.

Good point.

As long as thr unit cannot output more than 800w (about 3a) will it be able to cause much damage to the grid. If it tried to distort the waveform by being put of phase it wouldn't be able to "overwhelm" the natural grid waveform. I wonder if that is why the plug in limit is so low. The biggest issues will be islanding but that would be covered by the prongs not being live whan unplugged, which would surely be covered by thr CE marking. That said, it would be sensible if the approval for being put on sale in the UK included some basic specs that make it suitible for grid connection. Eg can only be put on sale if the inverter is listed in the g98 list.

The problem is and always will be storage of the amounts of H2 required. Just doing a quick calculation (may be wrong so here's the working) A large LNG carrier has around 250,000 m3 of LNG 1m3 of LNG is about 6.8Mwh thermal which equates to about 2.7Mwh electric (roughly 40% efficient). So a very large LNG carrier has 250,000 x 2.7Mwh = 680,000Mwh or 680Gwh of electricity. The UK uses around 22,000 Gwh in a cold month (and that's before we electrify heating and transport!). Which is about 700 Gwh a day. So we would need about 14 LNG tankers of storage for a fortnight. The problem is H2 is much harder to store cryogenically - it needs to be at - 250C or so. But if it was, it's energy density is 2.7mwh thermal per m3 so roughly 40% of LNG, that meany ou now need to store about 35 liquid H2 carriers holding H2 at -250C. If we store it as a compressed gas, the figures are even worse.

If any coal stations were currently operational it would be wise not to shut them down. As I mentioned RoS was extended because of high gas prices. But my point is, they are shut down so it's water under the bridge. Two points to note are that the % of our total generation that used to be coal 30-40% in the late 00's early 10's is now supplied by renewables. So we have, in a sense, already replaced them. Secondly, coal prices are not immune to the current situation, so electricity from coal would be subject to the same price linkage as gas and oil. As for China. They are in a different situation from thr UK, their power demands are still growing. They are having to add more generation. Ideally all of this and more would be from renewables. Instead it is mostly (in the 4/5 range) from renewables and crucially the renewable addition is greater than the growth, so the proportion of coal is falling. It's not perfect but it is pretty good. Again they install more wind capacity that the entire UK grid every quarter. It's mind boggling - it also gives lie to the claim that renewables are a Chinese plot to cripple western industry....

I would say the gas should be peaker/backup load not any kind of base load.

The carbon capture brigade neglect to mention that capturing the carbon from a combustion process intrinsically requires energy. You burn about 25% more fuel per Mwh running a carbon capture plant as you do a "normal" plant. Of course this is a win/win for the fossil fuel providers, not only do they get to keep selling their product, but demand actually goes up....

My bet is commercial fusion before green hydrogen boilers and clean coal.....

If the centers were sited on the coast not only could the power from ofshore be brought to them easily but they could also have sea water intakes and outlets for the cooling system.

Force all AI data centers to fund new build renewable capacity and grid upgrades to handle it equal to their demand, up front. That way whwn the bubble pops, hopefully before the data centers get built, we get a load of free capacity. 😁

But we have the alternative in front of us. We have a road map of how to do it. The national grid have the plans and projects to upgrade the transmission. We have the generation technologies already proven. We just need to do it. It would be madness to spend as much money rebuilding a coal based infrastructure. You saw the report that the cost of a single oil crisis, like the two we have had already this decade, is equivalent to just following the plan we have.

Too slow or too fast?

There would be an interesting case for people with old style meters, they would just run backwards so any export would be effectively net metered, ie your effective payment per kwh export would be whatever you import unit cost would be! 😁

Via CE/UKCA marking? At least for the device and any requirements for it to operate safely. Obviously it can't control shoddy house wiring (eg not using an outdoor rated socket or just running a really long extension cable) but those risks exist with any electrical equipment.

China is reducing imports. Their goal is energy security through independence. Being reliant on coal and imported coal at that, is counter to that aim. So they are increacing local production whilst reducing reliance on coal as a %of their mix. Given the size of China it's going to take a while but they are driving in the right direction. So is the UK to be fair.

It's not that it isn't secure. It's that there isn't enough of it (besides all the other issues). Again, if we use coal to become energy independent we still have to electrify the economy (ev's heatpumps etc) and we have to rebuild lots of coal mines and coal plants. And then work out what to do 25 years later when the coal runs out

Like all their arguments it's simplistic in the extreme and designed to appeal to people who can't or don't understand nuance or complication. The UK deficit is over 70bn The total number of illegal arrivals is less than 50k. So unless each one is costing us £1.4million it's not the answer.

They will fix the energy security issue by stopping the small boats. They will fix the potholes in the roads by stopping the small boats. They will fix the cost of living crisis by stopping the small boats They will fix the NHS by stopping the small boats They will lower taxes by stopping the small boats They will ensure England win the world Cup by stopping the small boats. They will get rid of the itchy burning sensation between you toes by stopping the small boats. They will fix your leaky roof by stopping the small boats.

China still has a big infrastructure for coal as it was a huge operator and coal is still used. There is a huge amount of inertia in the planning and commissioning system.

China is building new coal, but not much and as some is replacing old coal the total growth in thermal capacity is very modest. About 60Gw (out of nearly 3,500 Gw total) against 90Gw of wind and +300Gw of solar. As you can see even though energy production is rising the share by fossil fuels is falling. For all the people who say "why shoukd the UK do anything, China is the important one" - China is doing something. They installed more wind capacity in one year that the entire UK grid (some 45Gw is, depending) and more than 4x in solar. LNG imports were falling (luckily for them) and oil was falling though it did rise slightly last year, mostly due to refilling stockpiles (wouldn't that have been a good idea). I believe actual use of liquid fuels fell.

Farage "Given that our critical reserve of natural gas is down to two days and how vulnerable we are, and with talk potentially of energy rationing coming later this year, isn't it time we change course, get rid of excessive taxation on the exploration companies, open up the licences, and become self-sufficient in natural gas." Of course, given his propensity for lying he will outright deny that he ever meant that granting gas licences ever meant that we could become self sufficient in gas. And Badenoch " Drilling in the North Sea and expanding other sources of generation … is the only way we can protect families from rising bills.” And countless others going on TV and social media giving tge impression that there are vast reserves in thrnorrh sea and the only thing stopping the UK from becoming Saudi-on-sea is woke lefties.

This is only a theory but certain segments of the population have become so entrenched against renewables because of their opposition to "green stuff", which seems to be very culture war based, that they are unable to accept that renewables can make sense for other reasons.

IIRC the bare lifetime £/Mwh was around £60 for a CCGT plant. I imagine a coal plant would probably be more expensive to build and run. It was around £40 for an offshore wind project. Onshore and PV were a little bit cheaper again For the gas plant £40-50 of that £60 was fuel. Which has now near doubled

The point you are missing is that right now, all the still standing coal plants will require significant investment to get back to producing power. They aren't just sitting there waiting for someone to turn the key. The time to reverse the decision was before they stopped working. That ship has sailed. The argument that it was a bad decision to shut them down in the first place is a hindsight one and if we are playing that game we can argue that we should have started our nuclear replacement earlier and for more plants. You can argue we shouldn't have banned onshore wind for the last decade. You can argue we should have been pushing for more efficient homes and heatpumps years ago. But "if wishes were horses we would all ride."

And which mine was that?how many employees.? What capacity? As far as I can see the last major Mine (kelkingly) closed around 2015. It produce around 2m tonnes a year and emolued around 700. If you include mines closed in the last 15 years (where you plausibly be able to rehire some staff) there are less than 2,500 employees and they priced about 5m tons of coal, less than 25% of what we burnt back then. Currently there appear to be less than 500 miners making less than 100k tons a year. I'd we assume the rail isnin place, which it will only be for past coal mines and plants, *and* we manage to restart coal mining on a scale not seen for generations *and* we refurbish old coal plants and build new ones *in the next decade*. Then we still have to work out what to do by 2050. Or we could just keep doing what we have been doing for the last few years here and around the world (just 3 Chinese Co. installed more capacity than the entire UK grid last year alone) and add more and more renewables, update our grid and local storage. Then our demand for fossil fuels will have fallen so that waht little we do produce in 2035 will be a reasonable proportion of our consumption.