If I did not know better.

[SteamyTea]

A few people on here claim, and back it up with 'evidence' that low CO₂ electrical generation cannot work.

I just had a quick look on the Templar Gridwatch site (this is the proper gridwatch site).

Gas is supplying about 9% of out power.

Now I know it is a Saturday, but at 31 GW of power being delivered, it is not particularly low, but it is a fantastically low amount.

 

So the next time someone says tat RE does not deliver, remember this.

And, if they want to get cute and point out that the capacity factor of RE is dreadful, tell them to look at this site:

https://electricityproduction.uk/plant/

It shows the utilisation of different generation installations.

Pembroke is currently at 8.7% utilisation.

Nearby Wear Point wind far is at 42.9%.

For some reason the solar reporting is not working today, probably got one of @Radian's RPis attached to it.

 

 

[billt]

And if you're interested in CO2 intensity there's this site https://carbonintensity.org.uk/ which shows the current and forecast CO2 intensity of the grid. It also shows the regional breakdown. Usually lowest in Scotland and the north of England and highest in the south west.

[SteamyTea]

12 minutes ago, billt said:

highest in the south west

Highest in South Wales usually.

Get purple/yellow sunset when there is a NE wind blowing the Welsh air down here.

[ProDave]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

A few people on here claim, and back it up with 'evidence' that low CO₂ electrical generation cannot work.

I just had a quick look on the Templar Gridwatch site (this is the proper gridwatch site).

Gas is supplying about 9% of out power.

Now I know it is a Saturday, but at 31 GW of power being delivered, it is not particularly low, but it is a fantastically low amount.

So even on a low demand period, 9% is being generated by gas.

 

Have we EVER yet reached 0% gas or coal?

 

At the moment no fossil fuel is the aim, but we are not there yet, and the closer you get the harder it gets.

 

This is why I say if you buy an EV and plug it in, then you WILL increase the amount of gas being burned.  That is FACT.

 

One day we might get there, but it will take a lot of energy storage to make that possible, and then I bet there will still need to be some fossil fuel backup.  The first milestone we have to reach, is 100% non fossil generation some of the time.  I don't think we are there yet.

[oldkettle]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

A few people on here claim, and back it up with 'evidence' that low CO₂ electrical generation cannot work.

 

Lies, damn lies, and statisticians. 

Insert a smiley of your preference. 

[SteamyTea]

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Have we EVER yet reached 0% gas or coal?

Not yet, but it is early days on the RE journey.

 

Here is a breakdown of the 2752 major installed capacities.

There is a total capacity of 97,155 MW on the grid.  That is almost 100 GW of capacity.

 

Source	Capacity /MW	Capacity Percentage /%
Gas	29916	31
Wind	23202	24
Coal	12296	13
Nuclear	8918	9
Solar	8675	9
Hydro	6365	7
Cogeneration	3006	3
Waste	1886	2
Biomass	1584	2
Storage	897	1
Oil	372	0
Wave and Tidal	38	0

 

 

Not that far to go really, especially when you see that there is less than a GW of storage.

 

[ProDave]

The immediate issues from that chart, are with 9GW of solar (which is a daytime source) there needs to be about 4.5Gw of storage just to even that out and be some use at night.

 

And only 9GW of nuclear, what a sorry state we they have let that industry get into 

 

It still proves my point, not much point just now buying an EV believing you are cutting use of fossil fuel.  That will come later, but not yet.

 

And Tidal could so easily be a very large number.

[jack]

35 minutes ago, ProDave said:

It still proves my point, not much point just now buying an EV believing you are cutting use of fossil fuel.  That will come later, but not yet.

 

Gas is inherently a less carbon intensive (CO₂/energy out) fuel than petrol/diesel, plus CCGT power plants make their use even more efficient. On top of that, most of the time, a significant proportion of the power provided by the grid comes from wind and solar etc.

 

How does using grid electricity to charge a car mean you not "cutting use of fossil fuel"?

 

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

This is why I say if you buy an EV and plug it in, then you WILL increase the amount of gas being burned.  That is FACT.

 

Yes, but it will simultaneously reduce the amount of petrol or diesel burned by considerably more than that extra gas, for the reasons above.

 

I feel like I'm missing something in the argument you're making?

[ProDave]

7 minutes ago, jack said:

How does using grid electricity to charge a car mean you not "cutting use of fossil fuel"?

Okay you will be using less fossil fuel if the fossil fuel burned to charge your car emits less CO2 than an equivalent ICE car does.

 

But it seems an awful lot of people seem to think they plug there car in and it charges from a wind turbine and emits nothing.  That is simply not true.

 

Even people who charge from their own solar PV are "burning" fossil fuel.  If they were not self using their PV it would be exported, thus reducing someone elses use of fossil fuel.

 

It's like the people who sign up to a "green" electricity provider and smugly tell you they are not burning any fossil fuel.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, ProDave said:

But it seems an awful lot of people seem to think they plug there care in and it charges from a wind turbine and emits nothing

That is public ignorance, not really anything to do with changing over from FF to RE.

47 minutes ago, ProDave said:

And only 9GW of nuclear, what a sorry state we they have let that industry get into 

It is 3 times the price of RE alternatives though.

[Adrian Walker]

There is also https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ to look at

[ProDave]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

It is 3 times the price of RE alternatives though.

I don't believe it would have been that much had we retained our own industry and built our own as we used to do.  Now we have to buy in off the shelf designs and pay the foreign designers their dues.

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, Adrian Walker said:

There is also https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/ to look at

 

 

Ah that's okay then no carbon up here

 

 

So it's okay to plug your EV in here to charge it.

 

Oh except that will mean a little less green energy sent over the border and a little more FF burned down south.

[jack]

28 minutes ago, ProDave said:

But it seems an awful lot of people seem to think they plug there car in and it charges from a wind turbine and emits nothing.  That is simply not true.

 

How is that any worse than you arguing that using the grid to charge a car doesn't reduce fossil fuel consumption?

[Kelvin]

39 minutes ago, jack said:

 

How is that any worse than you arguing that using the grid to charge a car doesn't reduce fossil fuel consumption?

Agreed it’s just as ignorant a viewpoint. 

[TerryE]

In this last decade we've gone from under 20% to nearly 50% [1] zero-carbon electricity generation, and coal-based generation is now under 2%.  It's a journey, not a quantum leap to 0%.

 

See also this relevant talk by Tony Seba which is one of a series: The Great Transformation [Part 3] - The Disruption of Energy.

 

Edited January 7, 2023 by TerryE

[saveasteading]

Adrian Walker, thanks for that link.  Fascinating.

 

Can anyone explain how London is using 2.2% hydro?

 

Also, and excuse me if it is all explained and I haven't read it, is the 'imported' figure  a total, thus including French nuclear?

 

[ProDave]

45 minutes ago, TerryE said:

In this last decade we've gone from under 20% to nearly 50% [1] zero-carbon electricity generation, and coal-based generation is now under 2%.  It's a journey, not a quantum leap to 0%.

Exactly.

 

One of the things that makes me angry about the green loby is they address us like we are naughty school children and we are still burning fossil fuel because we want to and are ignorant.

 

If they would just give a little credit for the improvements already made, and say well done, keep it up, we are getting there, I am sure people would be more motivated.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

5 hours ago, ProDave said:

I don't believe it would have been that much had we retained our own industry and built our own as we used to do.  Now we have to buy in off the shelf designs and pay the foreign designers their dues.

Much of the cost is for future decommissions, which was never priced in with the earlier nuclear power stations.

Back in the late 1980s and early 90s, we were the worlds largest manufacturer of wind turbines.  That changed.

We have also bought into an untested design from EDF, the EPR.

Same design as Olkiluoto 3, which is still not producing, 17 years after construction started.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)

Edited January 7, 2023 by SteamyTea

[joe90]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

One of the things that makes me angry about the green loby is they address us like we are naughty school children and we are still burning fossil fuel because we want to and are ignorant.

Oh yes, I would love someone to look into these protesters as I am sure they all use electricity, petrol, oil and it’s by  products and live in poorly insulated houses (but wear hair shirts).

4 hours ago, TerryE said:

In this last decade we've gone from under 20% to nearly 50% [1] zero-carbon electricity generation, and coal-based generation is now under 2%.  It's a journey, not a quantum leap to 0%.

 

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

If they would just give a little credit for the improvements already made, and say well done, keep it up, we are getting there, I am sure people would be more motivated.

+1

[SimonD]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

Much of the cost is for future decommissions, which was never priced in with the earlier nuclear power stations.

Still isn't. Nuclear costing only includes 60 years of dealing with the waste, so yet another energy technology that will leave a horrible and expensive mess for many, many future generations, all for the sake of us not facing up to the real problem of how much energy we consume compared to what is actually sustainable.

[SteamyTea]

12 hours ago, saveasteading said:

Can anyone explain how London is using 2.2% hydro?

I think there is some hydro on weirs in the Thames.

There is one near Windsor Castle, but that isn't London.

[MikeSharp01]

25 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I think there is some hydro on weirs in the Thames.

Yes but 2% feels like a lot of mW in the case of London, can you get that from a few weirs? It seems there are 7 of them on the thames: https://www.shareable.net/a-people-powered-legacy-community-hydro-on-the-river-thames/.

 

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

in the case of London

I think London 'imports' most of its energy, so probably takes the percentages from the surrounding areas.

There is a bit of a problem with zoning the country and then proportioning pollutants to that area.

A lot of Cornwall's energy comes from the gas plant in Plymouth, and some of the waste at the St. Awful EFW comes from Devon (they just won't stop sending there shit to us).

It is a bit of a nonsense to try and proportion, exactly, who is generating what.  May just as well do a Carbon Intensity by population density, then we can claim that all Rural people are wasteful.

The main thing is to reduce the national levels.

 

I am just about to drive to Aylesbury, so shall be passing though, Devon, Somerset, Avon, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with a tank of diesel bought in Cornwall, that came from a fuel depot in Devon, from ship that has come from Rotterdam, with oil that was probably refined in India, from Alaskan or Middle Eastern, or may by even Venezuelan, crude.

When I get back later today (hopefully), I will have to fill up again, in Cornwall.  How do I proportion that environmental costs to that simple journey.

You have about 6 hours to answer that.

[Andehh]

8 hours ago, SimonD said:

Still isn't. Nuclear costing only includes 60 years of dealing with the waste, so yet another energy technology that will leave a horrible and expensive mess for many, many future generations, all for the sake of us not facing up to the real problem of how much energy we consume compared to what is actually sustainable.

 

But then its a 20 year life span for a deep sea wind turbine according to Google, which are full of complex multi material composite components with no recyclablility at all, that are miles offshore. OK its not nuclear waste (quality of headache) but there are 100x more of then (quantity of headache). When these wind turbines need decommissioning I'm confident they will cause more 'environmental harm' then the equivalent nuclear waste per MW.... 

 

Until cheap energy storage becomes available, no energy source has the answer, and a mixture is required... Nuclear though has the reliability, robustness and longevity more then any other 'minimum baseload' generation sources.