UK Energy Production

[Ozi]

If dynamic pricing is going to be a thing it shouldn't be to difficult to have some items set to run when demand and price are low, I'd quite like the idea that my washing machine and dishwasher ran at the cheapest available time, thinking about it it seems odd that I have a timer on my oven so it can start cooking to be ready when I get home but not on the dishwasher so it can run on cheap rate, think I'm going to look for a timer plug

ordered

 

[Spectric]

Perhaps more cost effective would just be to put in some backup generation and a UPS supply

Anyone handling critical information and data will have at least a local UPS supply for the computers and in large data centres they use a UPS to fill the gap between power down and the generators coming online simply because there is no such thing as a guaranteed electrical supply.

 

[mwinfrance]

Got UPS, but unless you go for the stupidly expensive huge ones, they just give you enough power to power down gently..not to keep running until the end of a 10 hour engraving on stone.nor do they power the lasers.

 

[whereistheceilidh]

Thanks for your replies.

I just feel we are still discussing how to shuffle the deck chairs.
Build a battery the size of Birningham and you'd still only get a few hours to power up the UK.

Cover the North Sea in windmills so you have almost unlimited electricity which goes down to zero when the wind isn't blowing.
And anyway, you would still need to match that with another generating source.

My issue is why is Miliband allowed to profess this gumph about reducing electricity prices and not being taken to task for the lie behind it.
Is it assumed we're all too stupid to understand these things?

It was mentioned that there is no magic solution.
Well the solution won't be magic - just technological research and invention.
But nobody is spending the real money needed. Instead they're investing in windmills!
Huge lost opportunity there.

So many mis-conceptions & factual errors....I really would rather be in the workshop....
Think pump storage, hydro, ....try & avoid the Daily Fail.
There is a whole world of other infomation out there........

 

[Dermot McArdle]

Yes, maybe I'm wrong. There are those in charge who will make sure everything is going to be alright.
'Best not listen to any siren voices and be reassured that the government knows what is best for us and will look after everyone, no matter what.
On this little dot on the world map - at least we will be doing the 'right thing'!

 

[Delaney]

What's so wrong with having the ambition to decarbonise and remove dependency on other countries? It might not be achievable in our lifetimes but if you don't set out the direction of travel nothing will change.

We can't treat cancer, so no point trying.

We can't map the human genome so no point trying.

Etc.

Wanting to achieve something is the first step. Do we only respect politicians who say they will do the easy stuff, or do we want leaders who try ?

Lol what? We treat cancer all the time.
These are straw man arguments, attempting to belittle opposing voices, instead of standing on your policies achievements.

Ironically the Chinese likely have the most diverse and practical solution.
Build coal plants, import gas and make solar panels.
No wonder their economy is doing so well.

Last year (or there about) the government put out tenders to green energy companies, after they adjusted the price per kw down.
Not a single energy company bid.

We could just wait until another country comes up with the solution and then copy them but that would allow one of the biggest scams and money laundering operations in modern history, take place, right under our noses.
Green energy is expensive, toxic a threat to national security. Gas can be transported with ease and burnt with ease.
Given the high correlation between Putin hating fanatics and green energy zealotry, you’d think the very idea of Putin bombing our battery storage and turning out the lights and cookers across the country, would have them up in arms over how risky, having effectively non transportable energy is.

Lastly, most of our green energy industry is being bought by EU energy providers, so as usual, we are on the hook for their profits.

I don't want to have to shut my business because I can’t make enough money to live reasonably after paying our exorbitant energy costs, just so someone can sit at hole feeling good about themselves.

That’s my opinion and I’m all for green energy, believe it or not. i’ve dreamt of it since I was a child but doing it iff the suffering and impoverishment of working people is beyond gross.

You’d be safer wondering who burns all the car tyres we use?

 

[Richard_C]

Lol what? We treat cancer all the time.

If course we do, I was making the point that if we hadn't tried, all those years ago when it appeared impossible, we wouldn't.

Seems like at least one person reading the post doesn't "get" metaphor.

 

[RobinBHM]

there is another way of looking at the drive to end our energy reliance on fossil fuels.

We need oil as a base to produce many many chemicals especially plastics, we have no alternative currently.

Given that oil is a finite resource we should preserve it for making those chemicals rather than for making electricity

 

[Phil Pascoe]

If dynamic pricing is going to be a thing it shouldn't be to difficult to have some items set to run when demand and price are low, I'd quite like the idea that my washing machine and dishwasher ran at the cheapest available time, thinking about it it seems odd that I have a timer on my oven so it can start cooking to be ready when I get home but not on the dishwasher so it can run on cheap rate, think I'm going to look for a timer plug

My dishwasher has a timer, it's cheap and is 10+ years old.

 

[Vulcan]

there is another way of looking at the drive to end our energy reliance on fossil fuels.

We need oil as a base to produce many many chemicals especially plastics, we have no alternative currently.

Given that oil is a finite resource we should preserve it for making those chemicals rather than for making electricity

Yes agreed. There are more pressing uses for oil than burning it. I gather some early plastics weren’t oil based and neither are some of the new ones so maybe we don’t need oil for that? Drugs though, aren’t some of these produced from chemicals made from crude oil? I guess you can make many from natural products but possibly not in the same quantities?

 

[Ozi]

Yes agreed. There are more pressing uses for oil than burning it. I gather some early plastics weren’t oil based and neither are some of the new ones so maybe we don’t need oil for that? Drugs though, aren’t some of these produced from chemicals made from crude oil? I guess you can make many from natural products but possibly not in the same quantities?

Fertilizer may be the big one.

 

[Jameshow]

Lol what? We treat cancer all the time.
These are straw man arguments, attempting to belittle opposing voices, instead of standing on your policies achievements.

Ironically the Chinese likely have the most diverse and practical solution.
Build coal plants, import gas and make solar panels.
No wonder their economy is doing so well.

Last year (or there about) the government put out tenders to green energy companies, after they adjusted the price per kw down.
Not a single energy company bid.

We could just wait until another country comes up with the solution and then copy them but that would allow one of the biggest scams and money laundering operations in modern history, take place, right under our noses.
Green energy is expensive, toxic a threat to national security. Gas can be transported with ease and burnt with ease.
Given the high correlation between Putin hating fanatics and green energy zealotry, you’d think the very idea of Putin bombing our battery storage and turning out the lights and cookers across the country, would have them up in arms over how risky, having effectively non transportable energy is.

Lastly, most of our green energy industry is being bought by EU energy providers, so as usual, we are on the hook for their profits.

I don't want to have to shut my business because I can’t make enough money to live reasonably after paying our exorbitant energy costs, just so someone can sit at hole feeling good about themselves.

That’s my opinion and I’m all for green energy, believe it or not. i’ve dreamt of it since I was a child but doing it iff the suffering and impoverishment of working people is beyond gross.

You’d be safer wondering who burns all the car tyres we use?

View attachment 197488

 

[Agent_zed]

Gas can be transported with ease and burnt with ease.

Given the high correlation between Putin hating fanatics and green energy zealotry, you’d think the very idea of Putin bombing our battery storage and turning out the lights and cookers across the country, would have them up in arms over how risky, having effectively non transportable energy is.

Do you not see the correlation between your two statements above?

Have you not noticed that the Ukrainians have been systematically bombing gas and oil storage and refineries?

In addition, gas isn't transported with ease. It is constantly leaking from pipework and is 22x more global warming potential than CO2. Not sure how you are going to move enough gas around to keep the lights on whilst Putin is bombing the country anyway. I'd imagine the military aren't going to get rid of any gas reserves for emergencies.

Green energy is expensive, toxic a threat to national security.

No, not in the long run.
Yes there is some toxic chemicals used to make some of the 'green energy' in the initial stages but overall far less than oil/gas.
No, having a matrix of sustainable energy is far better for national security than relying on foreign policies. Germany didn't have better national security by relying heavily on Russian gas. We almost had to have rolling blackouts.

 

[Sideways]

I don't want to have to shut my business because I can’t make enough money to live reasonably after paying our exorbitant energy costs, just so someone can sit at hole feeling good about themselves.

Flipping this on it's head, what gives you the right to profit from low energy prices today leaving the nation as a whole for centuries to come to bear the cost of global warming ?

 

[Spectric]

Maybe if you think of global warming as being cyclic then it is possible we have got away with the problems because the earth has been going through a cooler period but now if that natural cycle is heading into warmer times then with our global impact it is just amplifying the natural cycle to really highlight some big issues. We are really just trying to compensate for an over populated planet, just like a crane has an SWL figure then our planet will have a similar figure for a population that it can support without over stressing the natural world and we have gone way beyond that limit so is there really anything mankind can do at this stage other than wait for whatever happens rather than run around like a headless chicken looking for that magic solution. No one is going to accept the changes needed or even think of ways to reduce populations so we just wait.

 

[Delaney]

Maybe if you think of global warming as being cyclic then it is possible we have got away with the problems because the earth has been going through a cooler period but now if that natural cycle is heading into warmer times then with our global impact it is just amplifying the natural cycle to really highlight some big issues. We are really just trying to compensate for an over populated planet, just like a crane has an SWL figure then our planet will have a similar figure for a population that it can support without over stressing the natural world and we have gone way beyond that limit so is there really anything mankind can do at this stage other than wait for whatever happens rather than run around like a headless chicken looking for that magic solution. No one is going to accept the changes needed or even think of ways to reduce populations so we just wait.

You make a good point about population.

The same politicians that wring their hands over carbon footprint are also the ones most pro mass immigration.
Hence why it seems like the core of this is a bunch of narcissist politicians gaslighting the population.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Maybe if you think of global warming as being cyclic then it is possible we have got away with the problems because the earth has been going through a cooler period but now if that natural cycle is heading into warmer times then with our global impact it is just amplifying the natural cycle to really highlight some big issues.

I think there are two things which differentiate the changes we are currently experiencing from those that have clearly occurred in the past:

• speed of change - human activity changes conditions within a single lifetime, not over several centuries or millennia where natural processes meant responses could be gradual (volcanic, asteroid induced etc excepted!).
• we have evolved to understand concepts of "past" and "future". Previously higher mammals were aware only of "now". They could only respond to daily or seasonal changes, with no ability to influence or control the environment around them

We are really just trying to compensate for an over populated planet, just like a crane has an SWL figure then our planet will have a similar figure for a population that it can support without over stressing the natural world and we have gone way beyond that limit so is there really anything mankind can do at this stage other than wait for whatever happens rather than run around like a headless chicken looking for that magic solution. No one is going to accept the changes needed or even think of ways to reduce populations so we just wait.

I fully agree populations and their potential impact on the environment now far exceeds the capacity. Malthus warned 200 years ago (for different reasons) and humanity took no notice. There are two possible futures, or a possible probably unhappy compromise:

• an existence with features common to factory farming - confined to a limited area, fed a scientifically balanced diet, connected to the outside world through digital media, health and well being monitored against statistical norms etc.
• no doubt special privileges for those at the top of society. Overall an unpleasant future for one who has enjoyed the relative freedom of the late 20th and early 21st century.
• the alternative - conflict over increasingly scarce resources. In principle similar to that occurring in the natural world - a dominant species exhausts its food supply, competes for what little remains, populations rapidly fall to more sustainable levels (sometimes zero)
• in the natural world these events are relatively local or regional - mankind has the capacity for conflict and its consequences to be global!

 

[Spectric]

the alternative - conflict over increasingly scarce resources. In principle similar to that occurring in the natural world - a dominant species exhausts its food supply, competes for what little remains, populations rapidly fall to more sustainable levels (sometimes zero)

In essence survival of the fittest or probably in this case survival of those who have most value to society as there will be no capacity to carry dead weight.

health and well being monitored against statistical norms etc.

And if you don't meet these statistics you could be deemed as beyond servicable life unless you can offset them with some other asset that is of greater value to society.

Overall an unpleasant future for one who has enjoyed the relative freedom of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Yes we have taken whats been on offer without any consideration for the future and now we face payback time. If you had to decide on an epitaph for the human race then what would you write ?

I would put, the human race, made extinct by the greed of the few.

Why, because greed has driven people to gain power and war to maintain that power at the expense of the minority.

 

[mwinfrance]

I would put, the human race, made extinct by the greed of the few.

Agree with the above

But on the second quote,

Why, because greed has driven people to gain power and war to maintain that power at the expense of the minority.

Why, because greed has driven people to gain power and war to maintain that power at the expense of the majority .

 

[Jacob]

Maybe if you think of global warming as being cyclic

It isn't though. Climate changes over time but not in a cyclic fashion.

........... We are really just trying to compensate for an over populated planet,

No, we are trying to correct an over consuming population, particularly of fossil fuels, and it's the wealthiest sectors which consume most, emitting the most CO2 https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-rele...-planet-heating-pollution-two-thirds-humanity

.... No one is going to accept the changes needed or even think of ways to reduce populations so we just wait.

Population isn't the issue in itself, though of course if two thirds of the population was exterminated the global economy would collapse, including collapse of over consumption by the wealthy sector.
As it is it, looks like there will be little action and there will be mass extinctions, so natural processes will sort us out, while we witter and worry about heat pumps and replacing boys toys with EVs!
As far as the species is concerned, there is no such thing as over-population. Large populations improve the chances of species survival through changing circumstances, but not necessarily in large numbers. In fact it's other species which are becoming extinct due to human population growth, starting with the passenger pigeon, or possibly the woolly mammoth!
And Malthus was wrong. We've survived far longer and in far greater numbers than he predicted