UK Energy Production

[RobinBHM]

pretty much all Western countries are based on growth to sustain their economies

people with wealth want growth for their assets to appreciate...........and wealthy people also have the power to influence governments

so we will continue with the contradiction of growing the economy whilst trying to protect the environment

 

[Agent_zed]

pretty much all Western countries are based on growth to sustain their economies

people with wealth want growth for their assets to appreciate...........and wealthy people also have the power to influence governments

so we will continue with the contradiction of growing the economy whilst trying to protect the environment

Yeah I admit I don't understand economics that well but I havent worked out how you can continually grow. In biological terms this would be seen as cancer. How long til we reach max capacity of what people can have, there is only so much space to put things and there are only so many services you can use.

 

[mwinfrance]

Those people who want continued growth, want to be able to put their McThings in their McHouses, in their McCountries, on a McPlanet..or two, or more.

 

[John Brown]

Yeah I admit I don't understand economics that well but I havent worked out how you can continually grow. In biological terms this would be seen as cancer. How long til we reach max capacity of what people can have, there is only so much space to put things and there are only so many services you can use.

What are you talking about? The emperor's new clothes are amazing!

 

[Terry - Somerset]

Yeah I admit I don't understand economics that well but I havent worked out how you can continually grow. In biological terms this would be seen as cancer. How long til we reach max capacity of what people can have, there is only so much space to put things and there are only so many services you can use.

Traditionally growth has always been measured in economic terms. Probably a reasonable approach when some lack what most would regard as a reasonable level of material provision to aspire to. It has the benefit of objective measurement using a common denominator - £££, $$$ etc.

We may debate "reasonable" - eg: warm dry housing, adequate clothing and food, basic leisure pursuits, education, healthcare, transport, occasional holiday etc may fit the definition.

Other aspects of "growth" can benefit individuals and society in as meaningful a way - social harmony, contentment, improvements in health, reduction in disease, etc. AFAIK, no political party has focussed its strategies around wellbeing, preferring hard measurable concept.

There is no common denominator and efforts to create an "index" are inevitably skewed. Whilst reasonable "material" needs remain unfilled I suspect other non-economic measures will continue to take second place, no matter how important they are to a wider appreciationof growth.

 

[Eshmiel]

Yeah I admit I don't understand economics that well but I havent worked out how you can continually grow. In biological terms this would be seen as cancer. How long til we reach max capacity of what people can have, there is only so much space to put things and there are only so many services you can use.

Humankind reached that point long ago, really. The planet has become something of a slum boarding house for humans, degraded and degrading, with internecine competition for dwindling stuff and opportunities, no maintenance being done by the greedy owners, intent on building and stuffing more such boarding houses to increase their rent-income. Blackpool-in-Solar-System.

On the other hand, its not unlikely that some oligarchs have thought out the longer consequences of their desires and are even now plotting for and discovering means to evict we boarders from "their" planet so they can feel the glow of total and unfettered ownership of everything. They could just (as they have been doing) degrade the hoi-polloi to death; or they might quicken the process by releasing a pathogen for which only they have the anti. (I read it in a science fikshun novel).

Of course, they will still compete madly with each other, employing any and every means to "win". One day there will only be one Big Owner, possibly named something like Ugly Mask. He will have a robot wife and children to bully.

 

[Jacob]

Yeah I admit I don't understand economics that well but I havent worked out how you can continually grow.

You can't. It's a delusion. It's lazy thinking.
It's a popular notion with the rich, and with lazy politicians, because it suggests that more money/work will be available to keep the workers happy, without the rich having to pay more in taxes and have wealth redistributed in any inconvenient manner.
But in fact any increased wealth will still find it's way upwards and inequality will stay the same or increase.

In biological terms this would be seen as cancer. How long til we reach max capacity of what people can have, there is only so much space to put things and there are only so many services you can use.

We are already well past the limits, to such an extent that we are changing the climate, upsetting the whole apple cart, without addressing inequality at all.
Gary explains it well, to some extent, though he isn't exactly a smooth operator as an economics lecturer. He keeps it simple, but it really is simple!

 

[Jacob]

Traditionally growth has always been measured in economic terms. Probably a reasonable approach when some lack what most would regard as a reasonable level of material provision to aspire to. It has the benefit of objective measurement using a common denominator - £££, $$$ etc.

We may debate "reasonable" - eg: warm dry housing, adequate clothing and food, basic leisure pursuits, education, healthcare, transport, occasional holiday etc may fit the definition.

Other aspects of "growth" can benefit individuals and society in as meaningful a way - social harmony, contentment, improvements in health, reduction in disease, etc. AFAIK, no political party has focussed its strategies around wellbeing, preferring hard measurable concept.

There is no common denominator and efforts to create an "index" are inevitably skewed. Whilst reasonable "material" needs remain unfilled I suspect other non-economic measures will continue to take second place, no matter how important they are to a wider appreciationof growth.

Growth does not in itself produce benefits for all. In fact likely to do the opposite; giving more economic power to the already well off, increasing inequality.
Hence very wealthy countries like our own, with steadiy growing economies over generations, have increasing poverty, homelessness, etc and the running down of essential services, based on that myth/lie the austerity may somehow sort things out and give us growth. Jam tomorrow.

 

[RobinBHM]

Ironically it is easier to make money out of wealth destruction than it is wealth creation.

 

[Vulcan]

Fertilizer may be the big one.

Ah yes, of course.

 

[Jacob]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jam_tomorrow

 

[woodieallen]

LOL. There's a strategic

placed in the script, which I guess you didn't quite pick up on.
Any more holes you'd like to pick?
Such as "sea state 4 or 5" water versus land-based salt flats? This was exactly the reason for the (typically) in the script.

Regardless of whether there are any waves, which there typically always are, the wave tops aren't typically very high versus sea level, and will be consistently "level" over a large area and will typically be relatively regularly spaced. Unlike (typically) a land mass, with vegetation, undulations, and man-made obstacles of inconsistent heights and spacings.

BS. You're sloppy use of English again. Your 'typically' refers to the first clause. Admit it, you love lecturing to us and love the sound of your own voice.

 

[woodieallen]

But the real benefit of smart meters is that they record (and transmit) your power consumption at half hourly intervals. That means a whole lot of new pricing becomes possible. No need to switch people off if you can create an incentive tarrif on the fly, tell millions of people about it wirhin minutes via social media and incentivise a million people to shift their consumption backwards or forwards a bit and free up grid capacity for those who really need it.
They are piloting this stuff now. On Octopus I've done it a few times last year along with half a million others. I save a few pounds and the grid avoids spinning up a power station for the sake of an hour or two.

You're assuming that every one is glued to social media

 

[Spectric]

You're assuming that every one is glued to social media

Cannot assume that one but I do reckon that at least 75% of people you see out and about are glued to their phone at the expense of all else.

 

[mwinfrance]

Guy coming towards ( on my side of the road ) me today on his cycle, was not looking at me at all, he was looking at his phone in his right hand, and carrying a can of Coke in his left hand. He fell off when I hit my horn. I swerved around him and laughed. Nothing at all against cyclists ( cycle is how Mme does her rounds of her clients ( specialised care worker, cancer, end of life, Alzheimer's etc ), in rain, sun , ice etc all year, she has been knocked of her bike twice, both times ( witnessed independently ) was the drivers fault . This guy was lucky it was me and not some Parisian* ( holiday time here ATM, place is full of them ) busy talking to their kids in the back of the car with their head turned all the way around, or looking at their phone. He'd have been a smear on the road, he wasn't talking, but was doing the "thumb thing", so was probably on "social media".

* He was 20 to 25 ish.. not a local, ( small place , I'd know ) probably a Parisian ( Parigot..pronounced pah ree goh ) on holiday.

 

[mwinfrance]

@Dabop ..Mint 19.1 here with Chromium . You may well be correct there. I used to use Firefox(x) for here at UKW with far fewer typos and glitches. I've been using Chromium ( not Chrome or the totally degoogled appimage Chromium ) since the degoogled appimage ceased working. I'm stuck with running Chromium for at least another month as I'm signed into a whole bunch of AI testing sites with it and I don't want to sign out and have to begin again in FF*. Some may not work so well with FF ( some MS stuff prefers Chromium based ) . I could use a different box ( I have Mint 20(x) and 21(x) on others, but that would mean tidying this desk to get their keyboards in front of their monitors, and the chair in front of this one is the most comfortable .

Mint(x) is what I put on other people's machines when they ask, so I keep it on mine ( various flavours ) so as to be able to "troubleshoot" them via the phone, I don't charge , so avoid actual house calls if I can. The applications in the repos are always a bit behind Ubuntu, Clem and his team being cautious souls.

* I tend to have so many tabs and windows open in any browser, if I ran Chromium ( with all of it's memory leaks ) and FF ( with all of it's memory leaks ) I'd run out of RAM

 

[Terry - Somerset]

You're assuming that every one is glued to social media

I expect systems set up to monitor costs using simple user defined criteria.Example: charge the EV to 25% irrespective of price. Fully charge if the price is less than 15p kwh.

Some things are less able to be managed - but changing the operating window for (say) dishwasher, washing machine, heating hot water can all be easily set and referenced to energy costs.

For other items an app with a text message for a decision may be the outcome - "is it ok to switch the heating on one hour later to avoid premium rates this morning". User simply responds.

Once set up there would be no need to look at social media - although reviewing the user criteria set at regular intervals would make sense.

 

[mwinfrance]

Our washing machine already allows "deferred start" by up to 12 hours, no dishwasher here, but I know the ones that friends have do allow "deferred start" the same way. One of them has an electric car (and a diesel minibus ) , he charges on cheap night rate already.

If one could do that without social media, I'd lose many of my objections*. As long as the site(s) respected GDPR to the strict letter and spirit of the law as my own sites do. I suspect the way that it will be run here in France is that dynamic pricing will only apply to those like my neighbour who have signed up to "flat rate + about 20%" from 07.00 to 23.00 pm , and cheap rate ( about 85% of flat rate ) from 23.00 to 07.00 .

The new cheap rate hours here around mid day only applies to them.

Others such as myself would ( as we do now ) pay a higher "flat rate" 24 /7 than his "cheap rate", but our "flat rate" is lower than his.

Not like we will have a say or choice in it anyway, no matter where we live. We will take what our suppliers decide to send, and how they decide to send it.

The same way that the installation of smart meters here was not mandatory, but the mayor of each village , town etc got to decide if it was obligatory for each consumer unit in their village or town. Individually we were not allowed to make the decision to have them , or not. we were told it would save money on meter readers twice per year, the bills went up not down, the savings were not passed on to the consumers, nor were they ever intended to be.

* Losing supply because of "dynamic balancing" would still be a problem, as I've said, due to the disruption, and the unaffordable costs of large a UPS for my machines that could keep them running as opposed to just enough power for time to soft shut down. We do not have enough roof and wall space in the correct orientation to be able to compensate with solar. I can fit ( with the solar panels available ) 6KW and would need 9KW at least, without running washing machines, charging an electric car, hot water, cooking etc .Not even thinking about my welders. But we are an "edge case".

Plus if the power goes, we ( being recently shunted into a "no signal" zone ) have no cell service in the house or garden, because no femto cell via our ISP's box.

 

[Dabop]

@Dabop ..Mint 19.1 here with Chromium . You may well be correct there. I used to use Firefox(x) for here at UKW with far fewer typos and glitches. I've been using Chromium ( not Chrome or the totally degoogled appimage Chromium ) since the degoogled appimage ceased working. I'm stuck with running Chromium for at least another month as I'm signed into a whole bunch of AI testing sites with it and I don't want to sign out and have to begin again in FF*. Some may not work so well with FF ( some MS stuff prefers Chromium based ) . I could use a different box ( I have Mint 20(x) and 21(x) on others, but that would mean tidying this desk to get their keyboards in front of their monitors, and the chair in front of this one is the most comfortable .

Mint(x) is what I put on other people's machines when they ask, so I keep it on mine ( various flavours ) so as to be able to "troubleshoot" them via the phone, I don't charge , so avoid actual house calls if I can. The applications in the repos are always a bit behind Ubuntu, Clem and his team being cautious souls.

* I tend to have so many tabs and windows open in any browser, if I ran Chromium ( with all of it's memory leaks ) and FF ( with all of it's memory leaks ) I'd run out of RAM

You can have both...
This system here I use both FF for most things, but I keep a copy of chrome on it for a couple of websites that don't 'play nice' with FF...
You don't have to use 'one OR the other... just use both (or in the case of my phone, THREE different browsers lol)
In my case, I use FF as my default browser, but if I want to use chrome, then its as simple as clicking on its icon...
Doesn't do a thing to FF or any of its logins...

(in fact I use the two browsers at once so I can even run multiple facebook pages open at once (personal on FF and work page on chrome) without having to constantly swap back and forth...)

Not like we will have a say or choice in it anyway, no matter where we live. We will take what our suppliers decide to send, and how they decide to send it.

The same way that the installation of smart meters here was not mandatory, but the mayor of each village , town etc got to decide if it was obligatory for each consumer unit in their village or town. Individually we were not allowed to make the decision to have them , or not. we were told it would save money on meter readers twice per year, the bills went up not down, the savings were not passed on to the consumers, nor were they ever intended to be.

* Losing supply because of "dynamic balancing" would still be a problem, as I've said, due to the disruption, and the unaffordable costs of large a UPS for my machines that could keep them running as opposed to just enough power for time to soft shut down. We do not have enough roof and wall space in the correct orientation to be able to compensate with solar. I can fit ( with the solar panels available ) 6KW and would need 9KW at least, without running washing machines, charging an electric car, hot water, cooking etc .Not even thinking about my welders. But we are an "edge case".

Plus if the power goes, we ( being recently shunted into a "no signal" zone ) have no cell service in the house or garden, because no femto cell via our ISP's box.

You seem to be struggling to find a reason... ANY reason... for it to be 'impossible'- when millions of others have found it quite possible (and actually quite easy) to utilise the various features commonly found with newer tech... seems it might be a 'you problem' rather than a 'tech problem'....

(9kw is a HUGE system for most places, and even given your location with its less than ideal solar insolation, would still be capable of generating 25kWh a day plus... Even your 6kw system would still be capable of generating 17kWh a day, which was literally three times what my old ongrid house used per day (with its A/C left running for the cats all day, and my workshop (lathe/mill/welders etc )- what the hell are you running there??????? )

LOL- even my little 'temporary' array here (1.5kw) I still can run the welder/plasmacutter/aircompressor when I need to (although I have limits on time usage, simply because the tiny 'temporary array' is not keeping up, and they bite into the battery storage after the first couple of hours of use... I've got 20kWh of storage (so I 'could' in theory keep welding all night until the sun came up again), but I prefer not to discharge them too much and with such a tiny solar array it would take a couple of days to recharge them again...

Once I finish the house and get the full 18kw of solar up on its roof.... drools... nearly 100kWh a day from that puppy...