England Could Produce 13 Times More Renewable Energy, Using Less Than 3% of Land (theguardian.com) 222
England could produce 13 times more renewable energy than it does now, while using less than 3% of its land, analysis has found. The Guardian: Onshore wind and solar projects could provide enough electricity to power all the households in England two and a half times over, the research by Exeter University, commissioned by Friends of the Earth (FoE), suggested. Currently, about 17 terawatt hours of electricity a year comes from homegrown renewables on land. But there is potential for 130TWh to come from solar panels, and 96TWh from onshore wind. These figures are reached by only taking into account the most suitable sites, excluding national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, higher grade agricultural land and heritage sites.
Some commentators have argued that solar farms will reduce the UK's ability to grow its own food, but the new analysis suggests there is plenty of land that can be used without impairing agricultural production. More land is now taken up by golf courses than solar farms, and developers can be required to enhance biodiversity through simple measures such as maintaining hedgerows and ponds. Onshore windfarms were in effect banned in 2015 by the then prime minister, David Cameron. Rishi Sunak last year claimed to make moves towards lifting the ban, through small changes to the planning regulations, but campaigners say they were ineffectual and real planning reform is needed. No plans were submitted for new windfarms in England last year, and few new developments are coming forward, despite high gas prices, rising bills and onshore wind being the cheapest form of electricity generation.
Some commentators have argued that solar farms will reduce the UK's ability to grow its own food, but the new analysis suggests there is plenty of land that can be used without impairing agricultural production. More land is now taken up by golf courses than solar farms, and developers can be required to enhance biodiversity through simple measures such as maintaining hedgerows and ponds. Onshore windfarms were in effect banned in 2015 by the then prime minister, David Cameron. Rishi Sunak last year claimed to make moves towards lifting the ban, through small changes to the planning regulations, but campaigners say they were ineffectual and real planning reform is needed. No plans were submitted for new windfarms in England last year, and few new developments are coming forward, despite high gas prices, rising bills and onshore wind being the cheapest form of electricity generation.
No profit in that (Score:2, Insightful)
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We'll see. We're 95% likely to get a new government later this year
I believe that you are wrong about that.
The number is 99%!
https://www.theguardian.com/po... [theguardian.com]
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I had it in my mind that the next general election was required to be held in 2024, but since that is wrong, let me adjust my percentages:
1. There is a zero percentage chance of a new government this year.
2. There is a 99% chance of a new government early next year.
The Tories are resigned to losing the next election, so their priority has changed to bunging as much cash to their wealthy friends as they can. They clearly have no shame and give zero fucks.
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In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
UK plans a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors to meet their energy needs.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/mone... [msn.com]
The fine article is an admission of concerns on land use from renewable energy in the UK. This is not a new concern as Dr David MacKay pointed out the problems of wind and solar power meeting the energy needs for UK years ago in his book and website. http://www.withouthotair.com/ [withouthotair.com]
Dr. MacKay spoke on what UK needed to do for low CO2 energy for much of his life, making it a point to not state any conclusions but rather just point to the options and let the audience decide. In the last interview before his death Dr. MacKay deviated from this tactic and stated UK would need nuclear fission as a part of its energy mix or it will fail to meet future energy needs.
Much ado has been made over rising costs and construction delays for new nuclear power in UK, but both become irrelevant if there's no better option offered. If Friends of the Earth are to live up to their name then they need to do more than express enthusiasm on how UK could grow their renewable energy supply quickly, they must also face the realities of a cold dunkelflaute which can put the nation into a very dangerous and expensive energy shortage. Dr. MacKay's study may be a few years old by now but it is still based on some fundamental realities that exist. Friends of the Earth must know that UK cannot operate on renewable energy alone if they did their study correctly. Thankfully we see reality being recognized by policy makers in the UK, and elsewhere around the world, with investment in nuclear power. We will still need renewable energy but we can't rely on renewable energy alone. Every nation that got to a point of technological and economic development to allow building nuclear power plants have found it difficult to do without. In the USA we've had decades of nuclear fission providing something like 20% of our electricity and with each closing of a nuclear power plant there's increased use of fossil fuels to replace them. This isn't because people hate clean air and a stable climate but because renewable energy cannot reliably provide energy when and where it is needed.
To those that believe the solution to the problem of renewable energy being intermittent is energy storage then that shows a lack of understanding the problem. Uranium and thorium is stored energy, stores of energy upon which we can draw from as desired. These are energy stores that will not take up nearly as much valuable land, materials, and other resources as renewable energy and whatever else people have in mind as energy stores. It's great to read on how UK could put up many more affordable onshore windmills, and I'd believe Dr. MacKay would even agree, but that still doesn't eliminate the need for nuclear power in the UK.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
If the fully costed nuclear power stations plan hadn't been scrapped by the Government over a decade ago, they'd be on-stream by now, generating an excess of electricity for even a substantial growth in demand for the next 20 years minimum. Seems there wasn't enough personal enrichment for MPs and their cronies on offer...
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It was a combination of the astronomical cost and the fact that company wants to build them. In the end we had to give massive subsidies to EDF to do it (Hitachi and everyone else declined even with the free money), and get much of the money from Chinese investors. Now they are trying to buy the Chinese out because between them investing and today China became the new Big Bad.
So all we get is a nuclear plant in 20 odd years, at insane cost, owned by the French government (EDF was nationalized because their
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Indeed, which is probably why we are getting fleeced on the two they are building.
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I don't believe that.
Making a plutonium breeder is not a particularly difficult design problem, and has little to no overlap with civilian power plant design. Hanford Site's reactors have basically zero design in common with, say, APR-1000.
It's certainly possible to produce Pu or HEU in a civilian cycle, but it's expensive and time-consuming to the point where building a dedicated breeder is simpler, faster and cheaper. The only people who do this are the ones trying to hide their program, those who aren't
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>> irrelevant if there's no better option offered
As the article clearly stated;
"Onshore wind and solar projects could provide enough electricity to power all the households in England two and a half times over".
“Onshore wind power capacity has almost quadrupled since 2010 and renewables account for nearly half of our electricity, up from just 7%."
And then;
"wind being the cheapest form of electricity generation"
Meanwhile small modular nuclear reactors are still just getting started as a t
13 times current _onshore_ renewables (Score:4, Informative)
From the article: "If this capacity was fully developed (although weâ(TM)re not advocating for this due to the abundance of offshore energy potential also available) and if wind was prioritised above solar on sites that are suitable for both, this land would produce 13 times the current onshore wind and solar electricity generation across England. This is equivalent to more than 3 times the electricity currently consumed by homes (20% of total energy consumption). "
And notice the last bit: this would be 20% of the total energy consumption. A long ways to go.
Re:13 times current _onshore_ renewables (Score:5, Informative)
You have misunderstood the article.
What it is saying is that 60% (3 times 20%) of the electricity consumed in the UK could be produced by solar farms and onshore wind.
Just in case you are skeptical: Annual electricity demand in the UK was 310TWh in 2023 [statista.com] while this proposal is that onshore wind could produce 95TWh and solar 130TWh (from the article).
What's missing: Offshore wind and rooftop solar.
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Rooftop solar is going to become the next big social divide in the UK. People who have it will enjoy cheap electricity, everyone else will get shafted as the energy companies try to make up for the lost demand and keep their old fossil infrastructure going.
Same with EV charging. People who can charge at home will enjoy cheap motoring, everyone else gets to pay commercial prices that are as high as for fossil cars.
The only solution is for the grid itself to become mostly renewable and for individuals to have
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I still don't understand solar in the UK climate. the Met Office says that on average there's 156 cloudy days in southern England. In Cardiff, in Wales, the sun shines on average 6 hours per day from May to August - the time of longest day. In winter it's significantly less given that sun comes up after 7:30 in November and is down a bit after 4 pm. I cannot see how you can ever 'pay for' the panels in terms of energy out to be greater than energy in. I've done some minor experiments with solar and have found that they don't EVER seem to generate as much power as it is claimed, which is truly unfortunate.
You'll really hate that solar is used in Alaska.
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Solar doesn't require direct sunlight to generate electricity. It's overcast today, but solar is still producing 2GW in the UK (estimated due to there being no central way to measure private PV generation).
Typical payback time is around 5 years, but it varies with climate.
It's going to get better as climate change takes effect. We are already seeing demand for air conditioning increase.
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I think you have misunderstood the point of the statistic.
This is considering just onshore wind and non-rooftop solar which could supply all that our homes need in England. This is significant politically because the current government has effectively banned onshore wind and is very negative to onshore solar largely justified by one of their many culture wars. It's also significant technologically, because the supply could be located closer to the demand which is important because our grid needs a massive a
Chinese soda pop fallacy (Score:5, Insightful)
3% of the UK landmass is an absolutely massive area.
This is dumb. Build nuclear reactors. Done.
Re: Chinese soda pop fallacy (Score:2)
No part of the UK is absolutely massive.
Re: Chinese soda pop fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
I was about to say the same thing, 2.7% of the land is currently covered by buildings which includes cities, industry and their adjacent non-agricultural property (yards, parks, gardens etc).
You are basically asking humanity to double its footprint so that it you can produce approximately a quarter to half of the energy required to function as a society.
Re: Chinese soda pop fallacy (Score:2)
TFA is about England, not the UK. 8.7% of England is developed: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk]
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Almost 100% of the UK's landmass is already altered through human intervention. There's no "wild" part of the UK to speak of. The human footprint covers the entirety of the UK. We can cope with adding this much extra infrastructure.
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Let's be consistent here. If agricultural property isn't part of humanity's footprint, then neither are solar and wind farms.
1% of land use is housing. ALL of the housing. (Score:2)
Just to put "3% of UK Landmass" into perspective, 1.4% of landmass in England (the most built-up part of the UK) is covered by residential buildings [*].
So saying 3% we could do this by using just 3% of landmass means covering between twice and three times as much landmass with solar panels and wind turbines as is currently covered by all the houses that exist in the UK, put together.
That seems quite a lot to me.
[*] Source: England Land UK statistics 2022, as cited by Land Use in England Committee, House of
Nuclear is extremely expensive and takes 20 years (Score:2)
And Britain is very very windy.
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> And Britain is very very windy.
Only when it isnt, which is very often.
> Nuclear is extremely expensive and takes 20 years
And people wear seatbelts in cars. Both artificially created. Nuclear could be done in a fraction of the time to the same standards if it were not for the incessant manual checking of every bolt and screw taking days to build a wall for the mens toilets. China are putting up their reactors in record time, and they are the same designs as THEY build here only they take decades h
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>> Build nuclear reactors. Done.
When will Hinkley Point C be completed? Started in 2017, already more than 50% over budget. Projected completion 2031 at a cost of about 46 billion pounds.
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> Hinkley Point C
Is a new reactor type built in a NEVER BEFORE DONE WAY and it turns out this, being the "test bed" for this construction method fell flat on its face when they realised you can’t build like that in that location...
If you want to make an argument against nuclear being the solution any sane person knows it is, it might be best to avoid using the frequently admitted experimental construction that is Hinkley Point C
Also, show me ANYTHING that is in budget and on time? Not even a BT li
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>> a new reactor type
I'm not interested in lame excuses.
>> you can’t build like that in that location
But obviously it is being built, and at an enormous subsidized cost.
https://www.edfenergy.com/ener... [edfenergy.com]
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Britain's land mass is actually quite sparsely used overall, with the amount actually developed being around 8%.
They don't include solar on buildings in their 3% figure, so there is probably a fraction of a percent there. Line roads and railways with them too, as they do in other countries.
Of course a lot of land can't be used for development, especially up in Scotland. Or at least not for housing and the like, but for wind farms and solar farms, or pumped storage...
And as they note, they aren't considering
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Two words: Mari Juana (Score:2)
Solar?? In the UK? (Score:2)
Re: Solar?? In the UK? (Score:2)
No, the UK is a better fit for wind than solar.
However, as the number of sunny days increases, the viability of solar does too.
Re: Solar?? In the UK? (Score:2)
Solar panels have been designed for cloudy countries. They're a no-brainer for sunny countries but will be viable for covering warehouses, out-of-town supermarkets et al in Britain.
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The UK is not that overcast, and the thing is, solar is so insanely cheap compared to other forms of electricity generation that it's really a quesiton of both-and, not either-or
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> The UK is not that overcast
Since when?
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Yes it is overcast a lot and for weeks at a time.
Only during spring and autumn will you find variability with sunny intevals. During recent summers however it can be clear skies for weeks at a time.
In winter due to the high lattitude even a clear sky generates a fraction of the amount you'd want from solar.
Europe is up North (Score:2)
The southern most point of the UK, at 49 51 0N is more up North than the entire continental Northern US border (excluding Alaska).
Rome (southern Europe) is north of New York.
Just keep that in mind when cheering for solar.
Not saying it doesn't make sense, just for North Americans: this is solar in Canada...
Which 3% (Score:2)
England could produce 13 times more renewable energy than it does now, while using less than 3% of its land
Yes, but.. which 3%?
/NIMBY
1.2% of the sahara desert for the entire world (Score:2)
The challenge isn't land space. 1.2% of the sahara could power the entire world with reasonably reliable solar energy. The problem is politics, control, maintenance, cost of resources to maintain and produce it.
The energy is renewable, the resources to build and maintain it, are not. Then comes political issues, corporate control etc. If the entire world wanted to play nice together, we could use that 1.2% in the sahara, power entire world, everyone plays nice, but transportation of that power becomes a big
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> 1.2% of the sahara could power the entire world
No. It could genereate the power the world needs but as you will never be able to get the power across the world without loss (unless you use superconductors) then you power Egypt with loads of excess energy.
Perhaps then EV ships could use such a power system to recharge, while the rebels permit.
And when the wind won't blow at night... (Score:2)
the wealthiest 10% will discharge their $100k battery banks while everyone else sits in the cold dark and gives thanks for having such wise leaders who know better than the commoners about energy usage.
utterly ridiculous (Score:2)
Ummm England doesn't really "do" sunlight. For example: London gets 35 clear days, 180 partly cloudy days, and 150 overcast days annually.
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So that's 35 days at 100% rated generation, 180 days at 70%+ generation, and 150 days at 30%-70% generation. What number of TWh did you compute from that to make it 'utterly ridiculous'?
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and 150 days at 30%-70% generation
I seriously doubt you could get anywhere near that on a typical grey day in England. Id say 35 days a year of actual heat is about right, but the rest of the time its neither warm nor sunny - just grey. I honestly think there are some Scandanavian countries that might actually get more usable sunlight in the days despite the constant snow and ice
NIMBY (Score:2)
The reason much of that land hasnt already been used is due to the ease with which NIMBY's can block it.
Having elimiated herigate land, greens, agricultural land etc suggest they are looking at brownfeild sites, unable to be used for much of anything apart from as an investment.
Should that be near a village, NIMBYism and councils demanding to preserve natural beuty (some areas of the UK have VERY strict rules about what can be seen by the naked eye as Jeremy Clarkson found out with his farm plane, the Cotsw
yes but (Score:2)
Yeas but solar farms are ugly, and windfarm's are noisy so you get the NIMBY crowd putting an effective stop to it, and if you put windfarms out at sea (wey more expensive) you get birds being converted to mince so then you get greanbece on your back, so my question becomes where do you build?
Oh my God you're serious (Score:2, Insightful)
For the record there are several ways to prevent hail damage. And wind and solar are both extremely reliable and have been able to supply base load power for quite some time now.
I see this all the time with conservatives when things change they never update their information and they never believe that problems can be solved. It's weird.
I've watched two sets of apartment buildings in my area be thrown up in less than a year going fr
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Non-dispatchable energy sources cannot function as base load.
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An energy source doesn't have to be dispatchable to function as baseload as long as it provides constant power. For example, coal and nuclear plants take hours to startup so they aren't as dispatchable as a bank of grid batteries, but they provide constant power and that's good enough for baseload.
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You are assuming that wind is binary, on or off. It's not, especially off shore.
The speed varies, but it never stops blowing off shore and at the heights these turbines now reach. Over a wide area you can use offshore wind as base load.
Not that we actually need base load anymore. Look at his "duck curve" graph from the US government: https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
Demand hits zero at some times of day, because California has so much solar power. Base load can either turn off, meaning it's not base load, o
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I see this all the time with conservatives when things change they never update their information and they never believe that problems can be solved. It's weird.
It's weird that so many people believe that nuclear fission for energy hasn't advanced beyond the technology that brought us Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. While Fukushima was a relatively recent meltdown of a nuclear power plant the reactors that melted down were built before or around the same time as those at Chernobyl. It seems people believe the problems of nuclear power safety and disposing of the waste cannot be solved. While there's no perfect solutions available we have nuclear pow
I have not seen a single production design (Score:2)
I'm open to being convinced but so far every single design I have seen when I have researched it has had the possibility of a meltdown if maintenance was not properly done. They are safer but they are not safe.
And I do not trust the American people not to privatize everything lik
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As you well know, the consequences of a nuclear meltdown are much more severe than of a plane crash. So we rightly have a higher standard of safety for nuclear reactors.
When we design aircraft, we can test them on a computer or with a scale model in a wind tunnel first, so by the time a prototype gets built we are fairly confident that it will work. Nobody has yet come up with even a paper design for a nuclear reactor that can't melt down and appears to be commercially viable. To get money for prototypes, y
So I get that they don't teach Google in schools (Score:2)
My point is I'm talking about situations where something changed over time and it's not like how it used to be but people cling desperately to the way things were.
So just like how apartments used to take years to build and now can be thrown up in a matter of months or how there was a time when the theory of evolution was up for debate and now it's not there was a time when wind and solar farms could
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I think the problem is /dot is full of old farts who grew up thinking nuclear power was this hip super cool future and they just don't want to let it go.
I'm an old fart, and I've been anti-nuke for the vast majority of my life. It's only lately that I've come to think that solar and wind power might not provide enough power, and might not provide it soon enough, to save our sorry asses from the mess we've made.
I'm still afraid of large-scale and rapid adoption of nuclear power. But I'm more afraid of the future I foresee if we don't manage to reverse global warming. And I think nuclear may be a key component in making the power grid stable and reliable.
I'd
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So is the Texas power grid.
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>> here in Texas
Here in Texas just about everything that was hit with that size of hail was destroyed, but it is rare. That's why almost all solar farms here are completely intact.
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Wind is unreliable, and solar is expensive and fragile. Last week here in Texas, a HUGE solar farm was mostly destroyed by hail; and hail here in Texas is a COMMON occurrence.
England doesn't have large hail. What it also doesn't have is sunshine.
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... solar is expensive and fragile. Last week here in Texas, a HUGE solar farm was mostly destroyed by hail; and hail here in Texas is a COMMON occurrence.
This problem can be somewhat mitigated by Bifacial Vertical Solar Panels [youtube.com]. Properly situated vertical panels are actually MORE efficient than sky-facing ones, and will likely suffer less damage in a hail storm. As a bonus, their useful lifetimes - irrespective of things like hail damage - are significantly longer because they don't get as hot as sky-facing panels.
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solar is expensive and fragile.
Since you seem to know more than the IEA, please do enlighten us with your insights.
Because those uninformed suckers seem to think that "Solar is now ‘cheapest electricity in history’". https://www.carbonbrief.org/so... [carbonbrief.org] (already in 2020, and since then panel prices have come down significantly).
My personal opinion: The Texan oil&gas industry is already a zombie and only living on due to MASSIVE subsidies, destroying the future of your and my children for a few more years to come.
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An energy producer in Texas failed to property weather-proof their equipment, what a shock.
This is easily solvable with suitable transparent covers for the panels. Even the worst hale storms don't shatter properly spec'ed glass, e.g. windows. If it did, fossil fuel and nuclear plants would be destroyed by it as well.
As for wind, capacity factor for off-shore is over 50% in existing commercial deployments, and rising. It is actually comparable to European nuclear plants in recent years.
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> Wind is unreliable, and solar is expensive and fragile
Totally agree but we rarely get hail in the UK and when we do you guys wouldnt even call it hail!
A solar farm in the UK is more likley to be damaged by someone throwing a cricket ball onto the panels for fun.
The big thing with solar here is the sun is usually behind cloud much of the year. We have more wind than sun but most of that is offshore with onshore suffering with NIMBYism.
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Nuclear is the ONLY reliable, non CO2 emitting base load option.
Re: Wind & Solar? Balderdash. (Score:2, Funny)
Pretending no CO2 emissions are associated with nuclear power is a dumb lie. You should only tell lies that people can't trivially find out are lies. Otherwise everyone will know you are a liar.
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CO2 emissions from nuclear power is lower than "zero emission" wind and solar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Arguing that nuclear fission isn't a "zero emission" energy source is like complaining that Coke Zero actually contains calories, at some point the number is so small that only pedantic assholes care that it's not actually zero.
If finding out that the claim is a lie is so trivial then perhaps in the future you could do the trivial task of providing a link for people so see how much of a lie it is.
Re: Wind & Solar? Balderdash. (Score:2)
Oh look, serial pro-nuclear troll willfully fails to understand anti-nuclear argument, SHOCK AMAZEMENT.
Only lifecycle CO2 emissions, AKA cradle to grave, actually matter. And nuclear has higher lifetime emissions than solar or wind. The daily CO2 emissions of the plane being low are as irrelevant as your imagining that you have anything of value to add to any discussion on Slashdot.
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Oh look, serial pro-nuclear troll willfully fails to understand anti-nuclear argument, SHOCK AMAZEMENT.
Only lifecycle CO2 emissions, AKA cradle to grave, actually matter. And nuclear has higher lifetime emissions than solar or wind. The daily CO2 emissions of the plane being low are as irrelevant as your imagining that you have anything of value to add to any discussion on Slashdot.
I came here with a similar, less heated response. From the Wikipedia article which MacMann linked:
"Although the life cycle assessments of each energy source should attempt to cover the full life cycle of the source from cradle-to-grave, they are generally limited to the construction and operation phase. The most rigorously studied phases are those of material and fuel mining, construction, operation, and waste management. However, missing life cycle phases[25] exist for a number of energy sources. At times,
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Doesn't make nuclear a 'good' option, but it is a currently deployed method of base load power without that ongoing CO2 release for usage. We don't have anything else for that 'right now'.
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Doesn't make nuclear a 'good' option, but it is a currently deployed method of base load power without that ongoing CO2 release for usage. We don't have anything else for that 'right now'.
https://www.ceem.unsw.edu.au/s... [unsw.edu.au]
https://www.nrdc.org/bio/kevin... [nrdc.org]
https://theconversation.com/ba... [theconversation.com]
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I'll add in another issue renewables absolutely require and that's transmission. Something that again, we don't have 'right now'.
Hand waving away the building of such infrastructure, which will take easily over a decade as an argument against "Nuclear will need to be in place for a couple decades" is an amazing way to admit you're wrong about "It exists 'right now'".
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We have ~100,000 MW of hydro currently. The current grid is 10x that. If you know where we can deploy 1000% more hydro, do tell.
oh and they release more GHG than thought [popsci.com]
And of course the Southwest dams are almost to the point of shutting off due to lack of, wait for it, water.
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No nuclear power plant emitted CO2. They emit water vapour.
You’re trying to include secondary sources connected with the plant such as CO2 from construction, employees driving to work etc etc.
Yet you just ignore the massive amount of CO2 involved in building solar panels (let alone the toxicity), wind turbines and EV's. You ignore the eco-disaster each EV fire is and that an EV can’t make up for the CO2 released during its short lifetime.
Your problem is you haven’t realised what everyone
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Storage is growing at significant rates. With enough storage and solar/wind can more than cover the entire globes energy usage in gross volume. Edge case solutions will be needed in a few places.
Batteries made out of iron or salt.
Heat batteries that store energy for literally *months* that are made of garbage quality sand.
Flow batteries in the GW scale.
Oh and those EV batteries themselves will dwarf the batteries needed for the grid.
Existing nuclear is de
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What about geothermal or (not ready yet but possible) space-based solar?
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They've been doing it in various places in Cornwall over the last 30-40 years, for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
https://www.edengeothermal.com... [edengeothermal.com]
https://geothermalengineering.... [geothermal...ring.co.uk]
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We dont have any geothermal geology in the UK.
However some have suggested that we could use heat pumps and old mineshafts to do something similar.
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You probably shouldn't listen to Musk since he's a crank who got lucky and had the money to bully the right people. SpaceX tech is (very) nice, Tesla advanced the EV market but probably won't remain a major player once others seriously enter the mass market as costs come down. Then there's the Boring company and the whole Hyperloop garbage. And the disaster that is 'X' as Musk goes full right-wing nutter.
I would listen instead to NASA, who have reportedly studied the concept of space-based solar and fou
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The problem seems to be building them.
Vogtle in the US was years late and double the original budget, And Hinkley C is how late? And how over budget?
The one the French built in Finland, Olkiluoto 3, was 14 years late and three times the original budget.
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Nuclear isn't that reliable in the UK. Capacity factor was 77% according to the government: https://assets.publishing.serv... [service.gov.uk]
Offshore wind is getting closer to that level now, and that's on a per farm basis. Over the whole of the British seas, with the massive redundancy that comes from having thousands of turbines with hundreds of interconnects, it will easily meet base load requirements.
And that's just the UK. In practice we have interconnects with neighbouring countries.
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The concept of "base load" is relevant for a grid based on nuclear and fossil fuels. Nuclear or fossil provides some power all the time, while smaller and faster gas turbines are used for peaks, plus some pumped hydro.
Battery technology has already had a significant impact on peakers -- it is many times faster. As a grid moves toward renewables, I think, the idea of "base load" will fall away. There will energy generation on one hand, and storage/import/export to cope with peaks. Solving intermittency of su
Re:Wind & Solar? Balderdash. (Score:4, Interesting)
We've been over this before with you. You do not understand what base load is.
Solar can not produce at night. Wind is unpredictable. Therefore neither is useful for base load. Repeating the lie does not make it so.
I have a huge solar setup on my house and the largest battery farm you can reasonably buy for a residential system. I get zero power and night and the giant ass expensive as fuck batteries do not last all night. Recharging them the next day while still powering my home requires drawing from the grid. I love my zero electric bill but this is not an off the grid base load option.
For kicks, I looked up how much power I could get from a full moon. It won't light a tiny bulb for a few seconds. Solar is not base load capable.
This is likely due to the 1%'ers trying to keep us on their evil grid to control us and keep us enslaved.
Re: (Score:2)
the largest battery farm you can reasonably buy for a residential system.
Really? How large are we talking?
I have 30 kWh on my house, and that easily lasts all night. Even while cooling the house in summer.
In winter I don't get much power from the solar panels, but for about 2/3 of the year my roof can charge the batteries while running the house. I live near Seattle... I'll bet people in California and Texas really could run their homes year-round from solar.
In short, my personal experience disproves you
Re: (Score:2)
30 kWh eh?
Well a quick cursory google and I find powervault p4 which can provide up to 24 kWh for, and I quote "large homes and businesses".
Now, assuming most of the UK population dont live on business premises, how many large homes do we have?
Not many.
How many can afford such a system... very few.
Most UK households are terraced and cant always fir a heat pump legally. 30kWh of battery capacity is something that rich people will have, with big houses. Bosses, CEO's etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What a load of bunk.
Re: (Score:2)
Wind is extremely predictable, especially in the short term. The UK National Grid actually has less standby generation for wind than it does for nuclear and fossil fuels, because a turbine going down takes a few megawatts off the grid, compared to a reactor going down taking gigawatts off without warning.
On the timescales that the grid needs to bring alternative sources online, e.g. 15 minutes, wind is extremely predictable and reliable. Plus, wind farms often have batteries to smooth output over very short
Re: (Score:2)
> And yet other people run their homes of batteries for multiple days.
Thats BS. Unless you just use a 11W bulb.
Each day my house uses 3-4kWh. That will empty a battery system in a day.
It's even more fun when we think about batteries on the grid, should we have those, everywhere, no matter the huge cost and supply issues, a battery backed UK grid will run the UK's grid demands for... less than a day.
Loads of greens never actually look at the sheer numbers, thinking that a butterly farting on a wind turb
Re: (Score:2)
I think wind has hit 100% coverage in the UK at points of some days in the last few years. Itself a big achievement, but that's not base load ability by a long stretch
Re: (Score:2)
> Wind and solar have been fine for base load for over a decade now
Impossible.
Variable sources can never be "base load". If that were the case then wind and solar would be base load at night during an anti-cyclone were, if you dont know, you have no wind for a week or so.
Only nuclear, oil, gas, biomas and interconnectors can be base load.