Solar power hits 23.9% of UK power generation

Troy

@Mark_R, are you saying that there is no standard plug for electric cars? If that's the case then that's scandalous, havent they learnt from the IT industry?

prh777

Sporky said: ...well, on the afternoon of June the 5th it did.
Link to IET article
Rather more interesting/relevant is that renewable energy now makes up over a quarter of UK power production. It is very impressive but it is important to note it was a quarter of supply at a point in time.  Not overall power consumed for a period.

edit : apologies - now read that correctly.  Yes renewables over 25%.  pardon me.

Sporky

prh777 said:

It is very impressive but it is important to note it was a quarter of supply at a point in time.  Not overall power consumed for a period.

I think you may be confusing the two.

Solar made up 23.9% of the UK's power generation for a very short period of time.

Renewables now make up a quarter of the UK's power generation overall.

Axe_meister

Why should we even charge the cars?

What not have a replaceable battery the we change at a petrol station, so they do the charging.

Drive up, take old battery out, stick charged battery in.

Drive off, could be quicker than filling up with petrol. 

Sporky

Yeah, but you'd have to flip the car over and find the right security-head driver to take the bottom off, then carefully lift out the exhaust system without damaging the ribbon cables before you can get at the battery. And it wouldn't be waterproof afterwards.

chillidoggy

My offices are on the second floor. We'd have to have some fuck-off cables to charge our cars up in the car park, which is about 150 m away.

Mark_R

Troy said:

@Mark_R, are you saying that there is no standard plug for electric cars? If that's the case then that's scandalous, havent they learnt from the IT industry?

There is a sort of standard charging post port called a Type 2.  You have to then buy a cable which has the Type 2 at one end and the right adapter on the other for your car.

It gets more confusing as cars have both lower voltage AC and higher voltage DC, both have different connectors.

chillidoggy said:

My offices are on the second floor. We'd have to have some fuck-off cables to charge our cars up in the car park, which is about 150 m away.

The government provide grants to councils and companies to install charging points in car parks for staff.  Starting to see this more and more when I go to visit customers.  I call ahead, reserve the electric parking bay and its sorted!

Axe_meister said:

Why should we even charge the cars?

What not have a replaceable battery the we change at a petrol station, so they do the charging.

Drive up, take old battery out, stick charged battery in.

Drive off, could be quicker than filling up with petrol. 

Sounds like a good idea but battery capacity and charging rates are increasing each year, give it another 5 years and most electric cars would be able to cover 220 miles on a charge and be recharged to 80% (ie another 170 miles) in less than 20 minutes. 

What would be good, would be an optional additional battery pack you can put in the boot to give you another 50 miles when needed. Imagine the weight and cost would be an issue for most EV owners.

Snap

paulmapp8306 said:

I dont believe in global warming - its was warmer when the dinosaurs were around.  Just natures way.

me neither. There was also a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere apparently.

grungebob

Just to add balance. That's no a true percentage. Coal fire or chp power plants are purposely under run or made to operate at lower than designed output in favour of wind and solar so yes on that day solar made up a sizeable chunk of generation it was actually at the expense of the environment. Modern chp plants are very efficient and have low emissions , emissions that over a 10 year span won't match that of the factories and plants needed to generate the concrete for wind turbine bases or the large battery packs for solar.

I'm sure the green energy policy was put in place for legitimate concerns for the environment but alas they where done so by people outside of the industry

chrispy108

Snap said:

paulmapp8306 said:

I dont believe in global warming - its was warmer when the dinosaurs were around.  Just natures way.

me neither. There was also a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere apparently.

If you don't believe in Science perhaps you should turn off all your electrical devices and get back in your cave?

Sporky

grungebob said:

Just to add balance. That's no a true percentage.

I believe I was pretty clear that it was a peak figure, as was the article.

The energy costs and construction impact of the different energy generation approaches aren't the full picture though. No matter how efficient coal, oil, gas or even nuclear power stations get we're still going to run out of coal, oil, gas and uranium at some point if we keep using them as fuel. Better to shift away from non-renewables for that reason.

Of course, the sun will stop eventually, but at that point we'll have bigger problems.

ICBM

paulmapp8306 said:

I dont believe in global warming - its was warmer when the dinosaurs were around.  Just natures way.

Seen any dinosaurs lately?

Actually global warming was most likely a factor in their demise - the climate was already under massive stress due to increased volcanic activity (which puts out vast amounts of carbon dioxide) and in fact there was a slow mass extinction already under way. Then right at the worst possible time when things were a bit sticky anyway, a bloody great rock had to go and fall out of the sky…

Anyway, global warming is a demonstrable fact so you probably should believe it. I think what you mean is that you don't believe humans are responsible… which may be true, although the weight of evidence seems to indicate otherwise. But even if humans aren't responsible at all, surely it would be better not to assume that, just in case.

And keep a good look out for big rocks in the sky too.

grungebob

@sporky you did and the article did but it's an incomplete picture. As someone who works in the power generation industry it annoys me that we have very efficient low cost low polluting ways of generating electricity from existing infrastructure yet we spend even more resources building a less efficient device with a shorter run life.

Sporky

Isn't it worth getting the hang of renewables though, simply because all the fuels are much more finite?

grungebob

Sporky;1141136" said:

Isn't it worth getting the hang of renewables though, simply because all the fuels are much more finite?

Oh indeed, but..... If you've already refined the materials and completed construction on say a gas fired station wouldn't it make sense to operate that station at max capacity and minimum emissions especially as such a station has a finite life span?

We should invest in greener power and the people most eligible to do so are currently unable as their profits are ruined. They have to burn gas they've already paid for but won't receive any income on the electricity they generate, if they don't burn the gas they get penalised. So they've gone from making £1m/day to £80k at best and not breaking even most of the time.

Sporky

You have me at a disadvantage (by which I mean I understand that you know more about this than I do - I did read a lot of Energy Policy at uni, but that was 20 years ago now).

So, just to check I've understood; gas fired stations are most efficient and produce least emissions when running full-tilt? And is that least emissions per unit of energy output, or absolute least emissions?

I had no idea about the penalties and such - interesting.

grungebob

Most current gas stations are CHP's( combined heat and power) and recycle their heat back into the steam generation cycle. ramping up the units (known as two shifting) to meet the shortfall in production say in high winds or nighttime to then come offline again is where copious amounts of resources (water,gas,electricity, maintenance) is wasted and shortens the lifespan of the units. The two shifting is happening as preference is given due to green taxes etc to wind and solar.

At max chat a chp is only losing 3% of its water as steam and requires less therms per megawatt output

Sporky

Gotcha.

So ideally we need an efficient storage system so that the conventional stations can keep running at their peak efficiency while still enabling renewables to contribute; does that sound right? I appreciate that storing a lot of energy is a non-trivial task.

chrispy108

Indeed, but there are people working on it.

Like this lot shifting rocks up a hill with an electric train: http://fortune.com/2016/05/22/energy-storing-train-nevada/

grungebob

@sporky. The storage idea needs work, currently I don't think it can work. Part of my job is renewables ranging from energy to waste from household tips to bio gas plants using spent yeast etc from breweries. Also the most fascinating for me at the moment is algal farming. In most large scale effluent treatment plants (large scale municipality etc) algal blooming is a costly issue and interferes with efficiency of operations. However some bright spark had the idea to farm it, squeeze it for oil (to burn) and then compact the dry mass left over (to burn again). Easy obtained fuel with vast and rapid growth.