Gas & Electricity

[blueinsa]

I suspect the answer lies in a sensible balance of nuclear with the tidal/wind/solar you mention.

We should run the country off the hot air spouted in the politics forum.

 

[Kompany Car]

We shouldnt go nuclear.

Firstly, we will be reliant on countries where they produce the raw materials. I'm sure most of them aren't great countries that share our outlook.

The biggest producers of Uranium ore are Canada and Australia.
I’m pretty sure they share a similar outlook.

 

[M18CTID]

Any more increases in the price cap prediction? I seem to recall we were lucky enough to get 2 in 2 days last week!

 

[RobMCFC]

Any more increases in the price cap prediction? I seem to recall we were lucky enough to get 2 in 2 days last week!

Yep. Latest prediction was this morning: £5456 by April 2023.

£100+ per week.

 

[GoatersLeftShin]

The biggest producers of Uranium ore are Canada and Australia.
I’m pretty sure they share a similar outlook.

List of countries by Uranium production

I am not an expert on this stuff, but they produce about 25 per cent of the world Uranium. The rest of the countries aren't ones we want to deal with. The danger with being reliant on other countries is that they could keep it themselves, or sell more to other countries.

We have an abundance of wind, tidal and solar power. We should be focussing on producing clean, renewable electricity than running nuclea power stations. All it takes is one accident for it to cause horrific damage.

I'm sure we have the brains to do it, if there was a political will

 

[Kompany Car]

List of countries by Uranium production

I am not an expert on this stuff, but they produce about 25 per cent of the world Uranium. The rest of the countries aren't ones we want to deal with. The danger with being reliant on other countries is that they could keep it themselves, or sell more to other countries.

We have an abundance of wind, tidal and solar power. We should be focussing on producing clean, renewable electricity than running nuclea power stations. All it takes is one accident for it to cause horrific damage.

I'm sure we have the brains to do it, if there was a political will

Unfortunately you are always reliant on other countries, either for raw fuel or other materials needed to manufacture and maintain the equipment.

Wind would require 40000 turbines all working on a day with sufficient wind speed to generate the UKs current energy requirements, never mind future. We currently have around 11000. We don’t have an abundance of Solar and Tidal is exceptionally expensive plus damages eco systems and contrary to popular belief only produces energy for around 10 hrs per day.

Bottom line is, regardless of what you study from the academic press you read, for the UK, nuclear has to be part of the mix.

The biggest mess is having insufficient energy storage. So on those windy days making it so you can store the energy. This would require a mix of Green Hydrogen production or liquified compressed air for long term storage and battery sites for short term.

 

[horlock_was_super]

Northampton county court is going to be one very busy place come December

The business centre will be NOT the county court :)

 

[inbetween]

Unfortunately you are always reliant on other countries, either for raw fuel or other materials needed to manufacture and maintain the equipment.

Wind would require 40000 turbines all working on a day with sufficient wind speed to generate the UKs current energy requirements, never mind future. We currently have around 11000. We don’t have an abundance of Solar and Tidal is exceptionally expensive plus damages eco systems and contrary to popular belief only produces energy for around 10 hrs per day.

Bottom line is, regardless of what you study from the academic press you read, for the UK, nuclear has to be part of the mix.

The biggest mess is having insufficient energy storage. So on those windy days making it so you can store the energy. This would require a mix of Green Hydrogen production or liquified compressed air for long term storage and battery sites for short term.

I would of thought that electricity storage on this scale is close to impossible as the wastage will be huge and costs will be similarly very high. It's easy to store gas because you just need a chamber but for electricity you need batteries and lots of them but the life of a battery is only 8-10 years. Batteries also reduce in capacity over their life so your storage capacity effectively reduces over time too, it's not a great way of using what should really be 'free' electricity.

Unfortunately renewables will only ever provide energy on demand because they just don't generate enough electricity. At the moment renewables are used to supplement our main energy source which is burning gas. This isn't going to change until renewables are available 100% of the time but that's impossible with solar and wind. Even with increased capacity, if we turned the entire country over to renewables right now then the lights would go out.

The alternative is as you say to build and invest in nuclear on a huge scale. The only way to carbon zero is to replace gas with nuclear until better technology comes along such as fusion or something. We're then also immune from wholesale gas prices because we wouldn't need to buy gas.

Obviously the green people and NIMBY's won't like it but then the only other alternative is to get used to paying current energy prices whilst also polluting the atmosphere with Co2. That's the price of burning what is now a very expensive and supply restricted commodity.

A second way to cheaper energy is to go back to coal but there's very little chance of selling that!

 

[Kompany Car]

I would of thought that electricity storage on this scale is close to impossible as the wastage will be huge and costs will be similarly very high. It's easy to store gas because you just need a chamber but for electricity you need batteries and lots of them but the life of a battery is only 8-10 years. Batteries also reduce in capacity over their life so your storage capacity effectively reduces over time too, it's not a great way of using what should really be 'free' electricity.

Unfortunately renewables will only ever provide energy on demand because they just don't generate enough electricity. At the moment renewables are used to supplement our main energy source which is burning gas. This isn't going to change until renewables are available 100% of the time but that's impossible with solar and wind. Even with increased capacity, if we turned the entire country over to renewables right now then the lights would go out.

The alternative is as you say to build and invest in nuclear on a huge scale. The only way to carbon zero is to replace gas with nuclear until better technology comes along such as fusion or something. We're then also immune from wholesale gas prices because we wouldn't need to buy gas.

Obviously the green people and NIMBY's won't like it but then the only other alternative is to get used to paying current energy prices whilst also polluting the atmosphere with Co2. That's the price of burning what is now a very expensive and supply restricted commodity.

A second way to cheaper energy is to go back to coal but there's very little chance of selling that!

Energy storage is relatively easy, you just need to appreciate that there are losses in the conversion process. There are some days where we do generate an excess on top of the baseload that we currently get from Nuclear and the limited coal Powerstations (mainly Drax). Once up and running the production and storage of green hydrogen is pretty simple. Likewise liquified compressed air, the ideal place to store it is underground and seen as the coal mines aren’t producing much coal these days…

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-liquid-air-battery-starts-construction-in-uk

You are right about coal, the UK were leaders in low carbon emission coal plants but a decision was made to decommission them because gas was seen to be cleaner and cheaper.
The issue of energy security has never been high on anyones agenda until now. For the suppliers it’s been about maximising margins and from a government point of view, placating the oil and gas producers.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

I would of thought that electricity storage on this scale is close to impossible as the wastage will be huge and costs will be similarly very high. It's easy to store gas because you just need a chamber but for electricity you need batteries and lots of them but the life of a battery is only 8-10 years. Batteries also reduce in capacity over their life so your storage capacity effectively reduces over time too, it's not a great way of using what should really be 'free' electricity.

Unfortunately renewables will only ever provide energy on demand because they just don't generate enough electricity. At the moment renewables are used to supplement our main energy source which is burning gas. This isn't going to change until renewables are available 100% of the time but that's impossible with solar and wind. Even with increased capacity, if we turned the entire country over to renewables right now then the lights would go out.

The alternative is as you say to build and invest in nuclear on a huge scale. The only way to carbon zero is to replace gas with nuclear until better technology comes along such as fusion or something. We're then also immune from wholesale gas prices because we wouldn't need to buy gas.

Obviously the green people and NIMBY's won't like it but then the only other alternative is to get used to paying current energy prices whilst also polluting the atmosphere with Co2. That's the price of burning what is now a very expensive and supply restricted commodity.

A second way to cheaper energy is to go back to coal but there's very little chance of selling that!

You can “store” electricity by pumping water up to high reservoirs that can outflow through turbines when production is low.