Great Britain's Electricity System Has Greenest Day Ever Over Easter (theguardian.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Great Britain's electricity system recorded its greenest ever day over the Easter bank holiday as sunshine and windy weather led to a surge in renewable energy. The power plants generating electricity in England, Scotland and Wales produced only 39g of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt-hour of electricity on Monday, according to National Grid's electricity system operator, the lowest carbon intensity recorded since National Grid records began in 1935.
On Easter Monday, wind turbines and solar farms generated 60% of all electricity as households enjoyed a bank holiday lunch. At the same time the UK's nuclear reactors provided 16% of the electricity mix, meaning almost 80% of the grid was powered from low-carbon sources. The low-carbon power surge, combined with lower than average demand for electricity over the bank holiday, kept gas-fired power in Great Britain to 10% of the electricity mix and caused the "carbon intensity" of the electricity system to plummet to its lowest on record.
On Easter Monday, wind turbines and solar farms generated 60% of all electricity as households enjoyed a bank holiday lunch. At the same time the UK's nuclear reactors provided 16% of the electricity mix, meaning almost 80% of the grid was powered from low-carbon sources. The low-carbon power surge, combined with lower than average demand for electricity over the bank holiday, kept gas-fired power in Great Britain to 10% of the electricity mix and caused the "carbon intensity" of the electricity system to plummet to its lowest on record.
Well done! (Score:5, Funny)
Well done, chaps! This calls for tea and medals all around.
Re:Well done! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Well done! (Score:2)
Everybody's broke, or nobody had anywhere to spend their money because of lockdown restrictions?
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A distinction without a difference.
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The benefit is that because all the lorries end up being parked for days at the border the petrol use has plummeted.
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Re:Well done! (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK has the worst economic hit in the G7 from COVID. Our economy is badly damaged, with brexit also causing long term irreversible decline.
It will be interesting, in a somewhat morbid sense, to see how energy consumption is affected by a former major economy sliding into irrelevance and stagnation.
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Re:Well done! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if we re-joined say the EEA tomorrow much of the damage is done. Businesses have moved away and won't come back. New trade routes bypassing the UK are up and running. A lot of the skilled workers we need have left and won't return.
The hit we have taken can't be simply undone, it's with us forever now. Even when the economy finally starts to grow again it will be from a lower starting point, so to reverse the damage it would have to experience an equal benefit from brexit and that seems extremely unlikely to happen. The opportunities simply aren't there, given that we need to replace the premium access we had to the EU and the only other blocs of comparable size are the US and China, neither of which would give us such a deal and even if they did it wouldn't benefit us like the EU one did.
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Luckily, some people believe that not being part of a corrupt anti-democartic oligarchy is worth more than cash in hand.
Regardless of whether your doomsday talk is true or not, we're better off morally by turning our back on the organisation that fucked over Greece in order to protect the interests of a handful of private companies.
Re:Well done! (Score:5, Funny)
Luckily, some people believe that not being part of a corrupt anti-democartic oligarchy is worth more than cash in hand.
As far as I know, Brexit was not about getting rid of the ruling class in the UK.
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"We are not amused."
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Yeah, now we're in a corrupt anti-democratic oligarchy, instead of just being a part of one.
The difference is that we can vote against this one; we had no choice with the EU.
We fucked over Greece while part of the EU.
Sorry, I'm talking about the UK, not Germany.
You think that a small hit to Greece's economy,
The EU killed people in Greece instead of forcing the banks to take the hit for their bad business decisions or making the Eurozone actually work (either would have done); the economic hit was and is massive - far greater than Brexit will be for us. You clearly have no idea how bad the EU economy works. Youth unemployment of 30+% is dismissed as "regrettable" and a "price we have to
Re:Well done! (Score:4, Insightful)
But not demonstrate about this one.
This is just the first civil right that the EU protected that the Tories are going to limit.
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But not demonstrate about this one.
This is just the first civil right that the EU protected that the Tories are going to limit.
I didn't see much sign of the EU allowing demonstrations in Greece, Italy, and Ireland when there was money on the line. I seem to remember riot police and water canons.
Demonstrations have not historically been an effective tool in the EU. I was one of the two million that marched against Blair's war; didn't make any difference. The only thing that works is voting and that's the one thing you can't do in the EU because they only allow you to vote for the parliament which doesn't originate legislation.
The wh
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The only thing that works is voting and that's the one thing you can't do in the EU because they only allow you to vote for the parliament which doesn't originate legislation.
They're all voted on by either MEPs, MPs or both. I'm not a xenophobe, so it really doesn't matter where a law comes from to me, only if it's good or bad.
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The only thing that works is voting and that's the one thing you can't do in the EU because they only allow you to vote for the parliament which doesn't originate legislation.
They're all voted on by either MEPs, MPs or both. I'm not a xenophobe, so it really doesn't matter where a law comes from to me, only if it's good or bad.
The point is that if it's bad, what can you do about it - how do you kick out the people trying to make bad laws?
Basically your argument is that it would be fine if the House of Lords drafted all legislation and the Commons voted on it.
Thanks for playing the racism card, at least we all got a laugh out of that.
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You can't tell the difference between your xenophobia and your racism?
I can tell the difference between Europe (a place) and the EU (a political organisation).
I guess you can't tell your jingoism from a whole in the ground.
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The difference is that we can vote against this one; we had no choice with the EU.
Are you sure [youtube.com]. The city of London doesn't work this way. Companies get 3/4 of the votes and people only get 1/4 of them. They have a special lobbyist in parliament called the rememberencer (sp?) that just goes around to make sure all members know what the financial industry wants. And this group holds silent but significant sway over the entire country. BTW, the government of the city of London is a corporation called the Corporation of London run by financial companies. And this group now has signifi
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Eastern is a holiday.
Businesses/factories are closed. So being broke or not has not much to do with energy consumption.
However BREXiT + COVID was hitting UK hard, I pity them.
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Save your pity for people who really need it. I haven't really noticed the effects of Brexit and Covid hasn't impacted my life as much as say it has for my German colleagues in NRW. Anyway, energy consumption over the easter weekend doesn't seem to be lower than a year ago, or much different to normal usage outside of Oct-Mar: https://gridwatch.templar.co.u... [templar.co.uk]
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Obviously energy consumption is not lower than other Easters.
But our parent claimed the economy would be worth. I pointed out: economy is irrelevant for a holiday.
No idea about your NRW point, what has NRW to do with brexit?
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It's got nothing to do with Brexit, and I didn't say it did. Try imagining a comma after Brexit when you're reading what I wrote if that helps you.
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Medals? I'll have a biscuit with my tea instead thanks.
Chart (Score:5, Informative)
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Here's a chart showing the UK's coal use. It's 9 months out of date, but it's super pretty: https://www.reddit.com/r/datai... [reddit.com]
And here's the original of that figure [theguardian.com], It's made by Niko Kommenda [twitter.com] who does graphical work for the Guardian. It's live so shows all the up-to-date developments.
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I'll see people highlight Hinkley Point, and it's construction delays and rising costs, as a reason for why we should not have nuclear power. That's taking the worst example of the nuclear power industry and claiming this as being representative. That's one of something like 500 civil nuclear power reactors built around the world. Why pick this one?
Because it's the only one that's currently being built and the only one to be built in the last 30 years, the last one to be built and come online being in 1988? It's hard to pick another one when there's no other ones that've been constructed in this country in the last quarter of a century. And what has been constructed in other countries is irrelevant as they have different legal and regulatory frameworks and different geology.
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So I took a look at the chart in your link, and it asserted that nuclear had lowest CO2e of 39g/kWh, lower than wind (75) and solar (279). But these are unimportant variations, given that all three are wildly better than what it asserts for gas (1234) or coal (1290). Incidentally, the idea that gas is so similar in carbon intensity to coal makes me suspicious of this analysis because it's so out of line with everything I've ever seen on the subject, but whatevs, it's not like we need to take it seriously.
Th
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The chart on greenhouse gases includes direct impact from CO2 and indirect impact from other gases. Methane is a greenhouse gas that will breakdown into CO2 in the air over time. Because using methane as fuel results in leaks and incomplete combustion there will be more methane in the air the more we use it as fuel.
Natural gas produces less CO2 than coal but nearly the same greenhouse effect because of methane leakage.
If the goal is lowering CO2 emissions then why choose solar power over nuclear fission?
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1. I'm perfectly capable of reading and well aware of the idea of methane leakage. I just think the effect is massively over-estimated for the UK's gas network. There's not a chance it makes natural gas nearly as carbon intensive as coal. The estimate is way out of line with other studies, and is absurdly precise. Where's the interquartile range? Coal is highly variable: lignite is especially dirty, for example. Here's something more reliable: Fig 1 here. https://www.parliament.uk/glob... [parliament.uk]
Unsurprisingly, it
Another win (Score:3)
As with every other event, I'm sure that Boris will attribute this to brexit.
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Stop with these sarky snide remarks already. He hasn't done that as far as I can tell, and it's unlikely he'll ever do that, and all you're doing is inuring people to the stuff the government actually does that we should care about.
With people saying gloves should be counted in pairs [dailymail.co.uk] (they never are for surgical gloves), claiming Test and Trace cost £37 billion [thesun.co.uk] (it is a fraction), and prominent academics outright ad-hominem attacking people [twitter.com] writing a government report they're unlikely to have read,
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It is beyond parody that you use the terms "unlikely to have read" and "axe to grind" in relation to the Sewell report, given that this report was written by people who have consistently misquoted and misappropriated other people's work in support of a tendentious set of pre-determined conclusions. See, for example, what Marmot has to say.
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It is beyond parody that you use the terms "unlikely to have read" and "axe to grind" in relation to the Sewell report, given that this report was written by people who have consistently misquoted and misappropriated other people's work in support of a tendentious set of pre-determined conclusions. See, for example, what Marmot has to say.
You are criticising the authors of the report rather than the report, which is exactly my point.
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No, I'm criticising both. The report fails to reflect the 2020 Marmot review, for example, but does quote from the 2010 review. As Marmot himself says: "Unfortunately, the authors of the report quote my views from the 2010 Marmot Review produced by the UCL Institute of Health Equity (IHE) – but they do not mention the explicit reference to race/inequality in two reports from our institute last year, Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On and Build Back Fairer: The Covid-19 Marmot Revi
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Criticizing both the report and its authors at the same time is fine by me. I was too quick to dismiss yout last sentence, so apologies.
I have never made any judgement call on the report either way here, and my main point stands: I linked to someone who questioned the credentials of one of the authors, and then made references to Nazis when she found out she was wrong. This was not some nobody on Twitter, this was an academic at a prestigious university.
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Thank you for the apology -- doesn't happen often enough on here.
My main disagreement still stands too: her sin is much less egregious than those of the authors, who have written a very influential report that is wrong in many ways. Given that it is consistently wrong in the direction of downplaying evidence of structural racism and never the opposite, and given the authors' long histories of denying such, and given the government's own predilections, and given that this is deeply political terrain, I think
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provoking a foul argument that plays well with the demographics the Tories are especially interested in cultivating
This is the heart of what I'm trying to say and what I want to stop! When detractors immediately reach for the "you're a Nazi" toolbox, do they genuinely think they'll convince Tory voters to switch to alternatives? In my opinion, it'll only convince more people that it's a witch-hunt and it'll be another shoe-in for the Tories at the next election.
I think we're on the same side here.
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I get what you mean but that's not the foul argument I was referring to. The foul argument is about whether structural racism is real or not. Instead of what to do about it. Tory strategists want to provoke an argument about the legitimacy of calling racism out. That's what's foul.
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He certainly won't attribute it to the 3, or is it 4 lockdowns and 150,000 people dying that happened on his watch.
That's over 60% higher than even Trump managed, per head of population.
Re: Another win (Score:2)
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Of the 27 member states of the E.U., 21 have a lesser death rate than the U.S..
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Wonder if Trump could fix your broken browser?
Compared to what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The power plants generating electricity in England, Scotland and Wales produced only 39g of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt-hour of electricity on Monday, according to National Grid's electricity system operator, the lowest carbon intensity recorded since National Grid records began in 1935.
I mean it sounds good, but compared to what? What's a normal amount of carbon dioxide for each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated?
If you burned coal exclusively, you'd generate 0.94 Kilograms (2.07 pounds) of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. Source [slightlyun...tional.com]
So compared to a kilowatt-hour generated by coal, that's really good, but does anyone burn coal exclusively to generate electricity?
Re:Compared to what? (Score:5, Informative)
We hardly ever burn coal, but on cold windless days, we burn a lot of gas (methane not petrol), both in power stations, and in domestic heating.
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I don't know what the average is, but live data from https://www.electricitymap.org... [electricitymap.org] says they're currently at 238g/kwh. Only Island and Norway is below 39 right now and it would have beaten sweden at 45 which has a lot of hydro, nuclear and wind.
Once they were the Dirty Man of Europe (Score:2)
Real-time Power Tracker (Score:3)
https://www.mygridgb.co.uk/das... [mygridgb.co.uk]
Real-time and historical power usage for the UK.
Tracks type and carbon emissions and has data from at least the last 8 years.
(its a great resource as a teacher - it was set up by one of my friends from school)
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Great! For those of us not in the uk or if you want to compare live data between countries there's https://www.electricitymap.org... [electricitymap.org] (I have no connections to the project).
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That's nice. Thanks for that.
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Keeping up with the neighbours. (Score:1)
On Easter Monday, wind turbines and solar farms generated 60% of all electricity as households enjoyed a bank holiday lunch. At the same time the UK's nuclear reactors provided 16% of the electricity mix, meaning almost 80% of the grid was powered from low-carbon sources.
Big fucking deal. France does that every single day.
Currently [sic] 60% Nuke, 10% hydro, 11% solar, 8% wind.
Fossil is providing about 7.5%
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The UK's story is about decarbonisation without building out nuclear. France's story is about dodging a carbon bullet thanks to having built out nuclear many years back. Both are important stories, as is Norway, which is different again. There are many interesting stories about low carbon power gen in Europe.
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Sheesh, why the aggression? Yes, France has used nuclear to generate low carbon electricity for decades. But the UK has undoubtedly been decarbonising very rapidly, as can be seen vividly in the first graphic here:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
That's not a slur on France, and there's obviously much further for the UK to go, and if you want to argue that nuclear ought to have been a bigger part of the mix, go right ahead, but the decarbonisation process is real.
The second graphic illustrates the point abo
They can do better... with nuclear power (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's an article by Dr. Ripu Malhotra, with some very interesting data from government sources telling us that the UK would have had lower CO2 emissions if they had placed greater emphasis on nuclear power.
https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
I know someone is going to come back with "but nuclear power costs too much, so take that!" Okay then, how much is too much to spend on lowering CO2? Come up with a number. Please. Because I want to know just how much value you place on lowering CO2 to avoid global warming. I suspect that if this math was done then solar power would lose out to natural gas. The level of materials needed for solar power to create the same energy and power as nuclear fission is at least two orders of magnitude. I'll see people claim that this can be improved with new technologies. You know what can also be improved with new technologies? The cost in time and materials for nuclear power.
Solar power is shit for electricity to the grid. It is a waste of time and materials. More people die from solar power on a per MWh basis than nuclear fission. That's on a global scale when taking into account the disasters outside of the UK. Nuclear power in the UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, and so many other nations outside of the old Soviet nations is just incredible. By incredible I mean people are incredulous, cannot grasp in their minds, just how safe nuclear fission power has been. We know how to build it safer now, at lower costs, and with less materials.
The costs overruns we see now in nuclear power has come from NIMBYs and BANANAs. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) The costs come from inexperience. These were the same kinds of costs overruns that came from early wind and solar power projects. Costs that solar power still has not brought to be competitive with coal, nuclear, natural gas, wind, hydro, and so much else we have to choose from. Solar power is shit for power on the grid and we'd be better served to put those resources into energy sources that are lower cost and lower in CO2 emissions.
With hydro, onshore wind, geothermal, and nuclear fission we can get CO2 emissions lower than this record set by Great Britain, and do it EVERY DAY.
Solar power is dragging down the average and holding us back from doing better. It costs too much, it takes too much time/materials/resources, it's actually not all that safe (people falling off roofs, electrocutions, and other industrial accidents), not that great in CO2 emissions, and very unreliable. As a source of electricity on the grid this makes a very very bad idea.
If someone wants to put solar panels on their roof then I'm not going to stop them. I think it's idiotic, a potential environmental disaster, a matter more of conspicuous consumption than anything practical. I just don't want my taxes subsidizing this. This is a waste of tax money because we have better options on lowering CO2 emissions, lowering energy costs, lowering human suffering, and generally making a better world for ourselves.
Great Britain can do better than this. They should consider this new record a ceiling for CO2 emissions in the future. A ceiling that they can stay under with a combination of hydro, onshore wind, geothermal, and most importantly nuclear fission. Without nuclear fission they will not ever see another day of CO2 emissions this low.
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Without nuclear fission they will not ever see another day of CO2 emissions this low.
Want to put a wager on that?
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So is electrical demand. It goes up and down throughout the day, forcing electrical utilities to forecast demand and bring up more and more expensive sources of power throughout the day as demand rises, then power down those generators later in the day as demand falls. Since we can easily forecast solar output, it's no problem to bring it onto the grid, at least until peak output reaches well over 50% of the total energy mix.
Solar power is shit (Re:They can do better...) (Score:2)
Indeed, solar power output can be predicted but that doesn't make it reliable. That is unless you consider something that can be relied upon to fail as reliable.
Solar power is far from "no problem" on the grid. Having studied electrical engineering at university and listening to people in the energy industry I know that solar power on the grid is a problem long before it reaches 50% of the total electric generating capacity. The industry treats rooftop solar like a "negative load". It shows on their cal
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Ok, so government rules are the problem, not rooftop solar.
You're not listening. I already explained how they have to do that with or without solar. Pay attention!
Agreed, and let's do the same for coal, and c [bloomberg.com]
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You're not listening. I already explained how they have to do that with or without solar. Pay attention!
I am listening, you are not. We know how to address the problems of matching supply to demand but... BUT... solar power makes these problems worse. Solar power adds to the volatility to the supply and therefore adds to the cost and lowers stability.
We'd be better off without solar power on the grid than with it. We can get lower CO2 emissions with onshore wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear fission than with solar power. These choices are also lower costs and lower in requirements for land and other re
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Are you lying or do you have proof? Because as far as I know, this only became a problem in South Australia where peak solar output peaks at around 100%, so they stabilized the grid with Tesla batteries [slashdot.org].
So where's your proof that the problem occurs "far closer to 5%"? Let your next post contain that proof, or don't bother replying at all.
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I replied without proof, now what?
Solar power unreliable? (Score:2)
Do you work for the nuclear industry or something? Since when is the sun "unreliable"? Deaths and electrocutions from solar panel installations? As if nobody has ever been injured due to nuclear accidents or electrocuted at a substation. Go ahead and find me some solar panel death numbers. I'll keep checking back.
Like I pointed out in a previous post. Only a fool would see the free energy produced by the sun and not choose to take advantage of it.
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Here's some numbers for you, look at figure 3:
https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
If solar power is "free" then so is every other power source. All it takes for this "free" solar power is to dig up a bunch of material from the dirt and build solar collectors. Well we can also dig up material to build things to get energy from uranium too. How is solar power any more "free" than nuclear fission? Both require considerable effort to dig up this material, only nuclear power requires an order of magnitude less
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Look up Agrivoltaics
Also https://www.abc.net.au/news/ru... [abc.net.au]
Do you feel the same about sugar ethanol vs corn ethanol.
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I have looked up agrivoltaics. There's nothing to show them as economically viable. People have been experimenting with this for a very long time with no widespread adoption. If it made any economic sense then it would not be in the experimental stages any more. Agrivoltaics takes already expensive solar power and makes it more expensive.
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The same could be said about nuclear power.
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No, it can't. I can point to hundreds of profitable civil nuclear fission reactors providing power to the grid but the number of agrivoltaic projects is... how many?
Nuclear power is profitable while solar power is not.
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Except the solar death stat is not a reliable measure.
They looked at roof installer deaths and estimated solar falls from that. When you install solar you have a sold footing unlike when you are installing a roof.
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Ignoring the issue of whether nuclear power is good or not, there is a massive nuclear power station being built in the UK right now. [wikipedia.org]
How Long... (Score:1)
During the initial phases of the switch, we are being sold the line that it is necessary to "cover the cost of the deployment of new infrastructure".
This is nonsense, of course, since once it has been deployed and the costs have been recovered, we'll be told that a higher-than-necessary unit cost will be to cover some form of amortization of the cost of replacem
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The problem is supply of electricity is a small proportion of retail costs. Network fees that keep going up are a much bigger percentage.
Carefully examine the choice of time period (Score:2)
Need to examine the chosen time period for which the result has been achieved.
The Guardian will assert three things. One that what it calls Global Heating is a critical problem for humanity.
Two, that wind and solar electricity generation is a key to addressing this problem.
Three, that the high generation of the cited day is evidence for point two.
Its point three that is wrong. Because what it does not address is intermittency. If you look at the UK's generation over the time period of interest to users a
Re:We should make them pay for the whole carbon cy (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because they will be recycled doesn’t prevent you from pushing your bullshit anti renewable dribble eh?
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Assuming they are recycled*, was the cost of that factored into the number quoted in the article?
My point was that there's this big push to factor in the entire carbon cycle on the oil side, but it's conveniently ignored on the renewables side.
Yes, I think renewables are better, but let's compare apples to apples and avoid making the mistakes of the past.
* According to these articles, they aren't:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
https://www.discovermagazine.c... [discovermagazine.com]
Re:We should make them pay for the whole carbon cy (Score:4, Informative)
"Rare earth" minerals aren't actually so rare.
They are also recyclable.
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Rare earths may be found everywhere, but in such low concentrations that extracting them in quantity is horribly destructive to the environment. The common argument that they aren't rare is disingenuous, even if technically correct. This is a good indicator that the speaker is either selling something that makes heavy use of them, or is ideologically wedded to said product. In this case, likely wind turbines, which use rare earths by the ton for every megawatt of (often worthless) intermittent power. It would be more sensible to spend those materials on electric motors for cars and such, and leave bulk power generation to nuclear reactors.
Mod parent up. A 12MW windmill uses 1 tonne of rare earths which is a huge amount of environmental damage.
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A 12MW windmill uses 1 tonne of rare earths
Most wind turbines do not use rare earth magnets.
The rare earth magnets allow for a more compact design, but they are not necessary.
Also, new rare earth mines have opened or will soon open, in Australia, California, and Tanzania.
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Re:We should make them pay for the whole carbon cy (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you really, truly, honestly believe that a whole lifecycle carbon intensity analysis of coal or gas is going to show them being *more* favourable than wind or solar? I'm curious just how far down the rabbit hole you've managed to get yourself.
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No one is dropping rare earth or other recycle able materials into land fills - since 30 years or so.
Re:Good thing it was sunny... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sunny and windy (usually) means it's comfortably warm, but not hot enough that ACs will be running continually or cold enough to prompt people to turn on electric heating units, make a hot drink, etc.. Either of those would increase the load on the grid, which in turn would mean a greater chance of having to draw on non-renewable fuels to meet the demand, thus reducing the ratio of renewable energy production to non-renewable. Also, despite lockdown restrictions, a lot of people did manage to get out and about to enjoy the weather rather than watch TV etc., so again, less overall load on the grid.
Percentages can be deceptive - what this is really saying is that base load requirements dropped low enough and environmental conditions were favourable enough that green energy sources were able to cover almost all of the demand. It's a work in progress, but there's still a long way to go before the UK is going to be able to make the same claim for a normal working day in the middle of cold winter period.
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Depends where you are in the UK. In Scotland the figure for the whole of 2020 is 97.4% from "green" sources. A mixture of hydro, wind, solar and nuclear. There is a gas powerstation at Peterhead and till that is closed down we won't get to 100%
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
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"Base load requirements" don't drop.
Base load is always the same. Hence the name: base load.
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Nope ... base load is always the sam, hence base, hint: it is in the name.
Base load is a reference to the difference in dispatch-able generation vs non-dispatachable due to demand. that is basically the biggest nonsense I ever heard.
50 years ago: non dispatch-able aka intermittent power did not exist. Nevertheless they coined the term "base load" what exactly was it at that time?
Next time read the link you want to quote, makes you look less like an idiot ... as you would not quote it then.
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Yepp, but perhaps you can look up "base load" and improve the argument :P
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Obviously you did not grasp the term "base load" or you would not mix it up with "load following" or "balancing" ... wow, that was so simple again.
Cognitive dissonance
That also does not mean what you think it means. E.g. despite your lack of understanding what "base load" is, you likely do not suffer from "Cognitive dissonance". Well, perhaps you do. No idea. At least our discussion does not indicate, you would so.
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Sunny and windy (usually) means it's comfortably warm, but not hot enough that ACs will be running continually
Outside of commercial premises/offices AC isn't really a thing in the UK. We just open a window if it's too hot.
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Re:Good thing it was sunny... (Score:4, Informative)
Oooooh killer argument. What happens is that over time, the UK generates an increasing percentage of its power from low carbon sources. The days in the years where renewables are able to provide electricity also increases over time, as can be seen here:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
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It takes a special kind of dipshit to complain that a source is unreliable at the same fucking time as telling me to look at what the source is saying. Which is it, muppet: is the source worth looking at or is it not?
What the fuck has France got to do with the UK's increasing use of renewables? Ooooh France uses lots of nuclear! Well blow me down with a feather, that's utterly revelatory and completely irrelevant, because you were arguing that the UK couldn't rely on solar because the sun doesn't shine ever
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Funny what amuses people. You're amused by my choice of language. I'm amused by the fact that you have the gall to complain about how I've argued with you, while failing to answer the substantive points I put to you:
1. You said a source was rubbish at the same time as telling me to read it. So which is it, is it worth reading or not?
2. You argued that the UK couldn't rely on solar because intermittency and then brought up France's nuclear generation -- how is that relevant? It's no more relevant than the fa
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The UK is going to retire Hinkley C (the reactor that is scheduled for completion in 2025?) by 2030? Wow, 5 years life for a brand-new reactor?
Tell me, o wise one, what about the other 7 reactors that have been approved but have not yet started construction?
You post garbage, then have the gall to call someone else's source unreliable? Begone, Troll!
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A decade ago, maybe more, someone posted on Slashdot about how as renewable energy came in electricity supply would become intermittent. Electricity would be something we have when the sun shines and the wind blows, and between those times we would revert to an agrarian society, burning candles for light and warmth. Computers would become an occasional tool for the wealthy, because the tiny amounts of energy produced would be extremely expensive.
Over the years it became more and more apparent that renewable
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Only a fool would see the free energy produced by the sun and not take advantage of it.