Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Bountiful, cheap reliable is. There is no reason we can't expand at scale and have a reliable system. Last night wind was producing a third of UK energy, currently it is a sixth, but we have had a reliable supply throughout. Wind is part of the answer, it is not the sole answer but nobody is saying it should be the sole answer.
This offshore wind stuff is just such a load of rubbish.
Why? It is a good and increasingly cheap natural resource the UK has.
The UK leading the world in cheap, clean and reliable power generation will enable the UK private sector to have a competitive advantage in anything that uses electricity, which in the 21st century is everything.
The disastrous idea of XR and the Blair/Brown Labour government was to simply tax and cut demand on electricity. Having bountiful cheap clean energy enables our manufacturers and every other consumer of it to compete.
Wind isn't reliable, though, it's an intermittent power generation system. Which is fine in a diversified grid which has power storage capacity for when the wind is blowing and no one has the lights on to be used when the lights are on and the wind isn't blowing. It's not fine here though, it's a very poor idea. Tidal barrages make much more sense here, we're an island nation. It inherently solves the storage issue.
Offshore wind actually is very reliable, onshore wind less so but that's why much more emphasis and investment is going to offshore now.
Tidal barrages make a lot of sense too but they are complementary not competitive. Tidal barrages can be used as storage and as a backup to wind can't they?
Both should be part of the solution. It isn't all or nothing.
Offshore wind needs a huge amount of backup capacity because it doesn't have a power storage mechanism. Tidal barrages are inherently better because they come with a power storage solution. I guess you could conceivably use a tidal reservoir as power storage for offshore wind, put the pumps into reverse with excess energy but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
You can't really store energy with tidal without some monumental inefficiencies, which would make it much more economic to use current battery technology.
Apart from anything else, if you try to store energy ar low tide by pumping enough water into the lagoon to be able to generate electricity at high tide you have to not only expend energy pumping the water into the lagoon, but you forego generating electricity at the same time.
They're useful in terms of being a highly predictable source, but they're not dispatchable. You might end up using a form of storage to time-shift some of the electricity produced by tidal.
No I mean use the excess energy from offshore wind to fill the tidal lagoon by reversing the pumps. As I said, I'm not sure if it's feasible.
The issue is, at what point in the tidal cycle are you doing this, and in which direction?
I thought the idea was that, as the tide rose you generated power as water turned turbines entering the lagoon. Then, as the tide ebbed you would be able to do the reverse as you allowed water out of the lagoon through the turbines.
If, say the tide is a couple of hours into its ebb, and your electricity generation would be nearing its peak, how do you store energy in the lagoon at this time without losing all the energy from the ebb (and following flood) tides?
It may be a dumb question but can you not use locks? Have a lock that is filled naturally then closed off when full and stored until needed?
That is mostly how these schemes work - inflow (at least some through turbines) on the rising tide, then outflow on the falling tide, again through turbines. The pond in such schemes is there to "store" water at high tide, so that it will flow, more slowly, out while the tide level in general falls. Spreading the generation across at least part of the tidal cycle.
The non-barrage systems simply use the actual tidal flow to generate electricity - nothing at slack water. But since tides are phased around the country....
I do like these schemes. Unfortunately the press has a bad habit of constantly rubbishing them.
One of the very few things I get genuinely pissed off with Private Eye over is Old Sparky's antideluvian attitude to any energy generation that doesn't come from dead dinosaurs. This does fit with my experience of the power sector, who are just desperately stuck in the past. There are pockets of genuine innovation, but I remember discussing condition monitoring systems with one senior engineer who's response was essentially "It didn't work 30 years ago, it won't work now".
I think I mentioned previously my experience talking to an environmental lawyer, who was appalled and furious at the fact that planning consent for offshore schemes is given so quickly. Not that any steps were being skipped - just that between the government and the companies, they simply present a list of answers to all the possible objection - birds, wildlife, fishing, radar, shipwrecks etc etc.
He was quite clear that, in his view, all planning applications for any large scale schemes should take at least 10 years.
This kind of thinking is why will never get tidal ponds etc. The mini-nukes from RR will presumably cause him to combust.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Talking “red wall”, Blyth has a growing renewable energy industry, something that is very positive for the town. I myself have done a number of courses in renewable energy technology at the UK National Renewable Energy Centre on the docks. It’s very good.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
I think the idea is that people would be able to plug their cars in at home and have an ability to recharge cheaply when supply is high, unless they are desperate to recharge in which case they'd pay more to do so at peak.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Bountiful, cheap reliable is. There is no reason we can't expand at scale and have a reliable system. Last night wind was producing a third of UK energy, currently it is a sixth, but we have had a reliable supply throughout. Wind is part of the answer, it is not the sole answer but nobody is saying it should be the sole answer.
One thing people also forget is solar. It's not going to be a huge, massive contributor, but people's personal Solar PV and Solar PV in the South does have a non negligable effect. Gridwatch has the sheffield uni estimate of around 10% at this time (with the caveat that it's probably a slight overestimate). However, that's 10% of demand that doesn't need to be filled by other means, and is highly predictable. It's never going to be a backbone source of energy like in the Western US, but as a top up source it's invaluable.
This offshore wind stuff is just such a load of rubbish.
Why? It is a good and increasingly cheap natural resource the UK has.
The UK leading the world in cheap, clean and reliable power generation will enable the UK private sector to have a competitive advantage in anything that uses electricity, which in the 21st century is everything.
The disastrous idea of XR and the Blair/Brown Labour government was to simply tax and cut demand on electricity. Having bountiful cheap clean energy enables our manufacturers and every other consumer of it to compete.
Wind isn't reliable, though, it's an intermittent power generation system. Which is fine in a diversified grid which has power storage capacity for when the wind is blowing and no one has the lights on to be used when the lights are on and the wind isn't blowing. It's not fine here though, it's a very poor idea. Tidal barrages make much more sense here, we're an island nation. It inherently solves the storage issue.
Offshore wind actually is very reliable, onshore wind less so but that's why much more emphasis and investment is going to offshore now.
Tidal barrages make a lot of sense too but they are complementary not competitive. Tidal barrages can be used as storage and as a backup to wind can't they?
Both should be part of the solution. It isn't all or nothing.
Offshore wind needs a huge amount of backup capacity because it doesn't have a power storage mechanism. Tidal barrages are inherently better because they come with a power storage solution. I guess you could conceivably use a tidal reservoir as power storage for offshore wind, put the pumps into reverse with excess energy but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
You can't really store energy with tidal without some monumental inefficiencies, which would make it much more economic to use current battery technology.
Apart from anything else, if you try to store energy ar low tide by pumping enough water into the lagoon to be able to generate electricity at high tide you have to not only expend energy pumping the water into the lagoon, but you forego generating electricity at the same time.
They're useful in terms of being a highly predictable source, but they're not dispatchable. You might end up using a form of storage to time-shift some of the electricity produced by tidal.
No I mean use the excess energy from offshore wind to fill the tidal lagoon by reversing the pumps. As I said, I'm not sure if it's feasible.
The issue is, at what point in the tidal cycle are you doing this, and in which direction?
I thought the idea was that, as the tide rose you generated power as water turned turbines entering the lagoon. Then, as the tide ebbed you would be able to do the reverse as you allowed water out of the lagoon through the turbines.
If, say the tide is a couple of hours into its ebb, and your electricity generation would be nearing its peak, how do you store energy in the lagoon at this time without losing all the energy from the ebb (and following flood) tides?
It may be a dumb question but can you not use locks? Have a lock that is filled naturally then closed off when full and stored until needed?
That is mostly how these schemes work - inflow (at least some through turbines) on the rising tide, then outflow on the falling tide, again through turbines. The pond in such schemes is there to "store" water at high tide, so that it will flow, more slowly, out while the tide level in general falls. Spreading the generation across at least part of the tidal cycle.
The non-barrage systems simply use the actual tidal flow to generate electricity - nothing at slack water. But since tides are phased around the country....
I do like these schemes. Unfortunately the press has a bad habit of constantly rubbishing them.
One of the very few things I get genuinely pissed off with Private Eye over is Old Sparky's antideluvian attitude to any energy generation that doesn't come from dead dinosaurs. This does fit with my experience of the power sector, who are just desperately stuck in the past. There are pockets of genuine innovation, but I remember discussing condition monitoring systems with one senior engineer who's response was essentially "It didn't work 30 years ago, it won't work now".
I think I mentioned previously my experience talking to an environmental lawyer, who was appalled and furious at the fact that planning consent for offshore schemes is given so quickly. Not that any steps were being skipped - just that between the government and the companies, they simply present a list of answers to all the possible objection - birds, wildlife, fishing, radar, shipwrecks etc etc.
He was quite clear that, in his view, all planning applications for any large scale schemes should take at least 10 years.
This kind of thinking is why will never get tidal ponds etc. The mini-nukes from RR will presumably cause him to combust.
Lawyers thinking stuff should take ten years. Shocked I tell you, shocked. They’d probably think that’s warp speed.
When they say they will take it down to the wire its for a very simple reason. The closer we get to the end of the transition the sillier our "we will walk" threat will look considering that the infrastructure we have stated we need doesn't exist.
UK: "Now look here you foreign types, gives us what we want or we walk"
EU: "OK. Can you send us details of your new customs arrangements so that we can be ready".
UK: "They are world beating our new customs arrangements"
I don't actually disagree with the point, though that no one expects progress until last minute crunch talks seems to be a self fulfilling prophecy in part
I say we build a giant rail gun on the cliffs of dover, and use the spare energy to fire heavy metallic objects at high velocity at those pesky europeans.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
I think the idea is that people would be able to plug their cars in at home and have an ability to recharge cheaply when supply is high, unless they are desperate to recharge in which case they'd pay more to do so at peak.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
The power companies having been muttering about using plugged in cars as storage. Tesla, among others, have stated that they will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger.
A more promising area is storage at the high capacity chargers. Next generation electric cars will be 150KwH plus, in terms of storage. The next generation high capacity chargers store electricity to smooth demand - bit like a tank of petrol under the pumps.
Tesla and others are already investigating the market for storing electricity at the charger and selling it back to the grid if the price is right.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Bountiful, cheap reliable is. There is no reason we can't expand at scale and have a reliable system. Last night wind was producing a third of UK energy, currently it is a sixth, but we have had a reliable supply throughout. Wind is part of the answer, it is not the sole answer but nobody is saying it should be the sole answer.
Boris just stood up and said it was, unless of course you think he was bullshitting, which is fair.
We will be stuck in this lockdown loop for years unless ministers change their attitude to risk.
If Boris on March had kept saying its going to be 2 years at least, the lockdown wouldn't have lasted 2 mins. I firmly believe this shifting the goalposts is on the advice of behavioural insight people.
Despite a lifetime’s evidence that all Bozo ever does is say whatever today that is needed to get him through to tomorrow?
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
This offshore wind stuff is just such a load of rubbish.
Why? It is a good and increasingly cheap natural resource the UK has.
The UK leading the world in cheap, clean and reliable power generation will enable the UK private sector to have a competitive advantage in anything that uses electricity, which in the 21st century is everything.
The disastrous idea of XR and the Blair/Brown Labour government was to simply tax and cut demand on electricity. Having bountiful cheap clean energy enables our manufacturers and every other consumer of it to compete.
Wind isn't reliable, though, it's an intermittent power generation system. Which is fine in a diversified grid which has power storage capacity for when the wind is blowing and no one has the lights on to be used when the lights are on and the wind isn't blowing. It's not fine here though, it's a very poor idea. Tidal barrages make much more sense here, we're an island nation. It inherently solves the storage issue.
Offshore wind actually is very reliable, onshore wind less so but that's why much more emphasis and investment is going to offshore now.
Tidal barrages make a lot of sense too but they are complementary not competitive. Tidal barrages can be used as storage and as a backup to wind can't they?
Both should be part of the solution. It isn't all or nothing.
Offshore wind needs a huge amount of backup capacity because it doesn't have a power storage mechanism. Tidal barrages are inherently better because they come with a power storage solution. I guess you could conceivably use a tidal reservoir as power storage for offshore wind, put the pumps into reverse with excess energy but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
You can't really store energy with tidal without some monumental inefficiencies, which would make it much more economic to use current battery technology.
Apart from anything else, if you try to store energy ar low tide by pumping enough water into the lagoon to be able to generate electricity at high tide you have to not only expend energy pumping the water into the lagoon, but you forego generating electricity at the same time.
They're useful in terms of being a highly predictable source, but they're not dispatchable. You might end up using a form of storage to time-shift some of the electricity produced by tidal.
No I mean use the excess energy from offshore wind to fill the tidal lagoon by reversing the pumps. As I said, I'm not sure if it's feasible.
The issue is, at what point in the tidal cycle are you doing this, and in which direction?
I thought the idea was that, as the tide rose you generated power as water turned turbines entering the lagoon. Then, as the tide ebbed you would be able to do the reverse as you allowed water out of the lagoon through the turbines.
If, say the tide is a couple of hours into its ebb, and your electricity generation would be nearing its peak, how do you store energy in the lagoon at this time without losing all the energy from the ebb (and following flood) tides?
It may be a dumb question but can you not use locks? Have a lock that is filled naturally then closed off when full and stored until needed?
That is mostly how these schemes work - inflow (at least some through turbines) on the rising tide, then outflow on the falling tide, again through turbines. The pond in such schemes is there to "store" water at high tide, so that it will flow, more slowly, out while the tide level in general falls. Spreading the generation across at least part of the tidal cycle.
The non-barrage systems simply use the actual tidal flow to generate electricity - nothing at slack water. But since tides are phased around the country....
I do like these schemes. Unfortunately the press has a bad habit of constantly rubbishing them.
One of the very few things I get genuinely pissed off with Private Eye over is Old Sparky's antideluvian attitude to any energy generation that doesn't come from dead dinosaurs. This does fit with my experience of the power sector, who are just desperately stuck in the past. There are pockets of genuine innovation, but I remember discussing condition monitoring systems with one senior engineer who's response was essentially "It didn't work 30 years ago, it won't work now".
Wealth is a tricky subject. What is the real wealth of a couple aged 66 both entitled to £9,000+ per annum state pension (inflation proofed) and no other income or assets. They would pay no income tax or NI. Their 'wealth' on one basis is nil. But to buy a guaranteed income of £18000 per annum would cost several hundred thousand pounds. Which is their real wealth. You would have a difficult task taxing it.
Far easier to tax those who have the same wealth saved up in a visible non tax- payer funded form. But could it truly be fair?
Yes, I bet a couple of teachers retiring on an indexed-linked pension of £30,000 each at 65 wouldn't regard themselves as 'rich' - but between them they have an asset worth around £2.2m.
(Best buy annuity rates for an index-linked pension at 65 are around 2.5% to 3% depending on the exact terms).
Agree, assuming you missed the 'not' out eg 'not regard themselves as rich'.
A combined income of £60K in retirement I think is very well off indeed, yet they they could have minimal assets that would attract any wealth tax at all, yet someone living on half that income from assets would be paying a wealth tax!
60k with no mortgage etc is extremely comfortable, ours is over £50 k and can’t spend it unless it went oh holidays etc, not an option so it goes to the grandchildren with increasingly generous presents. I don’t need or want anything physical but I’m lucky in the extreme.
As you can see this is close to my heart. I have an income of only £3K or £4K and I am retired. I live off of my assets which I accumulated for this purpose. I fail to see why my assets should be treated differently to a DB pension pot for wealth purposes, but if you include the value of a DB pot in a wealth calculation you will be bring into a wealth category many fairly lowish income people (as per Pagan's post - these pots are very valuable).
I have no issue with paying higher council tax on my property (as suggested in HYUFDs post) or in fact paying CGT on my residential property when I sell it, which I will do for the cash and downsize, but the wealth tax for people who have made their own provision for retirement is a can of worms.
It`s an interested topic to discuss but it won`t happen. Any government which introduced a tax on residential property when sold (or even worse when not sold) would never be re-elected.
So it can only happen with cross-party support, or done by a government that knows it isn’t going to be re-elected anyway but wants to do the right thing.
More like only going to be done by a government that isn't going to be re-elected and never wants to be elected again...
This offshore wind stuff is just such a load of rubbish.
Why? It is a good and increasingly cheap natural resource the UK has.
The UK leading the world in cheap, clean and reliable power generation will enable the UK private sector to have a competitive advantage in anything that uses electricity, which in the 21st century is everything.
The disastrous idea of XR and the Blair/Brown Labour government was to simply tax and cut demand on electricity. Having bountiful cheap clean energy enables our manufacturers and every other consumer of it to compete.
Wind isn't reliable, though, it's an intermittent power generation system. Which is fine in a diversified grid which has power storage capacity for when the wind is blowing and no one has the lights on to be used when the lights are on and the wind isn't blowing. It's not fine here though, it's a very poor idea. Tidal barrages make much more sense here, we're an island nation. It inherently solves the storage issue.
Offshore wind actually is very reliable, onshore wind less so but that's why much more emphasis and investment is going to offshore now.
Tidal barrages make a lot of sense too but they are complementary not competitive. Tidal barrages can be used as storage and as a backup to wind can't they?
Both should be part of the solution. It isn't all or nothing.
Offshore wind needs a huge amount of backup capacity because it doesn't have a power storage mechanism. Tidal barrages are inherently better because they come with a power storage solution. I guess you could conceivably use a tidal reservoir as power storage for offshore wind, put the pumps into reverse with excess energy but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
You can't really store energy with tidal without some monumental inefficiencies, which would make it much more economic to use current battery technology.
Apart from anything else, if you try to store energy ar low tide by pumping enough water into the lagoon to be able to generate electricity at high tide you have to not only expend energy pumping the water into the lagoon, but you forego generating electricity at the same time.
They're useful in terms of being a highly predictable source, but they're not dispatchable. You might end up using a form of storage to time-shift some of the electricity produced by tidal.
No I mean use the excess energy from offshore wind to fill the tidal lagoon by reversing the pumps. As I said, I'm not sure if it's feasible.
The issue is, at what point in the tidal cycle are you doing this, and in which direction?
I thought the idea was that, as the tide rose you generated power as water turned turbines entering the lagoon. Then, as the tide ebbed you would be able to do the reverse as you allowed water out of the lagoon through the turbines.
If, say the tide is a couple of hours into its ebb, and your electricity generation would be nearing its peak, how do you store energy in the lagoon at this time without losing all the energy from the ebb (and following flood) tides?
It may be a dumb question but can you not use locks? Have a lock that is filled naturally then closed off when full and stored until needed?
That's what the lagoon is - a giant lock - but if you fill it at high tide you can't empty it to generate electricity at high tide, and if you decide to store the energy instead of releasing it for the first ebb tide then you miss out on the energy you would generate in the mean time.
I could be missing something very clever, but I don't see how it fits.
The tide comes in and out at different times of the day in different parts of the country which means it could be a form of baseload if there was enough of it distributed correctly.
Also, the tide never really stops. It slows, reverses direction and speeds up. Also different sides of an estuary or river can have different tides from each other. It is not a precise, digital on/off thing.
The other trick is to have another basin which you open at a different time so it can generate electricity at High Water slack. It is having a differential in the heights that works. It does not have to be one basin. Two basins adjacent to each other and working out of phase with each other can provide continuous water movement.
I say we build a giant rail gun on the cliffs of dover, and use the spare energy to fire heavy metallic objects at high velocity at those pesky europeans.
That is an utterly appalling thing to say; you mean *shoot* heavy metallic objects. No fire involved in electro-magnetic force, any more than in shooting arrows.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Long term, chemicals from renewables energy is not unrealistic, but it's a couple of decades off. And Middle East solar will be about half the price of anything we can or are likely to be able to generate.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Bountiful, cheap reliable is. There is no reason we can't expand at scale and have a reliable system. Last night wind was producing a third of UK energy, currently it is a sixth, but we have had a reliable supply throughout. Wind is part of the answer, it is not the sole answer but nobody is saying it should be the sole answer.
Boris just stood up and said it was, unless of course you think he was bullshitting, which is fair.
I didn't see him say sole answer. I saw him say 100% of household electricity. Households are not 100% of consumption are they?
In 2018 domestic electricity consumption was 35% of all electricity consumption. Industry and Services each used nearly as much as households. So why can't we get more than 100% of household electricity from wind while also using other solutions for the rest of it, able to balance it out?
There are videos around too, but I wouldn't advise watching them.
When I asked for evidence, maybe I should have been clearer. I didn't mean propaganda and lies put out by an anti abortion group, I meant independent facts. You might as well just quote Trump as reliable evidence. Here are just a few comments about what they have produced from reliable sources: Tampering with videos, twisting the facts, campaign of misinformation.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
Not today, but that's one of the points of Tesla's 'million mile battery', which ought to be achievable in the very near term. The cobalt free lithium-iron phosphate battery is already pretty long lived.
My plan for Sunday is to write a piece reminding us all that in 2016 the state polling was a load of bobbins whilst the national polling wasn't that bad.
There are videos around too, but I wouldn't advise watching them.
When I asked for evidence, maybe I should have been clearer. I didn't mean propaganda and lies put out by an anti abortion group, I meant independent facts. You might as well just quote Trump as reliable evidence. Here are just a few comments about what they have produced from reliable sources: Tampering with videos, twisting the facts, campaign of misinformation.
You don't believe videos you can watch with your own eyes because you don't like the website they are hosted on? That's one way of ignoring evidence I suppose.
For once Johnson isn't lying. We could well become a massive wind energy leader thanks to North Sea.
I don't disagree, it was the childish 'we have decided to become a world leader' which struck me. The UK can't decide anything of the sort, it has to work on it and others will be doing the same.
Throughout his political career Boris has been a world leader at imagining stuff. The hard work and difficult choices of manifesting it not so.
Yes, I don't think this is the #longcovid talking. It's bang on brand. It's "Boris".
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Bountiful, cheap, unreliable energy is not how to build a heavy goods manufacturing industry. The hydrogen stuff is just another pie in the sky idea.
Bountiful, cheap reliable is. There is no reason we can't expand at scale and have a reliable system. Last night wind was producing a third of UK energy, currently it is a sixth, but we have had a reliable supply throughout. Wind is part of the answer, it is not the sole answer but nobody is saying it should be the sole answer.
One thing people also forget is solar. It's not going to be a huge, massive contributor, but people's personal Solar PV and Solar PV in the South does have a non negligable effect. Gridwatch has the sheffield uni estimate of around 10% at this time (with the caveat that it's probably a slight overestimate). However, that's 10% of demand that doesn't need to be filled by other means, and is highly predictable. It's never going to be a backbone source of energy like in the Western US, but as a top up source it's invaluable.
With a big N Africa interconnect, it absolutely could be. If the economics stack up for Australia supplying Singapore (which apparently may well be the case), then Morocco/Spain is trivial.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
I think the idea is that people would be able to plug their cars in at home and have an ability to recharge cheaply when supply is high, unless they are desperate to recharge in which case they'd pay more to do so at peak.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
The power companies having been muttering about using plugged in cars as storage. Tesla, among others, have stated that they will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger....
I say we build a giant rail gun on the cliffs of dover, and use the spare energy to fire heavy metallic objects at high velocity at those pesky europeans.
No, because thanks to decades of progress we'd have to import the steel. Why not simply fire asylum seekers from your gun and challenge the Europeans to build a big net to catch them? Its not far off what Farage / Patel think and it would probably win support in some Tory focus groups.
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Yes. The plan would be to have a massive surplus of wind energy to turn into hydrogen. Then you can use the hydrogen for trains, for synthetic jet fuel, all sorts of other things.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
But he looked it up, and still seemingly doesn't realise that it was intended as a joke.
Fun fact: due to the lunar cycle millers worked in 3- or 4-hour shifts that precessed against the clock. I think they were only able to mill on the flow tide as the ebb was too slow. And, of course, they worked a lot harder during spring tides than neap.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
I think the idea is that people would be able to plug their cars in at home and have an ability to recharge cheaply when supply is high, unless they are desperate to recharge in which case they'd pay more to do so at peak.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
The power companies having been muttering about using plugged in cars as storage. Tesla, among others, have stated that they will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger....
Did you read the article? - the board changes were debunked. And Musk's statement was designed to push back on it happening - the utilities in the US have done some extraordinary stuff vs their tame legislators. Such as making going off grid illegal in some areas...
My plan for Sunday is to write a piece reminding us all that in 2016 the state polling was a load of bobbins whilst the national polling wasn't that bad.
Probably already covered but to Edmund's point, Biden is getting some seriously good leads in the national polling today (although the USC tracker tends to just swing from +12 to +7 depending which cohort is replying in any given fortnight.)
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Unless their owners want the option to use them, at short notice, as cars.
Ah I can help here. The way this scheme works is that you sell tarriff access to portions of the battery. For instance, you tell the energy provider that you're happy regularly only having your battery charged to some maximum. The more you're happy to let them pull from your battery, the deeper the discount you get, similar to economy seven. I think the standard amount quoted is 80% but I'm not sure if that is down to battery dynamics or just what they think consumers will go for. Whenever that battery is drawn from you get a rebate on your bills. The most efficient way to do this is locally, using the power stored in the car to offset your home energy usage. However, if you know you're going on a trip or something, you hit a button on the app/control panel/in the car or whatever and that locks out your car battery for a given period of time so that you know you have energy for the journey.
This offshore wind stuff is just such a load of rubbish.
Why? It is a good and increasingly cheap natural resource the UK has.
The UK leading the world in cheap, clean and reliable power generation will enable the UK private sector to have a competitive advantage in anything that uses electricity, which in the 21st century is everything.
The disastrous idea of XR and the Blair/Brown Labour government was to simply tax and cut demand on electricity. Having bountiful cheap clean energy enables our manufacturers and every other consumer of it to compete.
Wind isn't reliable, though, it's an intermittent power generation system. Which is fine in a diversified grid which has power storage capacity for when the wind is blowing and no one has the lights on to be used when the lights are on and the wind isn't blowing. It's not fine here though, it's a very poor idea. Tidal barrages make much more sense here, we're an island nation. It inherently solves the storage issue.
Offshore wind actually is very reliable, onshore wind less so but that's why much more emphasis and investment is going to offshore now.
Tidal barrages make a lot of sense too but they are complementary not competitive. Tidal barrages can be used as storage and as a backup to wind can't they?
Both should be part of the solution. It isn't all or nothing.
Offshore wind needs a huge amount of backup capacity because it doesn't have a power storage mechanism. Tidal barrages are inherently better because they come with a power storage solution. I guess you could conceivably use a tidal reservoir as power storage for offshore wind, put the pumps into reverse with excess energy but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
You can't really store energy with tidal without some monumental inefficiencies, which would make it much more economic to use current battery technology.
Apart from anything else, if you try to store energy ar low tide by pumping enough water into the lagoon to be able to generate electricity at high tide you have to not only expend energy pumping the water into the lagoon, but you forego generating electricity at the same time.
They're useful in terms of being a highly predictable source, but they're not dispatchable. You might end up using a form of storage to time-shift some of the electricity produced by tidal.
No I mean use the excess energy from offshore wind to fill the tidal lagoon by reversing the pumps. As I said, I'm not sure if it's feasible.
The issue is, at what point in the tidal cycle are you doing this, and in which direction?
I thought the idea was that, as the tide rose you generated power as water turned turbines entering the lagoon. Then, as the tide ebbed you would be able to do the reverse as you allowed water out of the lagoon through the turbines.
If, say the tide is a couple of hours into its ebb, and your electricity generation would be nearing its peak, how do you store energy in the lagoon at this time without losing all the energy from the ebb (and following flood) tides?
It may be a dumb question but can you not use locks? Have a lock that is filled naturally then closed off when full and stored until needed?
That's what the lagoon is - a giant lock - but if you fill it at high tide you can't empty it to generate electricity at high tide, and if you decide to store the energy instead of releasing it for the first ebb tide then you miss out on the energy you would generate in the mean time.
I could be missing something very clever, but I don't see how it fits.
I meant like a chain of locks. So your primary lock works as standard, but with a backup lock as storage? The backup lock can then be refilled at high tide.
Right, but I think you would generate a lot more electricity if you ran the backup lock in the same way as the first one.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Unless their owners want the option to use them, at short notice, as cars.
But that's the thing about car usage - it's predictable. Even more so when everyone's driving cars with real time remote data logging.
Predictable in the aggregate, and *most* of the time individually. But it takes away a lot of the point of having your own car when it isn't available for unforeseen evs.
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
Haha I forgot you think jokes by people you dont like dont count as jokes!
The audience was Conservative Party members anyway, who are far more likely to know what he had said in the past
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
But he looked it up, and still seemingly doesn't realise that it was intended as a joke.
Of course it counts as a joke.
Plus of course fools like Bienkov are giving Boris free publicity for what he's saying by sharing this, which he would have anticipated.
When they say they will take it down to the wire its for a very simple reason. The closer we get to the end of the transition the sillier our "we will walk" threat will look considering that the infrastructure we have stated we need doesn't exist.
UK: "Now look here you foreign types, gives us what we want or we walk"
EU: "OK. Can you send us details of your new customs arrangements so that we can be ready".
UK: "They are world beating our new customs arrangements"
EU: "Can we see them?"
UK: "No"
We will fold. Because we have no choice.
A competent UK government would be telling us , now:
a) what the rules will be on Jan 1st 2021 for trade with the EU if we don't get a deal; and b) what the rules will be on Jan 1st 2021 for trade with the EU if we get a deal.
but they won't because they will be told, in both cases, "That's not the Brexit we voted for".
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
But he looked it up, and still seemingly doesn't realise that it was intended as a joke.
Was it though? I haven't been able to read the full text but from what pieces I've seen it lacks literally any indication that it was a joke.
I expect the new CNN poll is an outlier but even if you take off a couple of points it’s still a dreadful poll for Trump .
Telling over 65s who have suffered most from covid that you shouldn’t be afraid of the virus is clearly the biggest own goal of all time especially as they are much more likely to vote .
His joyride and then bizarre appearance at the WH which ended with a maskless Trump entering the WH should go down in history as the moment voters said enough and which hopefully cements his election loss .
Wealth is a tricky subject. What is the real wealth of a couple aged 66 both entitled to £9,000+ per annum state pension (inflation proofed) and no other income or assets. They would pay no income tax or NI. Their 'wealth' on one basis is nil. But to buy a guaranteed income of £18000 per annum would cost several hundred thousand pounds. Which is their real wealth. You would have a difficult task taxing it.
Far easier to tax those who have the same wealth saved up in a visible non tax- payer funded form. But could it truly be fair?
Yes, I bet a couple of teachers retiring on an indexed-linked pension of £30,000 each at 65 wouldn't regard themselves as 'rich' - but between them they have an asset worth around £2.2m.
(Best buy annuity rates for an index-linked pension at 65 are around 2.5% to 3% depending on the exact terms).
The richest person I know is my missus' aunt, who was a deputy head teacher for 1 year before taking early retirement at the age of 52. She freely admits that despite eating out every day and taking around 6-7 expensive holidays a year she literally can't spend all the money she gets from her pension.
She is in her 70s now, but if her mum who is still alive at 101 is anything to go by then she could be getting this pension for 50 years.
The average worker who gets nothing like this back from the government is going to be taxed even harder to pay for this stuff and it's completely unfair.
Teachers can't take early retirement at 52 and haven't been able to for quite a while - if they ever were able to. However, putting that to one side, retiring at 52 would mean she was a teacher for a maximum of 30 years, including just one year as a deputy. On that basis, it is hard to imagine she would be getting a pension of more than £30,000 per annum. That is potentially very comfortable, but it is taxable and it is not going to allow you eat out every day and take 6-7 expensive holidays a year.
Yes, there's a lot of myths on here about teachers' pensions. If anybody wants to look at the reality, they can have a play around on here:
This shows, for example, that a teacher who retires at 65 with 40 years service on £35K (at the high end for a main scale teacher) at the time of retirement will get a pension of £17.5K and a lump sum of £52.5K. Retiring at 60 reduces the pension to £13.5K. Only senior staff will have a salary high enough to get anywhere near the £30K pension many cite on here. It's also worth noting that teachers (and civil servants) pay a lot more of their salary into their pension than they did 10 years ago.
All true I’m sure. The point is, it doesn’t matter how you slice it, public sector pensions are hugely hugely valuable. As I said upthread at 65 years multiply the annual pension by 43 and at 60 years probably by something like 50. That’s the market today, driven as it is by super low interest rates.
So even £17.5K translates to over three quarters of a million. In the context of any future wealth tax why should this be ignored compared to someone who has saved differently and has more visible assets?
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Unless their owners want the option to use them, at short notice, as cars.
But that's the thing about car usage - it's predictable. Even more so when everyone's driving cars with real time remote data logging.
Predictable in the aggregate, and *most* of the time individually. But it takes away a lot of the point of having your own car when it isn't available for unforeseen evs.
I refer you to my post above. You wouldn't discharge the whole battery, just the top 20% once the vehicle is charged up.
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
There are videos around too, but I wouldn't advise watching them.
When I asked for evidence, maybe I should have been clearer. I didn't mean propaganda and lies put out by an anti abortion group, I meant independent facts. You might as well just quote Trump as reliable evidence. Here are just a few comments about what they have produced from reliable sources: Tampering with videos, twisting the facts, campaign of misinformation.
You don't believe videos you can watch with your own eyes because you don't like the website they are hosted on? That's one way of ignoring evidence I suppose.
Well there were a few leaps in assumptions about me:
a) I did not say I didn't believe the videos. I have never seen them and have no desire to see them as I am sure they are very distressing. I was quoting reputable sources which said they were tampered with.
b) I don't necessarily dislike the web sites as I don't know about them, but you are probably right as I don't like propaganda.
c) I would rather take evidence from reputable sources.
Just for the record I think abortion is a terrible thing, that must be appallingly distressing for all involved. I also believe there is a conflict between the interests of the unborn baby, father and mother. But I am very reluctantly however on the side of the law as it is and that it is the mothers decision.
Re the videos that I have no intention of watching, I am sure they are incredibly distressing even in an unedited format.
My plan for Sunday is to write a piece reminding us all that in 2016 the state polling was a load of bobbins whilst the national polling wasn't that bad.
If you had to trust one rather the other you'd go for National, but it would be nice if they concurred for once.
Today's polling doesn't suggest much of a sympathy vote for the GoP.
There has to be a punchline for a joke. If your joke relies on your audience researching your previous writings on the topic then that lacks a certain cadence and quality of timing.
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
I think he assumes that anyone who is an "opinion former" is fully up to speed on their Johnsonology. So they get it and have a little chuckle. And to the rest it just sounds like a colourful Borisey way to make the point that he loves "green" and "modern" and "science" and "progress".
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
Hillary had an October bounce which faded. However Biden's bounce could fade and he'd still be on course for the White House by a clear, if not comfortable, margin.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Yes. The plan would be to have a massive surplus of wind energy to turn into hydrogen. Then you can use the hydrogen for trains, for synthetic jet fuel, all sorts of other things.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
Indeed ironically the people saying that Boris is being too ambitious probably have it backwards, I imagine that he is actually understating the ambition but putting it in a way that people understand. The idea of household electricity people can understand, the idea of complicated hydrogen supply chains aren't really soundbites.
I expect the UK will be generating much, much more than household consumption by 2030.
It's clever news management from Johnson. Give his opponents something harmless to be annoyed/amused about, they can easily hit their filing deadlines, and he escapes without any proper scrutiny (which might require some effort).
My plan for Sunday is to write a piece reminding us all that in 2016 the state polling was a load of bobbins whilst the national polling wasn't that bad.
If you had to trust one rather the other you'd go for National, but it would be nice if they concurred for once.
Today's polling doesn't suggest much of a sympathy vote for the GoP.
It reminds me of the 2015 constituency polls conducted by Lord Ashcroft, they indicated Ed Miliband as PM quite easily and the Lib Dems on around 35-40 MPs, but outside of Scotland they turned out to be bobbins.
Looking at the footage of Trump last night that's not a healthy man able to keep to a campaign schedule, so that should help Biden some more.
“I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power 20 years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness. This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country – and help us to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
So Boris is saying he is pig ignorant of both history and economics but he should continue to run the country.
Ha ha ha ha. Funny joke.
And BoJo wasn't saying that 20 years ago, he was saying it 7 years ago. So once again, are we absolutely sure he was talking about himself? Does he have a good grip of the passage of time?
10 new states have just started in person early voting aswell as many already having mail in ballots including many key swing states which means the polling will increasingly be including actual votes.
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
Surely Trump's going to be a minus number by polling day?
Behind a paywall for me, but if something is rare then it means it is happening I would have thought.
So you'd prefer just to let mothers die when the foetus gets in trouble ?
Don't know about the US, but when I got anywhere late term abortions there was always some sound medical reason; either the health of the mother or the foetus. And in the former case it 'late' was at a time when the foetus wouldn't survive. Incredibly difficult for the professionals, incredibly sad for the mother..
Reaction from ConHome fanbois and gals to the Big Speech:
"If there is a massive meteorite impact that wipes out pretty much all the rest of it I guess this might actually be delivered on"
"Rule by decree, COVID terror, ever higher taxes, mass unemployment, unsustainable and ruinous green politics, punishment lockdowns. They are all here for the duration. There is no end"
"Johnson could supply enough hot air to power a continent. The truth is that many people have given up listening to Johnson"
"So many hostages to fortune in Johnson's bluster. Why does anyone still believe his increasingly demented fantasies?"
"As long as we are governed by these fools, I fear you may be correct in your assessment"
"Most of what Johnson said struck me as overblown fantasy"
"Question is who is going to deliver next year’s speech?"
“I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power 20 years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness. This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country – and help us to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
So Boris is saying he is pig ignorant of both history and economics but he should continue to run the country.
Ha ha ha ha. Funny joke.
And BoJo wasn't saying that 20 years ago, he was saying it 7 years ago. So once again, are we absolutely sure he was talking about himself? Does he have a good grip of the passage of time?
Do you know any good ones Ally Boy? Are you good at telling them?
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
Yep. And Biden EC supremacy can now be sold at 78. I bought at 28 for quite a lot and it's VERY tempting to close. My wussy side is telling me to. Hush, Mr Wuss, hush now.
“I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power 20 years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness. This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country – and help us to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
So Boris is saying he is pig ignorant of both history and economics but he should continue to run the country.
Ha ha ha ha. Funny joke.
And BoJo wasn't saying that 20 years ago, he was saying it 7 years ago. So once again, are we absolutely sure he was talking about himself? Does he have a good grip of the passage of time?
If that's Johnson's line, perhaps he should recall that it was offshore wind that filled the sails of the British ships which carried Africans to slavery in the America's.
“I remember how some people used to sneer at wind power 20 years ago, and say that it wouldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. They forgot the history of this country. It was offshore wind that puffed the sails of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, and propelled this country to commercial greatness. This investment in offshore wind alone will help to create 60,000 jobs in this country – and help us to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”
So Boris is saying he is pig ignorant of both history and economics but he should continue to run the country.
Ha ha ha ha. Funny joke.
And BoJo wasn't saying that 20 years ago, he was saying it 7 years ago. So once again, are we absolutely sure he was talking about himself? Does he have a good grip of the passage of time?
Do you know any good ones Ally Boy? Are you good at telling them?
There are videos around too, but I wouldn't advise watching them.
When I asked for evidence, maybe I should have been clearer. I didn't mean propaganda and lies put out by an anti abortion group, I meant independent facts. You might as well just quote Trump as reliable evidence. Here are just a few comments about what they have produced from reliable sources: Tampering with videos, twisting the facts, campaign of misinformation.
You don't believe videos you can watch with your own eyes because you don't like the website they are hosted on? That's one way of ignoring evidence I suppose.
Well there were a few leaps in assumptions about me:
a) I did not say I didn't believe the videos. I have never seen them and have no desire to see them as I am sure they are very distressing. I was quoting reputable sources which said they were tampered with.
b) I don't necessarily dislike the web sites as I don't know about them, but you are probably right as I don't like propaganda.
c) I would rather take evidence from reputable sources.
Just for the record I think abortion is a terrible thing, that must be appallingly distressing for all involved. I also believe there is a conflict between the interests of the unborn baby, father and mother. But I am very reluctantly however on the side of the law as it is and that it is the mothers decision.
Re the videos that I have no intention of watching, I am sure they are incredibly distressing even in an unedited format.
How are the videos tampered with? Genuine question.
The videos in that link are basically just people at planned parenthood talking and describing their methods regarding partial-birth abortions.
I don't believe much unquestionably these days, but I believe what I can see with my own eyes, regardless of whether a reputable source tells me afterwards that I didn't actually see it.
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
Hillary had an October bounce which faded. However Biden's bounce could fade and he'd still be on course for the White House by a clear, if not comfortable, margin.
Pussygate caused a spike in her lead which quickly faded, as I recall.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Unless their owners want the option to use them, at short notice, as cars.
But that's the thing about car usage - it's predictable. Even more so when everyone's driving cars with real time remote data logging.
Predictable in the aggregate, and *most* of the time individually. But it takes away a lot of the point of having your own car when it isn't available for unforeseen evs.
I refer you to my post above. You wouldn't discharge the whole battery, just the top 20% once the vehicle is charged up.
Precisely. If you're paid to have your battery discharge to 80% full, then can recharge back up for less than you were paid later on . . . and have this all happen automatically, then why wouldn't you?
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Yes. The plan would be to have a massive surplus of wind energy to turn into hydrogen. Then you can use the hydrogen for trains, for synthetic jet fuel, all sorts of other things.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
You're talking about a complete step change or revolution in power generation in the UK. Boris isn't talking about that, if he was then I'd at least understand the policy. You lot are all projecting an idealised version of offshore wind and hydrogen production through electrolysis with masses of excess energy. What we're going to get will be nothing like that, it will be a mush of strategies and by the time we realise it will lead to rolling blackouts it will be too late.
Let's be realistic about what will actually happen, not what we think should happen. One thing that everyone should have learned in this crisis is that the British state is bereft of any kind of creative thinking and problem solving ability, the machinery of government is simply incapable of thinking beyond tomorrow's headlines.
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Yes. The plan would be to have a massive surplus of wind energy to turn into hydrogen. Then you can use the hydrogen for trains, for synthetic jet fuel, all sorts of other things.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
You're talking about a complete step change or revolution in power generation in the UK. Boris isn't talking about that, if he was then I'd at least understand the policy. You lot are all projecting an idealised version of offshore wind and hydrogen production through electrolysis with masses of excess energy. What we're going to get will be nothing like that, it will be a mush of strategies and by the time we realise it will lead to rolling blackouts it will be too late.
Let's be realistic about what will actually happen, not what we think should happen. One thing that everyone should have learned in this crisis is that the British state is bereft of any kind of creative thinking and problem solving ability, the machinery of government is simply incapable of thinking beyond tomorrow's headlines.
We have had a ten-fold increase increase in our wind power in the past decade and that increase is only escalating not falling. It is realistic to believe it will happen.
With today's polls factored in, 538 now have the average Biden polling lead up to 8.8%, the forecast national polling lead on election day now 7.5%, and Trump's chances down to their lowest yet at 17%.
Yep. And Biden EC supremacy can now be sold at 78. I bought at 28 for quite a lot and it's VERY tempting to close. My wussy side is telling me to. Hush, Mr Wuss, hush now.
Thaat polling average does of course derive from a mix of older and newer polls. As such I don't think that it may fully factor in Biden's post debate and post hospitalisation polling bounce, in so far as older polling is still in the mix.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Unless their owners want the option to use them, at short notice, as cars.
But that's the thing about car usage - it's predictable. Even more so when everyone's driving cars with real time remote data logging.
Predictable in the aggregate, and *most* of the time individually. But it takes away a lot of the point of having your own car when it isn't available for unforeseen evs.
I refer you to my post above. You wouldn't discharge the whole battery, just the top 20% once the vehicle is charged up.
Thanks, I had missed that.
My impression at the moment is that they don't go far enough on a charge to interest me anyway, and 80% of not far enough is even less appetising. Might think differently if I still lived in London and drove mainly within it.
Reaction from ConHome fanbois and gals to the Big Speech:
"If there is a massive meteorite impact that wipes out pretty much all the rest of it I guess this might actually be delivered on"
"Rule by decree, COVID terror, ever higher taxes, mass unemployment, unsustainable and ruinous green politics, punishment lockdowns. They are all here for the duration. There is no end"
"Johnson could supply enough hot air to power a continent. The truth is that many people have given up listening to Johnson"
"So many hostages to fortune in Johnson's bluster. Why does anyone still believe his increasingly demented fantasies?"
"As long as we are governed by these fools, I fear you may be correct in your assessment"
"Most of what Johnson said struck me as overblown fantasy"
"Question is who is going to deliver next year’s speech?"
Imagine knowing so little about politics as to believe that the posters on ConHome are actual Conservatives, rather than the Kippers and BXPers they in fact are...
Do not get a smart meter. Do not. The energy companies will use it to black you out when the inevitable gargantuan shortages of energy, any energy, cheap expensive, any, come. As they surely will.
Make no mistake, these policies are brave new world Maoism, and the results will be the same.
Have you got any evidence for this conspiracy theory nonsense?
And are you aware that blackouts and brownouts can occur without smart meters?
What happens when the wind stops blowing?
You rely upon backups or storage or interconnectors.
Oh Philip, do stop talking about things that you have absolutely zero knowledge of!
That is exactly what the UK is doing already. 🙄
But government policy is supposed to wean us off gas and French imports. Energy independence is the stated goal and yet we're talking about a huge investment in an energy source that doesn't do that. As I said it's complete bullshit.
If we can reliably export wind most of the time and import only when its needed then that would be a good thing would it not?
Export to who? It's not like oil or gas which can be stuck on a giant container ship and shipped all across the globe. We can sell energy to via an interconnect to France, Ireland and Belgium. There isn't a huge market for our energy as both France and Belgium are already net exporters of energy and Ireland is a tiny market.
I thought we were investing in interconnectors to Scandinavia and the Netherlands too?
Plus as I said before if we overinvest in bountiful clean, cheap energy then it should be possible to incentivise businesses that are energy-intensive but don't need to be 24/7 to operate when there is a surplus of energy and to shutdown when there is a shortage. With smart metres and electric vehicles at home there is the capability to do similar there too so people can charge their cars cheaper when there is a surplus.
Those are also tiny markets with surpluses. We are the next energy consumer in the region and the largest market except Germany. Also, being able to sell into a market is great, but we need to be able to cycle up when they need it rather than be able to sell it when we can offer it. They may not need the energy. Investing in a system that doesn't have the capability to cycle up and down on demand as the primary source is a horrible idea. Basing an export market on that is an even worse idea, what if we've sold energy futures to Germany and the wind isn't blowing?
Energy intensive business such as base metal production and manufacturing in general isn't a process that can simply be turned off, it needs a constant supply of reliable energy (which is why nuclear is still in the game). If we're moving to offshore wind as the primary generation method we will have to decide whether we will be a manufacturer of heavy goods in this country.
I was actually thinking of hydrogen production as an energy intensive business, plus hydrogen will soon be able to be used as secondary generation so it becomes its own backup.
If we have bountiful cheap energy in this country then we will be able to expand not contract as a manufacturer of heavy goods.
Yes. The plan would be to have a massive surplus of wind energy to turn into hydrogen. Then you can use the hydrogen for trains, for synthetic jet fuel, all sorts of other things.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
You're talking about a complete step change or revolution in power generation in the UK. Boris isn't talking about that, if he was then I'd at least understand the policy. You lot are all projecting an idealised version of offshore wind and hydrogen production through electrolysis with masses of excess energy. What we're going to get will be nothing like that, it will be a mush of strategies and by the time we realise it will lead to rolling blackouts it will be too late.
Let's be realistic about what will actually happen, not what we think should happen. One thing that everyone should have learned in this crisis is that the British state is bereft of any kind of creative thinking and problem solving ability, the machinery of government is simply incapable of thinking beyond tomorrow's headlines.
We have had a ten-fold increase increase in our wind power in the past decade and that increase is only escalating not falling. It is realistic to believe it will happen.
Starting from a small base. It's not the same as doing it today and there's nothing in government policy about using excess energy for hydrogen production by electrolysis. This is all nothing more than projection. The reality of this policy is intermittent power, more imports and burning more gas.
The hydrogen revolution dovetails with Britain’s colossal gamble on offshore wind, heading for 75 GW by mid-century if the Committee on Climate Change gets its way. The logical endgame is the construction of giant wind farms in the shallow waters of the North Sea - where flow conditions are superb - to generate power for exclusive use in hydrogen production. This would whittle down the cost.
Note that if you had 10 million electric cars on the road, you'd have perhaps 500GWh potential storage just there.
Would people want to degrade their lithium batteries in their personal cars to support the grid?
I think the idea is that people would be able to plug their cars in at home and have an ability to recharge cheaply when supply is high, unless they are desperate to recharge in which case they'd pay more to do so at peak.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
The power companies having been muttering about using plugged in cars as storage. Tesla, among others, have stated that they will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger....
Did you read the article? - the board changes were debunked. And Musk's statement was designed to push back on it happening - the utilities in the US have done some extraordinary stuff vs their tame legislators. Such as making going off grid illegal in some areas...
Yes. The reason I posted it was to make clear it's inaccurate to say that Tesla "will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger". As Musk made clear on battery day, they could offer the capability via software update. Tesla are understandably reluctant to do so, given their Powerwall business, I guess.
I'm finding it hard to reconcile the tightening of the race shown by YouGov over the last month and a bit with the movement in the other direction in the poll aggregate models.
I wonder if YouGov are picking up a trend in particular demographics that is being missed in the smaller sample polls that are the raw material for the aggregation models.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-54432170
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/tough-questions-answers-late-term-abortions-law-women-who-get-them/
He was quite clear that, in his view, all planning applications for any large scale schemes should take at least 10 years.
This kind of thinking is why will never get tidal ponds etc. The mini-nukes from RR will presumably cause him to combust.
Late term babies should be born and adopted. There are always childless couples looking for babies.
That would naturally smooth out supply and demand.
There are videos around too, but I wouldn't advise watching them.
Hmm. Yes, Boris, I'm sure that helps.
LOL.
When they say they will take it down to the wire its for a very simple reason. The closer we get to the end of the transition the sillier our "we will walk" threat will look considering that the infrastructure we have stated we need doesn't exist.
UK: "Now look here you foreign types, gives us what we want or we walk"
EU: "OK. Can you send us details of your new customs arrangements so that we can be ready".
UK: "They are world beating our new customs arrangements"
EU: "Can we see them?"
UK: "No"
We will fold. Because we have no choice.
Or should we give him credit that he is explaining the joke to those who didn't know?
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1313365580603371521?s=20
A more promising area is storage at the high capacity chargers. Next generation electric cars will be 150KwH plus, in terms of storage. The next generation high capacity chargers store electricity to smooth demand - bit like a tank of petrol under the pumps.
Tesla and others are already investigating the market for storing electricity at the charger and selling it back to the grid if the price is right.
The other trick is to have another basin which you open at a different time so it can generate electricity at High Water slack. It is having a differential in the heights that works. It does not have to be one basin. Two basins adjacent to each other and working out of phase with each other can provide continuous water movement.
In 2018 domestic electricity consumption was 35% of all electricity consumption. Industry and Services each used nearly as much as households. So why can't we get more than 100% of household electricity from wind while also using other solutions for the rest of it, able to balance it out?
I couldn't help thinking David Tenant was doing an impression of Alan Hansen!
The cobalt free lithium-iron phosphate battery is already pretty long lived.
That's one way of ignoring evidence I suppose.
If the economics stack up for Australia supplying Singapore (which apparently may well be the case), then Morocco/Spain is trivial.
https://electrek.co/2020/05/19/tesla-bidirectional-charging-ready-game-changing-features/
For it to count as a joke Boris would have to have mentioned that he was the one who said that. Otherwise ti doesn't work.
Terrific performance though.
If you have that large a surplus of wind energy then you probably don't need often to turn any of it back to electricity, you just pause the hydrogen production when the wind energy is low.
But that envisages ramping up wind energy production by a factor of ten, at least - not Johnson's modest ambition to double it only to satisfy household demand.
And, it's a great benefit to foreign companies like Vestas, but there were too many people standing in the way of progress in earlier decades for British industry to benefit. Johnson's ambition may not be high enough for us to gain a lead with hydrogen. Other European countries are moving quickly.
Even more so when everyone's driving cars with real time remote data logging.
https://woodbridgetidemill.org.uk/
Fun fact: due to the lunar cycle millers worked in 3- or 4-hour shifts that precessed against the clock. I think they were only able to mill on the flow tide as the ebb was too slow. And, of course, they worked a lot harder during spring tides than neap.
The audience was Conservative Party members anyway, who are far more likely to know what he had said in the past
Plus of course fools like Bienkov are giving Boris free publicity for what he's saying by sharing this, which he would have anticipated.
a) what the rules will be on Jan 1st 2021 for trade with the EU if we don't get a deal; and
b) what the rules will be on Jan 1st 2021 for trade with the EU if we get a deal.
but they won't because they will be told, in both cases, "That's not the Brexit we voted for".
Telling over 65s who have suffered most from covid that you shouldn’t be afraid of the virus is clearly the biggest own goal of all time especially as they are much more likely to vote .
His joyride and then bizarre appearance at the WH which ended with a maskless Trump entering the WH should go down in history as the moment voters said enough and which hopefully cements his election loss .
Or at 39?
a) I did not say I didn't believe the videos. I have never seen them and have no desire to see them as I am sure they are very distressing. I was quoting reputable sources which said they were tampered with.
b) I don't necessarily dislike the web sites as I don't know about them, but you are probably right as I don't like propaganda.
c) I would rather take evidence from reputable sources.
Just for the record I think abortion is a terrible thing, that must be appallingly distressing for all involved. I also believe there is a conflict between the interests of the unborn baby, father and mother. But I am very reluctantly however on the side of the law as it is and that it is the mothers decision.
Re the videos that I have no intention of watching, I am sure they are incredibly distressing even in an unedited format.
Today's polling doesn't suggest much of a sympathy vote for the GoP.
I expect the UK will be generating much, much more than household consumption by 2030.
Looking at the footage of Trump last night that's not a healthy man able to keep to a campaign schedule, so that should help Biden some more.
So Boris is saying he is pig ignorant of both history and economics but he should continue to run the country.
Ha ha ha ha. Funny joke.
And BoJo wasn't saying that 20 years ago, he was saying it 7 years ago. So once again, are we absolutely sure he was talking about himself? Does he have a good grip of the passage of time?
Incredibly difficult for the professionals, incredibly sad for the mother..
"If there is a massive meteorite impact that wipes out pretty much all the rest of it I guess this might actually be delivered on"
"Rule by decree, COVID terror, ever higher taxes, mass unemployment, unsustainable and ruinous green politics, punishment lockdowns. They are all here for the duration. There is no end"
"Johnson could supply enough hot air to power a continent. The truth is that many people have given up listening to Johnson"
"So many hostages to fortune in Johnson's bluster. Why does anyone still believe his increasingly demented fantasies?"
"As long as we are governed by these fools, I fear you may be correct in your assessment"
"Most of what Johnson said struck me as overblown fantasy"
"Question is who is going to deliver next year’s speech?"
The videos in that link are basically just people at planned parenthood talking and describing their methods regarding partial-birth abortions.
I don't believe much unquestionably these days, but I believe what I can see with my own eyes, regardless of whether a reputable source tells me afterwards that I didn't actually see it.
Let's be realistic about what will actually happen, not what we think should happen. One thing that everyone should have learned in this crisis is that the British state is bereft of any kind of creative thinking and problem solving ability, the machinery of government is simply incapable of thinking beyond tomorrow's headlines.
My impression at the moment is that they don't go far enough on a charge to interest me anyway, and 80% of not far enough is even less appetising. Might think differently if I still lived in London and drove mainly within it.
The reason I posted it was to make clear it's inaccurate to say that Tesla "will never add the capability to draw power from the batter via the charger".
As Musk made clear on battery day, they could offer the capability via software update. Tesla are understandably reluctant to do so, given their Powerwall business, I guess.
I wonder if YouGov are picking up a trend in particular demographics that is being missed in the smaller sample polls that are the raw material for the aggregation models.