https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/

There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
popular discontent.

On 12/12/2022 15:43, John Larkin wrote:
>
> https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>
> There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
> countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
> popular discontent.

Wind 3.3% is actually contributing more to the UK grid today than coal
1.28% is. There are very few coal fired power stations left.

The biggest ones have all been converted to biomass 6% burning stuff
that we import from the USA and Canada trashing primary forests:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63089348

Drax Corporation sounds like a Bond villain for good measure.

Gridwatch shows that demand is in the orange right now and will
inevitably go into the red when people get home and put their cookers
on. Most of the electricity generating and continental interlinks are
maxxed out they are even using pumped storage at this point in the day.

https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

More than half the UK's electricity is from gas turbines (and that goes
up to 60% when everything is running flat out in winter). The *big*
gotcha is that we have roughly 10 days gas storage capacity at an
average burn rate (less when it is all running flat out).

Solar in winter at our latitude isn't worth having. It has been grey and
foggy for most of today and solar panels are all covered in thick hoar
frost.

Most of the UK's electricity generation problems are of the governments
making - experts have been warning for decades that the lack of
investment in infrastructure and the dash for gas left us dangerously
exposed. They closed down the last big gas storage facility in 2017 and
are frantically trying to get it back online. We will end up paying
insane spot market prices for gas and electricity to keep the lights on.

Or not - there are plans for rolling powercuts that the government hopes
not to have to use. I have recently bought a higher capacity UPS and
already had a generator. We were off grid for two days last year and I
fully expect it to be very much worse this time around.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Monday, December 12, 2022 at 7:43:57 AM UTC-8, John Larkin wrote:
> https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>
> There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
> countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
> popular discontent.

Oddly, the combination of cold and windless is more important than cloudy and windless;
the great smog of winter 1952 killed thousands in London, due to trapped coal fire emissions.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London>

On Monday, December 12, 2022 at 10:43:57 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
> https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>
> There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
> countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
> popular discontent.

That's one reason there is such intense research into energy storage. DoE is now embarking on large scale demonstration projects of underground "Earth Battery" storage systems: Geological Survey has already identified over 10,000 suitable sites. There may be a problem with earthquakes- but those are the breaks. And their planning is not being done by a white supremist South African, whose education apparently consists of reading Popular Mechanics and Isaac Asimov fantasy.

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/11/30/underground-water-battery-to-bust-energy-storage-dam-wide-open/

On Monday, December 12, 2022 at 3:21:26 PM UTC-4, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> On Monday, December 12, 2022 at 10:43:57 AM UTC-5, John Larkin wrote:
> > https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
> >
> > There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
> > countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
> > popular discontent.
> That's one reason there is such intense research into energy storage. DoE is now embarking on large scale demonstration projects of underground "Earth Battery" storage systems: Geological Survey has already identified over 10,000 suitable sites. There may be a problem with earthquakes- but those are the breaks. And their planning is not being done by a white supremist South African, whose education apparently consists of reading Popular Mechanics and Isaac Asimov fantasy.
>
> https://cleantechnica.com/2022/11/30/underground-water-battery-to-bust-energy-storage-dam-wide-open/

So earthquake by fracking, or earthquake by geobattery. Choose your poison!

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 07:43:45 -0800, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

>
>https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>
>There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
>countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
>popular discontent.

What they need is energy storage. What they should use until that
becomes a useful reality is most likely nuclear.

As for photovoltaics and cold weather, PV works better at cold
temperatures but you still need sun.

boB

On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 13:01:36 -0800, boB <boB@K7IQ.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 07:43:45 -0800, John Larkin
><jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>>
>>There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
>>countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
>>popular discontent.
>
>
>What they need is energy storage. What they should use until that
>becomes a useful reality is most likely nuclear.
>
>As for photovoltaics and cold weather, PV works better at cold
>temperatures but you still need sun.
>
>boB

Enough energy storage to get a country (or a house) reliable power
through the winter will be insanely expensive, but insanely expensive
is what some people want.

“Under my plan … electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Barack Obama

On 12/12/2022 15:43, John Larkin wrote:
>
> https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>
> There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
> countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
> popular discontent.

Although the national Grid did ask them to warm up ready they were stood
down again in the early afternoon without ever being put onto the grid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63940390

UK energy policy fail is not so much due to greens as a total lack of
investment in any new plant for a very long time. Shutting down the gas
bulk storage facility in 2017 was the dumbest thing they have done
recently. Vast numbers of power supply companies have gone but here
because of deregulation - they had no clue what they were doing and were
annihilated when the price of gas and electricity went up last year.

Here is a very relevant warning from one expert, Professor Ian Fells
back in 2008 it is almost prescient in what he predicts will happen if
nothing is done (and predictably nothing was done).

https://www.theengineer.co.uk/content/in-depth/generation-gap/

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

On Tue, 13 Dec 2022 06:14:32 -0800 (PST), Anthony William Sloman
<bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:

>On Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 8:01:47 AM UTC+11, boB wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 07:43:45 -0800, John Larkin
>> <jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/12/green-fail-uk-grid-fires-up-coal-power-stations-amid-energy-crisis/
>> >
>> >There will be occasional cloudy windless days and weeks across entire
>> >countries. Night keeps happening too. Absent storage, that will cause
>> >popular discontent.
>>
>> What they need is energy storage. What they should use until that becomes a useful reality is most likely nuclear.
>
>Energy storage is useful now, and it would be a lot quicker to build more of it than it would be to build more nuclear generating plants.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
>
>was started in 1974 and opened in 1984 , which isn't quick, but still faster that nuclear generating plants.
>
>https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/
>
>uses Musk's car batteries and was delivered within a hundred days.

Nice facility to support maybe half a dozen wind turbines :-)

That 129 MWh storage capacity is miniscule, capable of delivering 5 MW
for 24 hours on a calm day. With successive calm days, the available
power would be even less.

However the electronics support 100 MW charging/discharging so the 129
MWh would last only for an hour. Sounds like the facility is built to
handle multiple turbines constantly reaching nominal power and then
dropping out many times an hour.

I calculated the values for a 3 MW wind turbine and 33 % COP at the
site.

A container full of Li-ion batteries at _each_and_every_ wind turbine
base would make wind energy quite well behaving, About 15-25 MWh
Li-ion could fit into a container.

>Vanadium flow cells
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanadium_redox_battery
>
>would probably be better, but they aren't being manufactured in volume yet. The capital investment required to set a high volume production line is probably a good deal less than you'd need to invest in a nuclear generating plant any you'd get working hardware a good deal faster.

They would be much bulkier than Li-ion recurring multiple containers
for a wind turbine.

>
>> As for photovoltaics and cold weather, PV works better at cold temperatures but you still need sun.

The temperature coefficient is about -2 mV/C so going from +20 C to
-30 C will increase the cell output voltage by 100 mV from 600 mV to
700 mV, thus the output power is slightly larger.

However, if the panel is covered by 50 cm of snow, the daylight last
for a few hours and the sky is cloudy, very little energy is obtained.

>
>The sun doesn't go away in winter.

But it is very low, so air mass losses and trees and other obstacles
reduce the output, even if you have cleared the snow from the panels.

>You can't see it for as long,

Today at 60 N the sun was up for less than 6 hours reaching 7.5
degrees at noon.

> particularly when you get above the Arctic circle or below the Antarctic circle, but there aren't that many people living there.

Quite a few millions live around 60 N in Europe.

On Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 7:16:06 AM UTC-8, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2022 06:14:32 -0800 (PST), Anthony William Sloman
> <bill....@ieee.org> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 8:01:47 AM UTC+11, boB wrote:

> >> As for photovoltaics and cold weather, PV works better at cold temperatures but you still need sun.
> The temperature coefficient is about -2 mV/C so going from +20 C to
> -30 C will increase the cell output voltage by 100 mV from 600 mV to
> 700 mV, thus the output power is slightly larger.
>
> However, if the panel is covered by 50 cm of snow, the daylight last
> for a few hours and the sky is cloudy, very little energy is obtained.

At latitudes where daylights lasts 'a few hours', vertical panels are what you'd
want, aimed at the horizon, where the sun is. So, the '50 cm of snow'
problem doesn't arise unless the snow sticks on verticals.

When the snow in front of the panels acts as a mirror, the panel will get some
extra photons...

On Wed, 14 Dec 2022 21:26:25 -0800 (PST), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 7:16:06 AM UTC-8, upsid...@downunder.com wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Dec 2022 06:14:32 -0800 (PST), Anthony William Sloman
>> <bill....@ieee.org> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday, December 13, 2022 at 8:01:47 AM UTC+11, boB wrote:
>
>> >> As for photovoltaics and cold weather, PV works better at cold temperatures but you still need sun.
>> The temperature coefficient is about -2 mV/C so going from +20 C to
>> -30 C will increase the cell output voltage by 100 mV from 600 mV to
>> 700 mV, thus the output power is slightly larger.
>>
>> However, if the panel is covered by 50 cm of snow, the daylight last
>> for a few hours and the sky is cloudy, very little energy is obtained.
>
>At latitudes where daylights lasts 'a few hours', vertical panels are what you'd
>want, aimed at the horizon, where the sun is. So, the '50 cm of snow'
>problem doesn't arise unless the snow sticks on verticals.

While installing the panels on a south facing wall will solve the snow
problem, however the air mass issue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_mass_(solar_energy)
must be considered. When the sun is 5 degrees above the horizon (85
degree zenith distance) the sun rays must pass through about 10 air
masses, the illumination level (and hence panel output power) will
drop to 1/4 compared to the high sun situation.

Clouds are also harmful when the sun is quite low. Even when the sky
is partially cloudy and some blue sky can be seen, the clouds will
quite effectively block the rays from a the sun close to the horizon.

However, a vertical panel is quite ineffective in the summer.

>When the snow in front of the panels acts as a mirror, the panel will get some
>extra photons...

This help in March and April, when the sun is higher and the angles
are more favorable.