Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Article out today on this, asking why everyone hasn't done it already? Perhaps folk don't realize just how cheap LED's already are.

This is your hobby, most people dont know any better

Here is an idea for you lot. Start a website and a charity to go and change light bulbs in homes.

You can start small. Raise just £200 and buy 100 bulbs and go to your own street and knock on doors saying you are a charity and are replacing incandescent lights with LEDs for free.

Keep a record of the address and how many bulbs you have changed. Take some photos and this will be enough to raise more funding.

Don't over complicate it make it a one man charity with volunteers

Say you keep the funds and then volunteers sign up with you. You can buy them bulbs off amazon to be shipped to their address and they can go install them in their neighborhood. Once installed you can buy more bulbs for them and repeat

One volunteer could perhaps do 10 homes in one day replacing 10 bulbs per home = 100 bulbs. Say they volunteer 10 days thats 1,000 bulbs replaced.

With just 10 volunteers and you can change over 10,000 bulbs

If each bulb saves 50KWh per year that would be 500,000 kWh annual saving (500MWh!!!)

Now collecting the funds for 10,000 bulbs would be a costly £20,000 but this is modular you can literally start with just 10 bulbs and change one house over and go from there

As a group you lot should get together and a dozen of you do this and take photos and go from there.

I will donate the first £20 go do it and take photos.
I am willing to donate another £80 which would take my contribution to 5 homes so long as another 5 people match this.

Keep doing it and you can grow this into a big charity and get LEDs out there at least a few years before they naturally would do

But make it all volunteers no way do I want to donate money to this venture if £9 out of every £10 goes to staff wages rather than light bulbs.

GreatApe

Or you could try and make it DIY

Raise £10,000 from a go fund me page or similar

Buy 10,000 LEDs (assuming discount for bulk purchase)

Then go hand them out in a shopping center or similar

Hope 30%+ actually make it into homes rather than into someones kitchen draw

While this is less light bulb installed efficiency it is more time efficient you could hand them all out in a single day with just one person

michaels

GreatApe wrote: »

Or you could try and make it DIY

Raise £10,000 from a go fund me page or similar

Buy 10,000 LEDs (assuming discount for bulk purchase)

Then go hand them out in a shopping center or similar

Hope 30%+ actually make it into homes rather than into someones kitchen draw

While this is less light bulb installed efficiency it is more time efficient you could hand them all out in a single day with just one person

The energy companies used to have to run energy efficiency schemes. Why not just make it compulsory for them to send for free leds bulbs to any customer who requested them?

Martyn1981

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I must have missed it. I fell over it today reading a discussion on the Guardian.

Someone suggested P2G of 80% efficiency, and I thought 'not quite mate'. But when asked for a link one was provided.

Power-to-gas with high efficiency

The beauty here is that you have an instant/easy storage mechanism for excess leccy generation. And whilst gas has much lower value, the leccy being used would be at a very low value too.

Looking at OFGEM's wholesale price, a therm seems to have been around 60p (50-75p) over the last year, so about 2p/kWh. That would therefore provide a minimal value for leccy somewhere in the £15/MWh region during excess times (depending on the cost of the process), and (optimistically) lower leccy prices at higher demand times due to more RE rollout due to said backstop value.

Lot's of Marty guessing going on here, but some fun pondering for me today.

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I must have missed it. I fell over it today reading a discussion on the Guardian.

Someone suggested P2G of 80% efficiency, and I thought 'not quite mate'. But when asked for a link one was provided.

Power-to-gas with high efficiency

The beauty here is that you have an instant/easy storage mechanism for excess leccy generation. And whilst gas has much lower value, the leccy being used would be at a very low value too.

Looking at OFGEM's wholesale price, a therm seems to have been around 60p (50-75p) over the last year, so about 2p/kWh. That would therefore provide a minimal value for leccy somewhere in the £15/MWh region during excess times (depending on the cost of the process), and (optimistically) lower leccy prices at higher demand times due to more RE rollout due to said backstop value.

Lot's of Marty guessing going on here, but some fun pondering for me today.

It is silly to even think you can build a large chemical plant and hire chemical engineers to then run this plant 20% of the time when the wind blows hard. How many chemical engineers do you think you can hire on zero hour contracts where they may only be called in for a few hours a week or a few days a month?

Plus I can create a virtual electricity to chemical plant for you that works at 125% conversion and costs close to nothing its called smart heating.

A typical home in the winter months may need around 3KW of heat from the boiler (70KWh in the day) so 3 million homes could absorb 210GWh of daily excess wind. And since wind tends to output more in the winter it correlates well too.

And you dont even need a smart boiler you could just install smart electric radiators into one of the hallways of a home. Such electric radiators cost almost nothing just ~£30 for 3KW install 3 million such radiators they can even be free standing and plug in.

There you have it, a virtual 9GW excess 'wind to gas' plant operating at 125% efficiency and costing close to nothing and can be deployed in months and needs no staff to run no land to build a chemical plant and no waste output and no need to hire chemical engineers on zero hour contracts

The energy companies can charge a lower electricity price to the electricity used in those smart radiators. Maybe only 4-5p/Kwh so it costs the customer no more than using their boiler.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

The energy companies used to have to run energy efficiency schemes. Why not just make it compulsory for them to send for free leds bulbs to any customer who requested them?

Those that request them dont need them they would have already bought, those that know no better wont be requesting them

However maybe have the energy companies install LEDs via their network of meter readers. They visit the home anyway so if it takes them say 15 mins extra to install light bulbs the cost is 1/4th of an hours wages @ say £20/ph that is an additional cost of just £5 plus the cost of the bulbs

That might work better

Or do so when they send over someone to convert the old meter into a smart meter

Martyn1981

Well this surprised me -

UK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds commission

The UK leads the European Union in giving subsidies to fossil fuels, according to a report from the European commission. It found €12bn (£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy.

The commission report warned that the total subsidies for coal, oil and gas across the EU remained at the same level as 2008. This is despite both the EU and G20 having long pledged to phase out the subsidies, which hamper the rapid transition to clean energy needed to fight climate change.

Germany provided the biggest energy subsidies, with €27bn for renewable energy, almost three times the €9.5bn given to fossil fuels. Spain and Italy also gave more subsidies to renewable energy than fossil fuels.

But along with the UK, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Ireland all gave more to fossil fuels. The report is based on 2016 Eurostat data, the latest available, and found that across the EU renewable energy received 45% of subsidies and fossil fuels 33%.

I think this bit helps to clarify where/what some of these subsidies are -

A significant part of the UK fossil fuel subsidies identified by the commission is the 5% rate of VAT on domestic gas and electricity, cut from the standard 20%. The UK government did not dispute the data but denied that it provided any subsidies for fossil fuels under its own definition and that of the International Energy Agency.

For clarity, having a lower VAT rate, might seem like a good idea, but of course a lower price helps to keep demand higher, which also means more sales for the generators/suppliers.

But also distributes subsidies to all / lower income.

Complicated.

Martyn1981

Interesting, despite the misleading (fun) title.

New UK Energy Storage Idea Is As Dumb As A Box Of Rocks

Potentially very large scale storage of low value excess generation (after shorter term storage such as batts is exhausted (full)).

The researchers predicted the UK’s storage capacity using a database of geological formations in the North Sea. They say the porous sandstone could store about one and a half times the UK’s typical electricity demand for January and February.

Good, bad or ugly, the more options we have, should lead to more viable solutions when investigated. Cool.

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Interesting, despite the misleading (fun) title.

New UK Energy Storage Idea Is As Dumb As A Box Of Rocks

Potentially very large scale storage of low value excess generation (after shorter term storage such as batts is exhausted (full)).



Good, bad or ugly, the more options we have, should lead to more viable solutions when investigated. Cool.

But how much would it cost per kwh?

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Well this surprised me -

UK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds commission



I think this bit helps to clarify where/what some of these subsidies are -



For clarity, having a lower VAT rate, might seem like a good idea, but of course a lower price helps to keep demand higher, which also means more sales for the generators/suppliers.

But also distributes subsidies to all / lower income.

Complicated.

Political suicide but economic good sense would be not to have less tax on heating a home than on buying energy efficiency measures or even just a thick sweater. If you are worried about equality/poverty then address this using tax/benefits not hidden subsidies

[Who gains most from the lower tax rate in £s? Obviously those who use the most who are probably in the biggest houses with the most assets and often highest incomes, thus in terms of targeting support to those who need it the lower tax rates are extremely inefficient.]

Anyone want to lobby their MP to persuade them to end this economic and environmental stupidity? Thought not.