Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

michaels

I think it is worth considering the question of how to support peak energy demand if we switch from fossil fuel for domestic space heating and am happy to hear both mainstream and left field suggestions - although I do agree to be news they probably need to link to a publication.

zeupater

JKenH wrote: »

There was an interesting article in today’s Daily Telegraph which sheds some light on why the musings of Great Ape cause such condemnation ...

Hi

I think that it's far more likely that the reason is linked to the musings being related to maintaining the current centralised position as opposed to a decentralised approach, this being combined with an obvious failure to correctly apply laws of physics and engineering practices within those musings ...

When challenged with logic and referenced data, the 'this is so' approach is usually defended by modified restatement and delivering major changes as if they were subtle tweaks, so keep an eye out for when this happens ....

In reading the past couple of posts above I find that there's plenty of misconception on the level of validity of what's been posted recently ... from my viewpoint all I see is commentary, argument & integrated quoted text by others and if a position deserves a level of support or explanation it may be offered, particularly to counter illogical interpretation & often deliberate misinformation.

Recently I've provided input on pressure loss within pipes, cavitation, laminar flow, material selection, pressure to temperature effects on materials, pumping energy differentials with flow rate, heat-loss, engineering case study from a recent reasonable scale UK CHP development to show what's involved (civil engineering work & materials) along with costs, and a link to a comprehensive descriptive report regarding what's probably the most well known city-scale CHP system in existence, which itself explains the issues, delivery efficiencies, destination energy analysis, likely ongoing costs of connections and future connection conditions - this being from the scheme operator themselves! ... from previous experience I'd expect that all of this would be countered by a 'finger in the air' approach to costs based on a bunch of illogical harebrained ideas designed to misrepresent as opposed to making an attempt to perform a realistic costing of assets, work & disruption ...


Anyone with a basic understanding of large business operations and/or engineering solutions would likely consider the referenced Telegraph article as being unrelated to the 'musings' (I sort of like that description for a level of illogical technical input!) and just be concerned by the errors & misinformation that are injected with little reason other than to drive disruption ...

HTH ....
Z

zeupater

michaels wrote: »

I think it is worth considering the question of how to support peak energy demand if we switch from fossil fuel for domestic space heating and am happy to hear both mainstream and left field suggestions - although I do agree to be news they probably need to link to a publication.

Hi

That's really interesting and has always been a bone for many to gnaw on when considering what's involved and the effect on efficiency, heat-loss and energy source ....

If you look around the forum you'll see plenty of threads with a title like "Is it cheaper to leave my heating on all of the time" ... and that's really the crux which will need to be considered to drive future heating (whether CHP or heat-pump etc) ...

Effectively, if heating provision is only for a few hours/day, the thermal energy required over those hours must be equivalent to the building heat loss between, so the max 'power' requirement is high for a short period, requiring a larger heat source & maximum demand .... if the same energy is delivered on a continual basis the source & demand is diluted by time ... if heat-loss is relatively constant at (say) 48kWh/day, then the available options would include replenishment at 12kW for 4 hours -or- 2kW for 24hours ...

Of course, the higher the power load on the infrastructure, the more costly the infrastructure, so whether it's a CHP pipe or copper wire supplying the energy, the source & infrastructure needs to handle the peak ... so it's a cheaper infrastructure investment option to smooth supply as much as possible ...

Now, whilst we're talking smoothed demand on a daily basis it's important to recognise that periodic smoothing doesn't work on a simple averaging basis, it has to cope with peaking within periodic demand ... for example, if the heating season was considered to be 180days per year, you couldn't simply take annual heating demand and simply divide by 180days then further subdividing this by 24hrs to calculate a power provision . We're all aware that when it's cold the property loses more heat & that cold periods could be extensive which, if the heat provision is underspecified, leads to a gradual incremental cooling of the property ... so the heating system provision needs to cope with this ...

In a way this is effectively this is what we do with our heating .... our heat-pump provides a considerable proportion of our heating requirements using our own generated electricity for the majority of the heating season, thus providing little heat for reasonably long periods, there is additional load on the grid in cooler evenings, but this is normally at a level well below the difference between a plasma or CRT TV and it's LED equivalent ... after this we sill have the options of GCH or biomass, but that's now only required as a top up for between ~a couple of dozen days & ~a month per year on average ... however, in running our small (air-to-air) heat-pump continuously it wouldn't have too mush of an issue in delivering 50-60kWh over 24hrs, which isn't too far from what would be considered a reasonable peak space heating demand for many properties. Maybe 2 units would be required for some, but the issue then is heat distribution within the domestic 'box' ... anyway, heat provision for what some currently classify as being base load isn't bad, it's just that many need to consider the implications of what COP means relative to future infrastructure provision ...

HTH
Z

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

Mart, you are perfectly free to choose alternatives to !!!!!!. What is stopping you getting an EV or a heat pump? Other members on this forum have already gone down that route. What is it you want the government to do that would make you buy or lease an EV - substantial grants are already in place?

If every one who was genuinely concerned about AGW “put their money where their mouth is” (not particularly polite but apposite) the cost of renewables would already have fallen and we would be much further down the road.

Oh boy!

I should really ignore this silliness, but I'll waste some time.

I do have a heat pump. I also have a green energy supplier, with partial green gas. Wifey and I own a single 6 year old car, and when finances allow, and costs for a suitable vehicle, large enough to transport building materials (I do maintenance work for the cat rescue I volunteer at), and two large dogs (we board for Guide Dogs, as trainees or when folk are on holiday), becomes available, we will go down that route.

But back to a sensible discussion, for individuals to shift on mass, we need policies and products that will allow all of us.

To place the blame on individuals, or as you previously attempted, to move the blame off Big Oil (and gas) is a rather unpleasant angle that I have little sympathy with.

Big Tobacco knew smoking was seriously harmful from the 1950's, but did all they could to mislead and stall. Big Oil did the same since the 80's, and I'd suggest that Big Auto has been playing similar games with low production EV's, and concept cars for nearly a decade.

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

I think their is a correlation between our standard of living and energy usage which currently largely also equates to ff usage. Thus at the moment to be greener we need to consume less = a lower standard of living.

I consume less than before thanks to more efficient lamps, TV's etc, and better insulation. No lowering of living standards, and lower bills.

michaels wrote: »

This works for the economy as a whole just as it works for the individual. Electric cars are more efficient but cost more, switching to heat pumps uses less energy but costs more for installation and running costs.

Over their life the TCO (total cost of ownership) of BEV's is lower and still falling, so they don't cost more, and the running costs of a heat pump should be less, not more than GCH. And both ICEV's and FF GCH fail to include the true (carbon) cost.

michaels wrote: »

Yes over time we can get greener without being worse off but right now there is a cost that most are not willing to pay. [I suspect the reason is that psychologically we discount the future more than our offspring would like us to]

Is there really a cost, a high cost, and one that 'most' are unwilling to pay? Didn't this suggestion come up recently and I supplied evidence (26 quarterly surveys) that the public massively support renewables, support has risen during the time they've been deployed and levies have impacted our bills, folk believe the costs to be more than an order of magnitude greater than they are, and subsidy costs have fallen massively ....... already.

Martyn1981

JKenH wrote: »

There was an interesting article in today’s Daily Telegraph which sheds some light on why the musings of Great Ape cause such condemnation.

Here is an extract

The US psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown how progressives particularly struggle to comprehend the motives of conservatives; he found that, when asked to think as their opponents do, conservatives answered moral questions as the liberal would have done, yet liberals were unable to perform the reverse exercise. This tendency to mischaracterise perhaps explains progressives’ heightened fear of ending up on the losing side – since your opponents must have the worst of intentions – and why many seek solace in forms of “in-group love” like the Twitter hashtag #FBPE (“follow back, pro EU”).



The full article is available here.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/08/07/eco-zealots-hardline-remainers-driven-feelings-not-facts/

So the right are blaming liberals!

Perhaps the right should look at the facts and evidence that support green and ethical energy, and stop obsessing over old and outdated pro-nuclear/FF opinions.

Personally I condemn the comments based on many years of reading them, answering them with facts, and realising that someone that would then repeat them, knowing them to be false (or delete 100's of posts and deny ever saying something) and displaying a long standing anti-RE position, is not worth listening too on a green and ethical board/thread.

Also you will find that contradictory comments will be made to defend a position at any given time. For instance Hexane has quoted a claim that pollution from cars is minor or nil - but a few years ago 'cells' argued against the large health impacts from coal generation on air pollution on the basis that its contribution was negligible compared to that of ICEV's (particularly diesels).

When someone changes their claims to suit each discussion, alarm bells should be ringing regarding their true motives. Once those alarm bells get loud enough, even moderate folk (like myself) will reach for the ignore option - and I only have two on there, so I don't think I'm exactly trigger happy.

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

I think that it's far more likely that the reason is linked to the musings being related to maintaining the current centralised position as opposed to a decentralised approach, this being combined with an obvious failure to correctly apply laws of physics and engineering practices within those musings ...

When challenged with logic and referenced data, the 'this is so' approach is usually defended by modified restatement and delivering major changes as if they were subtle tweaks, so keep an eye out for when this happens ....

In reading the past couple of posts above I find that there's plenty of misconception on the level of validity of what's been posted recently ... from my viewpoint all I see is commentary, argument & integrated quoted text by others and if a position deserves a level of support or explanation it may be offered, particularly to counter illogical interpretation & often deliberate misinformation.

Recently I've provided input on pressure loss within pipes, cavitation, laminar flow, material selection, pressure to temperature effects on materials, pumping energy differentials with flow rate, heat-loss, engineering case study from a recent reasonable scale UK CHP development to show what's involved (civil engineering work & materials) along with costs, and a link to a comprehensive descriptive report regarding what's probably the most well known city-scale CHP system in existence, which itself explains the issues, delivery efficiencies, destination energy analysis, likely ongoing costs of connections and future connection conditions - this being from the scheme operator themselves! ... from previous experience I'd expect that all of this would be countered by a 'finger in the air' approach to costs based on a bunch of illogical harebrained ideas designed to misrepresent as opposed to making an attempt to perform a realistic costing of assets, work & disruption ...


Anyone with a basic understanding of large business operations and/or engineering solutions would likely consider the referenced Telegraph article as being unrelated to the 'musings' (I sort of like that description for a level of illogical technical input!) and just be concerned by the errors & misinformation that are injected with little reason other than to drive disruption ...

HTH ....
Z

What qualifications and work experience do you have to be able to claim to be the arbiter of science technology and economics?

GreatApe

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

That's really interesting and has always been a bone for many to gnaw on when considering what's involved and the effect on efficiency, heat-loss and energy source ....

If you look around the forum you'll see plenty of threads with a title like "Is it cheaper to leave my heating on all of the time" ... and that's really the crux which will need to be considered to drive future heating (whether CHP or heat-pump etc) ...

Effectively, if heating provision is only for a few hours/day, the thermal energy required over those hours must be equivalent to the building heat loss between, so the max 'power' requirement is high for a short period, requiring a larger heat source & maximum demand .... if the same energy is delivered on a continual basis the source & demand is diluted by time ... if heat-loss is relatively constant at (say) 48kWh/day, then the available options would include replenishment at 12kW for 4 hours -or- 2kW for 24hours ...

Of course, the higher the power load on the infrastructure, the more costly the infrastructure, so whether it's a CHP pipe or copper wire supplying the energy, the source & infrastructure needs to handle the peak ... so it's a cheaper infrastructure investment option to smooth supply as much as possible ...

Now, whilst we're talking smoothed demand on a daily basis it's important to recognise that periodic smoothing doesn't work on a simple averaging basis, it has to cope with peaking within periodic demand ... for example, if the heating season was considered to be 180days per year, you couldn't simply take annual heating demand and simply divide by 180days then further subdividing this by 24hrs to calculate a power provision . We're all aware that when it's cold the property loses more heat & that cold periods could be extensive which, if the heat provision is underspecified, leads to a gradual incremental cooling of the property ... so the heating system provision needs to cope with this ...

In a way this is effectively this is what we do with our heating .... our heat-pump provides a considerable proportion of our heating requirements using our own generated electricity for the majority of the heating season, thus providing little heat for reasonably long periods, there is additional load on the grid in cooler evenings, but this is normally at a level well below the difference between a plasma or CRT TV and it's LED equivalent ... after this we sill have the options of GCH or biomass, but that's now only required as a top up for between ~a couple of dozen days & ~a month per year on average ... however, in running our small (air-to-air) heat-pump continuously it wouldn't have too mush of an issue in delivering 50-60kWh over 24hrs, which isn't too far from what would be considered a reasonable peak space heating demand for many properties. Maybe 2 units would be required for some, but the issue then is heat distribution within the domestic 'box' ... anyway, heat provision for what some currently classify as being base load isn't bad, it's just that many need to consider the implications of what COP means relative to future infrastructure provision ...

HTH
Z

Nobody asked for your life story, arbiter of truth and goodness

Michael was asking what the hell is Gona happen to peak electricity demand if you electrify heating nationally

The answer is something along the lines of 'its going to go from about 50GW to probably over 200GW' and we can see this by looking at peak demands of already electrified heating nations like Norway Sweden and partially electrified nations like France and extrapolate to UK population size

That you do X y or z in your particular circumstances is irrelevant unless you are planning to convert everyone to live in homes like you think and act like you

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

So the right are blaming liberals!

Perhaps the right should look at the facts and evidence that support green and ethical energy, and stop obsessing over old and outdated pro-nuclear/FF opinions.

Personally I condemn the comments based on many years of reading them, answering them with facts, and realising that someone that would then repeat them, knowing them to be false (or delete 100's of posts and deny ever saying something) and displaying a long standing anti-RE position, is not worth listening too on a green and ethical board/thread.

Also you will find that contradictory comments will be made to defend a position at any given time. For instance Hexane has quoted a claim that pollution from cars is minor or nil - but a few years ago 'cells' argued against the large health impacts from coal generation on air pollution on the basis that its contribution was negligible compared to that of ICEV's (particularly diesels).

When someone changes their claims to suit each discussion, alarm bells should be ringing regarding their true motives. Once those alarm bells get loud enough, even moderate folk (like myself) will reach for the ignore option - and I only have two on there, so I don't think I'm exactly trigger happy.

I still maintain that the negative health effects of burning coal a hundred miles away are less than that of traffic outside your front door and that the health effects of traffic are negligible compared to dozens of normal human habits. Like alcohol tabaco stress obesity or even simply driving or crime

Do you feel more healthy now that some 80% of the coal plants in the UK have closed?
Coal burning has gone down 90% over the last five years or so
Has the national life expectancy gone up because of it......???
Are NHS doctors suddenly void of patients thanks to the 90% reduction of coal burning???
No...? Guess the negative health impacts were always exaggerated propaganda then!


If you feel heath and well being is so critical then funnel the wind mill and PV panel subsidy into the NHS you'd probably get 1,000s X better outcomes.

Martyn1981

These articles are both about solar, as they from solar news sources, but I think the bigger picture is one of RE rising, and FF declining, which sounds like good news to me (though perhaps not to the hard right. )

Solar-plus-EVs economics to trigger a ‘relentless and irreversible decline’ for oil, report states

The economics of combining solar and other renewables with electric vehicles is becoming so compelling that the oil sector faces a “relentless and irreversible decline”, a new report from BNP Paribas has concluded.

The report, dubbed ‘Wells, wires and wheels’, examines the link between mobility, energy and capital investments, introducing the concept of ‘energy return on capital invested’ (EROCI).

That metric focuses on how much useful energy or mobility would be returned from a specific capital outlay in competing technologies, with the report squarely focusing on oil’s return for petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles and renewables alongside battery electric vehicles.

The bank’s analysis concludes that for the same capital outlay, wind, solar and battery EVs can deliver between 6.2 and 7-times more useful energy than oil if it’s priced at US$60 per barrel, roughly the same price as Brent Crude is today.

[Had to draw the line somewhere, or I'd have copied the whole article, as it's short, but packed with highlights. Worth a quick read. M.]


And along similar lines:

Solar-plus-storage grid parity sweeps through top EU markets

The costs of residential solar-plus-storage have already dropped or will only take a few years to drop to nation-wide grid averages across key European markets, according to Wood Mackenzie.

Storage systems installed across Europe’s homes will boom by a factor of five to hit a cumulative 6.6GWh by 2024, the firm predicted in its latest analysis.

[Posted on this thread, as I truly believe demand side storage (including BEV's) will help a country to reach much higher penetrations of RE leccy on the grid. M.]