National solar power within 10 years (national grid supply)?

QrizB

markin said:

Dolor said:

markin said:

The main point being wind and solar will not crash the price of power in the next 10 years, making home solar worth it, whether its 7 years at current prices or back to 1200 a year and takes 10 years.

But then maybe in 7 years time we will all have a home battery and use cheap night wind power.

It is worth reading this article which points out that producing green energy is one challenge: the other is getting it to consumers on a National Grid that is configured for a bygone era:

https://www.newstatesman.com/the-business-interview/2021/10/it-is-truly-bonkers-greg-jackson-octopus-ceo-on-the-uks-broken-energy-system

He was so close to saying it will be 'too cheap to meter'

I had to go refresh my memory on Sir David MacKay's Numbers for wind, 'Energy Without hot air' p73

http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf

"The UK government announced on 10th December 2007 that it would permit the creation of 33 GW of offshore wind capacity (which would de-liver on average 10 GW to the UK, or 4.4 kWh per day per person), a plan branded “pie in the sky” by some in the wind industry. Let’s run with a round figure of 4 kWh per day per person. This is one quarter of shallow 16 kWh per day per person. To obtain this average power requires roughly 10 000 “3 MW” wind turbines like those in figure 10.1. (They have a capacity of “3 MW” but on average they deliver 1 MW. I pop quotes round “3 MW” to indicate that this is a capacity, a peak power. "

Yet here we are today, 13 years on from that book being published, with 11000 turbines installled, total nameplate capacity 24GW, generating 75TWh/yr and contributing almost 25% of our electricity needs.

And roughly the same again under construction or being planned.

Verdigris

IIRC MacKay was somewhat pro-nuclear, which costs at least 3 times more than wind, without the still largely unaccounted-for costs of disposal and decommissioning.

smartn2

Clearly wind has been a success story and has more to offer in future but without storage we have problems, same goes for Solar. Once EV's are capable of storing and connecting to the home it means solar and wind energy can be more useful but even then for winter dark days we will need alternatives which is where small nuclear, tidal and other sources may help. 

Unfortunately for all this to come together and work needs long term planning which is something that had yet to happen in the UK.

Long term there is a possibility to produce sufficient renewable energy but its not going to happen quickly. 

Verdigris

Unfortunately for all this to come together and work needs long term planning which is something that had yet to happen in the UK

Agree, in spades. To achieve that we need electoral reform, to a proportional system, that will return coalitions who will have to act like grown-ups, rather than getting bunches of chancers who only have their eye on the next election.

matelodave

Without getting political, our last experiment with a coalition didn't really see them acting like grownups and there are quite a few countries where coalitions aren't exactly a raging success.

Anyway, getting onto politics is a slippery slope that isn't appropriate for this forum

markin

QrizB said:

markin said:

Dolor said:

markin said:

The main point being wind and solar will not crash the price of power in the next 10 years, making home solar worth it, whether its 7 years at current prices or back to 1200 a year and takes 10 years.

But then maybe in 7 years time we will all have a home battery and use cheap night wind power.

It is worth reading this article which points out that producing green energy is one challenge: the other is getting it to consumers on a National Grid that is configured for a bygone era:

https://www.newstatesman.com/the-business-interview/2021/10/it-is-truly-bonkers-greg-jackson-octopus-ceo-on-the-uks-broken-energy-system

He was so close to saying it will be 'too cheap to meter'

I had to go refresh my memory on Sir David MacKay's Numbers for wind, 'Energy Without hot air' p73

http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/book/tex/sewtha.pdf

"The UK government announced on 10th December 2007 that it would permit the creation of 33 GW of offshore wind capacity (which would de-liver on average 10 GW to the UK, or 4.4 kWh per day per person), a plan branded “pie in the sky” by some in the wind industry. Let’s run with a round figure of 4 kWh per day per person. This is one quarter of shallow 16 kWh per day per person. To obtain this average power requires roughly 10 000 “3 MW” wind turbines like those in figure 10.1. (They have a capacity of “3 MW” but on average they deliver 1 MW. I pop quotes round “3 MW” to indicate that this is a capacity, a peak power. "

Yet here we are today, 13 years on from that book being published, with 11000 turbines installled, total nameplate capacity 24GW, generating 75TWh/yr and contributing almost 25% of our electricity needs.

And roughly the same again under construction or being planned.

But the book is about total energy, No Gas. Even doubling it to 8 kWh per day per person would just cover the water heating of the uk, You then need 15 kWh per day per person for cars, And Heating and cooling: 37 kWh/d, The total needed comes to around 180 kWh per day per person averaged over a year.  Page116

PV farm  (200 m2/person):50 kWh/d

Wind off shore shallow and deep, A 4km wide farm around the entire UK  50 kWh/d

Even if you update his numbers by halving consumption by EV's and lighting and the cost of solar and wind, the amount of wind and solar that need to be installed are still huge.

QrizB

markin said:

But the book is about total energy, ... You then need 15 kWh per day per person for cars

I'm not going to read 200-odd pages and critique the whole book, but he's entirely wrong on that particular point.

His calculation "or cars (page 42 of the book) was based on a petrol car getting 33mpg and driving 50km/day. Such a vehicle needs 40kWh/day.

However an electric car (Tesla, Hyundia, Nissan - take your pick) will do sometihng like 5km on a kWh. That's 1/4 of what he calculated.

markin said:

And Heating and cooling: 37 kWh/d

That's wrong too. Ofgem's average gas-heated household uses 12000kWh/yr. You can obtain the same energy from a heat pump using 4000kWh/yr. That's 11kWh/day, not 37, and for a household, not per person. He's wrong by a factor of eight or so.

Maybe the numbers were right in 2008 when he wrote the book. They definitely aren't now.

Verdigris

Most street lighting has been converted to LED from high-pressure sodium since that was written. As has much domestic lighting, from filaments/cfl.

IIRC the book was criticised for being partial when it was published. It is one person's view, not holy-writ.

Uxb1

plus wind and solar tend not to work too well on a day like I have today
anti-cyclone high pressure over the UK freezing fog all day zero wind speed and no sign of the sun.
Added to which its freezing cold and everyone will have the heating on full blast.

markin

QrizB said:

markin said:

But the book is about total energy, ... You then need 15 kWh per day per person for cars

I'm not going to read 200-odd pages and critique the whole book, but he's entirely wrong on that particular point.

His calculation "or cars (page 42 of the book) was based on a petrol car getting 33mpg and driving 50km/day. Such a vehicle needs 40kWh/day.

However an electric car (Tesla, Hyundia, Nissan - take your pick) will do sometihng like 5km on a kWh. That's 1/4 of what he calculated.

markin said:

And Heating and cooling: 37 kWh/d

That's wrong too. Ofgem's average gas-heated household uses 12000kWh/yr. You can obtain the same energy from a heat pump using 4000kWh/yr. That's 11kWh/day, not 37, and for a household, not per person. He's wrong by a factor of eight or so.

Maybe the numbers were right in 2008 when he wrote the book. They definitely aren't now.

The total here i believe include Work/Shops/factories/Schools, to heat the uk not just homes, The personal total KWH includes farming, shops, food transport, Even 4kWh/day for Army/Navy, and that 5 cans of coke is 0.6kWh/day.

EDIT:

Heating and cooling is Work/home average.

Transport is also all transport not just personal cars.

The second part of the book is all about reduction from 180kwh to around 60kwh using Heatpumps, EV's, Insulating, ect, And it then lays out 5 different Energy plans on how to do it, and the costs, Around 3-400Billion.