Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Bit of energy saving, re-use, keeping cool .... tip here, and very cheap. You can keep the heat down by putting reflective foil over the windows ....

sounds like a bit of a fuss .....?

Well, check out Mart's tip (oh er missus) go to a cheapy store and buy half a dozen of those foldaway heat reflectors for car windscreens, they only cost about £1 each, have rubber suckers that stick easy to glass, and usually have elasticated straps to keep them folded away when not in use, which can be stretched around door or window corners, then closed in place.

They are long enough to cover most of a full length glass door, and two (landscape) should cover a pretty big window.

silverwhistle wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/hywind-project-scotland-worlds-first-floating-windfarm-norway

Amazing. Did I post before Martyn? Whilst we're about it shall we have a sweepstake on who will be first to post below the line? I'm going for Raykalon..

You beat me, I had it lined up for a read, but got distracted arguing with the trolls.

I have to say I'm quite positive about the huge increase in negativity on the Guardian comments this last 12 months, as I suspect this is due to them having their backs to the walls and simply fighting like crazy as the weight of reality slowly crushes them.

Perhaps in 2020 they will still be explaining why RE and storage won't ever work, but hopefully nobody will be listening to them by then (assuming anyone does today).

Gotta love renewables.

Looks like renewables are still replacing about 1% of leccy generation per year, though the impact of the cuts on PV and on-shore wind support will probably kick in now, but off-shore wind has a huge amount of capacity on the way.

UK renewables hit record production

New data from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) revealed that renewables powered 26.6 per cent of the UK's electricity needs between January and March 2017, a one per cent rise on last year's figures and the highest ever level for quarterly production.

Onshore wind led the charge, with production up an impressive 20 per cent on last year thanks to increased capacity, although offshore wind saw production dip by two per cent due to lower wind speeds. Hydro production fell 15 per cent due to low rainfall levels, but solar soared 16 per cent to 1.7TWh on the back of increased capacity.

Meanwhile, levels of energy generated from coal power slumped from 15.8 per cent last year to 11.3 per cent in Q1 2017.

Am I going mad(der)?

This is not a cheap shot at nuclear. Whenever we hear about nuclear, it's promising something great, like HPC, then it arrives (or the contract arrives) and it's a dog.

So for several years folk having been saying, yeah HPC is a dog, but Thorium or SMR's (small modular reactors) will be wonderful.

Well Thorium still seems to be going nowhere, but SMR's are getting closer, and here's a sales pitch by Rolls Royce, explaining how great their potential is:

Small Modular Reactors

Small Modular Reactors - once in a lifetime opportunity for the UK

Sounds nice, lots of promise, till some facts and figures jumped out at me:

The size of the potential global SMR market is approximately 65-85GW by 2035, valued at £250-£400bn.

With around 350GWp of PV in the world today, and taking capacity factors into account, are they really saying that in 18yrs time, SMR's 'might' generate what PV is generating today (about 1.5% of world leccy demand)? I'd assumed from all the hype, that SMR's were supposed to save the planet.

From their brochure I note that the export potential for Australia is 2,000MW, so equal to about 10,000MW of PV, roughly what Australia already has today just in roof mounted PV (domestic/commercial).

Supply power to the grid in a timely manner at lower cost to the taxpayer and consumer, generating electricity that is at least as cheap (per MW) as power generated by today’s large scale reactors – potentially even cheaper when SMRs go into volume production.

A bit of googling, suggests SMR's could eventually provide leccy at $90/MWh, so approx 3x the cost of on-shore wind and PV contracts being issued in the US today.

So as I say, am I going mad, I genuinely believed some of the hype about SMR's helping and working alongside RE, but they seem to be in trouble today, compared to just PV (before we bring in the other renewables) and PV has been growing at 40% compounded pa since 2000, with prices expected to halve again in 10yrs, and normal efficiencies to rise from around 17% to 30-35% with the addition of Perovskite (now at 21% in the lab, up from about 1% 5yrs ago).

I'm quite disappointed about this, as I'm really not sure the UK will want/need them, and I genuinely can't believe there will be an export market anything like the brochure suggests on page 5.