Wind Power

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Originally Posted by Oracle

It depends whether you are considering centralised or local distributed generation.

I have 5kw cells on a roof in north west that are invisible in the sense that they cannot be seen from the road, and a big 14 kWh tesla battery in the garage. So I generate 85 percent of what I use, only dipping below in Dec and Jan. I also Generate enough to heat water by electric for six months of the summer during which my energy bills are near zero. The battery is what turns useless to useful. In those numbers we cook electric, and have a heat pump tumble drier. I will have some left over to power an electric runabout for local journeys in summer, although I am waiting for the specs to improve to buy one.

I cannot do that with wind and certainly not invisibly.

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So like the feckless, the selfish, the dilettantes,...in December and January (and February) when the sun is low and the nights are long and the wind does not blow and it is cold outside you - along with virtually everyone else - expect to click a switch so the National Grid can supply all the power you desire from those nasty old power stations?

Better than nothing surely!

I am less at the whims of the greedy gas and electric giants that guzzle the hapless consumers money!
I have Utter contempt for the lunatic greens who would turn the lot off from gas to nuclear, so leave us all with just candles. When my solar is down, at least wind generation is high. Big batteries will help to bridge variability.

The real long term answer is fusion. With magnetic materials and superconductors advancing at a rate analogous to Moores law, it will not be too long before we can crush hydrogen into fusing. Channeling the energy away will be tough. But I am guessing it is a safe bet that it will be reality in 30 years. Safe bet for me because it will likely be hard for anyone to collect if I lose the bet!

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Originally Posted by Graham Breeze

So like the feckless, the selfish, the dilettantes,...in December and January (and February) when the sun is low and the nights are long and the wind does not blow and it is cold outside you - along with virtually everyone else - expect to click a switch so the National Grid can supply all the power you desire from those nasty old power stations?

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[QUOTE=Oracle;649208]Better than nothing surely!/QUOTE]

Yes it's nice to play on government subsidies but the power suppliers have to have in place plant and manpower and fuel supplies... not for summer but for when it is cold, or very cold, despite this being grossly uneconomic, or the whinging public with their sense of entitlement complain that the lights go dim and their swimming pools are lukewarm. Plant Capacity for a "1 in 20 years severe winter" only works once every 20 years.

The system justifies itself in absence of subsidies which are almost if not actually phased out. Batteries are what made it rational. I refused to get involved in what I saw as a government solar scam in the early days,

I accept no solution is perfect, and plant stood idle is inefficient.All of this is a stop gap till fusion. Until which nuclear is not as bad as it is billed. I hate the hypocrisy of importing French power which is a good proportion nuclear whilst saying not in my back yard!

Meanwhile my bills are now a lot smaller and stable

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Originally Posted by Graham Breeze

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Originally Posted by Oracle

Better than nothing surely!

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Yes it's nice to play on government subsidies but the power suppliers have to have in place plant and manpower and fuel supplies... not for summer but for when it is cold, or very cold, despite this being grossly uneconomic, or the whinging public with their sense of entitlement complain that the lights go dim and their swimming pools are lukewarm. Plant Capacity for a "1 in 20 years severe winter" only works once every 20 years.

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Originally Posted by Oracle

It depends whether you are considering centralised or local

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My comment referred to centralized, I have no issue with rooftop panels.

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Originally Posted by Wheeze

There's no doubt we are just a mere hiccup in a long and turbulent history.

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OK fair point, my comments are more related to what damage we can do over the next couple of hundred years, if we don't change our ways. Over 100s of 1000s of years and longer, astroid strikes, super volcanoes, changing sun activity etc. could make what we do irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by DrPatrickBarry

OK fair point, my comments are more related to what damage we can do over the next couple of hundred years, if we don't change our ways. Over 100s of 1000s of years and longer, astroid strikes, super volcanoes, changing sun activity etc. could make what we do irrelevant.

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One word answer is fusion. Unlimited cheap energy would solve food crises too.

And in my view that should be localised. Many smaller plants help solve the technical energy density problems of extracting energy from the fusion. Rockwell agree with me with their concept design of a container sized power plant.

A few years ago I volunteered to be involved with Ceres, a project to set up home based hydrogen fuel cells to generate power locally. Heard no more of it and I wonder what happened (strolls over to Google to find out!)

Hmmm. Ok. Growing stealthily and without fanfare. Converts gas to power. Currently natural gas but in future, biogas. Looks v interesting!

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Originally Posted by Oracle

One word answer is fusion. Unlimited cheap energy would solve food crises too.

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Oh the irony, one of the leading research groups
https://www.firstpost.com/tech/scien...e-5404551.html

One of the groups funding is the EU, so obviously Oracle will not want anything from this particular research :rolleyes: