Why is local renewable electricity generation seen as so desirable by green folk

[KenB]

Jack,

My original maths was seriously flawed - as I pointed out later.  A simple case of double accounting.

However, I managed to obfuscate the figures in such a convincing manner that perhaps a new job in the City - or Local Government beckons.

I just got my council tax bill - they want more money to pay for less services and less staff - so how more efficient is that?

Having been to the pub tonight, I came home to a Conservative Election leaflet on the doorstep. Shall I draft an email to my MP tonight - or leave it till tomorrow, when in the clear light of day, I might be marginally less confrontational??

These people need a serious kicking, they are public servants after all - if they want to draw their salaries from taxpayer's money, they need to return the goods. Let's not let them forget that simple fact.  7 weeks left to get your grievances aired.



Ken

[dan_aka_jack]

Have another beer and then let rip

[mespilus]

I was chatting to the owner of a local pipe fitting company recently,
(needed a length of 2 inch threaded both ends).

They do much of the work at our local largest hospital,
Hillingdon,which as you can imagine is emergency repairs
rather than planned maintenance.

Adjacent, on the same site, is a licensed incinerator,
which deals with all the medical waste, and that from other sources.

The chap told me for about £20k he could supply & fit the necessary
big bore pipework to turn the incinerator into a CHP for the hospital,
reducing by 6/7 the hospitals heating energy bill.

No budget for improvements, so the incinerator vents its' heat output.
 

[wookey]

Jack, you are quite right that if youhave £1million to spend on renewable power then large wind is the best thing to spend it on, preferably on-shore, but offshore is still quite good value. And spending all of it on one really big turbine is much better than two smaller £500,000 turbines. Trying to get the same power out of lots of tiddly turbines would require several thousand times as much money. But assuming you also want some PV for filling in on sunny, still, days there isn't that much difference between one huge solar array and lots of little ones. Solar doesn't get significantly more efficienct from doing it in big dollops. The only cost saving is that ground-mounted frames are cheaper than putting panels on roofs (I assume). So there is an install cost difference, but very little runtime efficiency gain. Given the useful social message that lots of PV on roofs sends I think it's actually very good idea to do on a micro scale.

Solar thermal is even clearer cut. You can't shift heat very far so putting on individual buildings makes perfect sense, and again the efficiency gains of big systems are not huge compared to micro ones. Similarly biomass heating systems need to be near the point of heat use. These do work a lot better at the block of flats scale than the individual house, and hopefully plenty will be going in at that scale, but they still make sense for houses. Biomass power generation is best done near the biomass source, but prefeably also near enough to buildings to use the heat. This does work best on a relatively large scale, but not large compared to conventional power stations - spreading them out to fit with the supply availability seems best.

For hydro you've got to site it according to each source. I assume big ones work by far the best, but there are relatively few sites. After that you get to do all the mini and micro ones - that's just how it is.

So, yes renewables often work better at larger scale and where you have the choice that's best to do, but some is best locally (micro) and for some it makes little difference.

[guydewdney]

Just HOW big an offshore wind turbine would we need to fill the current 'gap' - and roughly what would it cost - and what would it make per annum? - go crazy - why not a 1000' tall thing based in the atlantic? There has to be some remote rock you could glue it to?

[KenB]

Guy,

It appears that the "current gap" has already been filled with a second crop of gas fired CCGT plants due to mushroom up by 2016.

The government rubber-stamped these through planning consent back in 2007, when everyone was getting excited about E.On wanting to build a new pair of supercritical coal plants at Kingsnorth.

It's a simple task now to calculate our generation mix for 2015 onwards, and see that apart for Drax, Didcot and one or two other coal plants - that the lion's share of UK primary energy (heating and power) is squarely aligned to securing a supply of natural gas - regardless of the cost.

This short-sightedness alone is sufficient for me to be motivated enough to press on with ultimate grid and gas independence.


Ken

[GavinA]

For PV, one of the main benefits of distributed local generation is that it can take place on building roofs, with no loss of function or form to the roofs, so there's no need to have land dedicated to solar power generation, no nymbism issues associated with largescale wind turbines in the countryside, no need to install miles of high voltage cables to connect to the grid etc etc.

[billi]

...and its education/democracy  in  a positive way , people that are their own "Generators" will develop  a more detailed view on power generation , in-dependency  and democracy

Billi


beside the renewable aspect ....

[Paulh_Boats]

Jack,

I like the independence of local PV. If the wheels come off I can wire up batteries and survive off grid.

-Paul

[noelsquibb]

It appears that the "current gap" has already been filled with a second crop of gas fired CCGT plants due to mushroom up by 2016.

Somebody planning to nuke all those lovely gas fired plants then ?

On a more serious note, there seems to be a lot of developments in gas recovery and the known quantities of natural gas seems to indicate that the supply is reasonably secure for 10- 15 years.
Ive been watching the development of a 'down hole' compressor that has the potential to vastly increase recovery rates by putting air the far side of the gas pocket.
Gas prices have been cheap in recent months and have not followed oil prices, suggesting that speculative trading and evil banksters are more interested in screwing us through oil price manipulation.
Suppose its not so easy to manipulate prices when theres vast amounts of gas sat waiting to be used.

[desperate]

Air in a gas pocket whatever will they think of next, petrol in the fire hose??

Desp

[KenB]

Noel, the "air" is probably sequestered, compressed CO2 - often used for gas and oil recovery.

The world is now global, and every nation wants access to gas.  We are a small nation, and need to stand in line, like everyone else. UKplc has no special relationship when it comes to buying gas from the Norwegians, Qataris, Algerians, Russians or whoever.

If oil gets tight, the petroleum will be reserved for chemical feedstock and aviation fuel.  Diesel engines will be converted to run on compressed natural gas.

So for a few short transitional years we will enjoy a relative abundance of gas and fool ourselves that it will last forever- then what?



Ken

[tony.]

Some interesting reading from companies who are building the power stations in the usa & uk

http://www.bv.com/Downloads/Resources/Newsletters/EnergyStrategiesReport/201002.pdf

tony

[Ivan]

Jack,

In its current form (ie not much of it) local Solar PV power production probably doesn't incur 6% transmission losses. I've got approx. 3.6kW of PV, and I use between 1/4 and all of the output whilst it is produced, depending on the weather. My DC losses are around 1%. There will be a small loss in house circuits, but this loss would be present if I imported fossil fuel power - so let's not double-account it. My surplus is exported, and more than likely used by the neighbours within a few hundred yards - so the losses will be negligible (well under 2%, I'd guess).

So local generation is certainly going to reduce transmission losses.

Power companies will enjoy the lower loads on the grid - this means less stressed infrastructure, and less requirement for investment/maintenance etc.

There is also a good argument for many small things rather than one big thing. Big things tend to be bad for the environment. Small things may also be bad, but they are small enough for the environment to work around it and recover/adapt. However, it's certainly also true that bigger things tend to be more efficient.

[noelsquibb]

the "air" is probably sequestered, compressed CO2 - often used for gas and oil recovery.

Air in a gas pocket

Quite right too.

For some reason I got the impression that they were injecting something into the gas pocket and reading the somewhat limited info on their website, I am still unsure if they are sucking out wet dirty gas or blowing in something from the surface.  They mention the working environment being quite high pressure and the potential for lowering the pressure to increase recovery, so may be sucking but why if theres already high pressure ?

Just seemed like a small UK engineering company with a potentially great product ...

http://www.corac.co.uk/products/downhole-gas-compressor