Trump

[noodles]

No, that's not the case. For most of yesterday the UK's relatively paltry existing solar installations were supplying a quarter of our power (7.2GW/30GW, https://gridwatch.co.uk/ ).

Yesterday the peak for the UK from this website you're quoting indicates 10% max for solar, which is still quite impressive
for a northern, rainy country.
10% for a sunny day is still a long way off from a credible alternative in northern Europe.

Let's just hope some new tech comes along and increases it's attractiveness exponentially, otherwise I don't see this happening in our lifetime.
But yes the political will is definetely lacking. Massive amounts of money being pissed away on new types of reactors that are years behind schedule,
with little added benefit to the process of nuclear power generation. It would have been better spent on research for more efficient types of solar panels.

[KlaxonCow]

Yesterday the peak for the UK from this website you're quoting indicates 10% max for solar, which is still quite impressive for a northern, rainy country.
10% for a sunny day is still a long way off from a credible alternative in northern Europe.

It has been way higher than that.

Right now is really the wrong time to be assessing this, as lockdown has massively lowered demand, so these aren't typical figures at the moment. Indeed, there was talk in the news that for the Bank Holiday, renewables were actually being asked to produce less to avoid an over-supply.

In fact, in assessing any such numbers, one has to understand that the Grid has to constantly balance supply and demand - as Grid-level energy storage is essentially non-existent - so they are actually telling power stations and wind farms and so forth, to switch on and off, to match the demand as exactly as possible.

And the understandable logic they follow is to do so in strict "cost order".

It's cheap and instant to "turn off" a solar farm. Just switch it off. That is, cut the circuit. Then the photons hitting the panels just won't do anything useful. Wind farms are also cheap and relatively quick to turn on and off - it's not instant, as with solar, but it doesn't take long to slow down a turbine to bring it to a stop - and then lock it in place - or get it spinning back up.

Whereas, "turning off" a nuclear power station is comparatively such a long and complicated (and potentially dangerous) process, this basically never happens, other than for essential maintenance. Similarly, oil, coal and natural gas also have to be stepped up and stepped down, rather than just instantly turning on and off to match demand.

Thus, when demand drops or rises, the Grid will choose renewables first to match supply to demand. Now, if there's a big drop in demand - such as during lockdown right now - then they'll also try to keep those coal power stations offline and that's why we're now breaking the records for the longest time with no coal generation since 1882. Because, by "cost order", coal is more expensive. Thus, if you don't need it, then keep it off to keep costs down.

So, hopefully, you can perhaps understand why we need to interpret these numbers. Just because only 10% of usage is coming from solar on a particular day, doesn't mean that this is the maximum amount that solar can generate that day.

The Grid always uses renewables first to fill in gaps and ride small bumps in demand, as you can pretty much instantly turn those on and off - and it's naturally just a more fine-grained thing, in that if you have, say, 4 wind turbines at a wind farm, then you could turn 2 of them off and leave 2 running, for instance - and this is the cheapest and easiest way to handle small fluctuations in demand.

It's only when you have coarse-grain spikes and troughs of demand that they'd then move onto turning on and off the coal, gas and oil power stations. Because, indeed, if you can get away with fully turning off all the coal power stations - as we've seen during lockdown so far - then that's a massive win for reducing costs.

And, right at the bottom of the "cost order" is nuclear, because that one's extremely complicated, slow and dangerous to turn on and off - indeed, you have to do it slowly to make sure it's safe. Also, in a sense, you can't "turn off" nuclear directly, but you rather lift the fuel rods out then you just wait for it to cool down in its own time. So, generally speaking, nuclear is never turned on and off.

Indeed, it's worth noting that, with nuclear, coal, oil and gas power stations, we're often paying for them to waste fuel. As you're waiting for it to cool down, or for the fires to naturally die, then the fuel is still being paid for, of course, but the energy is not being used - and has to be simply dumped, as the Grid has to keep the supply and demand balance very tight and maintain that 50Hz AC as perfectly as possible (many devices, such as old CRT televisions, actually depend on the grid frequency for timing). Then, in the other direction, anticipating a spike in demand - such as the famous spike of kettles being boiled in the ad break for Coronation Street - the big old power station will be spun up ready for it, and we, again, can be paying for the power station to sit there, wasting fuel, waiting for a predicted spike in demand (which, in fact, might not even come, but you have to have the power station ready to kick in, just in case it does come).



It's a complex picture. And it's not just a case of "10% solar because that's all we can get out of it on a sunny day". Indeed, during our last long Summer, when we had some windy days as the Sun shone down, renewables did actually hit the majority (>50%) of generation on particular days.

No, not consistently. But it has happened. And I'd echo Dio's use of the word "paltry" to describe how much solar the UK uses. He might even be being overly generous there.

Look around the rooftops. How many solar panels do you typically see? Barely any. And what both me and Dio have described is the idea of every single rooftop - all of them, everywhere - having PV installations.

Indeed, I also heard that "we'd need to cover the Sahara Desert in solar panels" bollocks myself, many decades back - so, yeah, be wary of the "half-life of facts" - and that's what actually prompted me to realise that rooftops are the answer.

Basically, fire up Google maps - satellite view - and then look at any town or city. How much area does all the combined roof space take up? And this concept naturally expands - if a town or city gets bigger and its population rises, the number of houses - and available roof space - expands with it.

Don't put the solar panels over the Sahara. Not least because this is dumb, as you're going to have insane "transmission losses" getting that all the way from Northern Africa to the UK, to New York, to Tokyo and so forth.

Put the solar panels "at point of use". Where the transmission losses are basically zero. What's the combined roof space of every single urban area - every town and city - on the face of planet Earth? I bet not even the Sahara can hold a candle to that much "surface area".

(But, hey, as solar panels use silicon, maybe that's where the Sahara Desert could come in handy, as that's a heck of a lot of silicon in all that sand. Though, actually, there's a no great worry there, in truth, as most of the Earth's crust is silicates of one sort or another. Indeed, sand is powdered rock, basically.)

[tufty]

as solar panels use silicon

My understanding was that it was the "rare earth" stuff that was the limiting factor, but that may well be bollocks.

[KlaxonCow]

as solar panels use silicon

My understanding was that it was the "rare earth" stuff that was the limiting factor, but that may well be bollocks.

There are different types of photovoltaic.

But the main commercial one, typically found on people's roofs, is pretty much pure silicon crystals, doped with phosphorous or boron.

(Indeed, the purity of the silicon is actually rather important to its operation, that they purify it over and over until it's as close to 100% pure as they can get it. The doping is because, actually, the silicon crystal, all bonded together, won't have any spare electrons, so you use phosphorous or boron (note that these are one group up and one group down in the periodic table, respectively) to then either fill up the 4 electrons that silicon's outer shell lacks and has one extra electron to be a "free carrier" to move through the crystal, or in the other direction, to "leave a gap" of one electron in the outer shell for electricity to pass through. So it's pretty much 100% silicon, doped with phosphorous, to provide the "pathway" for electricity to flow.

And that's essentially it, because the rest is just the "photoelectric effect" - a quantum phenomenon - where photons hit it, adding energy, and this kicks out an electron, which can't, in fact, go anywhere as the pure silicon crystal has no spare electrons or gaps, forcing it to follow the "pathway" created by doping the silicon crystal, as these are the only paths. And that's how you persuade the electrons to all go in a single direction, around the circuit, to perform useful work. The photoelectric effect is quantum and actually happens all the time in metals, but the electrons scatter randomly in all directions - cancelling each other out - so can't perform useful work. The whole idea of the silicon crystal is that it doesn't, in fact, conduct electrons through it, so you can then dope it to create a "one way system", so the electrons all go in one direction, around a circuit, and then can do useful work.

It's actually not that different from the use of silicon in silicon chips. The same basic "semi-conductor" concept, that silicon can both conduct electricity and not conduct electricity, and you're able to control how it does or doesn't do that. In this case, not to perform logic, but simply to force the electrons to have the only option of going around the circuit, so you can make them do useful work.)

More here: https://www.renewableenergyhub.co.uk/ma ... ade-up-of/.

There are other more exotic types - cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide, organic PV cells, etc. - but that's more expensive, higher efficiency "research" stuff found in labs, and those are not typically found on anyone's roof at home.

Nah, solar panels are pretty much pure silicon that's been "doped" - by elements like phosphorous or boron, which are equally not hard to come by either - so there's no "rare earth" issue here.


You might be thinking of lithium ion batteries for storage. Those do have issues with cobalt. Because cobalt mines, found in Africa, are known to have used child labour and so that part of lithium ion battery production isn't great.

But, hey, though this is often used to bash electric car production, let's not forget that your phone and laptop and other mobile devices almost certainly have the same type of batteries.

More over, guess which industry initially set up all that dodgy cobalt mining? The oil industry. It's used in a catalyst to "de-suflurize" petroleum... in vastly bigger quantities than any electric car battery ever uses the stuff.

And recent developments in battery tech have greatly reduced cobalt and Tesla claim they've got a totally cobalt-free battery design coming (meanwhile, the oil industry remains the overwhelming main user of cobalt - the industry that originally set up all this corrupt shit in Africa, happily looking the other way whilst child labour went on, so that whole side of the industry is a shit hole, exactly because the oil industry has never given a shit to behave decently - and there's no hint that they're going "cobalt-free" ever. As it's used as a catalyst, it might prove chemically impossible for them to do otherwise).

Plus, John Goodenough - the bloke what came up with lithium ion batteries in the first place - has been working on "solid state" batteries. This is a deeply interesting development - something that when first proposed, many physicists doubted it was even possible - in that it has a solid electrolyte. Usually, a battery has a cathode and an anode, and then a liquid electrolyte through which it can flow from one to the other. But "solid state" batteries use a solid electrolyte - some type of glass, I believe. So no liquids and the whole thing is solid.

And this, apparently, means that there is no danger of fire or explosion. As we all remember from those Samsung phones, lithium ion can catch on fire. Indeed, when we recharge such batteries, it's deliberately done slowly, so it doesn't heat up too much and go on fire. But the claimed advantage of the "solid state battery" is that this is basically physically impossible, so we can crank up the voltage to charge much faster, as it just can't catch fire. Which will, for electric vehicles, make a massive difference when a "supercharger" can just dump tons of energy into the car's battery all at once, for super-fast charge times.

Also, lithium ion batteries - and other types of battery with liquid electrolytes - lose their efficiency over time, because dendrites slowly form in the liquid over time. And, indeed, a dendrite could eventually extend from cathode to anode, creating a short circuit. This is considered the big win of a solid electrolyte - can't happen, no such thing. So the solid state battery should, it's claimed, be capable of being charged over and over and over, without ever losing efficiency.

[Misfit]

I never thought I'd learn so much in the Trump thread!

Keep up the great information.

[Dio]

Basically, fire up Google maps - satellite view - and then look at any town or city. How much area does all the combined roof space take up? And this concept naturally expands - if a town or city gets bigger and its population rises, the number of houses - and available roof space - expands with it.

Don't put the solar panels over the Sahara. Not least because this is dumb, as you're going to have insane "transmission losses" getting that all the way from Northern Africa to the UK, to New York, to Tokyo and so forth.

Put the solar panels "at point of use". Where the transmission losses are basically zero. What's the combined roof space of every single urban area - every town and city - on the face of planet Earth? I bet not even the Sahara can hold a candle to that much "surface area".

Mixing it up with small scale wind generation is also interesting. Small wind turbines are basically about 5W/£. It looks a lot like you can add a 4kW wind turbine to an existing solar/inverter/battery combination for £500. Why not stick one of those on every roof in the country too? Hello 40GW. Even a tiny 400W turbine on every roof, for 4GW-ish, would be bigger than the entire existing solar install base given that it works 24/7.

Solar in high-output areas like the Sahara does have a place, but it will be in producing energy to manufacture jet fuel, crack hydrogen etc. and the like.

[KlaxonCow]

Mixing it up with small scale wind generation is also interesting. Small wind turbines are basically about 5W/£. It looks a lot like you can add a 4kW wind turbine to an existing solar/inverter/battery combination for £500. Why not stick one of those on every roof in the country too? Hello 40GW. Even a tiny 400W turbine on every roof, for 4GW-ish, would be bigger than the entire existing solar install base given that it works 24/7.

Yeah, totally.

Geographically, the UK is, in fact, one of the best locations in the world for wind power.

Indeed, the whole point would be to have an energy mix. Solar panels on every roof, but also wind turbines, but also tidal lagoons and so on and so forth. In fact, realistically, though I want 100% renewable and that should be - as I've detailed - the ultimate aim, we also have to recognise that this is an infrastructure transition we're talking about, so the energy mix will still include nuclear, natural gas, oil and coal for the short term. But the aim would be to use those fuels to power the development of their future replacement infrastructure. But, well, until all the solar and wind and such is in place, and in sufficient numbers to render the need for fossil fuels redundant, then those things will be there.

The way I'd envision it would be that every home could have solar panels. Coastal communities could supplement that with wave / tidal generation. More mountainous regions could have wind farms (because elevation does help). The whole country could have offshore wind farms and tidal lagoon projects.

I was reading about a project to convert former coal mines into geothermal generation. Because those have shafts going deep into the earth already, and they flood them when they're shut down - which could actually be used as a medium for heat transfer, to perhaps run Stirling engines on the heat difference between down there and on the surface.

It's not one or the other. Let's do it all.

But, yes, in solidarity for wind, here's a Fully Charged about that sort of thing, at a smaller scale:



So, yeah, if you've got the location for one of these things - a spacious back garden - then maybe one of these will suit you, sir.

I'm sure you already get it, but for the sake of the wider discussion, the underlying point here is a decentralisation of power. For folks to own their own micro-generation. Instead of one gigantic coal power station, pissing out smoke, to power a whole city on its lonesome, the model is thousands and thousands of rooftops with their own PV installations, maybe a turbine in the back yard here and there, the "community wind farm" on the top of a nearby hill. Imports and exports of excess energy from nearby towns - the Grid becoming more of a "distribution network" to take power from wherever there's plenty over to where they could do with a bit more. For everyone - the average person - to, well, "own the means of production", as it were.

Not one big coal power station, but rather loads and loads and loads of tiny power stations everywhere - that adds up to the equivalent, or greater, than what that big coal power station would have done. So we don't really need it no more. Shut it down.

That's kind of how I see the transition happening. More and more people install solar panels and more wind turbines are erected and all that. And then we look at the numbers and realise, yeah, we don't need that coal power station anymore. Then we build up to a point where, actually, we don't need any coal power stations at all. A few big cities go renewable and, well, they're actually generating, collectively, the equivalent of a Hinkley Point C. So, well, we don't need to waste any more time and money on that shit anymore.

But the real underlying win is that when everyone has solar and wind "on premises", then a blackout becomes impossible. Like the decentralised Internet, the decentralised power network has no "centre" for you to take out to bring the whole thing down.

The generation of the energy is occurring about, ooh, 5 metres above where it's being used. There's no appreciable transmission losses over such a distance.

Whereas, of course, we've all seen big pylons strewn across the countryside, carrying high voltage cables to deliver power long distances. Indeed, I'm sure many here will know, but the reason why those power lines that the pylons carry are so high voltage - about 11,000 volts! - is because the higher the voltage, the less transmission losses there are over long distance. They step up the power to very high voltage to try to lose at little as possible in transporting energy halfway across the countryside.

Because, yes, no-one wants to live next to a big polluting coal power station, so those tend to be built in the middle of nowhere, to least disturb anyone, but that then means we have to shift all the energy from the middle of nowhere to where people actually live, and energy gets lost on the way. So that's just pure wastage that comes about from the fact that dirty energy generation is something that nobody actually wants to live right next door to.

But with everyone having their own solar and battery, it's naturally a "least distance" thing. Your solar roof fills the battery and you use it. It's travelled all of 10 metres. You've got excess - because, let's say, you've gone on holiday for a week but, of course, the roof still keeps generating power which you're not there to use. So you can feed it into the Grid and your next door neighbour can make use of it. And, if not them, then it might get used by a house a few doors down from you. A whole community might have an overall "excess" that they can export to the village next door. A whole nation - like Scotland, having abundant wind today - can export its "excess" down to the North of England, who're running a bit short.

This is what I mean by "least distance" and the Grid acting as a distribution network (and in that video from the National Grid that I posted, the folks that work there are entirely expecting the Grid is definitely going to change to work that way over time - this is why there's moves to a "smart grid" to measure and meter who's generating what where, in order to then use the Grid to balance it out. Some excess over here can fill in a gap over there.

From a purely engineering standpoint, a decentralised energy system is just way better. I mean, we know how the decentralised Internet works. Let's have an "Internet of Energy" where every home is an energy "server". Energy "packets" get re-routed to where they're most needed. Like the Internet, there is no central location that you can knock out to take down the whole Grid. If something does go down then, never mind, we can re-route around it. Basically, as I said, blackouts become impossible.

By the way, that's already a thing. There's a concept called "vehicle to grid". The idea being that all those electric cars out there are basically an army of mobile battery storage.

So, like, a Tesla Model 3's battery comes in 54, 62 or 75 kWh flavours. Let's imagine a thousand such cars with the 54 kWh battery. That's 54,000 kWh (or 54 MWh) of battery storage.

And the idea is that when owners of electric vehicles plug in their cars, this can work both ways. The car gets power from the Grid, or the Grid can actually take some power back from the car.

Now, personally, I'm not the biggest fan of "vehicle to grid" because, to my mind, the better way to do it is to have homes have "house batteries" instead. I mean, in truth, all a Tesla "Powerwall" essentially is, is one of their car batteries mounted on a wall. But the trick of a "house battery" is that it's not going anywhere. It'd be always plugged into the Grid at all times. But the same idea that this "conversation" now goes both ways - the house can take power from the Grid (overnight, say, when it's cheaper) and the Grid can collectively take power from the house batteries, so we would have, in effect, grid-level energy storage to take full advantage of all that renewable goodness.

(Speaking of the Tesla Powerwall:)



This is the difference in the models here. People imagine a big power station, a big wind farm, a big solar farm. Big, big, big. But what I'm proposing instead is small - but it's absolutely everywhere, in massive quantities. Every house with panels and a battery. Individually small and modest - but when every single home in the entire town or city has these things, they collectively become a massive power station.

Instead of "1 x 1GWh power station", we have "1,000 x 1MWh power station" or even "1,000,000 x 1kWh power station". Same overall generation. But distributed - decentralised - across the whole village / town / city / region / country.

I wouldn't merely say this is entirely do-able. I'd say it's already happening and, ultimately, inevitable (because, as I say, the idea that there's ultimately any choice in the matter is illusionary - uranium, oil, natural gas and coal will, one day, die. And then this is all that will be remaining, like it or not).

[noodles]

If solid state batteries can become a reality in the near future, then that well might be the tipping point that convinces
people to invest in solar panels as a never degrading one that doesn't need to be replaced would be a major selling point.

Whilst repairing my roof I often wondered why they didn't make glass tiles with built in solar generating cells.
Then I found out that the seemingly indestructible couple of glass ones I do have to provide some light under the roof
cost almost ten times the price of an ordinary one.
So, if you had to replace them every 25 years like current solar panels (from what I heard), the cost is prohibitive.
The next direction that would make this tech irresistible for homes would have to be a standard solar glass based modular roof tile that
either is cheaper or has to be made to last at least four times as long, and the glass part shows that this is possible.
I calculated that a roof of all glass tiles would have cost me 20K Euros, which is expensive but still tempting
to be rid of cracked roof tiles for as long as I would live or even centuries.
It's kind of a shame they don't (AFAIK) make tinted glass roof tiles, I would be tempted to replace part of my roof
on the more exposed side of my house.
You could even push the solar glass tile thing beyond roofs but also to south facing facades of buildings to recuperate more energy.

[merman]

If solid state batteries can become a reality in the near future, then that well might be the tipping point that convinces
people to invest in solar panels as a never degrading one that doesn't need to be replaced would be a major selling point.

Whilst repairing my roof I often wondered why they didn't make glass tiles with built in solar generating cells.
Then I found out that the seemingly indestructible couple of glass ones I do have to provide some light under the roof
cost almost ten times the price of an ordinary one.
So, if you had to replace them every 25 years like current solar panels (from what I heard), the cost is prohibitive.
The next direction that would make this tech irresistible for homes would have to be a standard solar glass based modular roof tile that
either is cheaper or has to be made to last at least four times as long, and the glass part shows that this is possible.
I calculated that a roof of all glass tiles would have cost me 20K Euros, which is expensive but still tempting
to be rid of cracked roof tiles for as long as I would live or even centuries.
It's kind of a shame they don't (AFAIK) make tinted glass roof tiles, I would be tempted to replace part of my roof
on the more exposed side of my house.
You could even push the solar glass tile thing beyond roofs but also to south facing facades of buildings to recuperate more energy.

Tesla has "battery bricks", a combination of solar panel and storage, in development.

Of course if the Conservatives had continued to invest in new renewable technologies and kept the subsidies for those investing in small-scale generation we would be a lot further along.

One calculation showed that the cost of the new nuclear plant (French reactor technology*, being built & financed by the Chinese** and already guaranteed vastly higher prices for each MW generated***) was spent on renewables & energy efficiency, then we would not need a new nuclear plant anyway...


*first time they tried to make the reactor vessel similar to the one they want to sell us, it didn't pass safety inspection
**good to know that all that money we poured into privatising our power network is helping other countries
***nuclear has already had more than sixty years of subsidies for every MW generated, so any claims that it is cheaper & more efficient must be handled with care - especially because it doesn't include the huge costs of decommissioning and handling the waste



Anyway, Trump says global warming is a hoax and we are all to go back to buying his overpriced American coal...

[gilesgoat]

Back to Trump, so now he wants to shut down Twitter because they dared to comment he was talking bollocks ?

[Mayhem]

Back to Trump, so now he wants to shut down Twitter because they dared to comment he was talking bollocks ?

Not quite, because the links tagged to his posts suggesting his words aren't true were from sources he considers "fake news".

[Harlequin]

Back to Trump, so now he wants to shut down Twitter because they dared to comment he was talking bollocks ?

Not quite, because the links tagged to his posts suggesting his words aren't true were from sources he considers "fake news".

Which are presented as fact checks, thereby indirectly suggesting that those statements contain bollocks (and that those news sources are reliably not fake).

Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.

[gilesgoat]

Back to Trump, so now he wants to shut down Twitter because they dared to comment he was talking bollocks ?

Not quite, because the links tagged to his posts suggesting his words aren't true were from sources he considers "fake news".

Which are presented as fact checks, thereby indirectly suggesting that those statements contain bollocks (and that those news sources are reliably not fake).

Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices. We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen.

Maybe because they are SOCIAL they don't like much conservative ?

/me takes coat

[F-ZeroOne]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52815872

Mr. President - don't you have other things to worry about?

[F-ZeroOne]

Article on what a great job Trump has been doing. From the BBC, so clearly a biased payload of fake news spread by leftie pinkos:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52775216