Nuclear Power, clearly the way forward.

Anonymous

The Northern Monkey wrote:

Renewables is a project i'm working on at the moment at work.

We are currently in discussion with some of our clients in respect to producing their own energy... the main ways being solar and wind.
I can tell you all... its getting pretty big in the business sector

Of course big businesses love wind and solar power - because they get huge tax benefits.
Wind power is completely retarded though. To supply the UK grid's current power requirement, we would neet to cover almost all of the UK in windfarms.

I reckon there should be more emphasis on hydro power. (cough, but then, I would, because I used to work in a hydro plant )
But seriously, the energy density of water is far greater, giving a much higher return per square foot, compared to solar or wind.

Anonymous

welshkev wrote:

i did a conference a few years ago that basically said that the government are going to put up fuel prices, create more bus lanes, reduce speed limits etc etc just to try and force drivers into using public transport,

Whilst that may be a possibility in urban areas, where the public transport system is more developed, it simply isn't an option in rural areas. Here, towns villages and cities are so spread out that is is just highly inefficient to run bus services as regularly as cities. There's just too many routes to cover. And it also takes far too long because of all the contrived stops.
A bus to the cinema, for example, takes well in excess of an hour, whereas you can drive it in 20.
A bus to work will take 45 minutes, but I can drive it in 10, and cycle it in 30.

This is because the busses try to cover a diverse route, since running more direct bus services is just uneconomical, and financially impossible.

The Northern Monkey

yeehaamcgee wrote:

The Northern Monkey wrote:

Renewables is a project i'm working on at the moment at work.

We are currently in discussion with some of our clients in respect to producing their own energy... the main ways being solar and wind.
I can tell you all... its getting pretty big in the business sector

Of course big businesses love wind and solar power - because they get huge tax benefits.
Wind power is completely retarded though. To supply the UK grid's current power requirement, we would need to cover almost all of the UK in windfarms..

True, but if a factory can provide itself with energy, thats a massive chunk back to the everyday consumer.

The biggest problem is that a company can't produce energy, introduce it to the grid and the use the equivalent energy at another site but only pay the network a rental fee to use their lines.

rubins4

Windfarm production isnt that sustainable either, particularly the off shore types, with the massive volume of concrete required in their construction. Speak to your local builder about how the price on cement dust has increased year on year.

There is so much untapped power in the sea. I think this might would be a good place to try and get some cleaner energy.

Thewaylander

i agree witht he Hydro, it is in development, we focus int he industry on wind at the moment because the goverments have made it profitable to do so. and we have the technology.

And it's not all Tax on the fuel there is a good hit on exchange rates, as the price of oil is maintained in dollars, but as we beceome stronger witht he £ again will the fuel balance back a bit? with a projected cost of 1.70 by end of summer i doubt it

As the power industry looks forward it knows what we need is a smart grid, and a large slection of green power types, hydro wind solar, Ihave seen alot of futre grid plans basde on absorbing energy from houses with solar cells and so on. lots of interesting ideas out there.

Anonymous

The Northern Monkey wrote:

True, but if a factory can provide itself with energy, thats a massive chunk back to the everyday consumer.

The biggest problem is that a company can't produce energy, introduce it to the grid and the use the equivalent energy at another site but only pay the network a rental fee to use their lines.

Nope, the biggest problem is that for a factory to generate enough solar or wind power, it would need a larger area than it covers. The two methods simply don't produce enough energy per square meter.
And, you would need to take on adittional staff to maintain the generating plant.

If you DO manage to proruce more electricy that you actually use, you can get paid by the grid. In fact, there is a house here in Worth Nails that has a waterwheel to generate electricity. AFAIK, it was only a little old lady living inside, with very little in the way of electrical gadgetry.
She got paid by the grid (a pittance, because shw was only contributing a tiny amount, but stil...)
I think she's still alive, and still living there, actually.

welshkev

yeehaamcgee wrote:

welshkev wrote:

i did a conference a few years ago that basically said that the government are going to put up fuel prices, create more bus lanes, reduce speed limits etc etc just to try and force drivers into using public transport,

Whilst that may be a possibility in urban areas, where the public transport system is more developed, it simply isn't an option in rural areas. Here, towns villages and cities are so spread out that is is just highly inefficient to run bus services as regularly as cities. There's just too many routes to cover. And it also takes far too long because of all the contrived stops.
A bus to the cinema, for example, takes well in excess of an hour, whereas you can drive it in 20.
A bus to work will take 45 minutes, but I can drive it in 10, and cycle it in 30.

This is because the busses try to cover a diverse route, since running more direct bus services is just uneconomical, and financially impossible.

i agree with you totally. for me to travel to work is a 32 mile drive, it takes me anywhere between 35 mins and an hour usually. i put in about £30 ish a week in petrol. for me to catch a train i'd have to get to the station which is about 4 miles away, pay nearly £9 to get close to work and then walk a mile the other end. it'd cost me more and take me longer, plus like you i work ridiculous hours it's just not a viable option

Anonymous

I also think the smart grid system is a bit overhyped. Currently, pumped storage plants, and similar, are used to balance out the load. The trouble is, the laod is so gargantuan that the proposed idea of batteries are simply not going to work.

One very VERY interesting thing I have seen plans for however, was a pumped storage facility that used two enormous tanks, and an electrolyte instead of water. not only did the electrolyte turn turbines to generate power, but the whole plant also worked as a giant battery (or fuel cell, to be more correct).

rubins4

Thewaylander wrote:

And it's not all Tax on the fuel there is a good hit on exchange rates, as the price of oil is maintained in dollars

As an aside to the main conversation, has there not been a move by OPEC to trade oil in Euros? I don't know what that would do to us, as we are still in sterling, but would certainly shake the Americans up a bit?

The Northern Monkey

yeehaamcgee wrote:

The Northern Monkey wrote:

True, but if a factory can provide itself with energy, thats a massive chunk back to the everyday consumer.

The biggest problem is that a company can't produce energy, introduce it to the grid and the use the equivalent energy at another site but only pay the network a rental fee to use their lines.

Nope, the biggest problem is that for a factory to generate enough solar or wind power, it would need a larger area than it covers. The two methods simply don't produce enough energy per square meter.
And, you would need to take on adittional staff to maintain the generating plant.

If you DO manage to proruce more electricy that you actually use, you can get paid by the grid. In fact, there is a house here in Worth Nails that has a waterwheel to generate electricity. AFAIK, it was only a little old lady living inside, with very little in the way of electrical gadgetry.
She got paid by the grid (a pittance, because shw was only contributing a tiny amount, but stil...)
I think she's still alive, and still living there, actually.

They're called feed in tarifs. and it can work

Sorry I really can't divulge anything else under pain of losing my job

Thewaylander

It does work indeed,

And Yee i think partially your missing the point of wind in like Northern says, yes it wont produce all the power they need by a long way, but get enough business using them, and you will reduce the strain on the grid.

The smart grid systems works great why? because when there is a spike in the grid due to various reason power stations output actually drops slightly below optimal. Batteries i houses stop this and take a load of strain away. Especially if you imagine the system monitors the grid so turns on your appliances as soon as it dips and so on so the use of power across the grid is more even? this is of huge advantage to power generation,

Why? because turning a power station on and off is expensive. in terms of where and lack of real production while buring alot fuel. Smart grid is needed really badly just to help us manage our needs for power.

getonyourbike

The thing that is needed is a way of storing the electricity that is produced so there is less electricity wastage

Stevo_666

Another vote for fusion as the long term solution. Once we have that cracked (and eventually it will be), then we'll have all the power we need including powering electric cars or extract hydrogen from water to power hydrogen fuel cell cars - the technology on these will get there eventually I'm sure.

What worries me is if we don't get this in place before the oil starts running out, as I foresee f'ing big wars breaking out over energy if we don't.

bluechair84

getonyourbike wrote:

The thing that is needed is a way of storing the electricity that is produced so there is less electricity wastage

I think there is a reservoir in America - San Fransico maybe? - that has two levels. The power station outputs a constant amount and when ussage falls, the excess is used to pump water up to the top level. When demand increases, the water returns through hydroelectric generators.

I asked a bloke in PHD studies why we didn't have this sort of thing; he said we didn't have suitable sites and we had about run out of places to make reservoirs. But I thought this method of energy storage was a fantastic idea.

Anonymous

bluechair84 wrote:

getonyourbike wrote:

The thing that is needed is a way of storing the electricity that is produced so there is less electricity wastage

I think there is a reservoir in America - San Fransico maybe? - that has two levels. The power station outputs a constant amount and when ussage falls, the excess is used to pump water up to the top level. When demand increases, the water returns through hydroelectric generators.

I asked a bloke in PHD studies why we didn't have this sort of thing; he said we didn't have suitable sites and we had about run out of places to make reservoirs. But I thought this method of energy storage was a fantastic idea.

They're called pumped storage hydro plants. I used to work in one. There's two in North Wales. Sounds like your PHD was rather misguided

joshtp

I know I'm a few pages too late, but going back to electric car's and such...


Battery's are getting better all the time, and so are the motor's and other kit... they can already make car's with like 300 mile ranges, and they can do fast charging, so it takes like 10 mins (not sure how good this is?)

The car's can even be pretty fast!

Dont forget, at the start of the ICE, it was like 5 MPG max... these things take development...

If people really put their mind's to it, I could see perfectly good electric car's being common in a few years...



As for Fusion.... Well if anything happens to the reactor, unlike in Fission, the whole thing just stop's.

As soon as it cool's even a tiny bit, Fusion can not happen, and the whole thing stops. And the likely hood of anything going wrong, with all the magnetic containment they use is very,very low. Plus the by product's are pretty much safe, and have really, really short half lives.




As far as I can see, Susion is the future.


And I'm genuinely positive about electric car's


(still nothing like a good old, snorting, grunting and phenomenal sounding V12 though.....)

Anonymous

joshtp wrote:

Battery's are getting better all the time, and so are the motor's and other kit... they can already make car's with like 300 mile ranges, and they can do fast charging, so it takes like 10 mins (not sure how good this is?)

Nope, fast charges still take around 4 hours. That's what they consider "fast".

joshtp

yeehaamcgee wrote:

joshtp wrote:

Battery's are getting better all the time, and so are the motor's and other kit... they can already make car's with like 300 mile ranges, and they can do fast charging, so it takes like 10 mins (not sure how good this is?)

Nope, fast charges still take around 4 hours. That's what they consider "fast".

flip.... not fast at all.... :?

Thewaylander

and doesn't fast charging have a detrimental effect on the life span of the battery?

Anonymous

Thewaylander wrote:

and doesn't fast charging have a detrimental effect on the life span of the battery?

Depends on the iinternal construction of the battery, but generally, yes. Most cars currently available just make use of banks and banks of laptop batteries (same as in our P7 torches).
Passing a high enough current to charge them that quickly slowly destroys the electrodes.

There are newly developed batteries that can whitstand a much higher current, and not suffer any detrimental effect, but I don't believe they're in production yet, and will be VERY expensive at first.

ride_whenever

The point is hydrogen is solely pursued because it is has this lovely water end product.

But the fuel cells, be they solid oxide, polymer or anything else, are just stupidly expensive. The best thing is crack the energy problem (nuclear, of either type tbh) and make synthetic petrol.

If you look at this on the really big scale, all energy essentially comes from stars or is pre-stored from stars (except fusion which basically is a star) fossil fuels are basically highly condensed sunlight (via plants and animals etc) and when it's gone we cannot currently harvest solar energy fast enough, be that through wind and water processes or solar cells. We need to be seriously considering other forms of energy that have been pre-accrued over time, geo-thermal, fission, biomass (again I think this is too immediate) but I'm fairly sure that when I ran the numbers on the back of an envelope we're fairly boned in terms of energy coming into the earth vs our usage.

trail jacker

I think that one of the main issues is the oil companies themselves, they will want to continue to generate massive revenues regardless of what fuel is switched to after oil.
I heard of a small-ish business that was planning to make a system for splitting hydrogen for domestic uses, something like a solar panel being coupled with a small turbine used to power hydrogen splitting system. the intended purpose was to fuel hydrogen cars for free at home (a veeeery slow process i know).
The thing that worries me is that if technologies like these are developed they may not get government funding as it would spell massive profit drops for oil companies which undoubtedly have their talons in governments worldwide. I reckon the next fuel we switch to will be one that still generates effloads of money for the companies

The Northern Monkey

At some point we will no longer need much power because all the big factories will have left and gone to asia/india.

We're f*cked either way tbh.

The sun will die, we will die.

According to Brian Cox, it could happen today or in the next billion years

bluechair84

yeehaamcgee wrote:

bluechair84 wrote:

getonyourbike wrote:

The thing that is needed is a way of storing the electricity that is produced so there is less electricity wastage

I think there is a reservoir in America - San Fransico maybe? - that has two levels. The power station outputs a constant amount and when ussage falls, the excess is used to pump water up to the top level. When demand increases, the water returns through hydroelectric generators.

I asked a bloke in PHD studies why we didn't have this sort of thing; he said we didn't have suitable sites and we had about run out of places to make reservoirs. But I thought this method of energy storage was a fantastic idea.

They're called pumped storage hydro plants. I used to work in one. There's two in North Wales. Sounds like your PHD was rather misguided

yeah... guess where we were at uni :?
He was doing a PHD in... trees or something forestry though so not right up his street, but I did take him at his word.

Anonymous

Erm. I might be mis-remembering something here, but haven't you been up Snowdon at least once, bluechair84?

cooldad

trail jacker wrote:

I think that one of the main issues is the oil companies themselves, they will want to continue to generate massive revenues regardless of what fuel is switched to after oil.
I heard of a small-ish business that was planning to make a system for splitting hydrogen for domestic uses, something like a solar panel being coupled with a small turbine used to power hydrogen splitting system. the intended purpose was to fuel hydrogen cars for free at home (a veeeery slow process i know).
The thing that worries me is that if technologies like these are developed they may not get government funding as it would spell massive profit drops for oil companies which undoubtedly have their talons in governments worldwide. I reckon the next fuel we switch to will be one that still generates effloads of money for the companies

Paranoid conspiracy theories. You don't think the energy companies aren't already spending shedloads of money on alternative energy sources?
Like the urban legend of cars running on water and 'additives' and the tech bought out and hidden away by the evil oil co's.
Tosh is the word.
Anyway you can make biodiesel at home, just trawl your local chip shop for old oil.

getonyourbike

bluechair84 wrote:

yeehaamcgee wrote:

bluechair84 wrote:

getonyourbike wrote:

The thing that is needed is a way of storing the electricity that is produced so there is less electricity wastage

I think there is a reservoir in America - San Fransico maybe? - that has two levels. The power station outputs a constant amount and when ussage falls, the excess is used to pump water up to the top level. When demand increases, the water returns through hydroelectric generators.

I asked a bloke in PHD studies why we didn't have this sort of thing; he said we didn't have suitable sites and we had about run out of places to make reservoirs. But I thought this method of energy storage was a fantastic idea.

They're called pumped storage hydro plants. I used to work in one. There's two in North Wales. Sounds like your PHD was rather misguided

yeah... guess where we were at uni :?
He was doing a PHD in... trees or something forestry though so not right up his street, but I did take him at his word.

I know about these pumped storage hydroelectric power plants but the things is, these need to be worked out with the TV schedule so it is used at the right time, so in the advert break of a popular program lots of people might want a cup of tea. A kettle requires lots of energy for a short space of time which puts lots of strain on the national grid. I'm talking about a way of storing the power produced by the 'normal' power stations for when its needed and electricity only being taken when its needed unlike at the moment a chunk of lectricity is being lots as heat through the national grid.

trail jacker

cooldad wrote:

Like the urban legend of cars running on water and 'additives' and the tech bought out and hidden away by the evil oil co's.
Tosh is the word.

urban legend?
...and its in no way "tosh", there are car companies producing hydrogen powered cars today like honda,, they just arent getting enough backing because the worlds infrastructure, stupidly, is based on a finite resource.
Although well worth the move to hydrogen in my opinion, governments (especially during a recession, and given the amount of money they make on fuel duties) are veery reluctant to change despite the environmental implications.

bluechair84

cooldad wrote:

Anyway you can make biodiesel at home, just trawl your local chip shop for old oil.

I spent ages looking into this to fuel the old Toyota Previa and decided that it was a lot of effort if you didn't want to risk damaging the engine. You can get around the fuel pump problem by adding a thinner, or mixing it 50/50 with diesel but you need to filter it, then preferably wash it, and definatly bring the acidity down or it eats engine components. Though I never found any conclusive write-ups from people who did this in their garage with success so I couldn't be certain how seriously to take the instructables.
But there should definatly be more small business' recycling chip oil into biodiesel.

yeehaamcgee wrote:

Erm. I might be mis-remembering something here, but haven't you been up Snowdon at least once, bluechair84?

Did my PGCE at Bangor uni, so spent quite a bit of time around Snowdon and Marin trail, and Moel Elio - great descent from the top down to the Rangers, and back via Llanberis.

Raymondavalon

This is the future of power generatiopn in the automotive industry