• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Energy Bills

scaramanga said:
I've already mentioned in this thread that almost nobody was against the policy - no govt of any colour would have done anything differently.

But now we know, we have to act.
Click to expand...

The issue is how slowly governments have been reacting. Russia invaded Ukraine over half a year ago. Weaning ourselves off gas and fossil fuels is a longer-term object anyway. Being proactive buying up solar and putting in place a project to install over the nation, would have paid dividends. But it looks like nothing was done at all. Asleep at the wheel?
 
Rorschach said:
In fact, the batteries are lasting way longer than anticipated. The batteries will outlast the car in most cases and even then only degrade to about 70% of their original capacity. And then the cells can be retasked for something else. I've seen vids of guys turning a small number of cells from old Nissan Leaf batteries into DIY power walls. That is the germ of a new industry right there.
Click to expand...
Battery longevity has been patchy at best so it is good to see that manufacturers are conservative about performance promises.

I believe that the industry is still learning about how the batteries behave differently compared to petrol engines in adverse conditions especially extreme temperatures.

They are highly flammable too and while it isn't a problem now but imagine when the majority of cars are evs and a places with high density of EVs be one a super fire hazard. I think new fire safety devices at scale too.

Personally I think battery tech breakthroughs will come soon, however in the longer term hydrogen fuel will be the standard... Safe energy generation on demand as opposed to distributed and stored.

Sent from my SM-S908E using Fapatalk
 
metalgear said:
Battery longevity has been patchy at best so it is good to see that manufacturers are conservative about performance promises.

I believe that the industry is still learning about how the batteries behave differently compared to petrol engines in adverse conditions especially extreme temperatures.

They are highly flammable too and while it isn't a problem now but imagine when the majority of cars are evs and a places with high density of EVs be one a super fire hazard. I think new fire safety devices at scale too.

Personally I think battery tech breakthroughs will come soon, however in the longer term hydrogen fuel will be the standard... Safe energy generation on demand as opposed to distributed and stored.

Sent from my SM-S908E using Fapatalk
Click to expand...
Is highly flammable a problem when the alternative is petrol?
 
scaramanga said:
That would be great if we could, all I know is that's not possible here. Maybe it's the scale of the project but SSE want nothing to do with our excess.
Click to expand...
You're thinking to 'real-time'. My suggestion related to the inefficiency of pumping water up hill, I've married that with you're issue of burning off electricity that no-one needs. I'm not thinking of your or any other specific location.

Just identifying dots that could be joined.
 
SpurMeUp said:
The issue is how slowly governments have been reacting. Russia invaded Ukraine over half a year ago. Weaning ourselves off gas and fossil fuels is a longer-term object anyway. Being proactive buying up solar and putting in place a project to install over the nation, would have paid dividends. But it looks like nothing was done at all. Asleep at the wheel?
Click to expand...
They couldn't possibly put a large chunk of taxpayers money into something that would be eternally useful. What a ridiculous idea.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
You're thinking to 'real-time'. My suggestion related to the inefficiency of pumping water up hill, I've married that with you're issue of burning off electricity that no-one needs. I'm not thinking of your or any other specific location.

Just identifying dots that could be joined.
Click to expand...
I certainly think that could work. There must be something better than that for storage on a large scale though.
 
scaramanga said:
I certainly think that could work. There must be something better than that for storage on a large scale though.
Click to expand...
I think it's a multi faceted problem/solution.

It's the joined up thinking/approach we need, which is a worry with the political 'brains' involved and a non-nationlised sector to get buy-in from.

In this particular case, it cuts down on storing excess as you're using it to pump water uphill to a reservoir (which is effectively storage).

There are many new battery techs that will be safer, cheaper and more suited to large scale storage in the future. Different battery tech characteristics lend themselves better depending on how they are going to be used. Sodium, liquid metal, Sand, graphene...all under development.

Edit: I also think if people/businessess did feed into the grid or storage it should be '1 in 1 out' ...you use 1kw you're back to zero usage if you feed 1kw back in. None of this different rates for feed in and usage.
 
Last edited:
ricky2tricky4city said:
I think it's a multi faceted problem/solution.

It's the joined up thinking/approach we need, which is a worry with the political 'brains' involved and a non-nationlised sector to get buy-in from.

In this particular case, it cuts down on storing excess as you're using it to pump water uphill to a reservoir (which is effectively storage).

There are many new battery techs that will be safer, cheaper and more suited to large scale storage in the future. Different battery tech characteristics lend themselves better depending on how they are going to be used. Sodium, liquid metal, Sand, graphene...all under development.

Edit: I also think if people/businessess did feed into the grid or storage it should be '1 in 1 out' ...you use 1kw you're back to zero usage if you feed 1kw back in. None of this different rates for feed in and usage.
Click to expand...
The problem with looking at what will be available in the future too hard is that it leaves us in the predicament we're in now.

5-10 years is a long time for my business to carry £0.5m extra utility costs per year - it wipes out our profits completely. It's also a long time for households to carry £2.5k annual bills (or whatever it is now).

As much as we need to get away from our reliance on gas, we should have reduced its supply in line with the power we were generating elsewhere, not shutting it off in the hope that something else will just turn up and replace it.
 
metalgear said:
Battery longevity has been patchy at best so it is good to see that manufacturers are conservative about performance promises.

I believe that the industry is still learning about how the batteries behave differently compared to petrol engines in adverse conditions especially extreme temperatures.

They are highly flammable too and while it isn't a problem now but imagine when the majority of cars are evs and a places with high density of EVs be one a super fire hazard. I think new fire safety devices at scale too.

Personally I think battery tech breakthroughs will come soon, however in the longer term hydrogen fuel will be the standard... Safe energy generation on demand as opposed to distributed and stored.

Sent from my SM-S908E using Fapatalk
Click to expand...

Agree. Although hydrogen is possibly even more combustible. Storing hydrogen safely is one of the key issues to overcome. A big tank of hydrogen exploding would be like a massive bomb?
 
Rorschach said:
I've never once heard of anything like that. If you want to post some articles how the UK grid can't take feed in electricity I'll read them. Even if that was the case the solution is to fix the grid to handle it. It works everywhere else. And as I mentioned you'll use almost all the electricity you create anyway. You are tilting at windmills here.

And of course solar panels alleviate costs. Why else would you be putting them on your factory o_O ? A reasonably small 2kw system would get you about half your domestic electricity in ideal conditions. And again a 2kw battery adds say an additional 1k or so to the cost of an installation. It is not a massive amount.

If you want to argue that the current cost of a solar pv system is still beyond a lot of households then yes I would agree. This is where the government should come in. Batteries and panels are well on the learning curve and the prices has been dropping rapidly for years, but if you can't afford a 5k energy bill I assume you won't be able to afford a 5k pv installation either. Lower-income families should be helped with the upfront cost rather than throwing a few hundred quid at them every now and then which goes back to the energy companies anyway.
Click to expand...
The grid can take feed in
I was involved in a project to do just that about 15 years ago, when head of procurement at Tesco
We ran our generators on test but fed the electricity back to the grid
They use something called a ROCOF relay, rate of change of frequency … I remember the name and acronym so well
The programme was called Flexitricity
 
Our issue with energy costs in the UK isn’t wholesale costs, that’s just spin
It’s that our prices are off setting every other countries utilities as we don’t own any
Even our wind turbines are mainly owned by Danish companies
We are a laughing stock in Europe for the sell offs we have done
EDF - France
EON and RWE - German
Equinor - Norway
Orsted - danish
SSE - Swiss

it’s a shambles
 
Rorschach said:
Tidal is not at the races and won't be until it is too late to make a difference. It is too far back the learning curve. The 4 horsemen of energy are PV, wind, battery, and electrolyzers. These 4 will more than cover our energy needs with nuclear helping the transition. If you are looking for a dark horse it might be geothermal. Repurposing coal power stations and using drilling techniques developed by fracking is getting a little traction.
Click to expand...
I know a few guys that invested in tidal about 10 years ago. A Dutch system to be trialled in the Severn…. I do think it ever happened
 
SpurMeUp said:
Agree. Although hydrogen is possibly even more combustible. Storing hydrogen safely is one of the key issues to overcome. A big tank of hydrogen exploding would be like a massive bomb?
Click to expand...

Well that's what I worry about too, but from my casual reading:
- hydrogen by itself is not combustible
- to combust it needs to be ignited in a mixture of oxygen in sufficient volumes
- hydrogen is so light that if you free it it would disperse too quickly to be dangerous if not contained
- fuel cells work by mixing tiny amounts of hydrogen and oxygen so they are safe

So it won't spontaneously combust like Li ion batteries, but in the case of an accident, or creative user errors, I suppose anything can happen.

Korea and Japan are investing heavily in hydrogen and innovations to improve extraction and safety are still happening albeit under the radar, not hyped up by the Western press. This article explains better :

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans...ld-revolutionize-the-energy-market-1162360769

The issue with hydrogen as a fuel is generation and storage, to generate a lot of it and then get it compact enough for transportation.

Interestingly, tesla does not own much battery tech or innovation: they get their batteries from Panasonic (Japan) and LG (Korea) , who curiously are still not rushing out electric cars as enthusiastically as we know they can.

Also there are huge issues with sourcing cobalt and lithium, so new tech sodium batteries is inevitable. In which case, hydrogen fuel cells is ahead in large scale research and practical application.





Sent from my SM-T865 using Fapatalk
 
Bedfordspurs said:
I know a few guys that invested in tidal about 10 years ago. A Dutch system to be trialled in the Severn…. I do think it ever happened
Click to expand...
Do you mean you dont think it happened?

I have seen a bunch of successful tidal projects but they are very much prototypes and not scalable to any degree. I'm sure something somewhere might get a bit of traction but considering the low cost of other renewables it will not grab much of the market. Tidal has missed the boat.
 
Rorschach said:
Do you mean you dont think it happened?

I have seen a bunch of successful tidal projects but they are very much prototypes and not scalable to any degree. I'm sure something somewhere might get a bit of traction but considering the low cost of other renewables it will not grab much of the market. Tidal has missed the boat.
Click to expand...
Yeah Don’t
Typo
It was with a sixth company and they needed depth but not too many boats
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back