New rules on home energy

[excoriator]

I suppose we'll have to wait to see what the government is proposing regarding electricity generation, but it would appear that we are at last beginning to move towards the abolition of large centralised power stations, except as back-up for long periods of low wind or sun.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40699986

It is good to see that the idea of demand management using the internet being talked about, but I have reservations about the vulnerability of these systems to hacking. Thee are obvious concerns about washing machines and dryers being allowed to switch on when their owners are out at work. Fine if they are carefully designed, but recent fires caused by dryers demonstrates that this is not always the case.

The government's evident reliance on batteries as a form of energy storage seems predicated on the assumption that with a sustained effort, their performance will be hugely improved. This seems rather unlikely to me. Work on batteries has been going on for nearly 200 years now, and there is precious little to show for it. Energy density - the amount of energy stored per kg - seems stuck at about one or two percent of that stored in fossil fuels like petrol or diesel, even with the adoption of Lithium, which in my opinion is a rather dangerous element to use. Flow batteries may be a better bet. The energy is stored in tanks of electrolytes so the amount stored is defined by the size of the tanks, but whilst being relatively inexpensive, the energy density remains low and it is not therefore very suitable for domestic use.

I would have thought that grid-level storage would be a better bet. The fact that this involves much larger scale storage opens the door to many other technologies not suitable for domestic systems and offers the prospect of higher efficiency too. Even if - as seems to be mainly the case now - these storage facilities use lithium batteries, I feel this is much safer done using industrial installations than domestic ones. Certainly, I would not want a large domestic lithium battery in the house. I'd want it in an outhouse or cabinet where a fire would not burn the place to the ground.

[marchesarosa]

Whistling in the dark, exco?

[excoriator]

No. There is no need to whistle. Things are clearly going the way I hope they will.

My opinion is that batteries are simply not good enough for a long term solution, and its unlikely that throwing money at improving them is going to help much, but the government will find that out in time, or I will e proved wrong. Whatever the outcome, it is clear that fossil power will soon be relegated to 'back-up' status for a few decades before fading away in favour of storage.

I suspect that today's announcement on all-electric cars by 2040 will fail too. Again batteries are just not good enough. Over half the population of the UK live in terraced houses or flats where home charging is not practicable anyway, and charging at filling /charging stations takes too long. Fortunately, hydrogen cars are now beginning to enter the market and they ARE extremely practicable. The nice thing about hydrogen is that in the short term it can be made from petrochemicals - even natural gas - very easily, and it can also be made very easily by electricity allowing a gentle switch-over to renewables. This involves no change in driving habits from the existing petroland diesel cars.

Again, I can see the end of fossil fuel powered transport, and good riddance to it.

[marchesarosa]

In 2017, when I was last regularly active here Exco predicted (he was VERY good at making predictions!)

"It is clear that fossil power will soon be relegated to 'back-up' status for a few decades before fading away in favour of storage."

Hmm

Even the Beeb has now come round to my way of thinking. I explained back then that contrary to Green spin renewables were not even keeping up with the global growth in energy demand NEVER MIND actually REPLACING fossil fuel demand. - except in a few Western outposts of alarmism.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61802802

Even in Europe and Australia and the USA today the nations are scrambling to reopen coal mines and postpone closures.

I will now make a very unwonted "prediction" re the future of energy. I've always been leery of predictions, especially about the future. But here goes.

The renewables fantasy is over. It is not going to revive.

The West et al have been taught a salutary lesson about magical thinking. Wanting a thing to be so does not make it so. Do not dismiss the views of those who disagree with you. Learn about them instead and even modify your own.

[marchesarosa]

If you wonder what "biomass" is (at the bottom of the chart )it is mainly twigs and dung burned indoors on open hearths to cook their food by the very poorest in the world. Thankfully, this portion of the global population is reducing rapidly as the rest hurry to catch up with the West and share our aspirations for a comfortable, long and healthy life courtesy of fossil fuels. Expensive inefficient wind and solar energy will never deliver this longed for modernisation and industrialisation.

I recommend a book called "Factfulness" by Hans Rosling who sadly died in 2017 to you all. You can buy it in hardback, second hand, on Amazon for a very low price. It is a very easy ready so will not challenge you too much.

It will explain the existence of the global trends that may have passed you by, the absence of which has left some of you with inadequate "magical thinking".

Hans Rosling also gave some of the highly regarded TED talks and can be found on You Tube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdglink

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD1gxFvjJ6o

Take home message:

The populations of the richest, best educated (and also most alarmist) nations in the world are also the most ignorant i.e ACTIVELY misinformed i.e. their Ignorance of the world is greater than that of chimpanzees.

Exco!

Attachments:

[excoriator]

I've come to the conclusion that green hydrogen is the way to go. There are several proposals for offshore wind farms with on-board electrolysers in individual turbines, so the farm produces hydrogen not electricity. The latest developments in electrolyser technology are returning efficiencies of 95% and aboe.

It turns out that the levelised cost of energy is lower per kWh for hydrogen piped ashore than electricity. Partly this is due to much lower transmission losses from a pipeline than in a cable, and partly because pipes are far chepaer than HVDC cables accompanied by an offshore HVDC converter station and a matching onshore one.

Hydrogen can be used directly for heat or converted back to electricity by fuel cell or CCGT. A particularly interesting idea is to replace gas boilers with fuel cell CHP units fed from a 100% hydrogen main network. This will provide your electricity and heat, and the overall efficiency approaches 100%.

The biggest advantage of hydrogen is that it is easily stored in solution-mined caverns in salt strata deep underground. This is widely used for natural gas and works well for hydrogen. The environmental impact of this is zero. A 400 million cubic metre facility exists in Stublach, Cheshire and you can find information about it online.

Hydrogen is useable from cars to trains. We can replace diesel trains with them at lower cost than electrifying miles of track. It is also being used for trucks and buses - there are already hydrogen buses running in UK cities - as well as cars. One of its advantages is that it is as quick to fill as a petrol car and as about two thirds of brits live in homes where home charging is not possible, they can be owned by anyone. It is a little known fact that hydrogen fuel cell forklifts are becoming popular. They can be safely used indoors as the only exhaust is water vapor, and being quick to charge provide good use of capital equipment. Far better than battery powered ones.

Soall in all I see green hydrogen as the future, and I am not alone. There is something of an investment gold rush in hydrogen plant of all sorts going on across the world including steelmaking, where by using hydrogen as the reducing agent instead of carbon monoxide from coke, 'green' steel can be made without the huge release of CO2 that coke involves.

So there you go. The future according to Exco. Will it happen? Haven't a clue, particularly with Boris and the other shitheads in the cabinet busting a gut to extract yet more oil and gas from the North Sea.