Energy infrastructure at breaking point.

[Workingman]

A problem with a gas governor used to maintain system pressure has meant that a local network in Falkirk had to be shut down completely. Some 8.000 properties will have no gas till possibly the end of the week, so that means no heating and also no cooking or hot water for many at a time when daytime temperatures are about 2 ºC and at night go down to -4 or -5 ºC.

With that in mind the council and SGN, the gas company, have been handing out electric heaters and electric counter top cookers so that people can keep at least one room warm and have hot food and drinks. It's the least they could do.

But step forward Scottish Power whose electricity grid covers the area. It has warned people to be 'mindful' of their electricity use because the increased demand has already caused some temporary overloads and outages.

And some people think that we can change over to electric vehicles without any problems.

[TheOstrich]

Well yes, that has been an extremely serious event in Falkirk; 8,000 properties must equate to around 20,000 people which is the size of town like Kenilworth. I'd like to know where the authorities were able to source all those heaters from - some sort of strategic reserve?

On an entirely different note, we had the first real overnight frost down here last night; three of the four parking ticket machines in the main Shaftesbury car park were out of order this morning. I don't think that was entirely a coincidence ....

[Suff]

Scotland and SSE are in a particularly bad position because they shut down Drax in favour of renewables.

Solar does not work at night... Drax now runs on biomass at way less than when it ran on coal. If they didn't have Torness they would be totally screwed.

Forget EV's, they keep talking about transitioning from gas heating and cooking....

Every year we get more renewables and every year we lose more grid capacity.

One of these days we are going to get a major failure in mid winter and people are going to start dying. Because the government will not believe the problem exists until that actually happens.

[cromwell]

I played cricket at Drax. And Ferrybridge.
We can't move to electric cars until somebody pays ££££££££££££ for who knows how many power stations.Who is going to do that?
I used to have a work colleague whose previous career had been in the power station game. He was massively dismissive of biomass. "One big field will last about nine seconds" was one of his remarks.
The Japanese (Honda especially) have invested heavily in cars powered by the Hydrogen fuel cell. I know there is no perfect solution but if they are doing it, I'd be tempted to have a good look at doing the same.
The infrastructure already exists - petrol stations. Just put a hydrogen pump there as well. You can tax it like you tax petrol - unlike domestic electricity. And there is no need to spend billions on power stations, or toxic batteries to dispose of after they are exhausted.
But government has never seemed keen on hydrogen. Call me suspicious but I reckon there has been serious lobbying against it, probably by vested interests.

[Workingman]

Will you please stop talking sense?

Anyone would think that we could use free nighttime wind electricity, when it's not needed, in a country awash with water to create LH2 and LOx via electrolysis. I suppose we could then use the LOx in industry and transport the LH2 to 'petrol' stations for use in cars and lorries and buses. Those vehicles would then only produce water at their exhausts. Get a grip, man.

Oh wait, Hyundai, Toyota and Honda all think the same and are already producing such vehicles. Audi, BMW, Fiat, Mercedes, GM, Ford and others are all getting on board. They are all mad! It's far better to build a windmill every square metre and dig up rare earth metals to put into hard-to-recycle batteries than it is to use the most abundant element in the Universe again and again.

Next thing you know we'll be growing 'meat' and 'fish' from stem cells in 'vertical farm' laboratories so that we have enough land to produce all the veggies for the vegans; veggies that we will industrially process to look and taste like..... er 'meat'.

[Suff]

Of course if the recent research which has produced e-coli that breaks down CO2 proves out, then CCS becomes cc and re-use. Making fossil fuels truly CO2 neutral.

Something to watch.

Some other interesting stats are the batteries themselves. A Tesla P100d has a battery which weighs near 1 Ton but holds 10l of diesel in energy.

Should we find a way to use that fuel energy more effectively, EVs could be in danger. Especially as charging a Tesla I Poland emits 130g CO2 per KM driven....

The whole situation is in the hands of madmen and the wolves at the door think that removing our right to personal transport is the answer....

Ossie, the problem with Hydrogen is storage. You need to keep it in cryo to ensure it won't leak. Only Graphene seals have a hope of holding hydrogen in and that is not 100%.

We are used to leaving our vehicles for weeks and even months without running them. Not good news to come back to your vehicle 4 weeks later to find that it has no fuel and just how do you get it to the hydrogen pump?

Also they would be banned from all public enclosed parking spaces due to the risk of hydrogen build up. With 100 vehicles in a garage it would not take much.

BMW went all in on Hydrogen then had to back out of it. That cost them a lot of EV catch up time.

Personally I feel that they have just given up on innovating the ICE which would not only mitigate the current vehicles but provide an avenue to replacing older vehicles with more efficient engines.

[Workingman]

There are so many facets to the problems we face and they can all play a part, yet politicians and big business have all been sold on the big ticket items - except nuclear - as the only solutions and, sadly, the vast majority of us have bought in.

I had a laugh on another forum. One person was banging on and on about (unsafe) nuclear and how all nuke power stations were, dangerously, built on the coast - WITH IMMINENT SEA RISES!!!! We would all be DOOMED!

Then came the sensible one. S/he pointed out that the beach and the coast were two different things and that Beachy Head was on the coast but about 160m high. They avowed that if the sea rose that high we would all be for it. They also pointed out that tidal barrages, a thing the anti-nuker was all for, were effectively "on the beach" and that it would only take a few metres of sea rise to overtop and swamp them.

The resulting silence was deafening.

[Suff]

A few meters sea rise or one 1,000 year storm.

Odd how people see things.

We've been discussing moving gas to electric elsewhere. The lowest Household gas usage is double the highest band electricity usage. Middle of the road is nearly 4 times.

Heat pumps max out at 3 times as efficient as gas. Leaving the other "whole" to be filled by electricity.

To meet Corbyn's CO2 neutral by 2030, he would need to double the household grid capacity, Just for Gas...

It is a joke. When we see real planning, then we can accept that someone has actually thought about it.

[cromwell]

A lot of it is just halfwit sloganeering imo Suff.
Heat pumps sound good, but the cost of installing one for a UK house is what, £15,000 for a ground source heat pump?
Much more expensive than gas atm.

[Suff]

Mainly they are talking about Air-Air heat pumps which, in the depths of a UK winter, only provide around 50% 3nergy efficie cy gains.

With gas burning 4 times a homes electricity in thermal energy, the winter cost to the grid is going to be Huge.

I know how good they are not as my Uncle had one fitted to his new build. He has had constant adjustment problems with it since it was installed.

Halfwit is generous, they are just not that good. Any of them.