UK energy policy

[Workingman]

The Sun can, and does, deliver googols of TWh per year of power to the planet, yet the only way we can harness it 100% to our needs with current technology is to blanket the planet in solar cells and windmills taking up millions of sq km of land and sea. Nobody knows what the effect of that abstraction on the 'liveable' biosphere will be, never mind where all the materials to build the infrastructure will come from. What we do know is that we lose a lot of that land for food creation and other uses.

It's a pipe dream to make us feel all warm and cuddly that we are doing something. The spreadsheet numbers make it all seem ever so easy when the realty is very much different - and unknown. See politicians and their PPE 'degrees' or ask an engineer.

Wind and solar are not 'deemed to be intermittent, they are, by there very nature, intermittent. It is a physical fact. They might be part of a solution, but only a small part - currently 15% of our needs, https://gridwatch.co.uk/ as I write. Think of how many windmills and solar cells we have to achieve that, and we are at the forefront!

Nothing that we do is 'cost free' yet some of you make out that it is - it is NOT.

[Suff]

This is not correct by a long way. The solar required to duplicate daily TW/h for the whole world is a very small portion of the Sahara. Far bigger constraints are interconnects to 3 or 4 such areas to give world wide 24 hour power.

So let's stop the "cover the world in solar panels", it is simply not true. Equally using 2008 figures for onshore wind turbines won't work either. The 70GW of new wind will be mainly offshore and a cat has more similarity to a lion than old 2000's onshore wind turbines have to the new offshore 15MW ones. The changes in these turbines are nothing short of dramatic and they will continue to become more powerful through new and more innovative engineering, not just size which is maxing out now on tip speed.

Constantly repeating these Oil industry fed statements is exactly the same as repeating the tobacco industry statements before the ban.

With 2020 hindsight the tobacco industry statements were both untrue and designed to mislead the person in the street.

[Workingman]

Nice try with tobacco, but rubbish and irrelevant.

15 MW windmills are prototypes, not the norm, though you make out that they are. They do not exist in the present wind farms in any number, and if they ever become the norm (doubtful) they will still be small beer. Fact. See my link..

Go on then. Tell me how many of these big windmills and solar cells are needed to power industry and civilian needs in Europe, Western Russia, North America, the ME, China, India, Japan, South America, Africa, and other places 24 hrs per day once fossil fuels go. Where will they get their power? Who will build the new infrastructure to supply it? Where (on Earth) will the materials come from? What area will they cove? Where?

You do know that the Sahara goes dark at night and that DC voltage does not travel well. Then there are terrorists and insurgents to deal with over thousands of square kilometres, Simples; eh?

I am no Oil, Gas or Coal industry promoter, just a realist.

[Suff]

The SG 14-236 DD is not experimental and has been chosen for a range of offshore contrac[quote][/quote]ts including UK and Poland.

[Workingman]

The link is for the 222 and from the article:

The serial production is planned for 2024.

So, nothing installed yet.

As for the 236

Siemens Gamesa will install a prototype of its larger rotor 14-15MW turbine in 2022.

The German-Spanish company said the turbine, which features a rotor of 236 metres, up from the original 222-metre configuration, will go up at the Danish national test centre at Osterild.

A prototype, as I said - not experimental. That was your choice of description

In 2021 global electricity consumption was 24,105 TWh 80% of which was by fossil fuels. Better be quick building those windmills because we will need quite a few. Thousands just for the UK.

[Suff]

Both are specced at 15mw burst. 2024 is fully in line with the 60GW of additional wind in the pipeline right now.

Also if you follow the news a Scottish company has just been approved for HVDC cable manufacture for the Morocco cable link. This will bring in 3.2GW of energy, minimum, 20 hours a day. The same as Hinckley Point C but only 4 hours less time.

This is a dedicated UK facility where the cable runs direct. From Morocco to the UK.

As this works and we see the benefit, the cable trunks can be expanded faster than new Nuclear.

This is real power which will deliver in 2027. The onshore infra is in progress and this infra is now mature and runs to plan. Cable laying is also mature infra and runs to plan.

10 years from now this resistance to Solar and "Windmills" is going to look silly.

[Workingman]

60GW of additional wind in the pipeline right now.

Eh? A link to this please. We max out at around 45GW in winter, we are currently on 34GW today.

As for Morocco. It's 9,500 miles of cable weighing in at 90,000 metric tonnes of steel and covering 576 sq miles. It comes in at $21.9 billion and supplies, wait for it, 8% of UK needs! Figures are from Electrek.

Some scaling up needed, methinks. 576 sq miles is an area 24 miles x 24 miles. We don't have the land.

It is not resistance to solar and wind, it is that the promotion of them drowns out any other solutions. It is the partisan zealotry and and blind faith that irks people.

[Suff]

When I say in the pipeline, I mean the expansion from the current level of wind to 100GW by 2050. That was in the plan put out by the PM. Nice easy numbers. Where are we today?

The United Kingdom is one of the best locations for wind power in the world and is considered to be the best in Europe.[2][3] By the end of July 2022, the UK had 11,104 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of over 24.6 gigawatts (GW): 14.2 GW of onshore capacity and 10.4 GW of offshore capacity,[4] the sixth largest capacity of any country in 2019.[5] Wind power contributed 24.8% of UK electricity supplied in 2020, having surpassed coal in 2016[6][7] and nuclear in 2018.[8] It is the largest source of renewable electricity in the UK.[9] The UK Government has committed to a major expansion of offshore capacity by 2030[10][11] which was extended from 40GW to 50GW, with 5GW from floating wind sources in a statement by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2022.[12]

Where are we going?

The world’s first detailed roadmap on how to enable a nation to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 has been published by UK government advisory body, the Climate Change Committee (CCC).

Its 1,000-page, three-part report explains how emissions reductions in the UK would come through the electrification of heat and transport, renewable energy — based around a “backbone” of at least 100GW of offshore wind

Windmills!. Yes you did read correctly. Those stupid "Windmills" produced 24.8% of all energy supplied in the UK in 2020.

Windmills! Not a joke.