If that power line goes through the Ukraine you can expect some of those electrons to disappear en route.
More generally, a major power line will be exposed to all sorts of threats.
Hey, darlink, do I look like someone who steals that smelly gas stuff?
Of course we would be happy to have your power line cross our country.
Sorted. I flashed my t*ts and they believed every word.
mikepepler wrote:I wonder if heating is going to be the key demand for electricity in future. Once our gas has run out, we'll discover that we can only heat about 10%-ish of the homes in the UK with the available sustainable biomass. OK, so we could super-insulate as many homes as possible, and maybe get a bit further.
In the long run though, I think if we're going to keep the same number of homes in the UK and heat them all, the only way we'll do it is through ground source heat pumps, and the electricity will need to come form wind, wave and tide. A supergrid will help smooth out demand and supply variability.
Any thoughts? I've not considered all the possibilities by any means...
As soon as we replace the monetary system design with something that does not require infinite growth, it's possible to build passive solar houses. Like in BedZed. All initiatives which would represent any kind of actual *saving* are more or less prohibited under the current system. Real *savings* would kill the debt and interest carousel, and that can not be allowed.
MacG wrote:As soon as we replace the monetary system design with something that does not require infinite growth, it's possible to build passive solar houses.
But what about the existing 20 million houses? We can't build new ones to replace them all, but they probably can't be retrofitted to the standard of new build, hence the continued need for heating.
MacG wrote:As soon as we replace the monetary system design with something that does not require infinite growth, it's possible to build passive solar houses.
But what about the existing 20 million houses? We can't build new ones to replace them all, but they probably can't be retrofitted to the standard of new build, hence the continued need for heating.
Indeed. But people may get used to heating only one room again. As long as that room is well insulated and an efficient stove is used in that room (one that will cook, heat water and provide heat to the room) then we can cut use dramatically. Then it's time to fill the water bottle and go to bed in the cold bedrooms.
Jim
For every complex problem, there is a simple answer, and it's wrong.
"Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs" (Lao Tzu V.i).
If we invested the money from Grasping Gordon's proposed nukes and the third runway at Heathrow, we would probably be somewhere near our contribution with some left over for a few wave power machines. The vision of our Prime Minister is severely impaired, both physically and metaphorically.
I, too, am concerned that we don't have enough time for mega projects like this but I would rather stall half way through the HVDC line than get a nuke up and running and then stall. Especially as it looks like the idiots are going to put them on the coast in the line of flooding.
If the economy goes into recession we will not have the money to spend on anything. Unless, of course, the government takes a leaf out of the Feasta economic handbook and spend its way out of the recession, creating the money itself, rather than giving the profit to the banks. A recession could lower economic output enough to make the oil last a bit longer. It would take a lot of the rubbish off the market and allow it to be replaced by essentials.
It's clear that investment in new grid infrastructure is as important as investment in renewables-based generation as well as initiatives to reduce demand, particularly peak demand. The grid needs to be multi-layered. I don't know enough to say this with confidence but we need make changes that are relatively quick and cheap to build that add systemic resilience.
Maybe that points to a more cellular approach with local and regional mini-grids that can function to distribute some power autonomously but which normally link together to national and (if the UK decides to join in) to a supra-national HVDC supergrid.
Households and businesses would act as consumer-generators to the mini-grids. Mini-grids would act as consumer-generators to the national grid and the national grid would act as a consumer-generator to the HVDC supergrid.
Operating alone, the mini-grids could use intelligent metering to price electricity dynamically to reflect demand and supply. When supply is tight, prices for electricity consumed or fed back into the grid would be very high. Homes could get high visibility, traffic-light style red/amber/green meters to flag up when it's cheap to consume.
Operating together, linked to the national grid, pricing would fluctuate less dramatically. Or, if there is a peak in demand from other mini-grids, feed-in tariff prices would be higher to encourage more net exporting.
