Guest essay by Philip Foster
COP21 Paris climate conference urged that all home heating should move away from gas to be all electric. In the UK the Climate Change Act already assumes this scenario will be put into practice.1
Just how realistic is this for the UK?
There are around 16 million (16 × 106) households connected to the gas grid network in the UK.
The average household boiler is rated at 60 kiloWatt
To replace that with electric home heating would still require about the same electrical capacity. (Remember even a single electric shower is 7 kW, and an oven approaching 10 kW).2
Here’s the math(s):
16 × 106 × 60 kW = 96 × 107 =~ 100 × 107 = 109 kW = 106 MegaW = 103 GigaW
or about 1 TeraW of extra power.
Drax, in Yorkshire England (which was the UK’s biggest and most efficient coal fired power station), generates about 4 GW, therefore to generate this extra 1 TW we would need to build about 250 Drax sized power stations, or erect half a million 5 MW (in reality, 2 MW) wind turbines [for reference: current requirement in the UK is a mere 40 GW, that is 0.04 TW].
Now let’s go to COP21’s second idea that all cars should be electric.3
In the UK there are about 35 million cars (just over double the number of households).
1 Horsepower is about 750 W
So an average 100 HP car engine = 75 kW (marginally more than the average household boiler)
This means we need, not just 1 TW extra electric power to charge up these vehicles, but more than 2 TW.
That is 500 Drax-sized power stations or one million wind turbines.
Combining household heating with electric cars the UK would need an extra 3 TW of generating power.
Although, arguably, the 3 TW are not always needed, they will be, frequently so, around 5-6pm on a weekday. People return home, plug their cars, switch on their heating, and start cooking – all on electric.
So COP21 (and our very own Climate Change Act) is asking the UK to build 750 more Drax sized power stations4 or 1.5 million more wind turbines. And, of course, we would need to completely rebuild the electricity Grid to take this nearly 75 fold increase in load. Also every street in the UK will need to be dug up to install much higher capacity cabling.
I’m not sure the English language has a word strong enough to describe this. It’s beyond insanity. Perhaps, as Roger T. put it: “the British like their understatement: ‘problematic’?”
Notes
1. See Christopher Booker:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11305122/Forget-your-gas-cooker-were-headed-for-zero-carbon-Britain.html
2. Much talk about using heat pumps. But here again this is nigh impossible:
a. Most houses using gas are terraced or semi-detached in urban areas where there is obviously a limit to how much heat can be extracted from the ground without creating a local ‘permafrost’.
b. The necessary excavations in such areas would almost certainly hit gas mains (however defunct!), sewers, water pipes and electricity cabling.
3. Issues about electric cars:
a. The Tesla’s battery weighs 800kg – nearly a tonne. That is the equivalent of about eight extra passengers present for a whole journey. Range, if you are lucky, 200 miles. If it’s cold then less, as the power available from the battery drops by 50% for every ten degree drop in temperature. A petrol (gasoline) car for the same range would use fuel that weighed perhaps 16kg, diminishing, with no measurable change in available power for a ten degree drop in temperature.
b. Now imagine you are out on a lonely road in a blizzard in a Tesla. You have no heating; power diminishing due to the cold; you meet a snow drift; the vehicle slowly grinds to a halt with no available power. What can you do? Find a recharging point? Fat chance! Stay in the vehicle and hope for rescue? You’ll probable freeze to death. Get out and walk? a similar fate.
In a gas vehicle, unless you run out of fuel, you have heating, you are less likely to get stuck. Even if you do run out of fuel, you’ll probably have a spare can in the trunk: half a minute and you running again.
4. Just how many US forests will this require? Currently Drax consumes 7 million tonne per annum of ‘biomass’ – mostly imported wood pellets from the USA – for half its boilers. Assuming the new requirement of 750 Drax sized stations have to be built, they will consume a minimum of 5 billion tonne of wood pellets per annum!
Philip Foster
convenor Paris Climate Challenge www.pcc15.org
author, ‘While the Earth Endures: Creation, Cosmology and Climate Change’
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Retract this article while you can, because it is full of nonsense. This article lowers your credibility but more importantly the credibility of wattsupwiththat.com!!
1. Learn the difference between power (kW = Joule per second) and energy (kWh = 3600 Joule)
2. 70 kW for a household heater? Nonsense. Maybe 20-30 kW, tops. Which still says NOTHING about the actual energy used or average power consumed.
3. Are you seriously multiplying the rated power of an average car (75kW) with the amount of cars to determine the power needed to charge them all? Really? Would it not be a better idea to calculate the amount of energy needed per car per day (in kWh) and multiply that by the amount of cars, to come to the total energy needed, and then divide that by the time needed for charging them to give you an approximation of the power needed?
This article is an embarrasment, sorry to say.
Up your game and in the mean time remove this nonsense please
Articles don’t get retracted, here at WUWT. They stand or fall on their own merits. (Clearly noted corrections are allowed and encouraged, for mistakes.)
After reading back my comment I want to apologize for the harsh tone, which was not necessary.
And don’t misunderstand, I agree with the conclusion of the article. If the greens are really serious about all electric then they better get cracking on those new power stations.
But please re-do the numbers because they are so wrong that the very valid point of the article is lost completely.
“This article is an embarrasment, sorry to say.”
Indeed it is.
BUT I think these badly out of the mark calculations demonstrate brilliantly that WUWT is a science blog.
Your comment (January 23, 2016 at 10:31 am) is the 12th comment pointing out the serious errors in units and/or numbers, the overestimation, or the probable unit conversion errors.
Almost half commenting area is devoted to pointing out the errors in the article. More comment are posted showing that MANY readers saw the flaws.
This is what critical thinking is about. It shows the kind of crowd REAL science blogs get. People able to point out errors (and willing to check the math).
Fake science blogs (those often have “science” or “real” in the title) mostly (or only) get a crowd of fanboys and me-too-ers; people with critical thinking able and the will to check numbers are either blocked and banned (or leave in disgust).
totally agree with simple-touriste – let’s not shoot the messenger! – much better to offer constructive criticism and fair debate.
Spot on simple-touriste; and what’s more, I am yet to read a comment which does nothing other than spitefully cast aspersions upon the author’s (or another commenter’s) intellligence, parental heritage, source of income or testicular endowment.
“Critical thinking” is a bit of a grandiose expression for pointing out obvious errors in a slapdash article – sorry a “Guest Essay”.
““Critical thinking” is a bit of a grandiose expression”
I agree, after posting I realize my words have be strong for this particular case. It is more a general remark about the dynamics of a forum: I notice that obvious or less obvious issues in posts are regularly pointed out in the comment section.
Contrary to the claims of “skeptical” or “real science” blogs, there is no censorship here, people are free to disagree, point out errors, and they do NOT get banned for doing so.
(And I am NOT making excuses for the LAME errors in this post.)
Retract this comment immediately !! LOL
[Were the mods to retract this comment, it would require extending the computer page to the left side of the screen unnecessarily, thus using up too many black pixels well before their predicted half-lives. And besides, we are nearly out of this hour’s white pixel limit. .mod]
Would it not be a better idea
======================
Nope, because you are talking averages and power systems must always be designed for peaks. If everyone comes home at 5PM, plugs in the electric car, turns on the electric heat and starts up the electric stove, that is the reality you must deal with. And in a lot of cities, 5PM is about the time the sun starts going down and the power from your solar panels goes to zero, and as the sun goes down, so does the wind, so your demand peaks about the time you supply drops to zero, and the system will fail.
Don’t forget the spike in demand after EastEnders (I call it DeadEnders), Coronation Street and the likewise rubbish on TV (Can ya tell I hate these sorts of TV programs?) when people get up to make a cup of tea!
>> 1. Learn the difference between power (kW = Joule per second) and energy (kWh = 3600 Joule)
1 kWh = 3,600,000 J or 3.6MJ
Correction: kW = kJ per second, kWh = 3600 kJ
Not to repeat the others figures but this article is quite inaccurate and needs to be pulled and redone.
Redone, yes. Pulled, no. There are several infamous sites (which deal with similar topics as WUWT,) which involve themselves in that game. They are consistently unreliable and lacking in veracity.
Incorrect statements need a <del> tag, not an erase pen.
..The climate has been changing for 4.5 BILLION years, but liberals are just noticing it now !! LOL
Such idiotic “suggestions” only begin to get into the public’s mind in the UK simply because the vast majority employed as reporters and editors in all sectors of the media, and as local Councillors, MP’s and even as Ministers, have just about the technical and scientific qualifications and associated technical and commercial expertise sufficient to be able to change a light bulb. Given even a little such basic knowledge, our elites, would have scoffed at such suggestions at the outset and the credibility of such proposals would never have gained roots, let alone survived and prospered.
Where would they get the electricity when there was no or low wind or sun? The answer is from Gas Turbines, the only power generation system that can act as the necessary WT and SP standby’s in such low/no wind and sun conditions to maintain overall power supplies to meet ongoing national Power Demands – as confirmed by independent experts commissioned by the Government to vet and check this Standby problem, and the only power system available that can provide, interface and match these renewables’ ongoing varying shortfalls in power output compared to their plate rated maximum output powercapacity. All this was confirmed by independent experts commissioned by the Government to vet and check this Renewables’ problem.
We get the obscene situation that we pay heavily for not only the WT’s and SP’s but also:
1. subsidies needed to make these grossly inefficient Renewable Energy systems commercially viable, and
2. the same capacity in Gas Turbines as back ups to cover for when the renewables produce little or no power at all due to no/low wind or sun.
3. the extended and upgraded Power Transmission works needed toconnect the relatively remote WT’s and SP’s with actual areas of Power Demand
4 and finally in subsidies to the GT power suppliers. The WT’s and SP’s act as priority choice of power whenever available and not when needed, and the GT’s act as standby’s operating on and off and with varying outputs well off their efficient operational duty point, and not as base load units. As a result such GT subsidies are needed because they, themselves, need them to maintain their commercial viability when operating so inefficiently.
Yet the powers that be, and our so called “betters” carry on and not simply condone this gross situation but actually support it!
expertise sufficient to be able to change a light bulb.
===================
1 to hold the bulb, 4 to turn the ladder.
How many acres of wind and solar would this require? Also, the wind and solar decrease at night. How will all those electric cars be charged on a still dark night? Do these people even think about what they are doing?
https://youtu.be/z389t37zFKM
Solar does decrease at night, and wind tends to as well, on average. But sun also diminishes seasonally, and with cloud cover. Up at that latitude, how much solar can one get, and is it available when demand is high?
even the tropics, the sun comes up at 6 and sets at 6. unless your panels are self-steerable you only have about 6 hours of power a day from solar panels.
ferdberple
You are correct (solar panels – self-steering better than rotating plate better than fixed angle plate better than flat plate – generate only 6 hours of real power a day …) almost regardless of the latitude.
Solar panel receive effective power only between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm on average, (8:30 to 3:30 in summer, 9:30 to 2:30 in winter at the mid latitudes) due to the absorbtion of the sun’s energy through the far thicker atmophere layers between dawn abd 9:00 am, and between 3:00 pm and dusk each evening. Regardless of tracking, these hours cannot be improved.
Tracking does generates more power away from local solar noon, between that 9:00 cut-in time and noon for example, at a tremendous increase in price, complexity, mechanical failures and drive failures and maintenance costs. It can, if the atmosphere through the year is very clear, extend the available hours earlier than 9:00 and later than 3:00 by reducing losses from the face of the receiver, but it can’t make up for the atmospheric attenuation itself.
I was working on the Bird Flu outbreak in the sticks of Minnesota. 11 massive wind generators spread across corn fields: two clearly broken and in some state of repair, 7 not turning and one was on fire.
The wind generator that was put in on Lake Erie outside of Cleveland was another waste. Brutal lake winter weather destroyed it. BUT….ten more are slated. Gotta love government contracting!!
They have to do something. 19 power plants were shut down and there is very little high energy available for manufacturing (auto and others).
We are going to do something. Elect a president who will immediately repeal the insane regulations put in place by this one, and end nonsensical subsidies for stuff that makes no sense or is not ready for prime time.
Open up drilling, issue new permits for nuclear plants of several modern designs, and get this country moving again.
Or so I be mightily hoping.
The real problem is everyone knows these targets are loopy – even if you for a deluded nanosecond believed in the cagw fairy tale – and consequently every state with two neurons to rub together plays the ‘yeah, yeah’ game while giving lip service only to the madness. The Brits on the other hand will maintain a stiff upper lip, keep a straight bat and play the jolly old game to the death while adding some more internal idiocy on top just to show how very seriously we’re all taking it unlike Johnny foreigner. One more reason to vote out of the Euro madhouse.
No-one in the UK ever voted to enter the common market (CM. As it was called then) anyway. Heath took the UK in to the CM in 1973 without a mandate at election time. I have always maintained this was a very bad mistake for the UK even before I could vote! For the UK now I think the EU is like a tic on the her neck! Difficult to remove once bitten!
Warmunists don’t do math. Heck, they don’t even do science.
Bruce
The watermelons do ‘Control’ – or would, if we, the people, let them . . . . . . .
Auto
Hi Philip,
The various corrections of heater rating are useful, but individual ratings are not important. If I were to turn on every electrical appliance in the house I would exceed the 100A supply rating, but of course this (almost) never happens. On the other hand, although a car need to produce maximum output power while driving, it can get recharged overnight so the peak input power is less.
What you are attempting to do I think is calculate the extra generating capacity needed if we were to replace all gas and transport fuel consumption with electricity.
What we need is the aggregate gas consumption for the UK and then express this as Power in GW.
You can then compare this with aggregate UK electricity demand, which peaks at about 60GW and averages about 34GW (source Wikipedia – yes, I know…).
Do the same for transport fuel, again estimating as GW (i.e. power, not energy as you want to find the extra generating capacity needed).
Probably you will only be able to get a peak daily consumption figure for gas, and maybe the same for transport fuel, so you’ll only be able to work out the average capacity.
A very worthwhile calculation though, which I haven’t see done, so look forward to an updated version of the post.
All the best 🙂
British voters have an opportunity to avert the disaster.
Let’s hope they use it – to BREXIT, for their sake.
Amen to that – vote OUT.
Baz,
Given that the likely ‘re-negotiated’ terms involve one star on the Euro Blue Duster flag becoming red, white and blue – I will vote out.
If there is a real improvement – no time here for detail, but think sovereignty – I’d like to stay in.
Chances – don’t hold your breath.
Likely outcome – Brexit – but, then, better terms, and, perhaps, possibly, another vote – when a Brinagain is possible. But there will need to be serious changes – not just immigration, and some delay of in-work benefits but sovereignty, as noted.
Auto
The EU without Britain will collapse. It will, it’s just a matter of when. Without British funding – being the second (net) contributor – the money won’t be there for the craziness to continue.
I am going to have to talk to my olds (Parents – Yes I know I typed the word out as well) in the UK about this.
“Let’s hope they use it – to BREXIT, for their sake.”
Or keep the threat forever and reform Europe from the inside!
“The average household boiler is rated at 60 kilowatt”
My house has a 400 A panel at 110 VAC or 44 kW. A have a geothermal system with a 15 kW electric heater coil (for emergency conditions only) which is the single largest consumer of electricity. In a bad month my electric bill is $1,200 CAD or about $0.165 per kWh. This works out to an average of 10 kW and I use a lot of electricity.
My feeling is this article over-estimates electricity use by 4-10 times. Having said that the numbers still work out to about 25 Drax-sized power stations and over 100,000 wind turbines. Still seems unfeasible.
$1200 CAD per month? where do you live on the South Pole? Our worst electrical bill was $110 CAD add in $100 CAD/ month for oil heat so our heating and electrical is $210 CAD/ month and in summer it drops to $75 CAD/Mo.
[CAD = Canadian dollar? .mod]
Assuming Rockwood Ontario,
http://www.ieso.ca/
Note the “global adjustment” price. (green scheme subsidies)
Mod
A cad is an officer, who, when dispatched to tell a brother officer’s wife of his death, will certainly seek to – ah – console the widow.
A Bounder, of course, will shower first . . . . . .
Or is it the other way round?
Auto [Off thread!]
CAD = Canadian dollars yes ( pennies lately _ !! )
In a bad month my electric bill is $1,200 Canadian dollars in a month. That would be January and February. In the summer it slips to about $450. My point was, I use more electricity than anyone else I know. I have two houses and a business on one property, all with a single meter. My house has 44 kW capacity of which, in the worst month of the year, I use an average of 10 kW. So how can the average British home use 60 kW? I think the article over-estimates power use in Britain by 4-10 times.
As an ex gas fired domestic central heating bod, I would suggest the average rating of the vast majority of UK houses would be in the range 6 to 10kW for central heating useage. ( Noting combi boiler ratings are typically 24 to 35kW – but that much is only available to be used when heating potable water ). With the 2005 mandate for replacement/new boilers to be of the condensing type, the quantity of ‘surplus’ heat that is available for re-direction for electricity generation is negligible, ie, Combined heat and power generation is no longer credible.
Still a lot of windmills to erect though !
As usual, you are all ignoring the new fire LENR. Industrial Heat’s 1 MW LENR plant has now been running successfully for eleven months supplying steam to a real customer. The trial duration is 350 days. The trial report is expected Feb/Mar.
Technical reporter Mats Lewan has made a 1 hour webinar that covers the basics, followed by some interesting Q&A. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ3S3YMH96s&feature=youtu.be
LOL, Rossi’s is always seen wearing a coat during testing because of the cold. The claim of heat generation is obviously an exaggeration.
R Shearer
You are only a few years out of date. All the new work is in Florida.
As you think you know it all already I assume you didn’t actually view the video before making a troll comment.
I agree with wijnand2015 and others that this article is nonsense and detracts from the credibility of WUWT.
Should it be removed?. No, that would be adjusting after the act, something that WUWT followers have been critical of at other sites.
Should it have been peer reviewed? Now there’s a thought. No, again that process has been found wanting too many times.
Should it be flagged as low quality and / or unsupported? Definitely.
Rab, it is being reviewed. Right here, right now.
We await your calculations to correct the article.
Rab McDowell
No, it is NOW being very thoroughly peer-reviewed!
And, through that (public) peer-review by interested critical observers – not all of whom agree with each other much less the original author! – all are educated even more effectively that a single dry, “yeah I read that” monologue drearily read by uninterested readers ….
When I asked “should it have been peer reviewed” I was thinking of a review for acceptability and accuraccy before publication as per “scientific” journals.
After I pushed send it dawned on me that it was being peer reviewed in the best possible way.
I just hope that those who read the article and, on that basis form an opinion of WUWT credibility, also read the comment section.
[Reply: When they invent a 28 hour day we’ll add peer review before publication to our ‘to do’ list. ~mod]
“[Reply: When they invent a 28 hour day we’ll add peer review before publication to our ‘to do’ list. ~mod]”
On July 26th 2012, one of my “days” lasted about 144hrs without a proper break. Thanks Daniel! Destroyed my life!
“Here’s the math(s):
“16 × 106 × 60 kW = 96 × 107 =~ 100 × 107 = 109 kW = 106 MegaW = 103 GigaW
or about 1 TeraW of extra power.”
++++++++++
There is a fundamental problem with the approach taken to arrive at this figure.
I note that when calculating the output of windmills, you have (quite rightly) factored their contribution downwards from their potential output maximum because they do not put out, on average, their maximum rating.
In exactly the same way, the gas heaters are not all running at full capacity at exactly the same time. Thus the ‘service factor’ that has been applied to the windmills must equally be applied to the demand side of the equation. Further, electric heating systems often use thermal storage so as to run at convenient times, controlled remotely by the service provider. This significantly reduces the minimum required generating capacity – I believe by a factor of more than 2.
The actual total time that the gas heaters run at full power is, say, 20%. This reduces considerably the total installed generating power and the total output required, on balance, without invoking thermal storage as is done in many countries using electric ‘geysers’ (water heaters). This does not in any way refute the major points in the article, but it does reduce by a factor of at least 5 all the investment and expenses required.
As the gas will inevitably peter out to a much smaller sustained supply level (and carry on indefinitely because it is an abiotic fuel produced at depths >30 km) electricity will eventually replace most gas installations, this century or next or the one after.
Your major points about the foolishness of planning to turn off the gas as soon as possible are accepted. It is justifying destructive, even criminal, means by touting a badly misinformed ‘end’.
“…the end does not serve to justify the means. However constructive and noble the goal, however significant to one’s life or to the welfare of one’s family, it must not be attained through improper means. Regrettably, a number of today’s leaders—political, social, and religious—as well as some of the directors of financial markets, executives of multinational corporations, chiefs of commerce and industry, and ordinary people who succumb to social pressure and ignore the call of their conscience, act against this principle; they justify any means in order to achieve their goals.” – UHJ 2 April 2010
“…(and carry on indefinitely because it is an abiotic fuel produced at depths >30 km)…”
——————
Maybe.
_____________
“Your major points about the foolishness of planning to turn off the gas as soon as possible are accepted. It is justifying destructive, even criminal, means by touting a badly misinformed ‘end’.”
——————
Definitely.
——————
Thanks, Crispin and especially for your quote at the end. The cryptic attribution to “UHJ” prompted a search and delivered the “Universal House of Justice”. Never too old to learn.
Further to the comment above about the service factor of the heating appliances, the conversion from gasoline to electric cars will also need to introduce a service factor for the prime mover. We can easily predict that computer controlled driving will soon be upon us with large increases in system efficiency as we will not spend so much time in stop-and-go traffic. They also have regenerator brakes which adds to the system efficiency.
Electric cars do not idle their motors when sitting still. While it can be argued they might all accelerate at maximum power at the same time, they will be using batteries when they do so it won’t change the service factor. In terms of energy use, electric cars are very efficient. They also cost a fraction of an IC-engined car to maintain. The problem is generating and distribution the electricity in the first place. Quite frankly it is easier and safer to distribute electricity than liquid fuels.
What makes a lot of sense is to use coal to make town gas and supply it to homes in place of natural gas, should it run out. There is probably a lot more coal gas potential than natural gas potential and the sources are more concentrated. The gas can be de-sulphurised and dried before entering the system. It has a bright future.
But electric cars do not enjoy the free heating from waste heat either.
Also, don’t forget the energy lost in the battery.
Further to simple-touriste’s comments, I note that electric cars are, with present technology, susceptible to low-temperature effects, reducing the available ‘juice’.
And, in the cool, the humans inside will seek some heating; this will not be from waste heat, I understand.
Wrapping up in several layers will help, but a change in behaviour from that usual today.
Auto
Perhaps that why electric cars seem like a good idea in California.
But uptake in Alaska has not been so enthusiastic.,.
Florida seems like a good bet as well.
But does not draining and recharging these batteries tend to heat them?
I know my phone gets hot when usage is high.
“Florida seems like a good bet as well.”
Until you get stuck in a jam and A/C drains the battery.
How much power does the A/C in an electric car use when you are sitting in a traffic jam and the temperature is pushing 42C? Not everybody lives in that icebox moored off the coast of France.
I think they operate on the fact that most trips by most people, most of the time, are much less than the range of the vehicle.
For long trips, or the absent minded type, these cars are not a good bet.
Not much. Trivial compared to the load while driving at speed (i.e., most of the time).
Menicholas;
Au Contraire. Owners do at least as much road tripping as ‘before’, due to comfort and cost.
Brian, but only where chargers are located?
Or you do not mind stopping for several hours every…what is it…two hundred miles? And hope you have a place to plug in?
I liked this article. I admired the astute comments. Corrections with a positive attitude are helpful.
For me, however, the key point remains – replacing gas with electric heat on a massive scale is insanity.
Only a liberal idiot could think that chopping down American trees to ship to the U.K. to be BURNED to create electricity is GOOD for the planet !! NUTS !
Must be plenty of liberal idiots. This was approved.
For all the reasons quoted above.
True dat!
I found this article interesting in that it tries to paint the idea of electric heating as a bad thing, but here’s the thing.
The idea of electrical heating is nothing new, in fact my grandmother has lived in a home that had this since the 1970’s. The way it works is that such a house has metal coils behind the walls and the heat radiates through the walls into the house.
Now believe it or not, there is a clear advantage to this system and that is how it allows you to control the temperature on a per-room basis as opposed to a single thermostat for the entire house. My grandparents simply turn off the heating for rooms they rarely use and they can actually save money that way.
So in a sense, I don’t see why we should flat out reject any concept of heating a home that doesn’t involve a gas furnace, whether or not the alternative is electric or some future technology not developed yet,
“My grandparents simply turn off the heating for rooms they rarely use and they can actually save money that way.”
Surely you are joking.
My grand parents turned off the heating of many rooms, and they didn’t have electric heating.
Every place I have ever lived had either radiators, which have valves in the intake side, or louvered vents, which have louvers that can be adjusted, from full open to closed or anywhere in between. And I am not sure, but suspect that what they had was baseboard heaters, which are not in the walls, but along the bottom of the floor around the edges of rooms.
Putting heat in the walls would ensure much of it is wasted, and that it would take a very long time to adjust the temp in a room, or to get any heat when walking into a cold room. Modern in the floor systems are a different story, as the floors are within the living space, although such radiant heat systems do take somewhat longer to warm a room, depending on the flooring material.
A question that keeps coming up is how are we going to produce all the components we use in every day live like plastics and many other products that are now using oil and gas? If Norway and others shut off their oil fields where will these products come from? This looks like insanity to me and is unacceptable, we need some sanity and logic back into our governments ASAP.
“produce all the components we use in every day live like plastics”
From potatoes?
There has to be research grant potential in that. Potatoes suck up CO2, then we make plakky bags! We could even call them “spags”, bags made from spuds. Simples!
Tobias, relax old son.
Norway isn’t about to shut down any producing oil or gas fields that are still viable, indeed a number of large field developments are underway right now (Johan Sverdrup, Aasta Hansteen, Edvard Greig, Goliat, Ivar Aasen and Johan Castberg spring immediately to mind).
One would assume that other countries whose economies depend upon oil and gas export aren’t going to stop anytime soon. Even if they ‘talk the talk’ on gullible warming.
The CEOs of European oil companies who signed that petition claiming to support efforts to fight gullible warming weren’t acting out of any concern for reducing hot-air emissions and saving the children’s children; they can see a nothing-to-lose business case for replacing coal in electricty generation if the market for power station fuel is manipulated by bureaucrats foisting gullible warming policy on everyone. That’s why they’re so adament that a price on carbon (dioxide) is the magic wand to a 2C future; it won’t change anything other than how much gas Europe needs to buy and burn to generate the electricity it needs.
And if Blighty among others if consulting the pixies over energy policy and plans to switch domestic heating/cooking/hot water from burning the gas directly in one’s home to less effiently burning the gas in a power station to boil water, to spin a turbine, to drive a generator, to push electrons along a wire, to heat a resistor, to warm the air/food/water in a house, with all the losses that occur at each step,then those CEOs are up for an even bigger performance bonus. Which is why with all the cost cutting in the oil industry, those CEOs and the talking heads in their companies’ respective gullible warming and tree hugging departments could all afford a business trip to Paris to gas-bag with the assembled UN,Governmental, NGO and lame-stream media twatteratti.
The brakes are on investment in oil and gas for now because the return on investment is low, especially now that the price of oil is back down from the heady heights north of 100$/bbl to where is normally is (in real terms). As usual though, ‘the patch’ is inadvertently sowing the seeds of the next price hike by postponing investment in reserve replacement and laying off a lot of the experienced people who will be needed to restore production in a few years.
But even if oil producing countries lost the collective plot and agreed tofu and ganja are the trading commodities of tomorrow, one can find other ways to make plastic. Or indeed, one can find other materials to use in-lieu of plastic; humanity survived without it in the past.
It might make sense, if one took a very long view, to hold back on production at the present time due to low prices, and hold reserves for the time when prices might be supposed to be higher. Now is the time to put in large strategic reserves of crude, if one was to be all logic-y about things.
In fact prices are below production costs for many marginal producers such as, as far as I have been told, Canadian oil sands. Some places have very low production costs, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, due to shallow reserves that are under high pressure and in accessible areas, and some are much higher, like the above, and places like offshore deep-water sites, places where secondary and tertiary recovery techniques are in use, and places, I would imagine, that the oil is very deep, not under any pressure, is very viscous, or is in some place like interior Siberia.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413131/Line-motorways-wind-turbines-unattractive-no-one-lives-claims-Government-s-green-energy-adviser.html
OK, so the numbers are out by a factor of ?4?. So the UK needs only a few hundred thousand more wind turbines. That means they will also need a vast array of batteries to provide power on still days, or they will have to have a similar amount of backup power. At current and foreseeable technology, those backup batteries would be prohitively expensive, so backup power will be needed. The only possible economically viable non-fossil-fuel source for that extra backup power is nuclear. But if they build the nuclear, there is no need for the wind power.
OK, let’s start the logic again : All the UK’s future energy needs can be supplied using nuclear power. There is plenty of nuclear fuel for this, even if everyone else switches to nuclear. So the UK can forget about wind turbines and just go straight to nuclear power.
All very logical, yes? Well, sorry to disappoint, but no. If the UK is intelligent enough to recognise that nuclear power is a way better option than wind turbines, then surely they would be intelligent enough to recognise that there is no need to move away from fossil fuels in the first place. In other words, the careful logic that I started with is all based on the false premise that the UK needs to “de-carbonise”.
French antinuclear opinion on electric heating:
– it’s too expensive for the poor
– it’s too cheap
– it’s inefficient
– it’s CO2 emitting
– it’s the only justification for half of the nuclear power plants
– it’s a waste of energy
I am NOT making this up.
I am NOT conflating different groups or different POV.
This is a consensus. It’s too cheap AND too costly. It’s nuclear and non-nuclear. They think they can have it both ways (and they can because nobody in the media is asking them about what they really believe about energy).
Electric heating is their arch enemy, equal to atomic power (conflating fission and fusion). This is because EDF promoted electric heating.
Same thing every over. They are against everything.
Fools, or crazy, mixed up, or just wanting all technology to go away…they need to be given as much attention as they deserve in our heavily energy dependent world.
Which is to say, given none at all.
I suspect something very bad will have to happen that harms or kills a large number of people in a sudden and obvious way, before they will be seen for what they are by the MSM and the general low information public.
You assume the objective [is to] supply reliable power when we know that the clearly stated objective is to destroy democracy and capitalism and to take us back to the dark age
This article is a mess.
All the domestic gas boilers in the U.K. do not run simultaneously.
And certainly, all the cars in the UK are not driven at maximum power on a continual basis.
The rating of a device can not be simply multiplied up in order to establish how much power a large number of such devices would need. Not unless all such devices are on at maximum capacity for all of the time.
And they are clearly not.
Peak use is considerably less than what would occur if all devices were turned on all of the time, obviously.
Mainly because people find it hard to simultaneously use their shower, hairdryer, iron and toaster.
This principle is also true when determining the amount of energy that is delivered over time by a generating plant or renewable source.
Effectively the same mistake is often made by renewables promoters who casually multiply up the nameplate capacity for turbines or solar plants.
You cannot reasonably do that – the result is not meaningful.
We shouldn’t be indulging in such pisspoor abuse of engineering concepts here.
The fact that this article made it onto WUWT in this form is a bit of a let down.
Indeflatablefrog. The article may have been a let down to you but it was a real eye-opener to me. It let me know which commentors know their stuff and which ones that just want to show off their math skills. You did the best by far in explaining the many errors in the article and you did it without any math symbols. Thanks so much. You made my week.
James,
Your judgement of other people’s technical knowledge and your apparent amateur psychologist assessment of commenters’ motives are very suspect.
The “math symbols” you refer to are “digits” and are introduced to children in kindergarten.
Also, if the indefatigablefrog provided you so much satisfaction, should you not try to write his name more accurately? The orthographic symbols that you played fast and loose with are called “letters”.
Thanks Mebbe, you made my month!
Mebbe. Apparently you are one of the people I was referring to because I noticed you did not comment on the technical accuracy of the article. You must be a trained phychologist because you are probably right about my sensitivity toward mathematicians. I have spent a lifetime fixing the electromechanical and instrument systems of aircraft. Much of that lifetime my abilities were judged by people with college degrees who did not have a clue about basic physics, electronics and my job. I have met many people who bragged about their degrees in mathmatics, when I asked them how to calculate the blade tip speed of the helicopter they were working on, all I got was blank stares, except for one Chinese fellow. It has scarred me for life. Please excuse my misuse of orthographic symbols. I was trying to console indifatigablefrog.
I read many of articles and comments on this blog because I want to be sure about my understanding of global warming. Many of the topics that I read are discussing things I don’t understand so I must try to figure out who to believe when people contradict each other. When the discussion turns to an area that I do understand I can then determine from the comments who knows what they (the commentors) are talking about. The article by Mr Foster was a good example of someone with possibly good math skills but applying them to something he has just enough understanding of to be dangerous. I do think that just because someone is knowledgeable in one area that they should not be trusted in another. This topic was basic electricity and physics. If you don’t get that right why would you trust anyone with the much greater complexity of the physics of climate science. Many on this thread did not notice the large errors of Mr Foster’s article and instead jumped on the bandwagon.
I was hoping my remark would cause some commentors who really don’t know the technicalities of a topic to not jump in with technical comments. Humor is always welcome.
The math symbols I was referring to were things like +,×,÷,=,% . I didn’t go to kindergarten but I did learn what a digit is. When I said symbols I ment symbols. Did you learn anything about electricity in kindergarten or anywhere else? If you did then give us your evaluation of this article and try not to use big words like orthographic.