From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
Quite astonishing!
A glance at yesterday’s generation shows that at the early evening peak nuclear and CCGT were supplying about 60% of our electricity, with I/Cs another 20%:
Wind was running at 8% at the time, but has dropped since then:
To my knowledge, the Beyond Belief Corporation has said nothing at all about firing up coal plants. In fact, just this morning, R4’s More or Less programme – fronted by a statistics man from the Financial Times – poo-pooed the idea that EVs are substantially heavier than ICE vehicles. And unless you’ve done some reading around it you wouldn’t know what nonsense they were pumping out. Bottom line? The claim ‘they’ examined centred around American cars – which apparently have different physics to European cars.
Our Greta has been sending out her swan song, having now retired from school strikes.
“Rich countries are signing a “death sentence” for millions of poor people around the world by failing to phase out fossil fuels”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/13/greta-thunberg-not-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-is-death-sentence-for-worlds-poor
Poor abused wretch, but put through the Orwellian correction filter…
“Rich countries are signing a “death sentence” for millions of poor people around the world by denying them access to fossil fuels”
Thank gawd I’ve got an acoustic guitar or two.
Greta clearly has no clue.
Clearly.
‘Our Greta has been sending out her swan song, having now retired from school strikes.’
There will be no ‘swan song’. My prediction is that she’ll eventually reappear in the tabloids, perhaps sunbathing on the deck of Leonardo DiCaprio’s motor yacht.
Yuk! Thankfully I haven’t eaten lunch yet.
She’s too old for him.
“fronted by a statistics man from the Financial Times – poo-pooed the idea that EVs are substantially heavier than ICE vehicles.”
Did Griff finally get a job?
This posting has several Reality Checks, the view of coal as the dependable being one of them. Another is the actual temperature. Checking predictions for London for today to a week later shows “summer” highs of 25 to 28 deg (28 is the “mirror-image” temperature, 28C is 82F). A balmy early Spring day in New York City.
25-28 deg c – perfect conditions..
“Checking predictions for London”
It isn’t us ordinary English folk who are claiming 28C is something out of the ordinary or is something to fear.
Surely you knew that? This is a case of the Met Office and the media spinning a narrative. They used deep reds on their weather maps for 22C
Why?
[Our new research, led by the University of Exeter, highlights…] two distinct themes in visual coverage. The first used images of “fun in the sun” that depicted heatwaves as something enjoyable. In all four countries, the majority of these images showed people having a good time in or by water. This was particularly prominent in the UK, perhaps saying something about how British culture narrates the experience of very hot weather in our historically mild climate.
The second theme we found was “the idea of heat”, depicted through red and orange colours, which are (in western cultures) commonly associated with heat or danger.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/14/sun-photos-climate-breakdown
That’s why.
At noon today:
The other problem is that solar panel efficiency drops as the temperature increases.
And it’s the temperature OF THE PANELS, not the air temperature. So, aside from REALLY COLD AND SUNNY days IF there’s no snow or ice on the panels, that will probably be their best operating conditions.
For, you know, about an hour to 90 minutes given winter Sun angles.
During warm weather with Sun, the aforementioned loss of efficiency eats away at the output of the panels.
Kind of like a car that only gets something vaguely resembling its promised “range” only if it’s not too hot, not too cold, not too hilly, not too windy, isn’t carrying anything but the driver, doesn’t have lights, hvac, radio, navigation system, wipers, etc. in use, and isn’t going very fast…oh wait!
The Eco-Nazis are peddling THOSE, too.
It’s always worth checking out the Sheffield PV live solar site.
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/
They show nothing particularly abnormal about solar output. They estimate the effective capacity, allowing for panel ageing is about 13.4GW. The record peak output was 10.1GW in April, reflecting the fact that panel orientation is not perfect on many domestic installations, plus it is probably hazy or cloudy somewhere. Recent peaks have not been that far below the record.
They allow for panel ageing. Installed capacity is installed capacity, and panel ageing is just part of the panel performance. They might as well allow for dirt on the panels too. With a few other excuses, they can portray 100% performance all the time. If they include sun angle, the panel will still be operating at midnight at 100%, by their measure.
I have just read this on the BBC Website. In typical BBC fashion they haven’t said, and probably didn’t ask if it was ambient or panel temperature that caused the 0.34 percentage points for every degree.
So I did a bit of research my own. Apparently most Solar PV are rated up to 85C / 185F. I’ve no reason to argue that Solar PV will not keep happily generating even on the hottest summer’s day in the UK. Nor have they said by how much the installed Solar PV has increased since 2022, probably a lot due to increases in prices paid for electricity, at least 2GW from what I’ve found.
So presumably Solar PV is more efficient on sunny days with a strong cold winds, like we’ve had for a couple of weeks in the UK, but couldn’t find any data on that.
Is that ambient temperature, general panel temperature or semiconductor junction temperature?
Good pie charts of UK electricity
https://grid.iamkate.com
/
currently …
importing 16%
wind 15%
solar 22%
gas 31%
our 4kW panels in full sun giving just 2.6kW
Air temp 22°C; panel temp 57°C
Increased cooling devices = ha ha ha yeah right like total bollox
Nobody in the UK has any sort of home cooling device apart from a fridge and or a freezer
Hospitality venues maybe but nobody can afford to go them anymore so that’s more bollox
The best I could find was this piece of fuzziness from Leo (ty)
As best we can see and after weeks and weeks and months and months of importation at 4GW
The French are wanting their electricity back
Mais oui oui monsewre naturellemnet, et merci beucopus at you too
havez vooz un bon jour
pas
It had to happen, how did nobody see it coming:
We are governed by clowns
Remember the story about green investment and banks – here’s some belated input on that:
https://www.ft.com/content/5c32e52e-adc8-4add-bf79-6ffca66ee6c1
It’s about Ms Megan Greene, Climate Activist joining the team that sets UK interest rates.
She’s all in favour of higher rates for everybody it seems, EXCEPT, for Green ESG Investments/Loans which will be set at a lower rate.
Here’s the story from Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/06/10/megan-greene-bank-create-special-rates-net-zero/
Comparing the government to clowns is an insult to clowns.
UK homes do have cooling devices, electric fans and windows with curtains
You can follow Paul Homewood of Notalotofpeopleknowthat on twitter (2) Notalotofpeopleknowthat (@Notalotofpeopl1) / Twitter
I think the reason they opted for coal support has more to do with a combination of capacity shortage, low wind, and a scare about blackout risk. The day before there was a dip in grid frequency to 49.668Hz, which is well outside the normal bounds. Trips on interconnectors or of generators have been well defended at only just under 49.8Hz in recent months. This time the grid batteries were not up to the task. So the coal adds a useful chunk of inertia to the system.
I suspect that National Grid may have allowed too much capacity to be on simultaneous maintenance (much like Texas…), caught out by the lack of wind and the need to handle solar rampdown into sunset. There have been a couple of nuclear trips, and also some CCGTs. The Norway interconnector also tripped out and was not available for some hours, and then only at 50%.
I thought few people in the UK have “cooling devices”.
When I lived in the UK, our “cooling device” consisted of opening the windows.
The UK needs to build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid, their problems would be solved.
Just think, the UK COULD have been burning coal this whole time and saved all that money spent, or should I say wasted, building ugly, disruptive windmills and the wiring to connect them. Instead you could have spent the money on things that have gone begging, such as border security, policemen who investigate gangs, prisons, etc.In the bargain, you would have collectively enjoyed cheaper and more reliable electricity, better productivity of the economy, and gotten all the benefits to the biosphere of a bit more CO2 in the atmosphere. Hell, some of the money you saved could have been spent on making the coal plants burn even cleaner. Or you could have invested in safer nuclear technology for the future. These public services and all these benefits of cheap, reliable electricity that are now lost to your islands are what economists call “opportunity costs.” Opportunity costs are never factored in when Green alarmists fabricate reports on the “social costs of carbon dioxide,” but they are real, nevertheless. Furthermore, burning of that coal would not have raised the temperature of Great Britain, Ireland, or the world by any measurable amount, since CO2 is well established to be an effect of higher temps, not a cause, Meaning the so-called emissions of CO2 would probably not have any climate effects, whatsoever. But what am I saying, this is crazy talk… ha ha ha ha ha
Yes, mickeyreno, yours is crazy talk. The UK government could have fast-tracked approval for all privately-funded wind and solar investment right from the start, with the same or equivalent government subsidies, allowances, tax breaks and market operation as for fossil-fuel generators. There would then have been plentiful cheap reliable electricity right across the country. I’m not sure how much would have been from wind and solar, though.