From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/23/china-solar-panels-europe-net-zero-energy/
The naive journalist makes several references to the “massive” amounts of solar capacity on offer, for instance:
The clueless reporter evidently does not understand the difference between CAPACITY and GENERATION.
You simply cannot compare solar power, typically producing at about 10 to 15%, with nuclear, which runs at close to 100%
Worse still, that 10% is not available all year round. During December last year, it averaged only 297 MW, which is just 2% of capacity:
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
In summer months, solar power can peak at ten times as much, which will clearly destabilise the grid, if capacity is increased as much as the government wants.
Just think, how many of the readers of this article will recognize this “brain fart” conflating capacity with generation?
Then there’s that nagging little issue of solar only producing its nameplate between 10am and 2pm local (off peak usage) time and therefore would require expensive battery storage in order to be able to deliver that generation at the time it’s needed
Additionally, they only produce nameplate power between 10am and 2pm on sunny days, during the summer.
On cloudy days, they fall way short of nameplate.
During the other three seasons, especially winter, they fall way short of nameplate, even on sunny days. On cloudy days they produce pretty close to nothing.
On snowy days, despite their huge installed capacity, MW, their generation, MWh, is way short of their “wished for” generation, due to “weather dependence”
That solar generation would normally have a big bulge at noon-time, which far exceeds demand.
Storing it in batteries and discharging 80% of it during the peak hours of late afternoon/early evening, is out of the question, as that would add at least
30 c/kWh, to the price of the solar electricity fed to the battery.
Go woke, go big-time broke.
Now you know why the electricity rates in California are skyrocketing.
A bunch of climate screwballs are in charge, stealing from your pocket
They make the rules that enable their stealing.
The only solution is to elect Trump by a landslide to far more than overcome any fraud, so he can undo all that dysfunctional wind/solar/battery BS
Addition
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
EXCERPT:
Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume a system rated 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh, and an all-in turnkey cost of $104.5 million, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan for 50% of $104.5 million at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.484 million/y
Pay Owner return of 50% of $104.5 million at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.765 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.484 + 6.765) = $183.7 million
Assume battery daily usage for 15 years at 10%, and loss factor = 1/(0.9 *0.9)
Battery lifetime output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh to HV grid; 122,950,926 kWh from HV grid; 233,606,676 kWh loss
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183.7 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 184.5 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, depreciation in 5 years, deduction of interest on borrowed funds) is 92.3c/kWh
At 10% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 92.3 c/kWh
At 40% throughput, (Bank + Owner) cost, 23.1 c/kWh
Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 1.5%/y, 3) 20% HV grid-to-HV grid loss, 4) grid extension/reinforcement to connect battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites. Excluded costs would add at least 10 – 15 c/kWh
NOTE: The 40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charging above 80% full and not discharging below 20% full, to achieve a 15-y life, with normal aging
Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the Owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia. They excessively charged/discharged the system. After a few years, they added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and added more Megapacks to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION:
Regarding any project, the bank and the owner have to be paid.
Therefore, I amortized the bank loan and the owner’s investment
If you divide the total of the payments over 15 years by the throughput during 15 years, you get the cost per kWh, as shown.
According to EIA annual reports, almost all battery systems have throughputs less than 10%. I chose 10% for calculations.
A few battery systems have higher throughputs, if they are used to absorb midday solar and discharge it the during peak hour periods of late-afternoon/early-evening. They may reach up to 40% throughput. I chose 40% for calculations.
Remember, you have to draw about 50 MWh from the HV grid to deliver about 40 MWh to the HV grid, because of A-to-Z system losses. That gets worse with aging.
A lot of people do not like these c/kWh numbers, because they have been repeatedly told by self-serving folks, low-cost battery Nirvana is just around the corner, which is a load of crap.
Wilpost, don’t see where you +/- the fact that Batteries don’t store A/C power.
Most inverters on the market today have an efficiency of around 75-80%.
So if you are pulling from an A/C generation, that is 2*0.75 to 0.8 or 0.56% to 0.65%, is left and the rest is “Lost in Space”.
DD More,
I suggest you open the URL, read the article that has over 2000 views.
It has a detailed section about battery system losses, that should satisfy even the most curious people.
Of course, they produce zero power at night, when people are home using power. My personal installation are pointed in non-optimized directions and nor all in the same direction due to roof design.Thus, it has never produced anywhere near nameplate even during optimum hours, and the peak (about 80% nameplate) only lasts an hour a day.
Look up “Duck Curve” to understand why solar is horrible for the grid.
Johnathan Leake has a degree in marine biology. It is very possible he never studied any physics. He is just a little younger than me and I remember the few kids in school with me who did both biology and physics had aspirations to study medicine, otherwise doing biology was a pretty good indication they were maths dodgers.
A sweeping generalization from scant evidence, I know. But it is first-hand at least.
Pretty much all of them.
Even those who try hard to pretend that the difference doesn’t matter.
I mean he is clearly talking about Capacity. As far as I can see there is never a mention of capacity factor or produced kwh in the article. Insofar he is right.
If I build a 800mw coal power plant and run it 10% of the time, the added capacity is still 800mw.
Also:
According to the report, in 2022 the global average capacity factor was 80.5 percent, down from 82.3 percent in 2021
https://www.ans.org/news/article-5254/wna-issues-its-new-world-nuclear-performance-report/
Try running a power grid simply on capacity and you will find out how obvious it is to mistakenly assume the capacity from nuclear is the equivalent of the same capacity of solar. And especially in England? I dunno, is it ever cloudy there?
What about jight?
What about night?
And the winter season when the solar capacity factor drops by 80% while nuclear remains constant
If you built an 800mW coal plant, you could do better on an exercise bicycle!
Capacity factor of thermal plant cannot be compared directly with renewables, because sometimes you switch off for commercial reasons. The correct thing is availability. What you *could* be generating if you chose. For renewables its the same thing as they are paid to generate whatever they can. It’s very similar for nuclear. Only fuel plant and hydro are deliberately throttled back to save coal/gas/water for more profitable times, and so have different capacity factors (what they did generate) than availability (what they could have generated).
It is all part of the complex bullshit used to fudge renewables.
Oh and…
Haha! I actually thought about an alternate proposal to the 300MW (one million PV panels, 6000 acres farmland) Koshkonong Solar project that involved exercise bicycles. It occurred to me that if your goal is reliable power generation – day and night – and “green jobs”, we should place several hundred thousand stationary bicycles on pads with overhead covers. Connect them to generators and then tie to the grid. We would create thousands and thousands of jobs, minimally impact the farmland (not driving a million 15′ pilings into the ground), and could work round the clock – three shifts. In addition, all these employees would become fit and healthy and lose weight. Many, many advantages. The disadvantage, of course, is that Invenergy and Michael Polsky would not be making hundreds of millions of dollars for it.
From 2014 data – Ponder this,
Kilowatt hour generated per unit of fuel used:
1,842 kWh per ton of Coal or 0.9 kWh per pound of Coal
127 kWh per Mcf (1,000 cubic feet) of Natural gas
533 kWh per barrel of Petroleum, or 12.7 kWh per gallon
$ 3.41 The 2014 record holder for the [manpowered watts/]Hour Record is ex-pro cyclist and 2012 Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins (2015) an estimate of his average wattage during his Hour Record at 440 Watts! If Wiggins’ bike were attached to a bicycle generator and it was super efficient, Wiggins would have been generating enough power to light up 7 60-Watt light bulbs! Since I pay about 10 cents/kWh, if I were to pay Wiggins for the energy he produced over the hour he was pedaling he would have almost earned a whole nickel (440 Watts • 1 hour = 440 Watt-hours = .44 kWh)!
So a pound of coal will get you 900 watts-hours of power and the world record (2014) of human power 440 watts-hours (your results will be less).
The Rail Freight Industry calculated they could move 1 Ton of goods 530 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel. That was total fuel purchased and total tons moved total miles. Diesel fuel, retail at a truck stop on the interstate is $3.41. Want the job of pulling 53 tons for 10 miles for $3.41?
If the fossil fuel plants are being shut down for a long period of time, then their consumption of fuel does drop to zero.
However, if they are only being throttled back for a few hours, the drop in fuel being used is quite minimal. Additionally wear and tear, and the number of man hours needed to run the plant, barely drop at all.
No No No.
Throttling a power plant built for base load output costs much more wasted fuel than your “quite minimal” and increases the required maintenance much more than a steady state plant, there is NO DROP in maintenance expenses.
Even the best CC natural gas plants lose efficiency when being throttled. Any thermal generation system must heat up and then cool down when taken of line, all wasted thermal energy.
Talking capacity is clear garbage, as any thinking person would know.
The only thing that matters is generation, and generation when it is needed.
As for falling capacity, that is mostly caused by unreliable wind and solar being given first rights to the grid. Fossil fuel plants have to stop producing in order to prevent over load on the grid.
BTW, as any thinking person already knows, when fossil fuel plants stop producing electricity, this doesn’t mean they have stopped burning fossil fuels.
The difference is nobody is stupid enough to build a 800MW coal plant and choose to only run it it 10% of the time. Solar can’t do better than 20% no matter how much you wish it could
Correct. Even in sunny Australia, the eastern network’s large-scale solar only averages 16.26% over the year. And I believe the UK average is only 10.6%.
WOW.. you really are a mental Luser !!!!
The ONLY reason for a modern coal or nuclear plant not to run at near capacity most of the time is because of idiotic wind and solar mandates taking preference and forcing a reduction of output.
In Australia, the 3 remaining units of Hazelwood were running at OVER 100% of their rated capacity for many weeks before they were shut down.
The fact is that coal and nuclear fired plant can run at near rated capacity for months on end, if allowed or needed to.
Wind and solar…. not remotely possible of them ever running anywhere near their rated capacity for anything more than very short time periods.
Wind totally erratic… below are capacity curves from German wind farms for 2015 and 2016…
Below 20% of rated capacity 60% of the time.. and for 90% of the time, below 40% rated capacity.
Solar can do rated output from maybe 4-6 hours a day on a totally fine day… then NOTHING for most of the rest of the time.
More accurate to say, physically impossible.
Please list the Coal plants that generated power 10% of the time I am sure it will be a LOOOONG list.
“The clueless reporter does not understand … ”
So no change there, then, just modern journalism as usual.
Modern journalism = advocacy journalism.
It is a great worry that 97% (I like that number 🙂 ) of ‘educated’ people don’t comprehend the difference between theoretical “rated capacity” and actual generation.
Comparing sun to nuclear is like comparing a small sailboat to a nuclear submarine. Which one do you want protecting your nation?
The sailboat, because this submarine is clearly drowning.
Nuclear ranks last on list of good investments by big institutions
https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-ranks-last-on-list-of-good-investments-by-big-institutions/
Well, hello.
You never did tell me how you would move [Marshall] guitar amplification around in a car free city, so why not tell me now?
Idealism is far from practical unless you can show otherwise. All bets are you cannot.
Have you read the article? All bets are you didn’t.
I wonder why you don’t bring up emergency vehicles. Thats one of the first straws people grasp when talking about reducing car traffic.
I asked you a simple question – one you cannot bring yourself to address:
how you would move [Marshall] guitar amplification around in a car free city.
I move mine around my city in my car. Your only answer could be to hire some sort of social utilitarian van – when available.
In a word that is delusional
You’re assumming that there’d be electricity available at the venue for your evening performance. If we’re relying on solar you’d be doing unaccompanied acapella so you could leave the Marshall at home.
/humour
Just reread and there’s tautology acapella = unaccompanied sorry
Perhaps you were thinking of unamplified?
I do have acoustic guitars, a piano and drums.
The problem with those is strings, skins, etc
A string bass is big, hard to put on a bicycle.
That is not a bicycle.
And not even a string bass. So I guess it is just a random picture.
I also guess they are lucky it is not raining or snowing.
And you still ran away from the real question, Sir Robin.
And it needs three people
Lots of CARBON made aluminium or steel in that. !
Lets see them move this on bicycles.
Not as hard as a drum set 🙂
And the fittings are really heavy
Thank you for admitting that you can’t answer the question.
As to your belief that it is possible to replace all transportation with EVs, well stupid is as stupid does.
Well, I did, and it’s about Australia. Where there seems to be a religious objection to nuclear even more rabid than Germany, and it’s illegal anyway.
So you would have to be pretty nuts to invest anything in nuclear power there wouldn’t you?
Is this an act? Or are you really this dumb?
I have to wonder how much someone would have to be paid, in order to make a complete fool of himself on such a regular basis.
We have a number of regulars who might be able to answer that if they would be so inclined to be honest. However, that is probably an unrealistic expectation considering their responses on topics less potentially embarrassing.
That is due to excessive subsidies/kWh for wind and solar, and almost nothing for nuclear/kWh, because it is out of “fashion” in the West.
Nuclear Plants by Russia
According to the IAEA, during the first half of 2023, a total of 407 nuclear reactors are in operation at power plants across the world, with a total capacity at about 370,000 MW
Nuclear was 2546 TWh, or 9.2%, of world electricity production in 2022
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/batteries-in-new-england
Rosatom, a Russian Company, is building more nuclear reactors than any other country in the world, according to data from the Power Reactor Information System of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA.
The data show, a total of 58 large-scale nuclear power reactors are currently under construction worldwide, of which 23 are being built by Russia.
.
In Egypt, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $30 billion, or about $6,250/kW,
The cost of the nuclear power plant is $28.75 billion.
As per a bilateral agreement, signed in 2015, approximately 85% of it is financed by Russia, and to be paid for by Egypt under a 22-year loan with an interest rate of 3%.
That cost is at least 40% less than US/UK/EU
.
In Turkey, 4 reactors, each 1,200 MW = 4,800 MW for $20 billion, or about $4,200/kW, entirely financed by Russia. The plant will be owned and operated by Rosatom
.
In India, 6 VVER-1000 reactors, each 1,000 MW = 6,000 MW at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.
Capital cost about $15 billion. Units 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in operation, units 5 and 6 are being constructed
In Bangladesh: 2 VVER-1200 reactors = 2400 MW at the Rooppur Power Station
Capital cost $12.65 billion is 90% funded by a loan from the Russian government. The two units generating 2400 MW are planned to be operational in 2024 and 2025. Rosatom will operate the units for the first year before handing over to Bangladeshi operators. Russia will supply the nuclear fuel and take back and reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooppur_Nuclear_Power_Plant
.
Rosatom, created in 2007 by combining several Russian companies, usually provides full service during the entire project life, such as training, new fuel bundles, refueling, waste processing and waste storage in Russia, etc., because the various countries likely do not have the required systems and infrastructures
Nuclear: Remember, these nuclear plants reliably produce steady electricity, at reasonable cost/kWh, and have near-zero CO2 emissions
They have about 0.90 capacity factors, and last 60 to 80 years
Nuclear do not require counteracting plants. They can be designed to be load-following, as some are in France
.
Wind: Offshore wind systems produce variable, unreliable power, at very high cost/kWh, and are far from CO2-free, on a mine-to-hazardous landfill basis.
They have lifetime capacity factors, on average, of about 0.40; about 0.45 in very windy places
They last about 20 to 25 years in a salt water environment
They require: 1) a fleet of quick-reacting power plants to counteract the up/down wind outputs, on a less-than-minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, 2) major expansion/reinforcement of electric grids to connect the wind systems to load centers, 3) a lot of land and sea area, 4) curtailment payments, i.e., pay owners for what they could have produced
Major Competitors: Rosatom’s direct competitors, according to PRIS data, are three Chinese companies: CNNC, CSPI and CGN.
They are building 22 reactors, but it should be noted, they are being built primarily inside China, and the Chinese partners are building five of them together with Rosatom.
American and European companies are lagging behind Rosatom, by a wide margin,” Alexander Uvarov, a director at the Atom-info Center and editor-in-chief at the atominfo.ru website, told TASS.
Tripling Nuclear A Total Fantasy: During COP28, Kerry called for the world to triple nuclear, from 370,200 MW to 1,110,600 MW, by 2050.
https://phys.org/news/2023-12-triple-nuclear-power-cop28.html
Based on past experience in the US and EU, it takes at least 10 years to commission nuclear plants
Plants with about 39 reactors must be started each year, for 16 years (2024 to 2040), to fill the pipeline, to commission the final ones by 2050, in addition to those already in the pipeline.
Addition, due to not fitting
New nuclear: Kerry’s nuclear tripling by 2050, would add 11% of world electricity generation in 2050. See table
Nuclear was 9.2% of 2022 generation. That would become about 5% of 2050 generation, if some older plants are shut down, and plants already in the pipeline are placed in operation,
Total nuclear would be 11+ 5 = 16%; minimal impact on CO2 emissions and ppm in 2050.
Infrastructures and Manpower: The building of the new nuclear plants would require a major increase in infrastructures and educating and training of personnel, in addition to the cost of the power plants.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/electricity-sources-by-fuel-in-202….
.
Existing Nuclear, MW, 2022
370200
Proposed tripling
3
Tripled Nuxlear, MW, 2050
1110600
New Nuclear, MW
740400
MW/reactor
1200
Reactors
617
New Reactors, rounded
620
Reactors/site
2
Sites
310
New nuclear production, MWh, 2050
5841311760
Conversion factor
1000000
%
New nuclear production, TWh, 2050
5841
11
World total production, TWh, 2050
53000
the blades aren’t turning lol
Do you really think a single picture is responsive to the data presented?
The 2 unit 2400MW nuclear plant would sit entirely within the square turbine staging area in the image background while the potential turbines pictured will only produce 1/4 of that (about 600MW 300 blades = 100 units at ?MW per unit) at best and require over 1000 acres dedicated to wind turbines plus hundreds of miles of cable before power even leaves the facilities gargantuan footprint and enters transmission lines
What you post here escapes most people on the planet because they fail to understand the scaling of the set up.
South Korea is heavily into unreliables (NOT)!
It currently has 26 nuclear reactors with 2 under construction and is planning 6 more by 2033. It is also building the UAE’s first nuclear power plant.
Even so c. 85% of it’s primary energy is derived from fossil fuels and 98% of that has to be imported. Wind supplies less than 2%.
The South Koreans, living in the real world, obviously think nuclear power is a good thing.
“…also building the UAE’s first nuclear power plant.”
Built. The last of the 4 just went live.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-5897/barakah4-is-connected-to-the-uae-grid/
(with a h/t to MyUsername for the link to the ANS site where that just popped up 🙂 )
First off, at least try to find a reputable source for your propaganda.
Secondly, with you enviro-nut jobs misusing the legal system to through every kind of road block in the way of nuclear, of course it costs a lot to build a nuclear plant.
Quoting the biased Reneweconomy? Gawd.
Well the sun is nuclear power innit?
🥵
Yeah but trying to harvest it with Silicon chips is ineffective at best
The naive journalist…
Is he? Really?
“Journalist specialising in energy, environment, climate and science. Currently energy editor at the Daily Telegraph, London.”
https://muckrack.com/jonathan__leake
“Jonathan Leake
Energy Editor
AS SEEN ON
The Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald
..Leake is an experienced Energy Editor”
https://intelligentrelations.com/journalist/jonathan-leake/
Personally speaking, don’t buy the innocent ignorance angle.
The best journalism of 2020 revealed: British Journalism Awards shortlist
“Jonathan Calvert, George Arbuthnott and Jonathan Leake – Insight, The Sunday Times
Revealed – how the government sleepwalked into pandemic catastrophe
22 days of dither and delay on coronavirus that cost thousands of British lives
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/the-best-journalism-of-2020-revealed-british-journalism-awards-shortlist/
The Telegraph is a lefty rag and has been for quite some time.
The average journalist can’t count past 10 without taking his socks off.
Their science and engineering acumen is even further south.
The BBC is one of the pioneers of this new way of making people feel fear, guilt, anxiety etc. Putting the reporter at the centre of an human interest story. They even have what I call the 4 emotional horsemen of the apocalypse. Namely, Orla Guerin, Fergal Keane, Lise Doucet and….. Justin Rowlatt.
“The part of me that wanted to tell one of the biggest stories of my lifetime longed to stay. But it is also the part that is drawn to danger and has brought anguish into my personal life in the form of PTSD.” – Feargal Keane
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61350174
This mind meltingly shallow reportage has a weekly programme – From Our Own Correspondent. Yes, they tell us how awful things really are and crucially…. how they feel about it.
“The sight of a reporter expressing emotion is a sign of the times”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/18/reporter-emotion-bbc-graham-satchell-paris-attacks
Journalism is dead, Jim.
I do sometimes wonder if today’s “journalists” ever immersed themselves in Mark Twain’s works to get an appreciation of how the task should be carried out.
Today’s journalists….
“For several months now I have been trying to write something — anything — about the so-called “trans debate” in my Guardian column. But if I ever slip a line in about female experience belonging to people with female bodies, and the significance of this, it is always subbed out. It is disappeared. Somehow, this very idea is being blocked, not explicitly, but it certainly isn’t being published. My editors say things like: “It didn’t really add to the argument”, or it is a “distraction” from the argument.” – Suzanne Moore
https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/
“How the New York Times was engulfed by a trans culture warThe Grey Lady is caught between activist young staff and an old guard who value objectivity”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/02/15/new-york-times-accused-writers-anti-trans-bigotry/
Can anyone deny the woke nature of education today?
If your views run counter to the narrative they will label you as far-right and as wanting to start a ‘culture war’.And in this case, biological science is very much counter narrative.
Yes, their journalistic peer reviewers are the “cool kids” in the trade they aspire to emulate.
Just stay on narrative is their main approach to reportage.
And they have to say the same thing three times over in an article. It’s nothing more than padding.
To describe The Telegraph as “lefty” is to re-define the term…
Not as far left as the Guardian – yet.
The guardian is so far left it almost looks right
(Though it’s usually wrong)
That conjures up an image of Ouroboros….
Unfortunately, both the left and the right now appear to be fully onboard with the global warming scam in the UK.
I used to think there was a slight difference when David Cameron let slip “We’ve got to get rid of the green crap”. He was probably over-ruled by his wife.
Harsh reality is going to dictate what they are eventually forced to do, but neither party seems capable of actively grasping the nettle.
David – hug a hoodie – Cameron…..
Was – as he told us often times – the heir to Blair. And now he’s the Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Those labeled as right wing in Europe, would be called socialists in the US.
Telegraph is actually pretty decent, but not on energy. Clearly we have an ArtStudent™ as energy editor.
In fact he has a track record of inventing ‘news’ and supporting the wackiest products:
From Guido Fawkes
I can’t work out what his educational background is, but I am sure if he had a technical degree he wouldn’t have failed to mention it.
But most people with any technical knowledge regard him as a bit of a wanker.
In the US, there is a big stink because NBC hired a former RNC chair to do some reporting. Proclaiming that having such firm political connections makes it impossible for her to be fair and accurate.
On the other hand, the same people are defending the hiring of Biden’s former press secretary and giving her, her own show.
Either you cave the correct views…. or you’re cancelled
So, a solar farm in India, with a capacity of 30GW, will cover an area five times the size of Paris.
Paris = 40sq miles, 5 x 40 = 200 sq miles. But 9.5 Hinkley Cs would require 9.5 x 0.7 = 6.5 sq miles.
More than 30:1 ratio.
Stupid is.
There was also that community in India that Greenpeace arbitrarily decided could get by on solar and batteries alone.
After a month or so of suffering unpredictable and unreliable electricity, the people rooted, demanding “PROPER electricity”.
The experiment was ceased.
So those ‘simple’ country folk, turned out to be smarter, than the Greenpeace, post grads and ‘middle class’ idiots.
Solar has its valid uses though. My calculators are most happy to have them.😉
Solar + battery storage works OK on an individual, off grid application (where grid sourced power is unavailable)
Exactly. Off-grid for decades now has been defined as PV with lead-acid battery storage.
I have an old Texas Instruments calculator that does not say it is “solar powered”.
It says it is “light powered”.
PS It’s a TI-1706
There was also that community in India…
I’ve been asking to see such an example for quite some time. Seems to have turned out just like I expected.
If it can’t be done on a small scale, how can anyone expect it to succeed on a large scale? (I know, it will be different)
Sadly the naivety spoken of has been there since solar and wind got the ‘free energy’ tag that has been used by the green campaigners to gain credibility. Just read the empty headed comments made by alarmists on these threads who seemingly were born yesterday. You cannot educate an empty shell.
The inconvenient and expensive truth is that intermittent energy provision is incredibly inefficient and unreliable compared to any and all the alternatives e.g. hydro, gas, nuclear, coal etc. For those who have made or are making loads of money from green subsidies it’s a crazily easy income source as they take money from the rest of us.. Are the green politicians receiving benefits from public energy price extortion and is that why they pushed and pressured these technologies upon the rest of us? Since the greens are busy accusing sceptics of receiving benefits from big oil then it would not surprise me to know just how dishonest the green camp is when push comes to shove. I just hope these same people get their just desserts when time comes to dismantle and remove these monstrosities and the public are made to realize just how much this so called free energy actually cost them in real time.
Perhaps we have ourselves to blame for not having made our political classes more uncomfortable when they make poor decisions. Democracy must be strong to work and we haven’t has that since Thatcher’s first term in the UK. How do we get it back? Better media? Taking teaching back? An end to billionaire domination of the critical factor decision making in public life?
I don’t want to waste time & effort getting even with the green scammers, I just want them gone.
Forever.
I have to worm my dog periodically. The parasites have a bad habit of coming back. It is an eternal struggle.
Apt analogy.
Solar generation facilities may be out of action some of the time, but so are nuclear power stations. No difference really. Oh, except that another nuclear power station can provide backup for the one that’s down, but all solar facilities go down together.
Unless, of course, you’re prepared tp bring solar electricity from another part of the planet where the sun is shining, with all the transmission losses that would involve and the cost of the infrastructure to do it. Some idiot has recently suggested sending power to the UK from solar farms in the Sahara! So much for energy security…
What energy security.
Today the UK is importing 7.2GW out of 35.78GW demand, roughly 20%.
The Sahara?
Desert. Sand. Wind.
What’s the life expectancy of a sand-blasted solar panel?
Any estimate will have to be taken with a grain of quartz.
Ohm’s Law isn’t in the curriculum for social science or liberal arts majors.
NB : I am deliberately “misunderstanding” the points you are making here in order to “shoehorn” in my own.
When you look at the “Min-Max” over a 12-month period for the amounts of electricity generated each day from the “Solar” contribution, and compare them to the “Nuclear” contributions on those days, there is a considerable difference.
Note also that on the 18th of December 2022 the nuclear “capacity factor” was in the ATL article’s “close to 100%” region … for the entire 24-hour period.
Lol.
Yup that’s the way the ArtStudent™ mind works. The wind is always blowing somewhere.
Solar facilities are out of action daily … 18 hours of every 24 hour period and can only produce near nameplate during a 4 hour period that doesn’t correspond with peak usage (so not when its needed).
Nuclear is generally only out (one unit at a time) for refueling, on average, for a month with 10 days to replace the rods and 20 days for other maintenance. Considering this only happens once every two years, then Nuclear doesn’t generate for 30 days of every 730 days or 720 hours of every 17520 hours OR less than an hour per day average
re: “but so are nuclear power stations. No difference really.”
Why not start collecting your OWN stats (at least for the US)? Start here:
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/2024/20240322ps.html
Very rarely does nuclear power stations go offline unexpectedly. Most downtime is scheduled months in advance. (Usually for maintenance or refueling)
Over all, nuclear is available around 90% of the time while wind and solar are available less than 30% of the time, at best. Also the times of availability are almost completely unpredictable.
That is not comparable to nuclear, no matter how you choose to look at it.
Just because “they” are prone to exaggeration does not mean that “we” have to follow in their footsteps.
The “capacity factor” for nuclear is a lot better than solar (or wind), but various operational reasons mean that while nukes can run “close to 100%” for long periods (many weeks / a few months) they don’t always do so.
Attached is a plot for the GB (island of Great Britain) electricity grid’s “Solar” and “Nuclear” contributions for the month of March 2024 so far.
Note that around midnight on the 3rd/4th it looks like a (~600 MW) reactor “SCRAM-ed”, which dropped the nuclear “capacity factor” to around fifty percent, and it then took a week to get it back on line.
NB : I don’t know if the “glitch” on the 19th was due to the (BM Reports / Elexon) monitoring system going down, or if it was a genuine “lightning strike / switchgear trip-out” issue that disconnected a reactor (or two ?) for around 30 minutes.
When you take a step back and look at the result of “a few cloudy days over the southern counties of England” on the 10th, 11th and 12th, however, it’s clear which type of electricity generator I’d prefer to have connected to my wall sockets … which are located in France …
Diablo Canyon has a capacity factor of over 90%
From WIKI…
Unit One
Unit One is a 1138 MWe pressurized water reactor supplied by Westinghouse. It went online on May 7, 1985, and is licensed to operate through November 2, 2024.[17] In 2006, Unit One generated 9,944,983 MW·h of electricity, at a nominal capacity factor of 99.8 percent.
Unit Two
Unit Two is a 1118 MWe pressurized water reactor supplied by Westinghouse. It went online on March 3, 1986, and is licensed to operate through August 20, 2025.[17] In 2006, Unit Two generated 8,520,000 MW·h of electricity, at a capacity factor of 87.0 percent
Sure beats the solar crapacity factors
LOL! Every alarmist that supports Solar and wind power generation needs to be asked: Why are we subsidizing wind and solar, which are highly susceptible to damage from severe weather, when the “scientists” they trust are saying that human caused climate change is resulting in more severe weather?
Severe weather, like this?
https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1772466901345599716
Yep! And who is going to pay for that?
The same people who paid to build it in the first place. The consumers.
Do not confuse people with the facts. (/sarc)
You are assuming that alarmists are rational and logical.
Someone earlier asked a tongue in cheek question, is it every cloudy in the UK?
Well this past two months has been wall to wall cloudy. Every day it rains not always steady or heavy but every day we have what some have described as weeping.
That weather description is about as close a description as you would need to describe the emotional state of the nation, we are all like the weather weeping.
I write this comment as someone troubled by and affected by, the destruction of our infrastructure. Our roads are falling apart, Last week I damaged two 19 inch alloy wheels hitting a pot hole which is now a common feature of UK roads.
I have been travelling a four mile detour to access my woodland because the rail bridge the road passes under has been flooded to a depth of two feet for the past two months. Nothing is done to clear it despite constant demand from road users.
The fact the Telegraph news paper can present nonsense and feel they have achieved their subscriber’s desired objective is just another example of group think and woke attitudes holding onto the controls of society.
Grey and exceedingly dull – in London, anyway.
One of the comments I put into my testimony opposing the Koshkonong Solar plant here in Wisconsin was “If I went to my private company executive, as an engineer, and requested $700 million to build a manufacturing plant that would only operate maximum 20% of the time, and you couldn’t know when it would operate or for how long at any given time……….I’d have been fired. This kind of insanity can only exist in government political projects, using house money.” One of the biggest problems we have in the war against climate propaganda right now is that most of our population – low information – mentally equate all power generation sources and their characteristics. Solar=wind=gas=coal=nuclear, etc. We have a daunting job to educate the public why that is not true. And, of course, those financially benefitting from that ignorance would just as soon continue the ruse.
The journalist’s understanding of capacity factor is the same as most liberal/progressives. They want to believe CF doesn’t matter, so to them it doesn’t. An Interesting paradox.
Yes, capacity v. actual output is significantly distorted in most articles by pro-renewable publicists.
And so are the costs. People try to convince me that renewables are “low cost” or “free energy”. Yet, somehow the increased use of solar and wind has yet to reduce the per unit price of electricity for utility customers.
Or am I wrong?
In the UK Ofgem say 25.5% of all energy bills is for social and environmental levies.
The problem with wind and solar is that you end up having to build three power systems.
You need enough solar to power 100% of your load for when wind isn’t producing.
You need enough wind to power 100% of your load for when solar isn’t producing.
You need enough fossil fuel/nuclear/hydro to power 100% of your load for when both wind and solar aren’t producing.
Beyond that is the need to run power lines to where ever your wind and solar are being built (it will rarely be near to the cities where most of the load is.)
You also have to pay all of the power sources so that they can be on standby, ready to take over whenever wind and solar fail, which is often.
You probably saw this already but, just in case here is a video from Texas hail storm: https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1772466901345599716
From https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/huge-solar-farm-over-seven-9189225
“A new solar farm stretching over “seven large and medium sized” fields looks set to be given the go ahead. Councillors on Harborough District Council’s planning committee will meet tonight to discuss the plan for the farmland off Fleckney Road, in the countryside immediately to the north-west of Fleckney.
If approved, more than 103,000 solar panels will be set up on land which forms part of the Wistow Lodge Farm. It would operate for 40 years once up and running, and would generate enough electricity to power almost 13,500 Harborough homes a year.”
“A substation compound is also included in the plans, as well as a battery energy and storage system which will hold energy at times of low usage and release it into the grid at peak times. The applicant is further proposing to install 103 cameras on the site.”
This is a link to the battery safety management plan for the site mentioned above
https://pa2.harborough.gov.uk/online-applications/files/08830B618DBE7B131D01F12846062CBB/pdf/22_01133_FUL-OUTLINE_BATTERY_SAFETY_MANAGEMENT_PLAN-1170403.pdf
Has anybody else seen this: “BREAKING: Hail storm in Damon Texas on 3/24/24 destroys 1,000’s of acres of solar farms.”
https://twitter.com/Roughneck2real/status/1772339177264148491
Pix
So much for that 20 year life expectancy claim.
One report is 1000s of panels. Another is 1000s of acres, which is a massively greater number of panels.
Thanks to our media for providing clarity.
From videos I’ve seen, damaged panel number could be well over a MILLION. !
https://twitter.com/Roughneck2real/status/1772339177264148491
3300 acres.. maybe 1500 panels/acre.. well over 1/4 heavily damages…
… and probably a substantial number with smaller, but still disabling, damage.
Any crack in the glass destroys the encapsulation system of the module and allows moisture penetration that ruins the electrical insulation and initiates corrosion.
The clueless reporter evidently does not understand the difference between CAPACITY and GENERATION.
He also does not understand the difference in energy density between solar and nuclear. Nuclear energy density leaves solar way behind in the dust.
Give this a “Green Macaroni” award.
Politicians and bureaucrats seem more interested in the infrastructure and the political incentives than they are in the electricity produced and the benefits to the taxpayers who pay for all these idiotic schemes.
As an en-guin-eer that worked in electric generation resource planning for a while, I realize that it is really hard to understand the difference between baseload, dispatchable, peaking, and close-to-useless non-dispatchable resources like wind and solar.
Maybe our climate-change friends would understand if the regulators forced them to charge their EVs from their own rooftop solar panels. In winter.
“Worse still, that 10% is not available all year round.”
Even more ‘worser’ … it doesn’t generate at all for an appreciable time of any given day.