Brexit, for once some facts.

[oldgroaner]

....and what plans do they have in place to increase the electricity generating capacity to a level where it replaces the energy that we currently extract from petrol and diesel fuels? They probably think that they just need to order a grubby, overall wearing, adjustable spanner wanking, engineering type pleb to go and build a Dyson Sphere around the sun. That should fix it.

Hang on a minute, all of our graduates are trained in party planning, photography and media studies. Better call China, the country's emergency help line.

I have a Cunning plan, tillson, which I will patent and make a fortune

In future all cars will be Hybrid and fitted with an anemometer that has to record a wind speed of force seven before the Electrics will activate and you can drive, or, more significantly recharge the car: the moment the windspeed falls below that the Electrics disengage, and to get back the car then has a Kick started 50cc four stroke Petrol engine to get home on, the logic being no one will want to get more than five miles away from home in future will they?
And this solution ensures E cars don't draw additional power from the grid.
This has the dual benefit that for almost all of the time it will be faster to travel on an "E" Bike.
KudosDave and Woosh will love it!

 

[wheeler]

...the English military campaign.......
KudosDave

I wouldn't say that to the descendants of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders or Royal Scots left to hold back the Germans and allow the evacuation from Dunkirk.

 

[Woosh]

buzzfeed:

UK Officials Have Privately Told Senior Bankers The Brexit Bill Will Be Close To £50 Billion

 

[oldgroaner]

buzzfeed:

UK Officials Have Privately Told Senior Bankers The Brexit Bill Will Be Close To £50 Billion

Peanuts! pay up and smile (Oh Sure, this will go down Bigly with the usual culprits, won't it?)

 

[Woosh]

Peanuts! pay up and smile

that's worth 4 years of free access to the SM.

 

[Kudoscycles]

I wouldn't say that to the descendants of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders or Royal Scots left to hold back the Germans and allow the evacuation from Dunkirk.

I didnt say that the bravery of boots on the ground didnt do a good job and the Navy and RAF trying to protect the beaches, but the prior planning was awful and followed up by a botched landing in Norway.
It just seems our masters have an attitude 'that it will be ok',I am sure the civil servants over in Brussels are trying to get us a good deal but if the leadership is not there (Boris in New Zealand,Davis in South Africa and May in Switzerland) they must be very frustrated.
KudosDave

 

[Kudoscycles]

Exactly, calling hybrids electric cars is a sham, especially those that don't plug in to charge. Even on the plug-in ones are scarcely e-cars. The much TV advertised Mitsubishi plug-in hybrids for example cover around 28 miles on their fully charged battery, when it's new. Ok for the supermarket and school runs I suppose, but not "green" for anything else.
.

The Prius only does 23mpg if the engine is being used to propel the vehicle and charge at the same time.
KudosDave

 

[Woosh]

The Prius only does 23mpg if the engine is being used to propel the vehicle and charge at the same time.
KudosDave

if you use the Prius' engine to charge the battery (off grid, all the time), a customer I was helping to load the bike in the boot of his Prius told me he gets more than 60mpg.

 

[anotherkiwi]

I was reading that wind farms in Scotland and Wales could produce as much and cheaper electricity than your French nuclear power station paid for by the Chinese...

 

[Woosh]

that's true.
My son's German best friend manages the large wind farm near Hull, in the North Sea.
They believe in the future of wind turbines.

 

[flecc]

I was reading that wind farms in Scotland and Wales could produce as much and cheaper electricity than your French nuclear power station paid for by the Chinese...

Not really true, wind power is proving more expensive than thought at first, and the turbine positions are also problematic. Scotland and Wales are not where the current is needed and occasion up to 7% current loss in transmission to where it is needed. There's also a limit to how many turbines can be installed in those relatively small areas.

We're relying on large turbine fields at sea now to overcome that last problem, but again we are back to transmission losses and the maintenance costs of the seaborn ones are extremely high. Dangerous too, the risks very high.

And of course what happens when the wind doesn't blow or blows too hard? Their wind speed operating range is narrow.
.

 

[anotherkiwi]

I was talking about a new study on inland wind farms released last week where the wholesale cost per kWh was (much) lower than Hinkley Point. Wales and Scotland are among the windiest parts of Europe... But there is no way of getting planning position for inland wind farms in the UK so you won't know if the report numbers are true.

Funny how it costs so much in the UK and yet costs are also down in the US in recent trends?

 

[Zlatan]

Hybrid cars are a way of giving insane performance and soothing the green brigades indignation. Take the BMW I8, superb car. 200 plus bhp from a 3 cylinder turbo nutter engine, and another 100 plus from the e system..0 to 60 in around 4 seconds and claims of 135 mpg...Its utter lies. On a recent road test driving ut sensibly it returned 35mpg.....on a track test...it managed 17mpg...
I,m agreeing with OG again on all this..who,s figures are we believing that actually says e cars ( such as Tesla S I suppose, with its £80k plus price tag,0 to 60 in 2.5 secs and 260 mile range) are actually greener than a Focus 1.0 ecoboost???
Take everything into consideration and I,ll bet there is hardly anything in it, yet we just accept government knows best..banning ICE from 2040 is plain barmy. I wonder if Chinese will follow suit ? Nope, but they,ll supply all the batteries that some minister has invested in...
Will be another one like wind turbines. I,m an ex windsurfer,and by coincidence windsurfing needs almost exactly same winds as turbine does to work economically. I had a 30 year career windsurfing and reckon in UK we get 5 days a month which are sailable. To my mind that's 5 days a month when turbines work...

 

[flecc]

the wholesale cost per kWh was (much) lower than Hinkley Point.

That much is true, but it's very biased since it takes the low early years cost of wind and compares them with the Hinckley future prices which are initially high due to the new technology, and that the prices are a political fix to get it built.

It doesn't take into account that we are also going to have much cheaper nuclear stations as well, that Hinckley if it proves the expected success will get relatively cheaper, and that wind prices over the longer term are very much higher.

And most importantly of all, it doesn't take into account that we have to have the nuclear etc. stations for when the wind doesn't blow, and that is a wind cost during the many hours that is happening.
.

 

[tillson]

This news regarding the banning of the ICE by 2040 stands no chance of happening. The national grid will melt at the end of rush hour when everyone begins recharging for the following day's commute. How will the millions of people who park on the street charge their cars? With millions of kerb side charges? What about trucks, vans and coaches? Will these be electric too? What makes the government think that we are going to solve a problem which has eluded mankind for a hundred years within the next 10 to 15 years.....high energy density batteries?

I'm affraid this is all propaganda intended to soften us up for the coming assault on the Diesel powered car. After years of encouraging us to switch to Diesel, the penny has finally dropped and now the useless clowns are looking for a face saving way out of their error.

 

[Woosh]

And most importantly of all, it doesn't take into account that we have to have the nuclear etc. stations for when the wind doesn't blow, and that is a wind cost during the many hours that is happening.

offshore wind farms are going the same way as solar power, already cheaper than nuclear power and nearly matching the cost of producing electricity from coal.
We already have the installation cost down to about £1/W. We only have to reduce the cost of storing electricity.

 

[flecc]

This news regarding the banning of the ICE by 2040 stands no chance of happening. The national grid will melt at the end of rush hour when everyone begins recharging for the following day's commute. How will the millions of people who park on the street charge their cars? With millions of kerb side charges? What about trucks, vans and coaches? Will these be electric too? What makes the government think that we are going to solve a problem which has eluded mankind for a hundred years within the next 10 to 15 years.....high energy density batteries?

I'm affraid this is all propaganda intended to soften us up for the coming assault on the Diesel powered car. After years of encouraging us to switch to Diesel, the penny has finally dropped and now useless clowns are looking for a face saving way out of their error.

Our government's actions are all very silly Tillson. Among their pollution saving measures is the removal of the speed calming bumps and mini-roundabouts that they've been installing for years. That's yet another example of policy reversal, just like their advice on diesel.
.

 

[flecc]

offshore wind farms are going the same way as solar power, already cheaper than nuclear power and nearly matching the cost of producing electricity from coal.
We already have the installation cost down to about £1/W. We only have to reduce the cost of storing electricity.

But only initially when new. The earlier ones are already proving very expensive due to gearbox repair and renewal costs and the tech in the new ones is no different. And the costs of carrying out that work are very high. All too frequently in our sea conditions it has to be carried out by helicopter at high personnel risks.

The end costs of wind are high, and then there's the poor utilisation. Few realise that the USA was the early entrant to wind power, having so many ideal sites. The best generation utilisation from any turbines there is 26% and many operate as low as 13%. Here in Britain many of our onshore ones have been criticised for generation time yields as low as 8% over a whole year.

And it's here that your figures fail, since for the other 80% or so of time when other methods have to produce the power, those costs are also wind ones, since they are due to wind absence or unsuitability. Add in those generation support costs for four-fifths of the time and wind is the most expensive of all generation methods.

Remember, we only need Hinckley because the wind cannot be relied on, so it's arguable that all the Hinckley costs are due to wind's failings.
.

 

[Woosh]

the UK offshore wind farms can't compete against onshore wind farms yet, but I have been told last year by my son's friend that the cost of installed MWH in the North Sea is coming down much faster than projected now, driven by better reliability and lower construction cost. He works for Vestas and Dong.

 

[oldgroaner]

All of this nonsense about Diesels being "Dirty" is a solvable engineering problem, here for instance is a promising avenue of research

Electrically Heated Catalysts
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03227013
and
http://www.emitec.com/fileadmin/user_upload/Presse/Presseinformationen/IAA_2013/Heated_catalyst.pdf

Combine this with an exhaust scrubber and the problem should be solvable
There are already American patents like this one for an electrostatic vehicle exhaust gas scrubber
http://www.google.com.pg/patents/US3768981

This is the sort of research that should have been done years ago