Prices of the electricity we use to charge

Ghost1951

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I don't support hooliganism of any kind, which includes the recent riots, but there is a long long history of the UK government and ruling class coming down very hard on the lower classes getting angry.

This got particularly sensitive in England after the French Revolution when the lower classes rose up and executed the ruling class in large numbers - not that surprising that the boss class here got very tetchy about lower class unrest.

Rioters were very commonly attacked by mounted cavalry with sabres or fired on by soldiers so they got the idea that they'd better not challenge the status quo. Often the rioters were killed in dozens and sentenced to very severe punishments including death.

The attitude to civil unrest has been VERY different in France where the idea that the common people had better be taken notice of has never gone away since the Revolution. The Brits look on in amazement as they see scenes of French farmers burning trucks carrying agricultural produce from other countries while police stand by looking on at a distance. I remember one time when French wine growers had captured an Italian wine tanker and they opened the tap on the back and drained the lot onto the road while the police stood by and watched.

It would not happen here.


AI summary:
  • The Gordon Riots of 1780
    A series of riots in London that were motivated by anti-Catholic sentiment. The riots began with a protest against the Papists Act 1778, which was intended to reduce discrimination against British Catholics. The riots resulted in an estimated 300–700 deaths.


  • The Swing Riots of 1830
    A series of riots in rural England that were caused by a decline in agricultural produce and wages, the introduction of threshing machines, and an influx of Irish labour. The government's response to the riots was harsh, with 19 people executed, 505 transported to Australia, and 644 imprisoned.


  • The Poll Tax Riots of 1381 and 1990
    In 1381, a rebellion broke out in Essex against the poll tax, which affected everyone equally, regardless of wealth. In 1990, Margaret Thatcher's government attempted to introduce a new poll tax, and a rally of 200,000 people turned into a riot.


  • The Rebecca Riots
    A series of protests made by tenant farmers against the payment of tolls to use the roads. During the riots, men disguised as women attacked the tollgates.

Other notable protests in the UK include: The 1842 general strike, The Welsh coal strike of 1898, The 1926 United Kingdom general strike, and The 1984–1985 United Kingdom miners' strike.
 

soundwave

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plod would have a problem if everyone had a horse and a tank as a car to go riot ;)
 

MikelBikel

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 6, 2017
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Government "Transparency"
Bike shelter €334,000

Security shed €1.4million

National Children's hospital first touted 1993, still not built, €2.2billion and rising.

And they won't own up to who signed off on them, or who got the contract and why? No of course not. OPW, afuera!
 

saneagle

Esteemed Pedelecer
Oct 10, 2010
6,812
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Telford
Government "Transparency"
Bike shelter €334,000

Security shed €1.4million

National Children's hospital first touted 1993, still not built, €2.2billion and rising.

And they won't own up to who signed off on them, or who got the contract and why? No of course not. OPW, afuera!
We have one in Telford that comes with a walkway generator that cost over £100k. Nobody uses the bike shelter apart from smokers, and the screen that shows you how much the walkway generates uses about 200 times the power generated.
 
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Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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We have one in Telford that comes with a walkway generator that cost over £100k. Nobody uses the bike shelter apart from smokers, and the screen that shows you how much the walkway generates uses about 200 times the power generated.
This is what happens when ideologues are in charge of what happens. All practical considerations go out of the window and their 'inspirational' nonsense takes over. Most politicians are like this - they generally haven't got a clue. Take Miliband's plan to do away with all fossil fuel power generation in the UK. How does he think we are going to make the average of 27 Gwatts we need? In the last full week, we only managed to make 14% of our electric power from wind and solar and 52% of what we used was generated by gas.... Never mind - Miliband's plan to scrap the gas powered generators will be OK. Maybe he has some special Miliband technology development somewhere in his big brain. I doubt it though. It will be even worse if they succeed in moving more people onto electric vehicles and heat pumps, because of the increased demand. I see us all sitting on the dark and cold for a week at a time during blocked high atmospheric pressure like we have been having.

60609

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Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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look at the medium time horizon. EVs have already outsold ICEs in China and nordic countries. In 5 years, the same pattern will happen here because while EV prices go down, ICE prices can't. Tesla have shown that they make much more profit than the rest of US ICE carmakers put together.
In a generation, interconnectors will link Europe to the Sahara, nuclear fusion will become a possibility, storage batteries will be expanded to wipe out the remaining gas fired power stations and roof top solar panel yield will reach 50%.
The current smart money goes into batteries ATM. There is scope for new technology to reduce the cost of batteries to less than a quarter of current prices.
 

Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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Woosh said:
nuclear fusion will become a possibility, storage batteries will be expanded to wipe out the remaining gas fired power stations and roof top solar panel yield will reach 50%.
Bwah ha ha ha ha ha .

Thanks. That was funny. Especially the bit about nuclear fusion and battery storage. In the last ten days we would have needed about 3240 Gwhours of battery storage to replace the lost wind and solar caused by the persistent blocked high pressure system and the annual decline in sunshine hours called 'WINTER'. This is the second persistent high pressure event this autumn.

If our power demand is 27Gwhrs as it is now, and half is being generated by gas, we need 13.5Gw of storage for EVERY hour to replace what our wind and solar farms can not produce. This weather system has minimised wind generation for ten days. Work out how many hours there are in ten days, and take note of how big that high pressure system is, on the map above. How would all that lost power be carried in on inter-connectors? We are not the only nation with no wind. In fact, right now and yesterday, Europe had far less than we had.

And all of this is with demand based on most vehicles being fossil powered and most housing on gas heating.

You are living in a fantasy world.

Hey! I'm a huge fan of wind and solar power, but you can only use it when it is available in the region you live in.

As for fusion...... What a joke. All my life we have been five or ten years away from free electricity. We are nowhere near.

The best plan is to use the fusion energy of the sun and collect it on a massive scale in north Africa and convey it here on ultra high voltage dc lines. Of course - that plan is fraught with strategic problems. Unstable region. Exposed infrastructure. Dependence on that for all our power needs is a big risk.
 
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Woosh

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You can check out the projection of EU solar power statistics here:
EU solar power generation 2050 | Statista
They predict that solar capacity in the EU doubles every 2 years until it can match demand. There are other renewables too, there is no need to build more gas fired power stations.
In our little discussion, once we accept that building more gas fired power stations isn't necessary, wind and solar are the only runners for at least one generation. Beyond that, I won't be here to argue what's next.
 
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saneagle

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Oct 10, 2010
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You can check out the projection of EU solar power statistics here:
EU solar power generation 2050 | Statista
They predict that solar capacity in the EU doubles every 2 years until it can match demand. There are other renewables too, there is no need to build more gas fired power stations.
Here in Telford, I've been using about 8kwh per day. I the last week, my solar has generated less than 2kwh per day. There has been no wind at all, so when my wind generator goes on line, it wouldn't have produced anything. I have about 15kwh of storage in batteries. That was gone after 2 days. My house is a microcosm of the whole UK, except that I can buy electricity to cover my shortfall at the moment. I predict power cuts in the near future.
 

Woosh

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Here in Telford, I've been using about 8kwh per day. I the last week, my solar has generated less than 2kwh per day. There has been no wind at all, so when my wind generator goes on line, it wouldn't have produced anything. I have about 15kwh of storage in batteries. That was gone after 2 days. My house is a microcosm of the whole UK, except that I can buy electricity to cover my shortfall at the moment. I predict power cuts in the near future.
I accept your conclusions but solar tech is progressing in such a rapid pace that the landscape will change rapidly.
 

saneagle

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Oct 10, 2010
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I accept your conclusions but solar tech is progressing in such a rapid pace that the landscape will change rapidly.
The landscape can change a lot, but when there's no sun, you get no power. A major problem is that the demand is higher when production is lowest. Batteries are not enough. Even if I doubled the size of my panels and battery capacity, I would never be able to produce enough power in the winter. Solar will never work as a reliable source of power in UK unless the population is reduced by a factor of 10.
 

MikelBikel

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Jun 6, 2017
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Election, 29th Nov! Time to get popcorn and watch the show.
Law was changed in 2022, (remember then, when we were 'locked down'?) To allow Anonymous Postal voting. I von der vonder vhy?

Oh, and we all got letters demanding we "update" our voter registration with:
Postal code- which they already had to post the letter;
Public Service number, PPSN, (like national insurance no.). Why, mmm?
But to complete reg website demands Phone number and email address.
Or you vont be allowed to vote. Ve haf vayz..
imagine the shenanigans that will ensue!;)
 

Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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I accept your conclusions but solar tech is progressing in such a rapid pace that the landscape will change rapidly.
And how will we feed ourselves when all our fields are hosting solar farms?

The uk is already very far from self sufficient in food production.

Gas is already a low carbon fuel. The chemical formula of methane is CH4 - one carbon atom bonded to four of hydrogen. Compare that to coal which is the mainstay of electricity production elsewhere - between fifty and sixty percent more carbon per kilowatt hour in heat output and about 20% lower efficiency in converting heat to power, than combined cycle gas turbines.
 

Ghost1951

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 2, 2024
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625
You can check out the projection of EU solar power statistics here:
EU solar power generation 2050 | Statista
They predict that solar capacity in the EU doubles every 2 years until it can match demand. There are other renewables too, there is no need to build more gas fired power stations.
In our little discussion, once we accept that building more gas fired power stations isn't necessary, wind and solar are the only runners for at least one generation. Beyond that, I won't be here to argue what's next.
You can build solar farms and off shore wind farms as much as you like but that won't effect the fact that they stop producing when the power source is absent. The nonsense about storage has no impact when the wind is almost completely absent for a fortnight, like now. This happens several times each winter.

Ideology trumping real world engineering.

We will always need a large fleet of gas turbines to switch on when needed, unless we have a big fleet of nuclear stations. Of course, unlike gas turbines those REALLY don't like the expansion and contraction of being frequently turned on and off. This shortens working life big time and brings big increase in down time and maintenance costs. That is one reason we run them flat out whatever the strike price is. They run at 100% even when operating at a loss.

ZERO carbon is a piece of ideological nonsense.
 
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Woosh

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And how will we feed ourselves when all our fields are hosting solar farms?
I don't think we need a huge amount of area to collect enough for what we need. Panel yield is around 20% at the moment, soon reaching 30% then 40% then 50% in 25 years time before flattening out. I would allow 10sqm per person, 60 million people will need 600 million sqm or 600 square kilometers of panels.
 

Woosh

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May 19, 2012
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Southend on Sea
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We will always need a large fleet of gas turbines to switch on when needed, unless we have a big fleet of nuclear stations. Of course, unlike gas turbines those REALLY don't like the expansion and contraction of being frequently turned on and off. This shortens working life big time and brings big increase in down time and maintenance costs. That is one reason we run them flat out whatever the strike price is. They run at 100% even when operating at a loss.

ZERO carbon is a piece of ideological nonsense.
I am not against existing power stations. I don't think we need to build new gas units. Nuclear has hidden decommissioning costs and very high starting cost and maintenance cost. That leaves solar, wind and batteries. BTW, Bill Gates' nuclear reactor uses hot molten salt as batteries.
 

MikelBikel

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Jun 6, 2017
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MikelBikel

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Jun 6, 2017
909
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Ireland
Elektion vill be fun.
Expekt ze most popular candidate vill be Gerry Mander.
"You can vote by post and will Not appear on the register of electors.. If you are registered as an anonymous elector, or you are part of the household of an anonymous elector"
 

Ghost1951

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Jun 2, 2024
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625