Peter Scott wrote:
On 22/10/2010 19:44, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Peter Scott wrote:
All uyou have to do is multiply the average insolation of the UK, times
teh efficiency of PVS times the actual power requirements of the UK to
see that PV has not, never had, and never will have any hope of a
significant impact on UK power generation.
You don't even need to **** yourself looking at the costs.
Putting every single acre of land under a PV is not an option. It would
be too dark, and we would need all the power just to light it up again.
PV exists as a technology solely because of subsidy: which may be
withdrawn at a whim, and hopefully will be.
Perhaps you are right. But how is it then that people can go off grid
using only PV arrays in their own land?
By using very very little power indeed, and not expecting that all the
stuff they buy ois manufactured and/or delivered in the same way.
The per capita burn of energy in this country is about 3KW per head,
from memory. Oh, David Mackay reckons 120Kwh/day, which I make 5Kw.
UK average insolation is about 1Mwh/year meter squared or about 2.7Kwh
per day. Almost nothing is received in the winter months.
http://www.contemporaryenergy.co.uk/solarmap.htm
At 20% efficiency (highly optimistic) with 100% efficient winter and
night storage that is 550wh per sq meter per day
a single person would need about 240 square meters to meet *all* their
energy requirements. To supply all UK energy needs, assuming we had 100%
winter and overnight storage.
There are 60 million people in the UK
England is 130,000 sq kilometers.
Its population is 50M or so.
That's 12,000 square kilometers of panels.
So half of wales...
And it only works properly in summer at midday, and we have to store all
that for the middle of winter.
Yeah. Its only waiting for the price to come down.
Right. And I am Elvis.
Green**** ecobollox mate.
I don't have the data to allow
me to calculate whether we could power anything other than homes. Fact
is PV and storage is going to come down dramatically in cost and will
become easier to install, so as I said above it will be one of several
sources of 'clean' energy. The exact percentage I don't know.
It will never be more than ****ing in the wind and it will never compete
with proper large scale projects.
Its only value is where the cost of running a mains cable is higher.
There is no point connecting any PV top the grid at all, except to
provide by insane legislation.
Solar energy ion this country, and windmills are TOTAL FRAUDS on you,
the public. Wake up. Smell the coffee. They do nothing but divert cash
into the pockets of Dynamo Hansen and his ilk, and make not one jot of
difference to our carbon emissions.
Denmark has a higher per capita greenhouse gas emissions than we do,
despite using less energy per capita.*
(UNDP Human Development report 2007)
So much for windpower .
There is only one form of green energy generation that meets UK
requirements that is current stable and mature and cost effective, and
doesn't eat up acres of valuable land space, and emits no carbin, and
that's nuclear.
Bite the bullet. Swallow the pill,. Its the ONLY answer on the table
whatsoever.
You may not like it. I may not like it. The fact remains that it is the
only viable option for the vast majority of our energy needs at sane
costs.
And since its pretty inescapable, why **** around with silly windmills
and PVs at all? when at best they might be 1% of the total solution
before the costs of integrating such wildly fluctuation sources into the
grid become totally prohibitive.
There is no justification, in cost, in lack of carbon emissions, or in
any way whatsoever for all renewable energy generation, bar hydro, and
burning of organic waste.
A very convincing set of calculations that even a household can't supply
all of its current needs with PV. Actually elsewhere in this thread I
said that PV is one useful part of where we might get our energy from. I
agree with you that nuclear must be a part of that too. Less dangerous
than fossil burning and reliable. However viable uranium will run out
in 700 years or so,.
which is longer than we have been using coal.
And may JUST be long enough to develop fusion..
and there is a large energy/carbon dioxide cost in building the plants
no more so than the 100,000 wind,ills that would be needed oetherwise.
FAR less concrete in the nukes.
,
extracting and purifying the fuel and finally decomissioning. Each
method has its overhead. I just think we should not ignore any method at
present before we have seen what we can do with them. PV is very clean
and is likely to become more efficient and cheap. Hopefully we will see
fusion one day, but shouldn't hold our breaths. The crystals won't take
it captain!
All I am saying is that if the renewables won't do the job, and every
calculation shows they wont, why throw OUR money at them that would be
better spent on more cost effective measures, like insulation, and
levelling the playing field for nuclear, which WILL work.
All teh policy of RO and FITs assumes that renewables will work. No one
has ever actually asked, let alone answered the question 'but will they?'
The Danish experience is that they haven't worked at all.
They have more CO2 emissions per capita than we do, despite using less
energy. And paying three times the price for electricity that we do.
Peter Scott