John Rumm wrote:
On 12/03/2011 15:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article
,
Andy Dingley wrote:
On Mar 12, 8:40 am, harry wrote:
The age of gas is finished.

I have some sympathy with this view, but are you going to nip into
your Tardis and go back to tell Thatcher not to build our energy
generating capacity on gas too? If you follow the web links that TNP
has been posting lately, it's amazing just how much of total grid
output has been coming from gas of late.

Yup. With our own supplies diminishing. Which would have been better
used
for things it does best - like domestic heating etc.

Sadly its also the best fast start backup technology for power
generation, apart from hydro.

Arguable electricity is the best technical solution to home heating.

The only issue is poor thermal efficiencies at the power stations.

One interesting avenue for improving that:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03...cient_gennies/


Rather scary temperatures and pressures in that.

Mind you *any* form of large power or large energy storage is pretty scary.

Now how about that pint sized, sealed for 30 years life, home nuclear
CHP reactor.. :-)

Any excess heat is pumped into the ground in summer, to make sure you
have a good 'battery' for the winer heat pump..