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“It is truly bonkers”: Greg Jackson, Octopus CEO, on the UK’s broken energy system

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Interesting article…

The government removing the 40% import tariff and 20% VAT on imported solar panels would go a long way to helping the situation. Until that happens anything politicians/civil servants say about energy is self-serving hot air.
No investment needed there, just not hindering others who are willing to.
 
It's always struck me that the govt like wind power because they can just give the nod to a few big companies and have lots of wind power, vs having to deal with lots and lots of "individuals" who pop up solar.

But it also strikes me that a good mix of the two is a good idea. Sure, solar tails off during the winter, but quite often when it's not windy, the sun is shining, and vice versa. Also, as most households are happy to take on the buying, it's not like the govt need to grant money, it's just as mentioned above, stopping the tax part.
 
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Until someone comes up with a system for storing energy in large quantities for weeks rather than minutes or hours, reliance on wind for a major proportion of our energy supply is not going to work. Northern Europe experiences stable high pressure weather systems under which there is virtually no wind over huge areas. The wind turbines are stationary. These often occur during the cold winter months when energy demand for heating is high. We have closed down our coal fired power stations and our nuclear stations are closing as they reach the end of their lives. Building new ones seems to be problematical. Coal fired stations have been replaced by gas - and we are seeing the problems with gas supply now. Solar sounds good but we see very little sun in the winter days, and none at night. I don’t think anyone has a clear answer to this. I get my energy from Octopus but I treat their claim that it is 100% green with some scepticism - especially when it is dark and the wind isn’t blowing! Plus some from my solar panels - although most of that goes into the grid.
 
We have closed down our coal fired power stations
Quite rightly. The pollution from a coal-fired power station is enormous and prevailing winds tend to drag it straight across Europe.

The failure is to invest in nuclear power and premature closing of the plants (as in Germany).

Effective storage of renewable energy isn't that difficult. It can be used to create hydrogen, which can run a CCGT. Tesla is investing enormous amounts of money in MegaPacks, which if implemented properly could solve both our short-term energy storage problem and the issue of the first generation of EVs needing recycling.

The fact that a decent proportion of homes in the UK are legally banned from implementing energy saving measures such as better windows or insulation doesn't help.
 
Until someone comes up with a system for storing energy in large quantities for weeks rather than minutes or hours, reliance on wind for a major proportion of our energy supply is not going to work. Northern Europe experiences stable high pressure weather systems under which there is virtually no wind over huge areas. The wind turbines are stationary. These often occur during the cold winter months when energy demand for heating is high. We have closed down our coal fired power stations and our nuclear stations are closing as they reach the end of their lives. Building new ones seems to be problematical. Coal fired stations have been replaced by gas - and we are seeing the problems with gas supply now. Solar sounds good but we see very little sun in the winter days, and none at night. I don’t think anyone has a clear answer to this. I get my energy from Octopus but I treat their claim that it is 100% green with some scepticism - especially when it is dark and the wind isn’t blowing! Plus some from my solar panels - although most of that goes into the grid.
We live next door to a country with lots of nuclear power stations, everything will be fine if we don't fall out with them over minor arms deals.
 
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I’ve no problem with closing coal fired power stations - so long as there are plans to replace them as a power source. I don’t see this at the moment.

The France interconnector has a maximum power of 2GW and is down to 1 until sometime next year. Doesn’t help too much with peak demands of around 50GW. I suspect many of the French nuclear stations must be nearing end of life too.

So far as I have seen, the biggest MegaPacks are only sufficient to store energy to cover peaks of maybe an hour or so - not the weeks of low wind in winter that may need to be covered. At the moment hydrogen generation is hopelessly inefficient way of using surplus wind energy.

Insulation of homes is important but, I think I saw that domestic heating was only 15% of UK energy use so even if that could be halved it wouldn’t be transformational [except for the people who live in the more comfortable homes!)

Sorry I’m in gloomy mood today.
 
We can trade electricity, when we have too much we sell and when we don't we buy.

If we go with wind generation and our partners go with other solutions, that trade can work. Others may choose to focus more on storage, it shares the cost.

We are in a global economy, no country can "go alone" nowadays. We need to think bigger than just ourselves.
 
I’ve just had a pop at my DNO. My secondary panels aren’t allowed to export so they run only when I’m drawing more than my main panels are producing.
I’ve offered them roughly 500kWh p.a. For free to them the run permanently which will stop my EV chargers playing catch-up when the sun goes in and out!.
We’ll see how desperate they are for green electricity!
 
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What’s the state of Tidal renewable technology these days? The wind isn’t always blowing and the sun isn’t always shining but there are always waves in the ocean.

There are always predictable tides. Tidal power is different to wave power ... (and waves do vary quite a bit). It does seem surprising that tidal hasn't really become a major contributor to renewable energy overall. However, there have been various prototype schemes and one or two big projects around the world but clearly tidal is more of a challenge in practice than we imagine. Also environmental consequences of constraining tidal bores etc
 
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We can only 'trade' energy if partners have surplus and if there are suitably large interconnecting cables available. Northern Europe is heavily favouring wind energy and, as I have said earlier, this is very variable. This is the UK wind genration over the last year (source Gridwatch.templar.co.uk). You can see that supply has varied from virtually nothing to around 14GW and there have been periods of weeks when the supply has been less than about 3GW. At the times that our generation is low, it will also be low in all our near neighbours - so they are not going to have anything to trade.
 

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We can only 'trade' energy if partners have surplus and if there are suitably large interconnecting cables available. Northern Europe is heavily favouring wind energy and, as I have said earlier, this is very variable. This is the UK wind genration over the last year (source Gridwatch.templar.co.uk). You can see that supply has varied from virtually nothing to around 14GW and there have been periods of weeks when the supply has been less than about 3GW. At the times that our generation is low, it will also be low in all our near neighbours - so they are not going to have anything to trade.

Good to see that we have a new interconnector with Norway that will enable us to share some of their hydro. Not transformational but a useful step.
 
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Also good to see that Norway has a massive storage capacity in their reservoirs (70% of annual production) so their hydro electricity production should be very secure.
Norway Power Balance

By comparison, the Dinorwig pumped storage system in Wales has a capacity of 9GWh and can supply at a rate of 1.7GW, so would be empty in about 5 hours whereas the Norwegian interconnector has a capacity of 1.4GW and could, I guess, run continuously if necessary.

Perhaps Scotland's economy could be transformed by building lots more reservoirs and hydro plants to supply England with green energy using all that rain they get? :rolleyes:
 
There are always predictable tides. Tidal power is different to wave power ... (and waves do vary quite a bit). It does seem surprising that tidal hasn't really become a major contributor to renewable energy overall. However, there have been various prototype schemes and one or two big projects around the world but clearly tidal is more of a challenge in practice than we imagine. Also environmental consequences of constraining tidal bores etc
It's on its way, but like the early days of wind, things take time.
 
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Perhaps Scotland's economy could be transformed by building lots more reservoirs and hydro plants to supply England with green energy using all that rain they get?

Scottish Water are having to manage water shortages this year! Water shortage warnings in Scotland amid record low reservoir levels

It's going to be a bit difficult to persuade Scotland to wipe out umpteen valleys/glens for hydro when we are already virtually at zero carbon for electricity supply here much of the time. According to the ESONationalGrid App the northern half of Scotland is today at 100% zero carbon and the southern half is at 94% zero carbon! I'm presuming that there is already a hefty amount of transfer going on. But you're quite right in the principle of sending the zero carbon stuff around the country more effectively.
 
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Tidal:

A few pilot sites off Shetland, some plans for Severn and Mersey barages.

Probably no quicker than Small Modular Reactors.

I think there is a greater understanding of the environmental challenges for large tidal schemes (Severn and Mersey). These large scale infrastructure projects also require massive investment. They've been talked about for decades ... will they ever happen? Maybe the open water stuff like off Shetland has potential but it's very small scale at the moment though could be expanded in a modular way (as per offshore wind ... just add more turbines).
 
No one has mentioned Fusion reactors as a source of power. A friend works at Culham on the demonstration fusion project. I’m pretty sure he is confident of a job for life!

Just as nuclear fission was supposed to give us electricity so cheaply it wouldn’t be worth metering, fusion has been holding out the promise of almost unlimited clean energy for almost as long as I can remember. Seems to have gone pretty quiet recently though.
 
No one has mentioned Fusion reactors as a source of power. A friend works at Culham on the demonstration fusion project. I’m pretty sure he is confident of a job for life!

Just as nuclear fission was supposed to give us electricity so cheaply it wouldn’t be worth metering, fusion has been holding out the promise of almost unlimited clean energy for almost as long as I can remember. Seems to have gone pretty quiet recently though.
I have it on good authority that we are only 50 years away from safe, clean, unlimited fusion power.

;)