How about we install solar panels and let the home owners keep the saving?! That would be a better idea than lining some companies pockets. OR we could just build nuclear power stations, run them as public services and have cheap electricity like they had in SA before they privatised it and everyone got shafted. THAT would be the best solution. Power stations paid for out of current resources and then run not for profit. Shocking concept I know...Originally Posted by Noxvayl
Indeed - the endless stretches of countryside being 'developed' round on the edges of formerly small attractive villages here, to make way for population growth, brings tears of joy to me.
Who pays?
Social housing really annoys me in this repsect. Tenant gets most of the benefit in free power, taxpayer gets to pay the upfront costs and Housing Association gets to skim off a percentage.
Home owners do keep the saving though, the lease is to pay for equipment and installation much like you'd have to if you did it yourself. Even the way peterb has done his system requires an initial expenditure that reduces the savings at first but should turn out to be very valuable in the future. I agree that either home owners doing this themselves, or a for profit company leading the way, is unlikely to provide the same electricity price reduction as a public utility but it seems this way is thought of as better.
SA used to be a good example of what governments role in society should be, providing the amenities required for us to live comfortably and figuring out how to do so in the most efficient and beneficial way possible; market mechanisms are not as eager to do this with their unwillingness to upgrade and focus on short term bottom lines that have little relation to the real world.
I was thinking more of a public utility for solar roofs when I mentioned local councils doing something similar; the more it helps generate income the wider the net could be cast to add solar panels to roofs of properties not owned by the council. The current way things are progressing is less than optimal, we are slowly getting to the point where government spending is not required but that isn't the way we should go about doing these things. If we want to make something happen we shouldn't be waiting for the market to reach a point where not doing it is stupid.
On the other hand why should we labour the country with high priced electricity, to artificially subsidize the fledgling solar industry, when other countries are reaping the benefits of cheap fossil fuels and nuclear right now? Solar is currently nowhere near price parity and the only reason it has taken off is huge subsidies from the taxpayer and hidden taxes via our electricity bills.
That is true - and so I'd just like this opportunity to say "Thank you". (Although I have had to pay the installation costs up front - I assume you haven't read my thread in the Home, Garden and DiY forum)
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Sadly there are too many negatives relating to nuclear power. Firstly, nobody can be certain on the amount of Uranium which could be mined in future. Secondly, the UK will still need to import its own source of Uranium. Thirdly, nuclear power stations requires huge capital costs which means higher electricity bills for the consumer. Lastly, wars could be fought on Uranium shortages thus possibly resulting in the extinction of life. Going back to the caves is for the lucky few.
It is said we're ten years from having nuclear fusion power. A more safer and sustainable way of producing energy than using fission. I'd rather wait for fusion than taking a knee jerk reaction to expensive nuclear fission.
Whereas not that far outside London, the immigrant population I lived in the middle of were the ones where the primary school kids are in study groups every single evening in order to get into the local grammar school. I felt rather sorry for them, the pressure they were under was immense for such young kids. But they studied hard, they got good results.
Having heard what teaching in a London school was like 50 years ago (before most of the immigration), that sounds depressingly familiar. Do the girls still point out to the teachers that they can make more money in the evenings on the game than a teacher earns as a salary? I'm sure immigration has brought new challenges, but London had enough to start with
Blimey that's a long way from vacuum cleaners isn't it, love this thread
It is said very optimistically, 50 years is the more realistic quote I've heard.
I think you and I may have the same friend - yes they literally have said that to her. One said in class that her ambition was to be a porn star. And she wasn't kidding, that was her career plan. Tip of the iceberg.Whereas not that far outside London, the immigrant population I lived in the middle of were the ones where the primary school kids are in study groups every single evening in order to get into the local grammar school. I felt rather sorry for them, the pressure they were under was immense for such young kids. But they studied hard, they got good results.
Having heard what teaching in a London school was like 50 years ago (before most of the immigration), that sounds depressingly familiar. Do the girls still point out to the teachers that they can make more money in the evenings on the game than a teacher earns as a salary? I'm sure immigration has brought new challenges, but London had enough to start with
Blimey that's a long way from vacuum cleaners isn't it, love this thread
And on fusion - it is demonstrated at the lab scale in two processes, plasma and lazer. Lazer research is trying to find a sustainable lazing source, (no puns please) while plasma is trying to scale up production in a controlled manner. Given the amount of energy they require, to get fusion to run industrially will need enough power input to begin with. Best keep at least one fission reactor running or we won't get to switch to fusion at all. Once it's running however... job done! Assuming our government hasn't sold everything to China PLC
The amount of uranium required is pretty low. Plus the genIV reactors coming up should get between 100-300% more efficiency out of a given mass of fuel. They can run on Uranium, plutonium or thorium amongst others. So a sensible system is one of various fuel sourced stations, with a few breeder reactors to generate the plutonium even as the uranium is consumed. IIRC breeder reactors actually generate more material than they consume - something I still can't quite understand, since surely they can't, but even Wiki says so - and wiki *never* lies.
Fission is proven, not expensive, stable and will keep our lights on. If maggie hadn't abolished the public body responsible for planning our power network during privatisation and major had had more balls about getting the already proposed sites through planning, and blair had bothered to get his head out of his smug arse before 2005 to realise there was a problem looming we would already have a new generation of reactors up and running. Britain could be a net power exporter to Europe. Instead we are seriously facing the prospect of brown outs. the plan ought to be do what we know works, then use that cheap power to explore and manufacture other tech to see if it works. Not throw money at unproven solutions, whose numbers don't really stack up, while closing "polluting" power stations that are the only things keeping us afloat.
So as I head to bed, let's all hear it for privatisation.
Well, privatisation wasn't really the problem. Politicians that either can't, or just won't, think beyond getting themselves re-elected for long enough to do what the country needs, that's the problem.....
So as I head to bed, let's all hear it for privatisation.
It works because natural uranium is less than 1% U-235 which is the fuel isotope. Mostly it's U-238 which isn't useful for generating power. Breeder reactors turn U-238 into Pu-239, which can also be used as reactor fuel, hence it creates more fuel than it consumes.
Terrapower uses U-238... it is estimated that USA could use Terrapower reactors for the next 100-200 years without running out of fuel just from the waste produced by current reactors. For the foreseeable future, GenIV nuclear reactors could power the entire world more cheaply and safely than what is currently being done. Fusion is nice and all, but within the next 10 years it might have a single generator producing energy; replicating the first generator will be significantly more expensive and difficult than producing GenIV fission reactors and as such it will take longer than the next few decades for that to become a major source of energy for the world.
As for the price of Solar, these articles paint a different picture:
http://www.computerworld.com/article...in-europe.html
http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post...d-3b0a04149068
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...42-cents-a-wat
http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/03/...ity-next-year/
http://www.ilsr.org/wp-content/uploa...ution-ilsr.pdf
http://www.ilsr.org/wp-content/uploa...-ILSR-2012.pdf
Never mind the subsidies that are keeping fossil fuels cheap:
http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24833153
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/07/...gas-subsidies/
http://www.theguardian.com/environme...s-green-energy
I'd much rather subsidise an industry that will be relevant in the future rather than one which will become irrelevant. We have much better things we can do with fossil fuels, I would prefer us to use them sparingly for electricity and focus on other methods of power generation like: Solar, Geothermal, Nuclear GenIV and Hydro. Fledgling industries are the ones that require subsidies, not incumbents that have been making massive profits for decades.
The same price distortion argument can be used against fossil fuels, it isn't a one way street where renewables are the only energy source getting subsidies.
Last edited by Noxvayl; 26-09-2014 at 12:24 PM. Reason: grammar
Germany is an interesting example becuase they're rabidly anti-nuclear so have a LOT of renewables going in. This has two interesting knock on effects.
First up, their electricity is the second highest priced in Europe ( http://theenergycollective.com/wille...rmanys-economy )
Second, the unpredictable nature of renewables is wreaking havoc with the interlinked power infranstructures across mainland Europe.
It seems it's the consumers who are bearing the cost of investment for renewable energy instead of general taxation. While at the same time, dirty energy is receiving generous subsidy from governments. Seems very unfair to me.
I don't agree with the use of the words wreaking havoc. The infrastructure is not yet complete and you would expect teething issues just like any new technology.
Also, the the linked website is generously sponsored by Dutch Royal Shell, by the way.
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