UK electricity generation

Tidal is still in its infancy relative to wind. There are a number of designs out there which effectively transfer the up and down motion into


I think we could have developed the inland hydro better than we have, but offshore tidal is not a mature technology.

£/MW wind power is more cost effective. In fact, it’s more cost effective than nuclear and other traditional fuel sources.
All the more reason to pile money into tidal and become world leaders in the thing. Loads might like to think the uk is on a downward spiral, but what we have always been good at is inventiveness as a nation.
We've plenty of high end universities and research facilities, start giving them the monetary means to get this technology right.
At some point oil and gas will run out/ become too expensive to use so we need to be at the for front of the new industries
 


On Saturday wind produced 31.9% of GB electricity followed by nuclear 23.6%, gas 20.7%, biomass 7.9%, imports 6.6%, solar 6.2%, hydro 1.5%, storage 1.0%, other 0.4%, coal 0.0%, national demand 604 GWh *excl. non-renewable distributed generation.

That’s 71.1% from low carbon and renewable sources.

Big change from where we were 5 years ago.

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A turbo uses waste gas that’s doing nothing else. He’s taking about putting something onto a propellor that will add resistance to its rotation, so you’d have to use more energy to turn it. That’s more like a supercharger.
I asked the car turbine question before on here and it was decided it wouldnt work for the same reason.

Due to energy losses, it’s better to power the electricity generator directly from the engine.
When is the Dogger bank wind farm starting to be built?

Mid 2021. Absolutely enormous undertaking with up to 1000 turbines. Current fields are a fifth of that.
 
naah i meant turbines on ships propellors to create hydro electricity. or would it not work like that?

No it wouldn’t, ships propellers propel the ship forwards, turbines to generate electricity would create resistance which would require more energy to be used in overcoming that resistance than would be created by the turbines.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but is converted from one type to another.
 
On Saturday wind produced 31.9% of GB electricity followed by nuclear 23.6%, gas 20.7%, biomass 7.9%, imports 6.6%, solar 6.2%, hydro 1.5%, storage 1.0%, other 0.4%, coal 0.0%, national demand 604 GWh *excl. non-renewable distributed generation.

That’s 71.1% from low carbon and renewable sources.

Big change from where we were 5 years ago.
On Saturday at 5pm, the pure football forum produced 95% of the hot air required by the country
 
On Saturday wind produced 31.9% of GB electricity followed by nuclear 23.6%, gas 20.7%, biomass 7.9%, imports 6.6%, solar 6.2%, hydro 1.5%, storage 1.0%, other 0.4%, coal 0.0%, national demand 604 GWh *excl. non-renewable distributed generation.

That’s 71.1% from low carbon and renewable sources.

Big change from where we were 5 years ago.
It's good to hear though I suspect we could have been at this stage 20 years ago.
 
On Saturday wind might produce 30% and on Sunday it could produce 0%.

Completely unreliable and unpredictable, and therefore completely unsuitable for a developed nation to rely on.

You need two lakes.. one higher than the other .. with a turbine for hydro between them.

Wind turbine generates electric to pump the water back up and then when supply isblow from wind you release water down to the bottom lake
 
What about masts and sails on ships ? Might that save oil ?
Yes, decent article here with more info:


The shipping industry has no real targets to cut emissions, as far as I’m aware.
 
Yes, decent article here with more info:


The shipping industry has no real targets to cut emissions, as far as I’m aware.
The massive container ships coming with our shiny goods must be ripe for this sort of thing surely
 
Didn't the boat that Swedish lassie went to US on have some form of electricity generation by putting a prop/dynamo into the water?

Sails on container ships could be a great idea in some scenarios.
 
Not exactly. The learnings over the last ten years are that for low speed generation, you need a much bigger sweep to harvest sufficient wind.
The new turbines which are in development can produce 12.5MW and have a blade diameter of over 200m.

The next stage is to find effective ways of medium term storage.
Can't come soon enough. Won't ever be 100% renewable without a tech breakthrough or billions spent on battery farms.
 
Any drop in height provides the opportunity to convert potential energy to actual power, but to be commercially viable, the head of water generally needs to be above a certain level.

That said, there’s a clear argument for micro generation over multiple sites.
Bloody things would get blocked up with students ;)
Our new Aircraft Carriers are being fitted with them at this very moment.
And water wheels
 
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