Renewables blow past nuclear when it comes to cheap datacenter juice Renewable energy sources could power datacenters at a lower cost than relying on nuclear generation from small modular reactors (SMRs), claims a recently revealed study. Renewables can meet 80 percent of the constant demand from a large datacenter over the course of a year The current bit barn construction gold rush is …
"Its analysis shows that renewables can meet 80 percent of the constant demand from a large datacenter over the course of a year. Offshore wind can provide the majority of load requirements, with gas generation backed by battery storage as a stopgap source of power representing the most cost-optimal mix."
I had to go half way down the article to find the truth. Even the subheading lies. Gas, thats how it works. I am sure there will be many amusing ways to lie the figures for unreliables (as has been the case since the early 2000's when it was 'free' energy) but its gonna run on gas which is probably why it could be cheaper (depending how much 'unreliable' nonsense is mixed in).
The UK has gone nuts for unreliables. Germany has gone nuts for unreliables. We have a very similar experience for our energy costs and increased risks of not having enough power. But somehow we are to ignore that reality to accept the fantasy?
And written by a shameless shill for unreliable energy.
Yep-
Izzy Woolgar - Director of External Affairs at Centre for Net ...
London, England, United Kingdom · Director of External Affairs · Centre for Net Zero (part of the Octopus Energy Group)
And not sure why Dan used such an odd link to the CNZ when links like this are available-
https://www.centrefornetzero.org/about
Our relationship with the Octopus Energy Group (OEG) allows us to learn from millions of global customers, through billions of data points generated each day - and international field trials.
OEG is a global clean energy tech business, driving the affordable, green energy system of the future.
So another bucket of greenwash and slice of astroturf from those at El Reg who hate nuclear and technological progress. Octopus Energy of course want to keep the subsidies flowing and prevent competition from SMRs, even though SMRs will provide 'green energy'. And don't need billions on building BESS battery bombs. Luckily other information sources are available, eg-
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-news/hornsea-one-subsidies
A major UK offshore windfarm has received a staggering £2 billion of subsidy payments in just six years. Hornsea 1, sited in the North Sea, was one of the windfarms awarded contracts in 2014 by then Energy Secretary Ed Davey.
At the time, Davey decided that this first tranche of Contracts for Difference subsidy agreements should be awarded on a non-competitive basis. As a result, Hornsea 1 is currently receiving a guaranteed £200 per megawatt hour for its power, nearly three times current market prices.
Of course CNZ could be arguing for the removal of subsidies given wind & solar are mature so that 'renewables' compete on a level playing field.. But then Octopus Energy would go bust.
"even though SMRs will provide 'green energy'."
Don't count on it. The security requirements in addition to the physical plant that is needed for any nuclear facility aren't that far off of a much larger facility. There's still a need for water to run cooling systems so they can't just be dropped any old place as some seem to think. There's a good argument for the efficiencies of building much of a nuclear power plant in a factory, but that could also be extended to doing the same thing for larger installations and even constructing a factory on a site to fabricate and assemble things too large to transport. That factory can be disassembled when the site is finished or be refitted for another function. There would be a need to build more than one plant at a time to have some economies of scale. Pieces that can be transported easily could be made in a central factory, tested, inspected and made ready for when they will be needed on-site.
There are some other things that need a little more investigation.
This study is for a 120MW bit barn (current UK size) but there is talk of GW+ bit barns. I believe a 4GW one is planned in the US.
The costings only apply to the UK where we have already bonkers electricity prices.
The timescales used for renewables are based on offshore wind projects started 10+ years ago. Getting connections into and out of the grid has become the major time-consuming element in the last few years. Also worth noting that grid infrastructure projects are getting more and more NIMBY pushback.
I think it is safe to say that the generation source is probably a secondary issue compared to simply getting the elec from source to demand right now in the UK. With the push for 'AI' people ain't gonna want to wait.
So are they going to build the bit barns offshore as well then, because that's where they said the wind turbines will be.
Not such a bad idea. Some of the offshore support infrastructure is already built on platforms, so those could be made larger. Piles already exist to support the windmills, so fill in the gaps with gabions and landfill to make artificial islands. Might even be able to make some money, or at least subsidise by people avoiding landfill tax for dumping onshore. Sadly the windmills aren't far enough offshore to be in international waters, and the IMO spoils tax avoidance fun by not recognising artificial islands as sovereign.
it can’t be long before they address this problem by buying a small nation out…
Already happens and it's cheaper to just buy out the politicians, or the votes. See the curious case of Al Jolani being interviewed by Petraeus and the queue of politicians lining up for selfies with the former Al Qaeda & ISIS leader who's ended up with an oil state. Or there's Greenland, with a GDP of maybe only $5bn, a lot of resource potential and only around 56,000 votes to buy & hold an independence campaign. Do an LBO of Greenland, use the cash to buy out Iceland, upgrade the GIUK SOSUS line to fibre and plonk down datacentres between Europe and N. America.
It still talks about offshore wind, so unless said bit barns are built on the coast you still need to get the electricity from the windfarm to where it is needed. And given how much trouble the national grid and DSO's have with getting permission to build transmission infrastructure I can't see a private company having it any easier for their microgrid.
The 3 wind farms given as examples in the report are also all tied to the national grid.
Why not build the bit barns directly into the windmill towers? Then all you need is to connect the individual windmills to each other with fiber cables, and connect the main hub to land with fiber. You'd also have cooling available via the world's largest heat sink.
Course, that does mean the bit barn only works when the wond blows.
Are you posting to again tell us all how "unreliable" gas fired power stations nearly brought the UK national grid down this year, codejunkie?
"two big gas-fired power plants, Langage and Peterhead, did trip out. Their combined output is 2GW, and had they gone off at 5.30, blackouts would have been a certainty."
Are you posting to again tell us all how "unreliable" gas fired power stations nearly brought the UK national grid down this year, codejunkie?
Well, I'll post with a bit of your link that you seemed to have glossed over..
As for wind, earlier on Wednesday, Neso proudly announced that in 2024, wind overtook natural gas as the UK’s biggest single source of electricity, accounting for 30% of the total consumed. On its best days, it was generating more than 22 gigawatts (GW).
But during Wednesday evening’s peak, the data show that wind’s output was just 2.5GW. At that time, the total consumed across the UK was almost 19 times as much at 46.825GW.
So it got dark, meaning no solar and winds were light, so windmills were spinning slower than you are. But you neatly demonstrate why 'renewables' are expensive and unreliable, and why reliable baseload or even back-up generation is needed. And batteries don't really count because they don't generate enegy, only store it for a few seconds at a massive additional cost.. Nuclear doesn't have this problem as it'll keep generating regardless of time of day or weather.
It does beg the question as to just how often that happens and possibly they planned for that by having a gas gen on-site big enough to fill in for those occasions. They claim they only need the gas for 20% of the time. Even taking that with a pinch of salt, at at current prices, that still seems like a not too bad idea. And as a "micro grid" not attached to the national grid, I suspect the pricing structure and "strike price" will no longer be included as it will be a "simple" business to business" transaction without govt subsidy guarantees. If they can still make that work then good luck to them. It's no skin off your or anyone elses nose if it's an entirely private operation. (There likely will be grants for the construction phase as govt like to be seen to be "helping" with job creation, even if it's only short term.)
"They claim they only need the gas for 20% of the time" - no, they claim they need gas to provide 20% of the constant-demand power. That suggests they need gas to power all of the peaks, and if that's the last 20% to keep the site running then it needs to be running 24/7, just at a low level.
But that's 80% averaged over a year anyway, so it could provide 160% of the power needed over Spring/Summer and then generating nothing over Autumn/Winter. That's unlikely to be the case, but it's worded so broadly that this would be covered by their description.
It does beg the question as to just how often that happens and possibly they planned for that by having a gas gen on-site big enough to fill in for those occasions. They claim they only need the gas for 20% of the time.
This is one of those things that can be calculated I guess. So the assumption is-
120 MW, so 8760hrs in a year, so 20% requires 210,240MWh of gas generation. Then Google reckons To generate 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity from natural gas, you need approximately 7,600 cubic feet of natural gas. Then it'd be figuring out how long individual outages are to figure out storage requirements, so 215 cubic metres per hour, or maybe 215x24x5 to cope with a bad dunkelflaute, or the black start that might follow on. So depends on appetite for risk, but that would be 25,800 cubic metres, but then I've no idea what level of compression would be practical, or permitted.
But this is probably why DC operators prefer diesel given the better energy & storage density, ie per Google again and 70-100l diesel per MWh. Then there's the potential for gas turbines. Or just SMRs given a RR SMR could produce 470MWe 24x7x365, or enough to power multiple DCs per unit, and if they build >1 for resiliency & allow for maintenance, enought to also power lots of other useful things when uselless windmills (and Octopus) aren't spinning.. Which is why Octopus and similar 'renewables' lobbyists hate the idea of SMRs instead of embracing them.
You raise a good point re the SMRs, but the problem with that is there are no working SMRs at the moment. There may well be within a few[*] years, but you can't plan on investing money in something requiring SMRs until said SMRs actually exist, or at least have great confidence that only will they be on the market when you need them but production is at such a level that you aren't then stuck in a 5 year queue waiting for yours to be delivered.
* According to another posters, 2029 is looking likely for the first one to come on line. So probably at least 2035 before there's any real sign of a smoothly running production line, assuming there's no "gotchas" in the meantime and I suspect demand (and therefore prices) will be high for at least the first decade of production.
* According to another posters, 2029 is looking likely for the first one to come on line. So probably at least 2035 before there's any real sign of a smoothly running production line, assuming there's no "gotchas" in the meantime and I suspect demand (and therefore prices) will be high for at least the first decade of production.
That's why Octopus and other lobbyists are spinning mightily to slow down SMRs given they're basically windfarms in a can with less of the cost and complexity.
But there'll also be the inevitable campaigns, protests and lawfare to stop FOAK sites. Which funnily enough Labour's planning reforms could help with, so declare then CNI and arrest protetstors. Cost is a good question though, like how much will a serial production RR SMR go for? Way back, I used to hang out in a farming forum where farmers were discussing the money to be made from Vestas wndmills.. Then when the new subsidy regime was announced, Vestas hiked the prices up massively because they could. Or there's the way G.Brown Esq bailed out EDF with their EPR and the lousy deal negotiated for Hinkley which assumed FOAK costs when it wasn't the first EPR to go into construction.. Finland and France were, had massive cost overruns which we're now paying for thanks to the 'Iron Chancellor'.
@Anonymous Cowturd
Actually hold that thought. Animal dung has long been a fuel source in countries that haven't been persuaded to build windmills, but of course the Neo-Luddites want to ban livestock farming. But I digress..
Same happen at Fukusim: A classic example of a diesel backup generator failure leading a catastrophic disaster.
Hmm? By Fukusim, do you mean one of those sim games where a nuclear disaster can randomly occur? If you're referring to Fukushima, there were lessons learned about where to plonk diesel generators. And the catastrophic disasters were the earthquake, which managed to literally knock Japan sideways. For the Fukushima power plants, the catastrophy was pretty much a nothingburger other than the way Neo-Luddites exploited the situation, and overlooked minor details like the way Fukushima used to sell healthy, invigorating Radium water from their natural springs.. Which had a higher level of natural radioactivity that was released by the power plant. But then people that hate nuclear also tend to believe in homeopathy, hence why they objected to releasing a bit of water and diluting that with an entire Pacific. Plus connected oceans.
Oh, and then there was Germany, who promptly decided to shut down their nuclear fleet because of the risk of tsunamis instead of just moving their generators up a bit..
As an aside, there was Fukushima exclusion-zone news today:
Not sure why they arrested him when surely he should have died shortly after crossing into the exclusion zone? Then again, I didn't die after wandering around Chernoby. Did have some interesting conversations with researchers working there though who were studying the effects of radiation on Chernobyls rewilding. One of those fun situations where following nuclear 'disasters', scientists are able to refine and revise radiation exposure models based on actual data rather than theory. Which is also one of those nuclear FUD issues. Like people are exposed to more radiation outside a nuclear plant than inside, seas are naturally radioactive and people that live in areas with high natural radiation like Fukushima or Cornwall aren't all dead.
Plus the mistake the youtuber made was not getting permission, possibly because that's harder than it was for trips to Chernobyl. I think Kyle Hill visited the Fukushima exclusion zone and interviewed people living and working there.
"And batteries don't really count because they don't generate enegy, only store it for a few seconds at a massive additional cost.."
And this sentence is why no-one takes anything you say seriously.
You're absolutely right that batteries don't generate* energy, but absolutely wrong that they only store it for a few seconds, and absolutely wrong that they do it at massive cost.
* Let's just ignore the physics of energy generation vs conversion here... we all know what you're talking about
And this sentence is why no-one takes anything you say seriously.
And you'll be judged on your own words. At least I often cite sources to back mine up.
...but absolutely wrong that they only store it for a few seconds, and absolutely wrong that they do it at massive cost.
No, I'm absolutely right. Here's an example again-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/the-billion-pound-battery/
The 1,400 MW / 3,100MWh project, which is expected to be operational starting in mid-2027, will be the largest battery storage facility in the UK and among the largest in Europe.
and the usual guff about "785,000 homes". At a cost per home of £1,275+. But most people would agree that £1bn for a pile of batteries is a pretty massive cost. UK demand is around 30GW, so we'd need an even more massive pile of batteries for when the wind isn't blowing. But this project kinda puts a price on BESS, so call it £1bn per GW for 2hrs of backup. Then you can do the math for how many billions to waste to provide GW for the number of hours/days we want to protect.. Which becomes a very big number very quickly.
And then other boring technical details, like once discharged, batteries would need to be recharged which would again increase demand. But don't take my word for it, read this-
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/large-scale-electricity-storage/Large-scale-electricity-storage-report.pdf
No - batteries do not only store energy for a few seconds... you know that to be untrue, but can't quite bring yourself to admit it.
Your quote: "The 1,400 MW / 3,100MWh project"
Even at full discharge that's well over two hours - which is not "a few seconds" - your own sources disagree with your claim.
You're completely ignoring the fact that we've paid just about a billion pounds to turn wind turbines off so far this year. With better transmission and storage we wouldn't be doing that.... a 1 billion pound battery with even a ten year life (likely to be *much* more) would actually pay for itself rather quickly.
No-one, other than you, is saying that the last 5% of demand needs to be dealt with and completely accounted for before we start. But with V2G now being commercially available in the UK... it's really easy to move demand around, and that's what will become important.
Unlike you I'm not looking for one technology to do everything... lithium and sodium ion batteries will play a huge role in smoothing of supply/demand over anything up to about a 48 hour time period, but we will need other technologies for longer time periods - and that's fine.
Various systems already exist for storing energy as heat, particularly useful when the end result was to be heat anyway. And those vary from the pretty standard hot water tank, to the storage heater and phase change storage at the domestic scale all the way up to district heating storage and storage for industrial processes requiring much higher temperature heat sources.
Even at full discharge that's well over two hours - which is not "a few seconds" - your own sources disagree with your claim.
Nope. Not when you look at the battery capacity compared to grid demand. OK, so that's limited by the batteries discharge rate, ie 1.4GW vs 30GW demand when I looked on Sunday. Plus how much of the batteries capacity would actually be available and whether it would ever be allowed to completely discharge.
You're completely ignoring the fact that we've paid just about a billion pounds to turn wind turbines off so far this year. With better transmission and storage we wouldn't be doing that.... a 1 billion pound battery with even a ten year life (likely to be *much* more) would actually pay for itself rather quickly.
Nope. I've mentioned constraint payments before as one of the massive subsidies paid to windfarmers. Theres no suggestion that constraint payments will be dropped, and if you stopped to think about it, no suggestion that BESS would improve things. So constraint payments are when supply exceeds demand. If a battery is fully charged, that wouldn't change demand, would it?
Unlike you I'm not looking for one technology to do everything... lithium and sodium ion batteries will play a huge role in smoothing of supply/demand over anything up to about a 48 hour time period.
But you only need huge batteries to smooth supply/demand because wind & solar are highly intermittent and need smoothing, or providing synthetic intertia.. Which is one of the subsidies battery farmers go after. They're a very expensive solution to the problems created by 'renewables'.
Various systems already exist for storing energy as heat, particularly useful when the end result was to be heat anyway. And those vary from the pretty standard hot water tank, to the storage heater and phase change storage at the domestic scale all the way up to district heating storage and storage for industrial processes requiring much higher temperature heat sources.
Sure. So Economy 7 was one solution to sinking energy when demand was low and allowed baseload generation to keep running at peak efficiency. Heat water or charge storage heaters off-peak.. But that's a distributed or micro-BESS solution that could be managed via 'smart' meters and also reduce the need for £1bn batteries or constraint payments. Except storage heaters and hot water tanks aren't considered 'Green', and many new homes don't have space for hot water tanks, having been sold on the idea of instant hot water via gas.. Which government is trying to remove thanks to decarbonisatiion and Net Zero. District heating systems don't exist either, and would be very expensive to implement.
But some energy companies offer an 'EV 7' discounted tariff to charge EVs off-peak or via 'smart meter' control.. Which are cheaper than Economy 7 rates, but you can't use those for heating.
So your big revelation is that a single 18650 cell won't drive a car very far? Well strike me down with a feather duster.
That means that Dinorwig is useless because it can only hold water for 15 minutes.
Yes... that utterly ridiculous, and obviously false, statement is entirely equivalent to your lie about batteries.
If you have the storage and transmission capability then curtailment stops being necessary, so of course constraint payments would massively reduce. The vast majority of the time when there are curtailment costs there are also increased costs of paying for dirty generation elsewhere.
And yes, chemical batteries will fill up, as will pumped storage, which is why we'll need longer term storage options as well - or are you still working on the straw man that "all storage of any duration must be lithium ion batteries".
"Except storage heaters and hot water tanks aren't considered 'Green', and many new homes don't have space for hot water tanks"
Yes they are ... Storage heaters aren't as efficient as heat pumps, but they're often greener, and cheaper, than gas heating.
There are all sorts of DHW water storage options which are more compact than a traditional hot water cylinder, but they are still quite common. And yes, there is push to bring them back since the environmental, and economic, benefits are quite significant.
"But some energy companies offer an 'EV 7' discounted tariff to charge EVs off-peak or via 'smart meter' control.. Which are cheaper than Economy 7 rates, but you can't use those for heating."
For many of those tariffs you can use it for heating, or indeed anything else that requires electricity. But you know what... the companies are up front about what does and doesn't count for the cheap rate.
You really do seem to be deliberately misrepresenting the situation at every possible turn.
> "Except storage heaters and hot water tanks aren't considered 'Green’”
Depends on who is selling and what they are selling.
Personally, my current plumbing bug bear is having toilet inlets attached to the mains riser - overtime toilets move and the metal-plastic connections used in modern houses also move…
Plus when mains goes off, which it does a couple of times a year for a couple of days (Victorian street infrastructure), you only have one flush. With a family, that’s a problem.
I digress.
A well insulated hot water tank shouldn’t be a problem, as it permits a gas boiler to run for longer and more efficiently than an instant flow heater can achieve.
I came across some (German) storage heaters that had solid ceramic heater elements ie. there was no air gap between the conductor and the “brick”, massively enhancing their efficiency.
So whilst I agree “ Yes they are ...”, I also understand why someone could think they are not.
Plus when mains goes off, which it does a couple of times a year for a couple of days (Victorian street infrastructure), you only have one flush. With a family, that’s a problem.
Yep. Also why having a storage tank can be handy. My parents old house had a header tank in the loft to fill and provide some pressure for the hot water cylinder. So when the water went off, could fill the toilet cistern with a bucket from that. Might not meet current building regs, but those can be weird. Like the way we flush toilets with drinking water. If you have space & floor loading, a tank could be a solution and WRAS Byelaw 30 is your friend. But one of those bits of FUN! I've been having with a house I want to build given it'll be served off a well and I want to split the water supply between potable and non-potable so I don't have to treat water that doesn't really need it.
A well insulated hot water tank shouldn’t be a problem, as it permits a gas boiler to run for longer and more efficiently than an instant flow heater can achieve.
Yep, and even if it's not the best insulated, might still not be a problem, if any heat leakage is going into the home. Or just used as an airing cupboard, somewhere to plonk bread to rise etc. But a lot of new homes just don't have those, or convenient space to create them.
I came across some (German) storage heaters that had solid ceramic heater elements ie. there was no air gap between the conductor and the “brick”, massively enhancing their efficiency.
Yup. Storage heaters are making a bit of a comeback with all the Net Zero nonsense and sanctions making gas central heating more expensive than electricity. Plus the German ones might be HHR (High Heat Retention) designs that are more efficient than the old ones, and sleeker. Then if you've got solar PV, even better given you can do a bit of a reverse-Economy 7 and use solar to charge them for 'free' during the day.
Which in my experience can be a lot better because then you've got heat in the evenings or at night vs E7 charging them after midnight and then they lose heat during the day. They're very efficient, ie 1kW electricity gives pretty much 1kW heat and a lot less maintenance or repair cost than gas + radiators can be. Also some of the same risks, ie if there's a power cut, you lose heating unless you've got solar, but combi boilers & radiator pumps wouldn't work either.. Or there's always a home battery bank or just a genset. I've also been looking at more 'efficient' hot water heaters, but less convinced and will probably stick with traditional designs. Replacement elements for those cost <$50 and easy enough to have some spares and replace them if needed.. especially as there'll be a drain for the tank(s) so I don't have to run a hosepipe to drain them down.
>” But one of those bits of FUN! I've been having with a house I want to build”
From the headaches with my current (2003 build) house, any house I want to build will include some form of cellar: that space under the ground floor is ideal for rainwater storage, “boilers” and associated equipment. Just need to ensure the tanks can fit through the door - have had to replace several roof storage tanks which were obviously installed during roof construction…
Also an outbuilding for batteries. Mine are currently in the loft space, but would rather they were outside the habitable house shell. [BSI PAS 63100:2024]
>” especially as there'll be a drain for the tank(s) so I don't have to run a hosepipe to drain them down.”
Draining “the tank” in my first house was the reason why I purchased a garden hose - got an odd look in the garden centre when I specified the length as needing to be greater than the distance between loft tank and the external drain… :)
From the headaches with my current (2003 build) house, any house I want to build will include some form of cellar: that space under the ground floor is ideal for rainwater storage, “boilers” and associated equipment. Just need to ensure the tanks can fit through the door - have had to replace several roof storage tanks which were obviously installed during roof construction…
I think this is one of the big problems with energy efficiency. Like it's a lot easier to do with a new build than trying to refit an existing structure.. Especially when it comes to projects like retrofitting cellars. Mine will probably have one mainly because it's less expensive to do when building, and it's better to have space & not need it than the reverse*. Plus it'll probably be in Alaska so I want the house to be well insulated from the ground. Which then creates some fun challenges, like septic systems that work in the cold and being able to use the same cold to have a modernised version of a good'ol root cellar.
But it's also been interesting lookng at US properties. Older ones tended to have basements and use those for utility spaces like heating. For 'grey' water collection it's then mostly a matter of making sure that can drain, having a sump pump in case it drains unexpectedly and having back-up power for pumps. Or minimising the number of pumps needed and using gravity from roof tanks.. Which can also be one of those off-grid bits of fun, like pressurised hot water cylinders assume mains pressure is available, so what to do when it isn't.
And it's also one of those money things. The house will probably have underground parking making it easier to get bulky stuff from their into utility spaces, but then comes with its own set of planning headaches wrt things like fire safety, especially when EVs are becoming more of a risk.. Not that I'm planning on getting an EV any time soon.
Also an outbuilding for batteries. Mine are currently in the loft space, but would rather they were outside the habitable house shell. [BSI PAS 63100:2024]
Yep. Also one of those policy issues, like fire safety for EVs, if people have integral garages. Or one of those space issues, so lithium batteries have higher energy density than wet batteries, but that comes with its own set of risks. So I'm looking at using these instead-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRLA_battery#Comparison:_AGM_vs._Gel
Because they can be cheaper, less likely to spontaneously combust and cheaper to detect and replace a failing battery. Plus it's what gets used in DCs and telecomms, but mixing commercial and residential design elements has proven to be a bit of a PITA. Even with simple things like wanting proper fire doors on bedrooms and being told they're not in the codes. Which is something I've long thought should be mandatory in new builds given standard interior doors have about as much fire resistance as cardboard. Which they're often made from.
*And also arguments with architects. Like I should have a home cinema, even though I don't want one, especially after hearing from people that have one but never use it. But apparently I should have one because it might increase the resale value, except if I build it, I expect it to be my 'forever' home. So if I'm dead, what do I care about the resale? Or suggesting I use the space for a crypt instead, but that might negatively affect the value. Which could be fine, especially if it lowers my property taxes.
Yes they are ... Storage heaters aren't as efficient as heat pumps, but they're often greener, and cheaper, than gas heating.
Ah, have you looked at the rules around EPCs? There are lots of them and not all make sense. Which can be a concern given if you want to rent a property, it needs a decent EPC. Then there are assorted fudge factors to favor one technology over another. Storage heating can be a lot more efficient and a lot cheaper than heat pumps, but if the objective is getting an EPC score, you have to design around that instead of what works.
>” Theres no suggestion that constraint payments will be dropped,”
Given the current contracts and their durations, I doubt these and other payments will change, at least for existing operators within the next 20+ years.
So don’t expect any real reduction in consumer (business/residential ) energy prices for the foreseeable future, brought about by changes to the renewables charge element; even if Nigel’s wet dream comes true and Reform form a government.
"and the usual guff about "785,000 homes". At a cost per home of £1,275+. But most people would agree that £1bn for a pile of batteries is a pretty massive cost. "
The new Chevy Bolt was displayed to the press at an event in California recently. One of the technologies that will come standard is Vehicle to Load (V2L) allowing the car to use it's battery and 19.2kW charger/inverter to power a home (extra external hardware required). For me, having an EV that can absorb energy when it's cheap/self-produced and power my home when the grid goes down or is very expensive (high demand) is better for me over paying a larger electricity bill so the power mob can have a backup battery farm and take a profit from it.
Since we have Time of Use tariffs already, the next step should be to have supply/demand tariffs so people and companies can make dynamic plans based on the price of electricity. EV's could be programmed to, at first, charge when rates are low and eventually be able to put power back on the grid when rates are high. The same can be done with stationary batteries owned privately. It's not a perfect technology so one giant utility owned battery farm is one giant single point of failure. If a privately owned battery bank has an issue (marshmallow on a stick time), it's far less of an impact being off-line.
The last paragraph of that January 2025 article is troubling:
“ Meanwhile, Centrica, which owns half of Britain’s gas storage, reported on Friday that reserve stocks are 26% lower than in January 2024, and if needed would last less than a week.‘
I think the source for this statement is this Centrica report:
https://www.centrica.com/media-centre/news/2025/perfect-storm-reduces-uk-winter-gas-storage-to-concerningly-low-levels/
To put this in context, in 2022 and for several years previously, the Uk only effectively had 6 days of typical winter gas consumption storage. The government in 2022 finally gave the go ahead for the refurbishment of the Rough facility (owned by Centrica and capable of storing 6 days of gas) a matter the government had been sitting on since 2017, with Rough returning to service in January 2024…
Is the use of 'Unreliables' equating breakdowns in gas generators (very rare) with breakdowns in wind turbines (often*) or also the wind just not blowing today (also often**).
Breakdowns will happen to any mechanical system deployed at scale, it's a guaranteed certainty.
There's no simple engineering solution (for the UK) where a single type of source will be 'all we need', what we need is to be power self sufficient in a way that is not dependent on any global market price or weather condition. We need to build all generation types at the same time, half a dozen full fat reactor sites, several dozen of the bigger SMR's and a continued build of off-shore wind farms.
France has had clean energy for years with a nuclear/hydro mix, wind/solar & all other methods are just gravy giving them a very nice guaranteed cash generator exporting (quite literally 24/7) one full fat nuke sites worth of power (about 3Gw, £6.5Bn annual cost to consumers) into the UK (occasionally it goes up to 6Gw import), Germany is also importing a similar amount, all that imported cash is quite an offset for the annual plant build costs.
* but each individual turbine is so small they don't impact national capacity.
** unlike here, where it does impact.
"Breakdowns will happen to any mechanical system deployed at scale, it's a guaranteed certainty."
True, but when "reliables" such as gas break down, many, many MW if not some GW go offline. With "unreliables" it's mostly just a fairly small portion of wind turbines or solar panels which go offline and the main generation site continuing to produce, if at a slightly reduced level. Losing a whole solar or wind farms output is probably at least as rare as losing a whole gas or nuclear generator due to failure and that would likely only happen at the grid interconnect, a technology probably exactly the same at any grid interconnect with same failure modes/risks as gas or nuclear.
@Filippo
"I've taken to outright ignoring any comment on political topics, from either side, that involves mangling names in an attempt to sound witty."
If that is in reference to the word unreliables then you are mistaken. It is a highly accurate word due to previous discussions where the topic was wind/solar but by using the regular term 'renewables' some people would then point to renewables that are not unreliables. Since this article mentions the unreliables and anyone outside of delusional fantasy is aware that wind/solar is unreliable factually I am reducing the trolls intentional misunderstandings.
This isnt a political thing, its a factual thing. You get wind energy when the wind blows where the wind blows. You get solar energy when the sun shines where the sun shines. Anyone taking issue with those simple facts are self identifying as idiots or trolling. Anyone wishing for an actual discussion will have to share the facts even if opinions can differ.
>It is a highly accurate word [...]
Sure. And if, in the middle of a discussion about politics, I used "the orange man" or "the convicted felon" instead of "the US president" or "Trump", those words would be accurate, and maybe even relevant. And yet, a right-wing commentor would instantly know that engaging with me would be pointless.
@Filippo
"And yet, a right-wing commentor would instantly know that engaging with me would be pointless."
Originally when the wind/solar debates would come up I would use the word renewables. But of course not all renewables are unreliable so twerps would intentionally take it out of context and swap in a different source. Since the actual issue with unreliables is that they are unreliable so using them where reliability is needed doesnt really work is so damn accurate why would that upset anyone? So what word would you suggest using to refer to the unreliable sources that wont then be intentionally taken out of context for other reliable but renewable sources?
"I used "the orange man" or "the convicted felon" instead of "the US president" or "Trump", those words would be accurate, and maybe even relevant."
At what point does orange man become relevant? It is a fun one if discussing with someone who cries equality, especially if they oppose discrimination based on colour. As for convicted felon, yes he is and it was such a bad trial it is held as an example of the weaponisation of the state and the abuse of the justice system. Maybe someone massively to the right wouldnt talk to you but I have found they will often engage in discussion and willing to assume you are just uninformed.
I look forward to hearing the alternatives you think wont upset people.
80% of the energy demands of bit barns, not 80% of nationwide requirements
With unlimited investment renewables could SLIGHTLY outproduce carbon-emitting electrical generation - and that's the problem
Electricity is only 1/3 of our carbon emissions and decarbonising the other contributors will need 6-8 times as much electricity as is currently being generated
Renewsables CANNOT reach that level of generation. AT best they can be a stepping stone but there are an awful load of genuflections being performed to avoid admitting the only way forward is mass deployment of nuclear energy. Britain will need 60-80 generating plants within 20 years - and we're building 3
Rolling blacklouts/brownouts anyone?
Electricity is only 1/3 of our carbon emissions and decarbonising the other contributors will need 6-8 times as much electricity as is currently being generated. Renewsables CANNOT reach that level of generation
Quit spewing nonsense you heard from shills and morons.
"Solar, Wind Energy Potential is 100 Times As Much as Global Energy Demand- Report"
https://earth.org/solar-wind-energy-potential-is-100-times-as-much-as-global-energy-demand/
Next time attach some numbers to your rant, so someone can point out your errors.
You need to take these sorts of numbers with a pinch of salt. There was a claim doing the rounds that we could power the entire world with solar and it showed a map of africa with a square on it representing the size of the required solar farm area.
If you did the maths that area would be almost 100% solar panel, no gaps, and would have to be in 1000W/m^2 sun 24/7.
It is entirely possible to power the world with only solar. You'd need a series of huge installations along the equator
Nonsense. Solar panels do not need to be installed anywhere near the equator. That's not even the best location. The best places for solar are deserts, which China, the US, and Australia have plenty of, and they're pretty empty...
Even in less than ideal conditions, PV is immensely practical and cheaper than any other option (excepting wind). Germany is a good example. Solar panels are practical and economical even in Alaska.
"Solar energy could theoretically cover the world's electricity demand by just 0.3% of its land area."
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/02/01/solar-may-cover-the-worlds-electricity-demand-with-0-3-of-its-land-area/
Even factor in an order of magnitude more, and that's entirely practical.
Blimey, had to do some digging to get to actual numbers from that link!
After some hops you get to the actual source https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.joule.2021.03.005/attachment/c2b79392-88f9-4231-833d-faf1a0a2a125/mmc1.pdf
I'm in the south of the UK and my solar is producing about 1000 kWh per kW of installed capacity. This falls short of their requirement of 1380.
They cite a yearly global usage of just electricity, NOT total energy, of 27,000TWh. From what I can find the total global energy usage from all sources is 170,000TWh. ~6x higher.
https://www.statista.com/topics/4042/global-energy-consumption/#topicOverview
620 exajoules is 172,222TWh.
For reference the UK is 24 million hectares.
"From what I can find the total global energy usage from all sources is 170,000TWh. ~6x higher."
And how much of that is wasted?
Move from burning crap at 20% efficiency to using electricity at 90% efficiency and you close much of that gap.
Move from burning crap at 80% efficiency to using electricity (and ambient air) at 350% (even up to 500%) efficiency and you close much of that gap.
Yes - more and more people mean more and more consumption, but also no.
In 2005 UK electricity usage was well over 400 TWh, it's now under 320. That's more than a 20% drop, despite increasing electrification. Yes there are many other factors, but looking at domestic consumption it's been on a steady decline since the early 2000s as well (eyeballing the chart it's also about 20% total energy reduction), though since WFH was popularised by covid there has been a slight uptick in usage.
This house takes ~4-5kW of heat on the very coldest of days in winter.
I can either burn slightly more than that of gas (I doubt my boiler is still running at it's nameplate 88% efficiency after 20 years), or I could use heat pump to consume significantly less energy whilst retaining the same heat output. A heat pump at a COP of 3.5 uses only a quarter of the energy of a boiler (assuming that boiler is still hitting nearly 90% efficiency)
A car takes a certain amount of energy to get from A to B.
You can either burn petrol at ~20% efficiency or use a very much more efficient electric motor.
In both cases you could take the original fuel and burn it a power station, transmit the electricity across the country and still end up using less of it for heat/motion respectively - and that's about the worst way (that we still use) to generate that electricity.
And let's face it, despite the nay sayers there is a very significant amount of energy that comes from the sun, either directly or through the generated atmospheric disturbances (wind).
"despite increasing electrification"
There has also been a HUGE efficiency increase since 2005. Virtually all lights are now LED. CFL never really caught on in such a big way. And lets not forget that since 2005 there has been a lot of rooftop solar installed.
What is more interesting than a yearly average is the peak demand. How much has the highest peak demand value in 2025 changed since 2005?
"The total usage does seem to be rising about as fast as efficiency improvements are bringing it down."
Present stats that it hasn't...
"There has also been a HUGE efficiency increase since 2005"
That's the whole point of what I was pointing out, you were saying that the efficiency gains were being more than wiped out. A 20% reduction in usage doesn't match that statement, particularly not in the face of increasing population and increasing electrification.
>” And how much of that is wasted?”
Lots !
Hence why it needs to get even more expensive!
A local retail park the other year went from lights being left on all night in the shops to minimum needed to maintain key window displays until circa 10pm (restaurant and cinema turn out time).
>” Move from burning crap at 80% efficiency to using electricity (and ambient air) at 350% (even up to 500%) efficiency and you close much of that gap.”
For me the math didn’t workout, the increased electricity consumption and system maintainance costs over 30+ years (ie. Include replacement costs) means my 88% efficient boiler and central heating system stays, for now. Although if I could find some additional roof space for more PV’s and so during the winter produce my own electricity the costs aren’t as bad.
The numbers aren't all that close for me. About half of my overall energy usage (including transport) is gas, used for heating, hot water and the hob. The rest is all electrical, including a lone storage heater, EV and the ovens.
If my boiler is still managing 88% efficiency (a big if) then a SCOP of 3.5 would mean gas needed to be 25% of the price of electricity. At the moment I pay *less* for electricity than for gas, though I fully acknowledge that that will change when I get a heat pump - because I'll need to use more peak rate electricity.
That worst case... my peak rate is currently 27.77p, my gas is 6.2p, so just under 4.5x the price - a SCOP of 4 (entirely achievable) would beat even that difference.
However a decent proportion of the usage would be off peak (7p), or stored off peak (opportunity cost 7p*), or solar generation (opportunity cost 15p).
So I'd be saving money overall - my current model is already fairly conservative - a few hundred pounds a year adds up to a few grand over just ten years, well within the lifespan of a heat pump.
Have to account for the fact that a chunk of the initial cost is on things like a DHW system which won't need upgrading for many decades, and would likely be needed on the next "boiler replacement cycle" anyway.
Future upgrades, like V2G or additional storage would also significantly increase the savings - as would replacing/refueling the gas hob, eliminating the standing charge as well.
* 7p rather than 8p because I'm assuming some losses
>” a few hundred pounds a year adds up to a few grand over just ten years, well within the lifespan of a heat pump.”
That’s one of the reasons why I use 30 years; you can guarantee you will need to replace the heat pump/boiler during that time. Assuming a 15~20 year life (evidence is heat pumps and boilers have similar life spans) that at current prices is circa £16k/£3k additional cost. Which changes the return on investment figures. [Aside: as I said previously, I’ve been a bit hard headed, whilst also like you erring on the conservative side. ]
>initial costs…
I also included the upgrade of the existing radiators etc. with one’s more appropriate for heat pump operation - although accepting that under floor heating is probably the way to go, but that incurs further costs…
Heating is something I’m reviewing, given the efficiency of IR heaters, it is tempting to replace the simple gas boiler end hot water central heating system with something a little more sophisticated and hopefully also uses less energy.
Those radiators (and DHW system) are likely to last through several heat source replacement cycles, so they'd be amortised across several replacements in reality. The reason I was using that as a "well within the lifespan", was because the few grand is the difference in cost between the replacement options, and that would have been completely paid back before the next replacement cycle - longer timescales only increase the benefit.
"[Aside: as I said previously, I’ve been a bit hard headed, whilst also like you erring on the conservative side. ]"
The main thing I'm not entirely happy about in terms of the cost assumptions is predicting the cost of gas and electricity over long time scales.
The other minor thing that annoys me is the grant requirement to scrap a, somewhat functional, backup heat source only to replace it with a worse backup heat source (a bunch of fan heaters).
That article is using nonsensical statistics. Statements like "Africa has 39% of global potential" completely ignores the fact that most of the demand isn't in Africa. Sure, total solar energy arriving on Earth far exceeds our energy requirements, but building solar farms in the Sahara or the Australian outback and then getting the energy to where it's needed is impractical.
"Australian outback"
Ah, what happened to the project to build a huge HVDC link from Australia to Singapore? Very little info since about the middle of 2024. I think it is mired in red tape and funding issues.
Germany was planning a huge solar array in north Africa until the locals worked out how much water it would need to keep clean and the Germans had second thoughts about relying on such a long and vulnerable interconnect across multiple countries and the med.
"Also nice to see you've got a funny word in. Repeat it as much as possible because then it'll make it true."
It's not a funny word. They ARE unreliable. We don't know reliably when the power will be generated or when it'll be available. Energy storage can help remove this unreliability, but only if it's installed at sufficient scale. But it isn't currently, so this unreliability is something the industry is happy to keep. It doesn't seem unfair to give them a label they choose to stick with.
Just calling them 'Renewables' is unfair to sources like hydro-electric, geothermal, and tidal that still fall under the 'renewables' banner but are very reliable.
Unreliable is nothing like a Trumpism- it cuts to the heart of the complaint and doesn't tar all renewables with the same brush.
Just calling them 'Renewables' is unfair to sources like hydro-electric, geothermal, and tidal that still fall under the 'renewables' banner but are very reliable.
Also unfair to breeder reactor designs, which are renewable and sustainable, along with other environmental benefits like recycling, or the production of medical & industrial isotopes.
Especially when you consider that breeders can recycle existing nuclear waste. Older nukes only used about 1 percent of the energy potential of the fuel, while a breeder can theoretically recycle the same fuel over a 500 year period after which the fuel is completely spent and no longer radioactive. Theoretical because, it'll take 500 years to prove definitively.
So, breeders solve two problems, not just one. Can't have that though - when you solve something liberals whine about, they will fight the solution because they can't whine about it anymore. It's just like solar power - science devised a way to generate gigawatt level solar power 24x7, and it'll run for up to a week with no sunshine (solar sodium tower) and the liberals have protested and tried to stop solar sodium tower projects. Apparently the mirror installations cause some desert tortoise to make slight detours to go around the base or something, and the liberals get offended by it.
They are variable.
The sun will shine, the wind will blow.
Per year we know reliable lower bounds for how much.
The sun shines everywhere. The wind blows everywhere. On the good and on the wicked.
And may be tapped anywhere, and by all means shared.
But the wicked don't like that.
They want power sources they can charge rent on a connection to.
Even if they must run from rivers, tides, and deep holes into the Earth.
Anything which is a constrained point source.
@midgepad
"The sun will shine, the wind will blow."
And the ability to capture such is the problem. You have to be able to see the sun and be where the wind is blowing.
"Per year we know reliable lower bounds for how much."
Which isnt much. Massive areas must be developed over plus massive infrastructure overhaul of the grid to cope with and move around electricity from the places that are generating. You have to chase the energy source instead of putting it where people need it. The solution in use is to burn gas inefficiently to support the ramping up and down and paying for reliable power generators to be built to provide the very power hoped for from the unreliable sources.
"The sun shines everywhere. The wind blows everywhere. On the good and on the wicked."
I suggest you look up places with long nights. Also the wind does not blow everywhere, it does stop look up dunkelflaute. At the opposite end of the spectrum is storms where the wind farms must be turned off to protect them.
"And may be tapped anywhere, and by all means shared."
Only if there is sufficient inter-connectors which would have to be far to cope with dunkelflaute which can affect a large area. Do you remember the grand ideas of putting solar in Africa and feeding the power back?
"But the wicked don't like that.
They want power sources they can charge rent on a connection to.
Even if they must run from rivers, tides, and deep holes into the Earth."
That would suggest off grid. To which if you are going to do that you will almost certainly still want a grid connection so you can actually have power when your unreliable sources cannot provide. See the very first comment on this thread (mine)-
"I had to go half way down the article to find the truth. Even the subheading lies. Gas, thats how it works. I am sure there will be many amusing ways to lie the figures for unreliables (as has been the case since the early 2000's when it was 'free' energy) but its gonna run on gas which is probably why it could be cheaper (depending how much 'unreliable' nonsense is mixed in)."- https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/09/26/renewables_vs_smr_datacenter/#c_5150528
People just want energy. It is required for our civilisations to exist.
unreliable sources
Like the gas plants that failed earlier this year. So unreliable. Even just as the back-up for wind/solar.
@AC
"unreliable sources
Like the gas plants that failed earlier this year. So unreliable. Even just as the back-up for wind/solar."
I know you like to troll with this and it makes me laugh. You do realise that unreliables rely on the backup gas generators to quickly ramp up or down? So if you consider the gas generators unreliable then you are calling the whole thing very unreliable and shouldnt be on the grid. We can be practically in agreement!!!!
You are the one bandying the word "unreliables" around with gay abandon.
Clearly the mix has to be planned and provisioned correctly to avoid any issues. Would that not be the best approach?
Any comment on the gas fired plant that got knocked out by some wind?
Maybe you could move to a country with "reliable" electricity? Perhaps the US has "offered" you residency?
@AC
"You are the one bandying the word "unreliables" around with gay abandon."
Which is correct. The sources I am talking about are unreliable as a matter of normal operation. They cannot be relied upon to supply the energy people rely on. For that reason they require a reliable source that can provide the very power the unreliable source isnt providing as a matter of normal operation.
"Clearly the mix has to be planned and provisioned correctly to avoid any issues. Would that not be the best approach?"
Yes which is why unreliable sources dont make sense. They do not work with our current standard of technology and still waits for a magic technology to be developed to make them work aka reliable as a matter of normal operation.
You would want a mix to reliably provide the required power and support failure or issues.
"Any comment on the gas fired plant that got knocked out by some wind?"
I did comment. If you consider the gas plants unreliable AND we know the unreliables rely on gas plants to work, you consider the unreliables even more unreliable than I do. How could this situation be helped by unreliable sources that are not generating enough and not stable? Instead you would want a reliable source to provide the needed energy.
"Renewables can provide 80% of energy requirements therefore we must not use them at all. Truely unassailable logic."
Because for the other 20% you need 100% hard dispatchable supply. To illustrate. Load requires say 1 MW. Renewables can supply 80% of that. With how renewables function, that usually means that 80% of the time renewables can supply 100% of the load. Thus, renewables only make sense if the fuel costs of the hard dispatchables are enormous. Othwerwise why pay the capital costs for two generation systems and both their maintenance costs? At present, the options one have is 100% hard dispatchable, or 100% renewable (used 80% of the time) and 100% hard dispatchable (only used 20% of the time).
The maths might still work out in favour of renewables, but Germany and the UK appear to show otherwise with their electricity prices.
PS. Yes, fine the assumption that 20% of the time renewables supply 0% is flawed. But for 2% of the year both wind and solar tend to supply 0% for about a week thus one still needs 100% backup. For households solar is different. Easier to reduce consumption ahead of inclement weather and maybe visit friends and families that do still have power. Or just sit in the dark with flash lights for a while.
Something to consider is that these % do not give any indication of the timescale nature of the availability. People quote % availability for nuclear and try to claim it is no better than renewable.
The difference is that a modern PWR reactor will be on full load for usually 18 months and then will be turned off at a known and pre-planned time for maintenance. A cloud passing over a solar farm could potentially drop the output by 80-90% within a space of seconds.
Averages are a wonderful thing for fudging numbers :)
Something to consider is that these % do not give any indication of the timescale nature of the availability. People quote % availability for nuclear and try to claim it is no better than renewable.
Yep. This shows the problem-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
minimum: 0.651 GW maximum: 15.783 GW average: 5.978 GW for last month, or
minimum: 2.331 GW maximum: 6.747 GW average: 3.963 GW for today, it being not very windy.
Averages are a wonderful thing for fudging numbers :)
Yep. So is the trick of mixing power and energy to make create large numbers. So wind farmers crowing about how many MWh they've generated which glosses over how those match up with demand and constraint payments. Or how they compare to nuclear, or how efficient wind is. So according to Google, UK has 30GW installed capacity, so last month that 30GW had an efficiency of 2-22%, or an average of only 13% for the month.
Or it gets used & abused to hype batteries like the £1b Thorpe Marsh dirty bomb-
The 1,400 MW / 3,100MWh project, which is expected to be operational starting in mid-2027, will be the largest battery storage facility in the UK and among the largest in Europe. Once completed, Thorpe Marsh is expected to be three times larger than any other BESS project currently in operation or under construction in the UK and will have the potential to export over 2 million MWh annually, enough to supply about 785,000 homes each year.
Which really means it might be able to export <=1.4GW but only for <=2hrs.. And then it's empty until it can be recharged. Current UK demand is around 30GW..
>” So wind farmers crowing about how many MWh they've generated which glosses over how those match up with demand and constraint payments.”
In my experience wind/solar farm operators talk about the total capacity, as it’s a much bigger number and easier to justify than any number based on the variable generated output. Plus they get payments based on their total capacity, hence why they would want to talk this number up - obfuscating reality from the public.
Saw similar with respect to UK fracking, very big numbers got talked about, with no reference; put these numbers into the context of the UK’s total gas and oil consumption and oh look it’s at best 5% of total UK annual consumption - for all that effort and destruction…
> the £1b Thorpe Marsh dirty bomb
From their website [ https://fidraenergy.com/our-projects/ ] the real purpose of this is to be able to dump 1.4GW on to the grid, in much the same way as Dinorwig pump-storage does today. By using terms like “export” and “supply x homes”, they are also guilty of obfuscation. As that recharge in the new unreliable/reliable generators world is going to be more complex than currently used to recharge Dinorwig.
Saw similar with respect to UK fracking, very big numbers got talked about, with no reference; put these numbers into the context of the UK’s total gas and oil consumption and oh look it’s at best 5% of total UK annual consumption - for all that effort and destruction…
There's an awful lot of hype, spin and lobbying around, like this latest anti-nuclear article from El Reg. So it says we could feed AI with gas. We could have better energy security by producing more oil and gas. But there's been a lot of negative campaigning about fraccing being 'destructive' when it isn't.. Or it's perhaps less destructive than covering our landscape in massive windmills, or hecatres of solar panels. Frac a well and once its drilled and producing, there isn't a lot to see except a small bit of pipework in the ground. Which could be more sympathetic with the environment if we didn't paint gas pipes yellow.
How much we could produce? Who knows, but we won't know unless companies are allowed to explore & test drill. There's a bunch of modelling and theorycrafting along with regulations about evidence needed to announce proven reserves, but thanks to regulatory capture and a lot of lies, we're shutting down our oil & gas industry at a cost of billions and thousands of jobs. And if we really had to, we could still mine a lot of coal and go back to making town gas from that. But that would buy time to build more new nuclear and waste less money on 'renewables' that we know don't, and can't deliver cheap energy. As I often say, we learned that when the Age of Sail gave way to the Age of Steam.
>” fraccing being 'destructive' when it isn't.”
Fracking by its nature is destructive: take a bed of rock and reduce it to dust then turn it to slurry.
So any value in that rock being rock is lost.
>” And if we really had to, we could still mine a lot of coal”
Definitely “if we really had to”; Thatcher did a fine job of making it very difficult to reopen many coal mines by the way in which they were shut down.
>” But that would buy time to build more new nuclear…”
I suggest we actually don’t want to buy (more) time, given the evidence of the last 40+ years with respect to new nuclear and the politicians taking every opportunity to kick matters down the road…
Fracking by its nature is destructive: take a bed of rock and reduce it to dust then turn it to slurry.
That isn't how it works, otherwise Cornwalls Eden Project would have collapsed into a sinkhole after they fracced for their geothermal project. It just creates fractures in the rock, injects sand to hold those open and allow gas or oil to escape. Or in the case of Eden Project, circulate water to heat it. And for added amusement, irradiate it to 'dangerous' levels on account of Cornish granite. Geothermal is arguably more 'toxic' than fraccing given the water is recirculated picking up more contaminants vs fraccing where water is only needed for the initial injection and then maybe after a few years to open it up again/some more.
I suggest we actually don’t want to buy (more) time, given the evidence of the last 40+ years with respect to new nuclear and the politicians taking every opportunity to kick matters down the road…
It's more a case of it taking a looong time to get from decision to full-size NPP, especially here in the UK. Which is also where SMRs will have an advantage, if type approvals and serial production means they're faster to build.
> Gas, thats how it works.
Which is a little surprising given recent experience in Europe and specifically the UK with respect to gas pricing and sourcing.
Interestingly, the report sort of backs up the UK’s energy strategy since Thatcher ‘s dash for gas in the 1990s.
Looking at this slightly differently, given a single 2GW datacentre, how much renewable energy could reasonably be expected to be installed.
I suggest at best that’s Phase A and B of the Dogger Bank offshore wind farm (“the worlds largest offshore wind farm”) but probably more likely it would also need to take in Phase C (ie. All 3.6GW of capacity running at circa 60% given the variable nature of the output)
With respect to solar panels that is at best a 9 sq. km array. However, given the best panels can only operate for 12 hours, will need to double it to charge batteries for overnight operation. However, this doesn’t take account of typical actual panel output, so probably would need to double that again, giving 36 sq. Km of panels for one data centre.
As you observed, there is a lot of greenwash in this report. Suspect it will be used to justify building DC’s ahead of new grid level generation capacity. We can expect all those gas generators to be like many diesel generators already in use and thus will create large localised amounts of pollution, specifically Ozone and Nitrous Oxides (ie. The normal by products of high efficiency combustion). You won’t really be wanting to live downwind of one of these.
"However, given the best panels can only operate for 12 hours"
Only if you're living on a diskworld
The energy output of solar panels is proportional to the cosine of the sun's angle away from "directly overhead" and the BEST case scenario is that 70-80% of the total joules produced happens between 10am-2pm local solar time and essentially zero revenue output occurs if the sun is less than 30 degrees abover the horizon
At British latitides the BEST output of Solar PV is around 50% of theoretical maximums even with solar tracking, quite simply thanks to solar insolation being 50% of what you'd see at the Equator (between the tropics of you're picking nits)
Solar thermal is even worse. The only way to keep them warm overnight is to use gas heating and the result is spending 10-20 times as much as a dedicated gas-fired power power station for less than halving the gas consumption of that gas-fired power station. If you don't keep them warm then you're only going to get 3-4 hours of usable output per day
You can take out of a solar thermal system as much heat as you put in. (- leakage)
So you take it out over, say, 24 hours, and put it in during the hours the sun shines, and those figures tell you what your heat, and therefore electrical if you are doing that, power output is.
Any heat you don't draw during PV hours increases your night-time power, which is more it's point.
If you are a Finnish village, well North, you can draw in the winter the heat you stored in the summer. And if you use melted Silicon rather than granular sand, you are in a different league of heat-grade.
If you are a Finnish village, well North, you can draw in the winter the heat you stored in the summer. And if you use melted Silicon rather than granular sand, you are in a different league of heat-grade.
Yep. Except Finnish winters are long and cold. And Finnish summers aren't great for solar. And then you do some calculations to figure out just how much energy you'd need, and how big the molten silicon resevoir would need to be to provide heat or electricity all winter. And then how much that would cost, all the while carefully ignoring Olkiluoto and its 14TWh of output..
Agree, panel output is more complex and isn’t a straightforward on/off constant through the year. I was doing some rough and optimistic order of magnitude calculations - as you may have noted I totally ignored or hand-waved, depending on your viewpoint, at the battery requirement.
Basically, whilst I do believe there is a role for solar, wind and geothermal, we do need to be realistic about the role they can and probably should play.
The energy output of solar panels is proportional to the cosine of the sun's angle away from "directly overhead" and the BEST case scenario is that 70-80% of the total joules produced happens between 10am-2pm local solar time and essentially zero revenue output occurs if the sun is less than 30 degrees abover the horizon
The traditional horizontal mounting is not the only way to install solar panels. Large installations from decades ago were motorized with solar trackers to maximize output.
Today, vertical bifacial panels are proving a more efficient option at higher latitudes, in rainy/snowy conditions, etc.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-68018-1
I remember hearing some research where they simply mounted the bifacial panels vertically, with no tracking and getting a significant improvement. The value of this was that would permit panels to be mounted to permit financially viable crops to be grown beneath them. The current UK obsession with sheep grazing around panels is not economically viable, it is basically greenwash to get planning permission because the real money is in the grid payouts.
Reading the report on Vertical Bifacial panels, it is light on cost and blinds everybody on the extra efficienciest. But my O level maths work it out that the 11% to 15% extra gain is at the cost of an extra 30% in purchase price.
I could not see other extra gains but the option of sheep grazing under them that were not quantified. But I could have been bored of the graphs that could have been better summarised in a few sentences. Sometimes a picture(s) is NOT worth a thousand words.
From what I remember, just mounting the panels vertically gave a 5% gain because the panels were kept cooler.
>”I could not see other extra gains but the option of sheep grazing under them that were not quantified.”
There aren’t any!
Sheep are a low value “crop”, plus they damage the solar installation leading to unreliability and increased maintenance costs. However, planning and unthinking green fanatics buy the greenwash…
I’m trying to get a graduate who did a study for a UK solar farm operator in 2025 to provide sufficient information for a version of their report to be produced using public domain information…
Basically onshore solar and wind farms need the subsidies to be commercially viable…
Which is a little surprising given recent experience in Europe and specifically the UK with respect to gas pricing and sourcing.Interestingly, the report sort of backs up the UK’s energy strategy since Thatcher ‘s dash for gas in the 1990s.
Yup. If only the UK had a way to insulate itself from those (self-imposed) shocks and become more self-sufficient. But sadly we have Ed Millibrain and no North Sea oil & gas, or fraccing. Well, no fraccing except for geothermal, and then those operators desperately try to pretend they aren't fraccing.
> However, given the best panels can only operate for 12 hours
Southern Germany: Summer 16 hours, winter 8 hours. Your 12 hours is right on average. However the batteries are coming, and they cannot be stopped, they got so cheap and still getting cheaper...
Summer from my real-world data: 22 June 2025 here, in this place, on this roof: From 05:19 to 21:25, 16.1 hours. The inverter kept producing below 30W until 22:20 which would make it 17 hours, but that is just the heat-radiation from the roof converted by the panels, which I cannot count as "sunshine time". Night time: Battery (5 kWh for now).
Winter from my real-world data (on a day without clouds, but before making it a larger installation): 26th December 2024 from 8:28 to 16:31, 8.05 hours. The inverter actually operated until 17:01 that day, which is in this case not heat radiation but light from the sun beyond the horizon scattered by thin high clouds.
Bingo. Any "renewable" system means 100% gas capacity - that you always have to pay for - plus whatever unreliable greenwashing you can afford to virtue signal with.
Well, let's see who wants to be first to go fully off-grid and rely on the bird mincers and calculator chargers. I wish them the best of luck.
Whoever dounwvoted that post hasn't seen the EU report that points out that European carbon emissions have gone UP with the increasing prevalence of renewables
backing capacity is expensive and the costs of carrying it aren't borne by the operators who force it to be necessary. Wind/solar farms should be _required_ to have significant buffering capacity before being allowed to connect to the gfrid
"Whoever dounwvoted that post hasn't seen the EU report that points out that European carbon emissions have gone UP with the increasing prevalence of renewables"
Does that report also show how much it would have gone up without renewables too? That would a be a useful comparison.
Without that extra data, it sort reminds me of Trump claiming prices have gone down when the actual data only shows the rate of increase has fallen in some specific areas, but are still going up. The EU, like most countries, is increasingly energy intensive and population is still growing, so I'd expect emissions to still be rising although hopefully at a slower rate than otherwise.
> Germany has gone nuts for unreliables.
Oh yes, and the worst day of last year, the 6th of November 2024 (you can let youtube-AI-translate that for you), we nearly needed to fire up our unreliable reserve gas (thx Putin!) and unreliable reserve coal power stations. But we did not need to.
Switch over to France, who bought a huge chunk, i.e. more than 10% of our production over the year, of our cheap renewable energy. We, in turn, bought about 1% of our need from them when it was cheap.
And here, in my flat with luckily as much solar on the roof as the other owners said to be okay with: Ever time I see the stats I orgasm about it that my grid connection is reduced to play the UPS now.
So here for you <eloquence cam> fuck you </eloquence cam>.
It is pointless to argue with right wingers, they are immune to facts. We'll start seeing entire countries that go 100% renewables + battery and they'll be claiming it isn't true and link to some right wing nutjob Youtube video "exposing the lies". Or shift to Trump's insane claims about making whales go crazy and piles of dead birds.
@DS999
"It is pointless to argue with right wingers, they are immune to facts."
Do feel free to try and provide some. Your opinion of right wingers being an irrelevance when this is a simple discussion of a greenwash hiding the fact that it relies on gas,
"We'll start seeing entire countries that go 100% renewables"
That would be interesting. They would have to solve the problems of the unreliable sources for that I expect and batteries are still too expensive and hold too little charge currently. Maybe if the technology becomes possible at some point then yes. You might be surprised to find that is my actual opinion and if they ever get this stuff to work at a reasonable price I have no issue with it.
Instead if being lost in ideology which will leave you shivering in the dark I just want affordable energy. Because it makes my life better and would solve a lot of our economic issues.
Well, for one the sources aren't unreliable - they are non dispatchable. It's very well known what the pattern of production is over very long time periods, because we have these things called "weather records".
This allows for excellent modelling, and for countries to build appropriate amounts of generation and storage in various different forms to cover demand.
"Instead if being lost in ideology which will leave you shivering in the dark I just want affordable energy. Because it makes my life better and would solve a lot of our economic issues."
Can I just make some corrections here... You just want cheap energy now and are happy to have devastating events happen to other people because you're wealthy enough to move to where the weather isn't lethal, and you can afford to outbid most of the world for food.
You want everyone else to be left with a wreck of planet so that you have to think about taking care of it at all.
@John Robson
"Well, for one the sources aren't unreliable - they are non dispatchable. It's very well known what the pattern of production is over very long time periods, because we have these things called "weather records"."
Aka the energy generates when and where the wind blows and sun shines, not when and where the energy is needed. And have periods of no/low wind and sun at the same time. Often at the times when people need more energy.
"This allows for excellent modelling, and for countries to build appropriate amounts of generation and storage in various different forms to cover demand."
Yes. If you want to use these unreliable sources you need to have the ability to actually generate the energy reliably as a backup. Or a better solution is to use the reliable version and save on the cost of the unreliable.
"Can I just make some corrections here... You just want cheap energy now and are happy to have devastating events happen to other people because you're wealthy enough to move to where the weather isn't lethal, and you can afford to outbid most of the world for food."
That isnt a correction. You assume your god will strike down the sinners if they dont sacrifice the virgins yadda yadda so we must repent by shivering in the dark. I disagree.
"You want everyone else to be left with a wreck of planet so that you have to think about taking care of it at all."
The opposite actually. I dont want a wreck of a planet by authoritarian religious fanatics. Even under your religious belief the solution for the last couple of decades has been nukes not unreliables. And yet it is the very fanatics who also opposed the solution to their problem if we pretend their problem is reality.
To use unreliables REQUIRES having a reliable source to back it up. The obvious and right answer is to have the reliable source and not waste money on the unreliable. The unreliables lie was sold on free/cheap energy which has so far ramped up bills and put our energy security at risk. This isnt theory this is real world and we are watching this. No amount of wishful thinking and delusion changes the facts.
And you do this with the desperate belief that the world is going to end. As humans have predicted for as long as we have been aware. As with the guys with loud speakers in the city centre talking about God coming to finish us off etc. Your religion is not original.
"not when and where the energy is needed."
We've never really had electricity generated where it's needed until very recently - rooftop solar does that very well.
As for the when, your thinking is stuck in the past. Demand isn't something that is completely unchangeable - it's actually very malleable, particularly when there is storage on the network, and/or on the edge, which will become ubiquitous with v2g capabilities.
"Or a better solution is to use the reliable version and save on the cost of the unreliable."
That's only valid if the dispatchable generation isn't massively damaging and/or expensive, and it's both of those things.
So, you might retain some dirty, expensive, dispatchable generation for use as a last resort. But you get the benefit of not using that system the vast majority of the time.
Better still find something which is dispatchable and not dirty - nuclear and geothermal fit in there quite nicely.
This is the danger of "but sometimes", you ignore the benefit which exists.
As for the rest of your unhinged rant, I don't even know where to start other that to point you at climate science and physics.
None of this is impossible unless you make assumptions as dumb as those in the Royal Society report.
@John Robson
"We've never really had electricity generated where it's needed until very recently - rooftop solar does that very well."
What I said was "not when and where the energy is needed.". We have always done what we can to provide the energy where we need it such as burning wood for fires (warmth and cooking). Stop delivering the electricity people will use gas. Stop delivering the gas people light fires. Some houses still have the coal store where deliveries were taken for the needed fuel. Rooftop solar is fine if it works, where it works. As a grid generator its not very good as it requires actual reliable power generators to provide the power when it doesnt deliver.
Also as a user of rooftop solar are you disconnected from the dirty grid?
"As for the when, your thinking is stuck in the past. Demand isn't something that is completely unchangeable - it's actually very malleable, particularly when there is storage on the network, and/or on the edge, which will become ubiquitous with v2g capabilities."
Nope. People will still want warmth in the cold, food when hungry and if they have to buy a diesel generator they likely will. None of this syncs with the climate religion but also increases actual pollution.
"That's only valid if the dispatchable generation isn't massively damaging and/or expensive, and it's both of those things."
The dispatchable generation in this case being cheaper and not so damaging. Hence the better choice is the reliable generation. Even in the context of the MMCC religion the solution was nuclear or unreliables, and insanely the government went with unreliables due to the activism. Which requires gas generators to provide the power the unreliables dont and so is more expensive to require fossil fuels used inefficiently.
"So, you might retain some dirty, expensive, dispatchable generation for use as a last resort. But you get the benefit of not using that system the vast majority of the time."
Except the dispatchable generation is cheaper and not dirty. Which puts a nail in the coffin of the argument for unreliables. Surely it would be better to suggest flooding an ecosystem for hydro which is at least reliable. For grid use unreliables just dont work with current technology.
"As for the rest of your unhinged rant, I don't even know where to start other that to point you at climate science and physics."
You may see it as unhinged not to follow the same religion as you, various religions around the world believe themselves to the the one true religion. In a science and physics discussion you tried to correct my comment with religious claims. You dont have to like it but your attempted correction was incorrect.
At no point did I invoke religion.
The fact that you don't understand the science doesn't make it religion.
Besides your jibe about "if it works", when plenty of people and businesses are using rooftop solar all over the world, is just childish.
If you've got an actual point, I'm yet to discern it.
@John Robson
"At no point did I invoke religion."
Thats ok we can pretend you do not understand.
"The fact that you don't understand the science doesn't make it religion."
To which you have fallen away from any scientific response to my comments. Maybe you would wish to try a factual scientific response?
"Besides your jibe about "if it works", when plenty of people and businesses are using rooftop solar all over the world, is just childish."
Not a jibe. Surely you are not stupid enough to believe solar installed facing the wrong way or in places with too little sun is 'working'? No jibe just known observation. You did avoid the question however- "Also as a user of rooftop solar are you disconnected from the dirty grid?"
"If you've got an actual point, I'm yet to discern it."
Take your time. Its ok.
Ah Madam Codejunky debates both the sacred and the profane. Rapturous applause is well earned by such insights into electricity generation and energy policy. Job himself would be impressed by the tribulations you endure to get your incisive arguments across.
Illuminatio tua in aeternum fulgeat,
nec filum fragile rumpatur,
nec lampas tua in tenebras cadat.
Amen.
"Thats ok we can pretend you do not understand."
I'm not pretending... you're spouting such utter nonsense that there is no rational content to understand.
You were the one who invoked religion.
You claimed that solar panels don't work, when it's very clear that they do.
There is no point to discern, you're just waving your ignorance around like it's a trophy.
Am I connected to the grid? Yes - because why wouldn't I?
I have a relatively small array, however my array, and the associated battery, means that I actually make the grid a little cleaner.
So far this year my import of low carbon (which unfortunately probably includes Drax) electricity combined with my generation comfortably exceeds my usage. I've also exported nearly 25% as much as I've used. That's a small, but measurable benefit to the grid as a whole.
To top it off, because I buy energy when it's cheap and sell it when it's more expensive my electricity bill is quite substantially lower than it would have been if I'd not installed all this completely non functioning equipment.
@John Robson
"I'm not pretending... you're spouting such utter nonsense that there is no rational content to understand.
You were the one who invoked religion."
You appealed to your religion with your claims-
Can I just make some corrections here... You just want cheap energy now and are happy to have devastating events happen to other people because you're wealthy enough to move to where the weather isn't lethal, and you can afford to outbid most of the world for food.
As I do not subscribe to your religion we wont be seeing eye to eye on that.
"You claimed that solar panels don't work, when it's very clear that they do."
Now you are pretending victim. Try once more- "Surely you are not stupid enough to believe solar installed facing the wrong way or in places with too little sun is 'working'? No jibe just known observation.". You are aware solar works with sunlight and is dependent on the direction of the panels related to the sun to produce enough power? It is simple facts I was hoping to find common ground with you on as you wanted to discuss rooftop solar.
"Am I connected to the grid? Yes - because why wouldn't I?"
Ok. Excellent. I am guessing you do pull some power from the grid too. Why is that?
For common ground I have found that we both recognise nuclear is viable as a reliable energy source and that Drax is a not good pollution wise and in the MMCC Co2 belief too.
"To top it off, because I buy energy when it's cheap and sell it when it's more expensive my electricity bill is quite substantially lower than it would have been if I'd not installed all this completely non functioning equipment."
Congrats. I do mean that too, why not take advantage of the governments rigging of the market. It is not so good for the rest of us but that is the governments fault not yours.
The first mention of religion was you: "You assume your god will strike down"
I don't assume anything of your fictional deity. I know what the science says, and I can already see the evidence of that science it in the world.
"Now you are pretending victim."
Well your first statement was: "Rooftop solar is fine if it works"
That's a pretty clear suggestion than rooftop solar doesn't work... you are the one making unsubstantiated claims and then trying to claim that I'm invoking a god that only you believe in.
Even north facing rooftop solar (in the UK) generates a significant amount of electricity - it's not as much as either south facing or east/west arrays, but it is significant. Its generation is particularly helpful in the winter, when cloud cover means a more diffuse light source. But again, don't let facts get in the way of opinion.
""Am I connected to the grid? Yes - because why wouldn't I?""
"Ok. Excellent. I am guessing you do pull some power from the grid too. Why is that?"
For the same reason that someone with one apple tree will still buy fruit from the market. My small array doesn't generate nearly enough energy for me to rely on its generation alone. But don't worry, I'm sure you have a window box where you could grow corn, then you won't need any other food shopping all year - it's also why farmers with hundreds of acres of farmland still deal with the markets.
My small array doesn't generate nearly enough energy for me to rely on its generation alone.
This is really the issue. It works, to an extent but can't necessarily be relied on. Then the cost arguments. Like they're still fairly expensive and thanks to policy, pretty regressive. So you can maybe make some money exporting electricity, but someone else has to pay for that, plus the impact of the grid to support a lot of microgenerators nudging electrons in the wrong direction. Which then means 'needing' things like BESS to keep the grid stable when there's a lot of very intermittent generators hooked up to it. And that's also regressive because the costs are lumped onto everyone's electricity bills, increasing energy poverty.
"It works, to an extent but can't necessarily be relied on."
Cn absolutely be relied upon. But it's not an array sized for off grid operation, that was never the plan. It's the "easiest" installation, which covers a portion of my needs.
If you have an apple tree in the garden you might still buy apples, because one tree probably isn't suffcient for a family. You'll certainly buy other fruit. And sometimes you'll give/sell some apples to others.
"the impact of the grid to support a lot of microgenerators nudging electrons in the wrong direction"
We're nowhere near the market penetration required for power to be flowing backwards through any of our infrastructure. Any power I export is used by my neighbours - which merely reduces the flow of electrons from the HV grid. It's a far more efficient distribution than anything else, partly because it only needs to be distributed a few tens of metres.
@John Robson
"Well your first statement was: "Rooftop solar is fine if it works""
Which is a very honest statement I have tried to explain in dumb enough terms for you to understand. Yet you persist with playing the victim.
"Even north facing rooftop solar (in the UK) generates a significant amount of electricity - it's not as much as either south facing or east/west arrays, but it is significant. Its generation is particularly helpful in the winter, when cloud cover means a more diffuse light source. But again, don't let facts get in the way of opinion."
As you bring up winter already that would be the more cloudy days with shorter daylight hours. That requires being able to get power even when solar isnt generating significant energy. In summer with fewer cloudy days and of course still the night time. I am guessing you can agree with those facts? Or do you still have a different opinion?
"My small array doesn't generate nearly enough energy for me to rely on its generation alone"
Ok. And when does your small array not generate enough?
"But don't worry, I'm sure you have a window box where you could grow corn, then you won't need any other food shopping all year - it's also why farmers with hundreds of acres of farmland still deal with the markets."
The point continues over your head. You are the one with the window box (your solar), but the environment for your box is unpredictable and requires you to actually rely on the reliable sources. No amount of belief makes wind and solar reliable. No amount of wishful thinking makes them work consistently. Which means to use these unreliables REQUIRES actual reliable power generators to provide the power the unreliables dont. I am not arguing how 'green' the reliable sources are, you cannot escape them with your wind farms and solar arrays.
""Well your first statement was: "Rooftop solar is fine if it works""
"Which is a very honest statement I have tried to explain in dumb enough terms for you to understand."
It's a statement which implies that rooftop solar often doesn't work, which is utter tripe, and you know it. You just can't back down any more.
""My small array doesn't generate nearly enough energy for me to rely on its generation alone""
"Ok. And when does your small array not generate enough?"
Basically all year round. It's not designed to be an off grid system.
Just checked, there hasn't been a single month this year when my generation has come close to my usage.
You're falling deeply into a straw man here - maybe go an listen to Technology Connections "But Sometimes" video.
You continue to argue that doing nothing and burning coal would be better than improving the grid. You're wrong, and you just can't quite admit it, maybe your pay cheque depends on you being wrong? There is no requirement for 100TWh of lithium batteries, but you know that, you just don't care - you'll repeat that claim anyway.
@John Robson
"It's a statement which implies that rooftop solar often doesn't work, which is utter tripe, and you know it. You just can't back down any more."
If you must pretend I said something other than what I said then I understand why you are struggling.
"Basically all year round. It's not designed to be an off grid system."
Ok. And yet at some times you have excess which you sell back to the grid (so you said). That means the energy is generated when the sun is available isnt it? Again just a factual statement, can we agree?
"Just checked, there hasn't been a single month this year when my generation has come close to my usage."
That is fine, it makes sense, and how variable/consistent is the amount of generated energy? Not averaged over days and weeks but during the day? How does that compare to how much it 'should' generate if it was a reliable source?
"You're falling deeply into a straw man here - maybe go an listen to Technology Connections "But Sometimes" video."
As you seem to struggle understanding my comments I am asking very simple questions leading you to the truth. So that you may discover this for yourself and maybe be more satisfied with the answer as you dont like it when I point it out to you.
"You continue to argue that doing nothing and burning coal would be better than improving the grid."
Do I? I dont advocate for coal, gas, nuclear, wind, solar or whatever. As for improving the grid, only if it needs to because it is expensive and not always necessary. I do argue that trying to use something unsuitable that requires overhauling everything without any good reason isnt a good idea.
"You're wrong, and you just can't quite admit it, maybe your pay cheque depends on you being wrong?"
So far it is you who is acting (or not) stupid and claiming not to understand very simple things. You are the one who mistakenly tried to correct me on the basis of your religious belief. Even when I am politely trying to find common ground you continue to play victim and pretend (I hope) stupidity. So far I am not wrong, merely trying to get you to agree to basic facts we both should be able to come together on regardless of your belief based opinion. And that seems to be causing you all kinds of upset.
"There is no requirement for 100TWh of lithium batteries, but you know that, you just don't care - you'll repeat that claim anyway."
Did I? Where did I say this or did you MAKE THAT UP? You say I repeat that so can you link to it? OR ARE YOU LYING?
"And yet at some times you have excess which you sell back to the grid (so you said). That means the energy is generated when the sun is available isnt it? Again just a factual statement, can we agree?"
No it means that my battery system still has energy left at the end of the day in summer - and it's advantageous for both me and my energy supplier to use that energy when the sun has gone down, and to refill it when demand is very low.
"How does that compare to how much it 'should' generate if it was a reliable source?"
How does your screwdriver compare with how much juice it should drink if it was a sausage?
And again you're reverting to claiming that I have invoked religious beliefs when it is you, and you alone, who have talked about religion.
""There is no requirement for 100TWh of lithium batteries, but you know that, you just don't care - you'll repeat that claim anyway.""
"Did I? Where did I say this or did you MAKE THAT UP? You say I repeat that so can you link to it? OR ARE YOU LYING?"
Apologies - it was Jellied Eel who referenced that figure (in this same comments thread). Easy enough mistake to make.
But really there is no need to shout.
@John Robson
"No it means that my battery system still has energy left at the end of the day in summer - and it's advantageous for both me and my energy supplier to use that energy when the sun has gone down, and to refill it when demand is very low."
Thank you for clarifying that you sometimes have excess energy left from your solar setup that you can sell back to the grid. It isnt a gotcha, just confirming it with you.
"How does your screwdriver compare with how much juice it should drink if it was a sausage?"
Nice avoidance of the question but if your solar generator was as stable as a stable generator of energy what is the amount it 'should' be producing vs being a variable source of energy. I think you avoided answering because it takes you to the uncomfortable truth.
"Apologies - it was Jellied Eel who referenced that figure (in this same comments thread). Easy enough mistake to make."
Ok, that makes sense. I dont tend to talk about how much battery you would need for something which is how I know I didnt say it.
"but if your solar generator was as stable as a stable generator of energy "
Who said anything about stable. My load isn't stable, so a stable generator without storage would be equally useless.
And even then - I'd love to buy an old watermill and put a generator on (a new) wheel - but a constant kW is no better at providing for my needs than a variable multi kW system.
Both require storage and management of the load.
Maybe that is your straw man - that you don't think that load can be shaped, when it absolutely can be - both on a local level and on a national level.
@John Robson
"Who said anything about stable. My load isn't stable, so a stable generator without storage would be equally useless."
Nobody said it was stable. I am fairly sure you already know I say it isnt stable hence unreliables. So the additional technology of a battery is a good idea, to smooth out the generated electricity and to store some when there is surplus for when there is none being generated. I am assuming we can agree on this?
And when the sun isnt shining enough to provide you however much power you want from your array (we understand the array is not to provide all of your power) you will fall back on the grid to give you more? Is that correct?
"Maybe that is your straw man - that you don't think that load can be shaped, when it absolutely can be - both on a local level and on a national level."
You will use the power only when you are permitted peasants. Although I am sure those in charge will be running on a stable source. But no that isnt the point I am getting at. Just keep going a little longer.
You said it should be stable: "if your solar generator was as stable as a stable generator of energy"
You keep using "unreliable" as if it's an actual descriptor, it isn't.
Generation is absolutely reliable, but it isn't dispatchable. That's not a downside, it's just a different mode of operation.
I know you'd rather we went back to bashing rocks together, but the world has moved on, and is accelerating. Renewable generation is now the largest source of electricity globally, contributing more than a third of all electricity.
@John Robson
"You said it should be stable: "if your solar generator was as stable as a stable generator of energy""
My comment that you quoted entirely disproves your strange interpretation of it. I did not say it should be stable. What I said was (with emphasis)- "if your solar generator was as stable as a stable generator of energy".
I will rephrase just in case it helps- If you swap out your solar with a generator of energy you could rely on, how much energy should it produce consistently?
"You keep using "unreliable" as if it's an actual descriptor, it isn't."
It really is. You dont like it but the word is very accurate. You cannot rely on the energy generator actually generating energy nor enough energy.
"Generation is absolutely reliable, but it isn't dispatchable. That's not a downside, it's just a different mode of operation."
If the non-dispatchable generator of energy is used where energy needs to be on demand then it doesnt work. It cannot be relied on to do such. It is unreliable. You may not like the word but it is accurate. Alternatively if the non-dispatchable generator is used where such demand isnt an issue then it wouldnt be an issue.
"I know you'd rather we went back to bashing rocks together"
Where do you reach that stupid idea? Is it because you are realising how wrong you are and running out of ways to squirm?
"but the world has moved on, and is accelerating."
Yes, and you are trying to reject the world moving on and arguing for regression. To not have the energy we need, where we need it, when we need it.
"Renewable generation is now the largest source of electricity globally, contributing more than a third of all electricity."
I notice you use the word renewable which covers a lot more than just the unreliables. Also is that generation when are where we need it or is it totally useless but sounds good if you dont think too hard?
Yes, the bit I quoted exactly proved my point... Your "ideal" is clearly a 'stable' generator (whatever that means).
I rather suspect you'd still be happy if it was burning kittens and baby seals.
I absolutely can rely on the sun rising in the morning, it's not let me down yet, and I rather suspect it will carry on rising every day long after we're all dead.
"where energy needs to be on demand"
Ah, so you're going back to the straw man of demand being an immovable target.
It's simply not the case any more.
"arguing for regression"
Nope - that's you. right here, right now.
Steam trains are lovely things, but they aren't the way we move people around any more.
A third of all the electricity ... you're dismissing that much of the world's electricity as not suitable for use.
What do you think happened to all that generated electricity... do you think it just leaked out of the cable somewhere? It's not like oil, you can't just dump it at sea and hope no-one notices the destruction.
What is it about solar and wind that scare you so much? Is it that you can't tax sunshine, or hoard it, is it that you can't deny it to people? Is it that your pay check relies on burning crap?
Because there is something here that means you're deeply scared of progress, and I can't quite figure it out.
@John Robson
"Yes, the bit I quoted exactly proved my point... Your "ideal" is clearly a 'stable' generator (whatever that means)."
So its a toy that you dont care if it provides much power or not? Otherwise your response makes no sense. You really cannot be so stupid as to not understand stable when that is what we have been discussing all this time. I switched to the word stable because you found 'reliable' too complicated and I think you might run out of words before you stop pretending to be an idiot.
How much consistent power would you expect if you swapped solar for a reliable/stable generator? Something that actually generates the power you want as you want it. Dispatchable might even be a suitable word if you understand that one?
"I rather suspect you'd still be happy if it was burning kittens and baby seals."
Still? When did we burn kittens for warmth and I assume you mean the blubber of seals used by those without access to other sources of fuel? Just as a lack of grid energy would result in people burning more wood/gas/god knows what. Pretending to be an idiot and then casting stupid claims at me seems to be all you have left.
"Ah, so you're going back to the straw man of demand being an immovable target."
So you only come online when your solar works? Eat cold food once your battery has no juice left? Your straw man gets burned when people are cold.
"Steam trains are lovely things, but they aren't the way we move people around any more."
And why is that? Cmon you can get there, keep going with this....
"A third of all the electricity ... you're dismissing that much of the world's electricity as not suitable for use."
You didnt answer the question. I dismissed nothing I hit you with facts that dont sit with your world view. How much of that was reliable sources? How much from the unreliable sources? As we are discussing the unreliable, how much of that unreliable electricity was generated at the wrong time and wrong place so went to waste?
Its a simple question that again you dont want to answer because you dont like the answer.
"What do you think happened to all that generated electricity."
It destabilises the grid which REQUIRES inertia often gas power plants and curtailment to stop it from causing damage. Hell we can even end up paying others to take our energy!
"It's not like oil, you can't just dump it at sea and hope no-one notices the destruction."
I think you mean its not like oil that you can store and it is there when you come back to it. And before you say batteries they are harder to find than storage containment and will always lose charge just sitting there.
"What is it about solar and wind that scare you so much?"
That is a very childish question, who is scared? Pointing out that it isnt reliable and so not suitable for things needing stable energy generation might scare you but then you really would need help.
"Is it that you can't tax sunshine, or hoard it, is it that you can't deny it to people? Is it that your pay check relies on burning crap?"
My pay cheque is based on me doing work. My general life is greatly impacted by the availability of electricity as is everyone who lives in our civilised world. And for us adults we have energy bills to pay too. So when some idiot tries to tell me that we shouldnt be generating electricity because it makes em feel bad I do try to explain reality to them even if they are too delusional to go to the answer. Look how close your responses have got to the answer only for you to play stupid and avoid answers.
"Because there is something here that means you're deeply scared of progress, and I can't quite figure it out."
Ug bang rock in cave is not progress in my eyes. Neither is going back to the time before cheap, reliable energy in a civilisation that is built upon it.
Madam Junky, how delightful to see you return to form. Ever ready to share your boundless wisdom on power generation and energy policy, drawn from that inexhaustible well of spare time you so generously devote to public education.
One can only mourn the catastrophic loss to the nation when you declined to lend your formidable talents to this noble sector of industry. For shame, truly.
"So its a toy that you dont care if it provides much power or not? "
Of course I care - and it reliably provides power. What it doesn't do is conform to your twisted expectation.
"How much of that was reliable sources?"
All of it.
What isn't reliable is a gas supply, that can easily be turned off.
"how much of that reliable electricity was generated at the wrong time and wrong place so went to waste?"
None of it... you seem to think that electricity can leak like oil and pollute the environment somehow.
Electricity can't "build up" in a cable, it's used at the same time as it's generated (give or take the speed of light) - it can be used to charge a batter, or pump water, or heat things and any of those are reversible processes which can then generate electricity from the previously stored energy.
""What is it about solar and wind that scare you so much?"
That is a very childish question, who is scared? "
You are - clearly.
I have at no point suggested that we stop generating electricity, in fact we need to be generating much more of it. But there are ways to generate electricity that don't also involve destroying the climate upon which we rely.
There are ways of generating electricity which don't rely on stable geopolitics with dictators and oppressive states.
Cheap, reliable, energy is what renewables provide, not your precious fossil fuels.
@John Robson
"Your argument is what exactly?"
Again I can only reasonably assume you are pretending stupidity. How are you confused? Worryingly from your posts you really may not understand the limitations of the technology you are so blindly devoted to. Wind and solar do not just work alone. They require the stable reliable backup. It is the only way they function where reliability and availability is required (e.g. grid or in this case data centre).
"That you don't trust that the sun will rise tomorrow?"
Yes. So just looking at solar under normal operation-
>how much sun will reach the panel?
>how long are the daylight hours?
>How much energy will the panel produce (ish?)
This matters because if you rely on solar to provide power you need a backup to provide 100% of the power overnight. I am sure we can agree on that?
Also during the day the amount of electricity is variable. So when the panel doesnt produce enough you NEED the stable and reliable generator (in this case gas) to step in and provide the shortfall. Under normal operation you need to have the backup generator providing the power people need but the solar fails to generate. It doesnt work otherwise.
And there is a similar issue for wind.
"Gas generators are currently used because there isn't sufficient capacity."
Lets stick with your solar example. We can guarantee that you could cover the whole country but come night time you get zip. You cannot have sufficient capacity of solar without some serious storage of energy which goes back to our lacking a magic technology to make it work. Maybe it will be invented in future but for the moment its only a dream.
@John Robson
"Shall we play a game of memories? What has this conversation been about?"
You said "at the moment we haven't built out the new power systems" and I honestly asked you in case there was something new I had missed. What me and you have been discussing are the unreliable generation methods which as I said- "require[s] gas power plants".
You mentioned new technology so thought maybe you has something to add to the conversation but apparently not. So the unreliables still need gas plants, you dont seem to have some new technology to replace them with as you seemed to suggest. Hope that jogs your memory.
Your lack of trust in the science doesn't make other people's trust in the science religion.
"I notice that when you get closer to the reality you get uncomfortable and start up these childish deflections and attacks, but if at some point you fancy answering the questions you will be able to come to the answer yourself if only you are willing to shake the belief and look at the reality"
Nope - that's you... You remind me of Nathan Oakley, just repeatedly and loudly asserting that you can't measure an elevation angle from a curved surface, and doubling down on that when surveying and navigation text books show otherwise.
@John Robson
"Not religion - hard science.
Clearly too hard for you."
Throughout this entire exchange you have played the idiot and claimed not to understand the easy language I have been using. You have avoided questions and tried not to give the factual answers because you dont like the reality. And you avoided an actual response to my comment because you wish to hide behind your religion and call it fact.
Seems it is too hard for you to acknowledge reality.
This post has been deleted by its author
@John Robson
"Of course I care - and it reliably provides power. What it doesn't do is conform to your twisted expectation."
Great so you can finally answer the question of how much power you would expect a consistent source of power to generate if it was to swap out with your variable solar. Either you dont care and its just a frivolous toy or you do care and have an expectation of the amount of power you would want the array to provide.
Stop running from the question and answer it, it really does conform to my expectations whatever figure or explanation you give. That is why you wont answer.
"All of it."..."What isn't reliable is a gas supply, that can easily be turned off."
So you are saying the 3rd of electricity produced by renewables didnt include solar or wind or any other unreliable sources? Or are you pretend stupid again? And all power generation can be turned off. What strange bubble world do you live in? Germany doesnt (shouldnt) get its gas from Russia so gets it elsewhere. Fracking has opened up more gas deposits. And to use your preferred unreliable wind/solar YOU NEED GAS POWER PLANTS to provide the power the unreliables dont provide and to regulate the output so it doesnt cause damage.
"None of it... you seem to think that electricity can leak like oil and pollute the environment somehow."
Nope and again that is another stupid statement of yours. Do you not consider it wasted energy if the energy is not put to any good use but discharged to do nothing in order to stop damage to the grid?
"Electricity can't "build up" in a cable, it's used at the same time as it's generated (give or take the speed of light) - it can be used to charge a batter, or pump water, or heat things and any of those are reversible processes which can then generate electricity from the previously stored energy."
Ok so you seem to get that concept, so what bit dont you understand? If an unreliable source ramps up generation unexpectedly and vastly generates more than demand it causes damage unless that generation can be discharged somehow safely. Left unchecked it could cause a blackout as safety mechanisms activate. Yes the excess could be used to do various other things when there is excess, but there needs to be enough demand to absorb that excess.
"I have at no point suggested that we stop generating electricity, in fact we need to be generating much more of it. But there are ways to generate electricity that don't also involve destroying the climate upon which we rely."
Again you seem to be edging towards religion. How do you mean climate? If you are talking about the MMCC co2 theory all bow now religion then the problem becomes your belief which I do not share. We can discuss it to a point but I dont believe in that religion so you may as well be Jehovah's witness trying to convert me. I just dont share the same belief. And yes we can generate electricity reliably as we have been achieving for decades. We already had and have the technology.
"There are ways of generating electricity which don't rely on stable geopolitics with dictators and oppressive states."
Yes it is the world market. We have been doing this for decades too.
"Cheap, reliable, energy is what renewables provide, not your precious fossil fuels."
You again say renewables which includes reliable sources. Unreliables are expensive and unreliable. We know this as the more they are deployed the more expensive electricity gets. The more dangerously close to blackout we get. The more the 'claims' of what it can do get revised down. And of course it always needs the next magic technology and it will then work (at the moment it is batteries).
Also it is not MY precious fossil fuels it is PRECIOUS fossil fuels. Your life depends on them. But that is not what we are discussing. We are discussing unreliables.
@John Robson
"No. You don't need a backup; storage exists"
ok so what storage? Serious question you might have good answers for.
"Additionally wind and solar are generally inversely correlated, so even just having those two sources makes a significant dent in that variability you're scared of."
Except for when they are not, often in winter to which the Germans gave a name to.
"Of course there are more sources which we should be tapping as well, tidal, geothermal, yes and even nuclear - but those aren't "backups""
I dont know about tidal but geo and nuclear are pretty stable and I dont call them backups nor do they need backups to my knowledge. Because they are reliable.
"they are part of a mix of sources, which will not include coal, oil, gas (or dubious wood pellet operations)."
Why? We can agree about the wood pellet thing which falls under religion/politics but why not fossil fuels? Is that because you expect we use more renewables and nuclear? That sounds reasonable to me as long as its freely moving over because they are better and not forced off them for a worse option. FYI when reporting the glories of renewables they include wood pellet as part of the renewable energy generation which I think we both again think is a bad thing.
"I know the concept of putting on a jumper is an anathema to the climate deniers out there, but it is actually a better option than cranking the thermostat up."
Where do you get these ideas? First I dont deny there is climate nor climate change. Second I layer up before going near the thermostat and often keep it below MMCC co2 believers that I know. So much so that they complain my house is cold.
"This week NESO reports cite the recent increase in wind capacity and storage as meaning we are less likely to have supply issues this winter than in any of the last 5."
Reading a sky news article it said 6 years. The problem becomes, was that even any good? For the last few years we have been hearing warnings of how close we got to a blackout and even the NESO claims seem to hedge that it will be close for a few days. We have been saved by mild winters and the interconnectors providing the power we need as well as the now decommissioned coal plants. Energy security has fallen considerably for over a decade.
"I'd like to see micro reactors at all the motorway service stations, as well as some serious efforts to tap geothermal resources where we have existing thermal power plants (before they are decommissioned and sold off)."
I dont have any issue with anything like this. Where it is cost effective it makes sense, I expect some service stations (and more) are hard enough to supply that a micro reactor may make sense and even for those that can be supplied other ways if it is cheap enough. I have no issues with geothermal but it may hit some of the roadblocks that stopped gas fracking as it also uses fracking.
"But none of that precludes the wide and rapid uptake of the most easily scaled, and cost effective, resource harvesting we have - and at the moment those are wind and solar."
And in situations where they make sense I have no issue. My only problem with them is where they are misused and so not a benefit.
"Those aren't descriptions of a technology that "doesn't work""
Does the description meet fact or just propaganda? It took years of propaganda before the BBC finally put up an article acknowledging that the claimed capacities of wind farms were wildly different from what they actually achieved (about 25% at the time if I remember correctly). Just as the claims of lots of renewable energy including burning wood pellets from the other side of the world. There is a lot of fudge to hide the realities of these energy generation methods.
Remember this was sold as free energy. Then of course not free but cheap. Even now Millitwit had to abandon his claim of saving £300 with renewables and admitting its gonna cost more. Our bills have continued to rise and our energy security fall throughout this push to 'go green' with unreliable sources. Note that it still gets described as cheap. They are lying to you, to your face, contrary to what you actually experience in real life.
@John Robson
"This thread is now breaking the comment section..."
There is some fun in bringing you right up to the answer and watching you back away due to your beliefs.
"Something new you've missed? No it's something you're deliberately ignoring."
The last point we were at was wind and solar are very variable and so rely on gas power plants to run inefficiently to ramp up and down to provide the energy we actually require. You seem to be ignoring this fact.
"We are pretty early in the development and deployment of reliable solar and wind generation"
Nothing wrong with that, keep working on it until it is viable or only use it in situations that it works for. I have no issue with that.
"Your entire facade is based upon a straw man. At no point have I ever claimed that what we have installed today is sufficient."
My point is you cant have enough installed. For as much wind/solar that you install you require a backup that can step in and provide up to 100% of the power expected from wind/solar. Without that you are at the mercy of low wind/low sunlight and the grid going dark.
Or better put as the very first comment on this comment page-
"I had to go half way down the article to find the truth. Even the subheading lies. Gas, thats how it works. I am sure there will be many amusing ways to lie the figures for unreliables (as has been the case since the early 2000's when it was 'free' energy) but its gonna run on gas which is probably why it could be cheaper (depending how much 'unreliable' nonsense is mixed in)." - https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2025/09/26/renewables_vs_smr_datacenter/#c_5150528
At no point have you made it past the very first comment on the message board.
@John Robson
"Your lack of trust in the science doesn't make other people's trust in the science religion."
And just because you dont understand the science doesnt mean your religion is right.
"Nope - that's you... You remind me of Nathan Oakley, just repeatedly and loudly asserting that you can't measure an elevation angle from a curved surface, and doubling down on that when surveying and navigation text books show otherwise."
I can only suggest you go back and read our chat conversation. I asked you an uncomfortable question and now you have completely changed topic to your religion you were denying you had. Obviously you didnt like how the factual discussion was going. It conflicts with your beliefs.
Your use of "easy" language is mostly the result of you being wrong - it's very easy to use simple language if you don't understand the complexities of a system.
You are the *only* person in this thread who is waging a religious war against reliable, cheap, clean electricity production.
@John Robson
"And my future, as well as that of my kids, relies on us stopping their use as rapidly as possible."
And this is your religion bit. Again I do not share your religious beliefs.
"Yes, because they all are."
Obviously not. But now that you are back to your religious stuff it explains why we disagree even when I have taken you right to the facts.
"Science is clearly beyond you."
Then talk science instead of religion. It still doesnt make unreliable generators magically reliable. The solution to your religion is nukes, but for decades greenies including followers of your religion opposed them. Instead choosing monuments to your sky god.
"What's the point in any conversation with someone who can so easily dismiss the concept of MMCC"
Did I? Just because I dont follow your religion and shout the end is nigh on the streets does not mean I dont accept the concept is plausible. Note you say MMCC not the MMCC co2 theory (all bow now).
"As for your puerile question - I expect about 2MWh/year, and have exceeded that every year they have been installed."
Holy friggin balls you actually answered the question! Was it really so hard? Thank you. And is that the minimum output of your solar array or is it variable below/above that?
"Wind and solar do not just work alone."
"you need a backup"
No. You don't need a backup; storage exists, and for the day/night cycle it's not actually all that difficult. And that storage will also deal with variation in supply and demand during the day. Additionally wind and solar are generally inversely correlated, so even just having those two sources makes a significant dent in that variability you're scared of.
Of course there are more sources which we should be tapping as well, tidal, geothermal, yes and even nuclear - but those aren't "backups", they are part of a mix of sources, which will not include coal, oil, gas (or dubious wood pellet operations).
I'd like to see micro reactors at all the motorway service stations, as well as some serious efforts to tap geothermal resources where we have existing thermal power plants (before they are decommissioned and sold off). But none of that precludes the wide and rapid uptake of the most easily scaled, and cost effective, resource harvesting we have - and at the moment those are wind and solar.
Between my drive and garage I have enough battery storage to last me well over a week without any other electricity input (now I can't access it all in the way I'd like since neither car has v2g, but that's a different problem entirely). If I knew that there was going to be an extended outage I could also alter my usage slightly. I know the concept of putting on a jumper is an anathema to the climate deniers out there, but it is actually a better option than cranking the thermostat up.
This week NESO reports cite the recent increase in wind capacity and storage as meaning we are less likely to have supply issues this winter than in any of the last 5. Analysis of 2024 suggests that wind power on the UK grid lowered wholesale prices by about a quarter (not a report where I've dug into the statistics).
Those aren't descriptions of a technology that "doesn't work"
@John Robson
"And you're wrong - just flat out wrong."
With such a well reasoned and thought out argument I am convinced (sarc just in case you get confused). Since they only work as long as the weather plays nice (it doesnt) we cannot have enough to provide a reliable amount of power. That is why wind and solar require the gas backup that ramps up and down to provide the power unreliables dont generate. How do you struggle with this concept?
This thread is now breaking the comment section...
Something new you've missed? No it's something you're deliberately ignoring.
If you plant one square metre of wheat, you won't be able to supply bread to the village all year.
It's possible however that that planting was the first bit, and you'll plant more next year, and more the year after, and so on and so forth, until you have hundreds of acres of wheat, which will supply bread for more than just your village.
We are pretty early in the development and deployment of reliable solar and wind generation. And you don't see how 1 square metre can support a village. You're right, it can't. But 1 square metre isn't what anyone is claiming will feed the village - it's just that that's the only bit yet planted.
Your entire facade is based upon a straw man. At no point have I ever claimed that what we have installed today is sufficient.
It's not, it's the start of a change in the way we operate - a change for the better.
"You seem to shy away from the fact that your glorious technological progress require[s] gas power plants"
Not true.... but at the moment we haven't built out the new power systems, so of course there is still reliance on the old tech.
That's what happens when you start replacing stuff, the new tech can't do everything, because you can't build it all in one afternoon - it is taking, and will take, many years.
@John Robson
"You don't even know what my religious beliefs are."
>On the topic of fossil fuel- "And my future, as well as that of my kids, relies on us stopping their use as rapidly as possible."
>You have an clear lack of understanding what an unreliable source of energy generation is as shown here- "What isn't reliable is a gas supply, that can easily be turned off."
>You have a disconnect between the desire to generate more energy with your lack of understanding unreliables- "I have at no point suggested that we stop generating electricity, in fact we need to be generating much more of it. But there are ways to generate electricity that don't also involve destroying the climate upon which we rely."
>You believe the unreliables provide cheap energy and justify it to yourself by lumping all renewables together while deluded about the price of conventional generation- "Cheap, reliable, energy is what renewables provide, not your precious fossil fuels."
>You believe applying these unreliables in a situation that requires reliables works and that this contradictory fantasy is progress- "Because there is something here that means you're deeply scared of progress, and I can't quite figure it out."
You seem to believe in the doomsday prophesy version of the MMCC co2 theory religion and call it science. While claiming science may make you feel better about your religious belief it doesnt in fact work with the real world.
From your posts I think you are accepting of nuclear (kudo's) but every time I try to bring you back to the unreliable sources you want to talk about all renewables as if they are equal. You seem to shy away from the fact that your glorious technological progress unreliables require gas power plants and actual reliable generators to provide what unreliables dont as a matter of normal operation.
I notice that when you get closer to the reality you get uncomfortable and start up these childish deflections and attacks, but if at some point you fancy answering the questions you will be able to come to the answer yourself if only you are willing to shake the belief and look at the reality
" Again I do not share your religious beliefs."
You don't even know what my religious beliefs are.
What I know is that you don't agree with the hard science - and the consequences of our actions.
Most of your questions don't make much sense, that's why I ignore them. I've already given you the data, you just can't quite bring yourself to admit that the sun will rise in the morning.
"Your life depends on them." And my future, as well as that of my kids, relies on us stopping their use as rapidly as possible.
"You again say renewables which includes reliable sources." Yes, because they all are.
"I just dont share the same belief." Science is clearly beyond you.
What's the point in any conversation with someone who can so easily dismiss the concept of MMCC. There is clearly nothing that will displace the rant of some anonymous loudmouth on 4chan.
As for your puerile question - I expect about 2MWh/year, and have exceeded that every year they have been installed.
@Jou (Mxyzptlk)
"So here for you <eloquence cam> fuck you </eloquence cam>."
Eloquence? Thanks for the laugh but to each their own.
"Oh yes, and the worst day of last year, the 6th of November 2024 (you can let youtube-AI-translate that for you), we nearly needed to fire up our unreliable reserve gas (thx Putin!) and unreliable reserve coal power stations. But we did not need to."
Is this the november 2024 where 30% of German electricity came from coal?- https://unherd.com/newsroom/germanys-dunkelflaute-is-causing-an-energy-crisis-in-europe/
And of course you guys must rely on gas due to such a large amount of unreliables on your grid, which doesnt come cheap from Russia at the moment.
But I am sure you will come back with some personal view detached from the problems Germany faces.
The UK is in an unusual position regarding wind. We get a lot of it, most of the time. There's enough that it has already been calculated with sufficient storage, whether battery water or heat, we could run entirely on wind energy alone. However that would make a dent in the investors profits, so of course, won't happen.
Having said that, a major problem is heel dragging regarding the distribution system.
"However that would make a dent in the investors profits, so of course, won't happen"
You don't know much about most investors then. You seem to assume investors are some homogenous group, the reality is totally different. Whilst the existing investors in old tech might blanch, anybody who has money they need to park and wants their best return ignores sunk investments, ethics and social concerns, and simply puts their money where it gets the best payback. If (and where) there's money in renewables, then investors will stump up the cash. In the UK renewables aren't attractive without subsidy, and that's why we have the Low Carbon Contracts Company handing out generous inflation indexed subsidies for renewables, and there's plenty of people finding money to throw at that.
It's so easy to blame the system, assume that vested interest will stop innovation, but those beliefs are nonsense. Find me a way of multiplying money better, and I'll find you plenty of people willing to hand over the cash.
Which leads me to the unfortunate conclusion that investors don't think that even with the UK's huge subsidies that a renewables + storage grid is economically viable. I agree with that, but my views are based on over a decade as a strategy manager for a global energy company. And regardless of what you might think, this global energy corporation didn't give shit about the impact on existing investments, every investment decision was based on what it would get by way of returns in the market here and now, and based on expectations going forward.
The UK is in an unusual position regarding wind. We get a lot of it, most of the time. There's enough that it has already been calculated with sufficient storage, whether battery water or heat, we could run entirely on wind energy alone.
Can we have a reputable, unbiased cite for that please, because it sounds like total horseshit!
Wikipedia gives you this:
“ The United Kingdom has been estimated to have over a third of Europe's total offshore wind resource, which is equivalent to three times the electricity needs of the nation at current rates of electricity consumption[4] (In 2010 peak winter demand was 59.3 GW,[5] in summer it drops to about 45 GW).‘
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_wind_power_in_the_United_Kingdom ]
Following references gets you to some UK government and scientific papers.
I do recommend reading [4] “Will British weather provide reliable electricity? “ [ https://docs.wind-watch.org/oswald-energy-policy-2008.pdf ] Basically it’s a yes but expect it to be a rollercoaster ride - “ power swings of 70% within 12 h are to be expected in winter, and will require individual generators to go on or off line frequently,”
So yes the UK is well placed to exploit offshore wind, but the massive increase in electricity consumption AI datacentres, EVs etc represent mean we will still need more…
The paragraph immediately before the one you quoted says "By 2023, the United Kingdom had over 11,000 wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 30 gigawatts (GW): 15 GW onshore and 15 GW offshore,"
30GW is not "equivalent to three times the electricity needs of the nation at current rates of electricity consumption" if "peak winter demand was 59.3 GW,[5] in summer it drops to about 45 GW"
Not really - look at the distribution of turbines in a farm, they're spaced as they are to minimise the effect of one turbine on another. The amount of energy in the wind is huge, turbines only extract a portion (theoretically top out at 60%) of the energy of their swept area, and that's a pretty small area compared with the height and width of a weather system.
Can we have a reputable, unbiased cite for that please, because it sounds like total horseshit!
It's actuall true, until Adam Smith's invisible hand slaps you upside the head and economics enter the equation. The UK is about to build this-
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/the-billion-pound-battery/
Thorpe Marsh looks like costing over a billion pounds. The nameplate capacity of 3100 MWh will not all be usable. Allowing for line losses, deterioration of time and the fact that you would never drain the battery completely, 2 MWh would be the most you could sensibly plan for.
To put that into perspective, you would need 500 Thorpe Marsh BESS plants to store 1 TWh, which is not even enough to keep the grid going for one day.
As for a dunkelflaute, the Royal Society reckoned we would 100 TWh of storage to guarantee supplies all year round.
So we could build enough windmills, solar and batteries, except we couldn't then afford the energy produced and the UK would go bust.
Yawn - What kind of stupid assumptions are being made here...
Let's assume they meant that 3.1GWh -> 2GWh... that's 60% efficiency... that 40% loss would vaporise all the supply cables and the batteries. It's completely absurd.
And that Royal Institution study:
They've "assumed demand of 570 TWh/year" That's about double our current demand - but fine, they're not modelling now, they're modelling 2050; however failure to mention that is dishonest.
Then they reckon "100TWh of storage"... that's 2 months worth of storage by their own figures, which strikes me as pretty high.
Oh, They're assuming that we generate exactly what we need on average over decades, and only using two sources (wind and solar), and then looking at the peak to trough storage over 40 years, and adding quite substantial contingencies in there, as well as looking at nearly double the current demand.
We don't need to cover 2 months full demand in storage - particularly not if we build generation to exceed annual usage. Yes it would make electricity an exportable, very low cost, commodity for much of the year, but it would also significantly reduce the need for storage. They've also completely ignored tidal, geothermal, hydro, nuclear, anything other than the big two sources. And the more of these "minor" sources we have around the less storage we need, each and every bit adds into the mix.
So - if you assume more than double the current demand, assume that you're only ever going to use wind and solar, to the exclusion of all else, and take the ... Well, no faeces detective, you'll come up with a ridiculous storage capacity requirement.
If however you account for multiple sources, with some of those sources being dispatchable (like geothermal), or weather independent (like tidal), or with a pretty strong negative correlation then the picture changes dramatically - and you get a much more reasonable storage requirement - in particular one which doesn't require energy to be stored over several decades.
Running entirely on wind wouldn't make any dent in investors' profits at all. The price of electricity would simply rise enough to make the investment profitable. If generating electricity in the UK wasn't sufficiently profitable then nobody would invest money into doing it, shortages would appear, and the price would increase until it was profitable again. That's how markets work.
The people who would object would be the people paying their electricity bills.
No, we could run our existing electricity demand MOSTLY on wind.
The problem is that decarbonising requires 6-8 tiimes more electrical generation than we currently possess
(electricity is only 1/3 of our carbon emissions. Getting rid of the rest will take a LOT more than 3x electrical generation, or it would have already been done)
Only if you assume that the energy we extract from other fuels is *all* useful (rather than being inefficiently consumed), and that there is no way to get better efficiency from an electrical alternative.
An EV is 2-4x more efficient than an ICE vehicle.
A heat pump moves heat, and so manages what looks like an efficiency of typically 350-400%, with 560% recorded at one of the best in the UK (the best which I have access to data from). Even at the bottom end (SCOP 3.5) that's still four times better than a boiler.
The cost per KWH of batteries (and solar) has dropped dramatically. Sodium is replacing lithium. We already have excess power during peak times. Grid scale storage is growing very fast. And besides nuclear power is insane. It only exists because the government provides an insurance waiver. It is the ultimate crony capitalism: public risk supporting private profits. So along with being extremely expensive, it provides an existential risk when deployed in populated areas. The plants and the entire supply chain require security to prevent dirty bombs. Why anyone would be in favor of this is a mystery to me. Renewable power is a slam dunk to anyone who can do math. Why some many people fear it is perplexing. I guess it shows how effective propaganda and astroturfing is...
"petajoules" that is certainly a ten dollar word. The answer is much faster than any projection. But regardless, how is this an argument against renewables? Just because the cheapest form of energy cannot meet all our needs today, is that a reason not to pursue it? Currently we burn fossils for the majority of our energy. It is clear that is not sustainable so we need to develop renewable sources. Turns out these efforts are going better than anyone predicted. So we go through a transition where we reduce the amount of fossils while ramping up renewables, Switching to nuclear thet is more expensive than all other sources does not make sense. It is also worth mentioning there is a common trap comparing energy sources. If you take the total value of the fossil energy and compare it to renewables, your calculations are off by a large number. That is because the majority of the energy from fossil fuels is wasted. Forty percent in stationary plants and closer to 80 percent in the case of cars and trucks. The amount of energy we need is much smaller than the massive numbers thrown about.
My argument wasn't against renewables, it was that there are circumstances that renewables can't currently deal with. The reason manufacturers haven't moved to laser and electric furnaces (which they really want to for several applications because it's a LOT cheaper) is because the current system can't ramp up power quickly enough when they need to spin them up. The benefit of laser and electric furnaces is they don't need to be running permanently unlike coke ones, but that means when you switch them on there is a dramatic surge in energy demand. SMRs can provide that in a timeframe that renewables can't. Hopefully renewables will eventually, but waiting till then delays the adoption of cleaner manufacturing technologies.
Renewable power is a slam dunk to anyone who can do math.
It's certainly a slam dunk for China considering they build the vast majority of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries via fossil fuels. Not quite sure how secure that supply chain will be once they've invaded Taiwan and we're forced to declare war against them at the behest of the US, however.
Not quite sure how secure that supply chain will be once they've invaded Taiwan
Unlike Russian gas, those Chinese solar panels will just continue operating for the next 30 years, no mater how the geopolitical situation changes. The sooner they get installed, the better.
If China stops exporting them (or just stops subsidizing them), I'm sure PV producers in Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and the US will be happy to ramp up their production.
On Dec 22nd at 53(+-1) degrees north using the average sunlight & wind conditions prevalent in the UK;
How much land does it take to produce a guaranteed 72Gwh (24 hours at 3Gw) of electricity constantly from solar + battery - Yorkshire ?
How much land does it take to produce a guaranteed 72Gwh (24 hours at 3Gw) of electricity constantly from wind & battery - Lancashire ?
How much land does it take to produce a guaranteed 72Gwh (24 hours at 3Gw) of electricity constantly from Nuclear - under 1 square mile.
and for bonus points at what infrastructure cost.
Reality & physics care not a jot for any idealistic preferences.
You are using two different notions of "take" -- most activities can continue under a solar panel and / or wind farm. For some crops and livestock, the reduced sun intensity can be quite beneficial.
While there is infrastructure in renewables, because of area; there are no ongoing costs for fuel.
Of course that is the real issue that many interests have against renewable -- no way to wedge themselves into the supply chain.
>” Of course that is the real issue that many interests have against renewable -- no way to wedge themselves into the supply chain.”
The way in to the supply chain is to focus on bigger is better.
Government is giving incentives to wind and solar farm operators because the scale means they have to supply the grid, with all its middlemen and tax opportunities…
The “farm” operators convince people, they don’t need to make an effort because their installation will provide energy for n hundreds or thousands of mythical homes.
With micro generation, the manufacturers, installers and government gets a one off bite from my initial installation, then effectively nothing for 30+ years.
Obviously, the typical installation price isn’t an impulse buy, which helps to dissuade people from doing it for themselves and leave it to “businesses”.
This post has been deleted by its author
Ok - so on the 22nd Dec last year I generated 1.1 kWh, let's call it 1 - that was from six partially shaded panels on my roof in the midlands (a little under 12m^2)
So to generate 72GWh, that would be ~864 square kilometres - a very long way short of Yorkshire’s 12 thousand square kilometres - which would actually generate ~1 PWh
There is a 300MW SMR under construction east of Toronto, with 3 more scheduled for the same site. Construction started late last year, and it is supposed to start operating in 2029 if I recall correctly. Call that about 5 years for the first one. I don't know what the schedule is for the subsequent ones but I think it's less.
That's good news. I hope it manages to come in on time and on budget. But it's not there yet. At least 3 years away from the first one coming online, so still not a guarantee, but a very promising start. I'd never say let's not bother trying for a new technology, but on the other hand, we don't really want to be putting all our eggs in the SMR basket until at least one is up and running and we understand the issues, technology and economics of the result.
The Chinese already have a working Thorium SMR reactor out in the Gobi desert. That looks promising too, but again, we wait for the first economically viable commercial build. There's a actually a lot of hope out there for clean energy, but much of it does still remain hope for the time being. Even the Trump endorsed "commercial fusion in 5 years" claim :-)
but where the hell are all the batteries going to come from?
Probably from the Li-ion battery factories being built for EV production all over the world, which are sitting idle due to excessive supply and insufficient demand:
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2025/04/04/a-stunning-number-of-electric-vehicle-battery-factories-are-being-canceled/82868200007/
The world is pumping out batteries faster than anybody is using them. It's a well known production process that is simple to scale-up.
Now tell me, where are these SMRs going to come from?
LWR/BWR/PWR/CANDU nuclear (any water cored nuclear) is more expensive than burning coal and has been for over 60 years. That's the real reason that commercial operators moved away from plans incorporating it in the energy mix in the 1960s
Also:
1: Anything dependent on enriched uranium is a figleaf covering nuclear weapons production. The enriched uranium is harlmess enough but for every 1kg of 3% enriched "reactor grade" uranium, you get 9kg of depleted uranium suitable for converting to weapons-grade uranium (NOBODY makes nukes using enriched uranium. at $16 billion apiece, vs a few tens of millions apiece it's just not economic. Trying to make nukes from thorium or spent reactotr fuel costs even more, so those paths aren't happeniong either)
2: Anything using solid fuel containers(rods) is abusable to make plutonium. The design traces back to the Manhattan Project's X10 plutonium breede and LWRs are a tweak of that design optimised to produce more heat
3: Anything with water cores can only get hot enough to make wet steam. That drives up the turbine operational wear (pitted turbine blades from condensation amongst other things) and the relatively low "hot" side temp means you NEED heatsinking to rivers or estuaries
4: You don't NEED enriched uranium for nucear power. Natural uranium works just fine (see 1)
5: Water at 275-325C and 20-100atm is EXTREMELY corrosive, to the point of being likened to a hostile demon aggressively trying to claw its way out of the pipework and flash to steam - See Besse Davis, 2003. That's WHY reactors end up stupidely expensive (they're essentially water boilers and the engineering stress on a boiler goes up with the cube of power) Containment buildings end up even more stupidly expensive because they have to try and contain any steam for the worstr case scenario (a 8MW boiler explosion can flatten an entire city block - it's happened. 1GW power generation needs 3500MW thermal power)
6: Water cored nuclear reactors have a constant problem with some of the water being split into hydrogen/oxygen and accumulating at the top of the reactor vessel, with inevitable results if not dealt with
7: The non-nuclear economics of thermal electricity generation (and turbine maintenance costs in particular) precludes building anything smaller than 1GW. A 5-600MW SMR is an economic black hole
The proliferaton of SMR proposals a primarily intended to farm subsidies and grants
There ARE better nuclear power systems. - 99% less waste than conventional nuclear, hot enough to directly drive coal-fired steam turbines, several hundred times safer than conventional designs and 80% cheaper to build & roperate. The USA tested the most promising one (Molten salt liquid fueled) from 1965-69 and killed it in 1972 because not needing enriched uranium put the weaponsmaking industry in danger because without buyers for enriched uranium, that production chain becomes "military" rather than "dual purpose" and as such subject to vastly greater scrutiny
Lester (RIP) was a big proponent of MSRs on this very site and the arguments he made then are still valid now. There's 20,000 years of thorium available right now in existing mining sites - so what happened to it? (The answer: TMSR-LF1 and a couple of other projects, but TMSR-LF1 exists, is running and has already proven the enhanced weapons proliferation resistance by not needing external reprocessing of thorium into U233 or of fission products
There are some VERY loud voices against MSRs - mostly in the existing US Nuclear industry. It they were so uneconomic and impractical as these groups claim, surely they'd welcome someone building the things so their claims can be proven?
It sounds like what you want is a super-critical steam reactor. This uses high temperature super-critical steam (steam beyond the triple point), the same as is used in modern fossil fuel fired steam generating plants.
And if you happen to like natural uranium reactors, then what you want is a natural uranium super critical steam reactor, like what Canadian Nuclear Labs (CNL) are currently working on based on CANDU designs.
There's a lot of actual engineering going into this, involving chemistry, metallurgy, fuel design, steam flow modelling, etc. before we see one being built. The main advantage of these reactors is lower capital cost due to getting more power out of a smaller reactor.
As for molten salt reactors, the only one that I'm aware of that sounds practical from a commercial perspective is the design from Moltex, who separate the fuel from the molten salt coolant instead of dissolving the fuel in the salt like the rest do. Keeping the fuel separate avoids having tons of radioactive salt that you have to continually chemically process, and in worst case clean up if it leaks. Like a lot of companies promoting molten salt reactors though, they're a small company that may not have the financial strength to go from CAD drawing to working prototype however.
By the way, I listened to a rather interesting interview with the head of Moltex, and despite promoting molten salt reactors he's not a fan of using thorium with molten salt reactors. He didn't go into a lot of details but apparently there are chemistry issues with the type of salt that has to be used if you use thorium instead of uranium.
If you want to use thorium your best bet is to use a CANDU style reactor with mixed oxide plutonium-thorium fuel (all the practical thorium reactors would use this sort of fuel, as thorium by itself isn't fissile). You can do this today. The reason it isn't being done is that uranium is so cheap and abundant there is no financial justification for using more expensive thorium at this time.
Oh, and if you want to make plutonium for bombs, then what you want is either an unpressurized pool type water moderated reactor (commonly called a "research reactor") or a gas cooled graphite moderated reactor. A molten salt reactor might be good for this as well, as it's unpressurized. Any sort of pressurized reactor such as the common PWR, BWR, or CANDU style reactors are very unsuited to this sort of thing. You need to be able to be able to irradiate the target material for just the right length of time or you end up with reactor grade plutonium instead of bomb grade plutonium (these are different isotope mixtures), and it's hard to do this with reactors that aren't designed for it. This is why normal spent fuel from commercial reactors is no good for making plutonium bombs.
Didn't know that gas was a renewable energy source. This is a lot of BS.
Show me a large scale battery solution that exist now to provide enough capacity to sustain power to large datacenters when there is no wind and no sun (during night time for instance). It does not exist and likely not within five years as they claim in the study. Those batteries are not really environmental friendly either.
Nuclear power is the way to go in combination with renewable. Hydro power is also excellent for those countries that have that capability.
There are some very large batteries being built. It is worth noting that we currently have a massive fossil based energy system that powers our grid. It is not like we have to shut down all the power plants tomorrow. We will transition over the next 5 - 10 years to a circular economy based on renewables, The pace is accelerating. There is also V2G (vehicle to grid) to tap all the electric cars that are parked most of their life. and long distance transmission lines to help tame the intermittency of renewables. Nuclear is expensive and not renewable. You might want to look at the numbers.
Which is why they often have generators as well.
And if they run off renewables 80% of the year and a generator 20% that's still better than running off a gas plant 100% of the year.
And of course it's then trivial to extend that 80% as more renewable sources are built - and by trivial, I mean it's a zero effort game,
>”And if they run off renewables 80% of the year and a generator 20% that's still better than running off a gas plant 100% of the year.”
Plus carbon offsetting on 20% is a lot less effort and potentially more achievable than carbon offsetting on 100%. So whilst not net zero, it’s a lot better than where we currently are.
Didn't know that gas was a renewable energy source. This is a lot of BS.
Nah, just creative marketing, lobbying and the continuing quest for subsidies. Gas is CH4, there's been a lot of noise about making 'green' hydrogen, so there's your H4. Then Ed the Idiot has just approved two new carbon capture projects which gives you a source of CO2. Slap those together and you get synthetic CH4 and water... Just don't look very closely at what the cost of that CH4 would be, just admire its greeness. Octopus of course flogs gas, and feeds on subsidies so if it can get subsidised to produce 'green' CH4, it'll be 'good' business.
"Didn't know that gas was a renewable energy source."
At small scale, yes, it can be. That would be the bio-reactors we see on farms storing methane from rotting crop waste and animal shit. But I don't see that happening at any real world usable scale, so yes, you are right. It's gas producing bullshit :-)
Question. Can anyone explain the logic behind locating datacentres for AI (specifically AI) in the UK where energy is both scarce & expensive when the datacentres could instead be built on top of the North African gas fields and run extremely cheaply on gas, or a mix of solar & gas.
If the datacentres were for serving videos (high bw) or www pages (low rtt) I can see need to be as close as poss to market (mostly Europe), so North Africa doesn't make sense. But with AI, there's no such requirement. Most of the "work" going on inside AI datacentres is internal, and bandwidth requirements talking to the outside world aren't huge and super low latency response times aren't needed either. Yes, for sure, a new fibre connection across the Med would likely be needed but cost of that would be small compared to insane capital cost of the hardware going into the datacentres and offset anyway by low energy running costs, and even lower if multiple AI datacentres located in the same region.
Not just transiting "unstable" countries, but also the cost of providing enough cooling .in a hot country with low water resources. And whatever ones thoughts on global warming and whether humanity is a cause or not, there is a measurable climate change causing many places to be warmer and dryer than previously.
"If the datacentres were for serving videos (high bw) or www pages (low rtt) I can see need to be as close as poss to market (mostly Europe),"
Apart from transit costs making operators like Cloudflare viable, what is the real disadvantage to connecting my PC directly to YouTube servers in the USA and streaming directly from there? Would I notice the difference? Is it mostly a capacity issue at the source?
No, I think contention on the links btw you and the server would be the issue.
If you let youtube work as designed, when you request a video youtube decides which of it's CDN servers is nearest to you and that server then streams you the video.
But if you trick youtube into thinking you're in the US then your video will come from a youtube CDN server in the US. You'll then quite likely see jitter caused by contention. It could be anything from none at all, to enough to make the video unwatchable, all depending on time of day, and perhaps more importantly, your ISP's arrangements for connecting to the US. A good UK ISP will have quality transiting agreements in place, a cheapskate ISP poss won't.
Diff is when you connect to a youtube server in the UK you are just a few short fast hops across your ISP's network to the LINX then a few more short even faster hops across google's network to the nearest youtube content servers (now waltham cross in uk I think).
Whereas when you stream from the US it's over your ISP to the LINX then across a long & relatively slow trans atlantic link, then further hops across the US depending on exactly which US youtube server you're streaming from.
The bigger issue though, the one that really matters, is faced not by you but by your ISP. If you pull say a 1 GB video from a US server it's not going to make much diff amongst all the other traffic your ISP will be routing across the atlantic. But if lots of your ISP's other customers start doing same, then your ISP's trans atlantic pipe is going to fill and your ISP is going to have to shell out for more bandwidth. So both youtube & the ISPs are keen to connect directly whenever poss. ISPs because the youtube traffic remains within their network until it crosses directly onto google's network - so no 3rd party network payments involved. YT because it allows them to deliver a higher quality video stream.
I ready the "study" and was not impressed with the lack of rigour. I wonder if the people who came up with this sort of analysis do investment analyses on behalf of AI companies for their day job.
I opened up the link in Firefox and hunted around for the study. When I opened the study I was greeted with a black screen. At first I wondered if this was intended as a metaphor for our energy future if we followed their advice.
A bit more poking about though revealed that it was a Chromium-only web site and wouldn't run on Firefox. That must have taken some real effort to create. I haven't seen such a triumph of web design since the days when IE 6 was the dominant browser.
So finally I was able to wade through the Chromium only whizzy graphics to see the "study". They claim to compare the cost of powering a 120MW data centre from a dedicated 470MW RR SMR compared to powering it from an 80MW gas turbine plus some unspecified number of wind, solar, and battery installations. For a study supposedly promoting wind, solar and battery technology, you would think they would tell us how many, what size, and what model of wind turbines they are modelling. But no, that's left to vague hand waving.
Then there's the issue of how the electricity gets from the offshore wind turbines to the data centre and what the capital costs are of the long distance transmission lines for this. Given the transmission line capacity crisis in the UK and the multiple years of waiting to get a grid connection, you would think this would be a major factor in any serious analysis. But no, that's all just hand waved away and the costs not taken into account.
And then on top of this they assume that this "microgrid" will just connect to the main grid anyway to make up for when it can't deliver.
They also seem to have very little knowledge of what is happening in the world of SMRs, looking only at some experimental plants in China, Russia, and Argentina, while completely ignoring the commercial 300MW SMR currently under construction just east of Toronto, a project that anyone who has looked into SMRs is familiar with. I'm not sure why they would choose to ignore that, especially as the financial analysis for that was done by the independent system operator in Ontario who did a very professional study of the cost of nuclear compared to providing the same capacity with wind, solar, and battery before deciding which one to approve. Perhaps the fact that nuclear turned out to be cheaper than wind and solar may have had something to do with them not wanting to acknowledge it.
If this is the best they can do, then no wonder the actual engineers and bean counters at the big data centre companies have become disillusioned with wind and solar and are starting to look to where they can get nuclear power.
"Then there's the issue of how the electricity gets from the offshore wind turbines to the data centre and what the capital costs are of the long distance transmission lines for this. Given the transmission line capacity crisis in the UK and the multiple years of waiting to get a grid connection, you would think this would be a major factor in any serious analysis. But no, that's all just hand waved away and the costs not taken into account."
Their timescale estimate is also wildly optimistic. 5 years build time? Maybe. But the planning consent time? Not even mentioned. Even with the proposed "streamlining" of planning permission, I suspect that would add a minimum of 5 years to the project before they can even break ground. Here in the UK, to build any form of interconnect, especially from an offshore windfarm, requires multiple land owners permission, not least the Crown Estates who own the seabed and shorelines.
They actually mention consent time, guessing at 24 months for the solar portion, and 6 to 18 months for the wind portion. There's no mention of planning permission for the 80 MW (two thirds of the anticipated load) gas turbine generator which is part of the project.
What they don't cover is how the electric power gets from the shore of the North Sea to the data centres. They're calling it a "micro grid", but there's nothing micro about hundreds of kilometres of transmission lines which apparently will magically appear out of nowhere and at no cost.
With nuclear power you would build the power plant in the part of the country where the demand is, minimizing grid connection issues.
Wind power though is highly concentrated in a few areas which are far from demand, requiring huge cross country transmission lines. Hydro electric power is similar, and big hydro projects always have to consider transmission lines to load centres to be an integral part of the overall project.
I don't think I would rest on a study, commissioned for Ontario Power Generation, as evidence of much.
OPG started life as a swindle, based on the Enron model.
Enron collapsed before the fix was in, forcing a quick retreat and an ongoing mess of incompetence and corruption for over two decades.
OPG only has eyes for non-renewable energy, the same way most syndicate's operate.
Having an energy source with no where to launder and divert public funds is neither in OPGs interest, nor the fabulously shady Ontario government.
The deck is loaded against renewable energy, yet it keeps collecting wins. I wonder why.
Eh? You might want to learn a little bit about Canada before making ridiculous statements like that.
OPG started in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario. They are owned by the Province of Ontario and all they did was renewable energy for much of their history.
As for the study, it was done by the IESO, which is the grid operator, who handle capacity planning as well as the grid itself.
Ontario's grid is one of the cleanest in the world, at 94 per cent emissions free (2001 figures), and currently gets the majority of its electricity from nuclear power.
Eh? You might want to learn a little bit about Canada before making ridiculous statements like that.
Out of interest, do you have any good links about their SMR project? I did look into their CANDU reactors when BREXIT & Covid happened and there were concerns about the availability of medical isotopes given those are in short supply, and delay sensitive. AFAIK Euope and the UK mostly rely on a few research reactors to produce those.
The SMR project is called "Darlington New Nuclear" as it is next door to the existing Darlington nuclear power plant. You can find links for ongoing news by searching for that. The reactor itself is a fairly conventional boiling water design. Several smaller provinces are following the project as they plan to build SMRs of their own based on the experience gained from this one.
Medical isotopes are made in nuclear power plants in Darlington (the existing plant), Pickering and Bruce. All three operate CANDU reactors and also make medical isotopes without interrupting power production due to the unique reactor design which permits this. Medical isotopes made in those plants ship all over the world including to the UK. For example, 50% of the world's cobalt 60 is made there in this way.
The same company as builds CANDU reactors (Aitkins Realis) are in charge of construction of the new SMRs. However, they believe that with new construction management techniques large reactors can be built more rapidly as well, and their new large Candu design is centred around that.
I suspect that after these first 4 SMRs the next reactor projects in Ontario (which has an ambitious nuclear expansion program to accommodate all the electric cars and electric heat to replace fossil fuels) will be large reactors, likely the Candu Monark which is currently going through licensing. Many of the smaller provinces in Canada however which are too small to be able to use a large reactor are still interested in SMRs, so likely there is a role for both.
The new CANDU Monark design incorporates a lot of improvements to allow even longer periods of operation without shutdown of power for maintenance and various other efficiency improvements. The design also incorporates lessons from building more recent reactors in Asia when it comes to rapid construction techniques. The company decided to not come out with their own SMR design for now so as to not spread themselves too thin from an engineering perspective. Smaller CANDUs however could be back on the table once the Monark design (currently undergoing licensing review) is finished.
Romania also operate CANDU reactors, and they recently announced they are building two more to allow them to replace existing coal fired plants. They will also be producing medical isotopes in these reactors as well, and intend to make Romania a major medical isotope supplier for Europe based on this.
The SMR project is called "Darlington New Nuclear" as it is next door to the existing Darlington nuclear power plant. You can find links for ongoing news by searching for that.
Thanks, will give me something to read. I think it's interesting that the pro-'renewables' lobby assume some breakthrough that will improve the economics of their tech, but ignore all the work being done on new nuclear and SMR designs. Sure, there might be some breakthrough in photovoltaics or batteries, there probably won't be with windmills given that technology has been around for thousands of years. All we've really managed to do is make them bigger and more expensive.
It'll be interesting to see how SMRs play out. There are a lot of designs in development, not all of which will turn into product or orders. Also how politics and economics will end up playing into that. I like the RR SMR (or should that be MMR?) because at 470MWe, it's a decent sized chunk of generation and perhaps more practical to slot into grids or provide muni power than some of the much smaller designs. But then what the economics would look like for say, 4x RR vs a regular 1GW design. The BWRX-300 seems to have a pretty healthy looking order book though. Might not be the latest & greatest tech, but then being conservative can be a good thing when it comes to picking reactors I guess.
>” think it's interesting that the pro-'renewables' lobby assume some breakthrough that will improve the economics of their tech, but ignore all the work being done on new nuclear and SMR designs.”
Remember the corporate pro-renewables lobby want the subsidies and as the entry cost of a wind/solar farm are low… so keeping the “breakthrough round the corner” idea alive, it makes their proposition tempting. There is then the lobby where anything green is good and nuclear is bad, so will vote on emotion rather than evidence. Me, with green leanings, I made a hard nosed business decision and put panels on my roof with the added benefit that over their 30+ year life they are probably less bad than fossil fuels. [Aside: to me it is effectively a 30yr bond with a 16% Pa yield.]
New nuclear is going to be interesting, the idea of container size SMR’s is very attractive, although given where we are that is probably some decades in the future. Obviously the really exciting new nuclear is happening in China. It will be interesting to see where they go with Thorium - straight from R&D pilot to SMR?
New nuclear is going to be interesting, the idea of container size SMR’s is very attractive.
Introducing the porta-nuke. Perfect for powering the next Glastonbury festival! Although I think that would be.. unlikely. Miltary are looking at it though, as are Russia who've already built nuclear power barges and small reactors for off-grid energy in some of their remote locations.
Obviously the really exciting new nuclear is happening in China. It will be interesting to see where they go with Thorium - straight from R&D pilot to SMR?
Not just China, but Russia, India and a growing list of countries that want affordable energy, want it now and don't have the legacy of our decades of anti-nuclear FUD.
>” want it now and don't have the legacy of our decades of anti-nuclear FUD.”
Also don’t have the legacy of our decades of military thinking; it’s only a small step to convert a civilian uranium reactor to one that can produce weapons grade nuclear feedstock…
The ability to use spent fuel from a civil nuclear power plant to make a plutonium bomb has been greatly exaggerated. Just like with uranium, plutonium has multiple isotopes. Just one of these isotopes is used in making bombs and there is no practical means of separating the fissile from non-fissile plutonium.
Under international arms control treaties there is "civil" and "military" plutonium, just like there is civil and military uranium. It is all down to the concentration of specific isotopes.
Normal spent fuel from a reactor does not contain weapons grade plutonium.
Plutonium for bombs is normally made in dedicated military reactors (although the UK Magnox reactors were designed to be dual use - they were military reactors that produced electric power as a byproduct). Military weapons reactors are designed to cycle their fuel through rapidly in order to prevent the build up of the undesirable (from a bomb maker's perspective) isotopes. You then need to, as you said, process the highly radioactive material to separate out the plutonium.
This is why countries like Iran, Pakistan, and others decided it was easier to build enormous uranium enrichment plants to make a uranium bomb than it was to build a plutonium bomb.
You are missing the mindset issue. As you note producing electric power was a byproduct of military technology. We have permitted the uranium/plutonium = nuclear power to cloud our thinking, hence why we’ve not really done any work on alternatives, even though we knew Thorium had potential for civilian nuclear power.
I can see some MAGA influencer decrying the Chinese Thorium reactors as being inferior to the true American Uranium reactors, and somehow more dangerous in meltdown conditions….
[Yes, know a Thorium reactor “meltdown” is very different to Uranium reactors “meltdown”, but an influencer won’t let that get in the way of their ranting.
The only complaint you are likely to get is one of frustration that the western nations are years, if not decades, behind China. We have fully embraced the 'nuclear bad' and have let the knowledge and skills drain away.
And the meltdown characteristics depend more on the design of the reactor, not the fuel. The Canadian CANDU reactors can burn thorium and they are PWR type reactors. Well.. technically they are calandria type with pressure tubes. As was Chernobyl but that had some really special issues.
The point of SMRs is modularity, and the point of modularity is to reduce on site construction time in order to reduce the time between the money going out on construction and the money coming in from sale of electricity.
Modularity in SMRs has been compared to modern shipbuilding where ships are built in more or less complete "blocks" and then the blocks are assembled together.
There are a lot of economies of scale in power generation, so if Rolls Royce can build a larger reactor while still keeping to modular construction techniques then they have a good chance of having lower overall costs per kWh than smaller plants which output 300 MW.
Wait for it... Wait for it...
>and backed up by gas generation
... THERE it is!
As always: the quiet mumble of "just build double your generation needs".
Then swerve the capital cost implications, and swerve the lifetime/replacement-time cycle consequences of ongoing ("sustainable!") supply.
Hey presto! If we delete the major costs and just look at this one tiny little bit, it's magic!
It's all so tiresome.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2026
