Who's going to build a model then? working of course

Phil

Surely 230,000 watts is 230 kw not mega watts

Roy

Roy Entwhistle, 230 MegaWatts is 230,000KW divided by 230,000 householdsis, as I said, 1KW for each household, so what happens when the favourite tv serial ends, and one third of the consumers get up and put a 2kw kettle on? Energy usage is tied to time of day and generated power has to be matched as exactly as possible with demand from the grid, you cannot push more in than the demand, and if you cannot meet demand the results are disaster! The average daily usage iin the UK is 12 KWh, in the USA 24Kwh, but it will not be used at an even rate throughout the day, and at times demand will rise much above the available 1KW per household. This is why generators are kept running and on stand by, to be switched in when demand suddenly rises. Having been an electrical engineer since the seventies, I fully understand the difference between KW and KWhrs, but you must generate enough power to cover the huge peaks in demand when most people come home from work, and put on the kettle, the washer, the tumble dryer, and then start to cook the evening meal, when this happens, 1kw per household will be woefully inadequate!

Edited By Phil Whitley on 18/01/2019 19:08:57

Edited By Phil Whitley on 18/01/2019 19:10:00

"Its the largest milling machine in the world" – 'cept it isn't – its a vertical borer, not a milling machine.

Neither is the centre lathe or the floor borer – an old Asquith.

Impressive project, though.

Nigel B

SOD, commercial usage has dropped through the floor since the advent of intelligent drive systems, led lighting and the demise of many if not all our major load producing industries. Smart meteres are not for the benefit of consumers, they are there for the supply companies to make extra profits!! why do you think they have put so much money into development and installation? It would be insane for private companies, who bill us for the power to make it easier for us to use less of it! There is never a surplus of power, load must be matched to demand always, and it is very expensive to have generators running on stand by. The daily requirements of the grid are known to a very fine tolerance, and the major job of the generators is to match exactly as possible, supply to demand. Remember, the companies that send you your bill and will be installing your smart meter do not generate any power, they just buy in bulk from the generators, and sell to us at retail prices. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/. "cheap rate" used to be called "off peak" and was a result of the generators realising that it was more economical to run steam turbines on line than keep them running on stand by, so sell the electricity in the off peak hours, but how? thats why storage heaters were invented, and they were marketed until there was literally no off peak hours left, the problem was, as the consumers soon found out, in most households with patchy insulation they are absolutely THE most expensive and inneficient way of heating your house, and they have been scrapped by the millions! Electric cars are very expensive, and there is, as yet no second hand market developing, because of the cost of batteries! they will not reach the mass market for a long time yet, and this may create a Cuba like situation where, although no new petrol or diesel cars are being produced, older cars are being kept going virtually indefinitely.

Edited By Phil Whitley on 18/01/2019 20:46:46

Phil Apology accepted

Roy

I read one article a while back now

Peak time for domestic electricity usage was no longer winter but the school summer holidays

Millions of kids with up to a KW of desktop computer playing World of War etc etc up to 20 hours a day

I've walked dogs for 35 years now and on a lovely summers day in the school holidays the park is empty.

In my youth the parks were stuffed with us all playing football, Celtic even won the European Cup with 11 Scottish football players

Dave SOD, I am an avid reader of Electrical Review (first editor was Michael Faraday though unfortunately I dont have any issues from that time!), and have been since the seventies, when it was much more of an interesting magazine than the 90% advertising content it sports today. The most interesting page by far is "Gossage" insider news from the electrical industry, and it is an eye opener. there are many problems in the electrical supply industry, but one of the major ones is the unprecedented drop in demand, which has fallen 15% in the last ten years, and due to the ongoing conversion of all street lighting, shop lighting,traffic signals etc etc to LED demand is continuing to fall. Consider a time when all UK lighting is LED, which is about 90% more efficient than incandescent, and you are looking at 90% less demand for lighting.

The reason Hitachi have just pulled out of building two nuclear stations is the fact that, even at the garunteed price per MWh the government have promised them (approx double the rate today) they are unwilling to make such a huge investment on a falling demand market without garuntees the government was not willing to give them. A cynical viewpoint would be that the very reason they were invited to bid in the first place was that the government knew demand would fall to a point where nuclear power was so expensive that it simply was not a viable business model, and therefore needed someone else to carry the risk. When Tony Benn, as energy minister made his announcment that nuclear energy would be so cheap it would not be worth metering, and you would pay for it at an annual "rate" like water, he was not in possesion of the true costs of nuclear power stations, the only thing cheap about them is the fuel, the costs of building, maintaining, repairing, and eventual dismantling are collosal in comparison with other methods of turning water into steam for turbines which are, at best about 33% efficient. Remember also that when it comes to decomissioning, the taxpayer picks up the tab!

Hinkley is a case in point, there have been several different consortiums, most of whom have pulled out, leaving EDF holding the baby. Electricite De France is heavily backed by the french government, who have refused any more money to build this type of power station until and if EDF complete one and actually make it work. At present, the one they have built in France ( which, of the 5 they are building is supposedly nearest completion) has not produced a watt, is massively over budget, and (I think) 7 years behind schedule. In fact, no one from EDF will give a time when it will be completed, or will start testing! (Gossage, a few months ago, you can read gossage online at https://www.electricalreview.co.uk/features/10545-gossagegossip)

If you go to www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk you will see what is generating our power 24/7/365, updated every 5 minutes. Oil is now only used in standby stations, and coal usage is very low. Almost 50% of demand is met by combined cycle gas turbines, which are approaching 50% efficient, and use exhausted heat from the gas turbine to make steam for an additional turbine, hence the efficiency. Nuclear, at very best output, with all reactors operating at full output can only supply about 24% of peak demand and it is a red letter day when this happens. Even if Hinkley is ever finished and works, which is by no means certain ( the whole idea should be scrapped!) it will not provide any EXTRA energy, because it will be replacing existing units, which are long past their sell by dates (really) and will be shut down.

The problems with nuclear go on and on because of the golden deal they have with the government which goes back to the fifties. The electricity supply companies, whoever they may be, are tied to buying ALL the output from nuclear stations before they can use other forms of generation This is the only way nuclear can ever be commercially viable. As I have said before, you cannot push extra power into the grid, output from generators has to be matched as exactly as possible to demand at all times, so many times a day, some generation will have to be shut down, and because of the "golden deal" what is shut down is wind and solar. I am sure you have driven past turbines on breezy days and seen them not running, well this is the reason! What is needed is a reversal of this situation, so that the base load is picked up by wind and solar, and the top up comes from other forms of generation. This of course is not going to happen till (perhaps we have almost got there?) the nuclear plants are worn out (they are already well past their design life) and too expensive to repair or replace.

Please check out the Grid status link, at the moment wind is providing 10.03 Gigawatts, whilst nuclear is providing 5.77 gigawatts coal is providing 3.5GW, and combined cycle gas turbine is providing 22.6GW and oil no longer features at all. We are not running out of fossil fuels, despite the horror stories of the sixties and seventies, Britian has huge coal deposits which are virtually unmined today, and new oil and gas discoveries are being made all the time, indeed some areas of the scientific world are beginning to look at if these substances are indeed "fossil fuels" entirely, or by products of the huge amount of underground volcanic activity which cases them to rise up from the core to be trapped under impervious rock layers

Edited By Phil Whitley on 21/01/2019 20:35:08

Phil says: If it was all about saving energy, why not make their installation compulsory?

I thought that was exactly what the UK Govt have done, (but being the Govt, they are not pressing the point.)

Tim

Colin, well maybe 1KW would be enough for a venezuelan consumer, but without getting into KvA, most UK consumers, whose incoming cutout is fused at 100amps have almost 21KW available. which sounds like a lot till you consider that some electric showers are 10KW!

I was offered a SmartMeter. They rang to make appointment. I said you know I have 3-phase don’t you. Yes they said. You have 3-phase smartmeters. NO they said.

Oh well. Keep waiting.

Colin

I seem to remember when everybody was getting solar hot water, You never see it now

Roy