Quote from: Binary Shadow on March 23, 2011, 16:47:26 PM
EDIT: the population is continuing to increase, dwellings are being built non stop. the demand for electricity is going only one way.. UP!

Sadly even with all the education on energy consumption in the world this is the case, our rate of global growth and demand for power far exceeds production and any potential savings we could make.

Quote from: DEViANCE on March 23, 2011, 16:56:46 PM

Quote from: bear on March 23, 2011, 16:29:49 PM
There is about 60 million people in the UK if every one reduces there power consumption with 100 watts that will be 6000 MW one nuke gives about
1000MW, educate people to use less power and there would be no need to build more nukes. I have changed 10 of my 60 watts bulbs to 6 watt LED:s which give the same light a reduction of 540 watts.

And what difference will that 540W make to anything? Your local power station willstill be running at the same capacity, electricity cant be stored so if what is generated is not used it is wasted.
540 watts makes a huge difference if 60 million people save as much. As long power companies make huge profits on fission they have no interest in developing safer power.

Powerstations waste 10000,s of Watts everyday by running huge motors and discharging/recharging capcitors that are not connected to anything just to keep the load balanced.

People that say switching off at the plug and fitting low energy lamps makes any difference doesn't have a clue how the system works.

It has much to do with the will to do stuff. You can store power in Russia they pump water up in damms when power draw is low to use when power draw is high. There osmotic "pumps" that can use the difference between salt and sweet water to "pump" up water to useable hight I say
that it is possible to find ways to make energy without nukes. This happy go lucky attitude towards fission reactors does not help at all though.

there are two pump storage power stations in north wales, not sure if there are any elsewhere in the UK. They're great for load balancing if you've got the space but the power density is low and they are net users of electricity.

If you want base load generating capacity in the GW range, you currently have 4 options

1. Coal - dirty as hell
2. Gas - price fluctuates wildly and as resources deplete it becomes more environmentally damaging to extract
3. Oil - similar problems to Gas, plus dirtier.
4. Nuclear fission - produces radioactive waste, plants are hard to decommission

you can make good arguments in all directions for which of these is least bad, but to argue that we can currently make do without any of them is simply not accurate. In reality, a sensible energy policy includes a variety of fuel types. Gas for example can be spooled up really fast, making it handy for peak load use. Nuclear and Coal are a pain to start up and shut down, so should only be used for base load.

Energy policy is extremely complex.

Quote from: Mongoose on March 23, 2011, 18:49:39 PM
1. Coal - dirty as hell

nowhere near as dirty as the used to be. Washed coal/clean coal have a very low sulphur rate, thats without the various carbon filters, etc. that we have these days.
+ the whole UK is sitting on billions of the stuff. China are opening a new coal power plant every week, so why should we have to suffer the green issue when there is a
country 20 times the population of ours accelerating through rapid development that took our country the best part of 150 years.

Our coal is still being mined, what dont get burned here gets transported & burned in china. Its getting burned anyway!!!!!!!!!
Thats

Micro generation should be being pushed on housing developers imo.

A house can be heated for almost nothing through ground source heating and/or solar heating and Solar PV cells can almost permenatly supply a house.

If develeopers HAD to make 10% of all new houses with these it would be a good step.

Quote from: DEViANCE on March 23, 2011, 19:58:21 PM
Micro generation should be being pushed on housing developers imo.

A house can be heated for almost nothing through ground source heating and/or solar heating and Solar PV cells can almost permenatly supply a house.

If develeopers HAD to make 10% of all new houses with these it would be a good step.

Thats all well and good but the square footage of area for ground source is fairly high, and neither of those helps the massive number of blocks of flats, you could never generate enough power with the space you have to run all those people

Quote from: Binary Shadow on March 23, 2011, 20:09:36 PM

Quote from: DEViANCE on March 23, 2011, 19:58:21 PM
Micro generation should be being pushed on housing developers imo.

A house can be heated for almost nothing through ground source heating and/or solar heating and Solar PV cells can almost permenatly supply a house.

If develeopers HAD to make 10% of all new houses with these it would be a good step.

Thats all well and good but the square footage of area for ground source is fairly high, and neither of those helps the massive number of blocks of flats, you could never generate enough power with the space you have to run all those people

ground source can be done with 2 deep bore holes which take up about 1ft*2ft I've worked on it before.

assuming you can go down far enough some systems just run loads of pipe only a few feet below the surface

Quote from: Binary Shadow on March 23, 2011, 20:15:41 PM
assuming you can go down far enough some systems just run loads of pipe only a few feet below the surface

yeah I've seen them, you do need alot of space for those.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/22/real_estate/doomsday_bunkers/index.htm

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

that's quite an interesting chart :-)

Quote from: knighty on March 25, 2011, 13:10:23 PM
http://xkcd.com/radiation/

that's quite an interesting chart :-)

Saw that the other day, won't be eating Banana's anymore

missed the posts above.... ground source heat pumps are only and good when it's mild.... in a cold winter you need something else as a backup (like gas or oil)

but a couple of solar panels on the roof can give you all the hot water you need for 9 months of the year

Quote from: Mongoose on March 23, 2011, 18:49:39 PM

If you want base load generating capacity in the GW range, you currently have 4 options

1. Coal - dirty as hell
2. Gas - price fluctuates wildly and as resources deplete it becomes more environmentally damaging to extract
3. Oil - similar problems to Gas, plus dirtier.
4. Nuclear fission - produces radioactive waste, plants are hard to decommission

you can make good arguments in all directions for which of these is least bad, but to argue that we can currently make do without any of them is simply not accurate. In reality, a sensible energy policy includes a variety of fuel types. Gas for example can be spooled up really fast, making it handy for peak load use. Nuclear and Coal are a pain to start up and shut down, so should only be used for base load.

Energy policy is extremely complex.

You don't include Solar, tideal, wave, oceanic current, wind or other similar generation method. There is already over 5000MW of wind turbine electricity generating plant in the UK with a lot more planned.

OK, some idiots think that turbines are an eyesore, offer them a nuke plant as an alternative... 

Quote from: Serious on March 27, 2011, 05:41:54 AM
You don't include Solar, tideal, wave, oceanic current, wind or other similar generation method. There is already over 5000MW of wind turbine electricity generating plant in the UK with a lot more planned.

OK, some idiots think that turbines are an eyesore, offer them a nuke plant as an alternative... 

Windpower & wave costs twice the amount of money to generate power than nuclear, gas or coal. - About 1/2 of the extra associated with the wind extra cost is down to the fact that wind is unreliable so they have to keep other power stations running but at a reduced capacity. Tidal/Wave would be the best, but its still expensive atm - would you be prepared to pay double what your paying now for electric? As for solar, your stuck to things you cant control. Day/Night cycle & the weather. They would also need to point a certain direction to get the best from. Even then a footprint size of a normal house would not produce enough electricity to run a house of the same footprint size.