191–200 of 282 posts
They also make £0.5-1bn in annual revenue from North Sea oil. It's an achievement for sure but it's like the Marlboro Man boasting he's quit smoking while still selling cigarettes to everyone else.
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Electric cars are perfect for this. Connect them to the grid and the internet, and they’ll charge but also feed back as needed.
As an electric car owner, do I want to give my limited lithium battery charge cycle lifespan back to the network? This storage isn't "free" to the vehicle owner - charging and feeding back will contribute to the total charge cycles on your very expensive battery pack, which of course reduces range over time. I'd need to be heavily convinced by the economic arguments outweighing the wear on a very expensive vehicle co…
Just set the price at which you are willing to sell so that you make a profit overall.
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Here in Texas a lot of people could get access to spot prices and it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.
Yeah the problem is that what people actually want is not exposure to volatility in the energy market so much as cheaper energy prices. And energy looks cheaper if you just get wholesale prices because you are not paying for the insurance against high prices that your energy provider is probably buying. It isn’t easy to convince people that they are picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, so I’m not sure I woul…
Shed the pool heater/cleaner, beer fridge and the hot water heater when things get incredibly expensive.
Put the washer/dryer in slow-mo when prices are high.
Ultra-chill the freezer and A/C when prices go low/negative.
Turn on a resistive heater and shut off the gas heat when things are negative...
Instead we want complicated too-big-to-fail grid storage systems instead.
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With negative electricity rates you can do crazy things like buy thousands of space heaters, and just heat the outside. Space heaters don’t become obsolete, and they’re not very capital intensive, or require much maintenance. You just need space to put them in.
> You just need space to put them in. What are you talking about? Just take the three phases from your power outlet and stick them in the ground, with some distance between them. There, zero capital costs, and a nice, mostly resistive load for the power plant. A bad time to be an earthworm, though.
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TBH, I'm confused about what you were trying to say. Unless you live in the coastal lowland countries of Europe, pretty much every country has some geography conducive to hydro. And what does the "sparse" (which implies thinly distributed, FYI, hence the person who replied to you specifying that it's actually quite dense in a localised area) population have to do with hydro or not?
> TBH, I'm confused about what you were trying to say. Amount of hydro power capacity per capita in Scotland is much higher than say in Wales. > pretty much every country has some geography conducive to hydro This is simply not true. Availability of hydro in Switzerland is much better than for example in Lithuania.
Is it? Because most of Wales is mountainous. And nearly all of its inhabitants don't live in the mountains. Still confused about why the population distribution is important, especially as Wales and Scotland are part of the UK electrical grid, so per-capita is ultimately meaningless unless both declare independence and sever that grid connection.
> This is simply not true. Availability of hydro in Switzerland is much better than for example in Lithuania.
I did say "some geography". I also said "coastal lowland countries of Europe" which would include Lithuania also, yeah? It's coastal, it's highest point is 294m ASL, which is pretty lowland in my book.
And 20% of its generation capacity is from hydro.
So yeah... obviously not all countries are going to have the same hydro capacity, but it'd be damn hard to find one that has geography that prevents any hydro capacity.
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Here in Texas a lot of people could get access to spot prices and it didn't work out as well as they'd hoped.
Most people have too much depend that is fixed for spot prices to make sense. If you have two meters putting one on spot might make sense - but that only works if there is something is stopping you from changing what meter is active.
Too many people think about the above two because it’s easier to see/feel/touch while it’s really thermal loads that are the bulk of household loads.
If I have to go down to 15C or deal with 30C, delay my shower/dishwasher/clothes washer/dryer to save enough bucks when it could really count, I’d do it.
Meanwhile on fixed pricing, I turn things off when prices are negative (that’s bad!) and indifferent to high prices when I have zero incentive to do differently.
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Yeah heat pumps are the answer to places like Scotland. As a bonus you get air conditioning. They do have some problems with extreme cold (not really an issue in Scotland or most of Europe for that matter) but even in such a case should still be used together with plain resistance heating. But that kind of cold has very few people living there anyway (think -30c or colder)
I've been wondering about this! I keep hearing that air-source heat pumps aren't great in pretty cold areas. Do you have any links or references on this? I live in the Northeast US and wanted to see what the options were and what people's experiences have been.
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Also : * Produce hydrogen for hydrogen-powered vehicles * Bitcoin, I guess
The apparatus to produce hydrogen from electricity doesn’t like fluctuations in its power input.
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Because Canada has a massive Oil sector, Scotland doesn't so much - and with a tinge of hypocrisy they want a bigger share of the revenue proceeds from North Sea Oil. Canada's economic influence in the world is fairly strongly tied to Oil to the point where over the last 30 years it's correlated with the buying power of the dollar, and certainly the economic veracity of most Alberta. It also fundamentally alters the…
I thought Scotland DID have a large oil sector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Scotland%27s_oil You can argue whether it is Scotland's or the UK's but I live in the US and it is up to Scotland and the UK to sort out independence and their place in the EU.
Alberta will unfortunately not be able to turn those Oilsands dredgers into windmills.
The windmills will probably be made and installed by totally unrelated entities.
If I were the King of Alberta I would play all my cards on some kind of carbon capture tech because it's not entirely infeasible. Maybe not for cars, but for installed engines and there will be plenty of demand for fuel if it can be used without CO2 emissions especially.
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I've been wondering about this! I keep hearing that air-source heat pumps aren't great in pretty cold areas. Do you have any links or references on this? I live in the Northeast US and wanted to see what the options were and what people's experiences have been.
Basically the Coefficient of performance (COP or SCOP for seasonal version) just keeps going down with the temperature (under 1 means resistance heating is better) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance Models made for cold climate work to around -30c. Wikipedia has okish writeup about their functionality in cold climates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_source_heat_pump#In_cold_c... Don't really h…