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How the U.K. broke its own economy

theatlantic.com

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Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#251

Post by viraptor »

cupcakecommons wrote: post #219
tuatoru wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out "The Price is Wrong" by Brett Christophers[1]. It explains at length that what matters is not price, but how profitable an investment is. And how wind and PV don't look great without subsidies in various guises. 1. https://www.amazon.com/Price-Wrong-Capitalism-Wont-Planet/dp...

You distribute pv and wind over large areas and they get destroyed by weather, get dirty, require significant maintenance. If individuals want to have wind turbines or pv installations that's great - but these things are a giant mess at grid scale - absolutely awful.

> they get destroyed by weather

We get anything from storms to hail few times a year here. My patio roof got holes in it from the ice balls, but the panels are fine. Are you missing some qualifiers on that one?

> get dirty

You clean them every few months or monitor for issues per group of panels.

> require significant maintenance

Just like every other device out in the real world. Coal, gas, wind, solar, nuclear, thermal generators require maintenance.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#252

Post by walthamstow »

Myrmornis wrote: post #238
walthamstow wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that the natural landscape of Britain is forest. The enclosed fields people think are natural countryside are in fact an entirely human creation.

I'm sorry you're saying people think agricultural fields are natural vegetation?

Yes. The gently rolling fields of grass, sheep, rape and wheat are considered a national symbol of our natural environment in need of protection from dastardly human creations such as wind turbines. This is the 'green and pleasant land' that William Blake wrote about.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#253

Post by viraptor »

cupcakecommons wrote: post #220
chrisbriard wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wind Energy, like Solar Energy can be stored in Battery Energy Storage Systems to provide reliability to the grid in the event of shortages.

[flagged]

LLMs should not be used as a reliable source of numbers for research like that. You keep saying how obvious this is and trivial to research. Maybe just post a quality research link instead in that case?

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#254

Post by milesrout »

walthamstow wrote: post #184
cr__ wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like em.

People forget that the natural landscape of Britain is forest. The enclosed fields people think are natural countryside are in fact an entirely human creation.

The "natural landscape" is a pretty meaningless concept in Britain. Are moors not natural landscapes because they were formed hundreds or thousands of years ago? Is it natural when animals do something but not when humans do it? Or is it natural when hunter gatherers do something but not when agriculturalists do it? Or is it natural when non-industrial people do it, but not when industrialists do it? And why does your chosen definition matter? Is the natural landscape better than human-modified landscapes? Is a change always fine if the starting point was created by humans?

If you replaced the ancient figures carved into the chalk in England with wind farms would that be fine because they arent natural features?

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#256

Post by marliechiller »

tacker2000 wrote: post #157
patrickdavey wrote: post #81

Fascinatng that `brexit` isn't mentioned once in that article. Making trading harder with your closest neighbour can't be a great move for the economy.

Yes that’s really funny. Im not sure how you can write an article like this and never even mention it once. Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself, and the full effects are just starting to come to the surface now. I dont think the UK will ever fully recover from it.

> Brexit was the most stupid thing a country ever did to itself

From an economic standpoint, brexit was indeed a big L, but I dont think brexiteers were largely voting on economic grounds - a point which is lost on most remainers.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#257

Post by idiotsecant »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #174
alvah wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The cheapest source of energy" trope again. Intermittent energy (electricity) != on demand electricity.

Cheapest source is accurate. It may not eliminate the need for expensive LPG, but reducing the amount needed is still a massive benefit to the economy.

This may be true, on a watt basis. It also ignores the physics of a synchronous grid. You need to produce exactly what you use at any given moment. If you fail to do that by a little bit bad things happen. If you fail by a lot, the grid fails. You need to be able to get power when you need it, not when it's convenient to your generation plant. If you want to compare solar or wind to something more dispatchable you should really be using numbers from either a pretty massive distributed overbuild or including storage or both. Otherwise it simply isn't apples to apples. I am an electrical engineer specializing in the design of control systems for renewable generation.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#258

Post by viraptor »

lenkite wrote: post #248
mulmen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt everyone agrees on anything. If you have contrary numbers please just save all of us the time and share them.

Ugghh. I meant everyone in bird conservation. The ABC article explains why the official numbers are a heavy underestimate. But this was in 2021 - it has gotten worse since then. This is not unique to the US - my personal experience of this was in India. https://abcbirds.org/blog21/wind-turbine-mortality/

And the recommendation from those people is: choose the sites more carefully. Not stop or slow down, just:

> Climate change is a critical threat to birds. Recognizing this fact, ABC supports renewable energy, including wind energy, and the transition away from fossil fuels. However, not every wind project is proposed in a suitable location.

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#259

Post by [deleted] »

milesrout wrote: post #254
walthamstow wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget that the natural landscape of Britain is forest. The enclosed fields people think are natural countryside are in fact an entirely human creation.

The "natural landscape" is a pretty meaningless concept in Britain. Are moors not natural landscapes because they were formed hundreds or thousands of years ago? Is it natural when animals do something but not when humans do it? Or is it natural when hunter gatherers do something but not when agriculturalists do it? Or is it natural when non-industrial people do it, but not when industrialists do it? And why does you…

[deleted]

Re: How the U.K. broke its own economy

#260

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

cupcakecommons wrote: post #213
bryanlarsen wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheapest source is accurate. It may not eliminate the need for expensive LPG, but reducing the amount needed is still a massive benefit to the economy.

[flagged]

> It's also soul-crushingly ugly

I find them much more appealing than the power plant near me that dumps columns of soot into my skyline.

> and remarkably bad for wildlife

This talking point is really exaggerated. It's effectively fossil fuel propaganda. The effect on wildlife is downright cuddly compared to the effects of burning fossil fuels. You might have an argument if you're comparing wind to solar.

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