Vocal Voices

Plan for the worst.... and accept it will happen, in spades.

Gas is currently trading at £3 per therm and future deliveries are at £4+ per therm, and rising. That cost will be passed on to us, and then some.

Not only do we use gas directly for cooking and heating, it also provides something like 40-50% of our electricity.

Tell Sid to buy shares in manufacturers of thermal underwear.

Time to re-open a few coal mines and de-mothball one or two power stations as well, I think ...... especially as the French are actively threatening to block electricity supplies to the UK in the fishing trade war.

Sod the French, Any truly independent country has to have total control of its energy and utility resources. We are now just a small player in the market.

Thatcher and the Cons put us there.

My son and I bought pellet burners. I was already on wood and he was on oil.

My decision was simple. I wanted to be able to buy my heating fuel from local sources at local prices. First wood, now, when installed, I'll be buying pellets form local suppliers.

It was exactly this thing with the gas supplies being controlled by Russia that made my mind up for me.

We need more of that. Options, ability to have our own energy security.

As for France refusing to send us power? Whilst it will have a short term impact, nothing could be better for us than to realise that we have to knuckle down, get the nuclear plants built and build a net export energy market.

Don't hold your breath.

It's amazing. We sit on X billion tons of frackable gas. We still have North Sea oil and gas. And we have a gas price crisis.

The article (from a very left wing commentator) points out one reason - lack of gas storage capacity, a problem that was highlighted ten years since and again in 2017 when the Rough storage facility in the North Sea was closed down and not replaced.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/gas-price-c ... rt-1212095

Funny thing. In past years Boris was all for fracking, pointing out that we were over-dependent on "Putin's gas" and French nuclear power.
But now he's gone full-on Swampy.

We have discovered a new oil and gas field 75 miles west of the Shetland Isles, the Cambo field. But it is not being developed atm.
If the lights go out this winter and people sit around in cold houses there's going to be fun.

Workingman wrote:Sod the French, Any truly independent country has to have total control of its energy and utility resources. We are now just a small player in the market.

Thatcher and the Cons put us there.

Absolutely!

cromwell wrote:Funny thing. In past years Boris was all for fracking, pointing out that we were over-dependent on "Putin's gas" and French nuclear power.
But now he's gone full-on Swampy.

The reality of geological issues was one reason. They simply couldn't stop the quakes.

The other reality is that fracking may produce gas, but it is a ponzi scheme with new money in paying for old money out, there is actually very little profit in fracking and it all comes out at the beginning to pay for the infrastructure. Results in the US show that wells fade over time and you need 2x new wells to provide the same as the original, ramping up to 4x and more as the easy fracking gains peter out. At that point existing wells which have made their profit have to pay for the newer wells, etc. Fracking businesses are constantly looking for funding. Says it all really. Most profitability came out of fracking at $120 per barrel. At $50 it is a loss maker.

Also in terms of North Sea Oil, it is unprofitable around $50 per barrel for Oil. More profitable for Gas but still a fairly high fixed cost for the infrastructure. When Oil hits below $50 per barrel, exploration and exploitation of new resources are stopped. Given the ultra low oil prices recently, it is no surprise that new fields are not being explored. Light Sweet crude has a 52 week low of $35 per barrel. Well below profitability and is only at $68 at the moment. Not that fuel prices close to, or over, $120 per barrel would give you that idea. Meaning that any development of new sources in the North Sea will remain closed until prices have been well over $50 for at least a year.

In the end we have to get off fossil fuel products. Our wells will not last forever and if we want energy security, then we'll have to generate it by other means. We have the capability, we have the climate and we have the technology. All we need is to get on and DO it. If that's going full-on Swampy then we need to get with it and transition. And YES, that means the Nuclear blockers need to wind their necks in.

We might as well accept it; as the years go by we are going to be spending a larger portion of our income on energy in all its forms. Product costs in all sectors will also rise.

It is time to bring the utilities back into public ownership. Not for political or ideological reasons, but for national security.

At the same time we need to start building the modular nuclear power plants currently being worked on by Rolls Royce - I believe that the proposed number is 16. And we really do need to be looking at all forms of hydro power. We have badly screwed ourselves by throwing all our eggs in the solar and wind baskets.

Good with RR, but I think they need to be looking at NASA Kilopower too. It doesn't just do for Mars.

As for wind, the biggest thing is not enough storage. Wind power often turns negative on price because they are supplying more power than the market wants. The market is designed such that oversupply reduces the target price until sufficient oversupply turns it negative.

This is why I'm talking about targetted charging of EV's. If EV's are sitting waiting for prices to drop, they will consume all this oversupply. Once that is in place, the number of wind turbines sitting idle will drop dramatically because whatever they produce will be of value. Today they stop the turbines because it is, quite literally, costing them money to push power into the grid.

It is also a good fit with wind because offshore wind is normally strongest in the early morning and late evening.

But it will only work as a whole picture. Nuclear, Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geothermal, Biomass. Emergency peak will need to be some gas and some battery. Over time storage will grow. EV vehicles, cars and trucks, are a good storage medium as well as gigawatt battery, compressed air, H2, mechanical "towers". Storage is a big thing in research right now.

The thing is if we keep waiting for things to be "just right" they never will be. Because it won't pay. If we force the issue it makes worse in the short term but significantly better in the long term.

I have been keeping tabs on Kilopower, but it is for the future (when working) sometime in 20??s. We need things sorting out NOW!.

Suff wrote:But it will only work as a whole picture. Nuclear, Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geothermal, Biomass....

Well, yes, obviously.

Let me just disregard the first three.....we already use them, and biomass (it is not particularly green and will never be a big player) so that leaves hydro and geothermal.

This land is criss-crossed with rivers and streams. Millions of cubic metres (tons) of water flow every minute down to the sea taking with them TW of potential energy. So what do we generate from all this on a daily basis - about 1GW or 2% of our total generation? It is criminal waste.

When it comes to geothermal we basically gave up. We gave it a go after the 1973 fuel crisis but things fell apart in the mid 90s (cheap oil). We tried a few in Cornwall and the Peak District and a few other places, but the enthusiasm and, more importantly, the financial resources just were not there. The UK might not be volcanic but we do have viable geothermal layers and many of them are shallower than some of our deep coal mines.