France to nationalise EDF

[Suff]

Sort of. They already own 84% but they're going to take over the remaining stake in EDF before building their new 6 reactors.

It is something to watch. The French Government set an energy price cap earlier this year then told EDF to eat the losses. Not sure that can go on even with 100% government ownership.

[cromwell]

I thought nationalisation was a no no in the EU?

[Workingman]

I thought nationalisation was a no no in the EU?

Another myth. Art. 345 TFEU allows it and Art. 106 doesn't ban it, merely controls it.

The French cap worked for all consumers and kept their energy bills down. Our cap allowed prices to rise by nearly 50%, so the government had to step in with rebates, reliefs, call then what you will, with all the added admin. Both systems had a cost.

I know which I would have chosen, but then I am a Remainer - lowest of the low, in some warped minds.

[Suff]

Nationalisation is allowed but this particular one is in conflict with the legislation for opening of the energy markets.

I doubt anyone will challenge it. Right now nobody is really interested in trying to break the markets open to make money out of them, they are more interested in protecting themselves from losing money. If the French government wants to take all that risk themselves then the investors will clap them on.

When it all settles down and the prices stabilise and the Government has foot the bill for it all, it will be time enough to take out the legislation around opening the energy markets again, dust if off and carve a slice of that government money off.

[Workingman]

Yes, of course it will! Money eh, always money, money and "investors", err spivs, making more money. This is the world we live in. Let's make money, more money, and sod the people and the planet, we need growth, more growth and more money.

Suck up, dig it up, pump up all those finite resources, sod the environment.. there's money to be made, and let's pretend to go net-zero with heat pumps and electric cars and windmills and solar panels so we can carry on as we are.

Population, the capitalist economy and consumption are the biggest threats to our existence yet we will not seriously address them.

[Suff]

Population will do for us in the end.

As for wind turbines being "windmills", sorry wrong analogy. Windmills were small local power generators for milling and pumping. Plus a bit of industrial revolution stuff. Not too much because it was too unreliable and you couldn't keep the workforce in the building all night just in case the wind would blow.

Wind Turbines are GIGANTIC and the power they kick out is massive. A 15MW wind turbine is absolutely enormous. So much so they're reaching the limits of blade length because the tips are going transonic and they can't withstand the vibrations when reaching the speed of sound.

The difference is the difference between the pre industrial revolution simple windmill and the post industrial revolution power station.

All of my issues with wind power have been around people who want to treat it as always on power with some flippant response as to "it will work out". Things don't work out unless you work them out. So my point is not that they are not viable or that they are not exceedingly powerful, more that the people who are putting them in place build the correct ecosystem around them to make sure of our power security.

That, for me, is the biggest risk going forward right now. That our society collapses because of a bunch of idealistic yahoo's who have no clue what they are doing getting control of our energy resources.

[Workingman]

"Windmill" is a catch-all term for any machine doing work powered by a wind driven rotor be it for grinding grain, pumping water or generating electricity. It is NOT a direct comparison to a 17th century Dutch flour mill.

The average offshore wind turbine in 2021 was sub 4 MW. The rotor diameter is approx. 120m and their rpm varies between 10 and 20 rpm depending on wind speed - let's say 15 rpm. There are few working 15MW 'windmills' out there.

The tip speed is about 340 km/h (215 MPH) nowhere near supersonic. Transsonic affects might be seen in some instances and in different areas depending on wind conditions. The biggest problems are vortices and separation. These are what you see with F1 car wings and aircraft taking off in high humidity. They are extremely corrosive to leading and trailing edges, even with modern carbon fibre structures.

BTW, the wind has not become more reliable since days of yore. I still blows or doesn't and there is sod all we can do about that.

Windmills are part of the mix, no doubt about that, but they are not one of the only solutions,.as some adherents claim.

[Suff]

The Emergence of Supersonic Flow on Wind Turbines

The use of windmill to denote wind turbines is similar to using hosue cat to describe a lion.

It does not convert the magnitude of difference. In fact it is used by climate change deniers to evoke images of quaint medieval windmills calmly doing very little work.

[Workingman]

Thanks for the link confirming my Ladybird version for the masses. The new offerings from Vestas, Siemens Gamesa and GE’s Haliade-X with their 230m+ diameter rotors are all pushing tip speeds into the transonic area depending on atmospheric and other conditions. We are probably nearing the limit of what can be reached with current designs.

When it comes to "Windmill" the word perfectly fits the technology. It is a structure to convert wind power to rotational energy to do work and was in use for centuries before the famous gristmills of Holland. I am no climate change denier, as you well know, and I will continue to use the term windmill in any way I see fit without seeking permission from anyone at any time.

[Suff]

OK WM I will accede to your wish to use the term "windmill" to define 21st century wind power technology. So long as you don't mind my mentioning that modern wind turbines have sod all to do with the visual image of the medieval windmill and produce levels of power usually seen in on land power stations.

I know you are not a climate change denier. But those who are use the words of the community for their own ends. Windmill is used to set an expectation that these turbines generate a few teaspoons of energy and are offline most of the time, making them useless.

In fact the 50GW of UK wind turbines we will have by 2030 will produce more energy than our entire current and proposed Nuclear generation (46% net energy gives 23GW real power). So I'm a little bit sensitive about it. Messaging is a big problem and the denial group latched onto that very early and also onto the integrity of the scientists in the field. So they would ask loaded questions like "Was this storm as a result of Global Warming" to which the scientist would immediately say that you can't allocate any single weather event to Global Warming. Which ordinary people translates as a NO it was not driven by Global Warming. There was a lot of education going on about 2 decades ago and the science community were told how to respond. "If I turn that question around and ask if this storm would have occurred without Global Warming, the answer is almost certainly not". Which the ordinary person translates as Yes it was driven by Global Warming.

Hence my nitpicking.

Interesting news on the wind turbine front. The CFD (contracts for difference), on the latest 7GW of wind farms is down to £37.5 per MW/h. Which means if it drops below £37.5, the government pays the wind farm company but if it goes over £37.5 the wind farm company pays the Government. Hinckley Point C, 3.2GW, has a CFD of over £90 per MW/h. Expect a large amount of whinging about the cost of Nuclear. BTW I'm still in support of it.

Finally the National Grid released a report, yesterday, on how they are going to factor in the new wind farms (100gw by 2050 but this one is only for the 50GW by 2030), by building offshore connection hubs and making wind farms connect to them instead of building their own custom offshore/onshore connector. £54bn. The sad point is when they tell us how this will save us money. £5.5bn. Good eh? (£2.18 per year for every British energy consumer) <sigh>