Vocal Voices

About the cost of gas.

The surging price of gas has also sharpened the focus on renewable energy. Over the past week, gas for delivery the next day has cost £432 per megawatt hour, nine times higher than the £48MWh agreed at the last contract-for-difference auction round, analysis by climate information site Carbon Brief found.

Now as I recall the strike price for Hinckley point C is £94 per MW/h. It was considered ludicrous as recently as last year. Amazing what difference a year makes.

Hinkley will provide baseload 24/7. SMRs the same - if we are wise enough to follow that route.

Windmills and solar? Not without a mass storage solution that does not exist!

During war, might happen, defending a few hectares of a production site is easy compared to thousands of sq miles of sea.

I just found it enlightening that nobody is talking about how Hinckley is now really good value for 24x7 power. I had to find the relative costs in an article about wind turbines.

You have to think about who is pulling your chain.

I never said Hinkley was good value, £ wise, just that it gives baseload 24/7. Wind and solar do not and never will. They will not pick up the 45% of needs currently supplied by gas even if we blanket the whole of GB with them, whereas nuclear can... and probably will.

Interesting that Japan is starting to reopen its nuclear reactors after the natural disaster that was Fukushima, and is hoping to build more in its attempt to become largely carbon neutral by 2050.

There, the reality chain has been pulled.

The "your" was generic, mine as well as yours.

Wind will deliver 48% of energy. But only as an average over the year. In fact the goal is to deliver more than that, average, over the year.

My contention has always been that baseload has to be secured or the benefits of renewables will be lost amongst the brownouts and disconnections of a weaker and more fragile grid.

The Green/Renewable, eco warriors, don't agree with me. However WM, you do. Nuclear is one of those pillars. Which is why I support it so strongly even if it is 2x or 3x the cost of wind power. It only needs to be 20% of the total grid. With that we can balance the night lows and the times of low wind power. Offshore wind is almost never 0% power, but it is often too low to provide baseload.

Now that gas has been priced out of the market entirely, Nuclear looks like a bargain. Which is why I said it was good value.

BTW I also support 20% of an expanding grid. So more energy than 20% of current grid power. As energy consumption moves from gas and from fuelled vehicles the grid will expand. So Nuclear should expand to the same extent.

Yes, we do agree on some things.

Baseload has to be secured, for obvious reasons. The TV or X-Box might go off - then what?

Seriously, though. there are times when price has to placed way down the list of priorities. As we become ever more reliant on electricity, for just about everything, keeping it 'on' at all times is what matters the most.

Unfortunately green activists have successively demonized Coal, nuclear and then gas; and our politicians have buckled every time to this noisy pressure group.

Well, now we are all going to have to pay for it. We don't have sufficient baseload because coal has gone, nuclear is still being opposed and so is gas. Oh dear.

Energy policy has been a mess for years and maybe we need some power cuts to shock some snowflake millenials into the real world.

Cromwell wrote: Energy policy has been a mess for years and maybe we need some power cuts to shock some snowflake millenials into the real world.

I have three solar powered lights that each last for about seven hours, even on winter daylight.

My laptop gets about five hours from solar and has a TV dongle. I will remain informed even if the Internet fails.

The camping stove and gas bottle lasts months. Simple meals.

I can body wash from the sink, as we used to do, and I can stay warm by wearing clothes.

I absolutely refuse to be scared by these fictitious figures,

Workingman wrote:Yes, we do agree on some things.

We do.