I am not happy about being right

[Workingman]

All perfectly correct, as Suff says.

The problem is that we are dealing with politicians and they have put all our eggs in one basket.

Now to other things. According to my old maths.

Using electrolysis takes 41.4kWh of energy to produce 1kg of hydrogen. Hydrogen contains 39.4kWk of energy. That is a "loss" of 2kWh for every 1kg of hydrogen. And don't forget that Ikg of hydrogen contains about 3.3 times that of petrol. We could use night time wind and my old favourite, small scale hydro, to electrolyse water for next to nothing. We certainly do not need 100s of new power stations.

Hydrogen will never replace the hydrocarbon fleet, but neither will EVs. We need a mix and that includes better networks of public transport.

[Suff]

My friend did an analysis of wind power for his home. He worked out that to get any reasonable amount of usable power from wind he would have to have a 25m tower in his garden with a huge rotor on it...

I must admit I did have a thought about Hydrogen separation. Pretty much like the reverse osmosis used in the water generation units in ships and the one's we use in London.

Put a graphene layer with a mask that only allows hydrogen through onto a vacuum vessel which has holes under the graphene. Vacate the cylinder and wait. Seems sound to me. If you can convince anyone of that one, be my guest.

For current hydrogen we're in a losing game compared to pumping oil out of the ground and cracking it into fuel, in terms of energy in v energy out.

I think that more research on HDR geothermal would be better. For that we could use it to electrolyse hydrogen in local areas. Avoiding the need to transport hydrogen all over the country. After all we have taps everywhere already.

[Workingman]

I think that more research on HDR geothermal would be better. For that we could use it to electrolyse hydrogen in local areas. Avoiding the need to transport hydrogen all over the country. After all we have taps everywhere already.

Not disagreeing, but don't lock out the bee in my bonnet - small scale hydro - there's a good chap.

[Suff]

I think that more research on HDR geothermal would be better. For that we could use it to electrolyse hydrogen in local areas. Avoiding the need to transport hydrogen all over the country. After all we have taps everywhere already.

Not disagreeing, but don't lock out the bee in my bonnet - small scale hydro - there's a good chap.

NO, not at all. I'm very much in favour of that as I've said before. Just slipped my mind.

[Suff]

WM, something I fell over the other day.

Important points being that

The couple’s experience has helped smooth the path for those who came after the earliest adopters. They secured a grant to help set up a network of projects across the country, which they hope will be up and running soon

A 2010 report from the British Hydro Association identified over 1600 possible sites.

At the time of the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066—which Tellisford Mill pre-dates—there were upwards of 5,000 mills on the UK’s rivers.

The bad point is the way the local council used their powers to try and stop it.

This, also, is extremely interesting. Especially the pre form and quick deployment of the Belgian companies design. They claim it can be installed in 6 days.

[Workingman]

Suff, thanks for the links.

I did not know about the Tellisford Mill project, but I did know about "the sink" and other vertical rotor systems with hardly any head. If the water can be made to "spin" before it hits the rotor it is job done. It can be added to using the Coriolis effect, but this is fairly small.

There is also a link to the "Waterotor" that looks like a development of the rotating weir you might have seen me mention. The brilliant thing about Waterotor is that it looks like a very good candidate for emergency use in disasters - as well as permanent use.

There is currently and earthquake disaster in Indonesia and rescue efforts are being hampered by failures in the power grid.

[Suff]

These Tutorials are interesting to read. However they did not cover the Archimedes screw type which was disappointing. I'd have liked to see the efficiency comparison.

Using an entire weir as a waterotor sounds extremely interesting. But getting our councils to do anything about it would be a nightmare. Perhaps if our government had a two layer scheme, one to restrict council funding if they did not produce clean energy and another which gives them additional funds and grants, if they do. With a specific set of funding for water based generation.

I'm sure that would remove a LOT of politically motivated restrictions. But I doubt we'll see it. One of the things they cannot do, any more, is fund renewable electricity by paying more than it is worth on the market. It is time we started putting in renewables at current cost.

[AliasAggers]

I think it would make more sense if attempts were made to reduce the number of cars on the roads.

We managed quite well without them in the days of my youth.
People found employment within walking or cycling distance of their homes, and were quite happy to do so.

It is affluent society that has made this and many other aspects of life today ridiculously unacceptable.
If this trend keeps up there will come a time when life will not be worth living, all because of mankind's innovations.

You wait and see!!!

[medsec222]

In our day buses were plentiful and you didn't have to wait too long before one arrived. Also the fares were so cheap.

[Suff]

Yes meds, but so were drivers and conductors and so was fuel. A bus driver in London earns between £20,000 and £31,000 a year, depending on experience.

Also people, especially from outside the city, tend to use cars. So busses are even less used.

Aggers, whilst I do agree with the sentiment that a simpler life might be a better life, for a lot of people, solving the climate crisis and the attendant energy problem requires a rapid move forward, not backwards.

We are where we are and mobility is a key foundation for our economy and our lives. Yes I would prefer that the school run was not happening for people who live less than a mile from school, but the only way to do that would be to ban vehicles from school roads for an hour either side of school start and end. This would cause quite a lot of other problems.

What I would like to see is that post Brexit the UK drops the EU tariffs on Chinese solar products (It was only to protect Germany anyway), then push heavily into renewables in all areas.

Not that I'll see it, but we can always hope. Even Chinese solar products have gone up in price because the two largest Chinese companies making them went bust after the EU levied their taxes.

There is even some thinking that when we get enough EV cars on the roads, their batteries can be used to even out the supply problems. Especially in homes where old EV batteries can be used to charge in the night and ease the peak load during the day.

We need to keep moving forward but also we need to keep innovating at a local level and rivers are a really good opportunity for the UK to do that.