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Thanks to Marcia and Dave
I’m sorry, I promised an extra Therapeutic Thursday this week, but Dave was kind enough to write an article on the power situation (of which there is a third section to follow after the weekend). I hope you will forgive me… or rather Munguin, for I was acting upon his orders.
Here’s a little film that I came across that I thought you would enjoy.
Troubles ahead
The old AGRs , 8 of them, will be unlicensed by 2028, that’s 5GW of base load gone. They are already getting past it, trouble with the graphite core bricks cracking and last month 4 were offline due to a steam valve rupture on the eldest, caused all to be inspected. Of course we all know about it as it was all over the media, aye right.
Electric vehicles
Vehicular traffic is back to pre pandemic levels and we were seeing more battery powered cars in traffic, lately range restrictions and lack of charging points have seen a downturn. Not helped by the chancer introducing vehicle excise duties to luxury cars, backdated.
The batteries are around the 60kW capacity and require a 30amp source to charge them, the charger is in the car. That’s an over night charge if at home at 35p a unit, motorway charging is double that, a kW will take you about a couple of miles, depending on the vehicle.
The Tesla heavy truck has a 1000kW battery and has a range of 500 miles , it is said.
Currently there are around 500,000 on the road.
I live in a street of 60 homes, everyone has a least one car, some have more. There are about 6 electric vehicle sources, not nosy but they stand out.
Each house is at present heated by gas, their pump consumes around 500W when running the circulation pump, each house has a 100 amp mains connection and the grid can handle the load as not all houses will be consuming maximum demand, diversity allows for the load.
If we moved to 60 electric cars in the street, charging overnight, the whole street will require rewiring , new meters, larger diameter cables, new protection and an upgraded grid transformer.
Just one street of a small city.
Heat pumps
The use of natural gas , a fossil fuel, is to be phased out and heat pumps installed in each home, currently priced at £15k with a £7k grant, so around £1m to upgrade the whole street and a time scale of 2 to 3 years.
Companies and staff to complete the work? Have you seen any courses being pushed from your local college?
Now the good news. Heat pumps work really well at heating houses…in the summer, not so well in the winter. Pity we live in a cold climate. Global warming will help.
Remember the hot water tank we used to have for washing, that was thrown out with the gas combi boilers, well you will need to install an immersion heater and tank again, heat pumps aren’t good at heating homes and water to 40 degrees C. at the same time. Pity.
They use electricity to run them, essentially a refrigerator working in reverse so more electrical load on your grid transformer.
The heat pumps come in two forms, air sourced and ground source.
The air source type look like an air conditioning unit with air fans that are said to be carefully positioned due to the noise.
The ground source type have a long pipe that gets buried in your garden to pick up the heat. They need a hefty 4kW supply to heat a small house , that will give about 8-30kW of heat into your new radiators.
Electrical power is currently four times the price of a unit of gas, gas boilers are about 70% efficient.
I’m sure your government will level up the pricing. Energy is a Reserved Matter.
Fossil fuels
We will still be using diesel fuel for transport, aircraft , busses, rural trains and ferries.
The two new ones being completed at Port Glasgow are to use natural gas or diesel, for the next 25 years.
The container ships that deliver our requirements from the far east will be still using fossil fuels, possibly back to wind in the future.
So from the title ‘What is the Plan?
Our politicians have been busy with Brexit, asylum seekers, water companies, PPE, far too busy to plan ahead.
Busy blowing Syria up.
Running down the NHS for privatisation.
Selling off utilities.
Cutting services.
Global warming is spun as a scam.
What’s the plan? Seems they do nothing, that’s the midget’s plan, same as his buddy Johnson’s, keep stirring the pot as they play out their pantomime at Westmonster.
I’ve missed lots, feel free to add your own experiences, maybe we can get Scotland to a more sensible place.
Part three to come.
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And to cheer you up…
Seen in the Clyde :
(Thanks to Hetty)
The planet will be fine when the humans render the atmosphere unfit to support mammals , it will continue to wend its way around the local star. What life will survive and remain alive is hard to predict, plants and insects I suppose may continue in areas much like some reptilians survived the great extinction of the dinosaur.
We are committed to fossil fuels at present, large quantities of natural gas, coal, wood and oil. Add in the nuclear, wind, solar, hydro and so far little tidal.
That is the energy supply methodology used on the electric grid.
We import electrical energy from Europe to supplement the grid through DC cable systems , I’ll include the Irish connectors as European although one is the north of Ireland. The DC conversion system is used due to the frequencies used, 50hz in Britain and 60hz in most European countries.it is not very efficient but reduced losses through leakage are a plus.
The grid at present can supply a maximum load of 55GW, made up from
30GW of combined cycle gas turbines, efficiencies of 60+%can be achieved.
7GW of nuclear
20GW of wind
3GW of pumped storage
2GW of conventional hydro
3GW of bio fuel, cat litter from trees imported from the Americas. Coal is burnt with it.
1.5GW of coal, still in use, cleverly decommissioned the rest.
1.5GW of open cycle gas turbines. Old plant about 20%efficient
A couple of GW of mixed sourced plants, burning rubbish, small hydro.
That’s a total of around 70GW so, on paper, we have plenty of plant. Just last month the AGRs were offline due to a throttle valve problem, not reported by your media, that was 2.5GW lost.
Wind is variable, virtually none over the last weekend as the high pressure area was centered over the British isles.
Solar of course works during daylight, less in winter than summer.
Hydro relies on rainfall.
Biomass is imported in vlcc tanker from Canada, using bunker oil.
Pumped storage is really a battery, needs recharged overnight, using nuclear stations.
There are 10 off DC cable systems
4 from France utilising their nuclear, 4GW
1 from Netherlands 1GW
1 from Belgium 1GW
1 from Denmark 1.4GW
1 from Norway 1.4GW
That’s 8 GW, they’re bidirectional but mainly supply.
The two Irish ones are 500MW each, one to Eire and the other the north of Ireland, both mainly take energy from Wales and Scotland.
These feed into the super grid that surrounds the uk, mainly from the central belt southwards, the highlands are not connected as yet., a mix of high voltage overhead lines.
Your home will be fed from a transformer local to you at 450v , 3 phase, a single phase of 240v is your supply, now harmonised at 230v over Europe. Local transmission supplied from 11kv, 33kv or 120kv if industry near. The trains are supplied at 25kv, trams and underground have their own.
Certainly gas turbine stations can be commissioned reasonably quickly, 2 to 3 years, getting longer as worldwide other countries are installing, they burn natural gas, imported to the UK, large quantities from west of Shetland, transferred by gas tanker.
We are already said to have reached peak oil and gas, only Antarctica to be surveyed, bit tricky as there’s frozen water, pretty thick just now. No doubt there will be further discoveries, big oil will have the easy ones already.
The big oil areas are Russia and Saudi, with smaller reservoirs in Australia, gulf, South America and North Sea. The North Sea is moving to total extraction using water injection to get some more out, eventually the recovery takes more energy than you get out but reducing levels of supply will increase the selling price.
Troubles ahead.
[To be continued…]
Scottish Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh in the London parliament, Chris Murray, says:
“Great to be out chatting to people in Meadowbank today.
“Like me, many people are angry about the Scottish Government ditching our climate targets.
“Climate change is the most pressing issue facing the planet – we need serious, realistic, achievable policy to get to net zero.”
So, I’m not best pleased about it either. But I can’t help but think that it’s a tad hypocritical of Labour to make a big thing of it, given what their London bosses are doing.
Maybe want to have a word with Rachel, Chris. At least she was paid to do it.
And, while I have little doubt that some people may be concerned about this, I also doubt that it is the most pressing thing on their minds when they meet politicians.
Although I have a green agenda, there are more pressing matters that I’d be mentioning should I have the misfortune to bang into a candidate for the English parliament… feeding kids, making sure electricity and gas bills are payable, trying t attract more NHS staff, filling in potholes… and on and on.
It might be fair to mention to those who put it first on the agenda, that the Scottish government has approved a massive wind farm, the biggest in Europe.
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My respect for Anas Sarwar would increase dramatically if he had the nerve to tell Starmer where to get off. But I doubt if he does. He will find, like other branch foremen/women before him, that decisions about Scotland and “Scottish” Labour, are made in London by their betters.
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Sweetheart, absolutely NOTHING with your face on it is for my consumption, you money grubbing lowlife.
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From YouGov:
Not maybe what the British peoples want quite as much as you keep telling us, Sunak.
It will be interesting to see how it develops. I read that he has managed to get hold of an airline that will transport the refugees. AirTanker is reported to have been booked, going back on what they said when it was first suggested.
I imagine the flights will be worth a lot of money to them. But I’m not sure what it will do for their reputation. Still, it’s only taxpayers’ money and Sunak will pay out whatever it takes to get the job done before the election.
You can find out how your MP voted here.
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Munguin has already ordered the celebratory bottle in anticipation of winning this week, for the first time ever.
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6. Especially for our Welsh friends.
7. Safer there than in a river, beach or lake in England.
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9. Tell me, what colony do you belong to, mate?
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Hello. My name is Josh and I’m your guide for today.
2. Gotta get in quick before this peoples eats my breakfast.
3. This is Sushi, a new member of our Srem friends. She owns Claire. What a beauty.
4. Dirty work but someone’s got to do it.
5. One of Kay’s street cats that she looks after and takes to the vets. This is Dinka.
6. Aurora Australis over Munguin’s home.
7. Another of Kay’s street cats, again looked after and looking well. This one is called Ginga Ninja.
8. Just getting the soft furnishings in.
9. Nice of Munguin to lay on lunch.
10. It’s a family thing!
11. I’m hungry, but I don’t want what them rabbits are having. Some seed or corn would be nice (with a bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape, if you please.
12. A new species of ant has been named after Lord Voldemort… Not sure I see the resemblance. The ant is prettier.
13. We’ve had some heavy rain here, while in Bulgaria they have had almost none. However, in Australia they have had dreadful floods as the photographs in this article shows.
14. Would Munguin like to come for a swim?
15. Spirea out in Srem.
16. Awwww, isn’t that wonderful?
17. Yep. It will do for me too.
18. Smile … you’re on Soppy Sunday.
19. Some times the kindness of a person makes all the horrific behaviours of so many others disappear from your mind for just a few moments. Forget Putin, the Ayatollah, Sunak, Trump, Netanyahu and concentrate on this bird getting the drink of water it desperately needed.
20. OK that’s your lot for just now, but Munguin says he has a lot of pics in store and if politics gets any more horrible this week, maybe will have a Therapeutic Thursday or a Wonderful Wednesday.
We, at the Towers, would like to that Kay and Claire in Srem and Quokka in Australia. Also apologies to people waiting for replies to emails… I’m just really busy right now. I’m on it.
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Thanks to Marcia and Dave.
Mark Menzies, Tory MP for Fylde, appears to move in very strange circles.
It seems that he was “locked up” by “bad people” demanding thousands of pounds for his release.
Worse still, this happened in the middle of the night (3 am) and he was obliged to phone his ex-campaign manager there and then to try to get £5,000 to pay off these “bad people”.
The campaign manager, not unreasonably, told him to get lost…
So he had to try another one of his staff, and by this time the demand had risen to £6,500. (Why? Is inflation pretty steep in the ransom world?) This staff member got hold of £6,500 of her own money to bail him out. No one is saying how she managed to do this, given the time of night and the fact that there is a limit to how much money you can withdraw on a card without going into a bank, even if you could find a bank.
Here he is with another upstanding member of the Tóraí Party.
But it gets worse. Because instead of paying his staff member her £6,500 back out of his bank account, he chose to pay her out of campaign funds.
So, that’s a crime.
Also, what is suspicious to me is that the member of staff must have had an address to deliver the money to, and to collect the MP from, so why not call the police and direct them to that address to not deliver the money, but to grab the miscreants?
Mr Menzies appears to have form when it comes to misuse of campaign funds.
Fourteen thousand pounds of funds appears to have been used for medical expenses. (Sorry Mr Tory MP, is the English health service not good enough for the likes of you?)
According to Wikipedia, in 2017 Menzies was questioned by police over allegations he fed alcohol to a dog and had a brawl with a friend.
And what about the life and death of the dog?
The dog required emergency treatment for “intoxication” and “poisoning” but, despite the horror of the crime of trying to get a dog drunk (why?), Menzies was not charged. String pulling?
Menzies said his friend had attacked him and stated that the police had dropped their investigation after he showed them pictures of his friend plying the dog with alcoholic drinks. Maybe they charged his “friend”, but if he was taking pictures, presumably he was implicated in a horrible crime.
His history isn’t the greatest. He resigned as a ministerial aide to the International Development Secretary, Alan Duncan, in 2014 after a report he had paid a Brazilian male escort for sex and had attempted to get him to buy him drugs. Presumably out of his own money that time… but who knows?
The latest scandal was reported to the Tory Chief Whip three months ago. So obviously Mr Sunk takes swift and decisive action in matters of…well, theft. Or not.
Someone in the Tories must have annoyed Rupert Murdoch because The Times published the story last night.
This, at least, seems to have spurred the prime minister or his chief whip into some very belated action. Conclusion: it’s OK to use campaign funds to pay off kidnappers (and not inform the police). It is not OK to for the public to know about this and cause yet more embarrassment for Mr Sunk! (Yes, I really have stopped putting an “a” in his name.)
I think the public, which has been paying this man for so long, has the right to know why he was kidnapped; why he was prepared to pay (or rather have someone else pay) £6,500 ransom money to get set free instead of informing the police; whether having managed to get £6,500 out of someone, are the crooks likely to try again… and why the Tory authorities did nothing about it until The Times published the story.
Interesting thoughts…
Doctor De La Zouche pointed out this afternoon that after the Tóraí Party, Labour Party and the Scottish National Party, one of the the biggest groups in parliament is The Disgraced Conservative Party.
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Good luck.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 