Part three of Dave’s piece on the grid
Dave’s plan
House insulation.
Triple glazing.
Draught proof , with controlled vents.
Heat recovery from sinks and bath/shower.
More local transport.
District heating schemes.
Smaller power vehicles.
Working from home where possible.
Expand local food production using waste heating for greenhouses.
Solar water heating.
Restrict lighting to led, low power.
Reduce street lighting power.
Scrap open cycle gas turbines.
New closed cycle gas turbine stations to power district heating.
More pumped storage to be paired with wind farms to store energy when winds blow.
Improve tidal power and tie with pumped storage to time shift power from tides.
At present, only nuclear can provide base load for for windless days.
Local hydro from rivers.
Trains for longer distance travel, electric
Restrict aircraft use to husband fossil fuels.
Methane gas recovery from bio waste for fuel.
Bio fuels from waste, to alcohols.
Battery power for household gardening equipment, charged by renewables.
Wind generators on chimneys.
Restrictions in air conditioning using refrigerants.
Restrictions in plastics that are not recyclable.
What can you add?
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Small-scale hydro for district systems.
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https://www.fas.scot/downloads/technical-note-tn680-hydropower-small-scale/
Seems like it’s a very practical solution.
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Hydrogen.
The technology is simple, electricity and water make hydrogen which can be collected easily.
Drawback is that hydrogen is dangerous stuff but at an industrial level it could be used to store surplus energy from windfarms and reburned pollution free as needed to generate electricity again.
There have been ideas around hydrogen powered battery cells for vehicles.
Not sure I would want it piped into my house for use in a boiler though.
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Hydrogen works quite nicely for domestic heating for those alreadyn cannected to the gas grid. It’s not significantly more dangerous than the current methane (as it’s very light, escapes of hydrogen go out the window pretty quick.) The currently-running multi-year upgrade of the gas grid fortuitoyusly nuses pipes campatible with hydrogen. There would need to be a major scheme of re-working current gas appliances (mosly repacing jets, I understand.) This re-work looks similar to the 1970’s re-work when we switched from town gas to North Sea gas (ie methane).
Catch is of course the cost of producing hydrogen from electricity. Any conversion process will be less than 100% efficency. So superficially, going electricity => hydrogen => heat is less effic8ient than going electricity => heat. Big upsige is that gas is easy to store – we already have gasometers lying idle, whereas electricity is difficult to store.
Essentially, we need to do everything on Dave’s list. Some of it we are already doing – open cycle gas turbines are there as emergency back-ups when the grid id approaching being overwhelmed. Most of the time, they are idle.
Gridwatch https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php is an excellent was of knowingn what ghoing on with GB electricity. Currently showing 0.13% open-cycle gas generation, 29.7% wind generation.
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Is it any more dangerous than the gas we already have in our homes, though, Sandy?
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Nothing scientific that I know of Tris, but I remember playing with it in school chemistry lessons and the pop it made in those little test tubes was impressive. Scale that up to a house full and I guess it might take out half the street.
As for the “less than 100% efficiency” argument, I don’t buy it. If used to soak up excess energy at times of overproduction anything is preferable to the 0% efficiency of turning the windfarms off and paying the power companies to do so.
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Regarding hydrogen production; it takes less energy to break hydrogen off urine than it does to break it off water because the atomic bonds are weaker – presumably from ammonia. I’d have hydrogen production powered by wind and solar at sewage plants as an assist to product breakdown.
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Interesting idea… and why not.
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Robert: There was a massive changing of equipment in the 70s at no cost to customers. I wonder if the government would be able or willing to take that cost now.
I found this which might be of interest.
https://www.quora.com/UK-in-1960s-70s-switched-from-town-gas-to-natural-gas-That-required-modification-to-appliances-What-was-the-change-If-we-were-to-switch-to-hydrogen-as-Mains-gas-how-difficult-would-the-change-be-now-for-modern
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Thank for the link. Quora will always yield a discussion on anything!
The discussion is USA based. GB has the great advantage of having already comitted to upgrading the gas grid, using polythene pipes, which work fine with hydrogen. So it’s the boilers and cookers which need change or upgrade. I recall the previous upgrade happening in trhe early 1970’s. IIRC the was a preliminary scoping visit to determine what parts were needed, followed by a hour-long fitting visit. Expensive when rolled out GB wise, but demonstatedly do-able.
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Yes, It is certainly doable, and would create a LOT of jobs, which is good for the economy.
I wonder where we would get the labour.
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Montrose with it’s tidal basin filling/emptying twice a day, would be an ideal location for some sort of tidal turbine scheme, you would think,
ScotsGov advisors have other ideas tho and proposals a few years ago were knocked back by SEPA and the rest.
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Did they say why?
It is pretty massive and (I speak as a guy with absolutely no knowledge/qualifications in this area) would seem to be a sensible place to work on something like that.
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seals like to go for a wee kip in the basin at low tide,
https://www.finavoncastlefishing.co.uk/bulletin/?p=4274
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Dave says:
When the erskine bridge was a project the alternative was to be a barrage scheme at Dunoon, lock gates to allow shipping into/out of the Clyde. Advantage would be Argyll would have an extra road route as vehicles would cross the barrage.
Remember that the nuclear stations are dumping huge quantities of warm water into the atmosphere, either into rivers or estuaries.
A 600MW unit, there are 10 at present, releases nearly 800 MW of heat as a by product of electricity and plutonium production.
That’s a lot of global warming and the Drax bio units are just as inefficient.
Waste reduction is a good place to start.
Islay had a wave generation design in use, no knowledge of what it’s current state is.
Agree the hydrogen in the gas supply is possibly a help with wind generation being kept online during fresh windage but the hydrogen has less specific energy than methane, you would burn more volume for the same heating. Much like adding bio fuels to liquid fuels for cars, you use more.
The installation costs of dams in sea lochs to utilise the tides is a wee problem , the good part is they will last for a century or more.
Hydro dams are getting on but the machinery can be replaced, cruachan is getting two of its units replaced after 50 years, with an increase in output.
That’s before the new station project is started.
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Also from Dave:
Good start to the response to part 3.
At least some of your group of friends are reading it, I don’t have all the solutions , the idea is to raise awareness of the future.
The infrastructure needs to be upgraded but better would be we reduce our use of fossil fuels by intelligence, waste of the energy from fossils are the problem, cars with liquid fuels are aboutb20% efficient at best, rest of the heat is put into the atmosphere.
The biggest laugh yet was the GE release of an electric vehicle, pushing reductions in emissions, powered from a power station burning Coal.
Still it’s a start, maybe someone in Holyrood will have read it.
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tris
how it feel !really feel ? To see all yours hope and wishes crash and 🔥 burn ..:
As Indy 2 just slips from your grasps
orrible ! orrible !
wot the fuk …
do you now how I felt as as old Labour faded into new Labour
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I’m not sure they really have Niko.
The more ghastly it is to be in the UK, the more the figures from independence rise, SNP/Alba/Green troubles or not.
In a way, New New Labour, which will certainly be the next English government and probably the next Scottish government could be a good thing for the independence movement.
Over the last 18 years, we’ve seen a lot of good stuff for ordinary people from the SNP and then SNP/Green government. But lets be honest. No one should be in government for that long. They get tired and stale and people are fed up with them. And for whatever reason we lost two good leaders and ended up with a not so good one.
I’ve listened to Labour saying that it’s time for a change and they are that change, but on every single occasion when I have asked them what change they will bring, there has been no reply.
All the promises that Sir Starmer made when he was trying to win the job, have been thrown out.
He also has made it clear that there can only be one Labour Party in the UK, and that the branches must do what he says.
So, if later this year Sir Starmer is the PM, and then in two years … or before, Anas Sarwar is the branch manager FM. it will be interesting to see if we lose some of the progressive policies we have.
One example is the far more humane treatment of sick people here in Scotland
under Tèarainteachd Shòisealta Alba.
An example I saw personally. Someone I know has an autistic son, who is now in his 30s. Previously every two years he has had to apply for whatever benefit it is that he gets, and they’d have him in and someone interviews/interrogates him (not a doctor… the last time it was a physiotherapist).
The strain for the guy is enormous and he can’t handle the way he is treated. As there is no reversal of autism… if you are autistic you are for life… what is the point of this humiliation (which involves his parents too, as he can’t go on his own)?
Under the more humaine Scottish system, there is no need for that humiliation. They work on scientific facts… If you have something that can’t go away, they assume that it hasn’t gone away.
And that’s just one example. There are many things that are different here… and almost invariably better.
If we start losing these more progressive policies under Labour, the desire for independence may rise.
Or maybe people will just shrug their shoulders and say… we’re stuck here. Nothing we can do and they by and large have with Brexit.
Honestly don’t know what people will think.
I can’t imagine me liking a New New Labour government any more that the current mess.
But as always, I feel for you in that you had a party that had policies you agreed with… and then you didn’t.
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From Dave:
Good call on tidal supply.
Have a look at La Rance tidal power station, 240 MW generated from 24 reversible Kaplan bulb turbines.
Been in action from 1966.
The Awe Barrage river compensation water used to have the same bulb turbines to recover a couple of MW from the river needs.
Dave
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OT but fun…
https://www.facebook.com/reel/809195127858571
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In the Western Isles they have started (slowly!) trying to connect islands by causeways. Causeways! Solid barriers stopping the tide which now apparently cause further erosion of the dunes on the west coast.
Wouldn’t one answer have been to have incorporated turbines into the causeway? Share the cost of the build then the council would be responsible for the road – and the leccy company for maintaining their bit. Win-win surely? Or like most of the above too simple for the hard of thinking?
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Yes, indeed that does sound like sense… although obviously I dunno how practical it is. Anyone? Is it a possibility?
I’ve just found an email from Dave… and I’m not sure where it belongs, so I’ll stick it here…
From Dave
Just reading the comments,
The point Alex is missed is that his gas system will require fossil fuel gas for 10 to 15 years, burning gas.
A heat pump installation might have been a better move but the costs are too high.
I think the installers of gas have stocks of gas boilers to move before they get banned from installing gas.
Money has been spent.
That’s really my point, what’s the plan?
There doesn’t appear to be one, hence the slippage on net zero by Holyrood, we don’t control the levers necessary, energy is reserved to Westminster, they’re the control.
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It’s from the Scottish Daily Express…so treat it with the caution that implies
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/fury-snp-spend-35m-installing-32689351?int_source=nba
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Fair enough.
I’m dubious that we got all the facts there.
The Express LOATHES the SNP and Greens so, if there is a positive point here, and there almost certainly is, they will have left it out.
But… The Greens can be over ambitious at times.
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Scottish Daily Express, “£3.5m too much to help save the planet.”
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Daily Express! What can you say?
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From Dave:
Reply to jake,
Remember crown office is controlled by jack the lad from the borders.
More of the disinformation, not the snp government but the westmonster government.
Keep mixing up our two governments and what is devolved and what is retained.
Dave
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