Re: OT: EV Charging Stations Stripped of Copper Cables

On 5/07/2024 6:32 am, alan_m wrote:

On 04/07/2024 19:21, RJH wrote:
 

Interesting (to me) that the UK's consumption has gone *down* about 20% over
the past 50 years. Note I'm talking about the UK - the figures from that link
suggest that consumption and (not surprisingly) generation have been going
down for quite a while. Meanwhile, China has trebled, and India has doubled,
in the past 20 years.

 Possibly because of the UK having less heavy industry and importing our products that rely on heavy energy usage from China or the far east etc.
 Industries that were once heavy users of electricity probably had contractual agreements stating that it wouldn't be used in peak domestic times.
 

shows the annual rate of growth of generating capacity has been up to 6%
per year (though it been has closer to 2.5% per year recently), and if
we spread that 30% rise over six year it is 4.5% per year, which is
clearly practicable.
Cars and trucks don't get replaced every year. We aren't all going to go
over to electric vehicles fast enough to create any kind of insoluble
problem.

 Is that 30% in the past 6 years mainly due to the installation of more wind turbines which produce little when the wind barely blows for periods of weeks? Possibly also solar which produces little during the winter and nothing at night. Has there been a corresponding 30% increase in the backup capacity to fill the shortfall when wind fails? If the two are not matched then it's rather silly to rely only on extra intermittent power generation, especially during a cold winter.

The quote was that  the UK's *consumption* has gone *down* about
20% over the past 50 years.
Where  the power consumed has come from doesn't come into that.
With intermittent power sources you do need to install enough capacity to generate the total output you need - which is a lot more generating capacity  than you'd need if the sun shone and the wind blew all the time.
That does get figured into the cost of the power actually generated, and they are still the cheapest sources around. Once you've got a lot of intermittent renewable sources in your generating capacity, pumped or battery storage is also necessary. Fast start gas-turbine powered generators have been around for quite a while now, but they don't generate power as cheaply as renewable sources, and they would bbeing phased out even if they weren't CO2 emitters.

Although unlikely to happen within the timescales the green lobby would like there is also the move away from gas and oil to electric for central heating that will increase demand for electricity.

Sure. But heat pumps push out a lot more heat energy than the electrical energy used to drive the compressor.
--
Bill sloman, Sydney
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