wewbull
@wewbull@feddit.uk
- Comment on UK would need forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset new airport expansion. 2 days ago:
Ok, I see where you’re coming from and agree.
- Comment on UK would need forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset new airport expansion. 4 days ago:
An electric plane will expend similar levels of energy to a jet plane.
- Comment on UK would need forest ‘twice size of London’ to offset new airport expansion. 4 days ago:
Increasing airport size as a way to stimulate economic growth seems like dated thinking to me. Flights are increasingly not used for business travel as communications technology has advanced. All you’re really doing is trying to maintain hub status for London which doesn’t drive economic activity outside of the airport industry.
Heathrow needs a third runway as much as it needs a rollercoaster. A huge construction project, with all the emissions that brings, that paves over houses, green spaces and the M25 (on a bridge).
Finally, I guess we can see why Labour whipped against the environment bill last week.
- Comment on California just debunked a big myth about renewable energy 5 days ago:
Where have you seen that, what a terrible idea!
In the user manuals for the inverters I’ve looked at installing. Same is true for many battery inverters.
If they need to integrate with a grid supply at all, they must switch at precisely the right frequency. Mains frequency drifts and so that frequency must come from the grid.
Now some will also have a grid isolated mode where they can generate their own frequency when there’s no other option, but that’s not on all models as it’s a feature they don’t need for 99.99% of their life, especially when grid operators generally don’t want people energising the grid from their batteries when the mains is down as it puts workmen at risk. Cables become live at unexpected times. So if you do have an inverter cable of running without mains you also have to have isolation switch so you only energised your own wiring.
An alternative is a separate isolated output that only ever runs on the generated power and not the mains, but that’s a pain for all the rest of the time.
- Comment on California just debunked a big myth about renewable energy 5 days ago:
Right but, for example,
- most solar Inverters require a power supply to operate and define the switching frequency.
- Distributed storage and private generation may have enabled some areas to get by on reduced supply.
- Turbines and solar farms may have been in locations threatened by the fires or been damaged by ash / other debris.
- Repairing grid structure whilst the may be private batteries or generation online (damaged or not) might slow things down for safety reasons.
Once the electrons are on the wires I agree with you, it’s all much the same. However there are other aspects and I expect we’re still learning the good and the bad.
- Comment on California just debunked a big myth about renewable energy 6 days ago:
I’d be more interested to know how things have been in the recent disaster scenarios. The fires have downed power infrastructure all over the place. Have renewables been a positive, negative, or no different in terms of keeping the power on for people?
- Comment on UK ‘one of world’s least work-oriented countries’ claims BrewDog founder - as he slams obsession with 'work-life balance' 2 weeks ago:
As a shareholder he has no say in that. The company directors say how much dividend is paid, and he is no longer one of them.
- Comment on UK ‘one of world’s least work-oriented countries’ claims BrewDog founder - as he slams obsession with 'work-life balance' 2 weeks ago:
Only in the form of dividends, if brewdog pays them.
- Comment on Norwich restaurant charges £100 for a pineapple pizza 2 weeks ago:
Seems like it really should be down at number 8.
- Comment on Firms to raise prices due to tax and wage increases 3 weeks ago:
“Firms” here is very non specific. How many of those surveyed are consumer facing?
- Comment on "It seems likely Elon Musk has lost over half of the UK twitter daily audience by now" 3 weeks ago:
If you want a good example of the damage echo chambers can do, look at the democrat performance in last year’s election. To get people to vote for you you have to listen and respond to their concerns.
You may not agree with their proposed solutions, but you can’t ignore whole segments of society.
- Comment on Elon Musk makes 23 posts urging King Charles III to overthrow UK government 3 weeks ago:
I think he’s more a K man.
- Comment on Renewables supply 71% of Portugal’s electricity in 2024, led by solar 3 weeks ago:
Weird definition of “led by solar”
Hydroelectric and wind power each contributed 28% and 27% of electricity generation, respectively, with PV providing 10% and biomass 6%. REN noted that solar production grew 37% year on year, driven by rapid capacity expansion.
- Comment on Meta’s AI Profiles Are Already Polluting Instagram and Facebook With Slop 3 weeks ago:
Join once. Leave seven hundred and twelvety times.
- Comment on LegalEagle Suing PayPal's Honey 3 weeks ago:
My problem here, and I don’t mean to victim blame but I don’t understand why anybody thought Honey had a business model that was trustworthy. Most people would see through the slimy guy in your example, so why would they install a slimy guy in their browser? Why would people take sponsorship from a slimy guy? Why would they read our copy that tells kids to “install it on every computer in the house”?
Nobody asked themselves “How does Honey make money out of this?” because at the very least they were going to be data scraping! That much was obvious.
- Comment on German Power Slips Below Zero as Negative-Price Phenomenon Grows 3 weeks ago:
It also happened in the UK and I suspect other European countries with significant wind generation. Is this still a rare event in Germany? 2-3 times a month isn’t uncommon here. Especially in the winter.
- Comment on Apple CEO Tim Cook Donating $1 Million to Trump's Inaugural Fund 3 weeks ago:
I struggle to call this capitalism. It’s so twisted and corrupt it doesn’t resemble what it started out as.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 4 weeks ago:
Yes it’s imports. Norway / France and Netherlands mainly.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 4 weeks ago:
It’s the coal they’re burning.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 4 weeks ago:
UK for comparison (Average over year)
GW % Coal 0.18 0.6 Gas 8.31 27.7 Solar 1.52 5.1 Wind 9.36 31.1 Hydroelectric 0.41 1.4 Nuclear 4.36 14.5 Biomass 2.15 7.1 - Comment on Europe’s battery dreams die, but China cashes in 1 month ago:
Still, building a European battery industry was always a long shot at best, since China supplies about 80% of the world’s lithium-ion batteries and is home to six of the world’s largest EV battery makers, the report said.
Well that’s a defeatist take. We can’t have a European battery manufacturer because China has all the battery manufacturers. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a need for more.
- Comment on British Army successfully tests new drone-destroying laser 1 month ago:
Unlike conventional munitions, laser weapons are virtually limitless in terms of ammunition supply,
We have trucks with limitless energy!
- Comment on Battery Electric Vehicles still being shunned by EU buyers 2 months ago:
I’m really confused by this supposed EV slump. In the US maybe, because of Tesla being dominant and now falling out of favour with a lot of people, but that’s not the EU.
Data only goes up to 2023, but…
Further progress in the uptake of electric cars and vans was made in all 27 EU Member States in 2023. Electric vehicles accounted for 22.7% of new car registrations and 7.7% of new van registrations. In total, 2.4 million new electric cars were registered in 2023, up from 2 million in 2022. Registrations of new battery electric cars grew by 37%, while the number of newly registered plug-in hybrid cars fell by almost 4%. In 2023, a total of 91,000 new electric vans were registered, most of which were battery electric.
eea.europa.eu/…/new-registrations-of-electric-veh…
That show BEVs steadily increasing and PHEVs flatlining, and I don’t see why 2024 would be particularly different.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
Investments in nuclear power are not taking money away from investments in solar.
This is interesting. Why do you think that?
I would disagree, because is see investment capital as finite. There are only so many investors able to operate at infrastructure scales. And therefore I see nuclear’s true cost as opportunity cost.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
The land thing isn’t anywhere near enough of a concern for me, especially when dual uses of land are quite feasible.
24/7 is just about over commissioning and having storage. Build 10x as much and store what you generate. At those sorts of levels even an overcast day generates.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
Storage. It’s all about storage. In exactly the same way that our water is handled. We have reservoirs to handle the times when natural water supply is low.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
You’re using factors of less than 10 to argue against a factor of 100.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
- Finland: 338,145 km² and 5.6 million people
- Germany: 357,596 km² and 82 million people
Where do you want to put your hazardous waste again?
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
Finland with it’s vast swathes of frozen tundra.
- Comment on Solar modules now selling for less than €0.06/W in Europe 2 months ago:
$60k per MW or $210M for a nuclear reactors worth (3.5GW). Sure… the reactor will go 24/7 (between maintenance and refuelling down times, and will use less land (1.75km² Vs ~40km²) but at 1% of the cost, why are we still talking about nuclear.
(I’m using the UKs Hinckley Point C power station as reference)
