Greenpeace helped create global warming...

[S2central.net]

The only reason wind farms exist is to make more money for the electricity companies... They get a whacking great subsidy (and PR qudos) for putting them up. Now lets remember these same electricity companies already have massive profits - they are making money from generating with oil & coal. When the wind blows, some of the grid energy comes from the wind and they can burn less carbon so all that happens is their profits go up - for every day the wind is blowing...

I heard a brilliant and true story just this week... A rather large telecoms company put together a business case (in one region of the UK in the 80's) where they proved it would have been cheaper for them to build their own power station and operate it themselves for 40 yrs than it was to buy electricity off their only supplier choice. They had hoped it would bring down their tariff when they presented this common sense analysis to the electric company. Amazingly, the electric company told them to go ahead with the plan if they wished, but as the phone company was the highest individual user of energy in the region, the electric people said they would have to amortise the lost revenue over everyone else's bill - and that they would explain why. The phone company had to just take it up the ***, cos of the feared public backlash... Now is the world feckin mad or what ?

[anton]

The problem with nuclear is legislation...by law they cannot bury the waste. so then create a bunker for it above ground...okay i guess for a while...Then, once a plant has been decomissioned..what every 30-40 years they cant build on it..so they build one next to it.....thats CRAZY!!! just build the damn things on top of each other and bury the waste...just make sure you can get down there incase one of them leaks....

Apparently there is ideas flying around for passive solar heating/storage and solar pannels for heating water and elec being mandatory on new builds before too much longer..i for one think thats a good idea!! maybe not the solar water heating in this country......

Ant

[EspenW]

Nuclear is the only way, without a shadow of doubt. Funnily enough, the greenies on these shores are starting to embrace it.
Not a bad word about biofuels, though. E85 is godsent for us turbo folks. I will soon present the graphs to prove it

[S2central.net]

Espen - yes I agree that biofuel has some great advantages and E85 seems to be one of the best, its just their isn't enough space on the planet to grow enough raw material to make it for general consumption... Great for niche markets like turbo nutters though !

[S2central.net]

Waste is the problem - theres physically not much of it per year - just that it requires proper handling and storage.

As for solar - I think that can work on a per house basis - as long as you can orient enough panels towards the sun for as much daylight as possible.

I know a guy who has some wacky idea for a point of use wind generator and some patent pending trickery that would legally have your electric meter stop when the wind is supplying enough juice - or make the meter go backwards when supplying more than the house is using. You don't sell back to the grid as such - you just get a lower bill... All completely legit - he just needs to build one and prove it works - you might see him on Dragon's Den one day

Paul

The problem with nuclear is legislation...by law they cannot bury the waste. so then create a bunker for it above ground...okay i guess for a while...Then, once a plant has been decomissioned..what every 30-40 years they cant build on it..so they build one next to it.....thats CRAZY!!! just build the damn things on top of each other and bury the waste...just make sure you can get down there incase one of them leaks....

Apparently there is ideas flying around for passive solar heating/storage and solar pannels for heating water and elec being mandatory on new builds before too much longer..i for one think thats a good idea!! maybe not the solar water heating in this country......

Ant

[anton]

Waste is the problem - theres physically not much of it per year - just that it requires proper handling and storage.

As for solar - I think that can work on a per house basis - as long as you can orient enough panels towards the sun for as much daylight as possible.

I know a guy who has some wacky idea for a point of use wind generator and some patent pending trickery that would legally have your electric meter stop when the wind is supplying enough juice - or make the meter go backwards when supplying more than the house is using. You don't sell back to the grid as such - you just get a lower bill... All completely legit - he just needs to build one and prove it works - you might see him on Dragon's Den one day

Paul

that sounds like a top plan!!! thats the one good thing about England....if its not sunny its windy...sometimes rain..but i dont think you can get much power from the rain lol

Ant

[S2central.net]

Hah - if Ireland could extract energy from rainfall we'd be laughing... When you think of all the countries like in the Scandics and parts of N.America and mountainous parts where they can use water (from rain or melted glaciers) as a free source of power... All Ireland needs is a decent mountain range where it can store all the rainfall and direct it into hydro plants. How does one build an artificial mountain range - bit of a problem there Einstein

[90quattrocoupe]

I know a guy who has some wacky idea for a point of use wind generator and some patent pending trickery that would legally have your electric meter stop when the wind is supplying enough juice - or make the meter go backwards when supplying more than the house is using. You don't sell back to the grid as such - you just get a lower bill... All completely legit - he just needs to build one and prove it works - you might see him on Dragon's Den one day

Paul

Actually, we already have this in California. If you produce electricity, by means of solar or wind, and you are household, apt, or similiar, the power company has to give you credit for putting it on the grid.

Along these lines, the wife and I decided to put a 5.4KW, solar panel system on our garage roof. Over the last month that it has been installed, we produced 895KW. More than enough to meet the needs of this house hold. The meter runs backwards during the day, while we are producing power, and then runs forward at time we are not producing power. What ever we do not use, is given to us a credit, and rolls over to the next month. This runs on a yearly basis, and the credit resets to Zero at the end of one year and we will start again.

At the slope of our roof, we should produce about 9000 Kw a year. More than we need. So we are looking at changing out some gas appliances, such as clothes dryer and water heater, and replacing them with electrical. We will determine this when we see what excess power we have at the end of the year.

Greg W.

[Markarina]

don't get me wrong I have absolutely nothing against nuclear power, and in fact I agree it is the way forward, however I'm sure I read or saw a news article that said that energy wise nuclear power stations use more energy in their construction, running costs and decommissioning than they will actually generate??

Or was this just green peace propaganda??

[Fat Audi 80]

Jesus! HOW much electricity would it take to build one if that more than the thousands and thousands of Gigawatts the station produces when runnning.

I find that hard to believe!

Cheers,

Steve.

[Markarina]

it's not so much electricity but fuel for the construction vehicles, energy used to manufacture building materials and then the same again for when you rip it down x many years later.

In the theory the Prius is more environmentally friendly than other cars but when you do the analysis for manufacturing process and disposal of the car at end of life it's worst than most cars.

Lies, Damn lies and Statistics.

[Fat Audi 80]

Yeah, I realise the case with the Prius, but that contributes nothing once running (or provides limited savings over the alternatives). I would just be surprised that Nuclear Power station kicking out Gigawatts could not recoup its intial setup energy requirements within say a year or two!

Cheers,

Steve.

[S2central.net]

Sounds cool Greg - I dunno how the control circuitry is for that from solar panels, but I'm told there is some extra complexity when you have a wind powered source in that the phase of the voltage coming from the wind machine has to be aligned with the phase coming in from the grid. You must have some sort of blackbox that connects this solar system in thru your meter so that its somehow phase aligned...

We have a large south facing roof at the rear of the house - I've never done the maths on how long it would take for solar panels to pay for themselves, but it sure would be nice to be somewhat independent of the power company. A spreadsheet for a quiet night that one

Paul

Actually, we already have this in California. If you produce electricity, by means of solar or wind, and you are household, apt, or similiar, the power company has to give you credit for putting it on the grid.

Along these lines, the wife and I decided to put a 5.4KW, solar panel system on our garage roof. Over the last month that it has been installed, we produced 895KW. More than enough to meet the needs of this house hold. The meter runs backwards during the day, while we are producing power, and then runs forward at time we are not producing power. What ever we do not use, is given to us a credit, and rolls over to the next month. This runs on a yearly basis, and the credit resets to Zero at the end of one year and we will start again.

At the slope of our roof, we should produce about 9000 Kw a year. More than we need. So we are looking at changing out some gas appliances, such as clothes dryer and water heater, and replacing them with electrical. We will determine this when we see what excess power we have at the end of the year.

Greg W.

[s2driveruk]

decommisioning, nah just dig a very deep hole, lead and clay line it and drop the waste in...someone else in a few thousand years can sort it out once the half-life has been reached

[anton]

that solar roof looks great!! and the savings sound good too, out of interest could you tell us what the initial cost was??

As for the reactors using more than they produce i agree with Steve i find that far fetched, if you were talking about cost then i would be more likely to believe that as i know the government help them out with renuable and nuclear power...although even cost i'd struggle to believe..

Ant