Water meters and fracking

What do you think about the Run on Sun campaign to get schools to use solar power, Flickety?

I am all for renewables and always have been but I am also aware that wind and photovoltaics are inefficient and unreliable forms of energy and integrating them into the national grid is leading to gas power stations being paid by the government to burn gas to just keep their turbines warm, not produce power so that they can instantly be turned on when wind and sun disappear. This useless burning of fuel and emissions is part of the cost of wind power.

Water, on the other hand can produce power 24/7. Because it is reliable gas power stations do not need to be paid to be constantly on standby. It just strikes me as a tremendous waste of money to go ahead with offshore wind farms that are unbelievably expensive to build, unreliable, lead to gas being burnt to no purpose and have a limited life when we refuse to invest money in major tidal schemes that will produce far more power more reliably for less money because some wild life will be inconvenienced.

Not only that but the government has been financing the construction of diesel fuelled power units all over the country to provide black start facilities should there be a major electricity grid collapse as a result of the instability of managing a grid with wildly fluctuating loads of windpower. Diesel as you know is about the dirtiest and most polluting fuel that can be used for power generation. One wind power company owns just such a facility on a site local to me.

Yes, I thought this was particularly silly, Flickety. Surely there must be a way to get round the problem of stopping wind turbines and paying for gas.
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/11029583/Wind-farms-paid-record-sum-not-to-produce-electricity.html

However, the good thing is that 15% of electricity was produced by renewables that month. That was the target for 2020, but we know we can exceed it now.

You did not say what you think about the Run on Sun campaign. If all the schools were encouraged to do that, it would be the equivalent of solar farms, and feed into the grid, a win/win situation.
www.foe.co.uk/runonsun

I think solar farms are as unreliable as windfarms. They produce far less electricity in winter than summer and none at all at night, which is generally when a lot of power is required. When they are on buildings like schools, where all the electricity will be consumed on the premises and heating is only required during the day they do make sense, but I think wind and sun have their uses, but only in limited circumstances.

I think for effective renewable power we need to use water and nuclear power.

The one possible use for all this windpower is to take it off grid and use to produce hydrogen for use as a replacement for hydrocarbons in transport. Transport consumes more hydrocarbons than any other use, If we want to clean up the atmosphere it is replacement transport fuels that are the key. Except for cleaning up air in high pollution areas like cities, electric cars are not the answer because much of the electricity they use will be generated from gas, oil and coal.

Ecotricity has wind turbines and electric car points all over the country.
So if it is feeding power from wind into the grid and that power equates to the electricity used by electric cars, that should be a good thing.
If you think that's not possible, how can companies like Good Energy get away with saying that they only provide 100% renewable energy when all they do is trade, not produce.

The trick is to get a good mix isn't it Flicketyb . Hydro power is easier said than done.
Tides of course are very reliable (so reliable that they can be predicted precisely 1000s of years into the future ) and I agree with Galen that projects like the Severn Barrage are a sensible way to proceed. Nice little scheme going into Swansea docks.
Minor tidal turbines - difficult to find suitable places with the depth and the currents not too far off the grid.
We don't really have the rivers for hydro schemes to be put on them I think.
Ways to cheaply store the electricity generated by renewals is (are?) the holy grail.
Is diesel really more polluting than coal?

You know better than these engineers, do you, Jess?
www.freemansreach.co.uk/hydro-turbine-installed-at-freemans-reach/

A review of a discussion that took place at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Dixon, the head of Friends of the Earth Scotland and Zoe Shipton, a geologist from the University of Strathclyde between Richard Dixon, the head of Friends of the Earth Scotland, and Zoe Shipton, a geologist from the University of Strathclyde.

Fracking is mentioned but not water meters.

Gosh - no need to be cutting durhamjen. That is a very interesting development. I like a nice Archimedes screw. The biggest ones I have ever seen were pumping sewage over coastal defences and out into the Bristol Channel. Bit smelly to be a tourist attraction though
In order to power a turbine like this you require a certain kind of river. If it is a slow moving river, then there won't be sufficient kinetic energy in it to turn a turbine fast enough to make it worthwhile. I assume that the R Wear has a bit of oomph in it at Durham as there was previously a mill at the site. But I have never been there.
This is being installed as part of the obligation on new developments to be energy efficient. Seen some very silly token turbines next to new offices over the last few years. This looks a lot more useful. And probably much more expensive. The economics of installing one of these might not work out in many circumstances. (e.g. if you installed one to just get feed-in-tariiff off the grid, how long would it take to cover your cost of investment?)
My thinking is that most British rivers, by the time they have enough depth to install something like this, are not very fast moving.

Yes, the trick is to get a good mix, but the current mix is wrong with far too much reliance on unreliable forms of renewables and a tendency to reject most large hydro schemes out of hand because of concerns about wildlife.

I'm ashamed to admit that I only started to take an interest in fracking when it became an issue in the Scottish Referendum campaign. The non MSM media was principally concerned that Sir Ian Wood of the Wood group, a big supporter of the NO campaign, whose view that North Sea oil was diminishing was given extensive coverage, was also bidding for fracking licences in Central Scotland. There were also rumours that the UK Government were planning to remove house holder/landowner's rights to object to fracking under their land.

As our home sits right on the Ochil's fault line and within the designated area for fracking licences, this is obviously of great concern, but my online searches have not proved fruitful in finding unbiased opinions. Quite frankly the American stuff is so hyped up as to be unbelievable and most of the British stuff fails to recognise any risks at all, although, contrary to Bags information above, I have read that the first proposed scheme locally, at Airth on the other side of the Firth of Forth from here, plans to pump the waste water (or sludge) straight into the Forth, untreated, chemicals and all. Which means it will surely pollute the Forth which is tidal at that point, as far up as Stirling and as far down as Leith on one side and Aberdour, Burntisland and Dalgetty Bay(again!) on the other.

Now I discover that the UK Gov. has not only claimed the right to issue licences in Scotland under 'reserved powers' but has also indeed removed our rights to stop fracking under our own property: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-remove-barriers-to-onshore-oil-and-gas-and-deep-geothermal-exploration

I don't think I am being paranoid in believing that these official announcements (and the acknowledgement of 120+ years worth of oil in the Claire fields) were deliberately held back until after the referendum

I am as paranoid as you are, Granny23, in that case.
I checked up about the fracking rights because when we moved here, a previous mining area, lots of the houses on the market had clauses in the contracts about the previous owner having the mining rights, the previous owner being the NCB. This house did not have that clause. Presumably neither did the rest on this estate.
Nobody seemed to believe that Salmond was right about oil, despite the fact that his previous job was as an oil economist. He may not have been up-to-date but at least he knew how and where to find out what he wanted to know about oil reserves.
Just read a good article about party membership. Apparently the SDP and Plaid Cymru have half the numbers of the tory party, lots of them joining since the referendum.
Another good piece of news is that the number of customers joining Ecotricity is going up by nearly 1000 a week.