Quotulatiousness

April 8, 2011

British study finds wind power even less economical than hoped

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:56

The assumption was that wind farms would produce 30% of their theoretical maximum over time (the wind doesn’t blow all the time, so no wind farm will ever produce 100% for more than a short period of time). This number now appears to be too optimistic:

A new analysis of wind energy supplied to the UK National Grid in recent years has shown that wind farms produce significantly less electricity than had been thought, and that they cause more problems for the Grid than had been believed.

The report [. . .] was commissioned by conservation charity the John Muir Trust and carried out by consulting engineer Stuart Young. It measured electricity actually metered as being delivered to the National Grid.

[. . .]

In general, then, one should assume that a wind farm will generate no more than 25 per cent of maximum capacity over time (and indeed this seems set to get worse as new super-large turbines come into service). Even over a year this will be up or down by a few per cent, making planning more difficult.

It gets worse, too, as wind power frequently drops to almost nothing. It tends to do this quite often just when demand is at its early-evening peak:

At each of the four highest peak demands of 2010 wind output was low being respectively 4.72%, 5.51%, 2.59% and 2.51% of capacity at peak demand.

And unfortunately the average capacity over time is pulled up significantly by brief windy periods. Wind output is actually below 20 per cent of maximum most of the time; it is below 10 per cent fully one-third of the time. Wind power needs a lot of thermal backup running most of the time to keep the lights on, but it also needs that backup to go away rapidly whenever the wind blows hard, or it won’t deliver even 25 per cent of capacity.

April 2, 2011

QotD: The nature of Harper’s “slap in the face” to Quebec

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

I labour over this history to place in context the astounding, even outré, comments offered by Canada’s First Separatist, Gilles Duceppe, on hearing of the proposed arrangement — which, I hasten to mention, is merely a $4.2-billion loan guarantee from Ottawa, not some massive outright subsidy. Mr. Duceppe, with a logic that can only belong to a man who gets paid to be a separatist by the government he’s trying to extinguish, called the deal “a direct attack on Quebec.”

What really bothers Mr. Duceppe and other separatists is that they want to retain Quebec’s monopoly on southbound power sales to the United States — something the Lower Churchill project, including its 1,100 km of underwater transmission cables, would threaten. “By financing the Newfoundland project, Stephen Harper has given Quebec a slap right in the face,” the BQ leader declared.

It’s one of the continuing risibilities of the Canadian federation that we cosset and pamper and pay for the separatist faction in the House of Commons, and go along with the pretense that they’re parliamentarians like any other. They are not. They displace the natural balance of the federation. They have a vested interested in seeing the parliament they attend not working. And they leap to any perceived or manufactured imperfection in our system as evidence of dark perfidy or contempt for Quebec. They warp the system. Nowhere do these observations meet with greater validation than these ludicrous comments by Duceppe on the proposed assistance to the Lower Churchill.

Rex Murphy, “Newfoundland’s three-gigawatt insult to Gilles Duceppe”, National Post, 2011-04-02

March 28, 2011

TEPCO still seems to be more a hindrance than a help over Fukushima

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

A report from Kyodo News shows that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) is still not fully co-operating or providing all the information needed to clean up the Fukushima reactor sites:

While efforts at containing troubled reactors have not been making rapid progress at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, signs were emerging that Tokyo Electric Power Co., in the absence of a top officer, is losing its grip on accurately informing the public about risks from radiation.

On Sunday, the utility, known as TEPCO, announced in the morning that the concentration of radioactive materials of water found inside a turbine building adjacent to a rector housing was ”around 10 million times (that of) water in a normal reactor core” but later corrected the information, saying it ”made a wrong estimation.”

[. . .]

On March 20, TEPCO said, ”There were no increases in radiation levels in adjacent areas.” But increases were logged in various parts of adjacent areas, prompting skeptical reporters to raise a series of questions at a news conference but TEPCO officials remained mum.

TEPCO has been giving a series of news conferences since Fukushima Daiichi got into trouble after the March 11 quake. Attending officials have not been able to provide satisfactory answers to a majority of questions raised, only repeating words of apology and, ”We will check it.” It has left the impression they are unable to reply to questions because they are not given enough information.

[. . .]

But on Saturday, it was disclosed that the company had not informed workers who suffered high levels of radiation at the No. 3 reactor unit about radiation levels of the place where they would be working. The government was also found to have not been informed.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano expressed his displeasure, telling a news conference, ”We cannot give appropriate instructions unless accurate information is provided swiftly.”

TEPCO is allowed to monopolize the power utility market in Tokyo and surrounding regions by law. As the nation’s biggest utility, it has also been the key promoter of the nuclear power policy and one of the main employers of retiring bureaucrats.

Critics say the company lacks cost consciousness and apparently has no idea about what competition is. It is more like a bureaucracy rather than a business being run, they said.

March 27, 2011

Panic-mongers still hard at work over Fukushima

Filed under: Health, Japan, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:58

Lewis Page is less than impressed with the media’s ongoing coverage of the Fukushima reactor clean-up:

The situation at the quake- and tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan was brought under control days ago. It remains the case as this is written that there have been no measurable radiological health consequences among workers at the plant or anybody else, and all indications are that this will remain the case. And yet media outlets around the world continue with desperate, increasingly hysterical and unscrupulous attempts to frame the situation as a crisis.

[. . .]

Nonetheless, in the hyper-cautious nuclear industry, any dose over 100 millisievert is likely to cause bosses to pull people out at least temporarily. Furthermore, the three workers had sustained slight burns to their legs as a result of standing in the radioactive water – much as one will burn one’s skin by exposing it to the rays of the sun (a tremendously powerful nuclear furnace). They didn’t even notice these burns until after completing their work. Just to be sure, however, the three were sent for medical checks.

So — basically nothing happened. Three people sustained injuries equivalent to a mild case of sunburn. But this was reported around the globe as front-page news under headlines such as “Japanese Workers Hospitalized for Excessive Radiation Exposure”. Just to reiterate: it was not excessive.

Reporters clamoured to know more — in particular how could the water in the basement of the reactor building have become so radioactive — no less than “10,000 times normal”. One might note that in general radiation levels 10,000 times normal mean that you could achieve a tiny fraction of an extra percentage point of cancer risk by being exposed for a fortnight or so.

[. . .]

Then there’s the matter of the tapwater in Tokyo. Two days ago, levels of radioactive iodine-131 were found in the city’s water which were above the safety limit for baby milk calculated on the basis of a year’s consumption: in other words, if babies drank such water for a year constantly they would have a tiny, minuscule extra risk of thyroid cancer.

[. . .]

There was never any chance whatsoever that levels of iodine-131 in the tapwater would remain noticeable for a year, which is what would be necessary for any effects at all on the city’s babies. It was really quite irresponsible of the authorities to recommend that infants shouldn’t drink it. (One can’t help noticing that the first such recommendation reportedly came from the city authorities, belatedly followed by the national government. The Tokyo city governor is from the national opposition party and is facing a tough re-election battle. He had previously sought to use the Fukushima situation to cast his political rivals in a bad light over the deployment of Tokyo’s elite Hyper Rescue firefighters.)

I’d also recommend that you keep an eye on the World’s Only Rational Man for his professional take on what the media is currently panicking over at any given moment:

If modern “journalism” wasn’t the single most incompetent industry in human history we wouldn’t be pulling our hair out over this. Where’s the followup to the reports of Cl-38?

How freakin’ incompetent is the entirety of Big Media?!

You’ve had two weeks to learn a minimum about this subject you obsessively “cover”.

“But…but math is hard!” you whine? Then find some dad-gum folks who do this crap for a living rather than cultivate ivory tower media-hounds.

Sorry. Forgive the venting. Tired and P.O.ed.

Apparently going beddy-bye to the thought of runaway nuclear excursions isn’t warm milk and happy stories. Monsters Inc. could have stayed in the scaring business if they’d taken lessons from The Media.

This blogging day began with concern about neutrons. And so it ends.

I wish we still had reporters.

Because I hate journalism.

Once again, wormme is a radiological control technician, so he actually knows what the hell he’s talking about, unlike just about everyone “covering” the news.

March 21, 2011

More re-Volting details on GM’s electric car

Filed under: Economics, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:20

Patrick Michaels looks at the Chevy Volt:

. . . GM was desperate for customers for what they perceived would be an unpopular vehicle before one even hit the road. It had hoped to lure more if buyers subtracted the $7,500 from the $41,000 sticker price. Instead, as Consumer Reports found out, the car was very pricey. The version they tested cost $43,700 plus a $5,000 dealer markup (“Don’t worry,” I can hear the salesperson saying, “you’ll get more than that back in your tax credit!”), or a whopping $48,700 minus the credit.

This is one reason that Volt sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February. GM announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years. Who is going to buy all these cars?

Another reason they aren’t exactly flying off the lots is because, well, they have some problems. In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (My engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.)

But not to worry! They’ve found someone to buy half of the total Volt production:

Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.

Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama’s Economic Advisory Board?

Japan’s bifurcated power grid

Filed under: Health, History, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:00

Charles Stross points out something I was completely unaware of:

Western Japan and Eastern Japan do not share an electricity grid; because of an historical accident, in the 1890s when they were first getting electric lighting, Osaka, in the west, chose to run at 60Hz and Tokyo, in the east, picked 50Hz. Consequently there’s no grid interconnect between the two halves of the Japanese electricity supply system.

Eastern Japan has had 15 nuclear reactors scrammed by an an earthquake. Some of them may be checked out and approved to start delivering base load again over the coming months, but they all need a thorough inspection at this point — and we know for sure that at least three of them will never work again (not after they’ve had seawater pumped through their primary coolant circuit).

We are now heading into summer. And Tokyo doesn’t have enough electricity to maintain power everywhere even in spring.

Summer in Tokyo is savage: temperatures routinely top 35 celsius with 100% humidity. In a heat wave, it can top 40 degrees for days on end. Back when I visited in late August of 2008, the heat wave had broken and daytime temperatures were down under 37 degrees again — the week before it had been over 42, and joggers had been dropping dead in the street.

Greater Tokyo also has 30-million-odd people, of whom a large proportion — maybe 20% — are 75 years or older.

Elderly folks do not handle heat waves well; they get dehydrated easily and if they don’t have air conditioning they die in droves. Normally it’s not a problem in Tokyo because 80% of households have air conditioning, but with rolling blackouts and insufficient power it’s another matter.

It was bad in France, but the death toll among the elderly in Japan may be much higher.

The nuclear power industry’s technological lock-in

Filed under: Economics, History, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Leon Neyfakh looks at how light water reactors became the “default” choice of the nuclear power industry:

Japan’s reactors are “light water” reactors, whose safety depends on an uninterrupted power supply to circulate water quickly around the hot core. A light water system is not the only way to design a nuclear reactor. But because of the way the commercial nuclear power industry developed in its early years, it’s virtually the only type of reactor used in nuclear power plants today. Even though there might be better technologies out there, light water is the one that utility companies know how to build, and that governments have historically been willing to fund.

Economists call this problem “technological lock-in”: The term refers to the process by which one new technology can prevail over another for no good reason other than circumstance and inertia. The best-known example of technological lock-in comes from the 1970s, when VHS and Betamax, two different kinds of videotape, competed in the market until VHS gained a slight lead and then leveraged it to total domination. Whether the VHS format was actually superior to Betamax didn’t matter. After the lock-in, consumers no longer had a choice.

Much more is at stake in nuclear power. Some reactor designs are safer than others in an accident; some are more efficient than others in their use of fuel and produce less nuclear waste. The fact that the industry settled on light water over any number of alternatives was determined in the years after World War II, when the US Atomic Energy Commission and Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover made a series of hasty decisions that irreversibly set the course for how nuclear power plants around the world are built today.

“There were lots and lots of ideas floating around, and they essentially lost when light water came to dominate,” said Robin Cowan, a professor at the University of Strasbourg and the University of Maastricht who wrote a 1990 paper in The Journal of Economic History about the nuclear industry’s technological stagnation. “The market tends to choose a dominant design before it’s optimal, and it tends to under-explore.”

March 19, 2011

Trying to sort out truth from speculation at Fukushima

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Government, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

The only thing that is certain about the Fukushima situation right now is that both the operating company (Tokyo Electric Power Co. aka TEPCO) and the Japanese government have been ridiculously slow to provide information. They may or may not be actively concealing what they know, but they’re taking far too long to share what they do know with the rest of the world.

Inline update: New Scientist has a timeline of Japanese nuclear cover-ups and accidents. [end update]

wormme is a radiological control technician, so he’s very well informed about the overall picture — in a way non-specialists are not — and he’s had an epiphany about Fukushima:

See the light bulb above my head? Lesson Learned!

My first post on Fukushima is still the most widely read. Alas. I’m a radiological control technician who wasn’t paranoid about a radiological situation. Never good. Never acceptable. So I’ve been “hotwashing” myself ever since.

Where did I go wrong? What was the first cause, the primary mistake? I had to know in order to answer the most important question of all:

How do I never make that mistake again?

I turned a nifty phrase in “incalculable danger”, got generous links . . . then steam began venting and cores melting and hydrogen exploding and fuel pools leaking and spent fuel smoldering, all at once, with my brain sprinting like a hamster on a wheel and making about as much progress.

How did Fukushima have several quiet days after the event and only then have the Hellmouth open?

No lesson learned.

Then a couple of days ago we learned the site went six days without electricity. That monstrous tsunami took out the electrical backups, the backup-backups, and the backup-backup-backups in one fell swoop.

And I thought, ”well, that explains most everything”.

But still, no lesson learned.

It’s only now, right now, the realization: I wrote the post assuming that they had electrical power.

Not even an assumption, really. It wasn’t even a consideration. Of course they had power. They couldn’t possibly not have power.

But they did not have power.

Lesson Learned: the Japanese are different from Americans.

He also has interesting and highly informative posts (earlier than the one quoted above, so perhaps to be read with that in mind) on radiation poisoning, stuff that can cause a meltdown, some crappy radiological terminology, characteristics of radiation(s) and shielding(s), why the spent fuel is a bigger problem than the reactors, nuclear triage, time, distance, and shielding, spent fuel pools, first notes on the “Event Summary” file, and how NOT to wear a respirator.

March 16, 2011

Ontario’s nuclear power industry

Filed under: Cancon, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:32

I live near two nuclear power plants, and have done for more than a decade, but even with those two hints, I didn’t realize that Ontario gets 55% of its electricity from nuclear sources. For some reason, I thought we were somewhere in the 20-25% range — higher than the Canadian average of 15%, but not over half.

The Canadian Nuclear Association has posted a statement on their website (including the above nugget of information):

“Our thoughts are with the people of Japan and their relatives in Canada during this terrible time, as well as with the workers at the Fukushima station for their tireless efforts to protect the people offsite.

Over the coming days and weeks you can expect to hear many varying opinions on the events in Japan and even on Canadian nuclear facilities. Some will be based on fact and will contribute to a worthwhile discussion. Unfortunately, some of what you will hear may not be based on fact.

It’s important to remember the Fukushima plant was damaged, not as a result of any flaw in the reactor design, but from the largest ever earthquake in Japan’s history followed by a devastating tsunami. The nuclear industry — in Canada and around the world — has a history of working closely together to share technical expertise. We also have a history of examining operations and activities to ensure continuous improvements.

March 15, 2011

DC residents get stiffed on their solar power subsidies

Filed under: Environment, Government, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

David Nakamura reports on some Washington, DC folks who are feeling ripped off by their local government over solar panel reimbursements that were promised but never delivered:

It isn’t easy going green, and it may also prove costly.

Dozens of District residents who installed solar panels on their homes under a government grant program promoting renewable energy have been told they will not be reimbursed thousands of dollars as promised because the funds were diverted to help close a citywide budget gap.

In all, the city has reneged on a commitment of about $700,000 to 51 residents, according to the D.C. Department of the Environment. The agency has pledged to try to find money in next year’s budget, its director, Christophe Tulou, said.

“It just doesn’t seem fair to go through a process with them and have them make investments in solar panels under the assumption they would be reimbursed,” Tulou acknowledged. “It’s really sad we are having these economic woes when we are.”

H/T to Radley Balko for the link.

Update on the Fukushima situation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Colby Cosh complained yesterday about the low quality of information being provided by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), and that has not really improved since yesterday. At The Register, Lewis Page updates the situation as best he can:

The story of the three quake- and tsunami-hit reactors at Japan’s Fukushima plant continues, with indications that one of the three worst-hit reactors has sustained further damage. A fire also broke out at another reactor, shut down at the time of the quake and not previously thought to be a problem, but this has now been put out. None of this suggests that the reactors’ crucial containment vessels could be breached, however.

World Nuclear News reported in the early hours (UK time) that a “loud noise” had been heard at the site of the No 2 reactor at Fukushima and pressure readings had fallen in the doughnut-shaped “suppression chamber” situated beneath the core. The suppression chamber holds a large quantity of water and steam from the core, released into it to be condensed, so reducing pressure in the core without the need to vent to atmosphere in some situations: though reactors 1, 2 and 3 have all been repeatedly vented to atmosphere since the quake nevertheless.

Following the apparent release from inside the suppression chamber, radiation levels at the site briefly rose to 8217 microsieverts per hour — such that an unprotected person outside would receive several years’ normal background radiation dose in a single hour. Radiation then dropped to less than 2,500 microsievert/hr. (UPDATED TO ADD: The IAEA reports that as of 6am UK time this had fallen to 600 microsievert/hr). WNN reports that a statement from TEPCO, the plant operators, stated that there had been “no significant change” to the status of the vital containment vessel surrounding the reactor core.

March 14, 2011

Analysis of the Fukushima reactor situation

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Japan, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Lewis Page sees the triple-whammy disaster that hit the Fukushima nuclear plant as proof of the design:

Let’s recap on what’s happened so far. The earthquake which hit on Friday was terrifically powerful, shaking the entire planet on its axis and jolting the whole of Japan several feet sideways. At 8.9 on the Richter scale, it was some five times stronger than the older Fukushima plants had been designed to cope with.

If nuclear powerplants were merely as safe as they are advertised to be, there should have been a major failure right then. As the hot cores ceased to be cooled by the water which is used to extract power from them, control rods would have remained withdrawn and a runaway chain reaction could have ensued — probably resulting in the worst thing that can happen to a properly designed nuclear reactor: a core meltdown in which the superhot fuel rods actually melt and slag down the whole core into a blob of molten metal. In this case the only thing to do is seal up the containment and wait: no radiation disaster will take place, but the reactor is a total writeoff and cooling the core off will be difficult and take a long time. Eventual cleanup will be protracted and expensive.

In fact, though the quake was far beyond design limits, all the reactors went into automatic shutdown perfectly: triumph number one. Control rods slammed into the cores, absorbing the neutrons spitting from the fuel rods and pinching off the uranium-fission chain reactions powering the plant.

[. . .]

For a few hours all was well. Then the tsunami — again, bigger than the plant had been built to cope with — struck, knocking out the diesel backups and the backup diesel backups.

Needless to say, this being a nuclear powerplant, there was another backup and this one worked despite having been through a beyond-spec quake and the tsunami. Battery power cut in and the cores continued to be cooled, giving the plant operators some hours of leeway to bring in mobile generators: triumph number three.

Unfortunately it appears that the devastation from the quake and tsunami was sufficient that mobile power wasn’t online at all the sites before the temperatures inside the cores began to climb seriously.

On the flip side, Colby Cosh finds the information sharing from the Japanese authorities to be less than helpful:

It’s a frustrating sequence of events to behold, and it has been made more so by the poor crisis management of the Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and the Japanese government. A serious nuclear incident is the whole world’s concern, and TEPCO and Japan have an obligation to explain to the world just what has happened. But English-language reports from the state broadcaster, NHK, have been shockingly feeble and confused. TEPCO’s press releases, meanwhile, are masterpieces of indecipherable technical and even legal jargon. (“As the reactor pressure suppression function was lost, at 5:22am, Mar 12th, it was determined that a specific incident stipulated in article 15, clause 1 has occurred.”)

The global public has been left to figure out for itself what to make of hazy videos of nuclear power facilities exploding. What little context we can assemble, as we try to interpret such a mortifying sight, arrives mostly in shreds provided by Western oracles — ones who, in their turn, seem to mostly be working from supposition and indirect evidence, and who may not be particularly independent from the nuclear industry.

No one should forget, while trying to make sense of what’s happening in Japan, that something like 300 people died in major coal mining accidents around the world in 2010 alone. None of those accidents involved natural disasters, and probably not all of them even involved culpable human error. We just accept a certain quantum of mortality as the cost of keeping the lights on — when it comes to every means of power generation, that is, except nukes. A death toll in the single digits from the Fukushima troubles would represent an amazing triumph of design robustness. (Especially if we judge the quality of Japanese engineers and regulators by their competence at communications.)

March 12, 2011

Earthquake, tsunami, and worse

Filed under: Environment, Japan, Pacific — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:04

The earthquake by itself was one of the biggest ever recorded, and then the tsunami compounded the quake damage and will make relief and rescue efforts that much harder. Kevin Voigt has more:

The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis.

“At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan showing the pattern of shift over a large area is consistent with about that much shift of the land mass,” said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Reports from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy estimated the 8.9-magnitude quake shifted the planet on its axis by nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters).

The temblor, which struck Friday afternoon near the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, caused the formation of 30-foot walls of water that swept across rice fields, engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways, and tossed cars and boats like toys. Some waves reached six miles (10 kilometers) inland in Miyagi Prefecture on Japan’s east coast.

Another major concern is the ongoing struggle to regain control of one of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant:

An explosion at an earthquake-struck nuclear plant was not caused by damage to the nuclear reactor but by a pumping system that failed as crews tried to bring the reactor’s temperature down, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Saturday.

Workers at the Fukushima Daiichi plant have begun flooding the reactor containment structure with sea water to bring the reactor’s temperature down to safe levels, he said. The effort is expected to take two days.

Radiation levels have fallen since the explosion and there is no immediate danger, Edano said. But authorities were nevertheless expanding the evacuation to include a radius of 20 kilometers (about 12.5 miles) around the plant. The evacuation previously reached out to 10 kilometers.

H/T to Chris Taylor for the link.

March 11, 2011

Reason.TV: Should governments subsidize alternative energy?

Filed under: Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:48

March 7, 2011

Your energy consuming future

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:00

Britain is facing a very different future, from the point of energy consumption, according to Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid:

Because of a six-fold increase in wind generation, which won’t be available when the wind doesn’t blow, “The grid is going to be a very different system in 2020, 2030,” he told BBC’s Radio 4. “We keep thinking that we want it to be there and provide power when we need it. It’s going to be much smarter than that.

“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”

The more of your electricity that is produced from wind power, the more there will be very noticeable peaks and valleys in available electricity. Not only do you need more sources, you need over-capacity in some areas to generate sufficient power to supply to areas which are becalmed.

Under the so-called “smart grid” that the UK is developing, the government-regulated utility will be able to decide when and where power should be delivered, to ensure that it meets the highest social purpose. Governments may, for example, decide that the needs of key industries take precedence over others, or that the needs of industry trump that of residential consumers. Governments would also be able to price power prohibitively if it is used for non-essential purposes.

Perhaps it’s just the libertarian in me that finds the term “highest social purpose” to be very disturbing: just who the hell is going to be making that determination? And on what basis will the new high priests of the lightnings be making that call?

Smart grids are being developed by utilities worldwide to allow the government to control electricity use in the home, down to the individual appliance. Smart grids would monitor the consumption of each appliance and be capable of turning them off if the power is needed elsewhere.

Like the idea that someone at your local electrical board can decide that you don’t really need to run that TV set or that toaster right now? If the control freaks at the utilities manage to foist this off on us, we’ll be techno-peasants who are only allowed to run electrical devices that meet “social purpose” guidelines.

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