Switch off at the socket?

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...

well with a typical power station being somewhere upwards of a Gw, and our
total energy needs as a country running at an estimated 300GW, I cant see
those making a huge difference to anything.

I can, hydro electric are easy to control and respond quickly.
Run them at the bare minimum and you can turn them up to smooth supply
during peaks.
Pretty much like the pumped hydro stations but not as big.

On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:53:03 +0100, Paul Martin wrote:

Subsidising wind power is distorting the market.

Any subsidies distort the market but having said that letting the
market decide can be equally bad in the long run as the result is
then more down to who can spend the most on marketing rather than
what is actually a good product.

It's a political move that smacks of the short term thinking that is
endemic in high level decisions these days.

Hopefully the near crisis that occured last winter may have actually
given those in charge a big kick up the backside to look a little bit
further than the next election.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:43:58 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

IF you have the right geography, the second condition can be met by
hydro power. There will always be arguments about the third, drastically
modifying the natural landscape to create artificial dams.

There are quite a number of dams already existant that are letting
down water all the time but there is no turbine in that water flow.
Not a great deal of energy at each but it's cheap and easy to
maintain 24/7 source of energy.

I doubt many vistors walking up to the open area of Nenthead Mines
realise that the large single garage is a 400kW hydro plant.


http://www.r-e-a.net/installations/n...ydro-power-ltd

Which led me to:

http://www.r-e-a.net/installations/sites_map

134 "Micro" hydro stations
172 20MW hydro stations
17 "large" hydro stations

Without digging for the rest of the morning (the float over on the
map doesn't give capacity of each station) it looks like the
installed UK hydro capacity is 4 to 5GW.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Sun, 27 Sep 2009 22:24:14 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller wrote:

We have hydro plants on streams that can generate a couple
kilowatts

Sounds like Scottish Power generate more than a *couple of kilowatts* to
me from hydro electric schemes --

Lanark Hydro Electric Scheme 17 MW
Galloway Hydro Electric Scheme 106.5 MW

Sloy 152MW
Foyers 300MW

....

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:50:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Galloway Hydro Electric Scheme 106.5 MW

Better. But still no banana.

But better than the 150+ wind turbines that would be required
scattered across the country to even have a hope of providing that
amount of power more or less 24/7.


--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 08:50:41 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Galloway Hydro Electric Scheme 106.5 MW
Better. But still no banana.

But better than the 150+ wind turbines that would be required
scattered across the country to even have a hope of providing that
amount of power more or less 24/7.


Quite.
Hydro is great when it can be done. Mostly, in this country, it cant.

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:05:41 +0100, Bill Wright wrote:

So you'd advise me to cut our the heavy drinking?

For the sake of your liver.

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:06:00 +0100, Java Jive wrote:

... and our total energy needs as a country running at an
estimated
300GW,

FACT: Our current electricity consumption is 46 GW.

FFS read what is written. "total energy needs as a country".

Electricity production is only a small fraction of the total energy
consumed by the country. I suspect the biggest consumer is transport
and that is virtually all powered by fossil fuel.

Top posting is a PITA and your .sig is broken.

--
Cheers
Dave.

On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:11:46 +0100, Java Jive
wrote:

Yet I post much less nonsense than you ... Perhaps it's because I have
a 1st Class Hons in Maths ...


Nah.

You should have gone to "Leeds Metropolitan University". You could
have studied something useful and got a Ist class Honours degree in
"International Hospitality Management" there (Pizza-ology to you). or
Croydon and done "Geography with Dance".

Derek

The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Windscale and Douunreay were weapons production facilities thinly
disguised as power stations.

Granted...

The reasons power stations are built of large capacity, is because it is
more efficient. I wont worry you with the technical details of why this

also...

is so, because you have demonstrated that maths and engineering is
something ypu really do not understand.

That seems rather below the belt. There are plenty you could throw that
accusation at, but JJ does not seem to be one of them.

======================================


FIX YOUR ****ING SIG FILE!!

That however would be nice... ;-)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/