Electric everything.

[biketips666]

And of course much higher insulation standards would make an enormous difference.

Jonathan

Yup. We went to a house warming a couple of years back. Substantial detached house, luxuriously appointed. If you looked at it you might think millionaires lived there. I asked my friend to show me round:

"Double glazing?"
"Nope, triple glazing"

"Show me your boiler"
"Here it is, tiny, isn't it? And this is the forced convection heat recovery unit"

"What's your gas bill like?"
"Last month, £15"

That's December, in Yorkshire. New builds can achieve fantastic insulation standards. Of course it was built with that in mind, I assume way beyond whatever current building standards are. They used a specialist architect and builders.

[Jdsk]

Electric cars can be charged at night, when there's bags of surplus capacity.

Not if everyone's charging their car at night (fast forwarding 30 years)

It's all fuzzy... "everyone" isn't going to happen, "night" isn't a constant, and change will come gradually.

But:

1 Many of the desirable sources of electric power are intermittent. And with variable degrees of predictability... solar, tidal, wind.

2 EVs spend a lot of their time sitting still.

3 Current (!) EVs only need to be recharged for a small part of that time.

So choosing when to recharge EVs can reduce that problem of intermittent generation. That means that you don't have to build so much capacity.

Taking that a stage further the batteries in EVs can be used to feed power to the grid. That means that you don't have to build so much of other types of storage.

Of course this requires a financial system that gets the incentives right. And even the simple step of smart meters hasn't gone well in the UK.

For vehicle-to-grid it also require that the effect on the EVs' batteries is acceptable. There aren't any warning signs appearing on this, but it's a bit early to see if it will affect the useful life of the battery and possibly of the car.

Jonathan

[biketips666]

Electric cars can be charged at night, when there's bags of surplus capacity.

Not if everyone's charging their car at night (fast forwarding 30 years)

It's all fuzzy... "everyone" isn't going to happen, 'night" isn't a constant, and change will come gradually.

Oh, I don't know. "Everyone" goes to the petrol station to fill their cars with petrol at exactly the same time, don't they?

[Jdsk]

And of course much higher insulation standards would make an enormous difference.

Yup. We went to a house warming a couple of years back.

; - )

Nobutseriously... with decent insulation the energy generation by the carbon-based lifeforms becomes significant... it's about 100 W for an adult human...

Jonathan

[biketips666]

And of course much higher insulation standards would make an enormous difference.

Yup. We went to a house warming a couple of years back.

; -)

Nobutseriously... with decent insulation the energy generation by the carbon-based lifeforms becomes significant... it's about 100 W for an adult human...

Jonathan

The housewarming party was only one night. I don't think they were partying all December. Or at least if they were they didn't invite us. I might wait till the winter and ask if we can use their house for a quick experiment. Turn the boiler off and then invite the local swingers club round, to see how much heat vigorous physical activity generates. That could reduce the gas bill even further. But probably kill the friendship stone dead.

[Jdsk]

Yup. We went to a house warming a couple of years back.

; -)

Nobutseriously... with decent insulation the energy generation by the carbon-based lifeforms becomes significant... it's about 100 W for an adult human...

The housewarming party was only one night. I don't think they were partying all December. Or at least if they were they didn't invite us. I might wait till the winter and ask if we can use their house for a quick experiment. Turn the boiler off and then invite the local swingers club round, to see how much heat vigorous physical activity generates. That could reduce the gas bill even further. But probably kill the friendship stone dead.

That's 100 W at rest!

: - )

Jonathan

[biketips666]

; -)

Nobutseriously... with decent insulation the energy generation by the carbon-based lifeforms becomes significant... it's about 100 W for an adult human...

The housewarming party was only one night. I don't think they were partying all December. Or at least if they were they didn't invite us. I might wait till the winter and ask if we can use their house for a quick experiment. Turn the boiler off and then invite the local swingers club round, to see how much heat vigorous physical activity generates. That could reduce the gas bill even further. But probably kill the friendship stone dead.

That's 100 W at rest!

Really? Great, domestic heating problem solved in one easy step. You don't happen to know how much energy it takes to make Viagra, do you?

[francovendee]

biketips666. You mention importing 16% now, do you mean at this moment or each year?
I'd think the latter as it's summer so demand must be lower.

[Jdsk]

Interconnects avoid using fossil fuel systems even when total demand is low... area averaging for solar and wind power, and different demand from even small differences in behaviour... massive live sporting events being the exception!

Jonathan

PS: Of course the UK's National Grid is an interconnect...

[biketips666]

biketips666. You mention importing 16% now, do you mean at this moment or each year?
I'd think the latter as it's summer so demand must be lower.

I meant at the precise moment in time when I was posting. So it's in GW (power), not GWh (energy).

If you go to:
https://gridwatch.co.uk/
It tells you total UK electricity demand at the moment. And the sources that are satisfying that demand. There's also a FAQ and "About Us" to give you a bit more background.

PS. When I say "at the precise moment" I meant "up to 10 minutes ago". I think that's the refresh interval.

The actual National Grid has a similar thing:https://grid.iamkate.com/ which updates every 5 minutes.

PS. If you go to the National Grid site and look at this:

It appears to me that you can work out how much, over time, of our electricity is from interconnects. It seems to have been rising, slightly, over the past few years, whereas total demand has been falling. Right now it looks as though it's roughly 10%. Though I may be wrong in the way I've interpreted that graph, please say if you think I am.

[Mick F]

"What's your gas bill like?"
"Last month, £15"

Gas bill?

That's another supply that will be cut off in the future.
Fossil fuels are on their way out.

What I can't understand, is why new-builds have a gas main at all.

If I ruled the world, they wouldn't get planning permission for gas mains.

[biketips666]

"What's your gas bill like?"
"Last month, £15"

Gas bill?

That's another supply that will be cut off in the future.
Fossil fuels are on their way out.

What I can't understand, is why new-builds have a gas main at all.

If I ruled the world, they wouldn't get planning permission for gas mains.

Fine, whatever. I quoted that to demonstrate how energy efficient a new extremely well insulated building can be. I wasn't proposing that gas heating is the way foward. Jeez.

[CliveyT]

, I assume way beyond whatever current building standards are. They used a specialist architect and builders.

You have building standards specifying the bare minimum and then the builders who try to work around even that.
Even worse is the ones who don't even think- there's a new estate being built in my village- all the houses have a (now obligatory??) solar panel but maybe it will put people off seeing them on the long lines of (perfectly) south-facing roofs along the main road so they've been put on the north facing roofs in the estate.. You've got all that added cost, all the extra CO2 to produce the panels and the inverter and they are never going to generate anything. It's worse than doing nothing.
There are also more expensive "eco" houses in teh development that have TWO panels, but all of them are running more or less north-south, so they will get some power at least.

I contrast a farm on the edge of the village has a large barn with a perfect south-facing roof and they've covered everything with panels. What a curious idea- it's almost as if someone actually thought about it.

[PDQ Mobile]

^^mick
Not all gas is a fossil fuel.
There are some methods of generating gas that are broadly carbon neutral.
Though they remain a minority interest!
......
If you look at wind generation in the last weeks in the UK the figures are very poor.
So every electric vehicle has been producing more percentage of carbon.
Therein lies the biggest conundrum IMV.

[biketips666]

To make a point which helps to illuminate the original post, if you go here:

https://grid.iamkate.com/

And find this:

It looks to me as though electricity demand has been steadily falling in the past decade, unless I have misunderstood that graph. The black top line is total average annual production. Which fell from 36 GW to 31 GW over 7 years. I assume "production" equates to instantaneous demand, averaged. That's a fall of 14% over 7 years.

So maybe the fall in demand because of greater efficiency in things like domestic appliances, lighting, etc, gives some room for a greater demand from things like BEV (battery electric vehicles) and the other "Electric Everything" things.