Hinkkley Point C – Oh Deary Me
Brilliant video by Robert Llewellyn about the pros and cons of nuclear power and why Hinkley Point C is such a ridiculous proposition.
In fact, the comparison of Hinkley Point C and wind turbines should open many eyes. Perhaps David Cameron you should be watching this with your colleagues in parliament?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5lg73SDYUw&feature=share
Good luock
Not to argue with his take on nuclear, or the benefits of wind, but his take on wind is ludicrous. Wind providing 24/7 supply with batteries is only possible if you have massive batteries to ride through days of low wind (or 100% reliable daily wind).
Don’t discount the effects of household batteries Harrison Clark On a large scale (much larger than any single wind farm) they will smooth out demand for energy and store a heck of a lot of energy in total.
Alan Stainer True, but that doesn’t solve the problem I presented. How can you use your home storage to supply your neighbor during inclement weather? You need it yourself. The problem is that clouds can be wide-spread, as can low wind. In an area, say, the size of an average State, all homes would need storage for a week or more to cover inclement weather and that just isn’t going to happen (the grid is not sufficient to bring excess storage in from homes in neighboring states).
There’s another problem with home storage. It does not eliminate the grid and if you must have the grid anyway, you might as well take advantage of the economy of scale of central storage. Central storage is more easily controlled for the benefit of all on the grid. Though the problem of weeks of clouds still exists and suggests all the existing oil/gas plants must remain and be on standby. This is very expensive and not very efficient since at low output such plants are not efficient.
And there’s another problem. The AC grid depends on synchronism to be stable and solar and wind plants are asynchronous. Today, about 60% of the energy supply on the grid needs to be synchronous to maintain reliability (and it needs to be distributed across the grid) and this assumes huge investment to make the grid reliable at that level.
Look at your power bill. How much of what you pay goes for the energy input to the grid. It’s not much, a small fraction. Solar could be free and still presents the above problems without saving much.