Unthreaded
@lapogus
thank you very much.
Consider yourself the recipient of a glass (or several) of the virtual beverage of your choice :-)
Pretty much what I had part implemented - I'd tried using the bmreports interface but it kept not running on my boxes for some reason - figured somebody had done the spadework - yes, thank you !
TomO
SandyS
I used to live near Ratcliffe-on-Soar (many years ago) and I recall, even in those days, the water vapour and smoke from the stack going straight up a lot of the time. Nothing changes. Do they still have that coal mountain?
I see wind is now at 141MW (0.4%). The only time that they manage to accurately forecast the wind power is when it is pretty close to zero. I could do that for them just by looking out of my study window - they don't need to rely on the Met Office.
Phillip Bratby
lapogus/TomO
I just have a look at the numbers two or three times a week, particularly if the steam from Ratcliffe-on-Soar is going straight up. It's my felling that output from wind is all over they place, whereas hydro is pretty consistent. Wind doesn't seem to meet the short-term forecast a lot of the time.
Also heard on the news that E-ON made a £1.8 billion loss mainly due to Germany's withdrawal from nuclear. They are investing £7 billion in wind in Germany,Sweden and UK over the next 5 years so no let up in throwing money away.
Sandy Sinclair
SandyS
TomO - you don't need to - go to http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~dcurtis/NETA.html and uncheck total, and all the thermal plants and pumped storage. You will then get a graph showing the last 6 months of output for wind and hydro. Click and drag to zoom in on any period within the last 6 months. Right clicking to save image won't work, but in Windows, Ctrl & Print Screen (Prt Sc) will copy the screen output to the clipboard, then paste into an image editor and save as a jpg or whatever. Not sure what the trick is on a Mac or Linux. Wind is now regularly producing more than hydro, but as the metered installed capacity of wind is 4GW and hydro is about 1.2GW that is not much of a surprise. And unlike wind, most of the hydro can be controlled to some degree, if you zoom in you will see how hydro has two peaks a day which coincide with the breakfast and early evening peak demand. So instead of a problem for grid balancing like wind, hydro is part of the solution.
lapogus
From Oct. 2011 but still an excellent article showing the dismal nexus of public subsidies, political influence and "Big Wind" in the USA:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279802/america-s-worst-wind-energy-project-robert-bryce?pg=1
Skiphil
@SandyS
don't suppose you know of anybody who's processed the numbers for hydro vs. wind over the last few months? It seems the Cinderella effect is kicking in....
or anybody else here for that matter?
It's just that I'm looking to do it and can think of better things to do than parsing the .csv and graphing the file from http://www.bmreports.com/ if I don't have to..... it'll make uncomfortable reading for big wind methinks....
TomO
Britain's green campaigners fear a Black Wednesday for the environment next week when Chancellor George Osborne's assault on environmental protection in the name of economic growth reaches its climax in the Budget.
The Government is about to publish two major policy reviews, of planning and nature reserve regulations, both designed to remove what Mr Osborne sees as obstacles to development, but which have both been strongly criticised by environmentalists and countryside campaigners. The reviews are virtually complete and it is increasingly likely that they will be published alongside the Budget on 21 March.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/fears-of-black-wednesday-for-green-causes-on-budget-day-7565729.html
Best way to distract attention away from these two reports ... is to publish a third report into the current state of climate science.
matthu
Scientists and academics could be given greater protection from libel claims under changes being considered by Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary.
He said there were concerns that scientific debate was being "stifled" because of fears over defamation. He told MPs that articles in peer-reviewed journals could be protected as a result of the draft Defamation Bill.
Mr Huppert asked Mr Clarke: "Do you agree that it is in the public interest for scientists and other academics to be able to publish bona fide research results without fear ... "
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-to-be-protected-from-libel-7565746.html
matthu
Sandy - down to 50MW now, or 0.1% of electrical output. Better not put the kettle on...
James P
I am relatively new to the climate wars so apologies if my question sounds stupid
My question: I understand that according to the IPCC that a doubling of C02 will, according to the physics, create a temperature rise of 1.1 degree. The further increases are due to positive feedbacks. Now, if one played a "what if" game and there was a natural increase over the same timescale due to factors unknown would we also get the positive feedback? Logically I would think that the answer should be yes.
This raises the further question in my mind that we must assume that we are now at some optimum level and any increase will cause runaway warming
Can anyone enlighten me on this?