"Green" policies are destroying this country

patnor1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119638901#Comment_119638901

NH3 is actually worse. Have a sniff if you do not believe.

Akrasia

You're right. NH3 is worse at exploding

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640075#Comment_119640075

Not. bad. except for championing renewables because they will reduce energy costs. This hasn't happened and wont. No renewable has a capacity factor high enogh to allow it to be cheaper.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640396#Comment_119640396

Are you suggesting that electricity would be cheaper if we were using more high priced gas? Really?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119639444#Comment_119639444

The methodology used has been peer reviewed

https://ascmo.copernicus.org/articles/6/177/2020/

Roger is free to publish a criticism of that methodology in a scientific journal.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119639844#Comment_119639844

What's the backup for Nuclear?

Half of Frances' nuclear reactors went offline for extended durations this year

One of Germany's Nuclear plants sprung a leak and won't be available this winter while it is being repaired

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/leak-reported-german-isar-ii-nuclear-plant-environment-ministry-2022-09-19/

Nuclear is not a panacea.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640944#Comment_119640944

What's the backup for renewables, excluding gas, oil and coal given that we are trying to remove them from generation?

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119638407#Comment_119638407

No, thank you for both proving my point and showing that you either have a very poor grasp of figures, or that for someone who has never been a member of the Green Party or voted for them, you put a lot of effort into defending them and ignoring the figures when they do not suit your agenda.

Our use of gas for electrical generation has increased every year since since 2014, bar last year when it dropped by 1.1KWh. Did you miss my pointing out that consequently our use of oil and coal had increased last year and my asking you if you now regarded neither as fossil fuels ?

Last year while the use of gas dropped by 1.1KWh, coal and oil combined increased by 2.916 KWh. Btw. contrary to your assertion that oil has practically been eliminated as an energy source, it`s use has been increasing year on year since a low of 2017, and is now double what it was in 2010.

The facts are quite simple, and are as the SEAI stated. Last year generation by renewables dropped by 2.017 KWh, while generation from oil and coal increased by 2.916 KWh.

Coal alone increased by 2.5 KWh, yet somehow you appear to believe that a drop in gas, (a transitional source), by 1.1KWh with a corresponding increase of 2.5 KWh for coal, (the dirtiest fossil fuel), somehow validates your point. Very strange logic.

Your remarks on peat are quite comical as closing peat burning stations were being hailed by greens as one of their great achievements. Peat generation has gone from 2.105 KWh in 2019 to nothing now while coal lats year accounted for 2.5 KWh. Peat burning plants provided employment and thus contributing to exchequer returns, whereas coal increases our balance of payments. But then when it comes to wrecking an economy in pursuit of their ideology, wrecking an economy is not a consideration for greens.

ginger22

https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/report-finds-no-evidence-of-a-climate-emergency/video/828884dc1d97eccb8c4030bd90aa5e61?fbclid=IwAR1U8pqmFBA_Vc0F2YW0LAwF4dt-O-AyPe_sXcLtqNgEbEiwHFANC45RlCk

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640396#Comment_119640396

The average capacity factor for wind in Ireland is about 30% (averaged over 12 month periods)

(capacity factor is lower in summer and higher in winter)

The average capacity factor for a gas turbine is between 30-50% depending on how expensive the fuel is, Many of them will be switched off for most of the day when they're not needed

As Wind and Solar generation capacity increases, the capacity factor for Gas will go down because the Marginal cost of production for renewables is extremely low (close to zero) (capital and maintenance costs are fixed regardless of how much power is generated) while the Marginal cost of production for fossil fuel generators have is high, because Fuel is one of the main costs, and fuel is expensive.

Therefore, whenever there is low cost electricity available via renewables, it makes no sense for gas turbine operators to sell their power at a loss so they'll be shut down more often than they are

As we build more and more renewables, they'll be able to cover baseload power demand much of the time, and even provide surplus power when resources are abundant. Under these scenarios, Gas turbines will not be operating so their capacity factor will fall

Beyond baseload, their last use cases are: Peaker plants, Frequency regulation, Long term backup (in case renewables are not available for extended periods)

Frequency regulation is better suited to batteries that store surplus renewable energy so gas turbines will be needed less often

Peak supply is also better suited to batteries, who can buy power cheaply off peak when there is extra capacity, and sell it back to the grid when power is more expensive - Ireland already have about 2.5gwh worth of battery storage. This can be increased year on year to cover the ~8gwh we need to cover peak demand each day

The Capacity factor for Coal power plants is already very very low, they're rarely used anymore - Gas will follow this trend as they're replaced by renewables.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641091#Comment_119641091

You are the one mentioning the GP, not me, so no idea what you're on about there. Did you want me to? Ok...... Green Party...... there you go.

The rest of your post illustrates your twisted comprehension of the basics but no surprise there.

The current spike in oil and coal usage will be short lived as these sources price themselves out of the market through the application of carbon taxes.

Gas will follow in due course albeit being kept as a costly backup until the 2050's.

Personally I look forward to cleaner air and less pollution. Apparently you don't, for some strange reason.

By all means, argue that black is white, but the transition is underway and long-term usage of fossil fuels is on the way out.

Skyfloater

My apologies if this has been asked before, but this thread is 488 pages long!

Have any of the many energy storage options being researched around the world shown real promise at this stage? Namely, are there any front runners?

Speaking of air quality, as the saying goew "a lot done, a lot more to do".

Things are improving but we need to do more. The smoky fuels ban will absolutely improve things in that sense.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2022/0920/1324354-epa-air-quality/

As will increased provision of cleaner public transport and support for active travel. Like this recent announcement from Irish Rail of additional services.

http://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2022/0919/1324229-rail-timetables/

But I've no doubt we'll get there, once the dinosaurs accept that things must change. For the stubborn ones, there's always taxation to motivate them

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640777#Comment_119640777

No. Coal would be good, given the anti nuclear opinion.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641319#Comment_119641319

Yeah, because more pollution in our air is a good option, just what the doctor ordered

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119638222#Comment_119638222

It`s not me saying it. It`s the SEAI saying it.

The percentage of electricity generated by renewables dropped by 17% last year. From 42% to 35% while electricity demand rose by 4.3%.

Offshore is year away. SSE Renewables are not expecting to add anything to the grid from their Arklow Bank offshore wind farm until 2029.Even then nobody really knows what these offshore wind farms will add. Greens are fond of quoting the nameplate capacity for these projects, but with wind being intermittent and unreliable nameplate capacity means nothing.

From the on shore renewables we presently have, going by nameplate capacity, around 80% of what we use could be provided. But as we have seen for at least 3 times in the last year alone, for extended periods of low wind they have contributed 6% and less of our needs.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640075#Comment_119640075

Stocking up on fuel for winter is one thing, going out and building a new fossil fuelled power station is something else.

If we need to build new infrastructure, it should be renewable carbon free infrastructure as far as possible and while some places are turning back to coal, that is because they have that infrastructure already and can use it as an emergency in case the gas is switched off. They are not planning on keeping those power plants for the long term, it just takes time to build the new infrastructure.

There is enough 'proven reserves' of fossil fuels to exceed our remaining 'carbon budget' by 700%. At least 6/7ths of the proven fossil fuels need to become stranded assets. Guterres is referring to the Fossil fuel industry ramping up production to sell as much as they can before this happens and using enormous amounts of disinformation and climate change denialist propaganda to cover their tracks along the way.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421522001756?via%3Dihub

We need to meet our commitments under the Paris agreement and then demand that the likes of the US meet their obligations too. Biden Re-Joined the paris agreement in 2021. He needs to follow through, while the recent climate bill is better than nothing, it's not enough to meet those commitments

Some of the options listed for gas backup are analysed in the article below, all come with serious negatives and high costs while some options are nothing more than an expensive band-aid at best

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/some-consumers-may-lose-access-to-gas-cost-of-lng-ship-to-ensure-supply-could-run-to-400m-42002602.html

timmyntc

So ammonia is the new hydrogen, which was the new battery storage? None of which have as of yet proven the energy savior we need (or even come close)

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640944#Comment_119640944

Some of Ireland's gas turbines went awol unexpectedly in recent years, in case you forget. Selective amnesia? Cherry picking incidents is pointles, it's the overall multi-year performance you should be looking at when talking about a grid.

Yes France's reacators have current problems, but they are 30 years old and have been purring away for 30 years outputing zero co2 energy in huge quantities, but even a climate catastrophist will only go looking for criticisms because it's 'nuclear' and ignore the vast quantity od CO2 saved. Nuclear power has saved more CO2 output than all the worlds renewables combined.

The capacity factor of US nuclear power is 92%, South Korea it's 96.4% Sweden is around 90%. They are the single most reliable energy generation technology we currently have, highlighting occasional and rare failures doesn't invalidate the overall ststistics or picture.

Slovenia's NPP capacity factor a couple years ago was 99.5% You would only have had to run gas turbines for 2 days in the whole year if that was your backup. No renewables based grid can get anywhere near as good or as low in overall CO2 output.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641091#Comment_119641091

Eh, speaking of poor grasp of figures, a KWH is a kilowatt hour. Or how much energy it takes to keep a 1000 watt appliance running for one hour.

namloc1980

A whopping 13% from renewables this past week. Thankfully we still have gas/coal to keep the show on the road. The Greens would already have us sitting in the darkness if they had their way.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119640857#Comment_119640857

Peer review in climate science is a joke, as the climate gate email dump showed. These days I'd imagine the miscreants are all using an encrypted Telegram channel to hide their collusions and shenanigans, like dodging FOI requests and torching data sets.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641334#Comment_119641334

Why not, it's what China, India Poland and many others do? What we do doesn't matter one iota while those countries have decided not to hamstring their economies and their peoples standard of living. Woo-hoo, a country that contributes 0.3% to global anthropogenic CO2 output just reduced it's emissions by 10% - OMG, we're saved; altogether now, Kumbaya...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641388#Comment_119641388

Cherry picking incidents is pointles, it's the overall multi-year performance you should be looking at when talking about a grid.

But aren't you the one that posts single day data points for wind as a basis for your stance against renewable energy.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641433#Comment_119641433

The air quality in our streets is affected by the fossil fuels burned in our localities not China, India or Poland.

Bizarre that this needs to be explained but there we are

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119639299#Comment_119639299

Because the round trip efficiency is so awful - in the region of 20-30%, meaning you have to spend huge sums on overcapacity to generate your highly inefficient energy storage medium.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641241#Comment_119641241

A paper that with many glaring holes in it.

If you assume that there were loads of storms in the past that weren't recoded anywhere, then you can come up with any statistic you like

Also, counting the number of 'extreme wind' events and saying this number hasn't changed much doesn't go into the fundamental concerning issue of Climate change turbo charging the most extreme weather events

Lets look at this logically with the example below (data is made up)

1900s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1910s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1920s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1930s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1940s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1960s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1970s 10 storms, max sustained wind 10ms

1980s 10 storms, max sustained wind 11ms

1990s 10 storms, max sustained wind 12ms

2000s 10 storms max sustained wind 13ms

2010s 10 storms Max sustained wind 15ms

According to a study that counts the number of storms where max sustained wind was above 10ms, there is zero trend in extreme wind over the 12 decades

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641445#Comment_119641445

Not when I am talking about capacity factor, I don't; that's just a fun sideline. If the real objective figures for renewables actually made sense and were a lot better, I'd be the one championing them and singing their praises. Believe it or not, I am not fixated on nuclear because it's nuclear, it just is vastly superior when looking at the numbers in relation to the intended aim. There simply is no cheaper or better way to get a zero CO2 grid. And if you are a catastrophist who thinks there actually is a climate emergency and time is of the essence, then you can get your zero CO2 grid, 16 years sooner than any other way, at less cost.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119641270#Comment_119641270

The only twisted comprehension here is your attempts to ignore what the SEAI have said and what the black and white of your own post confirms. Whether that is from your inability to understand the figures or your unwillingness to acknowledge them I have no idea.

I have explained it to you in simple terms using the figures from your own post that show year on year, going back as far as 2014, our use of gas has been increasing. Since 2017 so has our using oil, which last year was double what we used in 2010. Our use of coal has been rising and last year was back to practically the same level as 2017. I even pointed out what closing peat burning plants has resulted in.

It really is not complicated. As the SEAI stated last year demand grew by 4.3%. Our renewable generation dropped by 17% and our use of coal and oil trebled. If you can still, for whatever your reason, not comprehend those figures, then their is not much me or anyone else can do for you I`m afraid.

Fairytale hopium thinking is not going to change those figures. .