Ianhill said:
Ive seen elon hanging around in the uk pushing his solar ideas saying that we can meet our grid demands using solar wind and battery alone, I'm a bit skepticle on this at the moment...
Musk makes many promises. I assume this is what Americans like a lot, but it looks a bit "strange" to most people in our culture over here.
Like with his powerwall. Imho this product is rather sub standard compared to other things available on the market (and I have real life data on hundreds of systems). But you may disagree here, I'm not able to proof it anyway...
But a significant amount of batteries is not necessary until around 60-80% solar+wind in the grid (depending on the size and quality of the grid), if you have highly flexible residual power plants (gas)
A Tesla powerwall is as "stupid" with no positive grid interaction as are 99% of all small home batteries. There are very few exceptions like Caterva who use a cloud of small home storage system on the primary balancing power.
...is still real so the UK is investing massive in nuclear fusion and we are building it on a small scale compared to before and with advancements we have had self sustained fusion but it's not possible for long periods of time so years to come we will have fusion reactors toping up the grid as to speak if you like making the renewables look weak and pointless .
UK has fantastic(!) wind offshore resources.
Last wind offshore tender in Germany ended at a bid of 0ct/kWh (zero!). Companies don't want any subsidies at all, they just want the place and the grid connection. It should be even cheaper in UK with better wind and closer to the coast.
As fair as I know Hinkley C will get a feed in tarif of ca. 11pc/kWh plus inflation for 35 years! Costs for rebuilding and waste storage are not included. If it succeeds becomes more and more doubtful.
There are almost no nuclear companies left. Areva now belongs to EDF and they are in massive debt and barely kept alive by French government, Westinghouse is already bankrupt. Who is left? The South Koreans and they have shown little interest to expand that business...
I assume that we will see another major nuclear power plant meltdown within the next 20-30 years and I assume this will be the last nail in the coffin, except for those that need new material to make bombs...
But imho each country should decide on its own, as long as they are able to pay for any damage (insurance?) and as long as it is helpful on a way to less CO2 emissions...
I also think spending research money for fusion is a good thing. We may not need it on earth (to expensive), but maybe in space.
Kind regards