El Cid Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Do you think they'll race at nighttime? When it's a solar powered Le Mans 24hr, ask me again. I believe that the around the world solar powered flight, was partly done during the night. It was designed to remain airborne up to 36 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 I believe that the around the world solar powered flight, was partly done during the night. It was designed to remain airborne up to 36 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse Did you read the article? It has batteries. Let's try discussing cutting edge battery technology. The Tesla powerwall which costs at least £2000 can hold about 10kWh. That's might be enough to keep your home warm on a still winter evening for a couple of hours. If it's not too big and is well insulated. Lighting is negligible, but you'd have a job cooking anything and I'd take it easy on the tea/coffee. The computer and TV will probably need to stay off. So on a still winter day run by a grid of solar and wind, having spent your £2000 you get about 2 hours and then you're freezing. That's not long enough so you'll end up buying several units. Does that sound affordable to you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truman Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Did you read the article? It has batteries. Let's try discussing cutting edge battery technology. The Tesla powerwall which costs at least £2000 can hold about 10kWh. That's might be enough to keep your home warm on a still winter evening for a couple of hours. If it's not too big and is well insulated. Lighting is negligible, but you'd have a job cooking anything and I'd take it easy on the tea/coffee. The computer and TV will probably need to stay off. So on a still winter day run by a grid of solar and wind, having spent your £2000 you get about 2 hours and then you're freezing. That's not long enough so you'll end up buying several units. Does that sound affordable to you? 10kWh is almost a day's power for our house.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 10kWh is almost a day's power for our house.. In winter? With no gas? Do you live in a closet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
truman Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 In winter? With no gas? Do you live in a closet? Who said anything about no gas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Who said anything about no gas? Home heating is at least half the CO2 production of the country. I assume that renewables supporters are for electric home heating. If not, then they make even less sense than I previously thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apelike Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 You're quite wrong. Electricity supply is always at least 50% "base load". This is required 24/7 and has to be continuous. The rest is a combination of "peaking" supply and supply which can be adjusted quickly according to demand. Again, can you please give further details of this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Again, can you please give further details of this? It's all on wikipedia. This is quite interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants It seems that modern nuclear reactors can do peaking and on demand/load following. So we could go 100% nuclear. Do we actually want to cut CO2 production by 80%? If so, then nuclear is clearly the solution. It can now do base load, load following and peaking. Wind and solar do none of these things and depend on load following power stations to back them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 I believe that the around the world solar powered flight, was partly done during the night. It was designed to remain airborne up to 36 hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse And again, so what? It isn't remotely related to solar power to homes. It was more of a showcase of aerospace engineering than anything else. ---------- Post added 03-09-2015 at 14:22 ---------- Home heating is at least half the CO2 production of the country. I assume that renewables supporters are for electric home heating. If not, then they make even less sense than I previously thought. Electrical heating is far less efficient than gas though, I can't see why anyone would be in favour of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unbeliever Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Electrical heating is far less efficient than gas though, I can't see why anyone would be in favour of it. Indeed it is. But you can't do home heating on gas and still hit the IPCC's CO2 reduction targets. The target is 80% by 2050. The government's plan is for no home gas or other fossil. All electric vehicles and all CO2 free electricity generation with a doubling of capacity to take over home heating. The plan depends on heavy use of nuclear (they like to keep that quiet). https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/68816/216-2050-pathways-analysis-report.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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