{"id":8005,"date":"2018-04-11T14:20:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-11T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8005"},"modified":"2018-04-11T14:20:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-11T13:20:30","slug":"sustainable-energy-update-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=8005","title":{"rendered":"Sustainable energy update – part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nissan_Leaf_002\"<\/a>Last week I blogged<\/a> on a sustainable energy update on\u00a0 the book”Sustainable Energy \u2014 without the hot air” by the late Professor David JC MacKay.\u00a0 The blog post became too long so I’ve split it in two.\u00a0 Here continues another look at the book in the light of events…<\/p>\n

Aircraft.\u00a0<\/strong> Who would have thought it that short haul electric aircraft are under development.\u00a0 Professor MacKay does talk about electric aircraft and describes the energy use of one which is exactly the same as a normal aircraft.\u00a0 He not unreasonably asks if we do have such aircraft are under development then where is the energy going to come from?\u00a0 The only change as I have mentioned before is in battery technology.<\/p>\n

Cars.<\/strong>\u00a0 There has been surprisingly little change here on the face of it.\u00a0 Professor MacKay suggests ranges that are not exceeded today and there are not that many electric cars on the road (although its reached the stage that its not that uncommon to see one).\u00a0 The main changes are in the political and manufacturing drive towards them becoming commonplace.\u00a0 Also the battery technology is undergoing regular incremental improvement and the costs have plummeted and continue to do so.\u00a0 When the book was written with the ranges suggested by Professor MacKay there would have been little room for any passengers or luggage!\u00a0 As we looked at in the last post the multiplier effect of so many items is important and even small improvements in battery technology will make the overall energy use lower.<\/p>\n

There is one more point that Professor MacKay talks about.\u00a0 That is the use of car batteries to store energy as grid backup.\u00a0 This was in vogue at one point then went out of vogue with the government and now seems to back in.\u00a0 The main problem as we wrote in our book is getting people to sacrifice their car use.\u00a0 What has changed is the cost of batteries has made home storage for people with renewable energy systems a practical possibility.\u00a0 Huge battery systems are also being built as grid storage.<\/p>\n

Wind Turbines.<\/strong>\u00a0 Two things have changed since book was written in the UK.\u00a0 Onshore wind has pretty much been banned to appease nimbys.\u00a0 The second is that offshore wind prices have plunged and electricity is now cheaper than nuclear (one thing he definitely did not foresee although neither did many other people).\u00a0 The reason for this is the size of turbines has increased dramatically.\u00a0 When the book was written most turbines being installed out at sea were probably 2-3MWh peak output.\u00a0 Now we are approaching 15MWh per turbine with 20 being talked about.\u00a0 The question is do these large turbines offer any advantages in terms of space?\u00a0 Turbines upwind interfere with those downwind and put stress on them and lower their power output.\u00a0 In the E-version of the book Professor MacKay does not show his calculations.\u00a0 He comes up with huge areas required.\u00a0 This question has been impossible for me to determine definitively.\u00a0 If people have the figures they are not letting on.\u00a0 An anti-wind site in the US says the answer is that the larger the turbine they need to be spaced relatively further apart.\u00a0 However the academic links given don’t reveal this.\u00a0 I think it must be true- its logical.\u00a0 Therefore bigger size does not mean more capacity for a given area, just much lower costs.\u00a0\u00a0 Predicting a given number of turbines per unit area is a mugs game anyway.\u00a0 This site gave two offshore wind farms which used the same turbine (I looked this up) and the areas were very different, presumably due to the sea bed?<\/p>\n

There are things that Professor MacKay did not see.\u00a0 One of which is surprising that he did not is that wind turbines are being put in deeper and deeper water.\u00a0 This makes his area availability calculations wrong.\u00a0 As does the use of floating turbines which are also coming along fast.\u00a0 The last thing to say is the load factor (fraction of time turbines operate at full output) for UK offhore wind is almost 40%.<\/p>\n

No book is perfect and making predictions is never easy (we know).\u00a0 Professor MacKay future proofed some of his predictions but not others.\u00a0 Overall today we can produce more power from less for less money and increasingly store it.\u00a0 The overall conclusion that we cannot switch wholesale to renewables and maintain our current lifestyles is still correct though.\u00a0 We can however get closer than Professor MacKay thought for less money.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I blogged on a sustainable energy update on\u00a0 the book”Sustainable Energy \u2014 without the hot air” by the late Professor David JC MacKay.\u00a0 The blog post became too long so I’ve split it in two.\u00a0 Here continues another … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5,15,4,1],"tags":[58,96,201,47],"class_list":["post-8005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-climate-change","category-practical-low-carbon-living","category-renewables","category-uncategorized","tag-economics-2","tag-electric-cars","tag-transport","tag-wind-power"],"yoast_head":"\nSustainable energy update - part 2 - The oil lamp - 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