Reducing CO2 emissions... (warning, may contain nuts)

[5potnoodle]

Originally Posted by missfire

he used to say that because it 'caused so much disruption' (cost the power company too much money) to shut down a reactor..that 'spare' power at night was dumped into things like lighting and heating things like public buildings etc.

as our 'carers' (government) have firmly chosen the glow in the dark route to ''clean'' energy (substituting dependency on overseas energy sources for the health and lives of our own people) i would imagine that there will be a lot more un-necessary lighting and things of that nature going on in the future.......... at night.

..

If that is true, though I find it a little incredulous that we have so much surplus supply at night, then it's just the kind of short sighted thinking with our first-past-the-post democratic dictatorship electoral system that's got us into this mess. As you mentioned, they don't seem to have so much of a problem in a proportionally represented no-overall-majority Europe, since they don't make decisions with one eye on the next general election result.

If spare overnight energy really is a problem then there are a few things that could be done to use it up more efficiently than providing enough light to keep the robins in the trees awake.

Offer all domestic customers cheap overnight electricity (like the economy 7 system) so that we can all reduce our energy bills and increase our spending power to help the economy.

Use the spare energy to manufacture hydrogen which could then be used for the rail system... by removing diesel engines from the diesel-electric rail locomotives and instead powering the electric motors with hydrogen fuel cells, hence removing the need for electrification of all rail lines, reducing costs on the rail network.

Originally Posted by missfire

in other countries they are smarter.. they do things like use this 'spare' power at night to pump water up-hill... then in the morning (when demand increases) they let it run back down again..through hydro stations..

but there just isn’t enough of that kind of common sense in this country..

this was a problem that he had with wind turbines, although i love them,...if the wind blows at night...what do you do with the excess??

They do actually use overnight leccy to pump water back up the hill at the Dinorwig hydro station in Wales and I suspect all the other stations in the UK so that's not specifically a European thing. I don't believe that a wind turbine turning at night is a major problem. It's not like they are nuclear and can't be switched off. So you can love wind power again