Any change of a re-visit in 2019 please? As per 2:12 coal was 19GW or about half of the UK generation, this summer it has quite often been 0%. Also post the August power cut would be great to see some stats from that day.
SilentS this videos was posted in 2012 , your comment was 2018 , mine is 2019 obviously so already far over the five ....but I do wonder upon the differences
@ 2:09 Wow...44% coal & 0.7% wind! Today Coal doesn't even get near double figures and wind is routinely more than double, sometime triple, that of coal today. Solar hit it's record this year with 24.3% in March!!! Would be really interesting to see an update on this video.
@@KennyTew2 I was working there recently and a return visit is definitely on the cards, and soon. And it has changed, oh lordy. When I went 11 years ago coal was producing around 30% of all over electricity. Now it's 0,05% over the year, wind has grown from around 9% peak back then to regularly peaking at 65% plus. So big big changes.
Hi Bobby... just re-watched this after five years and it's striking how much the numbers have changed since! Any chance of you doing a follow-up visit to update us? I'm particularly interested in the context of stuff like the Electric Nation smart charging trial project, which I'm just in the process of joining
There's a balance point with distance where for the same size of conductor you can economically transmit more power with dc than ac, you have to bring in the cost of the convertors at each end. The main difference - with dc the volts are always there, with ac it's a rms value so you have to insulate for the peak, but don't get the full benefit
It's because we are pretty awesome ;) Working with NG is great though in all honesty, we all love our work and know that we have some amazing challenges ahead of us! I, for one, am very much looking forward to what's coming over the next few years!
Probably best they don't update. Windows is getting more and more unstable and prone to hacking and problems due to the greater number of features. They don't need an elegant OS, just something that can get the job done. They need to control the power of the entire country, not get bugged about Windows Automatic Updates every 5 days and being told the system will restart in N hours (which even if you disable automatic updates, they still download and this still happens anyway, because f*** you user) :P
Robert, this is a super video. As an electric car owner it tells me that overnight charging is the way to go to fill in the "bath tub" of demand. It also tells me that electric vehicles are not going to cause a melt down of the grid as so many doom-sayers predict. Thanks for this superb report.
One of the advantages of PV is that its peak output is well-matched to peak demand, in most places. PV, in sufficient quantities, does a great job of leveling the midday peak, when utilities would be forced to bring their most expensive and inefficient peaker plants online.
Anyway, having popped a few replies down here, I just wanted to say thanks to Rob for coming over! Looks like you enjoyed yourself, shame I didn't get a chance to meet you in person... maybe next time.
Very good question. I've seen other documentaries on the national grid that show there's also an issue around how long it takes to turn a particular type of power plant on or off... (A coal plant taking about 2 hours, nuclear can take a day or more, and gas can be turned on within about 5 minutes) - but as to cost, gas seems to be the most expensive by far, and unfortunately, I think coal still remains cheapest overall.
Yep, even in summer That's amazing, so very different to what we see over here! We get a very steep rise in the morning, flat for most of the day, another rise in the evening and then a nice steep drop-off when everyone goes to bed! Wonder what the differences are which contribute to such a massive difference in energy usage over the day
This was a brilliant episode Robert. Fascinating...really filled in some blanks I had about the UK power grid. You asked great questions and I thought the fellow you interviewed did a marvelous job as well. Thanks again.
Will you be able to get in and do an updated video of this and also discuss in more detail the impact of half hour readings from smart meters, micro generation and vehicle to grid will have on the national grid.
Myles Dyer brought me to this video and I'm extremely grateful! I can't wait for the future look into tidal energy and I'm also looking into jobs at the national grid now. Keep up the great work producers of this series!
Nigel Williams made some good predictions. As I write at the start of 2020, the SMMT say there's about 275,000 EVs on the road, and if the current trend continues, there will be about 365,000 by the end of 2020. Nigel's predicted 500,000 by the end of 2020 being in the right ball park.
Wikipedia has an article called "Cost of electricity by source", where Coal and Natural Gas seems to be the two cheapest sources in general. There are several sets of numbers that vary somewhat due to them being from studies in different countries and plant variations, etc, etc. Stilll, it's a good read. :)
oop, when i said "pre-empts" i ment the opposite: "follows". ie: when you finally get to home/work, you first plug your car in, then you go inside and turn on the kettle/TV/PC. So the plugging in of the car's battery residue is wonderfully synchronised to offset whatever grid demand you will have now that you have arrived at your destination.
this is a video that should be a prerequisite for all new subscribers to watch... im sad that its taken me this long to know that this video was made. what a great video!
Seeing coal at the top of the board there 6 years ago, and seeing now that it's 0.0%, shows some great progress. Admittedly most of the slack has been taken up by gas, but it's still cleaner than coal.
Dinorwig Power Station (info on wikipedia) That is exactly what they do actually, this station in Wales pumps water to the top of a reservoir, and then releases it when required. They lose energy by doing this, but it does mean that during power surges you mantain a supply. I was told by a physics teacher that if it wasn't for this station the miners strikes may have suceeded, instead the station provided power during large surges.
This is brilliant! It's great to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on to keep things working. I worked at a power station for a few years, and even we didn't get to see much of this bigger picture.
This was so interesting! Really fantastic seeing the details and the inside of something that I have never seen. When people throw around complaints and comments about the grid it now makes a lot more sense having seen the control centre. Really great episode, thanks! :)
There is also the whole issue of home style PV being completely unmetered in real time, much like Nigel was saying, it's very difficult to balance the network when we are unaware of how much of the demand is being hidden by people using solar panels. The only way NG sees embedded generation is as a reduction in demand, we recieve no data from the feed in tarriff at all... can be rather troublesome when a storm begins coming across the UK. We actually see the demand rise area by area.
That really was a very interesting episode. It would be interesting to hear some insights on some of the other bigwigs of the industry, such as : - How much energy does a national communications grid like the telephone network consume ? - How much energy is used in road signals ? - How much energy is used in trains ? - What is British Gas up to ? :) All stuff that the normal private person don't have a chance of getting info on themselves, but something that Robert has a chance to obtain. :)
Actually, the peak is usually when people arrive home in the evenings, there is very little rise in demand during the middle of the day, it is actually rather flat. If you search for "National Grid real time data" you will find the demand curves on the NG website to show this.
IF you take a look at the list of energy they had, you'll notice they were using 0% oil ... that's usually a really good indication of which powersource is the most expensive. :D
Great, informative video thanks. Although, when using a multicamera set up you really should white balance your cameras properly so you can properly match the colours in post.
Really enjoyed this episode, well done & thank you! Never seen the innards of the national grid before, amazing to see real time numbers for energy generation, and also learn of the practical issues with supply & demand. The control room looked somewhat similar to a financial stock exchange! Most interesting!
Very informative report about the challenges to operate the national Grid in the UK. EV Recharge network Operator Better Place has built a network operation center which manages the recharging of their subscribed EVs centrally. They exchange information about available energy and demand with the grid operators in Israel. They charging their batteries when power is available and cheap and slow down charging when the demand peaks. Wonder if you can manage to get in the NOC of Better Place too.
Fully Charged, as always since episode 01 have always been interesting. Yet, since when you got the sponsorship from British Gas, everything has been far more professional, especially the camera quality! Robert, I think this is well good enough to appear on the teley. Something like the Discovery Channel maybe. You got CarPool in Dave and it was a success! This is really proper quality stuff, even on television standards!
Fantastic episode Robert. I would tend to say keep the show as webisodes as going to TV means the entire international viewership will be disadvantaged due to the idiotic rules the big media players have placed. Also keep up the great work you have done, seen every episode right from pilot and even re-watch episodes from time-to-time(something that cannot be done in mainstream(excluding those that have recorded onto PVRs/MediaCentrePCs/etc.)
“A storage solution, that’s just what we need” Well over 10 years later Tesla is installing Mega packs for energy storage. A drop in the pond for now but you have to start somewhere. With renewables needing to take on a bigger role storage is key. (I’m my opinion :) )
I was refering to megawatt class turbines, since price per MW falls down with the size of the turbine, whereas PV price is determined by the price of modules. Also, in your last sentence, which return will be much more? You say wind cost 2x as much, but the output per annum is up to 3x more for wind, so in 20 years PV makes max 240 MWh, wind makes 800 MWh.
Maybe somewhat relevant: The US Dept. of Energy released a study in 2000 (tinyurl / 7sjjp8s - PDF) says that well-to-wheels gasoline is 83% efficient, so for every gallon (3.78 liters) of gasoline (36.6kWh of energy) you started with (36.6/0.83)=44.1kWh of energy. Therefore a gallon of gasoline takes (44.1-36.6)=7.5kWh to produce and deliver. That's energy, not necessarily electricity, but with that energy you can drive a typical EV at least 20 miles (32km).
At real utility scale, even those might be too costly. But the pumped heat technology with gravel "batteries" that is being developed by Isentropic in the UK shows great promise.
Not sure but widespread use of air conditioners probably is a big factor in midday summer usage. I'm the only one of my entire circle of friends and colleagues who doesn't use one at home.
Very informative. Tied up a lot questions I had - and a few I didn't know I had. Created one though: the 'bootstraps' are dc? I thought ac was required for long distance transmission?
Um... I meant that because the cars are being driven and therefore, by definition, not plugged in they are not able to be used by the grid... at all, whether or not there is a peak demand.
And disheartening. I know things take time especially on a national scale but when Germany is producing 20 times more solar energy than us its embarrassing! Our politicians need to stop taking the legal bribes (lobbying) & start doing what is best for our future.
They have 20x the installed capacity, different thing entirely and more of something is not necessarily a good thing especially when it causes problems. The grid needs balancing and forethought not just throwing money at the problem and into the hands of special interest groups and people who already have money at the expense of the rest of society.
yeah but take a look from my POV, if lets say 30% home users would produce power themselves, then the peak demand would not be that high, and so the demand curve would be more linear.
This was 5 years ago, today on a typical day we get no more than 4% from coal and 10% from gas, with some days even seeing all electrical generation being nuclear or renewable. So, yes, driving an EV is about as environmentally friendly as you can get transport-wise - unless you own a horse and have sewn up it's arsehole.
Very good question, here's a conspiratorial theory. Maybe if your position is anti-wind/micro generation and pro fossil burning then the last person you want to hear from is someone who manages this. On the other far more plausible hand, National Grid don't desperately need the PR, but they do desperately need engineers, they are trying to hire 1,000's and having real trouble finding them. Bit bonkers in current climate
Yup, 8 years later and that has not changed. Same here in the US. We constantly have 1-3 unfilled vacancies in our Energy Control Centers, and struggle to keep up with retirements. Too few technical graduates coming out of our Universities and Colleges. And for those that do, we set up booths at the job fairs on campuses, but find most pre-grads are looking for IT or Robotics. My advise, get a 2 or 4 year degree in Electrical Tech or Engineering and you'll instantly join the upper middle class in the best growth field for the next 15 years.
Thank you for your answer! I am aware that wind energy is cheaper than solar, but I think that we should look for ways to reduce the cost and still go for this energy source. There are so many ways to convert solar energy and none of them are really efficient today, especially considering the amount of energy that is used to make them. I agree about the storage, I think this is going to be a key element in future energy handling, as shown by Donald Sadoway on TED a few weeks ago.
2012: We're forecasting 500 000 electric vehicles by 2020. 2019"The electric car market is growing quickly, with almost 265,000 models on UK roads at the end of December 2019"(www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/)
The big Boss has a Welsh accent, so the Centre is somewhere in Wales. As for electricity from wind farms, he implied they have no idea how to predict what input the farms can supply because that depends on the....er.....wind!
The Federal government has all but killed subsidies, and most of the State rebates and feed-in tariff have ended or been decreased. You have to be a dedicated (and rather well off) PV-er to install a set of panels because you have to pay for it all yourself.
Hi, Not any more. Price falls in PV (NB - not solar thermal) modules ('solar panels') in the last couple of years mean this is no longer the case. A 2.4kWpk wind turbine (e.g. SkyStream 3.7), would cost around UK£12k to install whereas a comparable PV system would be less than half that. A bigger system, say 10kWpk: PV=£30k/8-12MWh.pa, wind=£60k/20-40MWh.pa. So although the install cost of PV is less than wind the typical UK output is more and over its life the return will be much more.
The fact of the matter is that you won't necessarily have all the vehicles charging at the same time, and this is also something which might be controlled as part of the smart grid, much like economy7 style heating, the cars could be bought online and offline from a charging standpoint remotely as required. If this wasn't the case, the whole idea of filling the bathtub falls apart as you have a load of cars charging for 4 hours which then all stop, returning the demand curve to normal.
Robert. Would it be possible for you to make a video about how much electricity does it take to produce a litter of gas ? (Petrol where you live) Than lets compare that to how much electricity a car would use to drive equivalent of however many km you would get from one litter of gas. Thank you.
Really Good Informative episode - Thanks. And i never heard about the Water Storage thing, --does anybody knows how much power is lost that way ? because it seems pretty smart to store energy in "nature" rather that toxic batteries.
An idea just struck me to make solar and wind less problematic - Use the wind and solar, to only pump water back up to the hyro-electric storage dams. If the sun isn't out or the wind aint blowing, the water doesn't get pumped - and doesn't need to. It can be pumped day and night to fill the dams over however long. BUT will always be ready, with a known output, to generate via hydro when required. This way, power is known and a known quantity is always available like a big capacitor.
In the vid, the guy from the grid indicated that they shut down the most expensive to produce power first. Is there a possibility that the most expensive is wind and solar, due to the feed-in payed out? Does this hurt the green power movement?
Very nice video. It surprised me that you've got 50Hz too in UK, I thought is was 60Hz and there was a problem with connecting to the rest of Europe because of it.
Would be nice too see a new video on the national grid and see how much it's changed since this video!
Yes, wind was almost non existing and solar wasn't even included. We need an update.
Wind is doing fantastically well at the moment.
Coal Capacity would be down
@@AbovetheanklesCoUk1 32% yesterday
Any change of a re-visit in 2019 please? As per 2:12 coal was 19GW or about half of the UK generation, this summer it has quite often been 0%. Also post the August power cut would be great to see some stats from that day.
4:05 "Integration with Europe is an issue" - well, he predicted Brexit. Hats off.
this is actually really freaking interesting, I would love to hear more about our infrastructure
It would be interesting for Robert to go back today and see what's changed in 5 years.
SilentS this videos was posted in 2012 , your comment was 2018 , mine is 2019 obviously so already far over the five ....but I do wonder upon the differences
This link shows the current UK demand, it's interesting to see how much it has changed since this video www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
8 years on...
@@yarkmates3409 well I'm here in 2021, so...
@@sonyakhalfina7219 so......... What's changed?
@ 2:09 Wow...44% coal & 0.7% wind! Today Coal doesn't even get near double figures and wind is routinely more than double, sometime triple, that of coal today. Solar hit it's record this year with 24.3% in March!!!
Would be really interesting to see an update on this video.
gridwatch.co.uk
It's about 1% wind and 50% gas rn. wind is just too unreliable.
All I can say is please keep tuned. We discuss tidal turbines in detail in a future episode.
It’d be great to see a revisit of this video.
@@KennyTew2 I was working there recently and a return visit is definitely on the cards, and soon. And it has changed, oh lordy. When I went 11 years ago coal was producing around 30% of all over electricity. Now it's 0,05% over the year, wind has grown from around 9% peak back then to regularly peaking at 65% plus. So big big changes.
I love how his tie appears to be an afterthought.
Hi Bobby... just re-watched this after five years and it's striking how much the numbers have changed since! Any chance of you doing a follow-up visit to update us? I'm particularly interested in the context of stuff like the Electric Nation smart charging trial project, which I'm just in the process of joining
This video deserves way more views! Super interesting!
Very insightful. Great interview with quality questions and answers. Thanks
I absolutely loved this interview. It wasn't too enthusiatsic, not too pessimistic. He just said it the way it was. Simple unbiased facts.
*I would love to see an update on this, a lot has changed in 11 years!*
There's a balance point with distance where for the same size of conductor you can economically transmit more power with dc than ac, you have to bring in the cost of the convertors at each end. The main difference - with dc the volts are always there, with ac it's a rms value so you have to insulate for the peak, but don't get the full benefit
Not even 5,000 subscribers? C'mon, people. Let's spread the word about Fully Charged!!!
It's because we are pretty awesome ;)
Working with NG is great though in all honesty, we all love our work and know that we have some amazing challenges ahead of us! I, for one, am very much looking forward to what's coming over the next few years!
Brilliant episode. It would be great to see an update!
This was extremely interesting. Great information and insightful questions from Robert!
As below, please do again with same guy and same figures for comparison
I wonder how this has changed since when it was filmed??
I think I saw Windows XP shutting down at 6:39. I hope they have updated their OS by now.
i think its actually a screensaver :O
Probably best they don't update. Windows is getting more and more unstable and prone to hacking and problems due to the greater number of features. They don't need an elegant OS, just something that can get the job done. They need to control the power of the entire country, not get bugged about Windows Automatic Updates every 5 days and being told the system will restart in N hours (which even if you disable automatic updates, they still download and this still happens anyway, because f*** you user) :P
as long as it not connected to the internet... they don't need to do it.
not updating your OS is the easiest way to get hacked
why? XP works fine, if they don't need to update, why should they?
Very informative video! Thanks for the great content, even from 6 years ago! Keep up the great work.
Robert, this is a super video. As an electric car owner it tells me that overnight charging is the way to go to fill in the "bath tub" of demand. It also tells me that electric vehicles are not going to cause a melt down of the grid as so many doom-sayers predict.
Thanks for this superb report.
I hope you also learned that the "doom sayers" usually have an agenda, and it's always sideways from where they are pointing.
One of the advantages of PV is that its peak output is well-matched to peak demand, in most places.
PV, in sufficient quantities, does a great job of leveling the midday peak, when utilities would be forced to bring their most expensive and inefficient peaker plants online.
Anyway, having popped a few replies down here, I just wanted to say thanks to Rob for coming over! Looks like you enjoyed yourself, shame I didn't get a chance to meet you in person... maybe next time.
Very good question. I've seen other documentaries on the national grid that show there's also an issue around how long it takes to turn a particular type of power plant on or off... (A coal plant taking about 2 hours, nuclear can take a day or more, and gas can be turned on within about 5 minutes) - but as to cost, gas seems to be the most expensive by far, and unfortunately, I think coal still remains cheapest overall.
Yep, even in summer
That's amazing, so very different to what we see over here! We get a very steep rise in the morning, flat for most of the day, another rise in the evening and then a nice steep drop-off when everyone goes to bed!
Wonder what the differences are which contribute to such a massive difference in energy usage over the day
This was a brilliant episode Robert. Fascinating...really filled in some blanks I had about the UK power grid.
You asked great questions and I thought the fellow you interviewed did a marvelous job as well.
Thanks again.
Will you be able to get in and do an updated video of this and also discuss in more detail the impact of half hour readings from smart meters, micro generation and vehicle to grid will have on the national grid.
Myles Dyer brought me to this video and I'm extremely grateful! I can't wait for the future look into tidal energy and I'm also looking into jobs at the national grid now.
Keep up the great work producers of this series!
Doesn't appear that much has happened in regard to tidal power
Very informative many thanks for this video👍
Please can we have an update for 2020 showing how the generation mix has changed. Thanks!
Nigel Williams made some good predictions. As I write at the start of 2020, the SMMT say there's about 275,000 EVs on the road, and if the current trend continues, there will be about 365,000 by the end of 2020. Nigel's predicted 500,000 by the end of 2020 being in the right ball park.
science lesson gang
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wow...thanks a lot...
Interesting. Nigel Williams knows his stuff and gives very clear information. Please can we have a National Grid update interview?
Brilliant episode again. Experts have been getting better and better as the series has gone on.
Wikipedia has an article called "Cost of electricity by source", where Coal and Natural Gas seems to be the two cheapest sources in general. There are several sets of numbers that vary somewhat due to them being from studies in different countries and plant variations, etc, etc.
Stilll, it's a good read. :)
oop, when i said "pre-empts" i ment the opposite: "follows".
ie: when you finally get to home/work, you first plug your car in, then you go inside and turn on the kettle/TV/PC. So the plugging in of the car's battery residue is wonderfully synchronised to offset whatever grid demand you will have now that you have arrived at your destination.
Robert, this was your absolute best video I've seen so far, and I can't believe I've seen it only now.
this is a video that should be a prerequisite for all new subscribers to watch... im sad that its taken me this long to know that this video was made. what a great video!
Robert! We need to have an update!
We all want to know how much difference has happened in 8+ years!
Close to 9 years since this has been released when I am watching.
Just watched this. Brilliant. As so many others have requested, a return visit would be fascinating - just to see the change in RE vs coal etc.
Seeing coal at the top of the board there 6 years ago, and seeing now that it's 0.0%, shows some great progress. Admittedly most of the slack has been taken up by gas, but it's still cleaner than coal.
Dinorwig Power Station (info on wikipedia) That is exactly what they do actually, this station in Wales pumps water to the top of a reservoir, and then releases it when required. They lose energy by doing this, but it does mean that during power surges you mantain a supply. I was told by a physics teacher that if it wasn't for this station the miners strikes may have suceeded, instead the station provided power during large surges.
Anyone know the title of the fully charged video showing the power station producing electricity from air. Thx
This is brilliant! It's great to see some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that goes on to keep things working. I worked at a power station for a few years, and even we didn't get to see much of this bigger picture.
This was so interesting! Really fantastic seeing the details and the inside of something that I have never seen. When people throw around complaints and comments about the grid it now makes a lot more sense having seen the control centre. Really great episode, thanks! :)
Interesting to see how much we relied on coal in 2012. Looking at it now, coal never seems to make up more than 2% of our energy generation.
Do they get massive power surges whenever Photonicinduction is making a video?
For those interested, you can view the real time demand & transfers on the national grid website. Unfortunately youtube blocks links from comments.
Please please please do this interview again so we can see how things have progressed with the grid
There is also the whole issue of home style PV being completely unmetered in real time, much like Nigel was saying, it's very difficult to balance the network when we are unaware of how much of the demand is being hidden by people using solar panels.
The only way NG sees embedded generation is as a reduction in demand, we recieve no data from the feed in tarriff at all... can be rather troublesome when a storm begins coming across the UK. We actually see the demand rise area by area.
Robert your channel is fascinating. Keep it up!
I could sit in that control room just looking at those displays for a whole day...
That really was a very interesting episode.
It would be interesting to hear some insights on some of the other bigwigs of the industry, such as :
- How much energy does a national communications grid like the telephone network consume ?
- How much energy is used in road signals ?
- How much energy is used in trains ?
- What is British Gas up to ? :)
All stuff that the normal private person don't have a chance of getting info on themselves, but something that Robert has a chance to obtain. :)
Actually, the peak is usually when people arrive home in the evenings, there is very little rise in demand during the middle of the day, it is actually rather flat. If you search for "National Grid real time data" you will find the demand curves on the NG website to show this.
Over long distances, you also get issues with synchronization of frequency due to time delay with AC power, no such issues with DC.
Wow, that National Grid guy really knows his stuff. I know he needs to, and should, but still, impressive. Lots of food for thought there for us all.
IF you take a look at the list of energy they had, you'll notice they were using 0% oil ... that's usually a really good indication of which powersource is the most expensive. :D
Great, informative video thanks.
Although, when using a multicamera set up you really should white balance your cameras properly so you can properly match the colours in post.
great stuff as ever, hope it never gets dumbed down or drawn out for tele.
Really enjoyed this episode, well done & thank you!
Never seen the innards of the national grid before, amazing to see real time numbers for energy generation, and also learn of the practical issues with supply & demand. The control room looked somewhat similar to a financial stock exchange! Most interesting!
Very informative report about the challenges to operate the national Grid in the UK.
EV Recharge network Operator Better Place has built a network operation center which manages the recharging of their subscribed EVs centrally. They exchange information about available energy and demand with the grid operators in Israel. They charging their batteries when power is available and cheap and slow down charging when the demand peaks. Wonder if you can manage to get in the NOC of Better Place too.
How more iconic do you need!!
Robert LLewelyn (hope Ive spelt that right),,,
Thank you - inspirational and unbelieveable
Fully Charged, as always since episode 01 have always been interesting.
Yet, since when you got the sponsorship from British Gas, everything has been far more professional, especially the camera quality!
Robert, I think this is well good enough to appear on the teley. Something like the Discovery Channel maybe. You got CarPool in Dave and it was a success!
This is really proper quality stuff, even on television standards!
Fantastic episode Robert. I would tend to say keep the show as webisodes as going to TV means the entire international viewership will be disadvantaged due to the idiotic rules the big media players have placed.
Also keep up the great work you have done, seen every episode right from pilot and even re-watch episodes from time-to-time(something that cannot be done in mainstream(excluding those that have recorded onto PVRs/MediaCentrePCs/etc.)
“A storage solution, that’s just what we need”
Well over 10 years later Tesla is installing Mega packs for energy storage. A drop in the pond for now but you have to start somewhere. With renewables needing to take on a bigger role storage is key. (I’m my opinion :) )
I was refering to megawatt class turbines, since price per MW falls down with the size of the turbine, whereas PV price is determined by the price of modules. Also, in your last sentence, which return will be much more? You say wind cost 2x as much, but the output per annum is up to 3x more for wind, so in 20 years PV makes max 240 MWh, wind makes 800 MWh.
Maybe somewhat relevant: The US Dept. of Energy released a study in 2000 (tinyurl / 7sjjp8s - PDF) says that well-to-wheels gasoline is 83% efficient, so for every gallon (3.78 liters) of gasoline (36.6kWh of energy) you started with (36.6/0.83)=44.1kWh of energy. Therefore a gallon of gasoline takes (44.1-36.6)=7.5kWh to produce and deliver. That's energy, not necessarily electricity, but with that energy you can drive a typical EV at least 20 miles (32km).
Brilliant show Robert. You are really covering lots of bases. I am really looking forward to what you have next. Keep up the great work.
At real utility scale, even those might be too costly. But the pumped heat technology with gravel "batteries" that is being developed by Isentropic in the UK shows great promise.
Not sure but widespread use of air conditioners probably is a big factor in midday summer usage.
I'm the only one of my entire circle of friends and colleagues who doesn't use one at home.
Very informative. Tied up a lot questions I had - and a few I didn't know I had. Created one though: the 'bootstraps' are dc? I thought ac was required for long distance transmission?
Um... I meant that because the cars are being driven and therefore, by definition, not plugged in they are not able to be used by the grid... at all, whether or not there is a peak demand.
Pause at 2.08, look at where the energy is coming from. 96% from Coal, gas and nuclear and another 2.4% imported. That is amazing.
And disheartening. I know things take time especially on a national scale but when Germany is producing 20 times more solar energy than us its embarrassing! Our politicians need to stop taking the legal bribes (lobbying) & start doing what is best for our future.
They have 20x the installed capacity, different thing entirely and more of something is not necessarily a good thing especially when it causes problems. The grid needs balancing and forethought not just throwing money at the problem and into the hands of special interest groups and people who already have money at the expense of the rest of society.
yeah but take a look from my POV, if lets say 30% home users would produce power themselves, then the peak demand would not be that high, and so the demand curve would be more linear.
This was 5 years ago, today on a typical day we get no more than 4% from coal and 10% from gas, with some days even seeing all electrical generation being nuclear or renewable. So, yes, driving an EV is about as environmentally friendly as you can get transport-wise - unless you own a horse and have sewn up it's arsehole.
That was a fantastic episode. I understood almost all of it!
Excellent segment. Please visit Mr. Williams again for a 2019 update. Thanks.
Very good question, here's a conspiratorial theory. Maybe if your position is anti-wind/micro generation and pro fossil burning then the last person you want to hear from is someone who manages this. On the other far more plausible hand, National Grid don't desperately need the PR, but they do desperately need engineers, they are trying to hire 1,000's and having real trouble finding them. Bit bonkers in current climate
Yup, 8 years later and that has not changed. Same here in the US. We constantly have 1-3 unfilled vacancies in our Energy Control Centers, and struggle to keep up with retirements. Too few technical graduates coming out of our Universities and Colleges. And for those that do, we set up booths at the job fairs on campuses, but find most pre-grads are looking for IT or Robotics. My advise, get a 2 or 4 year degree in Electrical Tech or Engineering and you'll instantly join the upper middle class in the best growth field for the next 15 years.
Here in 2018 right this second wind meeting 33% of UK demand.
Nigel suddenly has a pair of glasses on his head at 3:02 haha
great video by the way, very interesting
Thank you for your answer! I am aware that wind energy is cheaper than solar, but I think that we should look for ways to reduce the cost and still go for this energy source. There are so many ways to convert solar energy and none of them are really efficient today, especially considering the amount of energy that is used to make them. I agree about the storage, I think this is going to be a key element in future energy handling, as shown by Donald Sadoway on TED a few weeks ago.
2012: We're forecasting 500 000 electric vehicles by 2020.
2019"The electric car market is growing quickly, with almost 265,000 models on UK roads at the end of December 2019"(www.nextgreencar.com/electric-cars/statistics/)
tony saba said it takes 8 years for a revolution... horse to car, gas car to electric car... etc
The big Boss has a Welsh accent, so the Centre is somewhere in Wales. As for electricity from wind farms, he implied they have no idea how to predict what input the farms can supply because that depends on the....er.....wind!
Wouldn't happen to be a stone's throw away from where you filmed Scrapheap challenge? ;) Snuck into the set when I randomly discovered it. Very cool.
The Federal government has all but killed subsidies, and most of the State rebates and feed-in tariff have ended or been decreased. You have to be a dedicated (and rather well off) PV-er to install a set of panels because you have to pay for it all yourself.
Hi,
Not any more. Price falls in PV (NB - not solar thermal) modules ('solar panels') in the last couple of years mean this is no longer the case. A 2.4kWpk wind turbine (e.g. SkyStream 3.7), would cost around UK£12k to install whereas a comparable PV system would be less than half that. A bigger system, say 10kWpk: PV=£30k/8-12MWh.pa, wind=£60k/20-40MWh.pa. So although the install cost of PV is less than wind the typical UK output is more and over its life the return will be much more.
The fact of the matter is that you won't necessarily have all the vehicles charging at the same time, and this is also something which might be controlled as part of the smart grid, much like economy7 style heating, the cars could be bought online and offline from a charging standpoint remotely as required. If this wasn't the case, the whole idea of filling the bathtub falls apart as you have a load of cars charging for 4 hours which then all stop, returning the demand curve to normal.
Robert. Would it be possible for you to make a video about how much electricity does it take to produce a litter of gas ? (Petrol where you live) Than lets compare that to how much electricity a car would use to drive equivalent of however many km you would get from one litter of gas.
Thank you.
Time for a revisit Bobby
Really Good Informative episode - Thanks. And i never heard about the Water Storage thing, --does anybody knows how much power is lost that way ? because it seems pretty smart to store energy in "nature" rather that toxic batteries.
Brilliant episode!
An idea just struck me to make solar and wind less problematic -
Use the wind and solar, to only pump water back up to the hyro-electric storage dams. If the sun isn't out or the wind aint blowing, the water doesn't get pumped - and doesn't need to. It can be pumped day and night to fill the dams over however long.
BUT will always be ready, with a known output, to generate via hydro when required.
This way, power is known and a known quantity is always available like a big capacitor.
In the vid, the guy from the grid indicated that they shut down the most expensive to produce power first. Is there a possibility that the most expensive is wind and solar, due to the feed-in payed out? Does this hurt the green power movement?
thanks you sir for providing such valuable information.....Sir please make a video on which softwares are mostly used in national grids....thanks
I stopped thinking Llewellyn as Kryten and found this really interesting. Thumbs up from me.
I've let go of that too but every now & then I catch him pulling a Kryten face, makes me smile every time. Thumbs up indeed :)
Hahaha definitely agree.
Very nice video. It surprised me that you've got 50Hz too in UK, I thought is was 60Hz and there was a problem with connecting to the rest of Europe because of it.
It would be really cool if you could do a revisit of this video 10 years further on.
Would be really interesting to go back and see what has happened in the last 9 years - how much of the things talked about have been acheived
great vid!
funny that the grid control room looks just the same like over here