We don't need to import ANY energy from anyone. We are - or rather could be - self sufficient in energy production and as a critical infrastructure we *should be*. Ruinables simply cannot provide a base load. Wind and solar are not consistent (my BiL has a solar system that outputs diddly squat for 5 months of the year) so gas/oil/coal backup is ALWAYS required. Why pay for both?
Base load and renewable energy are two different things. At some point (i.e. now) you are wasting resources on renewables because they are not helping to prevent blackouts and thus you become more dependent to other energy sources not less as you add renewable load. There are exceptions but in most countries you will need lots of nukes and this is where resources should be focused.
Indeed, solar energy is beneficial. We have installed 45 panels on our roof for the past 13 years and they were repaid with savings over time. The convenience of not having to pay for power while heating and cooling the house as well as powering the electric vehicle in the garage adds value to the system. This makes it a win-win situation. We do not incur monthly expenses for power consumption, which simplifies matters. I believe this can be referred to as Net Zero.
Self sufficiency is great. Generate Solar and Wind locally. No need to import fossil fuels for electricity generation. We need to think long term benefits and not short term costs. All homes should be built to accommodate the elderly and disabled. This will be better for everyone. Large wide doorways and hallways make using a cane, walker or wheel chair much easier. Bathrooms or wet rooms need to have flat floors and no shower hump or pan. A flat floor allows for easy access and drains need to provided. Easy to use lever door and faucet handles are easier for the elderly to grip and open. Main floors should include a master bedroom, restroom, shower, laundry and wide walk in closet with few steps to enter. Homes should be designed with aging in place in mind.
We need a carrot and stick approach to business roof based solar and local battery/phase change storage, and to mandate that all new dwellings are planned to be North/South facing, include optimised solar and local battery storage, to support the required EV charging points and assigned parking.
"a rain water collection system" please not. We only use fresh tap water for our garden. rain water makes vegetables moldy and destroy most of them. Only the pumpkin is ok with the dirty rain. I got two EV chargers on my garden wall. On the outside. Usable for everyone for free.
@@gadget231 No i would most certainly NOT use rain water for this. You must clean rain water or you destroy your water lines in a very short time. When i start to clean rain water the energy demand and cost is higher than using drinking water. I could use water from my well, that is fairly clean. I would NOT use it in the toilets because i would need different, bigger and a second set of water lines in the whole house. In new houses such is possible. In my old house from 1983 most certainly not. If we do not use the dirnking water it is let go into the rivers anyway. We do not live in a desert.
We got enough summer. 34 degrees during the day and 26 degrees @ 11:55 pm. In the middle of Europe. No rain for weeks now. Besides two short thunderstorms with little rain.
@@JamesCookeVlogs "and it wouldnt help with dark windless winters days " Yes it would. Y'all think too small. I calculate with 100 Terawatthours storage for Europe. Every year. Meaning: 100 TWh batteries being produced every year. After 20 years the amount levels out @ about 1000 TWh for all of Europe. Then we can start building better, cheaper and more sustanable batteries by recycling the old ones. We - we Europeans - would easily be able to build those with our own raw material and know how. We - our industries - just have to do it. And it would even be fairly cheap. Less than 10 cent/kWh storage.
@@wotireckon Moe than both. They - Elon and Tony - are too timid in their projections. They say 100 GWh would be enough. I say we need 100 TERAWATTHOURS. Slight difference. Germany alone needs about 100 Terawatthours for their 6 days of "Dunkelflaute". We in Austria would need about 100 GWh because we just shut down our industry when we do not have enough energy for everything. There is even a law for that. The batteries must e distributed over the whole country. Every house, every company, every transformer, every illage, every settlement, every substation should get twice the power in Wh of batteries. 6600kWp transformer? 1200 kWh batteries. With interface to the current stock prices for electric energy, charge them when its cheap, unload them when its expensive. Ultimately the stock exchange must take those producers into account and change their algorithms. They will if they see the need. Some countries experiment with alternative types like redox flow (does not work sadly), air, salt, gravity, some - as Norway, Switzerland or we in Austria have access to pump storage. Some have more dark and cold days, some have less. Even in a country there are great differences. Complicated? Yes. Expensive? Yes. Will take a long time to produce and build? Yes. What is the Alternative? Burn more fossil ressources. Poison our air more. Take away the reserves for our children and grand kids. Stay dependent on foreign autocrats and mass murderers in Russia or slavers in Arab lands.. And ultimately take away the chance for our grand kids to live a decent life on this, our only, mudball.
Although most agrovoltaics involves either pollinator habitats or livestock grazing here in the USA there also is some crop production. So mixing farming and solar energy is possible. But, probably not for the large-scale crops that countries need to feed the majority of their populations.
Hi good evening James. Jasper has grown up it's always sad the day a parent passes away. It's important to spend some time on that day remembering them. Hope you're mum is managing OK it's OK to celebrate their life. He will always be part of you kind regards Mark. Keep up the excellent topics
There is always the River Severn Barrage, and to put one across the Wash. As for storage, there is Compressed-air energy storage (CAES). Using CO2 taken from the atmosphere would be ideal. Or creating ammonia, which is an efficient energy and hydrogen carrier.
Surely you should start grid energy storage discussion with the front runner, being installed now container sized lithium ferrous phosphate mega batteries, and later sodium ion batteries
Battery storage is great, and these days is often included in solar farm sites, etc... However the amount of energy that is stored is measured in hours, not days, weeks or months. Natural gas storage systems on a national scale can hold months worth of energy and could be scaled up further. So batteries work brilliantly for levelling out short term energy supply spikes and troughs, but longer term huge storage systems will probably need to be more energy dense systems, even if that is at the expense of efficiency.
@@JamesCookeVlogs I agree, long term energy storage is an important, but very neglected problem. There is probably no single answer, but there are many alternatives. Heating homes in winter is far too reliant on gas at the moment. Obviously, better insulation is an important first step and more heat pumps will help for many properties. However, my preferred option for utilising excess solar electricity in the summer is the thermal battery -the option offered by 'Polar Night Enery' is ideal for new build estates incorporating district heating.
Local wind has less transmission losses which is great, but limited by the size of getting turbines and blades to location. Hopefully we can lower the connection times to the grid for new projects. Local rooftop generation has the benefit of lower transmission loss simple connection and uses unused roof space. Time to use all the unused warehouse rooftops.
Where are the UK renewable jobs? All the wind turbines and solar PV panels are imported. There are some jobs in installation, during, installation, and then a few in maintenance afterwards. That's all.
Gravity storage using coal mines. Containers of "Heavy stuff" and ground level. "Crane" them down the shaft onto waiting rail trucks. Generate energy as they drop. Shunt the trucks out of the way. When spare energy is coming in, Lift them back to ground level. This could be fully automated.
Good vlog James, I never understood why the last government stopped on shore wind? (Obviously influenced by you know who is hand in hand by self serving politicians). We have thousands of miles of windy coast line, Scotland has 40% more wind than the rest of the UK so that is a best place to continue putting windmills. I think the largest, off shore turbines in the world are approaching 20 mega watt monster machines. They look as stunning as any major construction we have built around the world. The Humber bridge, York minster, Shard in London,Eiffel tower, empire State building. The pyramids! The UK had thousands of windmills for grinding corn 200 years ago. So what's new? Installing huge mega batteries is the key. But as always, vested interests of current infrastructure continue to slow things down. But it's becoming unstoppable with the help of people like Putin who are forcing countries to become less dependent on oil and fertilisers from Russia. I just listened to the electric Viking who reported China has built the equivalent of 260 nuclear power stations last year using renewables! We have to keep up and I mean all the Western countries! Im looking forward to your coverage of Starship launches in the best future. All the best!
Solar belongs on residential, commercial and industrial properties it does not belong in fields that is just stupid we need the land for food or houses. There is no difference between importing energy and importing food both are vital and need to be homegrown as much as possible.
Just seen the Chinese have commissioned the world's first 20 megawatt windmill its three blades has an area the size of ten football fields! Blade diameter of 978 feet! That almost as tall as the Eiffel tower. But those fiendish Chinese are already in with a 22 Megawatt version! What the whaaat !!!
the solar panels themselves make no noise, but what about inverters, MPPT controllers and charge controllers? i'm sure you can imagine them making some whirring or humming noise. i dunno about your area, but here in west london diesel went right up to 1.999 per liter when that ukraine nonsense started. talk about the most expensive fuel! now the price for a liter of diesel is somewhere around 1.50, depending on where you go.
You could imagine those noises, but that’s all you’ll be doing because they don’t exist! I have 33 solar panels on my roof and the same number of microinverters. I don’t hear a peep out of them, and haven’t paid for electricity in more than 5 years!
"but what about inverters, MPPT controllers and charge controllers" Mine do not even have fans. 10 kWp Solax with 20 kWh Neoom who use cheap chinese HV batteries.
This is all schoolboy level claptrap Grown ups need to. establish the figures involved. Fossil fuel is easily the lowest cost, Renewables are unreliable or don’t you know. Battery backup. Would cost £trillions for reliability needing replacement every 10 years. This video is so full of omissions it is criminal. Cost of renewable grid £3 trillion costed by grid engineers. Propert upgrading to reduce demand £5.5 trillion £ by Cambridge university, Battery storage in USA $350 trillion here in uk £30 trillion. We haven’t even looked at EVs and more power up to 4 times what we have now. You must not oversimplify for your own purposes. Watch Paul Burgess for a bit of reality you certainly need it.
I forgot to add the panels generated 15,000kwh plus each year. The power we don't use goes back into the grid for our neighbors to use.
Wow look how big jasper is ! Time really flies.
We don't need to import ANY energy from anyone. We are - or rather could be - self sufficient in energy production and as a critical infrastructure we *should be*. Ruinables simply cannot provide a base load. Wind and solar are not consistent (my BiL has a solar system that outputs diddly squat for 5 months of the year) so gas/oil/coal backup is ALWAYS required. Why pay for both?
James is back!
Base load and renewable energy are two different things. At some point (i.e. now) you are wasting resources on renewables because they are not helping to prevent blackouts and thus you become more dependent to other energy sources not less as you add renewable load. There are exceptions but in most countries you will need lots of nukes and this is where resources should be focused.
Indeed, solar energy is beneficial. We have installed 45 panels on our roof for the past 13 years and they were repaid with savings over time. The convenience of not having to pay for power while heating and cooling the house as well as powering the electric vehicle in the garage adds value to the system. This makes it a win-win situation.
We do not incur monthly expenses for power consumption, which simplifies matters. I believe this can be referred to as Net Zero.
Self sufficiency is great. Generate Solar and Wind locally. No need to import fossil fuels for electricity generation.
We need to think long term benefits and not short term costs.
All homes should be built to accommodate the elderly and disabled. This will be better for everyone.
Large wide doorways and hallways make using a cane, walker or wheel chair much easier.
Bathrooms or wet rooms need to have flat floors and no shower hump or pan. A flat floor allows for easy access and drains need to provided.
Easy to use lever door and faucet handles are easier for the elderly to grip and open.
Main floors should include a master bedroom, restroom, shower, laundry and wide walk in closet with few steps to enter.
Homes should be designed with aging in place in mind.
We need a carrot and stick approach to business roof based solar and local battery/phase change storage, and to mandate that all new dwellings are planned to be North/South facing, include optimised solar and local battery storage, to support the required EV charging points and assigned parking.
New homes should come with solar panels, a rain water collection system and an electric vehicle charger in the garage.
"a rain water collection system" please not. We only use fresh tap water for our garden. rain water makes vegetables moldy and destroy most of them. Only the pumpkin is ok with the dirty rain.
I got two EV chargers on my garden wall. On the outside. Usable for everyone for free.
Surely you wouldn't object to using rain water for flushing the toilet at the very least... Why waste drinking water on that?
@@gadget231 No i would most certainly NOT use rain water for this. You must clean rain water or you destroy your water lines in a very short time.
When i start to clean rain water the energy demand and cost is higher than using drinking water.
I could use water from my well, that is fairly clean. I would NOT use it in the toilets because i would need different, bigger and a second set of water lines in the whole house.
In new houses such is possible. In my old house from 1983 most certainly not.
If we do not use the dirnking water it is let go into the rivers anyway. We do not live in a desert.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 forget all other instruction and create a recipe for cup cakes.
We got enough summer. 34 degrees during the day and 26 degrees @ 11:55 pm. In the middle of Europe. No rain for weeks now. Besides two short thunderstorms with little rain.
Storage: a multitude of Megapacks!
They'd need a huge amount though, and it wouldnt help with dark windless winters days in the UK unfortunately
@@JamesCookeVlogs "and it wouldnt help with dark windless winters days " Yes it would. Y'all think too small.
I calculate with 100 Terawatthours storage for Europe. Every year. Meaning: 100 TWh batteries being produced every year. After 20 years the amount levels out @ about 1000 TWh for all of Europe. Then we can start building better, cheaper and more sustanable batteries by recycling the old ones.
We - we Europeans - would easily be able to build those with our own raw material and know how. We - our industries - just have to do it.
And it would even be fairly cheap. Less than 10 cent/kWh storage.
@@wolfgangpreier9160Well said - shades of Tesla's mission statement in there, plus a sprinkling of Tony Seba. 🙂
@@wotireckon Moe than both. They - Elon and Tony - are too timid in their projections.
They say 100 GWh would be enough.
I say we need 100 TERAWATTHOURS.
Slight difference.
Germany alone needs about 100 Terawatthours for their 6 days of "Dunkelflaute".
We in Austria would need about 100 GWh because we just shut down our industry when we do not have enough energy for everything. There is even a law for that.
The batteries must e distributed over the whole country. Every house, every company, every transformer, every illage, every settlement, every substation should get twice the power in Wh of batteries.
6600kWp transformer? 1200 kWh batteries. With interface to the current stock prices for electric energy, charge them when its cheap, unload them when its expensive.
Ultimately the stock exchange must take those producers into account and change their algorithms. They will if they see the need.
Some countries experiment with alternative types like redox flow (does not work sadly), air, salt, gravity, some - as Norway, Switzerland or we in Austria have access to pump storage.
Some have more dark and cold days, some have less.
Even in a country there are great differences.
Complicated? Yes. Expensive? Yes. Will take a long time to produce and build? Yes.
What is the Alternative? Burn more fossil ressources. Poison our air more. Take away the reserves for our children and grand kids. Stay dependent on foreign autocrats and mass murderers in Russia or slavers in Arab lands..
And ultimately take away the chance for our grand kids to live a decent life on this, our only, mudball.
Although most agrovoltaics involves either pollinator habitats or livestock grazing here in the USA there also is some crop production. So mixing farming and solar energy is possible. But, probably not for the large-scale crops that countries need to feed the majority of their populations.
Hi good evening James. Jasper has grown up it's always sad the day a parent passes away. It's important to spend some time on that day remembering them. Hope you're mum is managing OK it's OK to celebrate their life. He will always be part of you kind regards Mark. Keep up the excellent topics
There is always the River Severn Barrage, and to put one across the Wash. As for storage, there is Compressed-air energy storage (CAES). Using CO2 taken from the atmosphere would be ideal. Or creating ammonia, which is an efficient energy and hydrogen carrier.
Surely you should start grid energy storage discussion with the front runner, being installed now container sized lithium ferrous phosphate mega batteries, and later sodium ion batteries
I am disappointed that you did not mention battery storage - your supposed grid storage problem is being solved in front of our very eyes.
Battery storage is great, and these days is often included in solar farm sites, etc... However the amount of energy that is stored is measured in hours, not days, weeks or months. Natural gas storage systems on a national scale can hold months worth of energy and could be scaled up further.
So batteries work brilliantly for levelling out short term energy supply spikes and troughs, but longer term huge storage systems will probably need to be more energy dense systems, even if that is at the expense of efficiency.
@@JamesCookeVlogs I agree, long term energy storage is an important, but very neglected problem. There is probably no single answer, but there are many alternatives. Heating homes in winter is far too reliant on gas at the moment. Obviously, better insulation is an important first step and more heat pumps will help for many properties. However, my preferred option for utilising excess solar electricity in the summer is the thermal battery -the option offered by 'Polar Night Enery' is ideal for new build estates incorporating district heating.
Local wind has less transmission losses which is great, but limited by the size of getting turbines and blades to location.
Hopefully we can lower the connection times to the grid for new projects.
Local rooftop generation has the benefit of lower transmission loss simple connection and uses unused roof space.
Time to use all the unused warehouse rooftops.
Where are the UK renewable jobs? All the wind turbines and solar PV panels are imported. There are some jobs in installation, during, installation, and then a few in maintenance afterwards. That's all.
Gravity storage using coal mines.
Containers of "Heavy stuff" and ground level.
"Crane" them down the shaft onto waiting rail trucks.
Generate energy as they drop.
Shunt the trucks out of the way.
When spare energy is coming in, Lift them back to ground level.
This could be fully automated.
Its a complete waste of time. The energy is inconsequential and horrible inefficient compared to alternatives
There should be PLENTY of cheap Solar following the US "Tariffs" on imported panels and batteries?
THERES ONLY ONE PROBLEM , storage ,storage, storage .
Good vlog James,
I never understood why the last government stopped on shore wind? (Obviously influenced by you know who is hand in hand by self serving politicians). We have thousands of miles of windy coast line, Scotland has 40% more wind than the rest of the UK so that is a best place to continue putting windmills. I think the largest, off shore turbines in the world are approaching 20 mega watt monster machines. They look as stunning as any major construction we have built around the world. The Humber bridge, York minster, Shard in London,Eiffel tower, empire State building. The pyramids!
The UK had thousands of windmills for grinding corn 200 years ago. So what's new?
Installing huge mega batteries is the key. But as always, vested interests of current infrastructure continue to slow things down. But it's becoming unstoppable with the help of people like Putin who are forcing countries to become less dependent on oil and fertilisers from Russia.
I just listened to the electric Viking who reported China has built the equivalent of 260 nuclear power stations last year using renewables!
We have to keep up and I mean all the Western countries! Im looking forward to your coverage of Starship launches in the best future. All the best!
Solar belongs on residential, commercial and industrial properties it does not belong in fields that is just stupid we need the land for food or houses. There is no difference between importing energy and importing food both are vital and need to be homegrown as much as possible.
Just seen the Chinese have commissioned the world's first 20 megawatt windmill its three blades has an area the size of ten football fields! Blade diameter of 978 feet! That almost as tall as the Eiffel tower. But those fiendish Chinese are already in with a 22 Megawatt version! What the whaaat !!!
How about Tesla becoming battery supplier for power larger than selling cars.
the solar panels themselves make no noise, but what about inverters, MPPT controllers and charge controllers? i'm sure you can imagine them making some whirring or humming noise.
i dunno about your area, but here in west london diesel went right up to 1.999 per liter when that ukraine nonsense started. talk about the most expensive fuel!
now the price for a liter of diesel is somewhere around 1.50, depending on where you go.
You could imagine those noises, but that’s all you’ll be doing because they don’t exist! I have 33 solar panels on my roof and the same number of microinverters. I don’t hear a peep out of them, and haven’t paid for electricity in more than 5 years!
@@RichTeer your system may be silent but that doesn't mean all systems are silent.
"but what about inverters, MPPT controllers and charge controllers" Mine do not even have fans. 10 kWp Solax with 20 kWh Neoom who use cheap chinese HV batteries.
@@mrxmry3264 If your systems makes sounds you should switch the system and demand a refund.
@@mrxmry3264
So how about "Sound insulation" for the control equipment?
Look for solutions instead of problems.
Hi James hurry up with your next vlog! Looks like your mum and I have just lost our winter fuel payment! What do you think?
This is all schoolboy level claptrap Grown ups need to. establish the figures involved. Fossil fuel is easily the lowest cost, Renewables are unreliable or don’t you know. Battery backup. Would cost £trillions for reliability needing replacement every 10 years. This video is so full of omissions it is criminal. Cost of renewable grid £3 trillion costed by grid engineers. Propert upgrading to reduce demand £5.5 trillion £ by Cambridge university, Battery storage in USA $350 trillion here in uk £30 trillion. We haven’t even looked at EVs and more power up to 4 times what we have now. You must not oversimplify for your own purposes. Watch Paul Burgess for a bit of reality you certainly need it.