Bye Bye Burnham

[Simon]

Christ, what a day, I'm agreeing with Zed again.

[DeskJockey]

I agree with @ZedLeg.

[ZedLeg]

I’m going to take the number of people agreeing with me now as a sign of how bad things have gotten because I don’t think my opinions have changed much in the last 10 years

[240PP]

I’m pretty against landlords in principle but I can understand that they’re a necessary evil in the current environment. I wish they would stop whinging about how hard they have it though

If it makes you feel any better, as a small landlord of two properties over the last ten years, I’m pretty sure at this point I’d have been better putting it in the bank. Not whinging about it, but it’s a misconception that we’re all rolling in it.

[ZedLeg]

Just in case the government aren’t telling us to go fuck ourselves loudly enough yet.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... tion-three

[dinny_g]

TLDR - Can you summarise Zed...

Scratch that - I got CoPilot to do it...

[ZedLeg]

[V8Granite]

As someone who will soon be building data centres in America in the middle of nowhere can I say, again, that wind turbines and solar on large scales are dogshit that's expensive and doesn't work, thank you.

I fucking hate how the national grid is being manipulated by net zero bollocks and people's ability to generate wealth for just a few people.

Dave!

[ZedLeg]

Surely by building storage so we don’t just lose what’s generated over capacity, we’d be reducing that though?

Seems like a better plan than just giving data centres cheap power when the people who live here are struggling with bills to me.

[V8Granite]

Surely by building storage so we don’t just lose what’s generated over capacity, we’d be reducing that though?

Seems like a better plan than just giving data centres cheap power when the people who live here are struggling with bills to me.

I don't think things like Data Centres should need any help at all, if they aren't commercially viable on their own they shouldn't be built in that area.

There are losses with charging and discharging, huge amounts of cabling, thousands of high current connections which go bad and then set fire to the things, then after that you STILL need a back up power source for when the weather is bad over a week or so.

You can cheaply grow food and be over 90% energy efficient by using large greenhouses, grow cheap food, provide energy etc but this doesn't help the lower income folk.

Gas engines, nuclear, reliable power 24/7 running at close to peak efficiency.

An example of how inefficient batteries are on a large scale, a 70 ton battery will run an oil rig for 12 minutes. Now imagine the size of battery we would need to run a town for a day. We lost a 80MW solar array due to a big fast moving cloud, the batteries shut themselves and after 20 seconds switched off, our engines ramped up at 400kw a second and kept the mine running, electricity likes rotating mass.

When every council building, council run home and low income house has solar installed by using the subsidies currently paid out to large energy companies then I'll be more understanding. I'm very pro solar and renewables but not on large scales, they aren't reliable enough with huge loads.

When a wind power station cannot be viable without government subsidies , Hornsea 4, when it has zero fuel costs, it shows how ridiculous renewables on a large scale are. This is before we even get to grid stability , Portugal 10 hour blackout, then nothing beats rotating mass power generation.

Dave!

[ZedLeg]

But afaik scottish hydro is a reliable renewable and the basis of what the government is suggesting here?

[Jobbo]

Gas engines, nuclear, reliable power 24/7 running at close to peak efficiency.

Nuclear power isn't efficient (30-35%) but doesn't need to be. Gas engine peak efficiency is at best 64% and not likely ever to get significantly better now; it's well refined technology.

I'm not going to object to nuclear but moving away from reliance on a finite resource like gas seems a good idea to me.

A data centre in the middle of nowhere in the US combined with a solar and wind farm seems an eminently sensible way to do things.

[Mito Man]

That government publication just sounds like the end of cheap off peak / excess electricity in the UK. Oh you know your off peak tariffs, can't do it anymore, its going off to some AI datacentre...

[V8Granite]

Gas engines, nuclear, reliable power 24/7 running at close to peak efficiency.

Nuclear power isn't efficient (30-35%) but doesn't need to be. Gas engine peak efficiency is at best 64% and not likely ever to get significantly better now; it's well refined technology.

I'm not going to object to nuclear but moving away from reliance on a finite resource like gas seems a good idea to me.

A data centre in the middle of nowhere in the US combined with a solar and wind farm seems an eminently sensible way to do things.

Our engines combined with greenhouses are over 96% contracted efficiency. A regular gas reciprocating engine won't be above 50%. We have a few hundred years of gas at least.

So build 2 power stations instead of 1 to power your data centre, seems like a big waste to me. You need the ability to provide full power at all times.

Dave

[V8Granite]

But afaik scottish hydro is a reliable renewable and the basis of what the government is suggesting here?

I thought the big push was for wind turbines ?

I'll need to have a better look this evening but I've done virtually no work with hydro so couldn't say whether it was a good or bad thing. I know in Norway it works well but they don't want them to upgrade the current stations and are trying for wind instead as there is more money to be made.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

Our engines combined with greenhouses are over 96% contracted efficiency.

And the contracted efficiency is no more than 50%?

I was referring to gas turbines when I mentioned 64% being about the peak of efficiency. Reciprocating would be lower, your ~50% figure.

[V8Granite]

No, total kw of gas energy in equals 96% harvested energy out.

50% efficiency is when we convert energy in to electrical energy out.

I didn't think gas turbines had got that efficient, I've never worked with any over about 45/50% but we only operate with them, I never operate them.

Dave!

[Jobbo]

No, total kw of gas energy in equals 96% harvested energy out.

50% efficiency is when we convert energy in to electrical energy out.

Dave!

96% efficiency from gas? What are you doing with it - just burning it for space heating? In which case where's the other 4% going?

Edit to reply to your edit: 64% from a gas turbine is the maximum I have read about - I don't know if that's in a lab or what but I was using it as a theoretical maximum efficiency, not what practical gas turbines are achieving in the real world.

[V8Granite]

(I did a sneaky edit above while you were replying)

We turn 50% into electrical energy we sell to the grid, the HT and LT circuits go direct to the greenhouses, the oil cooling circuit is sent to the hot water aswell. The exhaust is then treated through a urea filter to extract the CO2 and that is pumped into the greenhouses.

Plants grow much much quicker, Holland are the absolute kings at this. Bergen and Janbacher are the most common nes doing it out there. There is also a plant in Kent and the IOW.

Dave!

[V8Granite]

No, total kw of gas energy in equals 96% harvested energy out.

50% efficiency is when we convert energy in to electrical energy out.

Dave!

96% efficiency from gas? What are you doing with it - just burning it for space heating? In which case where's the other 4% going?

Edit to reply to your edit: 64% from a gas turbine is the maximum I have read about - I don't know if that's in a lab or what but I was using it as a theoretical maximum efficiency, not what practical gas turbines are achieving in the real world.

Generally of the gas qualities enough and it's within temps and pressures then it would achieve that on a stable field test. It's when we get above testing temps on the inlet then efficiency drops off. We lose 1% per degree above 35 degrees C which is quite a hit.

Dave!