Modern Vespa

WLeuthold,

I was impressed by the rain water collection designed roofs in Bermuda. I kept
thinking - no way could that provide enough water. I know you had a gig there
designing homes. I rented a small scooter to tour the island - had a bit of a time
adjusting to driving on the left side of the road.

I think Bermuda is a popular destination for folks on the East coast. Not
much activity from Paul Bunyan country here in Frost Bite Falls Minnesota.

Bob Copeland

Puglia - Italy, go to minute 9 or watch it all. It deserves.

Everything was back to normal in the midlands a week ago.

Doctor!
I missed you.

Even in English. Although in English a car or a boat or whatever is neutral, no gender.

My son's car license plate has the letters "PTR", totally at random it is named after me.

What I understand is that your house is mainly heated by burning wood and by electricity.

Actually both are not so good.
Wood is the worst fuel with respect to pollution.
And electric heating is as a dutch expression says "cursing in the church". All that effort to transform primary energy into electricity and then wasting that high quality energy into heat throwing away some 70% of the original energy that was in the primary fuel while you could have used that primary fuel, it being coal or oil or propane or natural gas, directly for heating at an energy efficiency of almost 100%.

Depends on how good your country/supplier is at using renewable electricity I suppose.
In the Uk it was 43% renewables last year and my supplier did 100%.

In the Western Cape Province wine region, prunings are dried and used for braai * fires instead of charcoal or timber.
It gives the meat a distinct smoked taste.
In the Free State Province, the dried husks of corn cobs are used for the same purpose as timber is not readily available to braai.

*braai is pronounced "bry" as in "dry" and is a barbeque over hot coals from wood or charcoal.
In South Africa it is considered 'less than manly' to braai meat over a gas fire.

43% renewables in the UK?
Where do you get that from?
The most recent data I find on the share of renewables in the UK is some 10%: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/8/86/Renewable_energy_highlight_FP2020-NL.png
That is 2018 data, could be a little higher now but for sure not 43%.

And your supplier that did 100%?
We also have here many suppliers that all sell us 100% green electricity. It is a story.
Finally you receive the same electricity as everyone else which is in your case some 10% renewable.
And they charge you extra money for the idea that you are very green.

Braai in Dutch is "braden".

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

This post was not quite
What we were hoping to see
Try again, perhaps?

https://renews.biz/67478/renewables-outstrip-fossil-fuels-in-uk-in-2020/

And live trackers like https://gridwatch.co.uk/renewables/percent all show good data trending upwards.

It seems to be correct. I checked the UK gov statistical site https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-section-5-energy-trends and indeed in 2020 it was 43,1% of electricity produced. Quite a surprise to me. I did not have the idea the UK was ahead.
But my appr 10% also holds: it is the share of renewals + waste in the total energy consumption (I overlooked it was total energy), in 2019 it was 12,5%.

Peter, the UK government has said that we will be getting 87% of all our electricity from renewables in just 7 years from now. The rest will come from nuclear with some oil and gas standing by for emergency use only. You may know that in 2019 the whole of the Uk was switched to renewable and nuclear energy for a full 24hr period. No gas, oil or coal was used to power the country. This was done to test the robustness of the UK network. Everything worked a treat! No issues.

Nobody's more shocked than me that we are doing so well.

We have good geography for renewables but you don't expect us to make the best of it.

The problem, as with water resources, is the large dispersion in the distribution network; not much progress has been made on that in recent years and we continue to waste by not thinking about it.

Stromrider,

Good on the UK. Where is the renewable energy coming from. Wind? - Solar?

Bob Copeland
Minnesota

Yes Bob. Our renewables are mostly wind & solar which is already quite formidable. We have some hydro & wave power. Where I live near the east coast you can look out into the north sea and as far as the eye can see it's huge wind farms spreading across the horizon. We have another absolutely huge wind farm planned amongst many others too. These will be the biggest in the world, and are about to be built in the north sea. They actually look ok in my opinion & most folks are ok with them. There's a range of other sources too such as the new modular nuclear reactors by Rolls Royce that will form part of the solution. UK contributes just 1.3% of carbon to the world's problem but it has to be dealt with.

Stromrider,

We have a measure of wind farms going up around the State of Minnesota.
We obviously do not have the ocean off shore wind in my area that you have. I thought
the UK was heavy into wind farms.

I personally think we have missed the boat on Nuclear Power. Although the danger
of its use is valid - there has got to be a safer way to do it.

In flatland mid continent Minnesota the wind does not always blow, it is dark at
night and cloudy much of the winter. Renewables do not seem to be able to
sustain even minimum requirements. Also, battery technology needs to catch up.

I do get a kick out of some missteps by environmentalists. Example: We need more and
better batteries. Minnesota is sitting on one of the largest deposits of precious
metal minerals in the world (Our old Northern Iron Ore Range). These are
desperately needed for battery production. Environmentalist block the Mining permits.

I really have a strong belief that we are creative enough to solve these energy challenges.

Good on you Brits - keep blowing. If I was in one of your local Pubs, I would raise a glass to you.

Bob Copeland
Frost Bite Falls Minnesota

And what is the energy system behind? I mean, wind you cannot count upon nor upon solar. It is not always there and solar at night by definition not, and nuclear is not very flexible in power output.
How will the electricity production and consumption be balanced at all time with a growing share of renewals?

It is a constant discussion here. It is stated nuclear and renewals from wind and solar cannot be balanced. As you know BE relied for many years on a mixture of nuclear and fossil. The nuclear produces the baseline and the fossil fills up the peaks. Worked very well and it was a logical choice back in the sixties for a small country as BE without much possibilities for hydro.

It is not really clear to me what you mean with "dispersion in the distribution network", but the network will be of extreme importance in the future, I think. Some state we need and should start building a worldwide network. To balance summer and winter north to south and to balance day and night east to west. Makes sense.

The system is there but it seems that nobody cares:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier

It seems not so simple.
Just a quote from your wiki reference: "Each reactor needs its own facility (particle accelerator) to generate the high energy proton beam, which is very costly. Apart from linear particle accelerators, which are very expensive, no proton accelerator of sufficient power and energy (> ~12 MW at 1 GeV) has ever been built."

A few weeks ago I found an article on rainews about nuclear fusion energy: https://www.rainews.it/dl/rainews/articoli/eni-annuncia-esito-positivo-test-magnete-superconduttore-in-collaborazione-con-mit-13f9626a-188e-4347-8bb9-8afa92c299ce.html

Checked it on the site of CFS-MIT and it seems authentic.

Their aim is a first real test power plant in 2025 and to go on the grid in 2030.

Nuclear fusion is like the monster of Loch Ness: keeps on popping up but nobody has ever seen it. If these guys are really on to something that would solve all our energy problems.

Yep, commercially viable fusion would be something that's properly planet-transforming.

It would mean cheap limitless energy that could solve so many problems.

It would certainly seem that the fastest way to reduce carbon to meet the 2050 goal would be through nuclear energy. This is an interesting article that discusses it and combinations of renewable, nuclear and hydro.

https://www.cnet.com/features/nuclear-power-is-clean-and-safe-why-arent-we-using-more-of-it/

The Rubbiatron is not a fusion reactor, it is a fission reactor but less bulky and a little safer ...
Sure, hot fusion would be ideal but at present it is still not viable ...
Cold fusion has not been talked about anymore.

It's all back to normal down here in the South East. I may have to buy another motorcycle to take advantage of it while I can.

You're right. It's too hard. We should just do nothing, except sit on our hands and wait for the cold, dark ocean to swallow us.

Or do as the protagonist of Quadrophenia with the Lambretta at the end of the movie...

Except it's a Vespa.

Jesus.

You're right, it's a Vespa...
My memory begins to betray me.

Yes, but it should have been the Lambretta.

Which is the end it really went to in the history of scooters ...

Interesting read on ancient history.
So what do you think did Jimmy kill himself?

No, he shrugged off his old fake personality and came into his own. Kids in his street now know him as old James and they often hear him crying "Pull your pants up! Get a haircut! Turn that crap down! You call that music?"

Balancing the power from different sources is becoming easier. The point to remember is that at night we don't need anywhere near as much electricity as during the day as the majority of industry slows or stops production at night, households sleep. But EV's will increasingly consumer more electricity during the night. And that's ok. With turbines in the north sea their is a fairly constant and consistent production of electricity due to the off shore environment both day and night, but of course, there is less wind at night. Although this summer wasn't as good as last year for maximum electricity production due to more variable weather conditions and we had to use more nuclear, some extra gas, and solar to make up for it. But this is why everyone wants and needs a range of electricity sources. That includes nuclear of course and it's nuclear that can take over more than comfortably at night. In emergencies we will still have gas and oil for a while yet ready to kick in when needed. But it's renewables that will lead the way from now on. For instance there are plans to build many more very very large solar farms here in the UK. These will use the new cheaper, more robust, 50% more efficient, longer lasting, night time generating solar panels. They are also more enviromentally friendly with less toxic substances in their make up. These panels only provide small amounts of power at night but will provide enough to be valuable extra power at night. The technology is racing ahead, just as with EV's.

Currently the UK produces just over 40% less CO2 than it did in 1990. Yesterday the UK government committed to a plan to reach carbon neutral status by 2050 or before if we can. The plan has been in existence for some while but yesterday was fully released. The initiative will create near 1/2 million brand new highly skilled jobs here in the UK. It's only by doing all this stuff that we will succeed. The future is bright if we act now. But there isn't much time left.

Oh and the fuel so called crisis is over now in the UK.

In Italy today:

Gasoline: € 2,050
Diesel: € 1,950
for liter.

If I'm doing conversions correctly from € to $ and Liters to gallons that comes in at $10.80 per gallon! I would assume a percentage of that would be in the form of taxes?

That's correct, taxes account for more than half.
So in the U.S.A. do not complain, you are still in good shape.