Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

[scaramanga]

To clarify...do you mean non windy 'bad weather ' ?

I mean those dunkelwhateverthefudges. The things that mean we need nuclear/gas/coal power stations as backup.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I mean those dunkelwhateverthefudges. The things that mean we need nuclear/gas/coal power stations as backup.

Get the SMRs rolling as back-up asap...fudge the rest of as quickly as possible.

 

[Rorschach]

The UK likes days where there's not much sun and not much of anything to make the spinny things spin - we have quite a lot of them.

BTW, you'd need at least 10,000 of those large arrays to cover the UK for a week. And a week's backup with no alternative is pretty low.

I guess they never thought of any of that.

 

[monkeybarry]

So we've 'eased' the sanctions on Russia....so fuel wins out above everything else in the end.

Yes.
Most people will choose heating and eating ahead of morality.

"Freedom of speech won't feed my children"

 

[Rorschach]

Get the SMRs rolling as back-up asap...fudge the rest of as quickly as possible.

SMRs will only ever be niche, is the consensus. Too expensive. The markets have already chosen batteries as they are cheap and getting cheaper. Grid storage installations have increased tenfold since 2021 up to last year. This year it is predicted to double again to something like 200GW new. I think about 2GW in the UK last year alone (will have to google that). Add in cheap sodium batteries and a few other ones (rust!) that are now entering the market and this race is over.

One small silver lining of the Iran war is the dawning realisation of how fragile a position we find ourselves in because of our fossil fuel dependency. It was pretty fudging obvious but it still seemed to be a lightbulb moment for some world leaders.