With the help of Grok, i have come up with a strategy to pursue energy independence in the UK, with immediate benefits to reducing energy costs, and subsequent mid term and long term benefits that come with the gradual increase in efficient power supply.
The link below has Grok’s reply going through my strategy, breaking down each of its specific details, Please have a look. But to summarise.
Small Modular Reactors with an optimal workforce.
Offshore Wind Expansion
Utilizing Domestic Oil and Gas
Fracking
Private home owners encouraged to apply solar panels to rooftops and where else for a period of time.
Council homes offered the same but with incentives to cutting energy bills.
Policy Change to cutting government waste to contribute to the budget of the project.
Traditional nuclear reactors for long term security.
Retrofit homes with insulation, efficient appliences and so on.
Energy storage solutions: batteries or pumped hydro.
Grid Modernization: Upgrade with smart technology to integrate and reduce losses.
Hydrogen Development to produce green hydrogen from excess renewables.
But Ocean based hydrogen power seems like it’d be an extremely useful advantage for the UK considering our geographical location. I think this is very much worth exploring.
According to grok this strategy with its additional strategies would create a swift benefit in the short term within 1~3 years due to solar. Immediately reducing bills and so on. With impactful benefits approaching with the impact from each individual strategy as each reaches completion.
By attacking the problem from multiple angles it will constantly be in the public consciousness, realizing huge political advantages as it does.
I have suggested this to Richard Tice in the same way, but i think this strategy wound up good enough to suggest here.
Rolls-Royce with their modular nuclear reactor technology is something that is so readily available to the government to approve of…yet…it is the labour government so we don’t want that ewy, common sense clean nuclear power, no no, can’t have that, wouldn’t want bills to be lowered with the assistance of private sector energy production.
One thing I thought about was about a possibly super project after we stabilise our prices, which is to maybe take a look at the direction of which water flows between Ireland and the north up in Scotland.
If it flows reliably in one direction then we could perhaps think to start up tidal energy facilities. The idea of a bridge so we can generate a bridge toll to contribute to maintenance whilst harnessing the sea power. We have seen the Kerch bridge in Crimea/Russia, we’ve seen the Vasco da Gama Bridge in Portugal, there is also a bridge made in Hong Kong to its western island but that is an odd project.
I just thought it would be something to think about, tidal energy with a reliable one-way current would be good, but yeah, there is wildlife that we have to think about, we have seals and coral beds, but as tech progresses, it could still be harness, whilst bridging up.
I am sure the Irish wouldn’t mind a land bridge connecting us to them…right?
(It would be from Scotland into British held Belfast so, technically…)
Its will be interesting to see how Ed Milliband’s energy plans are going to create the energy requirements to support the charge into their net zero policies.
The UK currently needs about 300TWh of energy, roll forward to 2030 with heatpump energy and EV requirements pushes the demand to 550-630TWh without any population expansion and with assumptions of heat pump COP efficiency’s of 3, bringing down Gas heating demands from 400-450MWh, Just charging GM EV busses will need an SMR to replace the fleet of diesel generators currently used.
Your list seems interesting,
1)SMR’s we need a deploy now actioned immediately, in addition implement the use of Thorium reactors to replace the existing nuclear network of larger reactors.
2)offshore wind expansion: reacting to the 2015 invasion of the Ukraine we accelerated our offshore wind production, not.many will champion BoJo accelerating that current production is 3-4 years ahead of original intentions, with new 14Mw 200m sweep GE turbines ready to be installed off Scotland. We need to change the domestic planning rules to allow for small turbines, noting the vibration from them can weaken the structural integrity brick built houses, in addition to the internal noise, so would need to be placed in gardens or on outbuildings. These tied with a battery system to stabalise the output the national grid.
3)Oil and gas, lets get those bills down by using our natural resources, China builds a new coal fired power station every 2 weeks, India one every 2 months!
4) Fracking… Ask a Rae Green resident, disturbances from fracking would make very unpopular. Dispite the push really would you want to live with regular tremors?
5) Anyone who has a south facing roof and intending to live there longer than 6 years, its a no brainer to get solar power system with a battery.
6) The last Tory government had a solar panel scheme for council properties.
7) no chance of anything being done in reality from this Labour government, its going to go the opposite way, already seen in 6 months a huge shift in consumption.
8) our whole nuclear network is at end of life, Thorium would be the way to go, with facilities to create radiological medical isotopes.
9) Weve been doing this for years, anyone that would do it probably already has. Even with the bankrupting demands of politicians demanding huge shifts by Landlord’s to do things with an expectation of no rent rises of substantial financial outlays.
10) Energy storage price per unit needs to crash down to make cheap energy viable drive the economy, Some countries have heat sand batteries as a thermal store, heated by waste heat to several hundreds degree Celsius to be tapped of for communal heating.
11) The National Grid will need to double in its abilities in under 5 years, controlled by blockchain.
12) we had huge success with the with H2 in Northumberland and other places, and a natural gas network that can push a mix of H2 and natural gas.
13) bio fuels, we haven’t enough fields, bovida fed cows wont produce the gas as fuel if some get their way. And when fields are getting filled with solar panel’s now its convenient to forget they are needed for food production due world instability.
wrt tidal energy I had created a proposal for a single system that could power the entire country.
I will probably post it in more details on the Mega Projects thread.
But basically it is similar to the Swansea bay proposal but much larger.
Think of it instead of a lagoon but as a vast Atoll, which various heights of sea wall.
The inlet would be further up the river where the tidal range is roughly 10-12m.
Once all 4 segments are filled pumps could be engaged in the rearmost segments to pump the water up much higher. To say 30m height (the higher the more energy can be created per m^3), this then can be used as pump storage of water so while filling energy is created, while draining energy is created and at the inbetween time (while the sea level inside and outside of the structure is level) the pumped height segment could be working.
The sea wall of the design could be used for housing similar to the UAE sea reclamation projects, and could allow easy crossing from swansea to north devon or cardiff to somerset.
similar to this:
See simple MSpaint drawing (with the barrage and lagoon proposals included) for rough size and concept, it could grow out to sea to be larger and to produce more power.
The benefits of this over the tidal lagoon or barrage is that it has very minimal effect on the environment, if designed correctly it should not effect the flow of water in the estury and could be massive.
Just for reference the sketched drawing is approximately 15 square miles or 39 square km, for a height of 12 m, that is total volume of 4.68 x10^8 m^3, and a potential energy assuming you can maintain a 12m head difference of 5.616x10^12 J or 1.5 million kwh per fill aka 2x the UK daily usage of energy.
Obviously that is not the total that could be drawn and there would be loses to inefficiency.
Any pumping inefficiencies would also need to be considered, but again that wouldnt matter at the complete volume.
Well then, this surely would be a very interesting sight to behold, and not only also have potential of cutting travel distances for the public if they wanted to get around this.
Lob out Ed-Zero Milliband, and get this fella in . I do recall looking at that area around our island and to be honest, there is a bunch of different locations we can additionally get contributions from, why not become a net-exporter of energy so then we can chip away our debt faster?
Block chain is something that should be elaborated on. Alot of people just consider it digital currency and such and don’t realize how potent it is at countering corruption.
. I do recall looking at that area around our island and to be honest, there is a bunch of different locations we can additionally get contributions from, why not become a net-exporter of energy so then we can chip away our debt faster?