n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly.

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 01:14
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - focussed

"the current significant increase in the wholesale cost of electricity for [rail] haulage means that some operators have had to take the regrettable decision to temporarily move back to diesel locomotives. A 200% increase in electricity costs for each train cannot be absorbed by the operators, or customers, and so necessary action is being taken to ensure that trains can continue to operate delivering vital goods across the country"

www.rfg.org.uk/press-comment-use-electric-traction.../

How embarassing on the run-up to the glasgow climate clown show - where's all that cheap power from the windmills and solar panels?

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 08:42
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - daveyjp

In the other enenrgy thread I picked up on the very large 'public' service users of electricity and how they will be impacted. Rail is the first to announce changes as a result.

Railfreight is quite simple to move to diesel as only a few electric locos are used, mainly on West Coast. For passenger services, especially in the south east where almost every unit is electric this isn't an option.

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 13:08
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - alan1302

How embarassing on the run-up to the glasgow climate clown show - where's all that cheap power from the windmills and solar panels?

Electrcity generation ism't cheap and as you know the UK still has a long way to go to have all its generation powered by renewables

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 22:40
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Zippy123

Electrcity generation ism't cheap and as you know the UK still has a long way to go to have all its generation powered by renewables

At a risk of giving away my age, I remember when the reactors at Dungeness were being built and we were told "the electricity would be too cheap to meter". Ha!

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Sun 17 Oct 2021 22:51
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - focussed

How embarassing on the run-up to the glasgow climate clown show - where's all that cheap power from the windmills and solar panels?

Electrcity generation ism't cheap and as you know the UK still has a long way to go to have all its generation powered by renewables

Which country run completely on renewable energy?

Some countries that have run completely on renewable energy for a period of time include Denmark, who ran entirely on wind for a day; Portugal, who ran on wind, solar and hydropower for four days; and Costa Rica, who was powered by renewable energy for more than 100 days.

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 14:25
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Engineer Andy

"the current significant increase in the wholesale cost of electricity for [rail] haulage means that some operators have had to take the regrettable decision to temporarily move back to diesel locomotives. A 200% increase in electricity costs for each train cannot be absorbed by the operators, or customers, and so necessary action is being taken to ensure that trains can continue to operate delivering vital goods across the country"

www.rfg.org.uk/press-comment-use-electric-traction.../

How embarassing on the run-up to the glasgow climate clown show - where's all that cheap power from the windmills and solar panels?

Given the majority of rail haulage is likely to be at night, solar power ain't exactly any use. And wind power is higly variable. Plus that interconnector with France (why should we depend on it anyway?) is now down for best part of two years (it may be at 50% capacity next year) after the recent fire.

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 14:59
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - sammy1

""" Plus that interconnector with France (why should we depend on it anyway?) is now down for best part of two years (it may be at 50% capacity next year) after the recent fire.""

May be the interconnector fire is just the excuse for other short comings. In any case any other country would have this fixed double quick giving the severity of the problem.

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Fri 15 Oct 2021 17:48
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - galileo

""" Plus that interconnector with France (why should we depend on it anyway?) is now down for best part of two years (it may be at 50% capacity next year) after the recent fire.""

May be the interconnector fire is just the excuse for other short comings. In any case any other country would have this fixed double quick giving the severity of the problem.

Macron is threatening to shut off the other connector if we don't cave in on the Northern Ireland negotiations, so in no rush to repair the broken one.

(bitterness at us defeating the French so often over the last several hundred years and English being more popular worldwide than the French language)

Edited by galileo on 15/10/2021 at 17:49

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 10:16
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - groaver

(bitterness at us defeating the French so often over the last several hundred years and English being more popular worldwide than the French language)

Where to start with this!?

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 11:07
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Xileno

Probably more to do with the election next year and Macron not being comfortably ahead in the polls. A bit of rattling the British cage usually goes down well there.

Doesn't this damaged cable also push power over to France when we have a surplus? If so then it's in everyone's interests to get this sorted.

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 13:42
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - galileo

Probably more to do with the election next year and Macron not being comfortably ahead in the polls. A bit of rattling the British cage usually goes down well there.

Doesn't this damaged cable also push power over to France when we have a surplus? If so then it's in everyone's interests to get this sorted.

Nose, face, cutting off to spite, has been a common attitude by the EU and its most ardent supporters are Macron and Varadkar.

Edited by galileo on 16/10/2021 at 13:43

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 16:06
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - groaver

Probably more to do with the election next year and Macron not being comfortably ahead in the polls. A bit of rattling the British cage usually goes down well there.

Doesn't this damaged cable also push power over to France when we have a surplus? If so then it's in everyone's interests to get this sorted.

Nose, face, cutting off to spite, has been a common attitude by the EU and its most ardent supporters are Macron and Varadkar.

Whereas removing the UK from the EU really has taken back control...

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 14:03
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Bromptonaut

Probably more to do with the election next year and Macron not being comfortably ahead in the polls. A bit of rattling the British cage usually goes down well there.

As does rattling the French from here.

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Sat 16 Oct 2021 13:56
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Bromptonaut

Given the majority of rail haulage is likely to be at night, solar power ain't exactly any use. And wind power is higly variable. Plus that interconnector with France (why should we depend on it anyway?) is now down for best part of two years (it may be at 50% capacity next year) after the recent fire.

Really?

I'm sure that the trains I hear on the nearby West Coast Main Line between say 1am and 5:30am are mostly freight but they're not a patch on the numbers running on the 'slow' line through Northampton itself during the day. Don't exclude the possibility of battery storage for solar power. The trope about wind power is one of those half truths that. like half bricks, go further.

Locally wind may be variable but the sort of long term slack wind from a blocked/blocking High, like this summer is very rare. The fact that wind needs backfil occasionally from gas is no reason to deny it its general usefulness.

The new RR midi reactors look like another good bet.

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Sun 17 Oct 2021 13:37
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Falkirk Bairn

The Big HooHah in Glasgow next month will see 360 electric Jaguars ferrying the leaders around. Some travelling from posh hotels 50+ miles away.

The problem is there are not enough chargers available to charge the cars.

At some hotels the cars will be charged from mobile charger - petrol/diesel generators.

We are to ban new diesel & petrol cars in 9 years time and today we cannot re-charge 360 cars for the Heads of State

Generation of double/treble the current rates is needed apparently, more at peak times - this is openly discussed. Getting the power to your street, your factory or your local hospital never seems to get much in the way of being a problem or headline.

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Sun 17 Oct 2021 16:44
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Xileno

This article claims the generators will be powered by waste vegetable oil. Still a farce that there aren't enough chargers for the fleet.

www.scotsman.com/news/transport/cop26-world-leader...7

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Sun 17 Oct 2021 21:29
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - focussed

This article claims the generators will be powered by waste vegetable oil. Still a farce that there aren't enough chargers for the fleet.

www.scotsman.com/news/transport/cop26-world-leader...7

Or the heads of state could catch the bus.

However, sustainable transport campaigners were aghast at the lack of planning to ensure sufficient electric chargers were available.

They said the heads of state should instead make use of the free electric shuttle bus service for Cop26 delegates between Glasgow city centre and the SEC.

Imagine that - Joe Biden snapped sitting on a bus - LOL!!

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Mon 18 Oct 2021 10:34
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - ExA35Owner

We need to separate two issues - current electricity generation and demand; and the long-term necessity to move to renewables.

Issues over delivery in the short term should not blind us to the need for long-term change.

Long term the mix will include nuclear, which produces remarkably little in the way of waste product (and much of that is very low level); wind, solar, tide, hydroelectric, geothermal. There is good storage technology already in the form of pumped-storage hydroelectric; there are developing technologies coming on stream as well. Interconnectors allow peaks in one country to be covered by other countries. It will all take time, but is the right way to go.

By the way, the evidence is that coal-fired power stations release more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear stations......

Incidentally Iceland is now 0.3% fossil fuels for electricity generation; Norway almost 100% renewables as well.

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Mon 18 Oct 2021 21:28
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - alan1302

Incidentally Iceland is now 0.3% fossil fuels for electricity generation; Norway almost 100% renewables as well.

Plenty on here will tell you that it impossible to do that.

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Sat 18 Dec 2021 11:25
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - focussed

Incidentally Iceland is now 0.3% fossil fuels for electricity generation; Norway almost 100% renewables as well.

Plenty on here will tell you that it impossible to do that.

Not impossible if you want the whole country covered in windmills, solar panels and batteries.

And then you still have to have base load generation by oil, gas or nuclear for when the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow and the batteries are flat.

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Tue 19 Oct 2021 08:51
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Falkirk Bairn

Iceland uses a lot of thermal energy to produce electricity/heat homes. Personally I would not like to live "on top of a volcano".

Norway has, for decades, had electricity from Dams high up in the mountains producing electricity. It imports electricity from Europe to pump the water back up the hill to replenish the head of water. Norway produces large amounts of North Sea gas and burns very little - electricity heats homes etc.

Both countries are small and have physical resources - volcanoes & mountains - both lacking in the UK - the last orogenesis in the UK was hundreds of millions of years ago (orogenesis = period of mountain building)

Volcanoes & mountains as a source for the future is very limited in the UK

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Mon 18 Oct 2021 22:56
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Bromptonaut

This article claims the generators will be powered by waste vegetable oil. Still a farce that there aren't enough chargers for the fleet.

www.scotsman.com/news/transport/cop26-world-leader...7

It's a one off international event.

I'd guess infrastructure cludges to deal with the exceptional demands of such events are pretty well standard. Installing permanent infrastructure to deal with charging 300+ vehicles all running one way in and one way out at specified times over a few days would attract its owwn accusation of waste of resources.

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Wed 20 Oct 2021 18:01
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - nick62

The problem is there are not enough chargers available to charge the cars.


I've been working in Sweden on and off for the last two years. Every factory car park I've used has a charger point in EVERY space.

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Sat 18 Dec 2021 12:52
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Terry W

The UK has 11000 wind turbines at present with a capacity of 24 gigawatts. Over the last year they produced an average of 7GW - equal to around 24% of UK total electricity demand.

Production of 7GW is less than capacity of 24GW as wind does not blow at the optimum speed all the time.

To suggest that both coast and land would need to be smothered with wind turbines to completely replace UK electricity demand is complete nonsense - a product of irrational bias, not rational debate.

There are issues of what the optimum mix of energy sources should be - nuclear, wind, solar, etc. There are also storage issues to be resolved. Finding solutions is far more useful than ignorant denial.

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Sat 18 Dec 2021 17:44
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Andrew-T

The problem is there are not enough chargers available to charge the cars.

I've been working in Sweden on and off for the last two years. Every factory car park I've used has a charger point in EVERY space.

That will be because Sweden can suffer long cold winters, so (like Canada) they will have built car parks with plug-ins for block heaters. Easily adapted for charging a battery.

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Sat 18 Dec 2021 18:31
n/a - Back to diesel power - electric too costly. - Dave N
Sweden has an energy crisis just now, and costs are up something like 5 times. The reason is the socialist government, supported by the greens closed down half the nuclear power stations. Reserve power is coming from an oil fired power station.

The wind isnt blowing much, its very cold up north, which means the channels supplying the hydro power stations are freezing up.

The power outlets at some company car parks are only for block heaters, and there is a big shortage of proper charging points, as electric car sales have outstripped the infrastructure by some margin. The ’free’ charging point are now rapidly disappearing as electric prices start to bite hard.
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