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We already have power stations near our conurbations, the grid is already there.

 

As to transporting electricity, you need transformers going down the grid to ramp the power up, which adds to the cost of the electricity. So transporting it down from the north of Scotland to a major English conibation would add to the cost. It's not been done because the cost is so great.

 

Found this, it might help some

 

http://powerup.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/over-11/electric-journey/transmitting-electricity.aspx

 

The further it travels the more is lost

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Your not listening, the cost of moving electricity, would make your ideas, to expensive, Scotland could have hydro, Bristol could benefit from tidal. Other than than your screwed. And why do we need water catchment?

 

Your basically talking gas and coal for the vast majority of the UK, not to dissimilar to what we have now Obs.

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Errm, think we need "water catchment" to avoid the regular need for hose pipe bans in a country that has more rain than it knows what to do with. As for your proximity arguement; larger countries use hydro to supply areas that the UK could easily fit in, so I think your overstating that particular problem.

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As I keep on repeating, the problem’s a carrying capacity issue rather than a loss issue and in any case, if the electricity is virtually free at source, what the heck if you loose a bit while sending it down here.

 

Think of it like water, we can all understand that the pressure would drop off on a hundred mile long hose pipe but increase the diameter of the pipe and increase the pressure and it gets better. It’s entirely possible to send electricity down lines 1000km long and only loose 3% with techniques available now so given the size of the UK, we could have a super grid backbone running the length of the country. It’s achievable providing there’s a willingness to invest in major long-term infrastructure changes. 

 

The fly in the ointment though is the emergence of new sources of power like wind and solar, that without infrastructure change can be made to simply feed into the grid locally. It’s a quick fix solution though and does nothing to help secure the stability of our supplies, in fact because it’s weather dependent, it makes matters far worse. 

 

On the storage thing, most understand that this normally involves pumping water up a mountain with off peak electricity then whooshing it all down again for peak demands. It’s all to do with potential energy and ideally you need a mountain with a reservoir on top to do this, or do you? Now we cant build mountains but what about going the other way and put the reservoir at ground level and drop the water down a big hole like an old coal mine?  Food for thought eh?

 

Bill :)

 

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Bill Water is free at source, we still pay for it.

 

You still need a Power station to pump the water up the hill in the first place, or pump it back out your mine shaft, 

 

This might help

 

 

The transmission and distribution or “T&D” system, then, includes everything between a generation plant and an end-use site. Along the way, some of the energy supplied by the generator is lost due to the resistance of the wires and equipment that the electricity passes through. Most of this energy is converted to heat. Just how much energy is taken up as losses in the T&D system depends greatly on the physical characteristics of the system in question as well as how it is operated. Generally speaking, T&D losses between 6% and 8% are considered normal. 

 

Thats talking about the American Grid to be fair, but the figure will not be that far out for here. And like us the Americans build their power stations where they need them. So as to keep the % low. As the longer the distance the bigger the loss.

 

 Nobody builds  power stations great distances from the energy's end user. 

The longer the distance the greater the cost. And who will pay that cost?

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£67BILLION to dump a load of toxic waste underground - no other positives Kije.  The costing for a Severn barrier scheme is around £25billion - providing tidal energy, labour intensive employment, flood defence (providing savings in flood losses) and a short cut from Weston Super Mare to S/Wales.

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Lt Kije

 

You’re still not getting it are you? 

 

Think of it this way. You either need a power station or you don’t, so irrespective of type or location you’re going to end up paying for a power station so let’s take that right out of the equation. That just leaves the fuel cost and the cost of getting it to the end user. Well there is no cost for the fuel so it all comes down to the cost of moving it.

 

Now you say it doesn’t travel well but it that was the real killer argument, we wouldn’t as I type be sucking over a Gigawatt from France and half a Gigwatt from Belgium while blowing 255 Megawatts into Northern Ireland. Power does indeed travel well and stations don’t need to be next to cities either. Their location is an economic decision based on several factors (principally raw materials) and line losses are only a small part of it. 

 

So I maintain my argument that hydro and tidal could still offer a solution, just as long as we’re prepared to spend extra money to find a greener solution.

 

Bill :)

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Bill

 

The French power station that pass electricity into the English grid is Gravelines Nuclear power station, it is just outside Calais, not far to travel,

 

Found this,

 

Losses

 

Transmitting electricity at high voltage reduces the fraction of energy lost to Joule heating. For a given amount of power, a higher voltage reduces the current and thus the resistive losses in the conductor. For example, raising the voltage by a factor of 10 reduces the current by a corresponding factor of 10 and therefore the I^2R\,\! losses by a factor of 100, provided the same sized conductors are used in both cases. Even if the conductor size is reduced x10 to match the lower current the I^2R\,\! losses are still reduced x10. Long distance transmission is typically done with overhead lines at voltages of 115 to 1,200 kV. At extremely high voltages, more than 2,000 kV between conductor and ground, corona discharge losses are so large that they can offset the lower resistance loss in the line conductors.

 

Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995 [2], and in the UK at 7.4% in 1998.

 

 

1998 figures

 

If you wanted to move energy at low cost and over longer distance, We would need the power grid to be DC, our power Grid is AC, the power we get from France, comes on a DC link.

 

Also our power grid is old, mainly put up in the 1960s, it would take massive investment to modernise it, Yes that would make it more efficient. But if you want power over long distance you need to be on a DC grid.

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Lt Kije, I don't want to tread on your toes here as I'm sure you know more than me, but my understanding has always been that we use AC because the transmission losses are far less than with DC because AC voltage can be varied easily using transformers (see your previous post: Losses

Transmitting electricity at high voltage reduces the fraction of energy lost to Joule heating. For a given amount of power, a higher voltage reduces the current and thus the resistive losses in the conductor. For example, raising the voltage by a factor of 10 reduces the current by a corresponding factor of 10 and therefore the I^2R\,\! losses by a factor of 100, provided the same sized conductors are used in both cases. Even if the conductor size is reduced x10 to match the lower current the I^2R\,\! losses are still reduced x10. Long distance transmission is typically done with overhead lines at voltages of 115 to 1,200 kV. At extremely high voltages, more than 2,000 kV between conductor and ground, corona discharge losses are so large that they can offset the lower resistance loss in the line conductors.

 

Please feel free to correct me ( and yourself) if we are wrong. :wink:

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A high-voltage, direct current (HVDC) electric power transmission system uses direct current for the bulk transmission of electrical power, in contrast with the more common alternating current systems.[1] For long-distance transmission, HVDC systems may be less expensive and suffer lower electrical losses. For underwater power cables, HVDC avoids the heavy currents required to charge and discharge the cable capacitance each cycle. For shorter distances, the higher cost of DC conversion equipment compared to an AC system may still be warranted, due to other benefits of direct current links.

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Still missing the point and trying to teach granny to suck eggs at the same time. :P

 

The point I'm trying to get across (without technicalities) is that it IS possible to move power over substantial distances if we really wanted to. Of course there's a cost involved and that cost tests the resolve of the government's commitment to long term clean and renewable energy. There’re so many factors in play here that arguments get skewed and logic takes second place for both political and commercial reasons. Let me try just one more analogy before I give up on this one.

 

In the past, we undertook to build canals with great difficulty and at great expense to provide an infrastructure that moved the country forwards. The designers knew there’d be losses but that argument didn't stop them from doing it because the water was free at source. If we lost more, then we simply put a bit more in at the other end. This analogy is as true for a canal as it is for power distribution and losses are only relevant when fuel costs are factored in. 

 

As it stands at the moment we don’t have canal linking the bulk of the population to the resources of the north, it more like a hose pipe and it’s not really up to the job. That said, when I wrote last night I used France and Belgium purely as an example of how power can be moved but maybe I should have mentioned that over 2 Gigawatts was also being sent down from Scotland to the UK.

 

There’s gold in them there hills, it’s just that we cant carry the bloody stuff down. :lol:

 

Bill :)
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