Note, I could not use the title of the traditional ryme.
Anyway the subject is the early closure of power stations.
I see a big thing is being made of the meaningless news that a 700 Megawatt
battery is to be installed on the site.
I have batteries in my little workshop that could be called 700 Mwatt.
It is just that it would be for micro seconds.
It has been suggested that it would go for two hours.
So the correct description of the battery would be 1400 Mwatt/hrs
If it really is 700 Megwatt/hr then it will deliver 700Mwatt for 1 hour.
Why oh why do they display their ignorance on the subject.
When asked why don't they just say "I haven't a clue !".

As Liddel is close next year, can Bayswater be far behind.
AEMO has said that to replace Euraring (3.8 Gw) with 6Gw of renewables
may not be enough.
Oh Really ! Where have they been hiding ?
It will probably have to be replaced with between 30 Gwatt & 48 Gwatt
of renewables.
Those figures depend on how much is spent on upgrading the grid.
CSIRO said One $Trillion "might" do the job.

Even those who must know are too afraid to say it out loud.
Anyone got a petrol generator for sale. Oh, Petrol Rationing anyone ?

Get some solar panels and collect all the old car batteries you can get that have some life in them also set up a pushbike to turn a car alternator for emergency charging.

Good advise Is Mise, my son has gone most of that way.
His roof is covered with solar panels, and has two very large sealed
lead acid cells. The storage he has will enable him to run his house
lighting for 2 or 3 days but not for oven, dishwasher, air conditioning.
It will run computers and radios and for some tv time.
Those batteries are not cheap but there is a source of second hand ones.

Bazz my son used to near cry when the navy chucked out the year old big gel batteries used in the 6000 BHP tank landing craft. They should be good for at least 6 years in a domestic system. He well understood that it is not much use having beaut high speed landing craft, if aging batteries won't start the things when needed, but it still hurt.

After the last flood, when we had no power for 5 days I bit the bullet & bought a 10KVA 3 phase diesel gen set. It will handle all required systems without luxuries for about 2 liters an hour. I've kept the 3KVA set as my 100 gallon diesel tank would run it for almost a month rather than a few days.

We have a solar array & 6 big gel batteries driving a 24V submersible pump putting 15 liters per minute from the river into the dam 24/7. Fortunately I was wise enough to get a harvesting licence when transferring the irrigation licence when I bought the place. This could be brought up to the house if necessary.

None of this will be much use if the shooting starts, & fuel supplies stop. I have the plans for a number of wood gas generators, as use during WW11, but of course you would need a WW11 vintage engine to run on the stuff.

Much better idea to keep the peace, & stop these damn fools with their net zero by 2050 rubbish. It will be hard, as too many of the elite are making too much money from the global warming scam.

Interesting setup Hasbeen;
I suspect what will happen is that the repeated blackouts will
convince the mad global warming believers that maybe the settled
science was wrong all the time, and the solution was impossible.
Then there will be a demand for nuclear power stations by tomorrow morning.
There will be hell to pay with the known greens being put in stocks.
Polies with be spinning at rates never seen before.

Bazz,
I understand the current title of the rhyme is Ten Little Soldier Boys...

Your workshop batteries wouldn't be able to output 700MW for microseconds. Capacitors might, but batteries rely on chemical reactions which don't all happen instantaneously.

>Why oh why do they display their ignorance on the subject.
It isn't clear which "they" you're complaining about? Is is ABC? 7? 9? News Corp?

>AEMO has said that to replace Euraring (3.8 Gw) with 6Gw of renewables
may not be enough.
It may not be, but keep in mind the figure is in addition to the renewable power already installed which is making baseload power uneconomic.

>It will probably have to be replaced with between 30 Gwatt & 48 Gwatt
of renewables.
The modelling says otherwise. Keep in mind the objective isn't to supply baseload power; it's to meet demand.

>I suspect what will happen is that the repeated blackouts will
>convince the mad global warming believers that maybe the settled
>science was wrong all the time, and the solution was impossible.

Now that is a truly idiotic comment! Whether we have a reliable electricity supply doesn't have any bearing on the physics of global warming. And as any competent engineer will tell you, the task is big but far from impossible.
And why the paranoia about blackouts? Haven't you noticed the supply problems in the last few years have been due to coal fired power stations breaking down?

<keep in mind the figure is in addition to the renewable power already installed which is making baseload power uneconomic>

That might have more to do with the way power is supplied. Are there 24hr supply contracts? Renewable supply will make the market unworkable. For starters you will need six to eight times the generating capacity to guarantee supply, meaning that over 80% of the power generated will go to waste. Renewable energy has its uses, but it is a moronic way to power the grid.

Aiden, I am well aware that my little battery would not produce 700Mw
in practise. I was just making the point about quoting battery size
without mentioning time.
The "they" is anyone who sounds off about batteries especially when
talking about their use in power systems.
Great for when clouds pass over on sunnt still days, frequency
stability etc, but not for backup.

The 6 Gw is to replace the closed station. The existing renewables
maybe under cloud on a still day so the 6Gw will need to be well away from the area.
And hopefully in a windy place.
The blackout problem cannot be blamed on coal fired stations.
They had enough backup installed anyway. So station going off line
was always taken up by the others.
It is only now with renewables on the scene that it has become a worry.
You said:Whether we have a reliable electricity supply doesn't have any bearing on the physics of global warming.
Of course it does ! We would not be playing with renewables if it
wasn't for AGW activists !

We will never be able to afford enough distributed renewables all
connected by the $1Trillion grid including WA.
As i have said previously there is a need for many wx stations to
be installed all around Australia fed into a computer that can measure
wind and solar and see if there is in fact enough wind & sun for 100% x 100% electricity.
If not install nuclear.

It is not just me Aiden;
http://tinyurl.com/3er4jdjv
The industry is also worried about it.

Bazz: "So the correct description of the battery would be 1400 Mwatt/hrs"

Not quite, the correct description would be "1400 MWh", eg: 1400 megawatts of power supplied for 1 hour, or equivalently 700 megawatts supplied for 2 hours.

The SI unit of energy is the Joule [J]. The units of power are Watts [W], which is a derived unit of Joules per second [J/s]. (Joules are themselves a derived unit of [kg.m^2/s^2]). And energy is equivalent to the integration of the power with respect to time. So when describing energy in terms of power supply over a set time the units work out as: W.s = J/s * s = J.

The units [MW/h] (or as you idiosyncratically wrote [Mwatt/hrs]) would be used to describe the rate of change of the power.
eg1: if a power station was starting up then these units could be used to state the rate of power increase, at any given instant, while it was firing up to normal operation.
eg2: you could use it to describe the overall average rate of increase over the whole time it took to start up: such as if a power station took 24 hrs to fire up to achieve 96 MW of constant power supply then its average rate of increase would be 4MW/h during the start-up.

This link exposes the lie of renewable energy in Europe. Solar and wind combined have over eight times the generating capacity of nuclear, yet the power provided to the grid is about the same.

https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/power/live-eu-electricity-generation-map

Australia should change the electricity supply market to support 24/7 power generators if it wants to maintain the economy via a reliable grid supplying low cost power. If a low carbon option is needed we need to go nuclear. The longer Australia pursues the renewable fantasy the more disastrous it will be.

Think-a-bit; No, I was just talking about the size of the battery.
Trying to put into something the average Joe Blow would understand.
If we need to explain, if the network needed to rely on the battery
it could run the show for two hours. That gives Joe a good idea of the
battery's size.
Of course what no one explains where will you get that level of power
to recharge the battery after the system overcomes the cause of the
failure, as the system is obviously running on empty, before it
happens again for the same reason.
We are heading for a worse situation than the UK's predicament.
We do not have any nuclear and no access to France.

Bazz: " No, I was just talking about the size of the battery."

I know you were, that's what my post is about. Battery capacity is measured in the amount of available energy it stores not its power output.
The SI units of energy are Joules [J] (SI is the "International System of Units"). And a Watt [W] is defined as a Joule per second, which is the SI unit of power.
But since the energy supplied is equal to the integration of the power it delivers over the time it delivers it, the units of energy can also be written as a unit of power multiplied by a unit of time:
eg1: in SI units: Watt times second, [Ws], or some multiple of this using metric prefixes if more convenient: [MWs], [GWs], etc,. Note that 1Ws=1J since [W * s] = [J/s * s] = J.
eg2: if you allow the use of non-SI [h] for an hour, ie:1h=3600s, then you can use Watt times hour, [Wh], as an energy unit. Or some multiple of this using metric prefixes: [kWh], [MWh], [GWh], etc,. Note that 1 Wh = 3600Ws = 3600J = 3.6kJ. And that 1MWh = 3,600,000,000Ws = 3.6GJ.

So a battery with 1400MWh would supply 1400MW for 1 hour, or equivalently 700MW for 2 hours, or 100MW for 14 hours, etc.

-- continued below --

-- from above --

Now in your original post you wrote: "So the correct description of the battery would be 1400 Mwatt/hrs. If it really is 700 Megwatt/hr then it will deliver 700Mwatt for 1 hour."
And my post was just a minor technical correction to this. A figure such as your "700Megwatt/hr" would be used to describe a rate of change power but NOT an amount of energy.
eg: if a generator started up and went from 0MW to a final steady 700MW and it took 1 hour, then its average rate of increase in power output over the start-up would be 700MW/h. However this number tells us nothing at all about the amount of energy that the generator supplied during the start up; it could have supplied any amount from just above 0J to all the energy available in the world's fossil fuel reserves*, we simply don't know.

However besides this technicality, overall I believe your post does convey the message you wish get across.

*:Well I'm obviously exaggerating a bit here- it would have to be using some extremely uncommon physics to supply this much energy.

Bazz,
>I am well aware that my little battery would not produce 700Mw in practise.
So you were well aware that you were lying?

Maximum output (MW) and storage capacity (MWh) are both important. Your dismissing the former as meaningless is IMO worse than the failure to report the latter you're criticising.

>The blackout problem cannot be blamed on coal fired stations.
The problem cannot be blamed on what caused it? Seriously?

>They had enough backup installed anyway. So station going off line was always taken up by the others.
It's one thing to have backup installed, but quite another to have it actually running.

I suspect you have a selective memory on this. I remember blackouts used to be quite frequent in SA, and reliability was a key consideration in the decision to build a link to the Victorian network. But not long after that link opened, a fault on it caused a major blackout when SA was utilising Victorian power and IIRC it took about 45 minutes for SA to ramp up its own output to replace it.

Nowadays batteries respond instantly, giving SA the most reliable power supply in the nation.

>Of course it does ! We would not be playing with renewables if it wasn't for AGW activists !
Firstly, it's likely we would be (for economic reasons)
Secondly, AGW is occurring because of changes to the composition of our atmosphere, not because of activists.
Thirdly, our use of renewables has very little bearing on the reliability of supply.

>We will never be able to afford enough distributed renewables all
>connected by the $1Trillion grid including WA.
The Eurasian Supergrid may well have a trillion invested in it over the coming years, including a connection to Australia. It doesn't mean Australia's paying that much!
Nuclear power is the expensive option - solar plus storage is far better value.

Your link is paywalled, but The Australian has long been biased against renewables.

It really is so simple.

We should give any generator a contract to supply a certain amount of power 24/7 for a period. This could be a year or many years. It would then be the responsibility for the generator to decide how this was organised. Wind & solar would be suppliers could chose batteries, pumped hydro, gas, coal or nuclear generation as back up, but it would be their responsibility.

Any failure to supply would attract instant cancellation of the contract.

This would get rid of the get rich quick subsidy farmers, & the ratbag greens, & give us a reliable power supply system, probably with very little wind or solar involved.

Hasbeen,
That's a recipe for high electricity prices, as the threat of immediate loss of contract means a lot of commercial risk (so high insurance costs). It also makes it very easy for the generating companies to quit if their activities turn out not to be profitable (so it wouldn't deliver the reliability you expect). And why the baseload fetish? Don't you realise how idiotic it is to buy a fixed amount all the time regardless of demand?

AEMO does engage in supply contracts rather than just relying on the spot market. But when they do, it's for a few days in advance, taking account of expected demand in order to get the best deal. Whereas your preferred course of action ignores demand and tries to distort the market to favour baseload suppliers, to the detriment of electricity consumers.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Fester,
>For starters you will need six to eight times the generating capacity to guarantee
>supply, meaning that over 80% of the power generated will go to waste.

That's a very illogical claim: not only does it rely on the peculiar assumption that the output from renewables is near its maximum most of the time, but also you're assuming the excess power has to go to waste rather than be put to productive use.

Why are you so desperate to believe renewables can't do the job?

Aidan, I am trying to make economic sense of renewable energy, but there is none to be made. Considering capacity factor alone it makes no sense, and the European energy link I gave would suggest that a real world capacity factor for wind/solar is about 11%. The other thing about capacity factor is that for conventional power generation, the downtime is predictable, whereas for renewables it is random.

As for why I think that up to 80% of renewable power generation would go to waste, consider which factory might be more profitable: A factory running 24/7 on cheap predictable energy, or a factory running intermittently on expensive renewable power?

As for undersea power cables transferring thousands of gigawatts around the world, consider that a 700mw power cable between Morocco and Spain, running under about 30km of the Mediterranean, costs about $150 million US. So hundreds of thousands of kilometres of undersea cables carrying thousands of gigawatts of power around the world will cost about a trillion dollars? Hahahahaha! That sounds like a job for Captain Underpants.

Fester,
> I am trying to make economic sense of renewable energy, but there is none to be made.
It looks to me like you're doing the opposite: trying NOT to make economic sense of renewable energy because you want to believe there is none to be made.

>Considering capacity factor alone it makes no sense,
Considering capacity factor alone makes no sense! Consider a wind turbine: f it has a high capacity generator (to take advantage of stronger winds when they blow) that gives it a lower capacity factor, but doesn't make it less useful.

>and the European energy link I gave would suggest that a real world capacity factor for wind/solar is about 11%
I can't see how you got that figure. Would you care to explain?

>The other thing about capacity factor is that for conventional power generation, the
>downtime is predictable, whereas for renewables it is random.
Not really - weather forecasting means it's far from random for renewables, whereas coal fired power stations often fail at random times.

Obviously there are issues relating to the lack of dispatchability from wind and solar power, but these are not insurmountable obstacles; they're technical challenges which can be (and are being) overcome.

>consider which factory might be more profitable: A factory running 24/7 on cheap
>predictable energy, or a factory running intermittently on expensive renewable power?
LOOK AT HOW YOUR SPIN IS FEEDING YOUR OWN DELUSIONS! You assume the baseload energy to be cheap despite the expense of its fuel, and you assume the renewable power to be expensive despite it costing almost nothing to operate!

Meanwhile back in reality, not all factories are equal: some are more labour intensive, some are more capital intensive, and others are more energy intensive. And the more energy intensive a factory is, the more it has to gain by only running on cheap (renewable) energy rather than running continuously.
(TBC)

Fester (Continued)

Despite checking urbandictionary, I don't really understand your Captain Underpants reference. But the Eurasian electricity supergrid already stretches from Ireland to Singapore (via Britain, Europe, Russia, China, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia) and there are many plans to extend it and to increase capacity (some being part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, some unrelated). A trillion dollars invested in something that serves billions of people shouldn't be too surprising.

Cheap renewables is a con and you have been sucked in by it Aiden. Don't feel bad about it. Con artists are clever. They tell stories that you want to see truth in. I look for working examples as it is a good way to expose con artists.

11%? Yes, that is a real figure. Nuclear power in Europe generates as much power as renewables in Europe. Wind and solar have a bit over eight times the generating capacity of nuclear in Europe. Given nuclear has a capacity of around 90%, that would give wind and solar a capacity factor of around 11%. That might be why nuclear power is a third the cost of renewables in Europe, yet you claim it to be more expensive Aidan. What is more, renewable energy requires large amounts of CO2 generating gas fired power to make it reliable.

I guess you can make up any fantastic story you like to make the renewable fantasy work, be it giant batteries or a spaghetti network of undersea power cables, but are there working examples to back up the story? Still based in fantasy, hence a job for Captain Underpants. Maybe International Rescue could delve into the undersea power cable business? Climate change is claimed to be a global emergency after all.

" the Eurasian electricity supergrid already stretches from Ireland to Singapore (via Britain, Europe, Russia, China, Laos, Thailand and Malaysia) "

Um, more fantasy I'm afraid. The idea was floated around the time of Desertec, the renewable energy farce that would provide Europe with abundant cheap green energy and turn Northern Africa into an oasis. Needless to say it failed on all counts.

And let's not forget hydrogen, the latest chapter in the renewable energy fantasy. Fortunately a number of scientists have spoken out against this lunacy. e.g.

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/-expensive-greenwash-first-international-hydrogen-based-tender-launched-to-import-green-or-blue-ammonia-to-japan/2-1-1172692

How ironic that the most viable low carbon power generating technology is supported by long range forecast/modelling skeptics, yet psychotically opposed by those screaming hysterically about the coming climate Armageddon.

Fester,
Declaring something to be fantasy does not make it so. Which part of the Eurasian supergrid do you think doesn't exist?

I'm well aware the centrally planned high capacity supergrid proposals haven't come to fruition (though IMO BRI will change this). But what you don't seem to have grasped is that it's in countries' interests to link their electricity grids up with those of their neighbours so they can trade. And many decided to do so, thus a supergrid formed almost spontaneously. And it doesn't involve "a spaghetti network of undersea power cables". Most of the supergrid's over land, and where there are undersea cables hey generally don't cross (though I'm aware of an exception in the North Sea).

Renewable energy activists have long regarded blue hydrogen as a con. However it's arguably desirable in the short term to get the hydrogen industry up and running, and will probably cease production within a decade for economic reasons as green hydrogen takes over. BTW it's easy to convert ammonia back to hydrogen, which burns cleanly.

You appear to have slept through the cost reductions in the cost of renewable energy over the last decade. But regardless, you need to know how markets work: even if renewable energy were as hopelessly uneconomic as it was back in the 20th century, you wouldn't have expensive power going to waste. When there's a surplus of power, the wholesale price falls - it would have to drop to zero before the turbine's owners decided to waste the power rather than sell it.

Your 11% figure's very dodgy - the figure I've seen for European wind power is 26%, with newer installations having a higher capacity. And where did you get the idea that "Wind and solar have a bit over eight times the generating capacity of nuclear in Europe"? AIUI it's more like three times. And the reason nuclear power is so cheap in Europe is because of when it was built - the cost was inflated away in the 1970s. Unfortunately they're unable to build new nuclear power stations anywhere near that cheap.

You think putting you power supply at the beck and call of a foreign power a good idea Aidan? It's worked well for Europe relying on Russian gas hasn't it? And no, it doesn't exist, not even for Europe. Note the words "possible future" in the following quote:

"The European super grid is a possible future super grid that would ultimately interconnect the various European countries and the regions around Europe's borders – including North Africa, Kazakhstan, and Turkey – with a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power grid."

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

"BTW it's easy to convert ammonia back to hydrogen, which burns cleanly."

Yes you can Aidan, but considering you are getting less than 15% energy efficiency using ammonia for the application I linked, converting the ammonia back to hydrogen would make the process even more abysmal.

"And where did you get the idea that "Wind and solar have a bit over eight times the generating capacity of nuclear in Europe"?"

Yes, you are right Aidan. A bit over three times I think. Wind and solar combined have a capacity factor of less than 30%, but given you need gas fired power on standby to make it reliable you can effectively halve that figure. What is pertinent is that wind/solar is currently three times the cost of nuclear and is far less reliable. Nor is wind/solar maintenance free.

The other advantage of nuclear power, aside from it being cheaper, less polluting and more reliable than renewables, is that it can be built far more quickly than renewables. This makes sense as with the high capacity factor of nuclear (>90%), you only need about a sixth the generating capacity as wind/solar. Nor do you need the batteries, back up power generation, extra grid infrastructure and power regulation systems. What is needed for a stand alone national renewable energy supply isn't known, because it is still a fantasy concept. Aidan should try to seek accurate information rather than accepting the propaganda of psychotically anti-nuclear greens and the renewable energy lobby.

Fester,
You claim nuclear can be built quickly, so why isn't that happening? Lots of solar and wind power infrastructure's going up quickly, but new nuclear plants are taking many years to build and costing enormous amounts. Look at Hinkley Point C: do you really think they'd be building it if they could construct nuclear power stations quickly and cheaply elsewhere?

And in practice you may well need batteries to make nuclear power financially viable. The lack of load following ability was the biggest factor in British Energy going bust around the turn of the millennium.

Iceland gets practically all its electricity from renewables. But a stand alone national nuclear energy supply is still a fantasy concept.

Nowhere did I suggest putting the electricity supply at the beck and call of a foreign power.

I am well aware the European Super Grid plan has not come to fruition. Nor have any of the other centrally planned supergrids (with the arguable exception of the Soviet grid) yet. Nevertheless, locally planned connections between the grids of adjacent nations have created a supergrid spanning from Ireland to Singapore.

Considering converting ammonia to H2 and N2 increases pressure but absorbs heat, I'd expect doing that before burning would actually increase efficiency. And yes, the efficiency of blue hydrogen is terrible, but green hydrogen does not have that problem.

And your trying to fudge capacity factors reminds me very much of a time a few years ago when anti wind power people were "converting" non energy inputs to energy inputs in order to achieve an EROEI figure below 7 (which they wrongly claimed was the minimum needed to power an advanced society). 'Tis much better to accept that CF is just a ratio, and the real limits are what can be done profitably.

"Nowhere did I suggest putting the electricity supply at the beck and call of a foreign power."

But that is what happens when you import your power from another country via a super grid.

"but green hydrogen does not have that problem"

It sure does Aidan. e.g.

"According to Recharge calculations, each tonne of green ammonia requires 14.38MWh of renewable energy to produce using standard processes, yet would only generate 1.96MWh when burned in a coal-fired power plant (presuming a steam turbine generator efficiency of 38%)"

https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/-expensive-greenwash-first-international-hydrogen-based-tender-launched-to-import-green-or-blue-ammonia-to-japan/2-1-1172692

China takes about five years to build a nuclear power plant. Why would it take other nations decades? Don’t developments of critical importance take place more quickly in a crisis? The main hurdle for nuclear is political. Consider that the Manhattan project went from theory to bomb in about four years. Thankfully Roosevelt took the advice of Einstein instead of Eugene. You can view a copy of Eugene’s letter in the presidential library. Here is a cut and paste.

Dear Prez,

It has come to my attention via some commie spies that you are considering researching the concept of a nuclear bomb. I strongly urge you to reconsider this waste of resources in these desperate times. It is the considered opinion of many learned physicists that such a device is theoretically impossible. Even if it were possible, it would likely take many decades to develop, long after the war with the Axis countries is predicted to have ended. Further, it is believed that such a device would not provide a significant advantage in an armed conflict, as it would very likely have little more power than conventional explosives and would only be available in small numbers due to the extreme cost and complexity of production. Also, such devices would be extremely unstable, making them very likely to spontaneously detonate long before reaching their targets.

Clearly it would be far more sensible to progress the war effort with expenditure on conventional weapons.

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Dr Eugene Drippydumbdoofus

President of the Psychotically Anti-nuclear, Snake Oil Renewables and Idiotic Thought Coalition

Fester, I think one of the problems of renewables for many countries
is that the possible generation capacity varies exponentially to the
inverse of the area of the country.
I suspect that is one reason that Germany has problems with renewables
being such a small country.
If West Australia was connected to our grid it would be a great improvement.

Bazz, I have no interest in fudging data. I just want to cut through all the smoke and mirrors of the spruikers of any persuasion. Iceland is a tiny country, but it has good hydroelectric and geothermal (not exploiting wind or solar Aidan) resources. Not relevant for Australia unless you can grow mountain ranges, reactivate volcanoes and increase rainfall. Tassie could dam the Franklin, but Dr Bob and his gremlins might have some objections.

France could have gone 100% nuclear but for political constraints. Ideology seems to be the basis for decision making with power supply. That is dangerous.

Fester,
>But that is what happens when you import your power from another country via a super grid.
No it isn't, and that kind of misunderstanding is probably a big part of why the centrally planned super grid proposals never took off.

What really happens is that you import power at some times of day and export it at others, to take advantage of price variations due to supply and demand fluctuations. Even when there's a massive electricity trade imbalance, the multiple links of a supergrid reduce the chance of one country being totally dependent on another.

I concede that using conventionally produced green ammonia in the way Japan proposes really is that inefficient.

IIRC it took around 8 years to get Hinkley Point C approved, and it's taking roughly that long to build it. There's a documentary about it on SBS.

And your attempt at satire is even worse than Paul's, and that's saying a lot.

North Africa or the Middle East could provide the imbalance I think.

Yes, it's an idiotic story, but I think the future obscure enough to make idiots of all of us. Kev's internet dream. The greenies in the 80s fighting against low carbon energy. Chiropractors in the 50s arguing against vaccination. I just hope for the best solutions to be chosen, and that is extremely difficult to get right. It might surprise you Aidan that I would be very happy to be wrong about renewables. I certainly have no delusions of infallibility.