I'll watch this later, I like his presenting style, he and the guy that plays Rimmer in Red Dwarf have made some good doco's.

why do you hope that? you think cost should be the only factor considered in converting energy?
incidentally, you might realise that coal stations have moving parts too, and probably a lot more staff

interesting video. it shows how much of a joke that "earth hour" is :]

I'd think with the amount of money involved and the volume of data that they have at their command these dudes would have a very good handle on the proportion of plant maintenance costs vs generation costs and it would all factor in under the heading of "costs" when they say they're going to shut down various sources in cost order.

Of course cost matters, Do go on holidays to Europe every month Jim ?
It would be wonderful and the Family would love it but you cant afford it.

Its fine to be all Greeny and "embracing a green future" but the reality is someone has to fund it and Banks wont fund Green Energy so that just leaves the poor old Taxpayer.

LOL at Actors being hired to convince us its a good idea to use our Taxes to fund it. Why doesnt the Actor invest in Fairy Energy ?

Wind Energy producing close to nothing during the story but TOMORROW WILL BE WINDY, thats no good because it its too windy they Windmills cant operate. LOL

England imports more Energy from France than it produces in Renewable Energy.
Almost all of their Green Energy is Nuclear Power.

2% currently Wind, it will never get to 20% Renewables and even if it does its unreliable, they will need to have a garaunteed back up Coal or Nuclear because Wind and Solar are unreliable. So you cant close down Coal and relpace it with Wind/Solar. Its impossible or you have to accept there will be loadshedding/blackouts.

All of these stories NEVER tell you the cost.
Many in Britain are experiencing "Fuel Poverty" they cant pay heating and Electricity bills now, how will they when the cost of enerfy triples or more to get to 20% renewables.

We arent looking at England seriously and declaring THATS RETARDED, instead we are creating a $10 Billion Green Fund to fund Fairy Energy, and a seemingly neverending amount of extra funding/taxes/levies etc...

Electric Cars will never be anything but a novelty.

Here is a REALLY smart guy who started fresh when designing a battery for use in power stations to save solar energy for night time...

I take your TED and raise you a Michael Webber!

Quite an insight into the central nervus system of the electricity grid in the UK.

Ours works in the same way. I've worked in both control centers of the eastern states grid. I'm a grid analyst.

I was surprised to hear they share power with france, wales etc... thats great!

We have QLD, NSW, VIC, SA and TAS all connected and trading with each other. WA and NT are too far away. We could connect to NZ which might have some merits but the link would be $$$.

Interesting bit on wind turbines how they can control them from the center to tell them to generate more or less.

You can command wind farms to generate less, in which case they brake some of the turbines in the farm. But you can't command them to produce more.

He said a few times that when they are over producing they turn down or switch off stuff starting at the highest cost and working their way down. That made me wonder, for wind they obvious factor into how long it takes for the bearings to get fucked and the cost of replacing it. So I hope all those costs of all that are lower then it costs to chuck some coal into a furnice :(

National Grid don't calculate the costs. Each power station volunteers what they believe their costs are, and then National Grid instruct based on those submitted costs. Anyway, ordinarily you would only back off wind farms as a last resort, as their energy cost is near zero because wind is free, while coal and gas aren't cause you have to pay for the fuel.

If you're interested in what they said about their 'pumped storage' in the video, well we have that too....that's what Wivenhoe is, in addition to a town water dam and a flood mitigation tool.

Oh and btw, big surprise but faceman doesn't know what he's talking about.

he and the guy that plays Rimmer

Yeah it doesn't take into account it takes time for generation to wind down only to have to wind back up. And is probably just a wanky way to annoy the engineers in control of the distribution grid for an hour.

Generation can wind down pretty darn quickly. This Earth Hour business is no problem for the grid.

yes, the idea of earth hour is to spread awareness of energy efficiency and avoiding wastage, not to actually save power itself.

Do wind turbines have a gearbox that you can step up through gears etc to acheive higher rpm? or are they all kept really basic and just prop connects to generator that can have brakes applied?

Does SE QLD have any wind, solar, wave , geothermal etc systems (even just as a test) orbitor?

Yes wind turbines have a gearbox because they need to turn the generator at the same speed as every other generator in a linked AC grid. The propellor part of the windfarm turns much slower so the gearbox multiplies the RPM to the level needed.

There are quite a few proposed wind farms for SE QLD, but none operating as yet. The only significant existing windfarm in QLD at the moment is Windy Hill Wind Farm in the Atherton tablelands near Cairns. The main reason we don't have many windfarms in QLD is that QLD isn't as windy as the southern states for the most part.

QLD has a number of small scale solar farms and is likely to get some much bigger ones in the next few years. No wave or geothermal yet, but geothermal is possible in far south-west QLD.

Bass, I work for a private consulting firm, but I've done lots of consulting for AEMO. Who are you with mate?