My solar power system mirrors exactly what we face by trying to rely on renewables alone.
The other day I received through the door a package about a proposed 340 acre (138 hectare) solar farm a mile from my house. Apparently, it’ll produce “49.9MW” (sic) and meet the needs of 16,000 homes. What? Even on a cloudy day? It goes on to mention that the projected life of the solar farm is 40 years after which the land will allegedly be reinstated. Who’s going to enforce that? More to the point, where will the 49.9MW come from after it’s been dismantled?
As for the people running the company, in 40 years’ time they’ll either be dead or done a runner.
The company claims to be “contributing to the world’s move to 100% renewable energy”. 100%? That tells me they don’t even understand their own technology, despite also being apparently unaware of what’s going on in India and China.
Actually, I’m all for renewables. Since sunshine is free it’s insane not to take advantage of it. But one has to be realistic – and tell the truth.
In these pages before I’ve mentioned in passing that I have a solar panel system. I noticed that one of the readers of this site immediately accused me of taking advantage of taxpayer-funded subsidies. Not so. I paid for the whole lot and the batteries out of my own pocket. I did not receive so much as a brass farthing from the taxpayer.
But the point of this Net Zero-oriented piece is to explain how my system depicts perfectly the shortfalls of renewables unless one is prepared to accept a completely different type of energy usage and standard of living (which I wrote about the other day).
What I mean by this is that my domestic setup mirrors perfectly the problem this country faces by trying to eliminate the need for power generated by non-renewable sources.
The first downside is that the panels and batteries cost a considerable amount of money. We’ve forked out about £12,000 for a nominal 4 kW system (in practice it does not do better than 3.7 kWh) and four 2.4 kWh (usable capacity 2.2 kWh) batteries. We were lucky: a) we had the money saved which at the time was earning nothing, and b) we happen to have an outbuilding at the end of the garden which is invisible to the street and faces SWS, which is almost perfect.
Obviously, many people are not going to be in that position in either or both cases.
However, our solar panels have paid for themselves in just a few years because we use a fraction of the grid power we used to need, and we get paid for what we generate. Though, I might point out that we get paid only about one sixth of what the utility company sells the power we haven’t used ourselves to other people for.
Still, it’s better than a kick in the teeth. Unlike EVs and heat pumps, solar panels make electricity, not use it (apart from a nominal amount lost through heat in the inverters and resistance).
We had the panels fitted first. But they were like filling a bath using a tap with uncontrollable variable flow and no plug. It became patently apparent very quickly that batteries were going to be essential. We had them installed too, at first two and then upped the system to four.
Result? We probably generate and store about 80% of our needs over the year. But here’s the rub. We have an oil boiler. There are only two of us in our mid-60s. Our children have all grown up and gone. When they come to stay it’s almost impossible to match their needs, especially those with children of their own. They expect to have the kettle on every five minutes as well as cooking without cessation (we live in the countryside, so the hob and oven are electric), their small children have to be roasted alive all night because children of their generation apparently expire at anything below 20°C, the washing machine has to be on constantly, and they have countless appliances.
Our own needs don’t include a heat pump or charging an EV. If we had either, we’d be incapable of doing more than reducing our dependence on the grid by a small margin. In the eight years since we had the panels installed, the system has generated 36,000 kWh. In the same period of time a heat pump would have used up approximately 84,000 kWh (I had a supplier provide me with an estimate). So, I’d have saved 43% only of a heat pump’s needs and not had any solar electricity for all our other appliances. In fact, the position would have been worse since we’d mostly have needed to use the heat pump when the ability to charge is at its lowest.
My 36,000 kWh over eight years works out at an average of 375 kWh per month or 12.3 kWh per day, but of course in reality that’s extremely unevenly distributed. In the winter I’d be lucky to manage half that which is why there is no hope of covering a heat pump at that time of year.
One website estimates that a little under 12 kWh per day is required to charge an EV (or 353.3 kWh per month). But that’s only for just under 12 miles driving per day! That, incidentally, is 3.3 miles per kWh which means a return trip for me to London would use up 75 kWh of electricity. I’m not concerned about the cost here, which varies considerably, but the practicality of charging the car from a domestic renewable system.
If our sons ever get EVs and expect to charge them at our expense when they turn up, the situation will be even worse. There’s a Net Zero protocol no-one seems to have thought about. Suppose you have a dinner party? I can just imagine the guests all coming out with ‘you don’t mind if I plug in while we’re eating, do you? I don’t want to sit at a public charger for 45 minutes after midnight.’ No-one ever expected the host to produce a couple of five-gallon cans of petrol, largely because ‘proper cars’ have a decent range and you can actually buy fuel at petrol stations, but you can bet that from hereon there’ll be plenty of people who expect to plug in at their friends’ and relatives’ houses.
Back to the panels. The thing is that renewables are all about diminishing returns. To improve on my 80% self-sufficiency I’d have to double the whole system (and therefore the cost) and that still wouldn’t be enough for a heat pump in winter or to charge an EV. Given their requirements, I’d need to triple the system, assuming I even had a place for the additional panels and batteries.
Not only that, but I also wouldn’t – indeed, still couldn’t – get to 100%. The reason is simple. I could install 1,000 solar panels but they won’t make the sun shine in the middle of the night, any more than filling the North Sea with wind turbines will make a gale blow when it’s a flat calm without so much as a gentle breeze (also incidentally foxing any wave power generators).
If the sun isn’t shining, then it isn’t possible to charge my batteries either. On the day I’m writing this (October 13th 2023), it has rained all day almost without cessation and the sky has been battleship grey. The nicely charged batteries of the evening before were wiped out by lunchtime and that was without even putting the washing machine on. I might point out that the batteries don’t fully discharge – they cannot be allowed to. Around 30% of the charge cannot be used.
And we’re not even into winter yet. Where I live, I’m lucky to get six hours’ sunshine a day in December and January. Further north it’s even worse. The very time of year more power is needed.
Even on good days we’ve had to modify our behaviour. It’s not possible to run more than one or two major appliances even at the best of times without having to draw from the grid. That means the washing machine in the morning, the dishwasher in the afternoon and preferably only using the kettle in between. The batteries have improved this, but not entirely. Using any of them after dark is a no-no or else we won’t get through the night and into the morning until the sun is high enough to start recharging.
That’s why a domestic setup like mine mirrors exactly what will happen with the national Net Zero push for renewables. You can only get so far towards 100%, but you cannot get there, and it’s much harder to match demand with supply. With the technology currently available it simply is not possible to manufacture and install the storage capacity to provide the backup during the night or on bad weather days always to be able to match potential peak episodes of demand.
Therein lies one of the obvious great falsehoods about Net Zero and renewables. There will always be dependence on sources of energy that are not dependent on variables like the sun and the wind. The vast majority of the population will be wholly dependent on the grid, just as they always have been – but it will be a very different type of grid.
Almost everyone with their own renewable source of power will need to turn to the grid sometimes, just as I have to, and if the grid is wholly or nearly wholly dependent on renewables, then the grid will not be able to cope. If I am forced into buying an EV and a heat pump then despite my system I’ll be forced to draw far more from the grid than I am now.
Unless that is, we are being deliberately led into a world where being accustomed to your refrigerators and freezers switching off, not being able to cook or charge your car, or run your heat pump, at least some of the time is almost inevitable. With smart meters and smart appliances being rolled out, that’s an entirely feasible prospect.
That likelihood is also being exacerbated by driving us all into a world with only one type of power: electrical and only to be generated by renewables. That means no competition and no choice, and we all know where that leads.
Right now, many of the public support Net Zero, but more than a few believe Net Zero means absolute zero. I wonder how long that will last when their electric hobs cut out, when their cars stand idle on the drive and their food rots in the freezers. Or when on Christmas Day in the dead of winter there’s no question of the nation cooking its Xmas dinners as well as switching on the kettle and charging all your adult children’s cars at the same time.
As it happens, mains electricity only arrived in my village in the early 1960s. There are residents here still alive who remember those days, along with no running water or mains sewage. It is of course possible to live without the levels of power consumption we have become used to.
The question for the Government and those eco-activists bent on imposing major changes in our way of life is who will vote for giving up what they’re used to when the reality sinks in?
We are only playing at Net Zero with a deadline of 2050. It’s a dream which rides on the back of the fact that for the moment most of us have petrol or diesel cars and we still have nuclear power stations and others that use fossil fuels. The solutions may come in time, but there’s a huge distance to go before realistic and affordable levels of power storage become possible.
And I still have no idea what will happen to my solar panels when they pack in, and the batteries when they reach the end of their lives (estimated life is 10-plus years for each battery).
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/04/bbc-employee-called-jews-nazis-no-longer-works-corporation/
It is an odds-on bet that this piece of effluent will turn up at either the WEF or the EU.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/04/bbc-journalist-was-paid-to-help-somali-criminals-stay-in-uk/
Deport the Next Tuesday.
Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Israel, Nigeria. Any one will do. Problem solved.
Did you mean Iran not Israel, by any chance?
https://flvoicenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/SC2022-1710-First-Interim-Report.pdf
Rocket science comes to mind.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/03/enemies-prepared-for-fight-time-to-rearm-avoid-world-war/
Another Next Tuesday stoking the WAR propoganda. F O. Hannan or get your bloody boots on.
I hate these Tossers.
Who exactly have we fallen out with? Wan#er!
‘You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.’
Leon Trotsky 1936
Article 5 provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.
A document leaked from the Presidential Directorate for cross border cooperation outlines Russia’s intended (now completed) military expansion in Belarus with a joint command system and Russian weapons depots.
The two-part document lists Russia’s short-, mid- and long-term goals in the first section and identifies potential risks in the second…..
The strategy was reportedly compiled by Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation head Alexei Filatov and presented to his superior, the presidential administration’s deputy chief Dmitry Kozak, in the fall of 2021.
The Presidential Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation is a subdivision of Putin’s Presidential Administration, which was established five years ago. The rather innocuously named directorate’s actual task is to exert control over neighbouring countries that Russia sees as in its sphere of influence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.
The best guess is that it will take Russia ten years to recover from its invasion of Ukraine….next stop Moldova and the Suwalki corridor.
That is why Poland has bought 1250 tanks, Sweden and Finland have joined NATO.
Maybe they perceive something that you, a thousand miles away, do not?
What gets me is the “re-arm to prevent World War III” line Re-armament in the 1930s happened with the growing understanding that war was going to happen, and that cutting our forces meant we were likely to lose. It was never done to prevent a war, but to win it.
The only weaponry that has prevented war is the nuclear M.A.D. of the Cold War with rough parity of conventional weaponry between east and west.
If Russia (or Iran, or Yemen!) did decide to invade Europe, our undoubted military inferiority would mean our estimable political class would be likely to have their fingers hovering over the nuclear button, awaiting orders from a safely distant USA.
But there is no evidence or motive that I’ve been able to see for such an invasion. Putin is a pragmatist seeking to make his own country prosperous and secure (his advanced age is both a testimony to that, and to the unrealistic nature of any desire to rule the world) and balancing the competing interests at home. Trying to emulate Alexander the Great and administer a hostile empire at the age of 72 seems far more Amercia’s style than his.
Russia has already invaded Europe by invading Ukraine.
The ‘Union State’ has already absorbed Belarus.
Putin has a whole department dedicated to restoring Russian control of Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltic States.
The strategic intention is clear: a new iron curtain from Kaliningrad to Odesa. That means war.
That doesn’t mean war is going to happen.
Nevertheless, just as Stalin asked ‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’ Putin will have asked himself how many armoured divisions does NATO have in Europe? The answer is: pretty much none.
That is why Poland has signed contracts for 1250 tanks etc etc
Of course Russia is not going to invade Western Europe, but Putin’s adventurism understandably makes his neighbours nervous…..and they are our NATO allies. If they are attacked, we will be at war.
To ensure peace, we must, as the Swiss and others have done before them, make the prospect of war sufficiently unattractive to a totalitarian despot that he will not risk it.
We all want peace on this site.
We won the cold war by maintaining a credible conventional deterrence.
So we know what works.
Net Zero Is Killing British Industry – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Saturday 3rd February 2024 Putney Bridge
With Karin’s marvellous London Yellow Boards People of Freedom
‘Forty Bibby Stockholm migrants converting to Christianity’ after Clapham chemical attack suspect did the same”
Does that mean we don’t have to provide Halal food for them anymore.?
Very good piece about the state of democracy in Europe;
”Here the battle over democracy in Europe becomes part of a far wider struggle across the world. In 2024, some four billion people across more than 60 countries are due to vote in national elections, and the ones for the European Parliament. We might imagine that the world’s biggest-ever carnival of democracy is something to celebrate. But not, apparently, for the political and media elites atop our alleged Western democracies.
These elitists are terrified of the prospect of billions of people refusing to do as they are told and instead voting as they see fit. ‘Democracy’ is all very well so long as it suits the interests of those with the kratos; but if the demos take democracy too literally seeks to assert their will, that’s an entirely different matter. As one former member of President Barack Obama’s administration put it, they believe that you can have “too much of a good thing” and that Western society “might be a healthier democracy if it were a slightly less democratic one.” For some liberals in high places these days it seems that, where popular democracy is concerned, less really could be more.
It should now be clear that, yes, democracy is indeed under threat in 2024. But the danger to European democracy comes from above, not below. The Brussels elites are determined to hold back the democratic tide.
That’s why they have spent years politically threatening and financially blackmailing democratically-elected conservative governments in Hungary and Poland, hiding behind talk of the ‘rule of law’ to disguise the attempt to enforce the rule of unelected judges and bureaucrats. Having played their part in installing EU lackey Donald Tusk as Poland’s prime minister, and turned a blind eye to the new regime’s purge of its political opponents, Brussels officials are now making plans to wreak havoc on the Hungarian economy in order to bring its prime minister Viktor Orbán to heel; and if that fails, to strip Hungary (and any other dissident nation) of its democratic right to vote ‘no’ in European Council meetings. In the eyes of the high priests of EU conformism, Mr. Orban has committed the cardinal sin of repeatedly winning elections on a platform of ‘illiberal democracy’ that refuses to accept mass migration at Hungary’s borders or LGBTQ ideology in its schools.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/democracy-watch/the-danger-to-democracy-comes-from-above-not-below/
Good post Mogs.
The rule of law – absolutely essential so long as it ensures the elites get the decision they require.
Yes of course the Church of England is complicit in the scammy ”Pray to Stay” fake conversions of illegals and any resulting crimes they commit. I mean, just how ridiculously naive is it possible to be??The CoE are abject traitors;
”Asylum seekers are exploiting loopholes in human rights legislation by “converting” to Christianity to prevent being deported back to their home countries — a move facilitated by the Church of England, prominent U.K. politicians have claimed.
“It is right that these cases are scrutinized and that there is a degree of honesty in establishments, including the Church of England as to what their motivations were,” Dame Priti said.
She claimed that religious leaders within the Church of England are “constantly speaking out against any reforms and work introduced by Conservatives in this area,” accusing the increasingly left-wing institution of “political activism.”
This allegation is evidenced by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s vocal opposition to the U.K. government’s asylum policy to send applicants to the African nation of Rwanda for processing. Welby has teamed up with fellow opponents of the policy in the House of Lords, Britain’s upper parliamentary chamber, to table amendments designed to frustrate its passing through parliament.
The archbishop has claimed the policy is “leading the nation down a damaging path,” sparking a response by Home Secretary James Cleverly who recently warned: “There is nothing honorable, there is nothing righteous, about removing one of the tools to break criminality.”
The Church of England has even published guidance to its clergy on how they can assist asylum seekers with their applications that specifically states that if an applicant “has converted to Christianity after a previous refusal, that may be the basis of a fresh claim.”
https://rmx.news/migration/church-of-england-accused-of-facilitating-bogus-asylum-claims-after-dozens-of-applicants-convert-to-christianity-to-exploit-human-rights-loophole/
I wonder what would happen if their conversion was tested at their baptism by routinely asking them to burn a Quran? If they say that would make them worthy of death under sharia law, then “apostasy” to Christianity is the same, but they’d be putting their money where their mouth is, as real converts like Hatun Tash do daily.
I can’t imagine Islamist terrorists being willing to associate with Quran-desecrators, which would be an incentive to “adopt British values” for lack of a viable alternative. You can’t de-apostasize in Islam – such a crime is beyond repentance.
“The CoE are abject traitors;”
I am in complete agreement and it is a point I have made more than once here on DS.
This point hasn’t been offered for some time, so…
If you uncritically support either Israel or Palestine then you are thinking with your heart and not your head.
By uncritically supporting Palestine you are emboldening Muslims everywhere, many of whom have radical beliefs and want non-believers heads on a plate. Many of these people now live amongst us in the UK and elsewhere in the West. Not only are you dismissing the barbarism displayed by the Hamas animals, you are signing the death warrant of traditional Western values and your own way of life (not that there’s much left of traditional Western values atm, but that’s a separate discussion). You are also supporting the vile plague of antisemitism that is sweeping across the West. Personally, I find these attacks, almost solely based on twisted conjecture, absolutely disgusting.
If you uncritically support Israel (which seems to be the DS party line) then you believe using an arguably greater evil to combat evil is morally justifiable. To murder civilian men, women and children and to destroy homes and vital infrastructure is ok, because, you know, the bad people. The argument that most Palestinians support Hamas objectives, and so are also fair game, doesn’t hold water – to want your own sovereign state is not the same as applauding the appalling murders of Israeli civilians.
Where’s the nuance in people’s thinking? It seems to have gone out of the window as the heart rules the head. Choose your flavour of propaganda is the order of the day.
I have this blind spot when it comes to wars. I never really understand wars.
These days I tend to keep an open mind , the Oct 7th incident was as heinous as us humans can get hand to hand . Israel’s response using modern weapons on urban infrastructure not knowing who is getting maimed or killed will at some point (if that point has not been reached already)be equal to said incident .
Yet the participants don’t have the luxury of even-handed judgments.
Two years into the Ukraine war, those who say “NATO’s expansion was an intolerable provocation, but Russia should not have invaded Ukraine” have failed to say what the correct response to “intolerable provocation” would have been, given it had been ratcheting up since NATO’s 1990s promise NOT to expand eastwards.
Likewise, if the Hamas atrocities do, indeed, signal putting their founding charter’s aim of destroying Israel and all its Jews into immediate effect, then what would Israel’s correct response have been to an enemy using its population, as the Ukrainians did in Mariupol, as human shields?
One could leave the foreigners to fight it out (only our leaders are always ready to make that impossible by bombing someone), but then we still have to choose whether to take “sides” on the anti-semitic mobs in our own country, bearing in mind the violence and intimidation here is not symmetrical.
The idea that there was intolerable provocation by NATO, or any promises regarding any expansion is just plain wrong. Gorbachev himself made it clear that there had been no promises made.
On the contrary, documentary evidence from inside Putin’s administration makes it plain that the invasion of Ukraine, twice, is part of a strategic plan of expansionism in order to create a new iron curtain from Kaliningrad to Odesa.
This means war with NATO.
If we wish to avoid war, we must prepare for it.
We know that works. We won the cold war in that fashion.
Thank you for voicing this point. To add context to the ongoing situation in Gaza, I’ve posted a link to a presentation given yesterday by Peter Koenig to MD4CE, which was wide ranging on the UN, WEF & included context into the history of the current conflict. He made a very salient point about the war being waged by the political Zionist movement, & gave historical context of how that came about, as opposed to war being waged by Jews. Very, very important distinction which is completely lacking in any of the articles posted ATL & is in fact purposely conflated to stoke the division, the anger & the tribal, emotional response to the situation.
A respectful, courteous debate followed in the Q&A part of the meeting. Deepened my knowledge on many areas & I learned a lot of new information.
https://rumble.com/v4bemxu-peter-koenig.html
For context this is Peter’s bio:
Peter Koenig worked for over 30 years with the World Bank, including 10 years in a Cooperative Program with WHO, in Environmental Health. As a macro-economist, specialized in water resources, his work took him to some 70 countries around the globe. It also gave him the rare opportunity to observe as an “insider” how these so-called UN agencies and the UN system at large operates. Who finances them, who influences them and to whose tune they dance.
This insight plus observations in countries where Peter worked, and many conversations he held with high-level government officials, but often more importantly dialogues with “normal” people, like you and me, gave Peter an extraordinary and broad insight into the dystopian world leadership pretending to run humanity. This formed his key incentive to concentrate on geopolitical analysis, not seldom with a hint of socioeconomics, the common denominator of most everything.
He was frequently invited to lecture on specific topics at universities in the US, Europe and South America.
Peter has also written a “docu-novel”, based on facts, about his World Bank experience, called “Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed”, and has contributed to various non-fiction books, notably as co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” Clarity Press – November 1, 2020.
Peter also writes regularly for several online, non-mainstream journals, especially Global Research, for which he is a Research Associate. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Topics of special interest, include the World Economic Forum (WEF), its Great Reset with the WEF’s / UN dream of an all-digitized “4th Industrial Revolution”, as well as the UN Agenda 2030 – which goes hand-in-hand with the Great Reset. He has covered basically all elements of these destructive agendas, from the covid crime to the energy shortages to the climate hoax.
In fact, the collaboration of the UN with WEF was cemented by a little-known illegal cooperation agreement between the WEF, an NGO registered in Geneva Switzerland, and the UN system, signed in 2019 between WEF’s Chairman Klaus Schwab and UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres. Illegal, because the UN may have cooperation agreements with national governments or other UN agencies, but not with NGOs, no matter by how many billionaires the NGO is supported.
Thanks BB.
“mRNA Covid vaccines caused more deaths than saved lives”
The Epoch Times link is behind a paywall, but here’s another link to the same info in a free article dated Feb 4th, 2024:
https://americafirstreport.com/mrna-covid-19-vaccines-caused-more-deaths-than-saved/