The key is a renewable energy SYSTEM.

Wind energy is a fuel $aver and constructing an energy system around variable or cycling (such as tidal lagoon) renewables is not an insurmountable problem as indicated by many reports from all around the world and as in the recent Royal Academy of Engineering report ;
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/releases/shownews.htm?NewsID=925

High renewable scenarios from around the world
http://www.mng.org.uk/gh/scenarios.htm

Denmark Smart Energy Systems: 100% Renewable Energy by 2050 (video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1P31EC0YsE
tech presentation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-sDkrZmrUA

Renewables, nuclear, or fossil fuels? Scenarios for Great Britain’s power system considering costs, emissions and energy security Imperial College Pfenninger & Keirstead
http://blog.environmentalresearchweb.org/2015/07/25/uk-renewables-can-get-to-80-or-more/

The Fraunhofer 2050 REMod-D high renewables model shows no cost penalty.
https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/Public/pdfs/presentations/solar%202050/Solar-2050_2014-01_Henning.pdf

The only problem are existing vested interests, supine politicians and poorly briefed journalists. The grid needs restructuring for the coming renewable energy revolution. We certainly do not need over complicated, high cost, inflexible and high risk nuclear. In fact current nuclear proposals will block investment in renewables after 2020, locking the UK into the high cost nuclear cycle.

When you have variable renewable, base load generation is redundant, you need quick reacting infill such as already existing gas fired CCGT Combined Cycle Gas Turbine and OCT Open Cycle gas Turbine (perhaps fuel cells in the future if they scale). We will need this anyway when a nuclear has a unintended shutdown. This will be relatively low cost with occasional use (give them capacity payments if need or just let the state buy them cheap) and well below C02 emission targets. The ramp up and down rates are similar to existing rates and extra maintenance costs are minimal.

With some CO2 capture and use of biomass + coal you can even have low to neutral CO2 emissions. BECCS biogenic carbon capture and storage (and use). CO2 then has an economic value.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmenergy/529/529we10.htm
http://decarbonizingfires.com/Heating%20Gas%20-%20Carbon-neutral%20Heating%20Gas.pdf

Base load is redundant (and puts the fear of God into the big 6)
www.energyscience.org.au/BP16%20BaseLoad.pdf

First reduce demand with a roll out of energy efficiency.

Storing potential electrical energy is high cost with diminishing returns in round trip efficiency.

Better to use other storage vectors that are lower cost first in an energy systems approach, then use higher cost but valuable electrical storage with short to long term storage capacities and availabilities as needed eg District Heating (using MW heat pumps on HV grid with inter-seasonal low cost storage), pumped hydro electric, batteries, cryogenic heat engines, P2G renewable power to gas has lower efficiency so one of the last port of calls but it is easily and cheaply stored and can be used for long periods in great quantity, etc.

JRC District Heating report
http://setis.ec.europa.eu/system/files/JRCDistrictheatingandcooling.pdf

see 4th generation District Heating low temperature 60-50C supply/ 30-20 return with large area surface emitters eg wall or floor heating
www.4dh.dk

Lots of interesting new renewable developments in the pipeline
eg prototype osmotic power station using high saline geothermal district heating water in Denmark

https://stateofgreen.com/en/news/salt-power-to-produce-co2-neutral-electricity
https://issuu.com/saltpower/docs/saltpowerbrochure-4-2016

solar photovoltaic + batteries - perhaps but not good economies of scale or use of resources, congestion? More public transport and trams better eg Trampower www.trampower.co.uk

Posted By: John Daglishsolar photovoltaic + batteries - perhaps but not good economies of scale or use of resources,

Works well, but not for the UK! Great if you are somewhere with sun most of the year and a lot of AC load..

OO dear I'm getting anxious - lulled by the explosion of news about PV's crashing prices and booming installations worldwide, plus storage costs ditto
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Switch-solar-storage-means-cheap/dp/1781256357/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472922777&sr=8-1&keywords=the+switch+chris+goodall
it had seemed Mrs M was alert to the new situation and it was all over for Hinkley.

Now not so sure - looks more like just a suspense tactic to bargain with China. UK may be the v last country to commit to the biggest ball-and-chain ever, just before everyone else sees sense.

Oh bug*er

Look at it this way: it is the lesser of 2 evils. I guess (hope) that's the way she did look at it - it is better to have Hinkley than not have Chinese (specifically) but mega investment from other countries due to our unreliability etc; and I doubt any open minded person would say that is an easy decision to make or consider that lay people like us could even list just the important variables/arguments.

Her hands were tied, she won some concessions. I will not judge her.

Posted By: fostertomspell those out?

Evil Choice 1: Hinkley C

Evil Choice 2:

Posted By: Gotanewlifenot have Chinese (specifically) but mega investment from other countries due to our unreliability etc

Yours perplexed?

Well I should hope that they think that the wider benefits in terms of trade with China and France outweigh the cost, because on it's own merits it seems a terrible deal!

Talking of China and electricity generation, just been reading some reportage from China:-

Thermal (fossil fuel, basically coal) generation 96 TWh lower in 2015 than 2014, hydro 44 TWh up, solar 43 TWh up, nuclear 35 TWh up, wind 29 TWh up.

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/15/latest-trends-chinas-continuing-renewable-energy-revolution/

Ed

Yes, caught a snippet of that on the radio today.
There was also something about the Chinese and Hinkley.

Imagine how much power storage we could develop and build instead with the money they are throwing at this?

The only limitation with renewables is grid stability (frequency, which could be ensured with distributed modular flywheel storage) and power storage for low production days (chemical storage, gravity batteries, sand batteries, redox flow batteries, etc, etc).

Distributed and independent technologies on the grid would provide the security and redundancy that would truly make the UK immune from price shocks and foreign shenanigans and, (increasingly likely) war damage.

But then the Government would connect them all with Chinese 5G...

The UK really needs to get behind nuclear at scale and work with the US and EU to improve standarisation. Nuclear is the greenest power source by a mile.

Entertaining to see a 380-posts thread revived from 2016, those were the days!

By chance, this July is both the twentieth anniversary of the 2006 government Energy Review that proposed building Hinkley C, and the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Final Decision to start full construction work. Finished by the thirtieth anniversary in 2036, perhaps?

People joke about how fusion power is only twenty years away and always has been, but seems like old-fashioned fission power is now only thirty years away!

Depleted uranium - denser than lead, hence more energy-as-momentum, as armour-piercing shell tips (while also making the battlefield (and Dartmoor as live-firing practice zone) radioactive for ever).

Reminds me of my aero-modeling (or was it slot-racing?) days, when a small lead nose-weight was incorporated to adjust fore-aft balance; someone wrote in to say why not use aluminium instead, would save so much weight.

@ fostertom
As IUI the Army only use DU ammunition in the UK for test firings and only then at 2 ranges,- not Dartmoor.

Posted By: owlmanNow that large-scale grid forming inverters are available it is even less necessary to build a new spinning mass just to maintain grid stability.


I often listen to Kathryn Porter on this subject of grid stability, and other power related subjects, she's worth a listen. Last I heard from her she has suspicions that the Spanish grid failure had frequency instability as its prime cause, plus a couple of worrying grid frequency issues here in the UK.

Hmm ...

AIUI the first large-scale grid-forming validation test was completed just a few months ago, and is expensive, so while the technology may exist it's in no state yet for wide scale roll-out.

I often read Kathryn Porter's articles too, and think she speaks a lot of sense as in the examples you mention. But in some ways she has her thinking backwards. She seems to think that getting off fossil-powered generation is extremely difficult (she may be right) and is not economic (probably right again) and therefore we should carry on building fossil-powered generation (she misses the fundamental nature of the climate crisis, IMHO).

Anyway, her latest article is about the added cost of providing duplicate fossil-powered generation to back up solar and wind in the event of a period of hot, still weather. She makes the relevant point that batteries are too expensive for grid-forming inverters to make sense, but apparently has not heard of the idea of storing green hydrogen in salt caverns and burning that when required.

@ Will,

I think Kathryn Porter agrees its voltage that was the problem. She says:-

"The grid operator forgot that inertia applies to voltage as well as frequency but unlike frequency varies with location
Allowing conventional synchronous generation in the south to close, relying on plant in the north and east was a big mistake
Now they can't keep the southern grid stable and face more blackouts "