My Meter Installation
This may seem an odd post, but I want to have the pictures easily available, as fitting a smart meter to my house seems to be an obstacle course.
Let’s hope it means, that I don’t take any more pictures!
Russia ‘secretly working with environmentalists to oppose fracking’
The title of this post is not taken from some right-wing scandal sheet, but from this article in The Guardian.
I have an open mind on fracking, but keep these facts in mind.
- A lot of the bad stories about fracking originate in the United States, where quite frankly a lot of get-rich-quick cowboys got involved in the process, in a manner that would be illegal in the EU and the UK.
- The largest on-shore oil-field in Western Europe is Wytch Farm, which is close to Corfe Castle. I can’t find a report of any environmental damage around this oil-field, since production started in 1979. This proves to me, that we can extract oil and gas safely on-shore over a long period, which in Wytch Farm’s case is without fracking.
- We have some of the best engineering Universities in the world and we should use them to develop better ways of extracting, transporting and processing oil and gas. A big project involving several European universities called SHEER, is looking at fracking on a Polish site.
- Remember that if we need to import gas from outside Europe, we deal with countries with impeccable human rights like Qatar, Russia or the United States.
- Fracking techniques are used in the Highlands of Scotland to extract water out of rock.
- We need a lot of gas to keep us warm in winter.
I may have an open mind, but no-one could deny, that if Western Europe obtained the gas it needs from fracking or perhaps by finding a massive conventional gas field onshore in the UK, that the biggest loser would be Russia and President Putin.
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Good Riddance To Coal-Fired Power Stations
This article on the BBC is entitled UK’s coal plants to be phased out within 10 years. This is said.
The UK’s remaining coal-fired power stations will be shut by 2025 with their use restricted by 2023, Energy Secretary Amber Rudd has proposed.
Ms Rudd wants more gas-fired stations to be built since relying on “polluting” coal is “perverse”.
Because coal is pure carbon, when it burns, if produces carbon dioxide.
On the other hand, natural gas, is a mixture of hydrogen and methane, which is a compound of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atons. So when it burns, it produces a lot of the combustion product of hydrogen, which is water.
I think to get the same amount of heat or produce a given amount of electricity, natural gas creates about half the amount of carbon dioxide, than coal does.
There is another advantage of using gas to generate electricity. You can have small power stations generating electricity, where it is needed.
An interesting small gas-powered power station is the Bunhill Energy Centre in Islington, which is used to generate electricity and heat for some of the Council’s buildings. Phase 2 of this project will capture waste heat from the London Underground and a large electricity sub-station, that will be used to heat more buildings.
These cogeneration systems will become more numerous. For instance, if you had say a large detached house in the country, you might use solar panels or a wind turbine, backed by a microCHP system for dark or still days.
We shouldn’t underestimate, the skill of engineers to design electricity combined heat and power systems matched to all the different markets.
There will come a time, where many of us will generate the electricity we need, either by ourselves or perhaps in a local co-operative. We could even sell the surplus back to the grid.
I will not predict what a system will look like, but it will heat your house and provide you with the electricity you need.
The one thing, I will predict that coal will not have any use for the generation of electricity.
Should We Nuke Russia?
The title of this post is not a serious question in the way you think it is.
I was thinking about how we control Russia in its expansion into Ukraine and wondered how much gas we buy from the country. Google found me this article on the Forbes web site. It has the title of Nukes Best Option Against Russian Gas. It however did give some interesting facts about Russia and its gas, particularly with respect to the sale of the gas. The article contained the answer that I wanted in this sentence.
Russia gets about €300 billion a year (US$417 billion/yr) from fuel exports to Europe, almost 20% of its GDP
So it looks like that by its policies and purchases, the EU is strongly supporting Russia. The article also contained these paragraphs.
It is unfortunate that Germany closed down almost half of their nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima, 8 out of 17. Nukes really come in handy during this kind of energy conflict. It would behoove Germany to rethink that decision and to postpone their plans to shut down the remaining nuclear plants over the next ten years, to give them more leverage to address the Russian aggression as they continue transitioning to alternatives.
Until recently, Germany’s 17 nuclear plants produced power exceeding the energy produced by all of the Russian gas entering Germany. With eight shut down, the amount of nuclear energy produced still offsets much of that produced by Russian gas. If Germany insists on prematurely shutting the rest of its nuclear fleet, then the amount of gas needing to be imported into the country will double, even with projected increases in renewables.
This explains the title of the article.
The writer has a point. Whether we like it or not, Europe and especially Germany is playing the Russian’s game, by buying more gas and giving Putin the funds to be aggressive.
The sooner we stop buying gas from Russia the better. We need to start fracking and build more nuclear power stations.
An Insight Into Small Energy Companies
I found this article on a company called Contract Natural Gas in the Yorkshire Post. This section describes what they do.
CNG supplies commercial natural gas to businesses, from family firms to blue chip corporations, across sectors including retail, leisure and hospitality.
But it also provides technical services to independent gas providers such as Ovo Energy.
It seems that there is a lot of innovation going on in the provision of energy.
The energy companies live in interesting times!
Keyhole Surgery For Gas Mains
I like this story from the Standard, as it shows how good design and clever technology can make the solving of everyday problems, quicker and easier. Here’s the first paragraph.
A £1m robot will today complete work repairing gas mains in London without having to dig a single hole in the street in a UK first that it is claimed will save thousands of hours of disruption to motorists.
It may have cost a lot, but how much did it save?
Should We Embrace Fracking?
As an engineer, I have come to some conclusions about fracking.
There is certainly a lot of gas and possibly oil, buried in the ground, that can be accessed using advanced techniques like fracking in the UK.
Countries like the United States have certainly benefited from fracking with low gas prices and increased manufacturing activity.
There have been problems, as there were in Blackpool in the UK with fracking.
But are we throwing the resources of our great engineering universities, like Newcastle, Surrey, Southampton, Aberdeen, Manchester and Liverpool at the problem? I’ve left out universities that aren’t close to oil and gas reserves.
I doubt it!
Knowing engineering and engineers as I do, I suspect they could come up with better methods, that would benefit the UK and perhaps other countries, who have large difficult gas reserves and are nervous of using fracking and other methods.
So should the major oil and gas companies, be spending a few hundred millions investing in the future?
The Other Upside To Fracking
If you believe that we can successfully solve the problems of extracting gas from the ground using fracking, it should give us enough gas for our needs for many years to come according to reports like this one.
In all of the discussions about fracking, no-one seems to mention how you transform this gas into useful electricity. You put it through an enormous gas turbine engine and this powers some form of electricity generator. Normally these days they work on a principle called combined cycle and you see the term CCGT (combined cycle gas turbine) used. But which British company is involved in this technology? Rolls-Royce is the answer. Unfortunately, their turbines don’t seem to be used in our numerous gas-fired power stations. But I know they could be.
I’ve found this link to a company, I’d never heard of before called Centrax, who integrate Rolls Royce Trent 60 WLE engines into power generation sets. Their web page is here. And this is their page on using the Trent 60 WLE .
So if we have all this gas, will it lead to extra jobs in the manufacturing sector?
It could do if we get it right!
Should We Have Unit Pricing For Energy?
Go back thirty years or more and you paid for what you used with energy. I’m not sure if you paid a standing charge, akin to a telephone line rental, but you knew exactly where you stood. If you used more electricity you paid more money.
Now it is not as simple and to be cynical, I think the energy companies like it that way, as customers find it hard to compare prices.
So when EDF suggests going back to simple pricing, as is stated in this report, do I think it is a good thing?
Of course I do!
But there is something we need even more urgently and that is a smart meter, so we can see how much electricity and gas we are using.
I haven’t seen any reports yet, but a smart meter connected to a smart phone and then linked back to smart heating controls, must save a lot of money. Just think of this simple case. Do you switch your central heating on and off, at the most optimum times. Without information you’re just fishing in the dark.
But I doubt I’ll ever see unit pricing and smart metering, as the energy companies will do all they can to delay its implementation.
A Message For nPower Customers
After my article on nPower’s cheaper tariff, that they hadn’t told me about, I’ve just had a phone call from a friend, who saw it and like me he saved a few hundred pounds by not switching suppliers, but by switching tariffs.
So if like my friend and myself, you get your energy from nPower, it might be worth checking with one of the comparison sites to see if you are getting the best deal. You may find a painless call to the company, will save you money, without changing energy suppliers and hopefully little hassle.
The Anonymous Widower 