Electric boiler?

[JohnW2]

Since when has politics made sense?

Maybe if/when sensible politics translates to lots of votes? I would have thought that a government that brought about substantial reductions in fuelprices / energy costs would be very popular,hence pretty likely to get re-elected?

The big problem is lack of rotating mass. With an alternator connected to a large steam turbine, a sudden load will be taken up by the weight of the rotating mass, but with wind farms, solar and wave power, there is an inverter between the rotating mass if any, and the grid, so an over load will trip out the generator, and the supply fails like the domino effect. .... So we need both the fast reacting hydropower, and the plodding nuclear and other steam powered generators ....

Is not a substantial proportion of the 'rotating mass' in the generator itself, hence also present with 'hydropower'?

What it needs is for the smart meters, car EV chargers, and solar inverters to be linked to a central electricity generating board, able to switch off not essential services while retaining essential services ....

Not just that, but remote control of the timing of operation of all sorts of 'smart' appliances. That surely is the ultimate aim of the deployment of 'smart' meters, albeit not something that you or I are likely to see happening to much of an extent.

 

[JohnW2]

Most of those running OFGEM previously worked in the very same industry. Like most of these 'regulators' they have zero interest in doing anything that doesn't maintain the existing systems.

Cannot government intervene? As I've just written in response to eric, bringing about a substantial reduction in energy costs would presumably be one of the most vote-catching things that any government could do?

 

[ericmark]

Is not a substantial proportion of the 'rotating mass' in the generator itself, hence also present with 'hydropower'?

The generator needs to be directly connected to the grid, not through any inverter, so it depends on how many poles on the generator, looking at 6000 rpm, 3000 rpm, etc.

 

[JohnW2]

The generator needs to be directly connected to the grid, not through any inverter, so it depends on how many poles on the generator, looking at 6000 rpm, 3000 rpm, etc.

I understand that, but why should there be less 'rotating mass' when the generator is being rotated by a water-driven turbine than when it's being rotated by a stream-driven one?

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

What it needs is for the smart meters, car EV chargers, and solar inverters to be linked to a central electricity generating board, able to switch off not essential services while retaining essential services, years ago we had this, where lights, and power were on different meters, and latter the Economy 7 with teleswitches so the CEGB could shed load, but my smart meter does not have two independent supplies, so the CEGB could only switch all or nothing, they can't just turn off non-essential load even if they want to.

Nail, head! That is exactly what is needed. At the moment, and for the most part - we try to match the supply to the demand. If instead, we could just generate, what we can generate, when we can generate it, and set demand to match it would be much cheaper. Instead, we attempt to set demand, by pricing, for at least some customers, like myself.

For instance, my cost per unit has been high for a while, so we have been holding back the washing. On Monday, I noticed the price would drop on Tuesday, and it was planned to do the washing, but we forgot. Today is still cheap, but not as cheap, so we are putting the washing on, rather than delay and perhaps forget to put in on again.