National Grid Summer Outlook - The Need For Storage

National Grid's Summer Outlook Report hit the mainstream news with plenty of commentators failing to understand how the system can be both under- and over-supplied. Of course the summer over-supply issue is all about flexibility and predictability. As Edie notes, there may be a need for some wind generation to be "curtailed" at certain times in the summer. This all points up the need for more storage - but where is that going to come from with affordable economics?

IPPR: Set up an Energy Company for London

Mildly confused of SW Surrey, here. I spotted this post from Edie which suggests that the IPPR is calling upon the next London mayor to set up an energy company performing a supplier role. However, looking at what I think is the original here, it seems that it's more a distribution company that the IPPR think is required. That makes more sense - having the energy equivalent of TfL to ensure the infrastructure is there to enable a true distributed energy solution be available to London. Edie notes that two cities - Nottingham and Bristol - have both recently set up energy companies. These are very clearly supply companies with a social target of providing lowest cost energy to consumers.

Densification

I missed this in the budget - not surprising as I admit to paying little attention over and above what is is likely to have an immediate effect on me and mine. However, this push for densification as reported in Building 4 Change has some merits - if it can be managed properly. And there's the rub. We all know what a disaster much of the high rise building in the second half of the last century has been. Planners somehow manage to forget human and social elements and err on the side of a soulless close-packing model. This has put me in mind of the vibrant communities that developed around Victorian working-people's terraces. Is this a model to reconsider - low rise but cheek-by-jowl?

RHI "Consultation" - Another Stupidity

Who are these bozos? HMG's proposed renewable heat reforms just fly in the face of common sense. A suspicious person might assume that back-handers from fossil fuel companies are flying around. It's just bonkers.

Sick and Tired Leadsom

Andrea Leadsom is apparently "sick and tired" of complaints being levied at DECC over their green energy support policies.

I am sick and tired of DECC ministers who do not have the wit to understand the costs of their continued tacit support of CO2 producing technologies.

Ms Leadson, removing clean energy subsidies would generate fewer complaints if you taxed the CO2 emitters for the damage they are causing. Your current incoherent policies deserve all the criticism they are attracting.

Long-Lived Massive Storage

One of my hobbies is genealogy - or more specifically tracing the history of my family and its various attachments. My family tree grows almost daily as I push back in time as far as possible (with the number of "lines" to follow doubling at each generational step into the past), and also discover cousins, cousins of cousins and other appendages. But this is not just an exercise in "name-bagging". What I find really fascinating are the, sometimes very brief, biographical details one unearths about these people. Many of my Russell extended family worked for the Southern Railway - who was the first; what influence did he have over others following him; what caused that line of family "business" to die away? Similarly, there are several closely connected prison warders to investigate. And this says nothing about the ecclesiastical connections in my mother's family. And there is also a steadily growing library of family photographs.

Like many a genealogist, I worry about preserving this information. I have it stored on my desk-top's hard drive; on a stand-alone portable hard drive, on Dropbox's servers, and (some of it) on USB sticks. Is that good enough? Quite possibly not.

Now comes news of a fantastic long-lived, massive storage medium - on fused quartz. If this turns out to be sufficiently popular and cheap then many a genealogist's secure storage worries may be relieved. There is still one major question, though. What format does one use? For how long will we retain the ability to process txt, doc, jpg, ged......... files? Having the hardware is fine but how does one produce long-lived, stable software?

Looming Supply Gap

One should always be wary of pronouncements from vested interests so the recent report from the IMechE needs to be read in the context of knowing its authors. However, that said, there's more than just plain sabre rattling here. I've posted before about the woeful state of UK electricity supply planning with successive governments botching the market and creating an unhelpful environment for investment and it is this that is at the nub of the IMechE's argument. So - read with a critical eye - the headline numbers may be scaremongering but the underlying message needs to  be taken on board.