Renewables can plug UK energy gap

A nother great article for info concerning the upcoming debate on nuclear power; it revolves around this research: "Research at Oxford University shows that intermittent renewables, combined with domestic combined heat and power (dCHP) could dependably provide the bulk of Britain's electricity. 'By mixing between sites and mixing technologies, you can markedly reduce the variability of electricity supplied by renewables,' says Graham Sinden, of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute. 'And if you plan the right mix, renewable and intermittent technologies can even be made to match real-time electricity demand patterns. This reduces the need for backup, and makes renewables a serious alternative to conventional power sources.' In particular, it puts renewables ahead of nuclear power, which runs at the same rate all the time regardless of fluctuations in demand."



There's even a practical generation, as opposed to political, reason for decentralised generation, as it is "essential to disperse the generators, whether wind turbines or rooftop solar cells, as widely as possible. By increasing the separation between sites, you can be sure that power is always being generated somewhere and so smooth out the supply curve. This goes against current practice, which is to put wind turbines where the wind is strongest."

There are some srendipties about production and one or two difficulties, but the overall message is that a combined strategy tends to iron out the dips. Combine that with the undoubtedly cheap and effective issue of insulation and building modifications and the political and security dangers of increased nuclear power and it seems like it's a no-brainer. Oh and did anyone mention that there isn't enough uranium in the world to have everything done by nuke power? Or that the carbon emissions of mining the stuff are pretty horrendous?

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Oliver Tickell: Renewables can plug UK energy gap: [:nuke power:]