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Greenpeace Goes Over The Edge To Protest Krabi Coal Plant


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Has anybody ever looked at what I would call a "hybrid system"? (Serious question, as I really do not know). Would it not be possible using solar thermal energy to heat vast amounts of water to lets say 80 to 90 degree C which could be kept hot in insulated tanks, This is done on a small scale in many southern countries like Greece for domestic hot water) and then just add the rest of the energy needed using conventional means- then running steam turbines??Something like that? If feasible it would mean, that a much lower amount of conventionally produced energy would be necessary? As it was said before in this thread, the amount of thermal energy available in this country is huge! Just a thought!

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khunken, on 25 Mar 2013 - 17:47, said:

This is about a coal-fired generating station and it is clear that no Thai community wants this type of plant in their vicinity. Yes, this is NIMBY, but the emissions from the coal-fired plant in Lampang (or is it Lampun?) has virtually killed this in Thailand.

Coal may be the cheapest on a narrow calculation which doesn't account for the deaths in coal mines around the world.

The problem for Thailand is twofold: it relies too much on imported energy sources & gas is too prevalent.

IMO Thailand needs to find a mix of types of energy generation, including wind, solar, gas, hydro, nuclear & even newer technologies (wave?). It needs some sort of masterplan with zero political input. If subsidies are required, so be it - couldn't cost any more than the current rice subsidies.

Agree, mostly,

What the article is about is greenpeace objecting to a plant (judging on their past performance in related matters, I'd be curious to have a door-to-door sample of the community to see if they actually agree with greenpeace in unbiased questions, remember the plant does provide employment as well).

The only direction given to EGAT, is to provide power at the lowest cost possible. They do not mine coal in Thailand, so the purchase cost plus waste is considered, not deaths of coal miners in australia or china - from what I understand, most is australian coal, china uses it's own.

I was just pointing out in replies that it's all very well to talk about wind and solar, but if I build a 10MW wind generation site, I need to build 10MW of reliable base-load as well (coal, nuclear, CCGT, OCGT). Plus of the 4, I cannot just turn on/off coal and nuclear (actually you really need to run CCGT at idle all the time).

So - what is my real advantage? None, except feeling good about myself. All I did was double to triple the cost to the consumer.

Your view on the rice subsidy is a bit confusing too - if I subsidize a power plant, I'm stuck with that subsidy for 30-40 years. A rice-pledge can be dissolved any year I feel like it.

But - enough - I personally would feel sorry for the poorest segments of the population if you double/triple the price, but that's just a personal view I don't expect to be shared by everyone.

Cheers

First, I'm just a layman when it comes to this subject so my assumptions may be somewhat off.

I not sure about EGAT having just a low-cost mandate - surely they also have a diverse mandate of weaning the country off gas as far as possible. I'm not a Greenpeace supporter, except that I wouldn't want to live next to a coal-fired plant. AFAIK much of Thailand's coal comes from Indonesia & yes, the coal-mine deaths are not paid for by Thailand. However the deaths of activists is .

Surely if you build a nuclear plant, for example, the building and set up are subsidised but you get energy at a decent price as the cost of generation is low. The Danes have successfully built large-scale wind farms & I haven' seen any major protests there. Hence the rice subsidy comparison.

I also wonder if your exaggerating the 'double/triple' cost of solar/wind plants?

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It depends - what are you being paid for the FIT? If you are being paid the realistic wholesale price, then it will take longer than the life of the equipment to pay for itself. Remember photovoltaic cells don't last forever.

If you are being paid more than the wholesale price - then everyone else is paying you in increased tariffs.

Don't you think if it was cost-viable that BP solar would have thousands of solar generation plants already? The truth is it can only compete on a large scale if it's subsidized. (Remember that when you supply power professionally you guarantee a certain amount 24/7/365 - home FIT cheats - you only supply what your cells produce during daytime)

On a home scale for your own use - depending on costs of running grid, it sometimes makes sense, but without subsidy it cannot compete in a 1-to-1 market on a commercial supply basis.

If you talk about photo voltaic, and you buy a ready made grid, then you are right. If you are able to do this on your own, it will come out much cheaper. But even a simple thermo device can easily boil water on your rooftop, and the steam can propel a generator. The technology today is a little more advanced, but the function is similar to these old type locomotives. Though there will be no smoke from burning coal. Hot water can also be used for your shower or the washing machine. Other technologies like: parabolic trough, dish Stirlings, concentrating linear Fresnel reflector are in use, and the U.S. are building solar thermal plants everywhere in the Southern states of America. And they do this, even centralized and using a large net, they do amortize, otherwise thejy would not do it. Anyhow, these technologies installed in Thailand, where there is sun in abundance, would be a great step forward for the whole country, and there are no smokes, fumes or nuclear wastes involved, with side effects which cause various types of sicknesses.

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Ok, if you're worried about it, where have the French been keeping theirs for the last 40 odd years? How much is the tonnage? How have they coped with 70 odd percent of their baseload coming from nuclear? Are they so much superior to us that they can do it and no-one else can?

(Not fair answering the last question if you're French)

Cheers

"...where have the French been keeping theirs for the last 40 odd years?"

Good question! Is it a safe place for the next 100.000 years, or may be 500 years? If you add the cost of the storage of the nuclear waste on top of the price, what you pay for electricity, nuclear power is more expensive, then any other generated form of electricity. Get your calculator out!

"How much is the tonnage?"

Also a good question, does all this waste fit in your backyard?

Sorry, I'll have to correct a few assumptions you made there.

I don't mean to be insulting, but did you study/read about, the relationship between energetic radiation and half-life? To remove the complexity from the discussion, let's put it as (more dangerous = faster half-life), so the materials you are talking about when you mention "thousands of years" are actually not very dangerous at all. (radiation-wise anyway, chemically it depends).

The currently defined "safe levels" are based on the idea that no amount is safe. Many people are calling for review on that as even WHO studies on nuclear plant workers find that (if anything) their incidence of cancer is lower than normal. (but call it normal, because it's noise threshold).

The point is - much of the fear is based on an uneducated media who couldn't be bothered going to more than one biased source for information.

eg. The ambient radiation at the gates of the Fukishima plant right now is lower than in Cornwall (normal background due to granitic formations).

Yet people are still scared by media stories.

What about the fish you cannot eat, what about the soil, where you cannot plant veggies for years? What about a similar incident as Fukushima happening at Cattenom, at the Rhone river, westerly winds, and so on. More than 30 million people would be affected. Where do we relocate them to? Do you think one of these energy giants will be able to pay the bill for all this. And there is no Pacific in the East, where the radioactive cloud may go.The chance of an accident is small, I admit. But the impact would be huge and intangible. Besides we have the nuclear waste for zillions of years.

"Yet people are still scared by media stories."

Who controls the media, the people, or the lobby? The media in Japan played down the so called "incident" of Fukushima, like other media would do too. The people still are scared, and they are right. Look at Tschernobyl, "..the amount of fatalities various due to different calculations from 10.000 to 100.000. I do not want to be in any of these future calculations.

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,

Your knowledge base is obviously restricted to what you read on Thaivisa.

Maybe you could do some googling about Solar panels cost effectiveness and next read some financial reports from the major solar companies and their stockprices over the past 2 years.

I don't need to google. But you can google Fraunhofer Institut. A student of my grammar school is now developer for photo-voltaic systems.there.

In the mountains where I stay they don't have elecrtricity, but a German sponsored researching program with small photo-voltaic cells. They have the electricity for their refrigerator and one hour of television.

The progress was castrated by politicians and people like you.

Edited by lungmi
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khunken, on 25 Mar 2013 - 17:47, said:

This is about a coal-fired generating station and it is clear that no Thai community wants this type of plant in their vicinity. Yes, this is NIMBY, but the emissions from the coal-fired plant in Lampang (or is it Lampun?) has virtually killed this in Thailand.

Coal may be the cheapest on a narrow calculation which doesn't account for the deaths in coal mines around the world.

The problem for Thailand is twofold: it relies too much on imported energy sources & gas is too prevalent.

IMO Thailand needs to find a mix of types of energy generation, including wind, solar, gas, hydro, nuclear & even newer technologies (wave?). It needs some sort of masterplan with zero political input. If subsidies are required, so be it - couldn't cost any more than the current rice subsidies.

Agree, mostly,

What the article is about is greenpeace objecting to a plant (judging on their past performance in related matters, I'd be curious to have a door-to-door sample of the community to see if they actually agree with greenpeace in unbiased questions, remember the plant does provide employment as well).

The only direction given to EGAT, is to provide power at the lowest cost possible. They do not mine coal in Thailand, so the purchase cost plus waste is considered, not deaths of coal miners in australia or china - from what I understand, most is australian coal, china uses it's own.

I was just pointing out in replies that it's all very well to talk about wind and solar, but if I build a 10MW wind generation site, I need to build 10MW of reliable base-load as well (coal, nuclear, CCGT, OCGT). Plus of the 4, I cannot just turn on/off coal and nuclear (actually you really need to run CCGT at idle all the time).

So - what is my real advantage? None, except feeling good about myself. All I did was double to triple the cost to the consumer.

Your view on the rice subsidy is a bit confusing too - if I subsidize a power plant, I'm stuck with that subsidy for 30-40 years. A rice-pledge can be dissolved any year I feel like it.

But - enough - I personally would feel sorry for the poorest segments of the population if you double/triple the price, but that's just a personal view I don't expect to be shared by everyone.

Cheers

First, I'm just a layman when it comes to this subject so my assumptions may be somewhat off.

I not sure about EGAT having just a low-cost mandate - surely they also have a diverse mandate of weaning the country off gas as far as possible. I'm not a Greenpeace supporter, except that I wouldn't want to live next to a coal-fired plant. AFAIK much of Thailand's coal comes from Indonesia & yes, the coal-mine deaths are not paid for by Thailand. However the deaths of activists is .

Surely if you build a nuclear plant, for example, the building and set up are subsidised but you get energy at a decent price as the cost of generation is low. The Danes have successfully built large-scale wind farms & I haven' seen any major protests there. Hence the rice subsidy comparison.

I also wonder if your exaggerating the 'double/triple' cost of solar/wind plants?

Danish wind-farm economics. To be quite honest, I haven't bothered looking up the particular Danish figures before, so I don't have a reliable figure from Denmark, but even as pro-green as wikipedia is - even they note a problem with Denmark having the highest cost of electricity in Europe. Recently KPMG (as auditors) noted that the UK government could save 33 Billion pounds by stopping wind buildout and concentrating on nuclear/gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark#Criticism_of_Danish_wind_economics

Plenty of studies have been done (by neither nuclear, coal, or Wind companies) on the real economics of wind power. But if you can see the logic in what I said of needing 100% redundancy, simply by virtue of intermittancy, then you probably don't need to look it up. ie. you need to build the same generation as backup, plus you build out 2 sets of feeders into the grid, monitoring, plus the wind turbine lifetime is shorter than traditional plants. Yep, 2-3 times, even when you count in fuel for the traditional. (nuclear fuel is a trivial expense over lifetime) (wind requires oil, maintenance etc same as usual).

Cheers

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and now for something different:

Time to get back to Nikola Tesla's theories then?
Nikola Tesla investigated harvesting energy in space. He believed that it was merely a question of time until men would succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature, stating: "Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe."
Wouldn't it be fantastic if there really is a way of making "Free Electricity"?
Just sayin.... wai2.gif

Which is exactly why his experiments were shut down by JP Morgan and he died in disgrace. No way to harness and charge for something that everyone can tap into for free.

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Ok, if you're worried about it, where have the French been keeping theirs for the last 40 odd years? How much is the tonnage? How have they coped with 70 odd percent of their baseload coming from nuclear? Are they so much superior to us that they can do it and no-one else can?

(Not fair answering the last question if you're French)

Cheers

"...where have the French been keeping theirs for the last 40 odd years?"

Good question! Is it a safe place for the next 100.000 years, or may be 500 years? If you add the cost of the storage of the nuclear waste on top of the price, what you pay for electricity, nuclear power is more expensive, then any other generated form of electricity. Get your calculator out!

"How much is the tonnage?"

Also a good question, does all this waste fit in your backyard?

Sorry, I'll have to correct a few assumptions you made there.

I don't mean to be insulting, but did you study/read about, the relationship between energetic radiation and half-life? To remove the complexity from the discussion, let's put it as (more dangerous = faster half-life), so the materials you are talking about when you mention "thousands of years" are actually not very dangerous at all. (radiation-wise anyway, chemically it depends).

The currently defined "safe levels" are based on the idea that no amount is safe. Many people are calling for review on that as even WHO studies on nuclear plant workers find that (if anything) their incidence of cancer is lower than normal. (but call it normal, because it's noise threshold).

The point is - much of the fear is based on an uneducated media who couldn't be bothered going to more than one biased source for information.

eg. The ambient radiation at the gates of the Fukishima plant right now is lower than in Cornwall (normal background due to granitic formations).

Yet people are still scared by media stories.

What about the fish you cannot eat, what about the soil, where you cannot plant veggies for years? What about a similar incident as Fukushima happening at Cattenom, at the Rhone river, westerly winds, and so on. More than 30 million people would be affected. Where do we relocate them to? Do you think one of these energy giants will be able to pay the bill for all this. And there is no Pacific in the East, where the radioactive cloud may go.The chance of an accident is small, I admit. But the impact would be huge and intangible. Besides we have the nuclear waste for zillions of years.

"Yet people are still scared by media stories."

Who controls the media, the people, or the lobby? The media in Japan played down the so called "incident" of Fukushima, like other media would do too. The people still are scared, and they are right. Look at Tschernobyl, "..the amount of fatalities various due to different calculations from 10.000 to 100.000. I do not want to be in any of these future calculations.

Honestly - I don't know where to begin with the above.

How about you read the IAEA agency reports on Fukishima. I think you'll see that despite being subject to a natural disaster much greater than was ever originally planned for 40 years ago, 2 deaths were caused during the initial tsunami (a crane fell over), none since, and none expected in future.

Oh, and read the WHO report of "real" fatalities of Chernobyl - from memory, about 87. You've been watching Greenpeace propaganda again.

That was a real disaster, but not even within 10 magnitudes of the greens highest figures. They base their figures on counting everyone who would have normally died of cancer as being due to the accident. Considering that before Fukishima, the Japanese Health Ministry showed that 40% of people die of cancer without being exposed to lethal levels of radiation, you can see why it would be a large figure

For the rest of the greenpeace-induced fear, please consider the support for nuclear power of one of the founders of greenpeace, Patrick Moore, who now supports nuclear power.

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It depends - what are you being paid for the FIT? If you are being paid the realistic wholesale price, then it will take longer than the life of the equipment to pay for itself. Remember photovoltaic cells don't last forever.

If you are being paid more than the wholesale price - then everyone else is paying you in increased tariffs.

Don't you think if it was cost-viable that BP solar would have thousands of solar generation plants already? The truth is it can only compete on a large scale if it's subsidized. (Remember that when you supply power professionally you guarantee a certain amount 24/7/365 - home FIT cheats - you only supply what your cells produce during daytime)

On a home scale for your own use - depending on costs of running grid, it sometimes makes sense, but without subsidy it cannot compete in a 1-to-1 market on a commercial supply basis.

If you talk about photo voltaic, and you buy a ready made grid, then you are right. If you are able to do this on your own, it will come out much cheaper. But even a simple thermo device can easily boil water on your rooftop, and the steam can propel a generator. The technology today is a little more advanced, but the function is similar to these old type locomotives. Though there will be no smoke from burning coal. Hot water can also be used for your shower or the washing machine. Other technologies like: parabolic trough, dish Stirlings, concentrating linear Fresnel reflector are in use, and the U.S. are building solar thermal plants everywhere in the Southern states of America. And they do this, even centralized and using a large net, they do amortize, otherwise thejy would not do it. Anyhow, these technologies installed in Thailand, where there is sun in abundance, would be a great step forward for the whole country, and there are no smokes, fumes or nuclear wastes involved, with side effects which cause various types of sicknesses.
I don't think you really got what I said - probably my fault for not being clear.

If you want light and heating at night - you need baseload power. Baseload power comes from coal/nuclear/CCGT/OCGT.

If you want to build solar furnace/photovoltaic, wind - it's not baseload. CANNOT be used for steady power consumption.

If you want to use solar whatever on your home - good for you - but don't expect the rest of us to pay for it via FIT. FIT is just transferring wealth from the poor to the middle class.

Lastly - in the longer term, FITs deprive the power generation industry of investment funds. If a government says to a power *distributor*, "You must pay 10c per KW/h for FIT" but at that time of day the wholesale price is 6c per KW/h from normal generation, then the bills go up, but the power generation is robbed of revenue. When that plant is due for retirement, no investors can be found without a government guarantee of the same 10c per KW/h. (happened in the UK recently over the new nuke plant by EDF - EDF won't invest their 14 billion unless the UK govt guarantees the rate).

Cheers

EDIT: In the past power generation utility companies competed on the lowest price per KW/h - the most efficient solution won - FIT's, carbon credits, etc distort the market, meaning more intervention is needed to guarantee investment. <deleted>, EDF would make more money right now by spending their 14 billion building wind farms and letting people freeze to death at night.

Edited by airconsult
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khunken, on 25 Mar 2013 - 17:47, said:

This is about a coal-fired generating station and it is clear that no Thai community wants this type of plant in their vicinity. Yes, this is NIMBY, but the emissions from the coal-fired plant in Lampang (or is it Lampun?) has virtually killed this in Thailand.

Coal may be the cheapest on a narrow calculation which doesn't account for the deaths in coal mines around the world.

The problem for Thailand is twofold: it relies too much on imported energy sources & gas is too prevalent.

IMO Thailand needs to find a mix of types of energy generation, including wind, solar, gas, hydro, nuclear & even newer technologies (wave?). It needs some sort of masterplan with zero political input. If subsidies are required, so be it - couldn't cost any more than the current rice subsidies.

Agree, mostly,

What the article is about is greenpeace objecting to a plant (judging on their past performance in related matters, I'd be curious to have a door-to-door sample of the community to see if they actually agree with greenpeace in unbiased questions, remember the plant does provide employment as well).

The only direction given to EGAT, is to provide power at the lowest cost possible. They do not mine coal in Thailand, so the purchase cost plus waste is considered, not deaths of coal miners in australia or china - from what I understand, most is australian coal, china uses it's own.

I was just pointing out in replies that it's all very well to talk about wind and solar, but if I build a 10MW wind generation site, I need to build 10MW of reliable base-load as well (coal, nuclear, CCGT, OCGT). Plus of the 4, I cannot just turn on/off coal and nuclear (actually you really need to run CCGT at idle all the time).

So - what is my real advantage? None, except feeling good about myself. All I did was double to triple the cost to the consumer.

Your view on the rice subsidy is a bit confusing too - if I subsidize a power plant, I'm stuck with that subsidy for 30-40 years. A rice-pledge can be dissolved any year I feel like it.

But - enough - I personally would feel sorry for the poorest segments of the population if you double/triple the price, but that's just a personal view I don't expect to be shared by everyone.

Cheers

First, I'm just a layman when it comes to this subject so my assumptions may be somewhat off.

I not sure about EGAT having just a low-cost mandate - surely they also have a diverse mandate of weaning the country off gas as far as possible. I'm not a Greenpeace supporter, except that I wouldn't want to live next to a coal-fired plant. AFAIK much of Thailand's coal comes from Indonesia & yes, the coal-mine deaths are not paid for by Thailand. However the deaths of activists is .

Surely if you build a nuclear plant, for example, the building and set up are subsidised but you get energy at a decent price as the cost of generation is low. The Danes have successfully built large-scale wind farms & I haven' seen any major protests there. Hence the rice subsidy comparison.

I also wonder if your exaggerating the 'double/triple' cost of solar/wind plants?

Danish wind-farm economics. To be quite honest, I haven't bothered looking up the particular Danish figures before, so I don't have a reliable figure from Denmark, but even as pro-green as wikipedia is - even they note a problem with Denmark having the highest cost of electricity in Europe. Recently KPMG (as auditors) noted that the UK government could save 33 Billion pounds by stopping wind buildout and concentrating on nuclear/gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Denmark#Criticism_of_Danish_wind_economics

Plenty of studies have been done (by neither nuclear, coal, or Wind companies) on the real economics of wind power. But if you can see the logic in what I said of needing 100% redundancy, simply by virtue of intermittancy, then you probably don't need to look it up. ie. you need to build the same generation as backup, plus you build out 2 sets of feeders into the grid, monitoring, plus the wind turbine lifetime is shorter than traditional plants. Yep, 2-3 times, even when you count in fuel for the traditional. (nuclear fuel is a trivial expense over lifetime) (wind requires oil, maintenance etc same as usual).

Cheers

Sorry to reply to myself - but missed a comment - I heard around the traps that BHP was offering to build a railway from the port to the power station to transport coal, so I'm sure the aussies are somewhere in the supply loop.
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,

Your knowledge base is obviously restricted to what you read on Thaivisa.

Maybe you could do some googling about Solar panels cost effectiveness and next read some financial reports from the major solar companies and their stockprices over the past 2 years.

I don't need to google. But you can google Fraunhofer Institut. A student of my grammar school is now developer for photo-voltaic systems.there.

In the mountains where I stay they don't have elecrtricity, but a German sponsored researching program with small photo-voltaic cells. They have the electricity for their refrigerator and one hour of television.

The progress was castrated by politicians and people like you.

I guess you are confusing emergency power resources with national power resources. Up in the mountains it would never be workable to install powerlines from where there is availability of electricity hence the installation of solar panels.

To provide nationwide electricity photo - voltaic panels is way more expensive than every other source available to date.

This will be my last response to you as it's clear you just want to push your point while it is made clear many times by other posters in this thread that photo-voltaic is not profitable and probably never will be.

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One answer for our nuke lover from the WHO:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html

And for those, who do not understand the FIT: The FIT is a law that will allow you to feed your personal production of electricity into the communal net. This law does not cost anything! You will get a compensation for the amount of power fed, but this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.

Therefore it will reduce the overall price for electric power and not raise it. Furthermore, the decentralized array of such power producing installations will reduce the costs for long transmission lines or even make them redundant.

The initial use should be to reduce the amount of fossil power used during peak times, i.e. from 11 to 15h, when all A/Cs are running.

PS: If you buy a electric water heater for your shower (3.5 or 4KW) it will cost you around 3.500 or 4000 THB. For the same amount you can build and place a water heating panel on the roof or to the side of your house, which will supply you with hot water all day long, a mixer tap is useful. The panel does not even have to be adjusted to its best position (here in HDY it is 7 degrees elevation, facing true South).

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One answer for our nuke lover from the WHO:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html

And for those, who do not understand the FIT: The FIT is a law that will allow you to feed your personal production of electricity into the communal net. This law does not cost anything! You will get a compensation for the amount of power fed, but this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.

Therefore it will reduce the overall price for electric power and not raise it. Furthermore, the decentralized array of such power producing installations will reduce the costs for long transmission lines or even make them redundant.

The initial use should be to reduce the amount of fossil power used during peak times, i.e. from 11 to 15h, when all A/Cs are running.

PS: If you buy a electric water heater for your shower (3.5 or 4KW) it will cost you around 3.500 or 4000 THB. For the same amount you can build and place a water heating panel on the roof or to the side of your house, which will supply you with hot water all day long, a mixer tap is useful. The panel does not even have to be adjusted to its best position (here in HDY it is 7 degrees elevation, facing true South).

For goodness sake.... "...this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity..."

You are mixing retail and wholesale price.

What you are saying is when I feed-in, I am receiving less than I pay - quite right! BUT, you are receiving MORE than the wholesale price!

See the problem? The electricity distributor is forced to buy your feed-in at higher than wholesale from the generating companies. That means he has to recover the extra costs - do the fairies provide the extra money? No, he recovers it by increasing the retail.

So - every Kw/h you feed-in, raises the price for everyone else. It does not save any electricity in the general grid AT ALL as you are not a reliable supplier with a contracted amount of supply. The generating companies must still supply their baseload (and have their peak capacity ready).

All FIT is is a slight-of-hand feel-good moment. If you want to actually reduce long-term requirements on the grid, don't do FIT, go off-grid with your solar, add the batteries, etc, and feed yourself - grid only when needed.

I think you will find though that when you go totally off-grid, add in the cost of battery lifetime, inverter/regulator, etc - even retail grid is much cheaper. The energy companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do.

With all that rant... yes, on solar water heating you are perfectly correct, Thailand is ideal to reduce your home consumption of eelectricity by doing so - but don't just use a regulator tap, use a heat-sensor mixer, the temp out of a solar water can reach 85 degrees and burn you very badly, use a limiter/mixer to make sure it's never more than 50.

Cheers

Edited by airconsult
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One answer for our nuke lover from the WHO:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html

And for those, who do not understand the FIT: The FIT is a law that will allow you to feed your personal production of electricity into the communal net. This law does not cost anything! You will get a compensation for the amount of power fed, but this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.

Therefore it will reduce the overall price for electric power and not raise it. Furthermore, the decentralized array of such power producing installations will reduce the costs for long transmission lines or even make them redundant.

The initial use should be to reduce the amount of fossil power used during peak times, i.e. from 11 to 15h, when all A/Cs are running.

PS: If you buy a electric water heater for your shower (3.5 or 4KW) it will cost you around 3.500 or 4000 THB. For the same amount you can build and place a water heating panel on the roof or to the side of your house, which will supply you with hot water all day long, a mixer tap is useful. The panel does not even have to be adjusted to its best position (here in HDY it is 7 degrees elevation, facing true South).

For goodness sake.... "...this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity..."

You are mixing retail and wholesale price.

What you are saying is when I feed-in, I am receiving less than I pay - quite right! BUT, you are receiving MORE than the wholesale price!

See the problem? The electricity distributor is forced to buy your feed-in at higher than wholesale from the generating companies. That means he has to recover the extra costs - do the fairies provide the extra money? No, he recovers it by increasing the retail.

So - every Kw/h you feed-in, raises the price for everyone else. It does not save any electricity in the general grid AT ALL as you are not a reliable supplier with a contracted amount of supply. The generating companies must still supply their baseload (and have their peak capacity ready).

All FIT is is a slight-of-hand feel-good moment. If you want to actually reduce long-term requirements on the grid, don't do FIT, go off-grid with your solar, add the batteries, etc, and feed yourself - grid only when needed.

I think you will find though that when you go totally off-grid, add in the cost of battery lifetime, inverter/regulator, etc - even retail grid is much cheaper. The enery companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do.

Cheers

Oh, on your WHO link

"....Mortality

According to UNSCEAR (2000), 134 liquidators received radiation doses high enough to be diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS). Among them, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS. Other liquidators have since died but their deaths could not necessarily be attributed to radiation exposure."

Do you see? 28 persons died - you can NOT attribute other deaths with certainty.

You *may* try to with statistics, but I think so far studies have shown no real anomalous rate - it's within noise limits.

So what are we talking for the nuke lobby now? 28 total provable from accidents - how many have died installing or maintaining wind farms?

(just having a dig, don't take it seriously, but nuclear safety record is excellent)

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This is the nuclear fan back again (but then as I studied physics I would be eh?)

Thanks for all the interesting comments and that terrific website showing power grid in the UK.

(It looks to me that the present 5GW is way above normal. Looking at the annual chart the mean average looks like about under 1GW in the summer calm and a roaring 2GW in the winter winds......completely unregulated of course) JBrain correct about solar company performance. They have mostly been decimated (literally).

Airconsult......am I not right in thinking there has NEVER been a death involving a generation II reactor? Again if I recall correctly....the gen II reactors are a couple of orders safer than gen I, and the gen III is that much safer again.

How many deaths and ill-consequences can be laid at the feet of the fossil fuels it replaced however?

Edited by cheeryble
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This is the nuclear fan back again (but then as I studied physics I would be eh?) Thanks for all the interesting comments and that terrific website showing power grid in the UK. (It looks to me that the present 5GW is way above normal. Looking at the annual chart the mean average looks like about under 1GW in the summer calm and a roaring 2GW in the winter winds......completely unregulated of course) JBrain correct about solar company performance. They have mostly been decimated (literally). Airconsult......am I not right in thinking there has NEVER been a death involving a generation II reactor? Again if I recall correctly....the gen II reactors are a couple of orders safer than gen I, and the gen III is that much safer again. How many deaths and ill-consequences can be laid at the feet of the fossil fuels it replaced however?

I think you're right about Gen II, though it's a broad description when you include the AGRs that the UK built. That was a very, very good design, it's just a pity instead of doing minor refinements, every new one was almost from ground-up again, so the costs stayed high.

I was just having a dig about the wind deaths before - but it's only fair if you want to include deaths in coal mining, you should think about the the pollution involved in germanium oxide used for photovoltaics, and the waste produced by rare-earth refining (for magnets in wind turbines) that has resulted in 2 towns being forcibly relocated in China.

When you look at all of that.... maybe nuclear has been the safest, I mean the largest uranite ore producing mine in the world in South Australia is actually a copper mine. The uranium is really a byproduct as it is in the same formations. So, if anyone has actually died in that mine (and knowing how miners party, it's probably likely), do you blame it on the copper or the uranite?

But... and I will say this - it's still more expensive per Kw/H than coal. Probably cheaper than "clean" coal, and certainly less waste. The final problem which may never be solved is simply - the insurance.

Due to the scaremongering by NGOs over the years, the required insurance is so high it makes it unprofitable without government guarantees.

The last thing I'm going to be amused at is I believe some of the later requirements on reactor decommissioning in the UK specify a radiation level that is actually lower than the surrounding natural radioactivity. How do you do that?

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This is the nuclear fan back again (but then as I studied physics I would be eh?) Thanks for all the interesting comments and that terrific website showing power grid in the UK. (It looks to me that the present 5GW is way above normal. Looking at the annual chart the mean average looks like about under 1GW in the summer calm and a roaring 2GW in the winter winds......completely unregulated of course) JBrain correct about solar company performance. They have mostly been decimated (literally). Airconsult......am I not right in thinking there has NEVER been a death involving a generation II reactor? Again if I recall correctly....the gen II reactors are a couple of orders safer than gen I, and the gen III is that much safer again. How many deaths and ill-consequences can be laid at the feet of the fossil fuels it replaced however?

I think a further point might be in order - though it's a bit OT from greenies protesting against coal.

Most of the green perception of nuclear=BAD comes from the Gen I reactors. Let's be honest, they were built to breed plutonium to make bombs. The leccy was merely a bonus round to sell it to the public. Many of the Gen II fitted into that description as well.

It's only when you got to Gen III LWRs that you finally reached purely commercial designs. In fact the new Gen IVs don't really have any useful military byproducts by the time they finish their full cycle.

People should think a bit further than their old conceptions, look again, and give it a chance to show what it can do.

Patrick Moore (co-founder Greenpeace) on the benefits of nuclear power.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/moore_qa

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One answer for our nuke lover from the WHO:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html

And for those, who do not understand the FIT: The FIT is a law that will allow you to feed your personal production of electricity into the communal net. This law does not cost anything! You will get a compensation for the amount of power fed, but this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.

Therefore it will reduce the overall price for electric power and not raise it. Furthermore, the decentralized array of such power producing installations will reduce the costs for long transmission lines or even make them redundant.

The initial use should be to reduce the amount of fossil power used during peak times, i.e. from 11 to 15h, when all A/Cs are running.

PS: If you buy a electric water heater for your shower (3.5 or 4KW) it will cost you around 3.500 or 4000 THB. For the same amount you can build and place a water heating panel on the roof or to the side of your house, which will supply you with hot water all day long, a mixer tap is useful. The panel does not even have to be adjusted to its best position (here in HDY it is 7 degrees elevation, facing true South).

For goodness sake.... "...this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity..."

You are mixing retail and wholesale price.

What you are saying is when I feed-in, I am receiving less than I pay - quite right! BUT, you are receiving MORE than the wholesale price!

See the problem? The electricity distributor is forced to buy your feed-in at higher than wholesale from the generating companies. That means he has to recover the extra costs - do the fairies provide the extra money? No, he recovers it by increasing the retail.

So - every Kw/h you feed-in, raises the price for everyone else. It does not save any electricity in the general grid AT ALL as you are not a reliable supplier with a contracted amount of supply. The generating companies must still supply their baseload (and have their peak capacity ready).

All FIT is is a slight-of-hand feel-good moment. If you want to actually reduce long-term requirements on the grid, don't do FIT, go off-grid with your solar, add the batteries, etc, and feed yourself - grid only when needed.

I think you will find though that when you go totally off-grid, add in the cost of battery lifetime, inverter/regulator, etc - even retail grid is much cheaper. The enery companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do.

Cheers

Oh, on your WHO link

"....Mortality

According to UNSCEAR (2000), 134 liquidators received radiation doses high enough to be diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS). Among them, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS. Other liquidators have since died but their deaths could not necessarily be attributed to radiation exposure."

Read the whole statement: 5.000 fatalities more wil be the result of the incident, and you have not answered the question about your backyard yet.

Your other comment: "The enery companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do."

This is a known fact, that they do everything to fill their pockets, and will obstruct anything, which

will lead to a privatized, decentralized production of renewable energy. That is what capitalism is all about. To your comment: "You are mixing retail and wholesale price." I never mentioned these prices or referred to them, I said:... will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.", which is correct for either the "wholesale" or the "retail" price.

Maybe you should google: "self supporting villages";

there you will find a lot of examples for the effective production of energy within self supporting communities. There are villages in Sweden,Germany, Austria, India, and, sure thing, some pacific islands,

where the transportation costs of fuel are relatively high. On the long run,we do have to change anyhow. Oil is not growing on trees. So why not take a step in the right direction.

Especially within the energy sector we have to say by by to a backward or eternally yesterday oriented policy ".

Edited by fxe1200
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One answer for our nuke lover from the WHO:

http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html

And for those, who do not understand the FIT: The FIT is a law that will allow you to feed your personal production of electricity into the communal net. This law does not cost anything! You will get a compensation for the amount of power fed, but this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.

Therefore it will reduce the overall price for electric power and not raise it. Furthermore, the decentralized array of such power producing installations will reduce the costs for long transmission lines or even make them redundant.

The initial use should be to reduce the amount of fossil power used during peak times, i.e. from 11 to 15h, when all A/Cs are running.

PS: If you buy a electric water heater for your shower (3.5 or 4KW) it will cost you around 3.500 or 4000 THB. For the same amount you can build and place a water heating panel on the roof or to the side of your house, which will supply you with hot water all day long, a mixer tap is useful. The panel does not even have to be adjusted to its best position (here in HDY it is 7 degrees elevation, facing true South).

For goodness sake.... "...this compensation will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity..."

You are mixing retail and wholesale price.

What you are saying is when I feed-in, I am receiving less than I pay - quite right! BUT, you are receiving MORE than the wholesale price!

See the problem? The electricity distributor is forced to buy your feed-in at higher than wholesale from the generating companies. That means he has to recover the extra costs - do the fairies provide the extra money? No, he recovers it by increasing the retail.

So - every Kw/h you feed-in, raises the price for everyone else. It does not save any electricity in the general grid AT ALL as you are not a reliable supplier with a contracted amount of supply. The generating companies must still supply their baseload (and have their peak capacity ready).

All FIT is is a slight-of-hand feel-good moment. If you want to actually reduce long-term requirements on the grid, don't do FIT, go off-grid with your solar, add the batteries, etc, and feed yourself - grid only when needed.

I think you will find though that when you go totally off-grid, add in the cost of battery lifetime, inverter/regulator, etc - even retail grid is much cheaper. The enery companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do.

Cheers

Oh, on your WHO link

"....Mortality

According to UNSCEAR (2000), 134 liquidators received radiation doses high enough to be diagnosed with acute radiation sickness (ARS). Among them, 28 persons died in 1986 due to ARS. Other liquidators have since died but their deaths could not necessarily be attributed to radiation exposure."

Read the whole statement: 5.000 fatalities more wil be the result of the incident, and you have not answered the question about your backyard yet.

Your other comment: "The enery companies concerned are NOT idiots nor are they devoted to any particular form of supply - whatever is most profitable, they do."

This is a known fact, that they do everything to fill their pockets, and will obstruct anything, which

will lead to a privatized, decentralized production of renewable energy. That is what capitalism is all about. To your comment: "You are mixing retail and wholesale price." I never mentioned these prices or referred to them, I said:... will be lower than the regular price you will pay for electricity, when you obtain it by EGAT i.e.", which is correct for either the "wholesale" or the "retail" price.

Maybe you should google: "self supporting villages";

there you will find a lot of examples for the effective production of energy within self supporting communities. There are villages in Sweden,Germany, Austria, India, and, sure thing, some pacific islands,

where the transportation costs of fuel are relatively high. On the long run,we do have to change anyhow. Oil is not growing on trees. So why not take a step in the right direction.

Especially within the energy sector we have to say by by to a backward or eternally yesterday oriented policy ".

eh palmoil does grow on a tree

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If the earth's getting warmer, whether as part of a natural cycle or not, why not just cover a bit with tinfoil and reflect some sunlight back into space? Somewhere useless like Saudi Arabia. It would need cleaning and lower the unemployment rate too.

ps It is fascinating in the Museum of British Columbia on Vancouver Island there is a plaque which says that on this spot just 10,000 years ago you would have been under 200ft of ice. Better be careful what you wish for....

Edited by cheeryble
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  • 2 months later...

Coal isn't the answer... nuclear isn't the answer... so what do they want? I think if they actually knew how many of those stupid windmill farms it would take to power the planet they would have to go back and rethink their strategy.

Let's say, for example, solar technology would be made affordable and more environmental friendly, because there are still some toxins being used that are actually unnecessary.

How many houses, flats, factories or any other kind of human made structures have a roof?

If ALL those roofs or roof tiles would be solar panels, you'd be able to power a ridiculously large amount of houses almost for FREE.

Can you imagine, if the total surface of ONLY all the rooftops in Bangkok would be mainly solar panels, the total energy supply coming from this would be impressive.

Don't say this is not possible because it would take too much work, people managed to build that whole city in no time, so covering the roofs is just a matter of getting started with it.

This is only one example of what is possible and the possibilities are endless, if you only want to use that blob inside your nutshell instead of letting it wrinkle away by watching tv and believe the popular media...

So, my friend, please think of possible solutions and not about what is not wanted, it is easy to break ideas to pieces...

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Coal isn't the answer... nuclear isn't the answer... so what do they want? I think if they actually knew how many of those stupid windmill farms it would take to power the planet they would have to go back and rethink their strategy.

Soooo douchey ....

What's ironic about people like you is that they are the first ones that suffer the consequences. I will be curious what you will be saying when you or your kids become cancer victims. Although nobody, even people like you, deserves it.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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