Telegraph Compares Solar Capacity With Nuclear!
By Paul Homewood
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/23/china-solar-panels-europe-net-zero-energy/
The naive journalist makes several references to the “massive” amounts of solar capacity on offer, for instance:
The clueless reporter evidently does not understand the difference between CAPACITY and GENERATION.
You simply cannot compare solar power, typically producing at about 10 to 15%, with nuclear, which runs at close to 100%
Worse still, that 10% is not available all year round. During December last year, it averaged only 297 MW, which is just 2% of capacity:
https://www.solar.sheffield.ac.uk/pvlive/#
In summer months, solar power can peak at ten times as much, which will clearly destabilise the grid, if capacity is increased as much as the government wants.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Unfortunately most of the public, politicians, civil servants and reporters do not understand the difference between power and energy and so always get it wrong when they talk about capacity. Whether it is deliberate disinformation or ignorance, I do not know.
“deliberate disinformation or ignorance”? It’s a political claim by a politician, so it’s both.
There are unused solar panels in the EU. That is quite an old story.
The greenies in Europe assume there is an insatiable demand for solar power installations, underpinned by governmental coercion, and so do not mind making the investment in stock. That the wholesale price is falling (if true – I am not in the trade) might indicate that they are wrong.
Again and again we see, in our intellectually bankrupt society, noisy and stubborn “doubling down” in everything. Going “all-in” is thought to be clever and bold.
A bit of both but certainly more of ignorance. Only this morning we have been treated to the sight of the idiot Miliband strumming and singing among windmills. Sadly the lie continues to be peddled that wind energy is cheaper and spending £120bn will somehow reduce our bills.
Philip there is even a regular poster on here (who risibly claims to be an engineer) yet who goes on about power capacity in MWh. Despite all my initial best attempts to educate him he still insists on getting it wrong and calls me an idiot. Not a lot of hope for the general public is there!
It’s sheer ignorance, obvs
I think you’ll find it’s mainly ignorance, Phillip. I confess I’m not very much “at home” with things like power vs energy, megawatts vs megawatt hours and various other “subtleties” to do with electricity.
99% of the British public know that when you flip the switch the light goes on; a pretty high proportion of that 99% have never seen any reason to enquire how that happens but they are mightily annoyed when it doesn’t and they are likely to become even more so when they are in the dark with no TV and no phone signal because we have all been conned into this weird belief that somehow we can “save the planet”.
Covering land 5 times the size of Paris! First -dream on. Second – in a highly populated land that struggles to produce enough food; is this a responsible use of land? Third - the locals will pull it down as fast as its built!
In South Africa they’ve pretty much given up on remote solar farms. The local wide boys just come in the night and steal them. The shacks in the townships then get a solar panel on their roof.
“The local wide boys”
Or the military.
I think Africa has always been like that. Put up expensive gear and it disappears fast. NASA had problems in Banjul during the space shuttle launches. Lots of kit kept on going missing and if lost would delay a launch. (Banjul was a diversion field for the shuttle – engineers and flight crew used to stay in same the hotel as us).
Not to mention the times of flying into Lagos only to find landing lights out or one of the Nav beacons was off the air ‘cos of missing cables.
Sharpened up the flying skills!
We should remember that these clowns faking it as journalists are all liberal arts bullshitters with zero comprehension of science, engineering, or anything more complex than a toilet brush….
The proper deployment of a toilet brush is beyond many of them……
They need to be asked teasing questions like: “If you don’t want to have hydrocarbon (fossil) fuels and the materials derived from them, with what are you going to make the insulation layers in the electrical cabling for all the renewables?”. They just don’t want to answer that as it totally implodes their liberal arts clown minds.
Rover/Jaguar use soy-based insulation.
Gray squirrels love it!
I recall hearing something like that before. The old adage springs to mind: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.
The “author” of his article is Jonathon Leake who has a BSc in Marine Biology and Oceanography. So he is either thick as a brick or a liar to come out with the crap in this article – take your pick.
The life of a solar panel is about fifteen years and its output degrades gradually over that time. Add the very expensive cost of cleaning the panels and you really have no comparison with nuclear.
Let’s not stop telling politicians that solar panel s are pretty useless between six and six. Speaking slowly with lips moving so that they ‘get’ the right 12 hours
“ the very expensive cost of cleaning the panels “
I wonder if any thought is given to cleaning.
How would one go about cleaning panels covering India’s deserts or space 5x that of Paris? Water? Where from? Then where to?
New metric:
‘an area five times the size of Paris’
1 square pentaparis?
Brilliant !. But what units , metric or imperial ?.
You simply cannot compare solar power, typically producing at about 10 to 15%, with nuclear, which runs at close to 100%
Sizewell B, 99% “load factor” achieved, although this must surely exclude planned outages.
https://www.construction.co.uk/construction-news/292661/sizewell-b-reaches-major-milestone
There must be a formal definition of load factor somewhere, perhaps
Plant Load Factor (PLF) is the ratio between the actual energy generated by the plant to the maximum possible energy that can be generated with the plant working at its rated power and for a duration of an entire year.
from https://www.statista.com/statistics/548885/plant-load-factor-power-stations-uk/
Sizewell may well have achieved 99% over a year. Refuelling is usually about every 18 months.
Micky, most existing PWR reactors run 100% for about 18 months then shut down for refuelling and maintenance outage resulting in a typical overall Capacity Factor of around 92%. The world’s oldest still running PWR from 1969 still quotes 91.8% c.f. Recent innovations in fuel cladding are extending run times up to 3 years so improving CF to over 96% for newer plants.
PV Live shows last 12 months solar generation of 13.24TWh from capacity of 15.44GW which demonstrates a capacity factor of just 9.8% for solar in the UK.
So to correct Jonathan Leake’s laughable remark …90GW of solar capacity is likely to generate 77TWh annually (mostly in summer and only ever in daylight hours) which is approximately the same as just TWO (not 25) Hinkley Point C (combined) Nuclear Power plants.
Jonathon Leake is clearly either as thick as sh1t for someone claiming to be “Energy Editor” for a national newspaper or simply lying or most probably both. Whatever, the Telegraph should be ashamed of printing such crap.
Thanks Ray and IDAU. I must admit that I thought that PWR had more frequent scheduled outages e.g. for maintenance checks of non-nuclear components.
The original (1960s) design for the AGR power stations was ambitious with refueling without disconnecting from the grid.
Hi Guys,
I’ve just been suspended by the Daily Telegraph for asking readers to sign the following petition:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/657353
“Repeal the Climate Change Act 2008 and Net Zero targets”
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We have the numbers signing the petition up to 5,522 in a month and at the very least I’d like to get it to 10,000 when Govt will respond.
Could anyone post requests on the Telegraph? Make sure it is on a relevant page and don’t post too often!
All the best,
Simon
You probably need to invent a few form of words wrappers that include comment that’s relevant to the article.
e.g. This article about [the massive cost and obtrusiveness of electricity pylons planned for net zero] is a useful wake-up call. It’s enough to make you want to sign the petition calling for repeal of the Climate Change Act here:
Adds to the reports about rip-offs by wind farms for curtailment payments the other day.
That’s exactly how I used to post on the Grauniad years ago. However, they finally banned me for linking to one of their own archived articles on the impending 1970s Ice Age. They really did not like being shown up in public.
I simply relogged on under a different name, from a different ISP with a different email and mobile number on a different device. I have since given up on posting there as a waste of time.
Sadly, you can’t really blame the reporter- it’s what he and many others like him are paid to do!
The problem lies with the media generally who are receiving huge sums to promote the zero carbon indoctrination at every available opportunity.
Even more sadly, they are succeeding beyond all their imaginations and there is very little we can do to stop them because part of the deal is that they will not allow any contrary view to published.
It’s a pity we can’t get Climate The Movie shown as a Panorama special but we all know that could never happen.
I don’t think it’s about money.
Money buys you things.
Cars, diamonds, golf clubs and membership, partners, MPs [some], influence, good addresses, civil servants who hope to retire into good job, football clubs, learned societies and their leaders, nice cuff-links, [some, again] councillors and planning committees, silk ties – even smart suits.
With [some of] those you have power – and means of getting more money – which buys you things ….
Auto
There’s no money in destroying Western Civilization. It’s about ending freedom, and global government.
But you don’t see the man-on-the-street at Davos or at the WEF meetings, only the most wealthy. It is about money; it is about these people getting their hands on our money, not by fair means, but foul.
The believers believe in control and believe that they can “make a difference” i.e. a legacy
“Save the world ! ”
They’re the ‘useful idiots’. Those at the top are only interested in YOUR money.
You project your low class on the wealthy, ilma. People flying Gulfstreams into Davos ALREADY have money. They couldn’t care less about your money.
They want to create meaning for their life by subjugating millions, and killing the rest.
There is no power without money. Money is the root of all evil, save Satan himself.
Correct, Mick. They’ve got more money than they can use, and it doesn’t bring them fulfillment. So they look to reorganize humanity. Not for humanity, but so they can feel better about themselves.
They can only be at the top table if they have the wealth. That’s what defines their ‘status’. Money buys influence/power. They need to sustain that money supply to retain that influence. They cannot ‘rule’ if they don’t have that money. You only have to see how all the solutions to the supposed world problems are their solutions, the ones they tax you for and demand you buy, from them or what they are invested in.
If solar capacity was called blue sky capacity the penny *might* drop with some of the hard of thinking on energy matters.
doubt it – look at Milliband, our next Energy Minister!
I have just popped a comment on Jonathan Leake’s X page to ask him to explain his complete BS remarks. Doubt he will respond.
Clearly this guy a) totally ignorant of the subject he is a self proclaimed expert in. or b) a complete liar.
It doesn’t have to be either or.
A lying totally ignorant self proclaimed expert
Only an utter dunderhead would compare 2/1/12 intermittent renewables with 24/7/365 coal, gas or nuclear
“Only an utter dunderhead would.”………..chose to deliberately lie to deceive their publication’s readership. I have just emailed the Telegraph to draw this to their attention.
Off topic, is this a spoof? April 1st joke?
Genuine in my opinion but an example of everything that is wrong with/in the UK ‘education’ system.
Stupidity rules, Thinking loses.
You have capacity with wind and solar only as long as the wind blows and sun shines – no battery storage system exists so no continuous capacity exists.