Please do not think my engineering pragmatism is in any way negative. I am all for renewables and nuclear (fission, fusion (when/if it comes) and thorium) to combat our dependence on oil.

Found this interesting graph from the UK DoE. It covers up to the first quarter 2018. Electricity is the best at almost 30% from renewables. Overall percentage is 10%, that leaves 90%, the majority of which comes from oil one way or another. That TED talk was not far off of the mark from where we are now.

If we all used 50% less electricity, the 30% we generate now would be 60% without generating another watt. Efficiencies are part of the larger picture. If our energy needs stay the same and we got everything from renewables, we would need a bigger country. The difference is imports or oil.



UK percentage renewables 2004-2017


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Maybe I'm thick but I don't understand the graph.
Carl2

Oops, maybe I missed a heading. UK percentage renewables 2004-2017 ish from Q1 2018 document linked.

Going back to add...

Quote from: Snowcrash on February 16, 2019, 10:50:04 AM
If our energy needs stay the same and we got everything from renewables, we would need a bigger country.

What about all the sea around our country, we have many windfarms out there already, according to live stats they are make around 25% to 35% of the UK's power already, are you try to convince me that they are only making 10% of our power needs, cos I'm not buying it.

https://infogram.com/live-dashboard-gb-electricity-mix-1h0n25ze0vjz2pe   

What are you not buying?

30% of electricity, over the 1st quarter 2018, was generated by renewables. We heat with oil, we drive with oil, we fly aircraft with oil. Add all the energy together and renewables account for 10% and growing. The overall line on the graph.

Quote from: Snowcrash on February 16, 2019, 12:42:22 PM
What are you not buying?

We heat with oil, we drive with oil, we fly aircraft with oil.

Mostly we heat with gas.

We drive with oil? don't include me and all the other EV owners in that  

We fly aircraft with oil, I'll give ya that one.

That TED talk video did not mention offshore wind farms, the UK already has over 30 of them and many more are planed. In fact I don't recall him even mentioning our oceans  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom

When I say oil, I mean fossil fuels in general. Gas/oil/coal

Quote
That TED talk video did not mention offshore wind farms, the UK already has over 30 of them and many more are planed. In fact I don't recall him even mentioning our oceans  

Go to 16:52 the top right box is wind. There are may smaller boxes of that colour dotted around the seas. This is to account for 16kWh per household when we use 125kWh. We need to be more efficient or get a bigger country.

I know you like to find negatives Snowy you always have but remember the sea is much larger than the land, if we utilise it more, which we will, then we don't need a bigger country, you must agree with that.

Okay makes more sense now, thanks.
Carl2

Snowy I do take your points on-board and understand that you are not only talking
about electricity, however, I also believe the video was based on the technology at the time (10 years ago) and things have moved on.

Quote from: Snowcrash on February 16, 2019, 14:08:04 PM
We need to be more efficient or get a bigger country.

Or what will probably happen will be both, the UK's power consumption is already decreasing as people buy newer more efficient appliances, that also includes the thousands of EV's on our roads,  a quick Google finds this: 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/30/uk-electricity-use-falling-economy-weather

A bigger country, as we have already been talking about, we can use the sea, I guess you could class that as a bigger country.

What I think would be one of the best things to do would be solar panels on many houses, factories, buildings, combine that with modern power walls (battery storage) in the houses, factories etc, that would get us much closer to the end goal.

Other industries could be partly/mostly powered with the offshore wind farms.

Heating, we now have modern heat-pumps.

That mostly leaves transport, trucks busses large vehicles are well suited to hydrogen power, OK the hydrogen has to be made but that can be included in "industry".

Cars, well we know they are going to be EV in the 21st century, many could be charged with peoples home solar panels and power walls.

One of the big keys to this will be to stop refining such large amounts of oil. the power saving will be massive.

It "was" a good video but out dated now, I truly believe that.

Moving on then to more offshore wind farms - this was posted on 18 Feb 2019, it is faze one of a much larger project.

QuoteWorld's largest offshore wind farm generates electricity for the first time.

Pretty impressive stuff 

The wind was blowing quite hard this evening so I checked the live electricity mix, ok this is off peak hours so it doesn't give an accurate all-day reading but impressive anyway.

We are getting closer all the time 

46% wind 

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Since over here we don't do much about wind power but maybe we can learn from what you do there.
Interesting.
Carl2

The trend continues with a record breaking year so far.

QuoteClean electricity overtaking fossil fuels in Britain

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Britain is obtaining more power from zero-carbon sources than fossil fuels.

The milestone has been passed for the first five months of 2019.

Full Story

  Nice to see that, guess I like the fact that they are switching to electrical control of things rather than mechanical methods.  Its given us Alexa who can now understand voice commands and perform an action.  Computers have also come a long way.
Carl2

Thought this was an interesting video, a modern solar panel installation and how it performs.