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West London faces new home ban as electric grid at capacity due to data centres
- basicplus2 4y agohttps://thelondonpress.uk/2022/07/28/west-london-faces-new-homes-ban-as-electricity-grid-hits-capacity/ https://thelondonpress.uk/2022/07/28/west-london-faces-new-h...
- 35mm 4y agoWhy don’t the developers simply install off grid solar with batteries on these new homes? You can have a pretty solid off grid system for £20k
- mjbeswick 4y agoBecause such a system wouldn't work in the winter. New homes in West London would almost certainly be in the form of multi story apartment building; so there wouldn't be enough free surface area to install solar panels to collect enough energy even if there was enough sunlight.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoYes, this does not even cover electricity needs in winter if fitted on an individual family house (my neighbour has this and tells me that they do need the grid in winter, and they still have a gas boiler) so on a block of flats this has to be more of a gimmick than anything else...
- sacrosancty 4y agoSolid enough to not have power failures after days of rainy weather? Maybe a more practical alternative is a generator.
- leoedin 4y agoSetting aside the day to day practicalities of off grid living (always watching energy use, no electric heat or cooking, the possibility of running out), the main issue is that this is the middle of the city. A block of apartments might be 6 storeys tall - a 50m2 flat would therefore only have 8.3m2 of rooftop - there's simply not nearly enough rooftop area to generate the power the building needs. Solar wouldn't even be particularly useful for peak compensation, as generally the UK peaks fall on winter evenings, while solar only makes useful power in summer. A better solution would be just the batteries. If these buildings had enough battery storage to compensate for usage during the few peak usage hours per day, the effect of new buildings on the grid would be negligible (as the grid is basically underutilised for most of the day). Then the solar could be built much more cost effectively in a field out of the city.
- acallaghan 4y agoThe whole UK is on the grid, even if you have solar generation, you sell the surplus back to the grid
- yobbo 4y agoA single home with all of its roof covered in solar panels is barely self-sufficient, even during the summer half-year. It can be, but it depends on usage.
- vxNsr 4y agoIsn't london famous for its rainfall? kinda feel like solar wouldn't really work so well there.
- smcl 4y agoI wouldn't say it's famous for its rainfall. It gets on average about half of the annual precipitation that New York City does, which itself isn't exactly known as a rainy place.
- BongBongThrice 4y agoDoesn't NYC get heavier rain than London though. London just gets gray skies and drizzle most days of the week, without much precipitation. NYC gets a few days of heavy rain then lots of sun. NYC is also over 1000 miles closer to the equator than London is. People forget how far north the UK is, the vast majority of the population in Quebec lives further south than the most southern point in the UK.
- smcl 4y agoIt looks like their precipitation is fairly similarly distributed through the year, so it's not like London is just very slightly rainy all the time and NYC has a monsoon season. In any case, the point is that the characterisation of London as too rainy for solar is not right.
- rich_sasha 4y agoHuman slaves must make space for Computer. Humans can tend to Computer and clean off dust and plug in Cables, but not disturb Computer by living nearby. Computer has spoken.
- substation13 4y agoWhy build a data-center on such expensive real estate? Surely 50km further out would be much cheaper?
- akmarinov 4y agoFor financial stuff, proximity matters and London is one of the largest financial centers
- carnitine 4y agoFor ‘financial stuff’ where proximity matters (which is a small fraction of it) you would be colocated with the exchange, and there’s no need for that data centre to be in London.
- yobbo 4y agoThat doesn't answer the question. Why not move all of it out?
- jleahy 4y agoThey’re in Slough, it is 50km out. These areas are all close to Slough.
- jfk13 4y agohttps://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/j/john-betjeman-slough.php https://www.oatridge.co.uk/poems/j/john-betjeman-slough.php
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoWhen talking about "London the financial centre", you're talking about offices in tall buildings in central London Compared to that, data centres out in West London, in an "industrial shed" in the vicinity of Heathrow Airport, are already "moved out".
- gerikson 4y ago
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- RappingBoomer 4y agooh good, more urban homeless
- MattPalmer1086 4y agoHardly, Ealing has already built more homes than required by planning, with more on the way. Huge tower block going up right near where I live. New houses in front of me, and more planned behind in the next 5 years. Very few of those homes will be affordable. So while there will be more people packed into the same area, it won't really help the urban homeless.
- voxadam 4y agoArchive: https://archive.ph/Azysn https://archive.ph/Azysn
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- mytailorisrich 4y agoThe UK has a general infrastructure issue and it only keeps growing because investment is lacking.
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- Wildgoose 4y agoIf West London electricity grid has already hit capacity, what about the ban on sales of new internal combustion cars from 2030, in just eight years time? It's not exactly "joined-up" thinking.
- sph 4y agoAll politicians from now to the 2030s will be jumping on the "ban petrol cars" bandwagon because it will bring them a lot of votes, but it's an unrealistic goal we will never achieve and we will find ourselves in 10 years with no widespread electric network, a lot of broken promises and a even warmer Earth. As a climate change alarmist, I consider any "ban on X in < 20 years" promise as wishful thinking or a populist lie, which will eventually turn into a huge cash-grab and tax reliefs for their lobbyist friends that will have gotten into electric by then. I admire all those that still believe their favourite party will fight climate change.
- tpxl 4y agoAs someone with similar concerns, how far do you think solar can take us? An average solar roof with ~10kWp of solar panels with a battery (an electric car?) should be enough to cover most of the needs of the house, leaving just the car as an external user. That, and with smart charging (ie off-peak) we could smooth the consumption curve, meaning we could use non-elastic generation (nuclear, ..?) more?
- dbetteridge 4y agoGoing to be much more challenging in Europe and cooler climates with less sunshine. Sunny places like Australia are having the problem of too much solar on the grid now and looking at community batteries and EV charging as ways to offset that and stabilise things.
- tpxl 4y agoI'm at +45° north and it should work fine here (I'm basing all my assumptions on where I live). It most definitely wouldn't work in Sweden and Norway, but France and maybe even northern Germany should be fine?
- jonatron 4y agoI can't imagine much new investment into UK datacentres will happen with electricity prices at £0.66/kWh ($0.80). That's a quoted day time price for a fixed 12 month tariff at the moment.
- trhway 4y ago>electricity prices at £0.66/kWh ($0.80) At this price (20x of solar cost in sunny regions) solar panels even in UK look like a great business. A square meter panel costs $200 and generates 200 watt. Say only half - 100 watt - in UK. That is 0.64kWh per 8 hour day. I.e. $0.50/day at those prices - basically a crypto level of ROI - 400 days. Wind, especially in the ocean, is even better. I wonder if the current energy crisis - and thus the resulting increased prices providing much better ROI for green investment - would move the world to green economy more than anything else before. In some paradoxical sense Russia attacking Ukraine is what may prove to be the biggest driver for greening of our civilization.
- fmajid 4y agoFortunately the government is working hard to gut GDPR so workloads will be shifted to the EU and those data centres forced to close /s
- MikeAshley178 4y agoShaving a few minutes off your shower, walking to the shop instead of driving, turning your thermostat down by a few degrees will make no f@@kin difference what so ever to the horror that is coming. The whole point of these exercises is not to save energy but to engage the population to believe that they are part of the problem and therefore part of the solution. They are not. One of the most important videos on the entire Internet, if you cannot understand why then you are probably already lost. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gnpCqsXE8g&t=1s