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Power station's last coal delivery arrives by rail
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- zeristor 2y ago“I pity the fuel”
- codetrotter 2y ago– Mr. C (Lawrence Coal)
- zoenolan 2y agoMore on Ratcliffe-on-Soar https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/21/end-times-for-the-uks-final-coal-fired-power-station https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/21/end-times-f...
- jhardcastle 2y ago> During its lifetime, Ratcliffe - commissioned in 1967 - has generated enough power to make more than a billion cups of tea every day. The most British unit of energy measurement possible. What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven?
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- chmod775 2y agoIf we're firing shots anyways, go with mobility scooter miles.
- throwup238 2y agoThe American version would be number of football fields smoked. But you have to further specify whether you're using Carolina freedom units or Texas freedom units, because the two groups can't agree on whether it includes the end zones or not.
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- BurningFrog 2y agoStandardized Texas A/C hours.
- drewcoo 2y agoIt's also the British billion which is larger than the American billion.
- rsynnott 2y agoLong-scale billions are essentially never used in English, and for official purposes the UK switched to short-scale billions in 1973. So, er, probably not.
- OJFord 2y agoIt's probably not, unless you've calculated that it is? It's not at all common any more, led by financial interoperability I think. (Unfortunately in my opinion: it seems more logical than the American/standard billion. We go up to nine until we run out of units and start on tens, until we run out at nine tens and nine and start on hundreds, until we run out at nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on thousands, until we run out at nine hundred and nine tens and nine thousand and nine hundreds and nine tens and nine and start on millions. Why then only go to nine hundred and nine tens and nine million (...)? It breaks the pattern of using all the expressable numbers until you run out and have to start a new word.)
- NeoTar 2y agoTrue, but the pattern would break down with (the long-scale) definition of trillion in any case. The long scale makes sense because it is powers of a million - - one million - 10^6, - one billion (long scale) - 10^12 - ‘bi’ meaning two, is a million squared, - one trillion (long scale) - 10^18 - ‘tri’ meaning three is a million cubed, - one quadrillion (long scale) - 10^24 - ‘quad’ meaning four is a million to the power four.
- Tagbert 2y agoIn each step of the American system, you go up by a factor of 1000 each time. There is no discontinuity. The problem was that there were once two billions, the short billion and the long billion. The English world decided to use the short billion and the French world decided to use the long billion.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> What would the American version be? Hamburger patties cooked? Smartphones charged? Highway miles driven? We tend to use homes powered. Which seems logical enough, until you realise there is a built-in assumption of 4,000 kWh/month homes.
- mgkimsal 2y agoholy tamole... I think we use around 700-1000/month most months. who is using 4000/month?
- dgacmu 2y ago1) big houses in the south with lots of AC. 2) at least one house in Pittsburgh that runs a few GPU servers for its owner's startup. ;) (not quite 4000, but over 3000 this month including our normal use and ac)
- WarOnPrivacy 2y agoOur lowest/highest are 1800/3300 for a 6 adult FL household. Our lower number was 1700 but our winters keep warming.
- mgkimsal 2y agoReplying to myself: I guess... there's only two adults in the house here, and a 2000 sq ft house with two heating/cooling units (up/down) and relatively modern windows/sealing. I think this month will be 1200, and I think we'll have a couple more 1000-1200 kw/h months up ahead. EDIT: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricity-use-in-homes.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/electricit.... This shows the average being 10500 kw/h/year, which seems to be in line with our use case. That average is including all housing types (apartments, detached homes, etc).
- lsaferite 2y agoI live in a 1900sqft house of 4 people (and lots of electronics) in FL and we used 2477kwh last billing period. Our low period is about 1370kwh.
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- mchannon 2y agoWhile that's very British, you forget the obvious: The BTU is the British Thermal Unit. Can't get any more British than something with British in its name. Not to mention it's very widely used in practice, though it's up there with pounds, gallons, and miles.
- Stevvo 2y agoSpoken like a true American. Despite the name, the BTU is an American customary unit, used almost exclusively in America for measuring the power of air conditioners. In practice, it's not quite extinct in the UK as gallons are, but it's on the way.
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- kens 2y agoThe other weird unit for measuring air conditioning is "tons". One ton of air conditioning has nothing to do with the weight of the air conditioner. Instead, it means the air conditioner provides cooling equivalent to one ton of ice per day. One ton is almost exactly 12,000 BTU/h; curiously, the round number is a coincidence.
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- rsynnott 2y agoI think it might be more extinct than gallons, tbh. People still talk about miles per gallon a bit (note that, for extra confusion, a UK gallon isn’t the same as a US one) but _very_ few people would have reason to think about BTUs these days, I’d have thought.
- cbmuser 2y agoMeanwhile Germany is still operating over 130 coal-fired power plants. Despite 25 years of energy transition.
- pydry 2y agohttps://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-power-plants-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po... 58 according to this and 210 in America. The American nuclear lobby really, really hates Germany's nuclear free green transition though. Coal and global warming theyre not at all bothered about.
- fsh 2y agoNot very surprising with 16 of the 25 years being under a conservative government. Even so, the electricity production from coal has more than halved over the period.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoThe world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) [1] [2]. Germany will phase those coal plants out before the end of the decade, regardless of what the current narrative is. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40788172 [2] https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.com/interactive/essay/2024/06/20/solar-power-is-going-to-be-huge https://archive.is/2024.06.24-223854/https://www.economist.c...
- tuatoru 2y ago> The world is approaching 1 TW/year of solar deployed (will likely be achieved in the next 18 months at current global solar manufacturing ramp rate) That's nice, but it's still underachieving compared to the task. We need ~50TW of solar and ~30 TW of wind to be able to smelt iron, make transport fuels and plastics and lubricants as well as electricity. Unless, of course, you want to suppress development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
- bb123 2y agoI think the lede that this article buries is that this is the last coal fired power station in the UK. The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone.
- throwup238 2y ago> The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone. The UK has been burning coal since the 13th century for heating so it's an even more significant milestone than that. There was a short ban because of the pollution it caused but otherwise the UK has been continuously burning coal since the late middle ages. I recommend Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. The history of coal in Britain is fascinating and closely intertwined with the birth of the industrial revolution, some of the first workers rights, etc.
- dredmorbius 2y agoThe missing term in bb123's comment is "burning coal for electrical generation". The Holborn Viaduct Power Plant, the first coal-fired electric power station in the UK, opened on 12 January 1882: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn_Viaduct_power_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn_Viaduct_power_station> Yes, UK / British coal consumption for other uses long predates the 19th century.
- OJFord 2y agoPossibly because there's still some emergency (/somewhat expected winter 'emergency') coal capacity I believe?
- KennyBlanken 2y agoEmergency capacity is provided by natural gas turbine plants, which can go online in ~10 minutes, and respond to capacity demand in less time. Coal takes hours and is not suitable for grid stabilization. Grid stabilization in the UK is largely provided by hydro like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station ...which can go from 0 to 1.7GW in seconds. The UK has long used hydro to help with the "tea kettle" effect every time the BBC was between programs or went to commercial.
- pflanze 2y ago> At the end of the last century, coal was used to generate more than 95% of the UK's energy, but last year it had fallen to 1%. That looks like an impressive change, even if the coal use hasn't been replaced with renewables. But looking up details, the 95% number doesn't appear to be true: - "Energy mix of UK"[1] shows no time when coal was above ~55%, and even total fossil fuel use was over 95% in 1965, not around the year 2000. But this may be total energy use, not just for electric (not sure). - "UK electricity production by source"[2] shows that around the year 2000 fossil fuels made up perhaps about 70% of the mix. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_of_UK.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Energy_mix_of_UK.svg [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production_by_source.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UK_electricity_production...
- Symbiote 2y agoThe BBC failing to copy and paste from the press release: > At the turn of the 20th century, coal supplied over 95% of energy consumed in the UK. https://www.uniper.energy/united-kingdom/news/gb-railfreight-completes-historic-final-coal-delivery-and-names-a-locomotive-ratcliffe-power-station/ https://www.uniper.energy/united-kingdom/news/gb-railfreight...
- OJFord 2y agoBecause that only goes back to 1965 and we've been burning coal since the 19th century..?
- pflanze 2y agoOK, but they wrote "At the end of the last century", which implies towards 2000 not 1900.
- tialaramex 2y agoI subtitled an album of music written and performed by friends and colleagues in about 2000, "Music from Turn of the Century Southampton" and some people were initially confused because they indeed hadn't got used to the idea that nope, this is in fact the turn of the century - all that stuff you thought would happen in the 21st century? Well that's now. Historians tend to talk about "long" versions of the centuries, e.g. European historians might have a "long 19th century" which ends when World War I breaks out in 1914 and begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The idea is that although calendars start and end arbitrarily, these "log" centuries are roughly 100 years but are bookended by substantial change to society. I think there's an argument to be made that the "Long 20th century" didn't end until a few years back, historians doubtless have numerous events they'd focus on, Ukraine, Liz dying, financial crash... So it may still feel to some people like "last century" still means the 19th.