Thread 2. Starmer, return of the Labour government

[L1ttledrummergirl]

Yes, lame but the last thread was nearly full.

Except I can't get the picture to load - gah. You'll just have to imagine a British Shorthair ( grey with yellow eyes) stretched out on a garden sofa

Thank you for the new thread Littledrummer & all contributors some beautiful cats dogs & elephants photographs, notonthestairs hoping things are better & welcome any newbies.
flowers from me as no pets here.

Oh & Pinboard really hope your son is receiving the treatment he needs & he is starting to recover💐

https://x.com/Sam_Dumitriu/status/1811799531517866025

At the end of his first full week as Energy Sec, Ed Miliband has approved three large-scale solar farms.

✅Sunnica Energy Farm

✅Mallard Pass Solar Farm

✅Gate Burton Energy Park

1.5GW of clean power unlocked with the stroke of a pen.

and he upset Alicia Kearns

I'm ROFL at Sunnica - it's in the village next to where I live (totally outed myself) and the NIMBYs have been up in arms about it for years because it'll spoil 'the beauty of the area' (it's boring farmland that wasn't being used for anything and not at all beautiful).

This has made my weekend, we NEED it.

Was it being used as farmland?

I do have issues with building solar farms on productive land. Surely there are plenty of roofs that could be utilised instead?

Thanks for the new thread, cat tax paid, could count as double

Not used for crops. Couldn't see it being used for grazing either, or for hay meadows. It was mostly fields with rotting agricultural machinery standing in the corners.

Fair enough.
There are some solar farms round here that have been built on quality farmland.
Equally if this announcement today is the signal that the UK is open for business again and supporting investments for the future, perhaps further projects will be developed that are on factories/supermarkets/carparks and so on.

I always love your flowers

Dh and I watched a programme earlier this week called "Who owns Scotland" presented by Martin Geissler. (The 2nd part is next week and having come across the 1st one by chance, we'll make a point of watching the 2nd).

In one segment he talked about community ownership and how the community in Huntly has taken matters into its own hands. It's suffered significant decline (losing shops, banks etc) which risked becoming a vicious circle, but it is working to reverse that with a travel hub, arts initiatives, community hub - funded in part by having raised the funds to buy a farm where they installed a load of wind turbines. The money generated from that is helping to seed-fund other initiatives.

The point is that on-shore wind farms were never banned in Scotland.

However standing charges for electricity in the north of Scotland are c60p/day , compared to c40p/day in London/the South East, despite the fact that the area produces more energy than it could ever use

My electricity standing charge (in Glasgow, with Octopus) is 58.33p/day before VAT

Scotland is (I believe) self sufficient in energy but we pay more in standing charges because of the way that Ofgem calculates standing charges as a function of access to the National Grid and distance from where most of the usage is. So Scottish consumers are penalised for being a long way from London

Anyone catch this ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2507npnxqeo

Aww, that’s genuinely rather sweet!

It is. Evidence of good parenting.

That is nice.

I hadn’t even realised that wind farms were banned in England. I’ve got so used to seeing them here in Wales (I can see them from where I’m sitting in my house) that I took it for granted that they were everywhere now.

Oh and my standing charge is the same @prettybird (Octopus). Wouldn’t it be the same across the UK? I hadn’t realised there was a difference based on distance.
I believe Wales exports more electricity than it produces (at least that’s what Plaid says).

Yes, same standing charge with Octopus here in England

Evening all, occasional poster paying my duties with He Who Must Be Obeyed doing his thing of claiming all the things…

I’m in Scotland too, there are some very loud people vehemently opposed to more wind farms up here, and I have to say I am dubious about some of the claims of how ef they are; but the fact remains we have more than the rest of the UK but seem to pay more.

Enjoying the feeling of the grownups being in charge, for a change!

That's shocking @prettybird

Nope @BestIsWest : the standing charges are not the same across the UK.

They're cheapest in London, because at a simplistic level that's where most of the power is used and more expensive further away (although weirdly, most expensive in Northern Region) because of the way that National Grid charges the generators to put their power into the grid.

It's nothing to do with where the power is generated - or even if it has to travel, because it all gets aggregated in the National Grid.

So Scotland and Wales effectively get charged (iirc) for the nominal transmission losses that occur on the way to London

The table on this page is quite shocking (NB: they include VAT).

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-advice-households/get-energy-price-cap-standing-charges-and-unit-rates-region

Interconnectors - that's the word I couldn't remember.

I used to work in a related industry (the energy companies gave birth to a number of telecom companies as the telemetry was an integral part of their operations and used to work for one of them) but that was a long time ago

Anyway, more recently: https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/07/10/free-electricity-for-scotland-possible-says-octopus-boss//*

@Errolwasahero : I agree, wind farms aren't the entire answer. There also needs to be investment in battery storage to cope with when the wind doesn't blow. Ditto with solar power (for when the sun doesn't shine ). But they're a start.

Hydro is also green and can also be used as a sort of battery (ie pump the water back up to the reservoir when demand is low and/or it's windy/sunny).

Personally I'm in favour of nuclear power until we can find a better alternative but I understand people's concerns. The "pocket" nuclear power stations (proposed by Rolls Royce????) would be a better way of expanding them than the giant EDF/China power station that is being built at greater cost to the taxpayer.

I did some work with Iceland (the country, not the shop ) who were trying to attract data centres there to make use of their cheap geothermal and hydro power (and cool climate) - and their excellent telecoms connections

Hello checking in. Gorgeous pictures.

Bit intrigued about all the snoring posts.

Looking forward to Sunday when I'll be at a local classical music recital in a lovely church. I'm not religious.

What a lovely note to leave, reminiscent of the Bush children for Obama.

Has anyone seen the pictures of the Ambani wedding? With guests Tony and Cherie Blair and also apparently Boris Johnson? Quite an amazing looking event!!

Really glad to see the solar farms signed off. There was a wind farm built near me a while ago - out on the fringes of an estuary. There was big upset at the time, but I doubt anyone thinks much about it now. I forget it hasn’t always been there to be honest.
Also very glad to see the back of the phrase ‘levelling up’. A nearby affluent village got a levelling up grant (£300k+) to bring a disused and uneconomic pub into community ownership (there is another pub, a village hall and community rooms all nearby already). I’m frankly annoyed that this project got funding given the huge challenges the country faces & can’t for the life of me see why the area needs levelling up (it is already ‘up’ as far as I can see).