Energy infrastructure

Distributed storage like this has huge potential, not only for renewable energy storage but lessening the peak demand on the grid as you say above. 100,000 houses using battery with discharge of 2.5kW is like having another Turlough Hill at your disposal.

A Boardsie in Ireland with 6kW solar panel system and 8kWh battery used no imported electricity for two months this summer. Can obviously use off peak electricity during winter. Modular battery packs like BYD and Puredrive can be added to if your consumption goes up etc.

I think your costs are a bit optimistic - the 10kWh battery and inverter will be 10k easy and the PV will be about the same again?

In terms of public policy, what you can do domestically in terms of batteries and PV panels, can be done way cheaper at scale. If €5B is to be spent on solar and batteries, then doing at grid scale will buy about 5 times as much PV capacity or about 7 times as much li-ion storage - looking at Lazard's LCOE table. Although this ignores the cost of the required transmission infrastructure.

As an aside, if you're concerned about CO2 and you're using natural gas for cooking and heating, then you could achieve more for CO2 emission reduction by switching to electricity instead of natural gas. Grid electricity is already 42% green and will get more green each year. The CO2 saved by relying on domestic PV and batteries instead of grid electricity is not as much as you'd think and will get less each year. By 2030, your domestic set-up will only be marginally more green than consuming grid electricity.

On the other hand, switching to electricity for cooking and heating will reduce your carbon foot print significantly. And as the years go by, the reduction will actually grow. Cooking should be easy, heating maybe not so easy although I find domestic thermal storage systems interesting.

We've been conditioned to think that reducing electricity consumption is key to helping the environment and this was definitely the case when grid electricity had high carbon intensity. But as the grid gets greener, there's more benefit to using electricity where traditionally fossil fuels were used - transport and domestic heating and cooking are big opportunities.

They don't seem to get the € bit, Grasping that a €5-6 k electricity isn't an option for most households seems to beyond them.

No idea what your point is or who "they" refers to?

That is disingenuous. The two are not comparable. It's like a car company that has only made large cars for consumers, but made a small expensive specialist vehicle for the millitary, announcing they had plans to make a small car for consumers. They may not have done so previously, but it's not a new invention and requires no new technologies, nor - for me anyway - any great stretch of credulity.

Then there is the technical capacity and reputation of Rolls-Royce, which I personally hold in high regard, as I wouldn't be typing this if it were not for the quality of their products in WW2.

"Football is a simple game, twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win.”

Gary Lineker, 1990

What are the chances of another pumped storage facility opening in Ireland? I've heard of a small proposal for a site in Tipperary at a former quarry. To my mind it is the only realistic option for energy security in a move to full renewable power generation.

The reactors in nuclear submarines use enriched uranium as a fuel i.e the type that can be used for bombs. This is banned for use in domestic settings for obvious reasons.

RR need to develop an SMR with a different fuel type, the same as currently used in existing power stations. So it is not as straightforward as you seem to think.

Large scale pumped storage is often not eco-friendly, as it involves flooding large tracts of land and extiguishing habitat.

But how many of them are actually in service on an electricity grid?

"It is straightforward. No new tech required, just a new design based on existing and known engineering data and principles."

RR themselves are saying it will take a decade to get the first one operational - on top of work they've been doing in this area for decades already and they claim to have the biggest team of nuclear scientists and engineers in the UK.

Maybe what all these scientists and engineers are lacking is a visionary like yourself to point out the error of their ways - if only they put as much thought as yourself into the problem then they'd realise that it's "straightforward" and involves "no new tech" and we could have operational SMRs in six months or so.

De Haviland Comet, beautiful looking plane

https://images.app.goo.gl/fV982spawSwhJW4j8