Interesting Links for 30-10-2017

[andrewducker]

No-deal Brexit: Tory donors warn Theresa May she must be prepared to walk away

(tags: UK Europe Conservatives )

Universal credit penalises the self-employed

(tags: welfare UK employment )

UK pensions among the worst in the developed world

(tags: pension uk OhForFucksSake )

Nestlé, Hershey and Mars are breaking promises over palm oil use

Forests being illegally destroyed for your chocolate bars
(tags: chocolate forests OhForFucksSake )

A lot of the alt-right movement is built on really messed up attitudes to women

(tags: Nazis patriarchy men OhForFucksSake )

Actor Anthony Rapp: Kevin Spacey Made A Sexual Advance Toward Me When I Was 14

(tags: abuse hollywood children )

Hollywood’s Other ‘Open Secret’ : Preying on Young Boys

(tags: abuse children hollywood )

Rail Energy Storage Harnesses the Power of Gravity (80% efficiency!)

(tags: power trains storage )

Record surge in atmospheric CO2 seen in 2016

(tags: co2 globalwarming OhForFucksSake )

The UK doesn't tax foreign corporations on UK property sales, costing us £8 Billion every year

(tags: tax uk property )

Comments

ARES

[danieldwilliam]

There is some sceptisism about the cost of the ARES storage system

http://euanmearns.com/is-ares-the-solution-to-the-energy-storage-problem/

Re: ARES

[andrewducker]

If I'm understanding the comments correctly, that's about twice the cost of the same amount of storage produced by battery packs?

Re: ARES

[danieldwilliam]

Something like that.

Depends what figure you are taking for storage by battery packs. The article from Energy Matters is some years old and they tend to ignore the current prices of renewables and storage when discussing them. It would not surprise me if the cost of batteries was lower than assumed in any comments.

The key difficulty is that the ARES technology is pretty mature and not subject to potential significant innovation.

Re: ARES

[doug]

Thanks for that skeptical article. It finishes off nicely with the installation cost looking eye-popping. I suspect the running costs might be pretty grim too: maintaining a heavy rail system is not cheap. Although my instincts on that are driven by the requirements of passenger trains: if nobody's riding the trains, you could be more relaxed about derailments, so your cost/benefit tradeoff would be different. Do you happen to know anything about that?

Re: ARES

[danieldwilliam]

Not much on the costs of rail I'm afraid.

I agree that you could be more relaxed about maintenance of the rail as there won't be people on it or near it but the costs of a derailement in terms of lost revenue might be eye-watering. If you are selling balancing services they are well paid but expensive to get wrong.

Re: ARES

[armiphlage]

There are a LOT of decommissioned rail lines and spurs in Canada. A company might take over a hundred-kilometer section of unused track and run a train up and down a ten-kilometer section until major maintenance is needed. Then they'd move along to another section with a suitable slope.

Not sustainable in the long run, but it might be useful for decades until battery costs drop.

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

Re: ARES

[danieldwilliam]

That might work.

I'm not sure how much of the set up cost is to do with the electricity cables and switching gear.