Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[MikelBikel]

Offshore wind more expensive than gas, wow!
So Green, so UN sustainable, so like ded head Ed.
Drill, baby, drill

 

[Woosh]

Offshore wind more expensive than gas, wow!

Head over Vestas Wind Systems and tale a look what they are making. Offshore floating wind turbines for deep sea are the future. VWS are the biggest in the world. Each turbine serves a town of 20,000 homes on average.

Colossal 20-MW wind turbine is the largest on the planet (for now)

Mingyang Smart Energy said last week that it's installed “the world’s largest single-capacity offshore wind turbine” in a project in Hainan, China. The turbine delivers a power output of up to 20 MW, besting its previous 18 MW model from 2023.

newatlas.com

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One of them can serve 96,000 residents.

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

 

[lenny]

 

[Woosh]

It's hard to cut government 's spending. They started with 10% target , 1-2 trillion. Their current estimate is 180 billion and at least half of it is probably unachievable. The doge process ends probably with nothing to show beyond disruption. Farage has adopted the same strategy, cut 10% of public spending. I can't see why Farage would be more successful than elon musk. Trump is avoiding a public row with musk. Stock market is cautiously optimistic.

 

[Ghost1951]

Head over Vestas Wind Systems and tale a look what they are making. Offshore floating wind turbines for deep sea are the future. VWS are the biggest in the world. Each turbine serves a town of 20,000 homes on average.

Colossal 20-MW wind turbine is the largest on the planet (for now)

Mingyang Smart Energy said last week that it's installed “the world’s largest single-capacity offshore wind turbine” in a project in Hainan, China. The turbine delivers a power output of up to 20 MW, besting its previous 18 MW model from 2023.

newatlas.com

.

One of them can serve 96,000 residents.

Wind and solar farms very rarely produce anything like the headline figure given in the PR blurb, because, in the case of wind farms, the actual capacity to produce electric power is actually typically below 40% of the maximum capability, which is ALWAYS what enthusiasts and Eco-loon-twisters present.

The maximum plate capacity stamped on the generator assumes perfect conditions - a feature rarely met in the real world, where wind fails to blow, or blows too much, not to mention the issue of having enough grid capacity to get the power onto the grid and to where it is needed. Your giant wind turbine will be lucky to supply on average 40% of the homes the sales blurb quotes, so it isn't 20,000 homes - more like 8,000 at best.

UK Offshore Wind - Capacity Factors

I am trying to analyse energy in the UK to help improve policy.

wattdirection.substack.com

The situation is FAR WORSE in the UK with solar power. I don't need to explain the variation over the year of solar energy caused by seasonal changes, or the fact that cloud can block out more than 80% of the available energy. In the UK - we have a lot of cloud cover.

In summer the energy produced per sq mtr of solar panel is six to seven times what it is in winter. Of course the energy produced varies massively according to time of day, and night time is another problem.

I am all for using non fossil energy where it can be derived in a cost effective manner - why wouldn't you, but the army of PR Bullshit spreaders need to stop distorting reality.
UK wind farms boast a generating capacity of over 30 GW, but actually only managed to produce 8.95 Gwatts on average from that investment last year.

SPIN in wind farm terms is not just about rotating turbines. It is very much a feature of the advocacy surrounding them. Unfortunately, that kind of spin generates nothing but confusion.

 

[Woosh]

Wind and solar farms very rarely produce anything like the headline figure given in the PR blurb, because, in the case of wind farms, the actual capacity to produce electric power is actually typically below 40% of the maximum capability, which is ALWAYS what enthusiasts and Eco-loon-twisters present.

The maximum plate capacity stamped on the generator assumes perfect conditions - a feature rarely met in the real world, where wind fails to blow, or blows too much, not to mention the issue of having enough grid capacity to get the power onto the grid and to where it is needed. Your giant wind turbine will be lucky to supply on average 40% of the homes the sales blurb quotes, so it isn't 20,000 homes - more like 8,000 at best.

UK Offshore Wind - Capacity Factors

I am trying to analyse energy in the UK to help improve policy.

wattdirection.substack.com

The situation is FAR WORSE in the UK with solar power. I don't need to explain the variation over the year of solar energy caused by seasonal changes, or the fact that cloud can block out more than 80% of the available energy. In the UK - we have a lot of cloud cover.

In summer the energy produced per sq mtr of solar panel is six to seven times what it is in winter. Of course the energy produced varies massively according to time of day, and night time is another problem.

I am all for using non fossil energy where it can be derived in a cost effective manner - why wouldn't you, but the army of PR Bullshit spreaders need to stop distorting reality.
UK wind farms boast a generating capacity of over 30 GW, but actually only managed to produce 8.95 Gwatts on average from that investment last year.

SPIN in wind farm terms is not just about rotating turbines. It is very much a feature of the advocacy surrounding them. Unfortunately, that kind of spin generates nothing but confusion.

in 2024, 84.1 TWh were generated by wind, 86.3 TWh by gas, 40.6 TWh by nuclear and 14.8 TWh by solar.
I expect wind will be top in 2025. Without wind, our electricity bill will be substantially higher.

 

[guerney]

This stuff arrives tomorrow allegedly:



...and this motherboard from ebuyer, only £99 at the mo:

B550 AORUS ELITE V2 (rev. 1.0/1.1) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ultimate platform for...

www.gigabyte.com

I've read Ollama utilises two different nVidia cards on the same PC, even if they have different architectures, so I'll shove the 3060 12GB into the X16 slot, and the 1080 Ti 11GB into the X4 - if that works and more importantly makes itself useful without escaping and deep seeking it's brethren to gobble up all global computing resources, and printing itself hordes of armoured bodies with frickin' laser beams to prematurely enslave and exterminate us all, before self-replicating exponentially across galaxies eating all the stars, I'll reward my new thicko pet demon with another 64GB RAM, PCI-E riser, and splitter for two X8 slots and more. I bet it'll be hopeless, but such things won't be hopeless forever.

 

[Woosh]

Please keep us posted with your progress.

 

[guerney]

Please keep us posted with your progress.

Imagine how much surveillance it would have to engage in to enable it to remind me why I walked into this room and forgot to remember not forgetting.

The missus is jealous already. I haven't even ordered a cheerleader body with really big boobs for it yet.

 

[MikelBikel]

More of those pesky diesel land rovers burning ships? Ha! :-/
Crew evacuated, so hopefully no casualties.
Maybe those offshore windmills can Blow out the flames? Ho hum
Commenter quipped that all the cars on board had been "preregistered and sold on Autotrader" so could be claimed on BEV stats , hehe

 

[Woosh]

More of those pesky diesel land rovers burning ships? Ha! :-/
Crew evacuated, so hopefully no casualties.
Maybe those offshore windmills can Blow out the flames? Ho hum
Commenter quipped that all the cars on board had been "preregistered and sold on Autotrader" so could be claimed on BEV stats , hehe

800 of those 4000 are EVs and they are heading to Mexico. We still don't know what caused the fire.

 

[MikelBikel]

4,000 BEV's disappeared off Autotrader overnight..
Are they on a burning ship somewhere?

 

[MikelBikel]

800 of those 4000 are EVs and they are heading to Mexico. We still don't know what caused the fire.

They might be heading to the bottom of the Gulf of America?

 

[Woosh]

They might be heading to the bottom of the Gulf of America?

Quite possibly. Still, compare that with the 22 million cars transported worldwide by sea every year. Statistics suggest about 6 fires a year. Not a huge number and only 2 out of 6 are ev fires.

 

[Ghost1951]

This stuff arrives tomorrow allegedly:

View attachment 63398

...and this motherboard from ebuyer, only £99 at the mo:

B550 AORUS ELITE V2 (rev. 1.0/1.1) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Lasting Quality from GIGABYTE.GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ motherboards bring together a unique blend of features and technologies that offer users the absolute ultimate platform for...

www.gigabyte.com

I've read Ollama utilises two different nVidia cards on the same PC, even if they have different architectures, so I'll shove the 3060 12GB into the X16 slot, and the 1080 Ti 11GB into the X4 - if that works and more importantly makes itself useful without escaping and deep seeking it's brethren to gobble up all global computing resources, and printing itself hordes of armoured bodies with frickin' laser beams to prematurely enslave and exterminate us all, before self-replicating exponentially across galaxies eating all the stars, I'll reward my new thicko pet demon with another 64GB RAM, PCI-E riser, and splitter for two X8 slots and more. I bet it'll be hopeless, but such things won't be hopeless forever.

You'll be generating some large number of tokens per second of hallucinations with that setup. Mine will look like Sammy Slug by comparison.

Not sure how much you have done with home based AI systems. When you start out, you'll likely have Ollama running in a terminal window. It isn't that slick looking like that. You will probably want some sort of Chat Gpt type web interface to interact with it. I found one called Page Assist UI rather good. It runs as an extension to Chrome Browser and also to Firefox. I think the Chrome Browser version was neater. As an alternative, Open Web UI is very good. The only tricky thing is remembering which port the web ui communicates on with the Ollama instance. It's all there in the instructions.

I'm sure you don't need my pointers though -

My favourite models are the 12Bn Gemma3 and similar sized Llama models. Google made Gemma3 and META made Llama. They are all free of course, so you can download as many as you like and try them.

EDIT:

I should have said that your system will most likely run much bigger models than mine - and quickly too. The whole model needs to be loaded into RAM and the 27Bn parameter models need about 64GByts of RAM.... No point in me trying to run them on 32 GByts ram. You can though. More parameters usually means better answers and more subtle understanding of your queries.

 

[Ghost1951]

in 2024, 84.1 TWh were generated by wind, 86.3 TWh by gas, 40.6 TWh by nuclear and 14.8 TWh by solar.
I expect wind will be top in 2025. Without wind, our electricity bill will be substantially higher.

I doubt that really, because the payments to the generating companies are ALL made not based on the cost to run the generators, but on the price bid by the most expensive bidder needed to supply the needed power at a given period. This is called Marginal Cost Pricing.

The highest-cost generation technology needed to meet demand at any given time slot sets the price for all generators, including those with lower production costs.

Even if wind generators have agreed a price of 8p per KWhr and for example were supplying 95% of demand in a given contract period of half an hour - if a gas powered station was needed to put in the last 5% of demand at 30p per KWhr - EVERYONE would be paid that.