[Petrochemicals]

You can forget hydro. Practically all the useable sites in Scotland are either already developed or too precious to flood, and the rest of the UK is too flat.

For solar panels, an average for the UK over a year is about 1 - 2 W/sq ft, so to meet 40 GW you need 20 - 40,000,000 000 square ft of panels, say 1,000,000 acres, about 2% of the total land area. That's only skimming the surface of the problem since you get no solar power at night, so you need at least 500 GWh of battery and 40 GW of inverter capacity to keep the grid running.

And of course if we get rid of domestic gas heating and fossil-fuelled cars, we will need about 4 times the current grid capacity. By the time we have moved to all-electric traction and industry we will have about 15% of the country covered in solar cells. That will have quite an ecological impact.

2 percent or 4000 sq km is that is for 1/10th of the uk energy usage.

You're falsely comparing secondary energy with primary energy. Secondary energy is far, FAR more useful. More importantly, it would be about 1/2 of the exergy (usable energy) of the UK.  And we already have about a couple of percent of the UK covered with buildings. Sticking solar panels on a lot of them would be a big start. And we have other sources of power such as wind, much of it off-shore. So what's the big deal???

And this isn't remotely a worldwide representative figure, the UK is EXTREMELY heavily populated. Most countries would need a much smaller fraction of their land area.

Also this is a strawman- nobody is trying to power the UK off only solar power anyway. But if we did, so what anyway?? 2% is nothing. 70% of England is farmland for example. Why is 2% somehow magically an impossibly big number???

Non follow

[chris]

I think "science journalism" is an oxymoron, like "military intelligence".

Ouch! I actually regard myself as a reasonably good science journalist! I certainly put the facts front and centre and check them very carefully, and I think we do quite well on the communications front!

[alancalverd (OP)]

Scientists who write for the meeja are one thing, journalists who write about science are often another!

It's very unpredictable: the most accurate reports of any of my work have been in the Sun and the Daily Mirror, and some of the most mickeymouse  reportage I have read was in the New Scientist! 

I was impressed some years ago by a Swedish radio interviewer who had clearly done her homework. I asked if I could hear the final edit. She said it would just be a "de-ummed" 10 minute slot at midday in a lightweight Swedish-language  news and popular music program  and "we always do the interview in English because people will only believe it if the scientists speak for themselves".

[nukapop92]

Eon scored a good four stars out of five for bill accuracy and a respectable three stars out of five in three other categories in our survey. That's not bad, but customers of the highest-scoring brands achieved four stars or more

[alancalverd (OP)]

Since I have never received an actual meter reading from EoN in the last 10 years, I wonder how they estimate accuracy?

[Iannguyen]

In 2020, E.ON launched a new brand called E.ON Next for homes and small businesses, which supplies 100% renewable electricity. New customers now start as E.ON Next by default, and all existing Npower and E.ON contracts will eventually be moved over to it.
This was the cheapest tariff we were quoted for on the E.ON Next website for someone using a “medium” amount of energy (2,900kWh of electricity and 12,000kWh of gas per year). It was also the cheapest quote among the three traditional big suppliers in our survey: British Gas, EDF Energy and E.ON.
The rates you’re charged for the energy you use are fixed for a year and you have to manage your account online. You must agree to have a smart meter fitted if you don’t have one already. There are no exit fees, either, so you are free to switch to another deal whenever you like. As well as 100% renewable electricity, all the gas you use is carbon offset with the Carbon Positive v3 tariff. E.ON will also plant five trees on your behalf, which will offset your carbon footprint even more. This deal is also fixed for a year, online only and with no exit fees, and you must agree to have a smart meter installed.
Different Tariffs by E.ON:
·       Next Flex
This is a variable tariff, so the rates you’re charged for your electricity and gas could go up or down, and there’s no end date or any exit fees.
·       Next 2 Year v4
Next 2 Year v4 is a two-year fixed deal with no exit fees. You must also agree to have a smart meter fitted to take out this tariff, which send your meter readings to your suppliers automatically and let you monitor your energy use and costs in real time.
·       Next 1 Year v4
This is the one-year version of the deal above and has the same monthly cost. As with all of E.ON Next’s tariffs, it comes with 100% renewable electricity and no exit fees.