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Comment by c-flow | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, in London, UK, local council doesn't allow you to put anything on your rooftop that doesn't gel with the Victorian look..

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It's a big town. You might want to specify which of the 33 boroughs this stupid policy exists in. There's no problem with solar where I live.

Is your building listed or something? In most cases it doesn't require planning permission even in a conservation area, and some councils are actively installing them on council houses.

The UK is actually world leading in wind electricity generation (especially offshore). So it's not all bad.

Not quite accurate anymore. The UK was indeed the world leader from 2008 until around 2021, but has since fallen to second place behind China. China now has over 41 GW installed (>50% of global capacity), while the UK sits at ~15 GW (~22%). [1][2]

Still impressive for a country of that size, but "world leading" is technically no longer correct.

[1] https://www.renewableuk.com/energypulse/blog/uk-wind-and-glo... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1489147/uk-offshore-wind...

ps.: Per capita it's also not #1 — Denmark and the Netherlands both have higher offshore wind capacity per person.

I guess we are. But who are the plants owned by, who built the and where did the components come from, are we also switching them off because our grid cannot handle transmit huge volumes of renewable energy from Scotland to London, and turning on gas power plants to make up for it.

You also have situations, like today, where a German developer has handed back a seabed lease for 3GW of offshore power because they didn’t get a contract for power from government (CFD) and their lease fees are approx £400m/yr if they want to continue developing the windfarm. This is after spending £1B already on lease fees with nothing to show for it.

The interconnection problem is being solved by several large cables down the east coast

Leasing the seabed before you win a CfD auction is a commercial risk but they probably didn't win because their bid price was too high

Their price was too high because it had to include paying back £1B of lease fees that were made as part of another government policy. Comes back to priorities being confusing, if the intention is lower bills why the lease fees, if the purpose is good jobs and independence, why compete on price? If their purpose is national wealth why not partial state funding / ownership?

For more amusement, look to Limerick, in Ireland, whose council tried to mandate all new homes have chimney stacks.

In Ireland all the rooms came with a substantial hole in the wall, mandated in case you decided to put something like a kerosene heater in your room, although the heating was electical. I generally had to block them off to stop the wind whistling through.

Right - I think it was to handle Carbon monoxide (and general ventilation). If you look at part F here I think current regs are 6500 square mm for most rooms https://www.seai.ie/sites/default/files/publications/Domesti...

(TBF Irish standards have gotten much better for airtightness)

That's more for ventilation to prevent damp etc (Ireland has humidity issues). Modern houses typically have MVHR instead.

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