@jamespa I’m unable to offer any solutions, I’m not an economist nor an electrical engineer, but accepting that something is broke is the first step in creating a remedy, the plaster needs to be ripped off. 
It always seemed obvious to me that modern nuclear was the best solution for the next 50 years and to do it cost effectively we should have have used the Chinese to build our facilities 10 years ago. Likewise for our rail network. Probably too late now. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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It always seemed obvious to me that modern nuclear was the best solution for the next 50 years and to do it cost effectively we should have have used the Chinese to build our facilities 10 years ago. Likewise for our rail network. Probably too late now. 

Chinese manufacturing has the ability to be very good quality indeed. Chinese quality control can also be top notch. However, examples of both of these can also very commonly be found to have cut massive corners. The latter tends to be in order to get goods out as cheaply as possible, and if we want "cost effective" nuclear plants, I'm not sure bargain basement is the way to go. Ditto any system of transport throwing large numbers of our populace around the country at high speed.

Of course, all too often, by keeping the manufacturing and installation closer to home, we're often seeing higher costs for delivering these infrastructure projects but without necessarily avoiding the corner-cutting. I don't think switching to Chinese supply is the answer; I think better transparency and project management is more to the point, and if we choose Chinese at that point then we're in a better position to ensure we're getting the best of Chinese not the bargain basement. Or any other foreign supplier, for that matter.

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@jamespa I’m unable to offer any solutions, I’m not an economist nor an electrical engineer, but accepting that something is broke is the first step in creating a remedy, the plaster needs to be ripped off. 
It always seemed obvious to me that modern nuclear was the best solution for the next 50 years and to do it cost effectively we should have have used the Chinese to build our facilities 10 years ago. Likewise for our rail network. Probably too late now. 

Nuclear was the best solution once - but probably isn't any more. Especially the mess we are making of it. It's IMHO too slow to build, too expensive to run and has horrendous failure cases. Even China has mostly run away from the UK nuclear projects and left EDF holding the ball. EDFs finance chief resigned because he considered the project too risky.

Your assumptions on rail are definitely off though. Apart from HS2 (which was a disaster when it became a political vanity project not a capacity fix, and then got worse and worse every time politicians meddled) the UK generally delivers railway projects pretty much on budget and much of the time on time too. We do that because they are designed by engineers and planners, delivered by people who know what they are doing and politicians only get to talk about it at the beginning, and pose on the platform at the end.

China has no real history in effective delivery of rail projects, rather they've got one of corruption, repeated failures of things like structures and relatively poor products. UK rail mostly at this point draws from Japanese companies like Hitachi and European ones like Stadler both of whom are actual leaders. There was some US influence but it's dropping away as US engineering remains focussed on high polluting diesel engines that don't remotely meet UK or EU regulation any more.

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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China has no real history in effective delivery of rail projects, 

Hmm, I think the last 25 years may disagree with that statement.

https://www.railway-technology.com/features/china-high-speed-rail-evolution/

A lot of folks don’t realise how far ahead of us they are now, in everything that matters. Our decades long preoccupation with the welfare state, investing massive state resources into the sick living a few months longer instead of into technology and infrastructure, has resulted in the UK becoming a barely working museum. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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A lot of folks don’t realise how far ahead of us they are now, in everything that matters. Our decades long preoccupation with the welfare state, investing massive state resources into the sick living a few months longer instead of into technology and infrastructure, has resulted in the UK becoming a barely working museum. 

I will remind everyone that this forum has a rule on avoiding overt discussions about politics. @papahuhu's post hasn't quite crossed the line IMHO, but any answer to it directly would need some very careful phrasing not to do so.

I'd prefer we move back away from opinions about how people are treated and cared for, and away from any danger of the broad brush of national stereotyping, and back to the underlying topic of potential energy production strategies.

@old_scientist I think not.

If you gave me a billion pounds and I sprayed a giant area of virgin wall with black paint you wouldn't conclude from the evidence that I was the new Leonardo da Vinci, especially if the paint was running down the wall with a drop of rain.

By most metrics the Chinese rail system has underperformed. It was expensive despite being mostly empty land, it's got significantly higher maintenance costs than were expected and there have been plenty of failures on the way - all the things you'd expect when you do a grand new project, in house and without the historic expertise. It's not really a useful assessment of their ability to deliver for others.

Also architecturally their railways are totally unlike ours in distance, sizing, weights and basic design choices. One of the advantages of being late to the party but also makes their whole basic rail architecture totally unlike ours.

You can make anyone the winner if you pick your metric. The US for example has the most cost effective railway network on the planet, and I believe it's still also the largest. That's because its lightly maintained, derailments are considered as just one of those things, lots of it runs at very low speeds and they don't in general have passengers so ignore a lot of safety on that basis.

The expertise and similar operating environments to ours are in Europe and Japan. The companies who deliver efficient, low TCO systems are mostly in those countries too.

Now that's about rail. Nuclear is a very different story indeed.

@majordennisbloodnok 

Deciding to partially ignore the social, ethical and economic implications of Newton and Darwin doesn’t make them dissolve away. The well managed state makes the hard but necessary decisions in the light of expanding knowledge, that’s at the root of our mediocracy. 

Posted by: @papahuhu

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@majordennisbloodnok 

Deciding to partially ignore the social, ethical and economic implications of Newton and Darwin doesn’t make them dissolve away. The well managed state makes the hard but necessary decisions in the light of expanding knowledge, that’s at the root of our mediocracy. 

Not sure who's wholly or partially ignoring anything, @papahuhu, but with my moderator hat on I'm not going to ignore that the discussion has been straying from a valid topic for this forum towards something that's not allowed. That's why I posted what I did so as to pre-emptively avoid any infringements.

@papahuhu getting back on track (no pun intended!), I can report that my effective export rate on Flux is averaging around 75% higher (~21p) than it was under SEG (12p). Octopus did calculate the whole period under Flux export rates despite taking 9 days to switch export over after switching my import.

I am also trying to maximise my export early in the session in case any savings sessions pop up in the 6-7pm window, so I dump the battery at 4pm, aiming to fully export it's contents by 6pm so as to limit any export to excess solar only between 6-7pm. That should help keep my baseline low in the 6-7pm window for future savings sessions. Every little helps!

Thoughts on quite a lot of areas including UK system financial costs and global carbon costs now the UK has been deindustrialised across many areas.

Interesting read even if you don't agree on everything he says.

https://dieterhelm.co.uk/energy-climate/the-cost-of-energy-and-what-to-do-about-it/

Be interesting to see how things evolve with a new prime minister with potentially dramatically more government intervention, taxes and spending, plus also potentially a new prime minister at the next general election with very different ideas again. 

Dieter regularly inputs into government policy and regularly writes on related subjects. Links to his work have been posted on the forum in the past. I have attended an event he spoke at. 

Posted by: @etchedpixels

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By most metrics the Chinese rail system has underperformed. It was expensive despite being mostly empty land, it's got significantly higher maintenance costs than were expected and there have been plenty of failures on the way - all the things you'd expect when you do a grand new project, in house and without the historic expertise. It's not really a useful assessment of their ability to deliver for others.

Also architecturally their railways are totally unlike ours in distance, sizing, weights and basic design choices. One of the advantages of being late to the party but also makes their whole basic rail architecture totally unlike ours.

Thanks, do you have a source. I am curious regarding differences in sizing and weights. In which ways are the railways that China built different from ours/Japan/Europe?