
Eigg – A small Scottish isle that runs on 90-95% renewable energy - ayanai
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170329-the-extraordinary-electricity-of-the-scottish-island-of-eigg
======
spodek
If you haven't read _Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air_ , by David
Mackay, I recommend it.

Free download: [http://withouthotair.com](http://withouthotair.com)

About the author:

David MacKay FRS is the Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of
Cambridge. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and then obtained his PhD
in Computation and Neural Systems at the California Institute of Technology.
He returned to Cambridge as a Royal Society research fellow at Darwin College.
He is internationally known for his research in machine learning, information
theory, and communication systems, including the invention of Dasher, a
software interface that enables efficient communication in any language with
any muscle. He was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Physics at
Cambridge in 1995 and was a Professor in the Department of Physics from 2003
to 2013. Since 2005, he has devoted much of his time to public teaching about
energy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Nine months after the publication of 'Sustainable Energy - without the hot
air', David MacKay was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of
Energy and Climate Change.

TED talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0W1ZZYIV8o)

Harvard talk:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE)

~~~
simonbarker87
Excellent book and a thoroughly nice chap. He also name-checked my business as
an example of a nice effective energy product at a DECC event a few years ago,
which was flattering and unexpected (radfan.com for those interested).

Update: I had no idea he had passed, such a loss.

~~~
mistermann
You should build a little _battery operated_ fan that you open your dishwasher
door a little bit and set it in there to gently circulate some air to do the
final evaporation that dishwashers cannot do, you would sell millions of them.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Couldn't manufacturers just add a low level fin/spoiler to the top of the
rotating water outlet ["spray bar"/"spray arm"], run the rotation at low speed
as a fan. Seems all the tech barring a slight raised area to catch the air a
little is already built in; even just slowly rotating the "spray bar"
unmodified probably would give enough air-flow? I can't imagine I'm the first
person to think of that [too late to patent it!] bet you there's a company
that has/had it as a feature?? One might even pump air down the spray bar
using the systems already in place but with no water-flow; residual heat in
the pipes might aid the process too?

FWIW some dish-washers have a built in fan eg "TurboHeat Dry" on Kenmore.

~~~
mistermann
I paid like $500 extra for the auto-open feature on my Miele, but even getting
that spendy, the fan only runs for ten minutes after the door opens, so some
things still can be a bit damp. It infuriates me that they went to this
complexity, but then don't let you lengthen the fan runtime. It's almost like
they want to minimize your happiness per $.

------
david-given
To be fair, Eigg is hardly a big consumer of electricity. I was there in
December of 2006. I was staying in the guest house --- there's only one. I was
the only tourist there. At one point I was kidnapped and taken to their
community nativity play (which was actually a lot of fun). But the population
is only 83, so running the whole place off renewable energy isn't difficult.

Fuzzy pictures from my trip here; the first few are from Mallaig, the other
end of the ferry link:

[https://goo.gl/photos/GQNcBpE4vVgv1A1i7](https://goo.gl/photos/GQNcBpE4vVgv1A1i7)

~~~
david-given
...addendum: there's actually a huge pile of small power generation facilities
springing up all over the Western Isles and nearby mainland. But the purpose
of most of these is to produce passive income.

e.g. in Applecross on the mainland nearby, they're just finishing installation
of a community-funded hydro system. It'll produce 90kW, with an income of
about 100k GBP a year going towards the community and small shareholders:
[http://www.applecrosshydro.scot/](http://www.applecrosshydro.scot/)

90kW is a toy, though. It's not going to provide energy independence for
anyone. Rather more significant is the estate across the loch from my father's
village, which is installing 3.5MW of private hydroelectricity:
[http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2016/06/gilkes-begins-
con...](http://www.hydroworld.com/articles/2016/06/gilkes-begins-construction-
of-three-small-hydroelectric-plants-in-scotland.html)

But a 3.5MW plant, if we assume it runs at 100% capacity for a year, is going
to produce 0.02TWh of energy, which is about 2 ktoe (kilotons of oil
equivalent). In 2015 the UK used 140000 ktoe, of which only about 20000 ktoe
are electricity.
([https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/573269/ECUK_November_2016.pdf))

These systems are important locally, but they're not going to run cities.

 _Edit_ : misread one of the graphs, corrected the number above. (The stupid
graphs all have lines in slightly different shades of bodily function. Maybe
they were trying to make a point.)

~~~
pjc50
> not going to run cities

No, that's the big mostly offshore wind farms. Currently sitting at 12% of
demand: [http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)

Energy independence on the personal level is as much of a pipe dream as
economic independence. You might be able to achieve it at great expense, but
what for? Even on Eigg the islanders are on a little grid.

~~~
david-given
That's a really cool site. Thanks for linking to it.

...but I do need to point out that 12% of _electrical_ demand is about 1800
ktoe, which is only about 1% of total _energy_ demand. We use about six times
more petroleum energy that all electrical demand put together.

~~~
pjc50
Well, yes. That's the great unanswered problem of the world; what do we do
when that runs out or we can't burn it without exceeding safe CO2 limits?

Scotland already went through a period of energy resource shortage in the
1800s when there were very few trees left. Going back to only locally
renewable resources might be like that again.

~~~
david-given
Well, _my_ preferred solution is gigantic offshore tidal power generators in
the Minch and around the top of Scotland where there are strong currents,
preferably combined with hundred-kilometre-wide offshore wind farms (if you're
building power generation structures in the open ocean anyway, you're an idiot
if you don't put massive wind turbines on top of them).

Tide is one of the few renewable technologies that generates reliable power,
and so is suitable for baseline load. Even in Scotland, the wind drops. But
it's had very little investment, partly because of a poor reputation from
horrific ecological damage caused by tidal barrages in the past, but mostly
because wind is sexier.

But plants big enough to actually make a difference are going to be very, very
big. Microgeneration is great for small rural communities, but we live in
cities these days.

Here's a new 320MW tidal lagoon being built in Wales:
[http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-
bay/](http://www.tidallagoonpower.com/projects/swansea-bay/) These only work
when attached to a coastline, though.

~~~
jdmichal
So that tidal lagoon... Is it basically a two-way dam that's taking advantage
of the height differential between the interior and exterior? That's a pretty
cool way to do it. Seems much simpler and more reliable than those wave-
powered things that come out in news articles every once in a while.

------
arethuza
Geology trivia: An Sgùrr, the shapely wee hill that features in the pics, is
interesting as it started off as a valley that was filled with lava and ended
up lasting longer than the surrounding rocks

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_(Eigg)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_\(Eigg\))

~~~
draegtun
Here's are some pics i took from _nearby_ Ardnish on October last year -
[https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/cS5bQE](https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/cS5bQE)

------
martinald
Considering this required £1.6m of subsidy (£20,000 per person) , only being
able to hit 90% renewable, with loads of gotchas (like serious rationing)

If you scaled this out to the UK, it means it would cost £1.2trillion to reach
90% renewable electricity.

While there will be some economies of scale and you probably wouldn't use
diesel for backup, the UK doesn't have enough hydro to do this model, so it's
likely the £20,000 per person subsidy would actually be way higher.

I think people are really underestimating the capital required to get past
30-40% renewable. It starts getting _seriously_ expensive once you get past
the easy bit (wind + solar).

Govt seems very happy to agree to a 90% renewable target by 2050 (say). There
doesn't seem to be any costing at all to see how we get there.

~~~
phaemon
Scotland already generates more than 60% of its electricity from renewables.

~~~
masklinn
Easy to do when you've got a shit-ton of hydro, which is the case of Scotland
(85% hydro, and pretty much the entire potential capacity is installed).

For instance Iceland is 100% electricity and 85% primary energy from
renewables, not exactly hard when you've got massive amounts of geo and hydro
(respectively 27% and 83% for electricity, 65% and 20% for primary energy).
Good luck applying that to Belgium or Florida.

~~~
pjc50
[http://www.hi-energy.org.uk/renewables/hydro-energy.htm](http://www.hi-
energy.org.uk/renewables/hydro-energy.htm) says 12%, which seems more
realistic. That page also says it's been overtaken by wind power.

Both Belgium and Florida seem like good candidates for offshore wind, although
I'd be worried about hurricanes in Florida.

~~~
oblio
Well, Belgium and Florida are kind of ok. But what would you do with Poland,
which has basically no wind, solar or hydro generation potential? Life's going
to be hard for some countries.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Just get them to pay a carbon tax which can be used to pay for installing
renewable in the places where it makes sense. It's a global problem, and it
needs global solutions.

And if they do happen to figure out something that's cheaper than the carbon
tax they're paying (maybe they can extract biogas from waste food, sewage or
farm slurry or maybe they just super-insulate their homes to save fuel) then
they have an immediate financial incentive to roll it out.

------
guycook
Sounds like an interesting place, I loved Isle of Skye when I travelled that
area. I think the article might be overselling the "leading the world in
energy" angle though -- I too live on an island where > 98% of the energy is
from renewable sources [1], and it has over a million people on it.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Island#Energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Island#Energy)

------
rodionos
> The £1.66m project largely was financed by the European Union’s European
> Regional Development Fund

This should be mentioned in the opening paragraph.

~~~
sulley_long
Why?

~~~
smcl
Because we literally handed over a piece of paper yesterday formally starting
the process whereby we'd leave the EU. I suspect the parent feels like this is
a project that might not have had access to this kind of funding outside the
EU in an independent UK

~~~
sulley_long
Where do you think the money for the funding came from?

Net contributors to the EU, like the UK. We gave the EU more than they spent
on us (of course, because there are poorer European countries).

You make it sound like you think EU funding money was a gift from other
people. It was them doing us the favour of giving us some of our own money
back.

If we choose to, we can spend exactly the same money in exactly the same way.
Or we could democratically decide amongst ourselves to do something different
with it.

~~~
smcl
It is my opinion that a small-scale renewable energy project on an island
community of <100 people would be unlikely to get 1.66M GBP from the UK
government. Perhaps the Scottish government would _want_ to, but have
considerably less means to do so as they still have a relatively modest
budget.

~~~
sulley_long
You're telling me that the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way
to bypass the people's democratic representatives when they won't do what you
personally want?

> would not get 1.66M GBP from the UK government

They did get 1.66M from the UK government. It just went involuntarily via the
middleman of the EU.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>the benefit of the EU was that it was an effective way to bypass the people's
democratic representatives //

The EU is democratically representative too, in a very similar way to the UK
parliament. They have the same shortfalls. It just happens that across the EU
there is more support for solving the energy crisis than there is in UK
Conservative government. In part that's because IMO the EU looks more long
term whilst the UK government appears only to be concerned about getting
through the next one election. In part it's because the liberal and green
elements that aren't properly represented in the UK, because we lack
proportional representation, don't get to pressure our government locally but
do get to represent the _demos_ in the EU. It's the EU's better, ie more
representative, democracy that causes the leap-frogging.

>They did get 1.66M from the UK government. //

Not really, sure the UK provided their part share of that, but they were
forced to by the elected EU layer of government. The major share came from the
other EU countries. Germany pays around twice the contribution of the UK and
with France, Italy, and Spain we pay about 50% of the contribution. So the
money is about 0.83M from these 5, perhaps about 0.2M from the UK government.

>involuntarily via the middleman //

The UK voluntarily, through a democratic process, joined the EU. The nation
chose to put itself in the position where it would contribute the 0.2M and the
other countries would add their 1.5M to enable projects such as this all
across Europe.

------
lliiffee
The project cost £1.66m. With a total of 83 residents, that's about $25,000
per person. It would be interesting to compare this to the total investment
needed for a typical non-renewable power infrastructure. This doesn't seem
outrageously expensive, though (as the article mentions) this might be out of
reach for communities in developing countries.

~~~
indogooner
Yeah but the developing countries do not have that much of a power
requirement. In India most villages would be fine with just the fans and
lighting. 5 units (kWh) should be sufficient for the whole day for a
household. I am not sure how much of £1.66m was on solar.

~~~
davedx
5 kwh still sounds like a lot. Our house in the Netherlands uses about 10/day
with a family of 6.

~~~
indogooner
Actually a large part of rural India still uses 60/100W light bulbs (filament
ones) instead of LEDs as they are much cheaper(1/15th). I took 75W ceiling
fans + 100W for the bulbs ~ (75W _20hrs + 60W_ 10hrs)*3rooms. I agree this is
still on the higher side as all fans won't be running all the time and would
be zero during winters (~3 months).

------
openasocket
I don't mean to downplay this achievement, but I've always thought that
renewable power, as it is today, isn't going to scale to meet global energy
demand. One of the biggest issues is that it's nontrivial to store electrical
energy. I think the holy grail for renewable power is farming algae for
biodiesel. Essentially solar power, only we get out chemical energy in the
form of gasoline instead of electricity. Burning that gasoline would be carbon
neutral, since the carbon was taken from carbon dioxide in the air during
photosynthesis. Gasoline is much easier and cheaper to store than electricity,
we can use existing power infrastructure to burn it, and it makes the
transition from fossil fuels to renewable power trivial. Plus the organism
just needs sunlight and nutrients and it will self-replicate, so will be much
cheaper than solar panels.

I think we're probably decades away from this being a reality. More research
needs to be done, and we'll almost certainly need to genetically modify the
algae to produce more butane/octane/etc.

~~~
L_Rahman
Here's a paper that lays out a plan to switch the US to 100% wind, water and
sunlight based power by 2050 and 80% by 2030.

There are non trivial problems to solve, but the core set of technologies
already exist or are experiencing Moore's law like cost curves.

[https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USSt...](https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USStatesWWS.pdf)

~~~
pilom
That report is better than most but it relies on the assumptions that 1) the
grid can route power nearly instantaneously from LA to NYC with very low
losses and 2) on cuts in per person energy use by 30-50% (primarily by
switching to electric cars). I see both of those assumptions being even less
likely than 3) we cover 6240 square miles (5 Rhode Islands) with solar panels.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
For comparison, roads and parking cover the same area as the entire state of
West Virginia, roughly 24,000 square miles or 62,000 square kilometers.

------
bfirsh
I went a couple of years ago and can highly recommend it for work retreats.
Very peaceful, enthusiastic islanders, and a surprisingly good internet
connection. (Transit comes from a nearby university, then fibre to the coast,
then a microwave link to the island, then small microwave links for each
house, IIRC.)

Here are some films somebody I went with made about the internet and the
island shop:

[http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-
scale](http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-scale)
[http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-
scale...](http://text.louisedowne.com/post/relative-economies-of-scale-ii)

------
pilom
I'm bothered that so many people on here see the rationing that these people
do as such a bad thing. The easiest way to increase the percentage of
renewable energy that you personally use is through cutting usage and limiting
peak demand. The energy company you pay will always use their renewable
generating capacity because the unit cost of that energy is 0 compared to >0
for fossil fuel power. If your electric company all of a sudden needed to
generate 50% less power, they would cut fossil fuel plants first.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There's no heat! Except in the community hall and church. I went in wondering
how they deal with that. They never say. Burning peat? Wood? Just staying
cold? Its the most important part of the consumer energy equation. Here, at
5kW per household max, there's no way they can heat using electricity.

------
1ba9115454
There's no doubt in my mind that this is the way power is going. I might still
be alive to see the last coal/oil/nuclear power stations get switched doff.

~~~
fche
> a traffic light system is set up at the pier. A red light requests residents
> to limit their usage; a green light, normal usage.

That seems like a dystopia.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You'd be terrified to know that some utilities will actually disable your AC
or electric water heater remotely during periods of peak power usage if you've
agreed to receive a discount for them to do so.

Signaling conservation requests isn't dystopian.

~~~
fche
Not terrified, just amused that people hold these rationing schemes up as some
sort of victory.

~~~
vkou
Every system that distributes scarce goods requires rationing.

Sometimes, we ration equal amounts, based per person.

Sometimes, we ration unequal amounts, based on how many
dollars/denars/quatloos each person is willing to pay.

Sometimes, we ration unequal amounts, by asking people who don't really need a
good to voluntarily stop consuming it.

There are pros and cons to each system - but all of them are rationing
systems.

------
fche
So their main generator is a standard hydro turbine, 100kW, and they have some
wind/solar toys producing so little on average as to be just for show. And
they suffer rationing and higher-than-normal prices.

This seems like a design anti-pattern.

~~~
pjc50
Maybe you've missed that they're an island and this is the cheaper alternative
to diesel? They've done this all with their own money, they're not a VC firm
willing to make big investments "just for show".

~~~
fche
> "The £1.66m project largely was financed by the European Union’s European
> Regional Development Fund,"

perhaps that explains the desirability of "for show" elements

~~~
vfclists
That is far less then the bonuses received by some _individual bankers_ who
only received them because their banks were bailed out by taxpayers, in the EU
and elsewhere, which I presume includes some of the inhabitants of Eigg.

~~~
thecopy
Why is that revelant?

~~~
vfclists
Because egregious misuses of public funds don't get the attention they
deserve.

How does a subsidy of £1.66 million for an investment which serves a whole
community compare with a single payment for the personal consumption of an
individual who belongs to a group whose acts have resulted in economic
depression for the last 10 years?

------
haffi112
On a national level have a look at Iceland:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Iceland)

~~~
derblitzmann
Do keep in mind that Iceland has a small population and the geology to support
geothermal energy, which most other nations can't leverage.

------
trengrj
New Zealand has been 80% renewable for many years (at least for electricity).
We do have a great mix of geothermal and hydro but it can definitely be done
at a country wide scale.

