Stratford lies on the outskirts east London in a convenient location on the underground map allowing quick transfer to central London and many of the London airports. This has been granted and trusted to host the 2012 Summer Olympics because of these superb transport factors and modern infrastructure which boasts some of the Stratford guest houses, each offering comfy and extremely pleasurable stays. This town is one of the 35 major centres recently identified in the London Plan.
The town takes its name from the Old English for street combined with ford meaning water crossing of the River Lea. Stratford Langthorne as it was originally named proudly showcased the Abbey of St Mary's which was founded in 1135 at this time was a dominating influence until the famous dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. These buildings do not exist today yet many archaeological investigations take place today all trying to discover how the whole process went.
This area was considered to be a part of the historic Essex countryside until the arrival of the railways in 1839 encouraging development from London to Stratford. Between 1889 to 1965 Stratford was governed and in the borough of West Ham its was only after the formation of Greater London in 1965 that the town became a part the London Borough of Newham.
Stratford has been a focus for investment for some years encouraging a popular shopping culture with many designer and famous brand names opening up in the modern and state-of-the-art shopping malls. As one would expect with shopping comes the need for rejuvenation, in Stratford the many bars, restaurants and bistros provide perfect places to find the very much needed rest and recuperation.
The worlds most famous sporting event, the Olympics is to be held in this fully capable city that, and what a success it will be, with the standard of the Stratford guest houses being among the crème de la crème of accommodations, fantastic nightlife and endless sites to be seen.
A well appointed restaurant can be found within the grounds of the guest house each presenting a divine eating environment that really does lye second to none. A wonderfully described menu awaits the diner who is spoilt for choice but once chosen speedily arrives at the table yet still surprising the guest as the meal appears exactly as described. The meals are prepared from fresh produce by experienced chefs who challenge themselves everyday to create the best meal possible.
Large single, double, twin and family suites are among the choices on offer at the St Andrews guest houses which each delightfully present a cosy yet fresh ambience that's both soothing and invigorating. High cotton count linen lye's draped across the comfy beds which also present the choice of pillow, offering hard, soft and medium feather soft pillows. The rooms are complete with en suite bathrooms that do fall shy of impressing even the most discerning traveller.
Plasma televisions with sky packages combining both movie and sports packages, DVD players, tea and coffee making facilities and high speed unlimited wireless internet are just an example of some of the in room facilities and amenities that are on offer.
The governing bodies of the Olympics came upon the decision to hold their world famous event in Stratford because the town presents everything a tourist could need including superb travel links, a well established shopping culture, vibey nightlife and an ancient culture which can easily and safely be explored. Every guest will experience an unforgettable vacation at the Stratford guest houses.	
​In this recent blog post I mentioned both California and Germany as sources of the growing evidence of the limits of renewables penetration. This post discussed California. This article on the energy collective which is repost of a German article by Heiner Flassbeck, a prominent and respected German economist discusses the German limits. The graph above from Flassbeck’s article illustrates the problem.
It was not necessary for Germany to build this amount of wind and solar to know that periods like December 2016 with low winds and low sunshine are possible. This shows low wind for periods of four to five days. Statistics show that low wind periods of up to two weeks are common in northern Europe. Sunshine in northern Europe is greatly reduced in winter, and weather can reduce it even more.
Flassbeck uses this practical evidence to discuss the economic impracticality of the current German path to a completely renewables based energy supply. Fassbeck’s concluding thoughts get to the heart of the issue. I quote:
“The example of Energiewende once again demonstrates that the traditional political approaches of our democracies are ill-equipped to solve such complex problems. Consequently, they pursue what I have recently called symbolic politics: democracies do something that is supposed to point in the right direction without thinking it through and without even taking note of the system-related consequences. If it goes wrong, the political predecessors were guilty and nobody feels responsible.
That is why citizens need to remain vigilant and critical. You can wish for a lot and always hope for a good outcome. But as important as wishes and hopes are, they are not yet solutions. We likewise have to use our minds when we would prefer to turn them off because the conclusions are so depressing.”
In previous posts I have stated my opinion that StratoSolar will not receive attention until current wind and solar actually are shown to be impractical solutions. Perhaps the emerging practical evidence from California and Germany will start to build that awareness.
PV is not a free market. It is dominated by China and the peculiarities of the Chinese economy. China is both the largest manufacturer and the largest consumer of PV. This has all occurred extremely rapidly over about the last five years. 2017 appears to potentially be a year of reckoning for PV, as this blog article neatly summarizes. The total historical PV cumulative installed capacity is about 300GW, most of it installed over the last few years. 2016 Installed capacity alone was about 70GW, with about 30GW of that in China. US installed a record 12GW in 2016, driven by the potential expiration of subsidy incentives. Most projections have 2017 world PV installations falling well below the 2016 70GW due to reductions in China and the US, with no major new growth area to compensate.
These reductions stem in part from the limited ability of electricity grids to absorb PV. The long-term limit is based on the capacity factor limit of grids to absorb intermittent sources. We are far from this limit, but short term constraints are showing up at very low levels of PV penetration. China’s current limit is the lack of long distance transmission capacity to take the power from the deserts in the west to the users in the east. As discussed in this blog post, California is hitting problems due to the inability of fossil generation to ramp up and down quickly enough to compensate for rapidly changing PV generation as the sun sets.
Advocates for PV are focused on the falling cost of PV generation and seem to assume that once PV becomes the lowest cost of generation the world will magically switch to solar energy. The reality is far from this rosy scenario. The real cost of PV electricity will increasingly have to factor in the additional costs needed to incorporate it into the electricity supply system. California is showing the need for storage at very low levels of penetration and China is showing the need for long distance HV-transmission. Both technologies are expensive and in need of development, particularly electricity storage. They are both additions to the current grid and both exceed the cost of PV generation. Add to this the geographical variability of solar, particularly at northern latitudes and the economic case for solar to be a large scale, economically viable supplier of electricity is far in the future.
StratoSolar is low cost generation with low cost, fast response storage built in and no need for long distance transmission. It has no daytime intermittency problem and it works well at northern latitudes. It needs relatively minor short term development to prove its viability. In contrast, the storage and HVDC transmission technologies needed to make ground PV viable are in many ways more speculative, unproven and longer term than StratoSolar.