Windfarm, Rannoch Moor.

BRASH said:
These things are a cancer on our landscape and Salmond is a disgrace for allowing them to be installed in such beautiful places. They are a false economy too. Don't let leftie hippy mugs try to convince you otherwise.
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TBH I would rather PS a few turbines than the obscene amount of telegraph poles in our countryside. Can you imagine the furore that current communication would create if they set about criss crossing the whole rural landscape with poles and pylons from scratch now? With regard to the economic viability of said turbines I have mixed views. Some are reliable and last well beyond their return on investment many times over some do not.
 
neil_g said:
is a nuclear power station not just as ugly/an eyesore? or this simply a case of NIMBY?

not to mention the ever increasing stockpiles of nuclear waste.
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How many turbines does it need to create the same power as one nuclear power station

I'd love to know if a wind turbine ever makes a profit, no wind, too much wind and they're braked,

How much do they cost to buy , assemble and maintain compared to the amount of electricity they produce on those perfect wind days

If they shut down all the nuclear power stations without replacing them I wonder how long it would be before the country is on it's knees because business has no power so we're all out of a job.

Land rover letting their foreign buyers they can't have their new evoke until a 12mph wind is forecast

All of this green b*****ks is to get people to spend money

We want to sell more cars so well bring in emissions limits , that's not enough so a perfectly useable car has to be replaced at god knows what cost to the environment because there's a warning light on the dash

I'm bloody sick of it
 
wack61 said:
How many turbines does it need to create the same power as one nuclear power station

I'd love to know if a wind turbine ever makes a profit, no wind, too much wind and they're braked,

How much do they cost to buy , assemble and maintain compared to the amount of electricity they produce on those perfect wind days

If they shut down all the nuclear power stations without replacing them I wonder how long it would be before the country is on it's knees because business has no power so we're all out of a job.

Land rover letting their foreign buyers they can't have their new evoke until a 12mph wind is forecast

All of this green b*****ks is to get people to spend money

We want to sell more cars so well bring in emissions limits , that's not enough so a perfectly useable car has to be replaced at god knows what cost to the environment because there's a warning light on the dash

I'm bloody sick of it
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This!!
 
wack61 said:
How many turbines does it need to create the same power as one nuclear power station

I'd love to know if a wind turbine ever makes a profit, no wind, too much wind and they're braked,

How much do they cost to buy , assemble and maintain compared to the amount of electricity they produce on those perfect wind days
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Considerable less than nuclear power. Whilst nuclear power station can produce electricity in abundance it is very expensive and the only private companies prepared to build them require a state subsidy.
 
Nuclear power stations are hugely expensive to build and run but the true cost of nuclear power doesn't kick in until they are at the end of they're lives. It takes decades to decomission one and their waste needs guarding and watching over for centuries.
 
That may be true but there isn't a viable alternative for generating the amount of electricity required to power gadget and power hungry 21st century Britain

Nuclear power stations aren't a UK problem, they're a global problem, if they build them and we don't so we lag behind the rest of the world with no electricity because its not windy it wont take long before Britain is as barren as some African countries

Employers create jobs, once the power goes off they'll move anywhere with nuclear power stations

do you think other governments aren't constantly watching to see if there's any sector they can control

Britain is where it is now becuase we had a navy to go and kick arse and the ingenuity and ability to develop ideas that became global successes
 
wack61 said:
What else is viable
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Only nuclear power (or fossil fuels) can provide 100% of the base load required. As things stand.
 
That's my view, if we ever got a government that decided to abandon conventional methods of generating electricity because they were too polluting the country would be on the slide to financial ruin

I read somewhere we're only ever 8 days from civil unrest once things start to fall apart because cash machines don't work and the shops are empty
 
chadders said:
Only nuclear power (or fossil fuels) can provide 100% of the base load required. As things stand.
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wack61 said:
That's my view, if we ever got a government that decided to abandon conventional methods of generating electricity because they were too polluting the country would be on the slide to financial ruin

I read somewhere we're only ever 8 days from civil unrest once things start to fall apart because cash machines don't work and the shops are empty
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its no good producing it if we cant afford to use it. Sellafield costs annually £1.6 billion pounds to run and that doesnt even produce electricity. The total estimated costs of decommissioning our current power stations stands at £100 biliion pounds, that is over a number of years but you can bet that those costs will only increase. The new deal on the power station at Hinkley is likely to exceed the cost of actually building the bloody thing at around £17 billion, thats £17 billion pounds to a french and possible chinese companies and this from a ideological based free market government :) At what point are we going to say enough is enough, it is absolutely pointless producing electricity that most people will not be able to afford to use unless the government is prepared to heavily subsidise it
 
It may be unpalatable to many, but wind cannot provide the base load. Even if we cover these islands in wind farms there will always be a time when there will not be enough electricity to supply the demand. No matter what the price might be. It's not a case of when is enough enough. I'm afraid that what is required is a range of technologies to supply our energy and wind will be a part of that, but it can never be all of it.
 
chadders said:
It may be unpalatable to many, but wind cannot provide the base load. Even if we cover these islands in wind farms there will always be a time when there will not be enough electricity to supply the demand. No matter what the price might be. It's not a case of when is enough enough. I'm afraid that what is required is a range of technologies to supply our energy and wind will be a part of that, but it can never be all of it.
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There is some work on Zinc Air batteries to store wind and solar power until needed but I doubt there's enough Zinc to make enough batteries to power the world overnight which is why I think a combination of wind and tidal and solar power is the way to go. But that has to be tied to more efficient usage of power, LEDs for lighting, flywheel generators for trains so they help to generate their own power etc. etc. we can't just keep using power at the rate we have been.
 
jakeblu said:
At what point are we going to say enough is enough, it is absolutely pointless producing electricity that most people will not be able to afford to use unless the government is prepared to heavily subsidise it
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"At what point are we going to say enough is enough, it is absolutely pointless producing electricity that most people will not be able to afford to use unless the government taxpayer is prepared to heavily subsidise it".

I think that's what you meant. Governments don't subsidise anything. It's all down to the taxpayer.

That brings me nicely to "free energy". From where I'm now sitting I have a grandstand view of part of Scout Moor and some of it's 26 2.6 mW turbines. The company who run this, Peel Holdings, wish to double the size. When this was first mooted publicly they had a spokesman on TV. When he was told that there was considerable opposition to the plans, his response was "Why would anyone oppose free energy?" Of course this particular buffoon was referring to energy (wind) that is free to Peel Holdings. Not the energy the that consumers are using. In fact they are paying for it twice over, firstly as consumers through their quarterly bill and secondly as taxpayers through the subsidy paid by the government.
 
chadders said:
"At what point are we going to say enough is enough, it is absolutely pointless producing electricity that most people will not be able to afford to use unless the government taxpayer is prepared to heavily subsidise it".

I think that's what you meant. Governments don't subsidise anything. It's all down to the taxpayer.

That brings me nicely to "free energy". From where I'm now sitting I have a grandstand view of part of Scout Moor and some of it's 26 2.6 mW turbines. The company who run this, Peel Holdings, wish to double the size. When this was first mooted publicly they had a spokesman on TV. When he was told that there was considerable opposition to the plans, his response was "Why would anyone oppose free energy?" Of course this particular buffoon was referring to energy (wind) that is free to Peel Holdings. Not the energy the that consumers are using. In fact they are paying for it twice over, firstly as consumers through their quarterly bill and secondly as taxpayers through the subsidy paid by the government.
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I am not advocating the use of any method of energy production, I know very little of the true costs, but we have been here before and in the eighties it was deemed that nuclear energy was not cost effective and it put the privatisation of the energy companies at risk. Even the new stations that are to be built are to be heavily subsidised, despite what Cameron & co say.
 
jakeblu said:
I am not advocating the use of any method of energy production, I know very little of the true costs, but we have been here before and in the eighties it was deemed that nuclear energy was not cost effective and it put the privatisation of the energy companies at risk. Even the new stations that are to be built are to be heavily subsidised, despite what Cameron & co say.
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Yes they will be, as are wind farms. Everything is subsidised. The alternative is the lights will be out, or we'll be paying the energy companies even more eye watering amounts than we do currently (pun not intended). Assuming you could ever persuade them to invest.
 
I don't understand why wind generators all have to be white, there's no reason why they can't be green or whatever the best colour to match their surrounding is surely? This at least might mitigate the eyesore problems tham some have.
 
The waste from coal fired power stations actually is quite radioactive
they are far worse for the planet than nuclear power
I think that onshore wind farms are generally a waste of time as already said they just make money for the landowners
wind farms at sea in windy places have to be a good idea
 
Steep said:
I don't understand why wind generators all have to be white, there's no reason why they can't be green or whatever the best colour to match their surrounding is surely? This at least might mitigate the eyesore problems tham some have.
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I couldn't agree more. There used to be a large, ugly edifice I passed on my way to work every day. It was only mitigated by the fact that from a distance it always blended in against the sky. Someone once said that it was a special paint they used. I don't know about that, but I would have thought that by that kind of technology existed. After all they spend a lot of money camouflaging aircraft and ships so why not wind farms?
 
I agree with using nuclear power. I can't see, given an increasing demand for power, how we can achieve carbon reduction targets and have a stable source of power without it.

Nuclear power definitely has its problems but we should be working to solve them. Although Hinckley Point C is being built and ignoring the understandable controversy about the price the Government have agreed to pay per megawatt-hour, it is not due to be completed until 2023.


We also need to look at renewable sources and energy as a whole.

Is there a need for some office blocks and shops to be illuminated at night, in the way some are now?

We are told the UK is in great need of new houses. Why not build these to a very high standard of insulation – I don't mean good standards for here but have a look at somewhere like Finland for insulation ideas. Yes, it would add to the initial costs but it could help to reduce our energy consumption.

The Y cube idea - Y cube shows that good insulation is possible -

“Thanks to its excellent insulation, a three-week trial conducted by YMCA has shown that each home can be lit and heated to 20° C (68° F) throughout the day and night for just £7 ($11) per week.” -

but even more could be done.


I quite like the look of wind turbines but I certainly would not want to see them on every hill top and they do seem to be popping up everywhere, but their reliance on an inconstant source makes them, I think, a less viable option.

Tidal power looks more useful. The main power generation would be only twice a day but we know exactly when it is going to happen and how much power can be generated. There is a successful small scale tidal generation scheme in Strangford Lough and while the lough's geography helps there must be other places where similar or larger schemes, with similar minimal impact, could be operated.

Think we also have to look to using more solar energy. Why not include solar panels on the new houses that are to be built, wherever it would be viable?


I found this article interesting, the figure on the second page is quite impressive - Solar generation

Germany is larger than than the UK and they have used a lot of land for solar panels, but I think a reasonable contribution to energy generation could come from solar energy.

There is the argument that solar generation happens when a lot of people are not at home, something which is a problem in Hawaii and California, but businesses need energy during the day. Why not require all new office and other commercial properties to incorporate solar panels (and wind turbines).


I just think there is a lot more that could be done but feel there is no real desire at governmental level to push it hard enough. This is not a go at the current shower; I haven't seen any government grasp the nettle.


Dave
 
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