Windfarms

[pgtips]

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

I'm careful enough, perhaps you just don't like what gets said.

So you see no energy crunch ahead - purely due to the saving grace of windfarms?

Apologies - thought you were implying that we were all paying £45 /MWh in subsidy! Just keen to make sure everyone has the facts on how the RO works.

Me too!

A parliamentary written answer revealed that the cost of the Renewables Obligation - those government certificates issued to wind farm operators that make wind power economical to run in the first place through taxpayer subsidies which we're discussing - will be £25 billion between 2002 and 2027.

That's what we're all paying and it amounts to more than £1000 per household. Or has somebody misled parliament?

£25bn over 26 years spread over a cumulative total of 10,000 TWh (assuming demand stays approx the same as today) equals £3 /MWh. In your £1000 per household I think you have forgotten that commercial and industrial customers also pay the RO. Agreed that if only domestics paid the RO it would amount to approx £1000 over a 26 year period, but you need to include industrial and commercial use as well. Hence better to look at it on a £/MWh basis and the headline is dramatically less than £1000 / household.

You've forgotten that commercial and industrial consumers pass on cost increases. What idealistuic world do you inhabit?

Uh? Right - so following your logic we live in a closed, single system

Uh? And how complex does your system have to be to realise that as fuel and energy costs increased recently, the price of goods and services to households increased too? You are living in a dreamworld full of windymills where others swallow your information pollution.

You joined PH, have started one or two threads in the entire time on here (any car related?) and have only replied to this one, plus one on electric cars, and a couple of smokescreen domestics. No cars listed. Perhaps we should ask which internet rapid response group you belong to, or which vested interest organisation you have links with. Either way you make no sense but keep it up, at least you might learn something from others' replies.

Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 11th November 09:32

No offence intended - and certainly won;t be taking this to a personal level. Just enjoy debating on the power sector (you will see from my few other posts that it is one of the few things I do comment on here!) and hopefully correcting a few facts on the costs of the RO.

As I have said before - a role for windyills and other forms of generation - seems to be the concensus amongst most posters and hardly controversial. Yes - the RO costs money, but not £45 /MWh. Not sure where you get the impression I have a vested interest?

[ratbane]

With this nations propensity to flood, would it not be more appropriate to develop small turbine hydroelectric schemes in streams/rivers.

I have a pretty high energy stream adjacent to my cottage, which would probably run the 10/15 houses in my area.

Grants for this would be far more appropriate than wasting money on windfarms.

[fadeaway]

ratbane said:

With this nations propensity to flood, would it not be more appropriate to develop small turbine hydroelectric schemes in streams/rivers.

I have a pretty high energy stream adjacent to my cottage, which would probably run the 10/15 houses in my area.

Grants for this would be far more appropriate than wasting money on windfarms.

According to all the articles I've seen, wind is the most appropriate renewable for the UK. Doesn't mean it's suitable though - just the best of a bad bunch!

[turbobloke]

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

pgtips said:

turbobloke said:

I'm careful enough, perhaps you just don't like what gets said.

So you see no energy crunch ahead - purely due to the saving grace of windfarms?

Apologies - thought you were implying that we were all paying £45 /MWh in subsidy! Just keen to make sure everyone has the facts on how the RO works.

Me too!

A parliamentary written answer revealed that the cost of the Renewables Obligation - those government certificates issued to wind farm operators that make wind power economical to run in the first place through taxpayer subsidies which we're discussing - will be £25 billion between 2002 and 2027.

That's what we're all paying and it amounts to more than £1000 per household. Or has somebody misled parliament?

£25bn over 26 years spread over a cumulative total of 10,000 TWh (assuming demand stays approx the same as today) equals £3 /MWh. In your £1000 per household I think you have forgotten that commercial and industrial customers also pay the RO. Agreed that if only domestics paid the RO it would amount to approx £1000 over a 26 year period, but you need to include industrial and commercial use as well. Hence better to look at it on a £/MWh basis and the headline is dramatically less than £1000 / household.

You've forgotten that commercial and industrial consumers pass on cost increases. What idealistuic world do you inhabit?

Uh? Right - so following your logic we live in a closed, single system

Uh? And how complex does your system have to be to realise that as fuel and energy costs increased recently, the price of goods and services to households increased too? You are living in a dreamworld full of windymills where others swallow your information pollution.

You joined PH, have started one or two threads in the entire time on here (any car related?) and have only replied to this one, plus one on electric cars, and a couple of smokescreen domestics. No cars listed. Perhaps we should ask which internet rapid response group you belong to, or which vested interest organisation you have links with. Either way you make no sense but keep it up, at least you might learn something from others' replies.

Edited by turbobloke on Tuesday 11th November 09:32

No offence intended - and certainly won;t be taking this to a personal level. Just enjoy debating on the power sector (you will see from my few other posts that it is one of the few things I do comment on here!) and hopefully correcting a few facts on the costs of the RO.

As I have said before - a role for windyills and other forms of generation - seems to be the concensus amongst most posters and hardly controversial. Yes - the RO costs money, but not £45 /MWh. Not sure where you get the impression I have a vested interest?

Well OK, but without information to the contrary there is enough to question the degree of spin and legerdemain inherent in some of your replies. That's not personal either it's just a view. Everyone on here will form their own view.

As to consensus - not so, such reasoning by assertion is simply not credible. There is no such consensus visible. Consensuses have little to offer anyway, even if this diminishes both sides of the argument. The facts speak for themselves - wind energy is a pointless diversionary and costly waste of good countryside, offshore we have even worse economics problem without the RO subsidy from taxpayers.

The diverting of attention away from the immediate need for nuclear power to bolster our dire energy security is culpable.

[Apache]

To cut to the chase, is the cause for my domestic bills trebling due to the tax imposed to pay for windmill farm subsidies? if so can I have evidence as I feel a wave of indignation about to engulf me and cause my MP to suffer yet another electronic rant

[Tafia]

Harsh said:

so basically what we're all saying is....

there's no coordinated and efficient answer to our energy supply issues?

Build nuclear quick..........but the French will do that for u, which could be another reason we are seeing such high energy costs. Better retun on French investment?

[Tafia]

ratbane said:

If windfarms are considered the correct path politically, then sobeit. We can't do much about that.

My biggest gripe is that the windfarm lobotomists parp on about them being clean/green friendly machines.

They are not!. It takes vast amounts of energy to make them. This is not an exclusive list but the process includes....

1. Mining ores to construct them. Copper, aluminium, iron (and some nasties),
2. Smelting the ores (requires coal etc, - more mining),
3. Huge concrete bases require aggregates and cement (cement requires a huge amount of energy to produce).

All (well most) of the energy to produce these items comes from fossil fuels!!!!

There is no environmental benefit to wind farms!

Edited by ratbane on Monday 10th November 10:28

Spot on sir.

[ratbane]

Tafia said:

ratbane said:

If windfarms are considered the correct path politically, then sobeit. We can't do much about that.

My biggest gripe is that the windfarm lobotomists parp on about them being clean/green friendly machines.

They are not!. It takes vast amounts of energy to make them. This is not an exclusive list but the process includes....

1. Mining ores to construct them. Copper, aluminium, iron (and some nasties),
2. Smelting the ores (requires coal etc, - more mining),
3. Huge concrete bases require aggregates and cement (cement requires a huge amount of energy to produce).

All (well most) of the energy to produce these items comes from fossil fuels!!!!

There is no environmental benefit to wind farms!

Edited by ratbane on Monday 10th November 10:28

Spot on sir.

The last I was told (and this may have changed a little over the past few years), is that the wind turbines planned for a site which I was being consulted on, would take at least 20 years to achieve an "environmental" balance. They were expected to be obsolete well before 20 years.

Edited by ratbane on Tuesday 11th November 15:22

[Tafia]

Harsh said:

tinman0 said:

Harsh said:

I believe some of the comments above are slightly short sighted.

i tend to agree that current technology means they dont make a huge amount of sense in todays world.

however, looking at things long term......
improvements in technology will mean that power is generated more efficiently
and
higher unit power costs will mean the payback time for the units will fall considerably.

renewable energy is the future, how quickly it becomes the norm will depend on how quickly the development happens.

just my 2p

Yes and no. I can see where you are coming from but there are technical dead ends, and from what I can tell wind turbines are one of those dead ends.

What you see today isn't the result of a few years work, its the result of over 100 years of research and development. The first electricity producing windmill is 1888 in fact. Hardly recent. So we are talking 120 years so far and frankly, its still not very good.

i know what you mean Justin, but i was more focussing on the conversion efficiency and also the storage of produced power....this applies not only to windpower but to photovoltaic cells.

at the moment, their efficiency levels are dire but (certainly with pv) we're at the start of the road.
oil gas and coal are finite resources, nuclear is far too dirty and dangerous to be a long term solution....we dont actually have a lot of choice.

if you couple better efficiency levels with reduced energy demands (from more efficient lighting, consumer goods etc) then we may see it become viable.

just not right now.
however its the only road we can travel and be sustainable

At current (geddit?) consumption levels we have over 500 years coal reserves and 3 trillion barrels of recoverable oil. Add shale oil to that and we have another trillion. To put that in perspective, we have used 1 trillion barrel of oil to date. Production technology and advanced drilling techniques means recoverable reserves have increased with time, not diminished.

As for nuclear being dangerous, have more folks been killed in the nuclear industry or the coal industry? As for waste, ask the Fins how to store waste safely for 10,000 years!

As for storage of wind power they do that in Alaska with huge banks of batteries. When the wind drops that gives them just 15 minutes to start the diesel generators. Wind generation is an expensive joke

[Tafia]

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=3...


See this para:

"Because of the intermittent nature of wind, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas uses a figure of only 8.7% of wind power's installed capacity when determining available power during peak periods.

On cloudy and windless days, solar and wind are useless and require conventional power sources as backup. Output is not steady and cannot be increased on demand. You can't make the sun shine brighter or the wind blow harder during peak periods."

[fluffnik]

Apache said:

To cut to the chase, is the cause for my domestic bills trebling due to the tax imposed to pay for windmill farm subsidies? if so can I have evidence as I feel a wave of indignation about to engulf me and cause my MP to suffer yet another electronic rant

Noising up your electeds never hurts.

[fluffnik]

ratbane said:

I have a pretty high energy stream adjacent to my cottage, which would probably run the 10/15 houses in my area.

Get the grant app. in!

[turbobloke]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/rsp...

[mybrainhurts]

turbobloke said:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/rsp...

Brians....phew, got worried there for a moment

The RSPB was infiltrated by greenfreaks long ago.

I keep sending their begging letters back with suitable comments, but still the arses send them...

[turbobloke]

mybrainhurts said:

turbobloke said:

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/rsp...

Brians....phew, got worried there for a moment

It couldn't be bats...

mybrainhurts said:

The RSPB was infiltrated by greenfreaks long ago.

Many wildlife groups are on the junkscience bandwagon, short-termism and expediency rules.

[mattviatura]

Is it true that they don't work properly if it's too er... windy?

[Beyond Rational]

I have a question for the boffins; can you send the power from the power stations to make the windfarms into huge fans, thus solving all global warming issues in a instant?

[anonymous-user]

Beyond Rational said:

I have a question for the boffins; can you send the power from the power stations to make the windfarms into huge fans, thus solving all global warming issues in a instant?

You're some sort of twisted genius

[Lefty Guns]

Skywalker said:

Surely the offshore farms would be better?

Would they not have less noise & visual pollution. I'd prefer them to a bking gas or coal power station in fairness.

(ETA - They work well on Sim City if you put them near the edge of the map)

Edited by Skywalker on Sunday 9th November 10:46

Aye but they're too feckin expensive. It takes so long to recoup CAPEX that they may never break even.

[cazzer]

Beyond Rational said:

I have a question for the boffins; can you send the power from the power stations to make the windfarms into huge fans, thus solving all global warming issues in a instant?

But potentially altering the rotation of the planet and thus time itself.