Another take on wind turbines

sgr143 said:
The O2 arena could get rather more renewable energy than from these toy-town turbines by putting solar panels all over their large roof area. I know it's curved and a bit flexy and all that, but that's something us sailing folk are used to dealing with - maybe we could help?
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it has been observed that qualifications for journalism mostly evade maths of any kind, so this reportage is unverified and highly dubious.

And the rush by so many to virtue signal by erecting windmills wherever (remember Cameron?) still raises a sigh. I note in Holand that mills are placed in industrial areas or along sea defences. Thd idea of introducing anything effective into the Greenwich conservation area is just daft.

And the potential weight of solar panels on the O2 roof is not an inconsiderable factor against, I would think. Easier on the Albert Hall - shall we campaign for that, wave our little virtue flags?

This whole debate of generating urban power fails the proportionality test.

PWG
 
Whitlock said:
I doubt it. My boat uses over 1Kwh per day and I'm sure that house dwellers use more than that.
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Mine is around 14kWh per day and I don't use that for space heating or hot water. O2 using 24 x that amount per day isn't too unbelievable (336kWh per day).

Ten of these tiny turbines producing that isn't even vaguely believable. They will make a (tiny) contribution and help produce some of the total energy needed.
 
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I think the average house electricity consumption is about 10kWh per day. In our last house, we used 3.5kWh per day - both out at work, out in the evening and away quite often - plus all the normal energy efficiency measures.
 
Whitlock said:
I doubt it. My boat uses over 1Kwh per day and I'm sure that house dwellers use more than that.
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See Typical Domestic Consumption Values
I was out by about a factor of two: Ofgem's numbers range from about 2000 to 7000 kWh per year, equivalent to about 5 to about 19 kWh per day. So about 0.5 kW overall, perhaps. That's just electricity usage: overall energy usage is considerably higher at about 195 kWh per day, or about 8kW averaged.
Ch 18 Page 103: Sustainable Energy - without the hot air | David MacKay
 
Thanks, JD. It's a bit sad that so many educated people including wind turbine manufacturers and Guardian energy correspondents confuse power (kW) with energy (kWh)
 
By the way, Ive been in touch with Alpha-311 offering to invest in their enterprise if they can verify their figures ?
 
Alan S said:
By the way, Ive been in touch with Alpha-311 offering to invest in their enterprise if they can verify their figures ?
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It will be interesting to read their reply. I briefly considered doing the same thing but didn't want to use my main email address and thought a gmail one would arouse suspicion that I was a Nigerian prince.
 
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Alan S said:
This works out at exactly 1 kW average over 1 year for one turbine only 68cm high!
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As a comparison, the absolute maximum efficiency of a disk turbine is 59% (the Betz limit) and at that efficiency it takes a wind speed of 15.2 m/s (30 kt, F7) to produce 1 kW. In practice a vertical axis turbine of that size would be lucky to run at 20% efficiency which would mean 21.8 m/s (42.4 kt, F9) for 1 kW.

As for turbines on lamp-posts producing useful power from the wakes of passing cars ... cobblers. This is somewhere between greenwashing and cake decorating.
 
Alan S said:
Thanks, JD. It's a bit sad that so many educated people including wind turbine manufacturers and Guardian energy correspondents confuse power (kW) with energy (kWh)
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Before you waded in I was responding to the statement, "... roughly speaking, a UK home uses electricity equivalent to about 1kW, on average over a year" which is incorrect.

While it is true that a kW is a measure of power it is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer.

You obviously see yourself as something of an expert and dismiss what I say, but I think it is a strange statement from you that wind turbine manufacturers and newspaper energy correspondents don't know what they are talking about.
 
Whitlock said:
Before you waded in I was responding to the statement, "... roughly speaking, a UK home uses electricity equivalent to about 1kW, on average over a year" which is incorrect.
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Kelpie said:
The willingness to engage in mass innumeracy really winds me up. We have a perfectly good set of SI units. So why does power consumption have to be measured in 'homes'.

It's starts young. I was reading my son a book about dinosaurs and it has a bit about a certain dino weighing as much as X number of elephants. He asked me if that was a lot. Like me, he has never picked up an elephant and had no idea what one would weigh. If the book simply told me the weight of the dinosaur in kg then I could have translated that easily into something that meant something to him- people, cars, cows, whatever.
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I think you miss the point of the comparison, relativeness, and how useful it is to make complex stuff simple to explain. If I think of an elephant in terms of displacement, 4 x legs is about a cubic meter, the body 3 cubic meters, the rest another cube: 5 cubic meters of water or about 5 tonnes.

It's the same with 'homes'. As we establish new sources of energy, people can easily understand that a wind farm development can power 100000 homes if they have basic idea about the size of somewhere to compare that with. If the power supply is expressed in wattage, some one is just going to make it a comparison anyway for those who are not like you.
 
You lot are very unkind. From the Alpha 311 website -
"Electric vehicles will turn our turbines and which will power more electric vehicles, in a beautiful never-ending cycle."
Yay!!! They've invented perpetual motion.
 
Here’s something to consider: my electric car (I won’t be buying another) has consumed 3,415kWh over the past 10,000miles.

If all new cars are to be electric - or partly electric - within 10 years; we’re going to need to really up the generation [game] :p
 
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