New nuclear power station @ Bradwell

I think that these wind farms are a bit of an eyesore,the only good that is coming out of the one at Sherringham is that they are having to dig out the entrance to Wells harbour ,so that you keel boaters can come up and visit.

The bit that i cant get a handle on,is that we have one of the greatest forms of free energy in the world,TIDES,why the heck can they not build a turbine type setup similar to the Hydro electric turbines and sink them,im sure that the regular tide could drive these quite efficiently and if you stagger them around the uk then there will be a constant source of power.

May as well visit Sea Palling whilst you can in the not too distant future it will be for scuba divers only
 
Err...ooops... I've think I've just been caught cross-threading /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

I just can't multi-task anymore /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I offer my sincere and heartfelt thanks to Fullcircle, of this parish, for the link wot I have now bookmarked

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The focus of wind power seems to be on supplying the national grid from large arrays. Could it be that the future is more fragmented?

On Marmalade, we run a number of systems perfectly adequately on 12V. Lighting, refrigeration, instruments and pumps all run without the need for 240V AC. My wind generator (one turbine only and miniscule by comparison) contributes greatly to this consumption.

Why couldn't we build houses with 2 circuits; a 12 or 24V circuit and 240V mains for the few appliances that need it. Then one or 2 small wind generators per house could supply all or most of the DC requirements and massively reduce the national grid draw.

In this day and age of terrorist attacks - there's also a benefit to removing single points of failure - each house with its own generating capability would certainly move us in that direction.

Am I being fanciful?
 
I think this is quite correct. The cost of adding various forms of supplemental energy for your own house (thermal or solar) has come down significantly in the last decade and there is a large choice of technologies and suppliers now. I think these will become more attractive and competitive as consumer demand increases.

11 years ago we installed a wood burning stove with a back boiler in addition to our main gas CH. No intention of this being our sole source of heating, but just nice to know that whenever we wanted a nice cheery glow it was also keeping the thermal store topped up. What we've found is that it's so efficient that when we have a fire the gas boiler never comes on at all - it was great during the recent cold spell. Next step is thermal solar panels on the roof - again, could supply 50-70% of our heating needs, which is the bulk of our gas consumption. Eventually a bit of wind power and/or solar power could fill in a lot, if not all, of the rest. With low gas prices there is no great economic incentive to do this but long term trends for gas supply and pricing/instability do not make me feel comfortable.

We also put in low voltage lighting all through the house when we built it so our main electricity consumption (lighting) is pretty low. However, the 20W halogens we used are probably going to be superseded when LED technology matures a bit more - it's only a matter of time. Then we might conceivably meet the entire house electrical needs with solar panels and a battery bank.

I didn't mention it but I fully agree with your comment about security of nuclear plants. They can be made secure against terrorist attack (pretty much, short of crashing a plane onto them I suppose) but again I have to ask at what cost? Some joined up thinking on a diverse and dispersed energy generation strategy just removes the issue completely.

Large industry will still need big generating plants but why oh why do we throw half the energy we use away as waste heat when it could be piped round local communities for heating and hot water like they do in Scandinavia and other countries? This is an embarrassing and criminal waste imho and an ideal candidate for an infrastructure project the Guvmint could spend all it's cash on to keep us working during the recession.

On final point and then I promise I've finished - despite all the "aesthetic" comments about the unattractiveness of wind turbines remember that in the end decommissioning them is simple, straightforward and leaves no lasting consequences. The same cannot be said for a nuclear power station - unless you like 200ft tall concrete sarcophogi scattered around the coast purely as handy sailing marks for the next few centuries???

There, I'm done now. Thank you for listening. I'm off.

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massive amounts of radioactive waste /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

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You have got to be joking /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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