South Coast Wind farm

[Aries]

Wind Farms

Imay have missed it in your link, but I see only successful installation of CAPACITY, nothing about successful OUTPUT.

An article in The Times yesterday said that the pylons only had a twenty year life. Does that make them economic or are the costs being hidden by subsidy?

I have yet to find a good justification for the whole life costs of these.

 

[Robin]

But what are your plans for dealing with the waste ?

Boo2

Having read some of your rude responses on here I can think of somewhere quite appropriate to stuff it.

You dream on, I want the lights to stay on.

 

[oldharry]

I dont like the idea of wind farms, and have yet to be convinced of their viability, cost effectiveness etc. Go and have a look at Holland - the Land of Windmills? Yes certainly - thousands of tall concrete ones - everywhere!

But I guess we will feel a bit differently about them when this countries ageing electrcity generating grid starts breaking down and power cuts become a regular feature of life, because the government didnt invest in it when it could afford to.

 

[Bajansailor]

I was just reading the weekly 'Tugs, Towing and Offshore' newsletter I receive (free) from www.towingline.com and they have a little write up about two new wind farm installation vessels orders by Seajacks in the UK.
So I had to go and google Seajacks - http://www.seajacks.com/
They certainly have some very impressive vessels!

And everything is happening in the DanTysk windfarm off Germany -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DanTysk
A company called Vattenfall have commissioned a newbuild jack up ship that can carry and install 80 wind turbines for this wind farm - here is their press release.
http://www.vattenfall.com/en/pressreleasedetailhidden.htm?newsid=08A612192A5B4CB6AFEBFB97F05D075C

Here is some info about the new ship http://www.swireblueocean.com/fleet.html

 

[Whiskey Bravo]

:Boo 2, you really don't have to get personal, but I'll do you the courtesy of replying:

Boo2[/QUOTE]
== 10%. An extremely useful and largely carbon free contribution to UK energy consumption. The National Grid have plans to expand this capacity to 30,000 MW, so around half of UK energy production will be low carbon / carbon free.

Reply:
>>In a totally un-vitriolic way, unlike your post, what you don't seem to understand is that the more the government and energy companies rely on windfarms, the more spare capacity they need as back-up At present this is estimated to lead to a rise in total capacity from 76 gigawatts to 120 gigawatts at an estimated cost of £50 billion. When the wind DOES blow this will drive down prices, which the energy companies are already worried about and will be passed on to the consumer.

Boo2[/QUOTE]
An entirely irrelevant statistic : what is the average output of UK wind farm energy production taken over a whole year ?

Reply:
>>The best claims by developers are that windfarms will produce 30% of their total capacity in a whole year [a pretty low return anyway] In the whole of December 2010 [one of the coldest months on record] they produced less than 21%. From Oct 2009 to Sept 2010 they produced only 23.6%. Why would anybody want to build something that can only work at less than a quarter of capacity. It's like having a yacht capable of doing 8kts which only ever does 2kts. Nobody would buy one of those, would they?


Boo2[/QUOTE]
You are raving. It does follow that we need some backup and other technology in support, but WFs do produce substantially CF energy and that is far from useless given the universal acceptance by informed opinion of MMGW. Extremely useful, in fact.

Reply:
>>Here are the figures for CO2 emissions for various forms of energy:
Hydroelectric 3g - 11g /kWh
Nuclear 5g /kWh
Windfarms 5g /kWh
Solar 58g /kWh
Fossil fuels 410g - 800g /kWh

Boo2[/QUOTE]
As an on-topic explanation of why your point is a non-sequiteur, directed at anyone who is as rabid or as dim as yourself, merely consider that for much of British history all our international trade was carried out in boats which had no means of propulsion except wind power. When the wind didn't blow then the ships didn't go.

Does this mean that sailing ships were useless ? No.

Does your point render you a bit of an *rse ? Well, excuse the ad-hominim but, yes.

Reply:
>>When sailing ships were the cutting edge of technology they were the things to use, but as steam/oil/nuclear power developed, commercial sailing ships died. How many are still working today compared to other forms of energy? So maybe you'd like to think that point through for a little longer.

Boo2[/QUOTE]
Which I note you are very careful to avoid giving in your rabid post...


>>Well if you can't be bothered to look up the projected costs yourself, I'll do it for you, on the basis of the income received by the electricity generator, including subsidies and, of course, bills paid by the consumer, estimated for 2020:

Nuclear £30-£60 /MWh
Hydroelectric £30-£60 /MWh
Fossil fuels £30-£60 /MWh
Windfarms [onshore] £80-£110 /MWh
Windfarms [offshore] £80-£160 /MWh

So far from being dim and rabid I think you'll find my views have a substantial backing. Without wanting to get personal and abusive, I think you must be one of the millions taken in by successive governments and people with axes to grind or especially those who can see huge profits to be made at the expense of the consumer.
Look at the facts, consider the long term implications, add in the horrific visual nightmare together with the noise these things produce, consider what environmental nightmares may be caused in the waterways of the World and then try and put forward a cohesive argument for spending billions on windfarms. Nobody has managed it yet.

 

[Seajet]

I remain to be convinced as to the viability of wind farms if one considers the cost, emissions etc of manufacturing the bits and pieces, the workers driving to the factories and the people in Landrovers or powerboats going out to service the bearings etc...

Wind farms are a total con, I hate to say it as someone with quite 'green' leanings, but for the foreseeable future nuclear plants seem the best option, though a few SAMS and military types nearby to fend off terrorists seems a good idea !

 

[Stork_III]

:>>Well if you can't be bothered to look up the projected costs yourself, I'll do it for you, on the basis of the income received by the electricity generator, including subsidies and, of course, bills paid by the consumer, estimated for 2020:

Nuclear £30-£60 /MWh
Hydroelectric £30-£60 /MWh
Fossil fuels £30-£60 /MWh
Windfarms [onshore] £80-£110 /MWh
Windfarms [offshore] £80-£160 /MWh

So far from being dim and rabid I think you'll find my views have a substantial backing. Without wanting to get personal and abusive, I think you must be one of the millions taken in by successive governments and people with axes to grind or especially those who can see huge profits to be made at the expense of the consumer.
Look at the facts, consider the long term implications, add in the horrific visual nightmare together with the noise these things produce, consider what environmental nightmares may be caused in the waterways of the World and then try and put forward a cohesive argument for spending billions on windfarms. Nobody has managed it yet.

Here here, thanks, I couldn't be bothered to argue.

 

[WestwardBound]

Look at the facts, consider the long term implications, add in the horrific visual nightmare together with the noise these things produce, consider what environmental nightmares may be caused in the waterways of the World and then try and put forward a cohesive argument for spending billions on windfarms. Nobody has managed it yet.

Except for those who have managed to get the windfarms financed and built in many countries.

It's very interesting to see people discussing the question of the whole lifecycle of the windfarms. Clearly the greens have had a greater influence than I might have thought.

It's hard to quantify the indirect costs of consuming fossil fuels at the current rate. We're not paying the bill today, it's our children and grandchildren who may see more of the effect. If someone comes up with a fast and inexpensive carbon sequestering technology (Lovelock says make charcoal from fast growing trees and bury it) this would be a game changer but it's not looking very likely. No suprise, it took 100s of millions of years for natural processes to sequester the carbon dioxide as coal and oil.

Nuclear power has so far not been developed to the extent we might have expected not because it was politically unatractive but because in competition with fossil fuels it was economically unviable. If it had paid its own way it would have been unstoppable. Rising fossil fuel costs are now making it approach affordability, or at least some analysts say. Fission power is still quite problematic, this is not to say that the problems are insurmountable. I think we might not have a lot of choice about fission, I expect that we will need it. France gets the vast majority of their power from fission and we buy plenty of it.

I don't doubt that wind power will pay off over time. Technology and engineering practices will improve and fossil fuels costs are not going down. In the UK we are way behind other European countries and this will most likely work in our favour as we can now benefit from plenty of accrued experience.

The truth is that the UK is up against it when it comes to energy. We need rather a lot of it if we are to avoid poverty to say nothing of our lifestyle. Wind power is just one of sustainable power sources and it is one which can contribute today. I'm quite pleased that the goverment has decided to get on with it.

I'm less pleased that it's in my back yard. Hopefully together we'll get some consideration for yachtfolk and figure out how to avoid or navigate the hazards. For now I will prefer to admire the windfarms from a distance.

 

[Grumpybear]

The fundamental problem with wind power, as so many other posters have said, is that it does not and in UK cannot deliver a predictable and viable proportion of its rated output. Therefore it will always be necessary to have cover from other forms of power generation for a very high proportion of that capacity. Given the cost of installing that cover and having it ready for use, it will make sense to the power companies to use it, especially as it will be cheaper than wind. In the end we will all pay dearly for the use of wind power and it will do much less to solve the nervy problem that its proponents claim. meanwhile our cowardly politicians of all parties have used wind power as an excuse for not having a proper grownup debate about nuclear power until it is too late to replace the existing life expired nuclear capacity, let alone expand it as we should to a realistic proportion of our overall capacity. What price electric cars without enough power to recharge them?

 

[Seanick]

More power or use less?

Correct me if I am wrong, the statistic is something like 'the UK has seven power stations, one of which is just running the gadgets of your average household left on standby'.

Aye, we're all doomed.

 

[Plomong]

Here's an example of how ineffective wnd farms are:

On 20th December 2010 peak demand in the UK was appx 60,000 megawatts.
Maximum capacity for UK windfarms at present is 5,891 megawatts.
20/12/2010 was a practically windless day, windfarms contributed 140 megawatts.
Do you really want to put your tust and money into somethng so useless?

There are many more examples, even before you start to look at costs & generation of CO2.

Whiskey Bravo, maybe you should look at it this way:
!) Diversification of energy sources is essential. I hope there is no need to explain the political and other reasons for this.
2) Every MWhr generated from your own resources is Sterling that does not go to another country whose final position might just be that they own you -- lock, stock and barrel. Sound familiar ???

Plomong

 

[Stork_III]

Except for those who have managed to get the windfarms financed and built in many countries.

It's very interesting to see people discussing the question of the whole lifecycle of the windfarms. Clearly the greens have had a greater influence than I might have thought.

It's hard to quantify the indirect costs of consuming fossil fuels at the current rate. We're not paying the bill today, it's our children and grandchildren who may see more of the effect. If someone comes up with a fast and inexpensive carbon sequestering technology (Lovelock says make charcoal from fast growing trees and bury it) this would be a game changer but it's not looking very likely. No suprise, it took 100s of millions of years for natural processes to sequester the carbon dioxide as coal and oil.

Nuclear power has so far not been developed to the extent we might have expected not because it was politically unatractive but because in competition with fossil fuels it was economically unviable. If it had paid its own way it would have been unstoppable. Rising fossil fuel costs are now making it approach affordability, or at least some analysts say. Fission power is still quite problematic, this is not to say that the problems are insurmountable. I think we might not have a lot of choice about fission, I expect that we will need it. France gets the vast majority of their power from fission and we buy plenty of it.

I don't doubt that wind power will pay off over time. Technology and engineering practices will improve and fossil fuels costs are not going down. In the UK we are way behind other European countries and this will most likely work in our favour as we can now benefit from plenty of accrued experience.

The truth is that the UK is up against it when it comes to energy. We need rather a lot of it if we are to avoid poverty to say nothing of our lifestyle. Wind power is just one of sustainable power sources and it is one which can contribute today. I'm quite pleased that the goverment has decided to get on with it.

I'm less pleased that it's in my back yard. Hopefully together we'll get some consideration for yachtfolk and figure out how to avoid or navigate the hazards. For now I will prefer to admire the windfarms from a distance.

The post you quote is not by me but by Whiskey Bravo.

 

[Clammer]

Surely the site for the new windfarm off Swanage is where the Seahorses congregate for the winter months? What will happen when the Seahorses return to their wintering quarters and find huge concrete blocks on the seabed? This wintering area could be sheltering a large proportion of the South coast's Seahorse population. I feel a further study is required or a new Environmental Impact Assessment. Natural england can you help?