Wind Farms, Yes or No?

[Coaster]

"Blight on the landscape 1" looks rather foreign. Are those windmills in the UK?

One of the tallest windmills in the UK is at Sutton in Norfolk. It's 80' to the cap. Big, but stll human in scale.

Some of these wind turbines are truly enormous. Take the Ness Point wind turbine. 262' to the hub and 413' to the blade tip. Combine that with movement of the blades and I find such constructions abhorrent.

 

[Ubergeekian]

Take the Ness Point wind turbine. 262' to the hub and 413' to the blade tip. Combine that with movement of the blades and I find such constructions abhorrent.

How would you prefer to get your power? Oil, coal and nuclear power stations are pretty ugly too ...

 

[planteater]

Furthermore, the centre of UK consumption is halfway between Birmingham and London and the losses getting power there are considerable, >5% from distant sources

Excellent. Build the nuke plants in Milton Keynes!

 

[gandy]

Boyndie had in 2008 a 34% load factor; up from 32.6% in 2007.

The Renewable Energy Foundation is a charitable trust who, amongst other things, have sorted and tabulated Ofgem's data since 2002.
ref.org.uk Look for Issue 9 of their annual windfarm report.

Cheers. Interesting to see such low productivity from Spurness on Sanday where you'd think they'd have plenty of wind. Reliability problems maybe? They're noisy brutes in any case - from the ferry waiting room they sound like a tumble drier right next door.

 

[Coaster]

How would you prefer to get your power? Oil, coal and nuclear power stations are pretty ugly too ...

Nuclear please.

 

[fergie_mac66]

Nuclear please.

Definitely the way to go.

Only One problem we have to buy it/ them from another country.We dont have the nuclear engineers capable of building a power station.The last one we built was the 70' I believe well I stand to be corrected on that.
But I am not sure that I would want to be next to one if we build them ourselves . With fresh faced engineers just out of our universities, not with the state of our education system.

 

[alant]

Nuclear please.

From France you mean.

 

[ValleyForge]

FWIW I understand the income generated for supplying the National Grid to be 32p per unit from wind power, & 7p per unit from Micro Hydro. Figures supplied by Gilkes at a recent LDPNA meeting. That money gets paid from our leccy bills, where else.

 

[oceanfroggie]

Peeps thoughts? Discuss?
Stu

When combined with pumped storage for hydro and/or hydrogen production wind makes a lot of sense. It's the energy storage in the form of giant man made lakes or hydrogen that brings it all together.

Example of pumped storage http://www.spiritofireland.org

 

[gandy]

FWIW I understand the income generated for supplying the National Grid to be 32p per unit from wind power, & 7p per unit from Micro Hydro. Figures supplied by Gilkes at a recent LDPNA meeting. That money gets paid from our leccy bills, where else.

The figures are all up in the air at the moment, until the new Feed In Tariffs are finalised. Gilkes may have more up-to-date figures, but the most recent that I saw put hydro ranging from 4.5p to 17p, and onshore wind at between 4.5p and 30.5p. In both cases the higher rates apply to smaller scale installations. I've seen other figures that split it into so much for generation plus so much for export. There doesn't seem to be anything authoritative from the government yet. My figures came from here and date back to July at the start of the consultation :

http://www.lowcarboneconomy.com/community_content/_tips_did_you_know/6652