Windfarms and red diesel

[MidlandsOnSea]

May be these comments will be regarded as heresy. I see the RYA are campaigning in relation to windfarms as well as red diesel. Now, if this were a commercial venture, someone would surely have thought that a compromise was possible. Could they, for example, offer to drop resistance to wind farms in return for a reciprocal gesture as regards scrapping red diesel? Doubtless, it won't be quite as simple as that. However, simply opposing everything might give the impression to some that the RYA is not good at seeing the wider picture.

Which issue concerns you most?

 

[moodycruiser]

I think that there is also a wider picture than even the RYA are protesting regarding windfarms.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that all the while that windfarms are running there has to be power stations running on standby to supplement should the wind drop and they actually cause heavier polution runnning in this standby state.

 

[Alastairdent]

Doesn't work like that . . .

Power is supplied to a grid - not just an area. Windfarms contribute to the total power feeding the grid.

The grid has to be able to supply enough to meet peak demands, so power stations normally run at less than full capacity. Building windfarms just adds to the power in the grid, reducing the amount of fuel being burnt by the fossil-fuel power stations.

 

[rex]

It would be interesting to know the actual cost per unit of useful (not theoretical maximum) power generated by different methods, not that it has anything to do with the red diesel forum - just rambling.

 

[halcyon]

It was explained a bit ago on the forume that a power station on standby, burns only a little less fuel than on load, so the wind farm is not doing a lot.
To make the situation more odd, wind farms ( or some of our local ones ) only supply the grid when the price is right, the rest of the time they run on standby.
Who builds these turbines ? and how much do they cost us ?, facts seem to be short in the media, normally a sign these days of negative media value.

Brian

 

[mirabriani]

I believe that there is a group of peeps who look through the TV
programs in order to foresee the demand on electricity generating stations. Seems to me this is not at all efficient.
My immediate thought is to suggest to peeps, use gas to boil a kettle
and save a big power demand.
One day it might be poss to level out the demand as a battery does when on board.

Happy new year Briani

 

[andykayll]

The Electricity supply system in the UK is actually regarded as one of the best in the world...
In a nut shell it goes something like this - There are large power stations that have to run all the time, most are still the big old coal burners that need the furnace to be kept hot to stop it falling apart, and Nukes. Since these produce more power than we can use at night (when most peeps are in bed) they try to get us to use storage heaters by selling it to us cheap i.e. Economy 7... The remainder is sold to France via an undersea cable.
When we wake up we put the kettle on, nice idea about using gas to boil it but a Gas Fired power station can use gas a lot more economicaly than your stove kettle can (but it does warm up the kitchen) and Gas Fired stations can be built small and run up in about 1 hour so they can be turned on and off but do need the demand to be predictable, fortunatly we do tend to be very predictable in our collective daily usage.
The generating boards Ace in the hole are Pumped Storage Stations which use the spare capacity at night to pump water into a high level lake and then release it to generate power and Wind farms (they always have a good enough forcast of short term wind). Both Pumped storage and wind farms can produce power instantly and are used to provide the short term peak demand top up when we all put the kettle on during the adverts etc.
Limiting the on line use of wind farms has two advantages, it reduces the wear and tear (they are very expensive) and also helps to limit the airborn Wooshing noise from locations near to houses.
Nothing at all to do with red diesel but thought it might interest some.
Andy

 

[gandy]

Ironic that one of the drivers for pumped storage was nuclear. "Power at the press of a button" was cited by the nukes, but they didn't mention the long delays between pressing the button and changing output. Thermal stations can't avoid that.

Tony S