Making the news today....

[coppice cutter]

To be honest, I think the principle of wind turbines is terrific, they take something that is free, clean, and plentiful, (wind) and turn it in to something which has never been free, clean, or plentiful, and with a minimum of effort.

 

I think all the problems surround how they've been put where they are, how they're managed, and how the resultant electricity is managed afterwards.

 

In other words, the politics behind them.

[Johnsond]

14 minutes ago, coppice cutter said:

To be honest, I think the principle of wind turbines is terrific, they take something that is free, clean, and plentiful, (wind) and turn it in to something which has never been free, clean, or plentiful, and with a minimum of effort.

 

I think all the problems surround how they've been put where they are, how they're managed, and how the resultant electricity is managed afterwards.

 

In other words, the politics behind them.

What about the periods when we have no or low wind ?. We need a balance of options unfortunately currently especially in Scotland it’s a mad ideologically driven irrational rush to renewables at all cost, with the vast majority of the profits and jobs going overseas. 

Edited January 17, 2023 by Johnsond

[GarethM]

Personally I don't think wind is in any way cost effective without subsidies which means it's not viable.

 

Solar on the other hand yes, fill your boots but only ever on buildings in the UK.

[coppice cutter]

3 minutes ago, Johnsond said:

What about the periods when we have no or low wind ?. We need a balance of options unfortunately currently especially in Scotland it’s a mad ideologically driven irrational rush to renewables at all cost, with the vast majority of the profits and jobs going overseas. 

Personally I don't think it should be fed in to the national grid, the grid is hard enough to balance without having to factor in the massive swings due to variability in the wind blowing. Balancing out intermittent supplies costs money, I believe that's why electricity is now disproportionately more expensive than pretty much any other form of energy, we are having to pay to keep an increasingly inefficient grid balanced.

 

Instead of huge subsidies to multi-national conglomerates there should have been more effort made to subsidise the supply of small and medium sized turbines to businesses, or even small groups of like-minded individuals who would have been much better able to maximise the use of the resultant free electricity in the most efficient ways possible.

 

John Seymour insisted that electricity generated by what he referred to back then as "natural energy" was always best done on as small a scale as possible as it was much easier (and therefore more efficient) to match demand to supply. What we are doing is the exact opposite.

 

Bear in mind that I'm supporting wind generated electricity as a principle, that doesn't necessarily mean the huge spinning monsters that we see dotted around the countryside.

[GarethM]

There was that solar from space thing being talked about again, anything is better than wind turbines 

[Stere]

Dunno whats is so bad about wind turbines?

 

One problem atm is blades are non recyclable that needs some fixing but supposedly they are gonna do that in future

 

National grid has interconnects with the EU to balance power demand and generation also u can use pump storage systems like Dinorwic

 

Demark has a system that thet must be some share of community ownership of them i think.

 

Wether all the contracts to go to foreign companies is a seperate issue .

 

Smaller turbines are less efficient - the local ones have being upgraded to larger versions on the same site

 

But no reason you can't have both small and big.....

[GarethM]

They are bad because they need like 500+ ton of concrete for the base that's not for these new super turbines!.

 

The miles of rebar before you even get out of the ground. Nothing is free.

 

If it so great, zero subsidy and then you can decide how great they are before heading off to be scrapped.

 

Just because I've seen a garden ornament with a man cutting logs powered by the wind isn't an argument to base a whole power network upon.

Edited January 17, 2023 by GarethM

[coppice cutter]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

Smaller turbines are less efficient - the local ones have being upgraded to larger versions on the same site

Bigger ones being more efficient isn't much of a benefit when the operators still have to be paid to stop supplying the grid on a regular basis.

 

It's not about the generation, it's about the utilisation.

 

If you read about some of the smaller communities that have successfully gone totally off-grid there is always a degree of collective responsibility involved. Using less at peak times or when supply is low and making best use when it's plentiful.

 

With the best will in the world that degree of collective responsibility becomes more difficult as you scale up, and totally impossible at national grid level.

 

As it stands the national grid has just become a huge power soak for all the renewable suppliers, large and small, with the consumer now starting to pick up the tab.

[openspaceman]

1 hour ago, Stere said:

Dunno whats is so bad about wind turbines?

Unlike bigger countries you cannot get away somewhere to kid yourself you are in the wilderness, so they spoil the view, same as with electrification of railways.

 

In the past even in SE England most buildings and infrastructure were hidden by trees, not so with Turbines or overhead wires.

 

Still it has to be done and should have started fifty years ago rather than 20.

 

The objections about non schedulability are spurious because until we actually achieve surplus RE we remain dependent on fossil fuels and existing  CCGT are very good at load following as are turbines easily curtailed.

 

As to cost there is little doubt in my mind that wind and solarPV  are currently the cheapest electricity with nuclear running last and way back in the race. In fact bearing in mind our nuclear fleet are owned by the french government as are the two under constriction by the chinese and I am chauvinistic enough to think the money would have been better spent on domestic PV and srorage.

 

I too like small scale and as a result only buy some electrcity for for 4 months of the year, even in those 4 months I self supply 50%.

[GarethM]

And that's before we even get discussing the privatised national grid and the billions that goes abroad.

Edited January 17, 2023 by GarethM