New wind follys announced.

Ben84

moonrakerz wrote: »

.............and, as they are off-shore the pathetically low amount of power they produce will be subject to around a 50% transmission loss !!

I'm not sure about this. We have cables to France and it's apparently economical to import electric from them, so I suppose it's reasonable to transport electric from locations off shore around the UK.

magyar

moonrakerz wrote: »

.............and, as they are off-shore the pathetically low amount of power they produce will be subject to around a 50% transmission loss !!

Sorry, how did I not spot this! It's complete rubbish. The losses in the cable are in the region of 2-3%. Might be a bit more on the sites in the middle of the North Sea, but by then DC-link technologies are expected to be available which would bring the losses down much more.

penrhyn

How does using Direct Current reduce transmission loss?

magyar

Someone at Wikipedia has written it better than my non-engineering brain ever could!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission

penrhyn

The proposed link from Iceland to the UK could be interesting if it goes ahead, presumably Iceland could export power from Geothermal sources and pay off some of their debt to us at the same time.

yakky58

Agree with Magyar that the gird is a problem. That should be state owned. Yes DC current does help. However, wind farms are not really the way to go long term. I don't believe they generate enough or ever will. I am a fan of nuclear even with waste disposal issues.

I have solar PV on my house and get around 45% off them in the sunny south. They are an option if the cost was less.

magyar

yakky58 wrote: »

Agree with Magyar that the gird is a problem. That should be state owned. Yes DC current does help. However, wind farms are not really the way to go long term. I don't believe they generate enough or ever will. I am a fan of nuclear even with waste disposal issues.

I have solar PV on my house and get around 45% off them in the sunny south. They are an option if the cost was less.

Virtually anything would be an option if the cost was less!

No-one is, or ever would, say that any one form of generation is 'the way to go', you need a mix. We need to balance up low cost (e.g. gas/coal) with carbon-free (wind/nuclear) with reliability (nuclear/gas/coal) with security of supply (wind/coal/nuclear).

cepheus

moonrakerz wrote: »

.............and, as they are off-shore the pathetically low amount of power they produce will be subject to around a 50% transmission loss !!

The government has announced the sites for huge offshore wind farms, that could supply up to 25% of our electricity needs.
If these were on line today, during the biggest freeze for years, guess how much of a contribution they would be making. Here is a clue ******all.

Perhaps the posters could provide the source of these claims, especially the 50% transmission loss, and the reason for mentioning this incredulous figure

ninky_2

iran has the a massive amount of uranium. funny how as the oil runs out it becomes ever more a source of interest for foreign policy of the united states.....as for nimbyism. what better idea than take over parts of the middle east, create nuclear power stations close to the uranium supplies and get the power from there.

they say we are fighting a war on terror but the main terror i see is being on the losing side of ownership of natural energy resources.

magyar

cepheus wrote: »

Perhaps the posters could provide the source of these claims, especially the 50% transmission loss, and the reason for mentioning this incredulous figure

I'd love to see them try. If anyone would like to pick it apart, this was an initial study done into the Round 3 grid connections:

http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/round3_connection_study.pdf

It doesn't actually have much in it about transmission losses, but since certain people seem to think this is all just 'folly' and perhaps the ideas of a few crackpots in government, it might show just how much design work goes into this. And remember this is an initial study, we're two years on from this and millions of pounds have already been spent detailing these studies further.