Wind turbines

Jon_Tiffany

celerity wrote: »

You bring up the cost, which is of course fair - but you must accept that fossil fuel costs are going to continue to rise.

As pointed out by another poster (was it on this thread, so many I can't remember!) not only is the cost of energy going to rise, for us in the UK we are going to become increasingly dependant on energy imported from other countries.

Even the cost of nuclear, (for which the real cost is often hard to find out), is set to rise significantly following the disaster at Fukushima.

celerity

Jon_Tiffany wrote: »

Cardew is is 100% anti renewables.

I was under the impression he has solar panels?!

/\dam

grahamc2003

PeterZ wrote: »

The usual suspects will be along shortly to tell us that the national grid have got it all wrong and that renewables are a waste of time.

Quite a chip on your shoulder you've for there Peter, why's that?

Would you rather counter opinions to your own weren't posted?

I'm afraid one mistake you are making is that the engineers at ngc view aligns with yours and, of course, that is unlikley due to their expertise in the area. Do you claim the same expertise?

What you shouldn't do is post tiny extracts of reports which you may not understand, nor the context, or the subject matter, or the problems to which solutions are being proposed.

The opinion of the report authors on the efficacy of the proposals is often neither here nor there, and it is rarely sought these days. The reports are NGC's view of solutions to what is thrown at them, not the desirability of what is thrown. Pertain to this discussion, ngc will try to integrate 20 or 30 or 40% (or whatever they are told by government) renweables into the grid. It would be unwise for any grid expert group member engineer to over voice his or her concerns that it is wasteful/detrimental to the environment/almost madness/ or whatever else he feels since that isn't his job. His job is to find solutions to what the government want.

Jon_Tiffany

celerity wrote: »

I was under the impression he has solar panels?!

/\dam

I think you will find that he hasn't. I'm sure he will be along soon to confirm.

Jon_Tiffany

grahamc2003 wrote: »

Quite a chip on your shoulder you've for there Peter, why's that?

Would you rather counter opinions to your own weren't posted?

I'm afraid one mistake you are making is that the engineers at ngc view aligns with yours and, of course, that is unlikley due to their expertise in the area. Do you claim the same expertise?

What you shouldn't do is post tiny extracts of reports which you may not understand, nor the context, or the subject matter, or the problems to which solutions are being proposed.

The opinion of the report authors on the efficacy of the proposals is often neither here nor there, and it is rarely sought these days. The reports are NGC's view of solutions to what is thrown at them, not the desirability of what is thrown. Pertain to this discussion, ngc will try to integrate 20 or 30 or 40% (or whatever they are told by government) renweables into the grid. It would be unwise for any grid expert group member engineer to over voice his or her concerns that it is wasteful/detrimental to the environment/almost madness/ or whatever else he feels since that isn't his job. His job is to find solutions to what the government want.

Just because you disagree with Peters views theres no need to be so rude to him.

He posted a link to the report so anyone could read the report in full. I had a look at the report and understood the content, and I would imagine Peter did as well, along with many others on here who are quite capable and knowledgable.

You make it sound like you are the only one who understands this and that the rest of us are too stupid to get and we should just believe everything you say.

While Peter is equally guiltly of getting into childish spats and disagreements, I have to say that you also seem to dislike having your views challenged.

Too many of these threads have been spoilt by this, that's why I stopped posting for a while. I enjoy a lively discussion and I like to hear opposing views, but when it turns into pantomine I get bored quickly...

Zenoka

Cardew wrote: »

The latter statement cannot be proven, but IMO you are completely mistaken - the money(FIT) is overwhelmingly the main incentive.

My DH has always told me Im a bit odd I would have solar panels and a windmill without the fits if I had the money - just to do my bit to protect the environment for my childrens future.

I suppose like most people I dont have the money though

zeupater

celerity wrote: »

@ Zeupater, may I ask you the same questions I ask Cardew above please? Especially whether you would cancel currently planned developments for future wind farm expansion.

/\dam

Hi

If it was in my power I would certainly have a full review of the windfarm strategy and costs .....

I would really consider technologies such as large scale tidal power over windpower in the first place due to the predictability as 'legacy' generation can be almost seamlessly meshed with this renewable. I'd hazard a guess that if the total windfarm investment cost in terms of £/Useful kWh instead of potential maximum (£/kWp) was compared on a like-for-like basis with the Severn barrage then the tidal scheme would be much cheaper and still be going ahead .....

Whilst we have governments and respective bodies which are inherently decision & risk averse, it's extremely unlikely that any of the climate targets will be met, with the main barrier being the very groups which are so vocal on all things green, that is as long as whatever is needed is done 'somewhere else' and it's what is on their agenda, not anyone else's.

Within 20 years of the first passenger railway journey over 2500miles of UK network had been planned and built, mainly by hand, carrying over 30million passengers annually. This would now be considered the timescale for the planning & enquiry stage for a 50 mile line and someone would finally gum up the works and press the 'reset' button by finding a pair of greater crested newts in a puddle somewhere along the route .....

In the mean-time, if anyone wants to do anything to help the environment, do so ..... insulate, insulate, insulate .... then insulate some more, it'll be of far more immediate use to both your own pocket and the climate than any windfarm project on the drawing board for the next 25 years ..

HTH
Z

Rodders57

tiggerpud wrote: »

I have recently had solar panels installed and was wondering about a wind turbine too. I think these are also eligible for FIT - anyone got one or know anything about them such as rough idea of cost? Would be great to produce energy at night too.....

Original post

Oh dear its gone a bit off topic here.

grahamc2003

celerity wrote: »

Ok, but that's a hydro storage facility - a casual reader of the thread would be forgiven for thinking you were talking about a wind farm

I see your point though I think. You're saying that excess wind energy could be sent to somewhere like Dinorwig to store the energy?

/\

The economics of Dinorig only made sense because it can supply primary or secondary reseve to the grid. That means it can, in a few seconds, be instructed to supply a high power input into the grid to maintain grid stability and keep grid frequency within legal and operational limits. Previous to Dinorwig, this reserve was supplied by many conventional power stations at a very high cost.

The major problem with windpower (when connected to a grid network) is it's intermittancy - it is not schedulable (i.e. the grid can't instruct it to generate, it generates when the wind blows). The effect of this is a requirement for more reserve (primary, or near instant as well as longer term). Since Dinorwig is a major supplier of that reserve which will be more in demand with more windpower, the opportunity for its secondary duty of absorbing cheap night electricity and releasing it during more expensive periods will diminish.

I'm afraid that storing windpower in Dinorwig doesn't make sense in my opinion.

Cardew

Jon_Tiffany wrote: »

Just because you disagree with Peters views theres no need to be so rude to him.

He posted a link to the report so anyone could read the report in full. I had a look at the report and understood the content, and I would imagine Peter did as well, along with many others on here who are quite capable and knowledgable.

You make it sound like you are the only one who understands this and that the rest of us are too stupid to get and we should just believe everything you say.

While Peter is equally guiltly of getting into childish spats and disagreements, I have to say that you also seem to dislike having your views challenged.

It is not his views, but his inability to comprehend that is the problem.

Take the report to which he made reference. It is a simple document that reports on the feasibility of NG to cater for xxGW of renewable energy and thus enable the UK to meet the targets it has been set.

The report, understandably, steers clear of the cost implications of providing that renewable energy and indeed makes this statement:

In this scenario, we assume that the correct economic incentives are in place to make this world a reality.

Now why would the ‘usual suspects’ challenge such a report; especially as in the quote above it alludes to the main reservation about renewable energy – namely the cost of generation.