Potential sites for new mega-solar farms

[Adam W.]

Please tell, I don't know the answer either.

 

[Scruples]

Surely that's an oxymoron ? We are rural and you can't hear any traffic. Guess there's 'rural' and 'rural' !!

When rural reaches the point where there's a lot of traffic, the rural becomes suburban.

 

[deema]

Yes, it would. But if it puts the prices up, and YOU as a twenty or thirty-something struggling to get a mortgage, would YOU financially herniate yourself to go solar tiles?

Those who benefit the most should shoulder their fair proportion of the cost. Will the young not have the most to benefit from net zero? Do the young have a ‘hall pass’ that means they are entitled to shout and protest about climate change but not be affected by the changes and costs needed?

 

[Drifter2406]

Green energy? parts of the wind turbine are not recyclable (Blades mainly) but not accounting for the amount of energy they take to make and the land fill the blades end up in people seem to forget the 100 or so gallons of oil that the gearboxes take once a year for lubrication.

 

[deema]

I think Wyoming has started ‘farming’ wind turbines, burying the blades hoping they grow into new windmills. Very environmentally sustainable.
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detai...he-casper-news-photo/1222855002?adppopup=true

 

[Spectric]

You cannot keep on burying 8000 turbine blades a year because they are not going to decompose that easily so they need to both find a suitable alternative material for these blades and a use for the current old blades rather than just burying them. I wonder if they are taking the cost of blade replacement into account when giving the cost per unit of electricity generated.

 

[SammyQ]

Thanks for the informed reply Spectric. I had not appreciated your point re landscape and buildings. Against that I might counter with the increased corrosion of sea bed bases, compared to land ones, but t.b.h., I also realised I need to fill out my knowledge a LOT more with facts and figures. I will NOT be using so-called "AI".

 

[SammyQ]

Those who benefit the most should shoulder their fair proportion of the cost. Will the young not have the most to benefit from net zero? Do the young have a ‘hall pass’ that means they are entitled to shout and protest about climate change but not be affected by the changes and costs needed?

Good point Deema. I appreciate the validity of it, but, looking at my three childrens' experiences of trying to get on the housing ladder - in three very different parts of Britain - we have to do SOMETHING to make housing available. Solar/insulation is terrific, but the reality is, not everyone can afford to buy "new" houses with "eco" energy savings. There is always a premium slapped on them - as you implied above. We still have a massive, read, huge, percentage of older, not-easily-transformed housing and realistically, a significant proportion of new buyers are plumping for these older, more difficult properties, because that's all they can afford.

 

[Agent_zed]

Green energy? parts of the wind turbine are not recyclable (Blades mainly) but not accounting for the amount of energy they take to make and the land fill the blades end up in people seem to forget the 100 or so gallons of oil that the gearboxes take once a year for lubrication.

Unless you have some actual figures then this is just propoganda by those that don't want to move away from oil.

If it takes X litres of oil to make a windturbine and install it and run it for 10 years and you make Y amount of energy, as long as Y is more than the amount of energy you get from burning that oil directly then it is more sustainable. Ideally the amount of energy from wind turbines will be significantly more over it's lifetime.

Burning oil/gas/coal directly will always be less than 100% efficient. Solar and wind get energy from the vast amount of energy in the form of sunlight and air currents so can easily be more than 100% efficient.

I think Wyoming has started ‘farming’ wind turbines, burying the blades hoping they grow into new windmills. Very environmentally sustainable.

showing pictures of turbine blades is all well and good but you have to show that along side the reality of things like strip mining for coal. How many blades is it going to take to fill this one in
https://www.worc.org/media/coal-strip-mine-1.jpg

How many old oil tankers and oil rigs are being stripped without proper safety measures on the shores of 3rd world countries?

How many aquafers are going to become polluted from fracking?

 

[John Brown]

Green energy? parts of the wind turbine are not recyclable (Blades mainly) but not accounting for the amount of energy they take to make and the land fill the blades end up in people seem to forget the 100 or so gallons of oil that the gearboxes take once a year for lubrication.

Parts of coal and gas fired plants are not recyclable, parts of nuclear powered plants are not recyclable.
Maybe the term should be "greener", but at least it's a start...

 

[deema]

but you have to show that along side the reality of things like strip mining for coal.

Your wish is my command, plenty of examples with a google search. Within a single lifetime with no intervention of man, strip mining pits become beautiful oasis for wildlife.

 

[deema]

I used to make the current sensors used in wind turbines, so got to know the industry a little. For an environmentally friendly product that the industry deliberately set out to make one of the major life limited items out if totally unrecylable material seems stupidly short sighted. Environmental warriors add to the stupidity of promoting a ‘green’ technology that has blades that cannot be recycled and nobody knows what to with them…..and ignore the issue! There is literally mountains of them building up that we will leave to our kids to clean up. They will take thousands of years to break down naturally. What are we going to do with all the UK blades? Burry them? (Some remote part of the UK like Scotland) or just dump them in the Irish Sea with all the thousands of tons of live audinance we dumped after WW2??

 

[SammyQ]

..... or just dump them in the Irish Sea with all the thousands of tons of live audinance we dumped after WW2??

Ah Yes!! The good old Beauford ****!! Good luck fishing near there...just ask any Kilkeel fisherman...

Estimates vary, but 100,000 tons ordnance seems a good average. Some of it now over 100 years old...forget the Titanic for detailed surveys, this one is far closer to land, in relatively shallower water and (arguably) in more priority to investigate.

 

[Jake]

You cannot keep on burying 8000 turbine blades a year because they are not going to decompose that easily so they need to both find a suitable alternative material for these blades and a use for the current old blades rather than just burying them. I wonder if they are taking the cost of blade replacement into account when giving the cost per unit of electricity generated.

Having seen the project finance docs, yes they do.

 

[Agent_zed]

Your wish is my command, plenty of examples with a google search. Within a single lifetime with no intervention of man, strip mining pits become beautiful oasis for wildlife.

View attachment 184511

looks lovely. But where did all the millions of tons of coal end up that was once in the hole, and all of the energy and resources used to extract said coal? Ah, yes all floating around in our atmosphere.

If you burnt all of the old turbine blades in a incinerator you would still be in no worse position as long as overall more energy was produced by those blades than it took to make them. It's all optics. People don't want to see the blades being burnt as it would look worse than burning oil/coal.

I do agree though having non-recyclable blades seems dumb, but I'm not a wind turbine manufacturer so I don't know the reasons not too (I would suspect cost).

 

[woodieallen]

Might be behind a paywall

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/13/fears-food-security-miliband-solar-farm/

 

[deema]

There are other materials that the blades could have been made out of, but they cost a lot more than good old fibreglass. So, to balance the books of cost to generate guess what? Blades are made of a none recyclable material….and nobody mentions it!

Solar panels (back on topic) are primarily made of glass and aluminium, and that is easily recycled…..but 90% still goes into landfill! Why, well the lifecycle cost is more efficient if you simply bury it!

Guess what you need to make all this technology work? Derivatives of oil! So stopping oil and coal exploration is synonymous with cutting off you nose to spite your face!!

 

[cmoops2]

I've often wondered how long it will be before the 'stop oil' brigade start targetting wind turbines. I only make this point because the average turbine gearbox contains 700l of lubricating oil which needs changing every 9 to 18 months.

Not an altogether 'green' solution when you factor this in - is it ?

 

[Cooper]

Another interesting tread. A few random observations.
The buried blades from turbines are a form of carbon sequestration. The resin and carbonfiber were once oil. Buried in the ground they may not rot but they will not be released into the atmosphere as CO2.
There have been several negative comments about the cost of insulation and solar panels. There were proposed regulations that new homes should be highly energy efficient and old homes insulated in the early 2000s, I believe to be implemented in 2016, giving ample time for the industry to adjust. Unfortunately the last government, elected with massive financial support from the property speculators (euphemistically described as builders), ditched them, as part of Cameron's getting rid of the green crap.
Energy efficient homes would have saved us, as a nation, billions rather than subsidising gas, when Putin turned off supplies after we rightly decided to impose sanctions.
As to the noise of wind turbines, consider yourself lucky to live in silent open unspoiled countryside wherever that may be. When I've had the occasional opportunity to relax in the country, there has usually the noise of traffic and agricultural machinery in the background. I've just been sitting in my secluded suburban garden in south east London, six miles from Biggin Hill private jet park, with a railway 200 meters away and quite a busy road 100 meters away and always 5 flights in the sky passing to and from Heathrow and Gatwick. I would like to let you know how peaceful it was and that I could listen to the wrens wittering in my hedges. A little woshing, not dissimilar to the sound of waves on the shore half a mile away will be easy for you to cope with.
If these simple changes to the production and use of energy go some way towards mitigating the undoubted ravaging of parts of our plant by extreme temperatures, out of control forest fires, devastating hurricanes and rising sea levels, in my opinion it is a price well worth paying.
One thing I’ve noticed about climate emergency deniers etc, happily not on this forum, is they are same people who don’t like refugees. Wars over water and desertification are driving millions from their homes, a tiny fraction of whom try to cross the Channel to reach Kent. If only to reduce the occasional tragic loss of life in the Channel I think it’s worth the effort to change our production and use of energy. There are also numerous other benifits.

 

[Cooper]

How interesting that the website has instantly managed to change to Green rubish Cameron's change of policy.