Wind turbine stupidity!

[Jonzjob]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy ... icity.html


They have always been a waste of space and very far away from green!

Ash tray on a motorbike comes to mind!

 

[wobblycogs]

There are (at least) two really scandalous problems with the current power situation it would appear.

Firstly, it would seem that once you have managed to get a grid connection you can then, pretty much, hold the grid to ransom by threatening to generate more power than is required. How come we don't have some way of just disconnecting sites that are playing silly buggers?

Secondly, and contradicting the article, power can be stored we just don't have much in the way of storage facilities. Adding a large amount of wind power is all well and good but there has been a total lack of joined up thinking regarding what to do when supply out strips demand. The obvious solution is to use pumped storage but there are numerous other options available for energy storage. What has been lacking is an investment in infrastructure to cope with the change in power generation. If you don't want to store the energy directly how about running a desalination plant to top up our pitifully small reservoirs or something like that.

 

[studders]

So...

Too much electricity being generated
Tell some to stop generating
Pay them for not generating
Pass on cost to consumers.


Makes perfect sense to me. :roll:

 

[RogerS]

But if you read some of the comments it would seem that this is normal. Otherwise where would the incentive be to build power stations...if they couldn't guarantee some sort of steady income whether they were generating or not. I know it sounds daft but I can't think of an alternative.

 

[wobblycogs]

Simple, rather devote half our countryside to a wind power which won't even generate a tiny fraction of the power we actually use (don't forget we use a huge amount of power actually as oil and gas which has to change) why not invest this money in designing and building safe nuclear plants. Perhaps ones that run on thorium rather than uranium / plutonium for example.

 

[t8hants]

If you want to get a bad idea adopted sell it to the Greens, they haven't had a good one yet

unleaded fuel - highly toxic
Low energy bulbs - highly toxic
wind farms - grossly inefficient
Bio fuel - respocible for rain forest clearances, reduced food production, and massive damage to older vehicles 10 years +.

But all of these bad ideas were what the industry wanted in the first place, but didn't think they could get past the public.

G

 

[Jonzjob]

Wobbly, I assume that you are talking about the storage of power in the way of pumping water uphill to lakes on the top of hills and then letting Newton use his invention, gravity, to power turbines to produce power?

Great if you have a hill with a lake at the top? But if you are talking about storing the electricity, other than batteries (nice green little boxes) pray tell how? I would be the first to hold my hands up?

I am 100% behind the idea of safe nuclear plants. They don't take a HUGE footprint and yes they have to have that footprint for a very long time after they are decommisioned. We here in France get 80% of our power from nuclear plants and god help us if the French equivalent of the labour party PS Partie Socialists get in one of the aims seems to be to shut ALL of the nuc power stations down. That would also effect loads of you that side of Le Manche (the Channel) ever heard of EDF, Elecrictie de France?

Our little Jap friends have done a great deal to screw the nuc power industrie by puilding them in the most unstable parts of the whole planet! Baft dastards!

Back to wind. It has to be the biggest con carried by politicians who can't talk if the sit down. Very difficult to talk out of yer *** when it's covered by a seat me-thinks.

Ever heard the story of the kings new clothes? If not then I will let Danny Kay tell it http://www.angelfire.com/film/dannykaye ... lothes.htm

 

[wobblycogs]

Yep, I'm talking about pumping water up hill to store power. At the moment pumped storage is really the only viable solution to massive power storage. There's certainly no way we could make enough batteries to store even a tiny fraction of the excess power we are likely to generate. Making a lake up a hill isn't that hard compared to some of the problems we face with power generation, in fact we actually already have some pumped storage in the UK. There is certainly an infrastructure cost to pumped storage but when you look at the alternative, which is to just waste the power, I can't see how it's not viable.

Here's one alternative power storage system that I read about a while back and thought was very clever. One of the problems with renewables is the power is rarely exactly where you want it to be. That means moving power around a large geographical area with little loss would be a real bonus. We already have materials that can achieve that: super conductors. There's a catch though, they need to be kept in liquid nitrogen to remain super conducting and liquefying nitrogen requires a lot of power. The trick is this, when you have excess power make liquid nitrogen and feed it into the super conducting grid system. When you need to meet a sudden power demand just boil off a bit of nitrogen through a turbine and generate electricity. Basically the system kills two birds with one stone.

 

[Jonzjob]

One problem with the superconductor idea is that if the supercooled lines were above ground you would kill of more than one bird? More like every bird that landed on it and they do on high voltage lines because they run warm.

If underground, unless very well insulated they would cause permafrost in the ground and cost a fortune to keep charged with said cold stuff and cost an even bigger fortune to put there in the first place?

As for the hill lakes, you could charge inflated prices for fishing licences to help I suppose :mrgreen:

 

[wobblycogs]

Iirc the plan was for very well insulated underground pipes with the cables running up the middle. The plan was fully costed from an energy point of view and quite favourable. They admitted that the initial installation would be very expensive. There are, I believe, already a couple of small proof of concept systems in place in the states so the basic idea seems sound.

 

[Eric The Viking]

There are other methods of storage than pumped.

For example, compressing gas, say at the ocean bottom, and electrolysis of water. They've been banging on about hydrogen as a fuel for years, as if there is no conversion cost attached, but getting a wind turbine to do this, when it otherwise would be wasted output, has to be useful.

Neither that nor gas compression is especially efficient, but that's not the point in this instance. None of the pumped storage schemes we have are especially efficient (I think Dinorwig is the best at around 75%), but they are good enough. In the case of storage of renewables, that's less important.

 

[Digit]

Well said wc. The only pumped storage I know of is here in Wales but for some reason it seems not to have been adopted elswhere.
Apart from its use as storage of potential power it would logically also extend the use of the water in times of shortages.
We really do need a joined up approach, nuclear, wind, tide, geothermal, all designed as one programme for the benefit of the nation, not utility providers!

Roy.

 

[Jonzjob]

I reckon that pumped storage would be a winner in east anglier!

We already have the answer here with 80% of or electrifical pouvour from nuc jobbies and provide loads to you lot North of Le Manche too!

 

[Digit]

Yep! But you haven't got our government with its stated intention of X amount of power from turbines in the furure.

Roy.

 

[CHJ]

...... The only pumped storage I know of is here in Wales but for some reason it seems not to have been adopted elswhere...

A couple more in Scotland, main problem is lack of mountain lakes high enough to be of any real use I suspect.

http://www.visitcruachan.co.uk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_of_Foyers

 

[Digit]

Aren't we great at telling the world of our achievments Chas?
I would have thought that any existing hydro scheme was theoretically suitable for pumped storage if the pumping power came from the unused off peak turbine power.

Roy.

 

[Jonzjob]

Woodchester Park would make a good lake if you used the windmill behind Froster Hill to pump the water Chas? :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

No? Probably not! It would upset the long eared bat colony in the Manor? :roll:

 

[CHJ]

Woodchester Park would make a good lake if you used the windmill behind Froster Hill to pump the water

Having witnessed the rate at which the water comes out of the cruachan lake I should think woodchester would last all of two minutes. :lol:

I think Nailsworth might object to being flushed down the pan each time it was used as well :lol: