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Windfarms - majestic necessities or inefficient monstrosities?

banana

By banana
in The General Nonsense Forum

Windfarms - majestic necessities or inefficient monstrosities?  

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Lofarl

Lofarl

Posted
Posted

If fusion ever comes a thing then hooray.  But the energy requirements of a vastly growing worldwide population is just gonna get much more demanding.  This might not effect Scotland much but I doubt Solar or Wind is the solution.  Nuclear power is.

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MONKMAN

MONKMAN

Posted
Posted

The cost of new nuclear makes it debatable whether we should build more in the UK, but the existing reactors have helped us massively reduce GHG emissions and air pollution.


Yes and they’ve also produced the worlds largest dumping ground for nuclear waste, at Sellafield. A site that takes billions of pounds a year in tax payers money.

A problem which the world has known about for half a century, yet still to come up with a viable solution as to what to do with it.
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AL-FFC

AL-FFC

Posted
Posted
8 minutes ago, MONKMAN said:

 


Yes and they’ve also produced the worlds largest dumping ground for nuclear waste, at Sellafield. A site that takes billions of pounds a year in tax payers money.

A problem which the world has known about for half a century, yet still to come up with a viable solution as to what to do with it.

 

The latest Government idea was to bury them under the National parks as they are protected land which is a f**ked up logic if your willing to dig up a beauty spot rendering spot an ex beauty spot your doing more damage to the environment to dump radioactive sh*t.

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Sergeant Wilson

Sergeant Wilson

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, cambozpar said:

Fucking love them, I do a fair bit of work on them all over the world and get payed well for doing it.

i  also dont give a f**k if they are blots on the landscape and are inefficient monstrosities.

oh, and the birds can go f**k themselves as well

I like the way you think!

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OSP

OSP

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, MONKMAN said:

 


Yes and they’ve also produced the worlds largest dumping ground for nuclear waste, at Sellafield. A site that takes billions of pounds a year in tax payers money.

A problem which the world has known about for half a century, yet still to come up with a viable solution as to what to do with it.

Fire it into space. Some arsehole alien can deal with it instead.

I can see no inherent risk in my plan either as firing nuclear waste high into the air strapped to rockets and fuel is completely safe...

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itzdrk

itzdrk

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, welshbairn said:

North Caledonian League  grounds are windy as f**k and could do with a bit of light after 3pm in the winter. Cracking idea.

The sustainable as f**k league. 

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Hawk89

Hawk89

Posted
Posted

I quite like them, but there is only so many we can have on land. Should really be building enormous ones at sea. Preferably in view of anything Donald Trump owns.

Should really be building solar panels on all new homes as well. Surprised alot of football clubs haven't looked into covering their roofs with them.....might be a structural issue with plenty of hidden costs mind you.

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GordonS

GordonS

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, MONKMAN said:

 


Yes and they’ve also produced the worlds largest dumping ground for nuclear waste, at Sellafield. A site that takes billions of pounds a year in tax payers money.

A problem which the world has known about for half a century, yet still to come up with a viable solution as to what to do with it.

 

The problems at Dounray and Sellafield are because they fecked them up right from the start. Storage hasn't been a major problem for 40 years - and is still vastly less of a problem than burning coal, oil or gas.

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gannonball

gannonball

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, banana said:

Travelling through the beautiful kingdom of Fife is now quite depressing on this note, a good example of the dangers of a cult of progress over everything.

Unexpected/counter-ideology outcomes is always darkly hilarious when it comes to fanatic do-gooders, in this case dead wildlife for environmentalists.

FTFY.

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dorlomin

dorlomin

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, NewBornBairn said:

Read this a few years ago and it coloured my view of the things - https://mannkal.org/downloads/environment/windfarmscam.pdf

Quote

There are many natural resources that are
intermittent, wind is one and water is another.
All life depends on water. Water can be stored.
Electricity cannot be stored in economically
large quantities. A result of this is that every
kilowatt hour of electricity produced must
be instantaneously used or spilled back into
the earth. This has dire consequences for our
already expensive (and low yielding) wind
turbines, as ygu cannot simply turn them on
and offas needed to balance supply. In context,
we build wind turbines to generate electricity
not to cut CO, emissions. The former is a
requirement that is highly inefficient, the latter
an added benefit'(p. 59).

This was written in 2009. 

 

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-portal/electricity-generation-mix-quarter-and-fuel-source-gb

 

Since then winds share of the energy mix has jumped from about 2% of our energy mix to 20%. We can predict wind days in advance and have the grid ready to switch between wind and gas, varying the loads. 

 

The latest offshore wind farms are winning auctions at £57.5 per MWh. That is for 15 years after it is built it will get a minimum of £57.5 MWh when it sells energy to the grid. That is against an estimate £60 MWh for new gas and that will go up if the costs of gas continue to rise on the global markets. 

Onshore wind is cheaper still but now a bit of a pariah in Westminster. But it is likely that in the coming years it will be cheaper than gas as costs continue to fall. 

And as for storage grid scale lithium storage is now competing with peaker plants to deliver peak power, by buying power in low use hours and selling at peak. 

 

Linked to wind farms in South Australia the Tesla Powerpack is out competing fossil fuels and lowering costs. 

https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-australia-reduced-grid-service-cost/

Quote

“In the first four months of operations of the Hornsdale Power Reserve (the official name of the Tesla big battery, owned and operated by Neoen), the frequency ancillary services prices went down by 90 per cent, so that’s 9-0 per cent. And the 100MW battery has achieved over 55 per cent of the FCAS revenues in South Australia. So it’s 2 per cent of the capacity in South Australia achieving 55 per cent of the revenues in South Australia.”

We are nowhere near being able to go 100% renewable yet, but the pathway to significantly increasing our renewable and storage here in the UK is open and it is likely to become the low cost option as once the capital costs of a wind farm have been repayed the running costs are very low, just maintenance. 

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