Green energy discussion

[Ozukus]

I believe the issue is related to the fact that it is performing a fairly high continuous draw of electric over an extended period of time. Most high draw items such as toasters, kettles etc, only draw the electric over a short period of time whereas for the Outlander it will be continuous for say 2-3 hours. If the wiring isn't up to scratch then this could be subject to a build up of heat, whereas for the kettle any heat build up will have dissipated in between uses.

Generally though if the socket is fitted to a house with modern wiring, proper consumer unit, grey cables everywhere, then there should be no issue. Unlike my previous house when I went to channel out the wall boxes so they were flush and found half the sockets in the house were spurs using lighting cable, naturally a rewire was required.

 

[jaapv]

A charge for me is £1.17

CJ

Different countries, different systems, obviously. A bit of shopping around a couple of years ago reduced my rate from 13 Eurocent to between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on the time of day. It is an aggressive market, I get weekly cold calls from electricity companies.

 

[maby]

A charge for me is £1.17

CJ

Different countries, different systems, obviously. A bit of shopping around a couple of years ago reduced my rate from 13 Eurocent to between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on the time of day. It is an aggressive market, I get weekly cold calls from electricity companies.

A hell of a lot of what we pay is going to subsidise windmills that most of us would like to see blown up!

 

[rgilyead]

A charge for me is £1.17

CJ

Different countries, different systems, obviously. A bit of shopping around a couple of years ago reduced my rate from 13 Eurocent to between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on the time of day. It is an aggressive market, I get weekly cold calls from electricity companies.

A hell of a lot of what we pay is going to subsidise windmills that most of us would like to see blown up!

Most of what we pay subsidises the nuclear power industry (when decommissioning is included). However, blowing it up probably wouldn't be a good idea!

 

[RazMan]

A hell of a lot of what we pay is going to subsidise windmills that most of us would like to see blown up!

A trifle harsh don't you think? I think that wind turbines are the only way to help our ever increasing energy costs .... along with PHEVs too of course

My dealer made a big point of giving me warnings like "It's a 300V battery you know - just think what that would do if it shorted to your house supply!" My logic is that if my well protected RCD fusebox doesn't trip, then it is probably ok - at least it was during my test weekend drive.

 

[maby]

A hell of a lot of what we pay is going to subsidise windmills that most of us would like to see blown up!

A trifle harsh don't you think? I think that wind turbines are the only way to help our ever increasing energy costs .... along with PHEVs too of course

....

It is, of course, possibly that this is not the most representative forum for opinion on the subject! I think you'll find that the majority of the population of the country would prefer that the windmills had never been built and have a little grin every time the media show pictures of one of them catching fire or blowing over... Personally, I think we should have launched a massive programme of nuclear build twenty years ago.

 

[jaapv]

Very few are opposed to wind turbines - except in their own back garden, of course. In fact, there is a strong movement towards green non-nuclear energy. But we are far behind Germany in that respect.

 

[maby]

Very few are opposed to wind turbines - except in their own back garden, of course. In fact, there is a strong movement towards green non-nuclear energy. But we are far behind Germany in that respect.

Perhaps where you are - it is difficult to find anyone here that approves of them outside the small community of eco-idealists. I guess the difference is that we have been made very aware of how much they are costing us and how little they are giving in return.

 

[Cymro]

You might find the exec summary of this an interesting read. http://www.adamsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Assessment7.pdf

Cymro.

 

[jaapv]

Very few are opposed to wind turbines - except in their own back garden, of course. In fact, there is a strong movement towards green non-nuclear energy. But we are far behind Germany in that respect.

Perhaps where you are - it is difficult to find anyone here that approves of them outside the small community of eco-idealists. I guess the difference is that we have been made very aware of how much they are costing us and how little they are giving in return.

I wonder how that can be. Near to us we have a row of eight. They feed 10.000 households... People are scrambling to get shares in new ones. Great returns in free electricity.

 

[maddogsetc]

Different countries, different systems, obviously. A bit of shopping around a couple of years ago reduced my rate from 13 Eurocent to between 5.5 and 6.5 depending on the time of day. It is an aggressive market, I get weekly cold calls from electricity companies.

:shock:

 

[maby]

You might find the exec summary of this an interesting read. http://www.adamsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Assessment7.pdf

Cymro.

Exactly - it is one of the most stupid ideas anyone has ever come up with and only supported by eco-idealists. If it were not for ridiculous subsidies enforced by governments desperate to jump onto the green bandwagon, it would never have taken off.

 

[jaapv]

There seems to be a divide between the UK and the rest of the world here.....

 

[RazMan]

There seems to be a divide between the UK and the rest of the world here.....

Not as far as I'm concerned Given the choice of fossil fuel & nuclear power stations or clean, pollution free turbines, it is a no brainer in my book. I have met quite a few people who hate turbines with a vengeance and their main argument seems to be that they spoil the countryside - I love turbines because they are clean, non polluting sources of relatively low cost energy. Like our beloved PHEVs, they are a necessary part of our future and the lesser of many evils.

 

[greendwarf]

There seems to be a divide between the UK and the rest of the world here.....

Not as far as I'm concerned Given the choice of fossil fuel & nuclear power stations or clean, pollution free turbines, it is a no brainer in my book. I have met quite a few people who hate turbines with a vengeance and their main argument seems to be that they spoil the countryside - I love turbines because they are clean, non polluting sources of relatively low cost energy. Like our beloved PHEVs, they are a necessary part of our future and the lesser of many evils.

+1 - its lucky most people here didn't live before the Industrial Revolution when water & windmills were the only available non-animal power sources

 

[jaapv]

I was quite amazed too to read about burning/exploding/toppling wind turbines a few posts back. I have never heard of such a thing over here. Something about quality control perhaps?

 

[maby]

I was quite amazed too to read about burning/exploding/toppling wind turbines a few posts back. I have never heard of such a thing over here. Something about quality control perhaps?

There have been quite a few photos of them published over the last couple of years - they don't cope well with very strong winds and have a tendency to burn out!

From the point of view of value for money, they simply do not generate reliably because the wind is not reliable. I'm a sailor and often sail past, or even through, the enormous wind farms off the east coast of Britain. Very often they are standing there stationary. We are dumping vast amounts of money into windfarms which actually generate significant amounts of power less than 50% of the time, then having to build enough conventional and nuclear capacity to meet our full needs for the times when the wind isn't blowing.

The only long term answer is nuclear - and a lot of it.

 

[CJ1045]

Personally I am in the UK and like wind turbines. I am not convinced that Maby's view is representative of the Uk population.

CJ

 

[jaapv]

Nuclear is certainly long term. Especially the cleaning up bit....
As for catastrophes, you may have missed Tsjernobyl, Fukushima, etc... That I find slightly more worrying than one or two out of tens of thousands of wind turbines failing....

 

[maby]

Nuclear is certainly long term. Especially the cleaning up bit....
As for catastrophes, you may have missed Tsjernobyl, Fukushima, etc... That I find slightly more worrying than one or two out of tens of thousands of wind turbines failing....

If wind turbines could remove our need for nuclear, I would agree with you - but they don't. We are sinking vast amounts of money into building wind farms and we will have to build nuclear too. We may as well just build the nuclear.

I live close to the head office of one of the big alternative energy companies and they have a mid-sized wind turbine outside the building. I also know one of their engineers - the machine has never produced more than 17% of its theoretical capacity and averaged over its lifetime, it is difficult to distinguish its output from the noise in the meters. Admittedly, this is not in the optimum location for a wind turbine, but the same applies to a lesser extent to all of them. Weather patterns just do not support them - it's quite breezy at the moment - and the temperature is never dropping below 10 degrees. In January and February we will get periods of many days, if not weeks, with temperatures below zero, possibly snow on the ground, and no wind at all. As I said above, I sail round the east coast in the middle of the wind farms - I know the weather pattterns there very well. When we really need the power, we have to burn something - currently coal or gas, uranium in the future.