Green energy discussion

[greendwarf]

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.

When you say sail do you mean wind powered? Is it not possible that they are standing stationary because they are not needed at that time rather than unable to provide power. We have lots of power stations not generating at any particular time. Grid management is very complex - I was told by my friend who worked for the old CEGB that if demand unexpectedly drops, generator sets can overrun so badly that the flywheels (weighing several tons plus kinetic energy) can detach causing huge damage

 

[maby]

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.

When you say sail do you mean wind powered? Is it not possible that they are standing stationary because they are not needed at that time rather than unable to provide power. We have lots of power stations not generating at any particular time. Grid management is very complex - I was told by my friend who worked for the old CEGB that if demand unexpectedly drops, generator sets can overrun so badly that the flywheels (weighing several tons plus kinetic energy) can detach causing huge damage

Wind powered when possible. but it's a fact of life that one burns a lot of diesel off the east coast of this country. Windy weather tends to be warm - not hot or cold. When electricity demand is peaking - either to run heating, or to run air conditioning - there is usually very little wind. Don't take my word for it - look at that Adam Smith Institute report referred to several messages back - our 10GW specification wind infrastructure is actually generating about 800MW most of the time. They simply do not generate reliably which means that we have to replicate the capacity using some other power source. I know that fossil fuels are finite, and reportedly damaging to the environment, so this leaves us with nuclear as the only option. Having built enough nuclear to meet all our needs, we may as well run it and stop sinking so much money into wind which is working for such a small percentage of the time.

P.S. Figure 5 in that report says it all!

 

[jaapv]

It is indeed true that it is a all about grid management and that a small insular grid might struggle but the vastly larger European one should be OK, although located ill-maintIned parts like Belgium have their issues.

 

[Cymro]

Hi Guys,
please read the paper (well at least the pre-amble for policy makers) as it will inform some of your misunderstandings about wind-grid performance and capacity.

I'm a big advocate of renewables, I like wind turbines. But I was very disappointed to see the current performance and capacity levels of the wind fleet. Also the fact we need spinning-reserve of the same capacity. We really need to be investing in 1)predictable and reliable renewables like Tidal, we spend very little on this. 2)storage technology, the biggest issue with un-reliable and un-predictable renewable generation is that its often working when we don't need the power and vice-versa. If we can crack the ability to store the power we can flatten-out the peaks and troughs of supply we currently have to cover with spinning-reserve.

I know the Author of the paper, he's a good guy and had a long-term senior electricity supply career both in Nuclear and Renewables. I'd take what he's written seriously.

 

[maby]

While tide is completely predictable and reliable, it is only applicable once we have solved the large scale energy storage problem. We get four periods of slack tide every day when the rate of flow drops to zero and no energy will be generated. The times of those slack tides vary throughout the month - four times every month, we will find ourselves with no power being generated at times of peak demand. It is true that the actual time of the slack tide does vary from one place to another and I guess you could get by without the storage, but only by vastly over-equipping so that all the demands of the country could be met from a small fraction of the overall generation infrastructure.

 

[jayfdee]

Put me down for the anti wind turbines. Where I live,if plans for more turbines were announced there would be significant protests,however if a Nuclear power plant was proposed it would have serious local support,yes the locals like nuclear.
I worked most of my life as an engineer on alternative fuels and energy projects,however not nuclear or wind.
I can accept many people like wind power. My biggest objection is the back up problem,conventional power generators like high utilisation at design outputs,not ramping up and down to cope with the variability of wind.
How many years does a turbine take to pay back the energy cost used in its manufacture,the concrete foundations and steel structure use huge amounts of energy to manufacture.
Anyway rant over,I still like my PHEV.

 

[jaapv]

A wind turbine is written off against investment in ten years with a life expectancy of twenty. Net gain per year is 60.000 Euro on average for a 1 MW turbine..Investment is in the order of 1.5 million Euro per Megawatt.
Figures come from official German and Dutch sources.

 

[rgilyead]

Wind power is an important part of a balanced portfolio of energy sources. It is understandable that people don't want wind turbines near their own homes but then they wouldn't want power stations of any kind near their homes anyway. The alternative is to invest far more heavily in energy saving. The problem is that this is much harder because it involves millions of people changing their behaviour and altering the housing market to make it financially advantageous to build and maintain better insulated homes. The rental market is a huge issue here because landlords don't benefit from insulation - their tenants do via lower utility bills. Also, the government's energy saving schemes have not been particularly successful with low take-up.

 

[maby]

Once again, I'm sitting on our boat just a few miles from the London Wind Array as I write this. The water is glassy and the anemometer is static - many millions of pounds worth of turbines sitting rusting.

 

[jaapv]

I drive past about two dozen wind turbines on my way to work. Over the years, I do not need more than two hands to count the number of times they were not turning. Btw, I believe there are no materials that can rust being used.

 

[rgilyead]

Once again, I'm sitting on our boat just a few miles from the London Wind Array as I write this. The water is glassy and the anemometer is static - many millions of pounds worth of turbines sitting rusting.

And every night millions of pounds of solar arrays stop working. And twice a day tidal systems come to a standstill as the tide turns. And every year some gas, coal or nuclear power stations break down or have to be taken offline to be repaired. That's why you need a balanced portfolio of energy sources.

 

[user 258]

Hi,
Just to give my opinion; There is no simple, easy answer to the power production issue. We need to keep chipping away at as many different options as possible. My view is generally quite pessimistic for the world in general due to climate change, growing population, water & food shortage. Unless there is a scientific breakthrough that enables cheap and plentiful energy things look bad (to me).
Kind regards,
Mark

 

[greendwarf]

Once again, I'm sitting on our boat just a few miles from the London Wind Array as I write this. The water is glassy and the anemometer is static - many millions of pounds worth of turbines sitting rusting.

And every night millions of pounds of solar arrays stop working. And twice a day tidal systems come to a standstill as the tide turns. .

1. Along with the on-land mothballed power stations of all types! There's always more capacity available than being used.

2. Except that its not "night" nor has the tide stopped elsewhere - as something like more energy reaches the Earth in 15 minutes from the sun than the planet uses in a year (don't quote me on this ) the real problem is distribution. If we can solve this for food, fuel, data, people etc. it shouldn't be impossible. But in the meantime, we can store green energy in hydro schemes for when its dark & calm.

 

[maby]

Why is it that the advocates of alternative energy refuse to address the basic problem with it? For one reason or another, we need to get away from fossil fuels - no argument about that - they are finite and will run out, even if they don't wreck the climate. But none of our (as in this country) sources of alternative energy are reliable, so we are going to have to build enough nuclear to supply ourselves when the wind isn't blowing and the days are so short that the solar panels are not generating anything useful. Having built all that nuclear, why on earth would we also build giga-watts of wind power? Just run the nuclear full time.

 

[Paule23]

Why is it that the advocates of alternative energy refuse to address the basic problem with it? For one reason or another, we need to get away from fossil fuels - no argument about that - they are finite and will run out, even if they don't wreck the climate. But none of our (as in this country) sources of alternative energy are reliable, so we are going to have to build enough nuclear to supply ourselves when the wind isn't blowing and the days are so short that the solar panels are not generating anything useful. Having built all that nuclear, why on earth would we also build giga-watts of wind power? Just run the nuclear full time.

There is another alternative, change the way we use energy and accept it is not a 100% available all the time resource. Arrangements are in place for large industrial users to stop pulling from the grid in times of pressure, ordinary consumers may have to accepts more brown-outs as we more to more renewables. Infrastructure may change to support this, better energy storage, local generating solutions, emergency generators serving a few houses as just a few examples. Anything can be achieved if we put our minds to it.

 

[maby]

Why is it that the advocates of alternative energy refuse to address the basic problem with it? For one reason or another, we need to get away from fossil fuels - no argument about that - they are finite and will run out, even if they don't wreck the climate. But none of our (as in this country) sources of alternative energy are reliable, so we are going to have to build enough nuclear to supply ourselves when the wind isn't blowing and the days are so short that the solar panels are not generating anything useful. Having built all that nuclear, why on earth would we also build giga-watts of wind power? Just run the nuclear full time.

There is another alternative, change the way we use energy and accept it is not a 100% available all the time resource. Arrangements are in place for large industrial users to stop pulling from the grid in times of pressure, ordinary consumers may have to accepts more brown-outs as we more to more renewables. Infrastructure may change to support this, better energy storage, local generating solutions, emergency generators serving a few houses as just a few examples. Anything can be achieved if we put our minds to it.

Mmmm, I would simply love to be a politician trying to win the next election while selling that to the country!

There's an easy answer - nuclear.

 

[jaapv]

Why is it that the advocates of alternative energy refuse to address the basic problem with it? For one reason or another, we need to get away from fossil fuels - no argument about that - they are finite and will run out, even if they don't wreck the climate. But none of our (as in this country) sources of alternative energy are reliable, so we are going to have to build enough nuclear to supply ourselves when the wind isn't blowing and the days are so short that the solar panels are not generating anything useful. Having built all that nuclear, why on earth would we also build giga-watts of wind power? Just run the nuclear full time.

Well, maybe you shouldn't have built the things in the first place. Would have saved a lot of trouble over Sellafield too. It is not for nothing that Germany decided to shut down all its nuclear reactors over the coming years.
Unless there has been a development in the elimination of nuclear waste that I am unaware of. For the time being we are saddling future generations and even species that will succeed us with our mess.

 

[Ozukus]

You may be interested in looking up the Hyperion Nuclear Battery, it's the next generation of nuclear power.

I also read a while back an article about a 16 year old in America who had designed something similar that was based on nuclear waste, however can't find the article.

 

[KentishSteve]

this is interesting, I was watching a science programme during the week and touched on this below

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129562.400-lasersparked-fusion-power-passes-key-milestone.html#.VHECatkgGc0

 

[maby]

4 degrees C and 4 knots on the North Kent coast this morning - that London Array must really be justifying its existence this morning!

I'm toasty warm, but burning a diesel at a fair old rate. A couple of our neighbours have small wind generators on their boats - there are seagulls sitting on them...