3 Feb 2014

Wind Farms - good or bad?

On my Facebook page I asked a simple question: am I alone in LIKING on-shore wind farms?

Although I would not like to be right next to one, I find wind farms good additions to our 21st century life. They look natural, are graceful and elegant. Some folks violently disagreed. Do you have a view?  BTW I live about 10m from a 200 year old corn windmill.
at 12:54
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11 comments:

takis perreas said...

Hi Roger!
You are recovering well thank God for that!
Would you trust 1 wind turbine or 1 wind farm to power up an operating theatre with you inside having an operation?!
I wouldn't!
Not for a million wind farms, not for a million quid!

Mon Feb 03, 05:40:00 pm GMT
Roger G3XBM said...

Takis, surely if connected to a National Grid then wind farm output is well regulated?

Mon Feb 03, 07:50:00 pm GMT
takis perreas said...

No Roger!
It will destabilize the system.
The more you add, the more the "havoc" they create.
They don't work at all with little wind and they auto-shut off in very high winds. They work in between, with RANDOM efficiency.
The only reason they exist is the subsidies the Big Cats steal joyfully from our pockets. The same applies to the Solar Panels and their useless presence under the cloudy sky of Old Blighty!

Check this blog:
http://greenfraud.blogspot.com/

cheers and 73

Mon Feb 03, 08:26:00 pm GMT
Anonymous said...

Roger, If your house was powered by wind you would only have power for 25% of the time. That is not a very reliable arrangement, if ANY other power source was that good we would NEVER use it.

Wind is a massive con, the funding is insane. In energy terms the things are very expensive, they also require 100% backup for the 75% of the time that they are not working so their real contribution is highly negative.

Wind also has limited the development of more promising energy sources such as geothermal, thorium and tidal. Although tidal is normally thought of as intermittent it is always totally predictable and very intense in the UK.

It is all OUR fault, if you let the Court Jesters make important decisions then what more can you expect?

Alan G8LCO.

Mon Feb 03, 08:48:00 pm GMT
Roger G3XBM said...

I agree, at best, wind farms can only be PART of an energy mix and better, CLEAN technologies may come.

Mon Feb 03, 09:03:00 pm GMT
Zak The Rabbit said...

Roger, there are plans for a windfarm near me that are being opposed by the local NIMBYs so called 'pressure' group, having been in their meetings I know that amongst them there is not a single engineer or scientist!

I studied environmental science and renewable energy as part of my degree. Ive also studied the designs and performance of turbines. I would be more than happy to have them near me.

As for stopping the development of other renewables, utter bunk. Tidal stalled because of massive environmental damage risks. Geothermal is very inefficient in the UK, and also risks damaging the aquafers, which cover much of the UK. Solar is useful for microgen installations (many, many very effective household systems near me, and im a northerner!) Thorium, although a very good system, is beset by difficulties caused by 50years of non-proliferation treaties.

No renewables are expected to be continuously operational. They are part of a mixed system of baseload generation, peak demand generation and intermediate generation. But they will only be truly effective once we adopt dynamic demand technologies, something coming closer finally with the development of smart metering (by which I mean telemetric metering, not the so called 'smart' gadgets that the likes of British Gas give you to monitor your usage)

Right, i'll get off me soapbox now and back to my WSPR!

Martin G7MRV

Mon Feb 03, 09:12:00 pm GMT
takis perreas said...

"...No renewables are expected to be continuously operational...".
That's the key phrase Mark!
Would you ever buy a partly operational washing machine?
A fridge?
A car maybe?
My guess is NOT!
So, why would you, me, Roger and everybody else, fund a partly operational scheme which has an 100% efficiency only when it comes to subsidies?

Tue Feb 04, 07:17:00 am GMT
Anonymous said...

Takis,

Read G7MRV's comments again.

The issue with renewable energy is that consumers have become accustomed to energy on demand.

Smart metering allows devices to be turned off when demand is high and supply is low. Turn down the freezer/boiler/ when the nation's kettles come on.

Being more proactive about it, turn on your washine machine when the sun shines on your solar panels or when the local hilltop wind turbines are working.

The alternative is what we have now - 100% backup, using nuclear and fossil fuels. And remember that fossil fuels won't be around for ever. Not to mention that our great grandcildren are going to fry because of our power stations' CO2 emissons.

The UK is blessed with wave/tide/rain/wind energy. We should construct to harness all this whilst fossil based energy is cheap enough to allow it. Petrol is SO CHEAP, even with 82% tax on top. 1litre of it will take your car ten miles. Try hiring a couple of men to push it that far!


Regards,
Rhys

GW4RWR

(3.96kW photovoltic system installed in 2012. It's already produced 7MWh of energy)

Tue Feb 04, 01:02:00 pm GMT
Zak The Rabbit said...

Takis,

Is your washing machine on the spin cycle 24h a day? Do you leave your car engine running? No, I expect not.

Take a standard coal fired generating station. Theres three within visual range of my QTH (I live IN megawatt valley). At any one time, a typical situation is that Drax will be running at capacity, Eggborough at half capacity for turbine maintenance, and Ferrybridge C in sink, ie not generating due to excess supply on the grid. Traditional generation also, like renewables, does not run constantly. This is the whole reason that we have a grid network - so that each station can supply a part of the load WHEN NEEDED. In the case of renewables, which by definition are intermittent, you use them to supply part of BASE LOAD. Peak load is never supplied by renewables, it is supplied by fast uptake systems like gas turbine and pumped storage.

Your argument against renewables based on intermittency against critical supplies is fundamentally flawed. NO system of generation is relied on 100% for critical supplies such as operating theatres. Supplies here are backed up by high capacity UPS and seemless switching, self synchronising on site back-up generators.

Here where I work, we have twin diversity HV feeds, UPS systems and two MASSIVE diesel back-up generators

The future use of dynamic demand technology, combined with near realtime load information from smart metering, will allow renewables to be switched into the grid more effectively, by evening out demand by intellegently controlling systems to take power at low demand periods and to go idle during peaks.

The current grid system is never 100% in operation, and is far from 100% efficient.

We do have to end the use of fossil fuels. I wont get into the climate change argument (although having studied climate change at university level im well in a possition to do so!), but from the point of view that almost all the plastics, high tech, and most of all medicines we enjoy these days are based on oil.

Tue Feb 04, 11:49:00 pm GMT
takis perreas said...

Dear Martin!
I don't run my car or my washing machine 24/7 but I can do it, if I can afford it.
A coal or a nuclear plant CAN run 24/7 for years and years!
The so-called renewable resources can't!
Until they do, it is a waste of effort and a waste of money.
OUR money.

Plus they consume a lot of power for their construction and pollute the environment with their by-products when they come to EOL.

It is an interesting conversation not for this blog though! Maybe some other time.

Thank you Roger and take care!!!

Wed Feb 05, 11:20:00 am GMT
Zak The Rabbit said...

Takis, Have you any idea the energy required to construct a coal or nuclear plant? Let alone the environmental aspects of decommissioning!

As for running your car or washer continuously - try it! See how soon your paying for repairs. No generating plant can run constantly, all are routinely shut down for maintenance, far far more often than wind or solar plant.

Ive studied energy generation for my degree, and I worked when younger at Drax!

Your arguments are flawed, and it also seems there is an agenda against renewables,

I agree, a very interesting conversation,a nd one in which im sure i could out-argue most people, but not for here and now

Mon Feb 10, 07:14:00 pm GMT

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