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I love (hate) this shit.
My comment was in response to "difficult decisions to be made". It'll not be a difficult decision for the vast majority, will it?
I think the vertical axis turbines are a partial answer to more urban/small scale microgeneration. It's a lot less juice but could also require less distribution infra and upfront expense.
I remember reading about trials to put VAWTs on lamp posts along motorway central reservations to harvest the wasted wind from passing vehicles, but my cursory search for the results hasn't turned up anything.
However, when you think about the scale you can only have pretty modest expectations. The Rampion visitor centre in Brighton is pretty good. They are 140 metres tall and 116 of them are still only enough for "half of the homes in Sussex" I think it said.
<p>I’m still flummoxed as to why we are so obsessed with wind generation when we could, and in my view should, be exploiting tidal power. We have some of the best sites in the world around our coastline. It also has the benefit of being entirely predicable at any point round the country for the rest of time.</p>
because wind is proven and scalable. floating wind will only expand that by opening up regions that weren't suitable. the planned developments of offshore wind over the next 10yrs globally is huge.
tidal is stuck in a proof of concept stage and other than a couple of small scale demonstrations hasn't ever crossed the valley of death to scaling and commercialisation. in my opinion, it never will.
I’m not yet convinced wind is proven. It’s still unpredictable which means it can never meet base load requirements without some form of battery to store the power for when it is required. It’s commercialisation is largely due to government subsidies and preferential pricing focused into that form of generation at the expense of any other method of generation
The International Renewable Energy Agency tracked some $634 billion in energy-sector subsidies in 2020, and found that around 70% were fossil fuel subsidies. About 20% went to renewable power generation, 6% to biofuels and just over 3% to nuclear.
[ energy subsidy ]
My comment was in response to “difficult decisions to be made”. It’ll not be a difficult decision for the vast majority, will it?
Won't it?
If it's genuinely not nimbyism where was the Scottish opposition to the M4 widening or Crossrail which contributes towards keeping the Barnett formula viable? Why not build some "Garden cities" and industrial parks in the Borders rather than concreting over Kent and Northamptonshire?
Why is infrastructure in the south seen as spending on the South, and infrastructure in the north seen as the south not wanting it in its own backyard.
By all means send all those well paid offshore jobs down from Aberdeen to Barrow in Furness and we'll stick more of the turbines in English waters and leave the Aberdeen economy to dry up with the oil.
tidal is stuck in a proof of concept stage
Also because underwater turbines and tidal barrages have the potential of not fully understood and researched catastrophic environmental consequences. Apart from affecting ocean levels along coastlines and noise pollution (potentially affecting sea mammals for example) electro-magnetic emissions could also drastically affect sea life.
Not only are natural magnetic fields used for migratory purposes by species such salmon and turtles but also for day to day hunting, navigation, feeding, etc. by dolphins, sharks, and other fish.
Its coastline is less than 1% of its border.
Drac - I admire your dedication to banging away at a horse that is not just dead but fossilised. A lesser poster would have abandoned the ludicrous suggestion that "Ukraine is practically landlocked" after glancing at a map and seeing the coastline. But not you! You're doubling down and introducing even more wacky metrics that you think prove your point. Thats true Big Hitting in action.
Unfortunately, you seem to be confusing yourself about what "landlocked" means and what the numbers are. Facts: Ukraine has 6,993 km of land borders. It has a coastline of 2,782 km along the Black Sea and Azov Sea. It has an exclusive economic zone of 147,318 sq km in the Black Sea. It is not landlocked or "practically landlocked" or anything like that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Ukraine
I’m not yet convinced wind is proven.
I think we can safely say it is proven - there's decades wind data so the average wind speed for a given area is very well known and as such wind farms can be placed where they will be the most efficient.
Also because underwater turbines and tidal barrages have the potential of not fully understood and researched catastrophic environmental consequences.
Very much this - there are plenty of examples where man made structures have altered the geography of the local area for the worse. Plus the ocean is an incredibly hostile place for anything mechanical - it will always win in the end!
I’m still flummoxed as to why we are so obsessed with wind generation when we could, and in my view should, be exploiting tidal power.
Maintenance of a tidal system would be very expensive. Frankly if it was as straightforward as you think it would absolutely have been done by now.
Re Ukrainian waters, it's obvs not just about having a body of water to put the wind farm in but also having suitable wind conditions - some areas of the world simply don't get enough wind throughout the year to make it feasible.
It's the "coastline paradox" politecameraaction...... the smaller the ruler the bigger the coastline. What size ruler did you use?
Also because underwater turbines and tidal barrages have the potential of not fully understood and researched catastrophic environmental consequences.
They said all that when wind turbines were being tested. It was going to wipe out migratory birds as they would all get chopped up by the blades and confuse their navigation.
I get that turbines in the sea create noise that travels along way. But given the number of ships travelling the worlds oceans is it really going to add to the noise pollution that much? At least this noise source doesn’t move
Facts: Ukraine has 6,993 km of land borders. It has a coastline of 2,782 km along the Black Sea and Azov Sea. It has an exclusive economic zone of 147,318 sq km in the Black Sea. It is not landlocked or “practically landlocked” or anything like that.
I’ve obviously clearly misread some numbers then. I was under the impression its coastline was tiny in comparison to its border. Anyway it still has a huge landmass and the UK a huge coastline. Not forgetting the ban of course.
They said all that when wind turbines were being tested.
I don't think that the full effects of tidal barrages and underwater turbines has been "tested" in any significant way.
The oceans are the most sensitive environment on our planet and totally rely on stability, much of it is not fully understood. And it's not just about noise pollution btw, even if you want to compare turbines generating electricity for millions of people with the propellers on ships. IMHO.
It’s commercialisation is largely due to government subsidies and preferential pricing focused into that form of generation at the expense of any other method of generation
New wind receives no subsidy - hasn't done for ages. The bidding process for the right to build wind hits a strike price (last round of offshore at £37.35/mwh - far cheaper than any other form of generation). Dem's the actual facts, but there's no point in arguing about it if you disagree. The sky is green in some people's opinions and they're free to hold them.
Offshore wind is cheap cheap cheap. We should be building loads of it. But the problem is our antiquated and oversubscribed grid - which we should also be piling money into, but aren't. The Tories will leave that to Labour so they can hobble themselves financially, or do the wrong thing and not invest in that, which the Tories would love.
Offshore wind is cheaper than onshore, and doesn't come with perfectly valid NIMBY problems (you can hear Burbo Bank quite clearly from Caldy if the wind is blowing in the right direction - so having onshore wind next to your house would be horrible (better than a coal fire station, but still...).
The engineering required to put together a supergrid - linking up north Africa, Europe, UK, Scotland, The Nordics - so we can get around any intermittency issues, is trivial. It's political will that's lacking is all. We've a plan for a morrocco > devon cable that could provide 7%+ of the entire UK demand, but we just need to move on it.
The head of the UN's environment committee was devastated during the 2008 financial crash. The trillion-dollar bailout just to save our banks (when we could have let them and the shareholders go to the wall) was enough, in his opinion, to essentially fix the energy side of global warming with current tech. He'd have solared up the major deserts and made a power ring around the planet so we'd always have enough sun hitting enough solar.
Oil lobby will never let that happen though. Neither will the governments. Capitalism would fall apart.
They said all that when wind turbines were being tested. It was going to wipe out migratory birds as they would all get chopped up by the blades and confuse their navigation.
Well it was extremely easy to survey that..... just wander around under a wind farm and see how many chopped up birds there are - 'cos they don't move.
It's wildly more tricky to do the same at a tidal site - you'd need to send divers down* to count the chopped up things - but the chopped up things are constantly being eaten by things that aren't chopped up.... oh, and they will be always be moving in the strong tide just to make it more 'fun'.
* not easy and very expensive in the strong tidal areas where the hardware would be located (obvs).
At least this noise source doesn’t move
No, it's comparatively close to shore in pretty shallow water.
lodger
I think the vertical axis turbines are a partial answer to more urban/small scale microgeneration. It’s a lot less juice but could also require less distribution infra and upfront expense.
I am not particularly clued up on the technology, but I don't really understand why there aren't more small scale wind turbines being used for micro-generation.
There is a new concept turbine installed at the end of Skegness pier, which consists of circular ducts/vanes to re-direct wind from any direction upwards through a vertical turbine.
I don't know what the power generation capabilities of the device is but it is quite small, reasonably unobtrusive (no more obtrusive than roof-mounted a/c or other ventilation systems) and I doubt it weighs a great deal - you could have a bunch of them installed on the roofs of buildings in all the business parks/industrial estates around the country feeding into the grid.
I can't find any information about how much energy they generate, so I suspect it's not massive amount.
I am not particularly clued up on the technology, but I don’t really understand why there aren’t more small scale wind turbines being used for micro-generation.
Because small units are quite inefficient and madly expensive for what they generate.
I am not particularly clued up on the technology, but I don’t really understand why there aren’t more small scale wind turbines being used for micro-generation.
A wind turbine big enough to boil your kettle on a windy day (2.5kW about the same power as a large detached house might make from solar), is a lot bigger that you'd imagine and really noisy. You wouldn't want it on or anywhere near your house, let alone one on every house in the street.
And there's awkward planning rules for them, you have to calculate the area that the blades cast a shadow over, because it can't be anywhere near any buildings or roads due to the strobing which is the big reason you don't see them in built up areas.
thisisnotaspoon
A wind turbine big enough to boil your kettle on a windy day (2.5kW about the same power as a large detached house might make from solar), is a lot bigger that you’d imagine and really noisy. You wouldn’t want it on or anywhere near your house, let alone one on every house in the street.
I get that perhaps it's not feasible for every house in surburbia to have a wind turbine in the back garden.
I was thinking more along the lines of installations on industrial estates/shopping centres & the like. There must be tons of areas around the country that are pretty bad industrial eye sores anyway, and so whacking a few of the vertical axis wind turbines on the roof, or some of those ducted turbines that I linked to above, wouldn't really make any more of an eyesore.
I had a look at that wind turbine on Skegness Pier last time we were there during the Easter break & apart from a slight swooshing noise, it was very discrete & you can't even see the blades through the ducting.
Business Parks/Industrial estates are often sited alongside busy roads (like the business part where I work), so I would be surprised if excessive noise was an issue.
I suspect one of the main reasons for not doing it is cost/unit energy generated. If they were economically viable, I guess they'd be popping up everywhere.
My daughter does her football training in the next village along by the primary school. They have a wind turbine installed on site that's been going since 2007 (according to the article I found online). I just looked it up & its a 6kw one. That's a fair few staff room kettles boiled, in 16 years!
It's a bit of a shame that there isn't more information about it on the schools website - how much it generates etc. I hope that the kids learn about this as part of their science/tech classes.
There are non-windmill ways to generate electricity from wind - spiral turbines that (apparently) don't make a noise, and the giant wobbling dildo concept. Probably far less effective than solar though I would imagine.
Probably far less effective than solar though I would imagine
except at night...
You wouldn’t want it on or anywhere near your house, let alone one on every house in the street.
I get that. Perhaps they could put them in noisy environments such as the central reservation of motorways
@cheychase New wind receives no subsidy – hasn’t done for ages.
I’m not so sure about. This scheme is less than 2 years old
Also because underwater turbines and tidal barrages have the potential of not fully understood and researched catastrophic environmental consequences.
Very much this – there are plenty of examples where man made structures have altered the geography of the local area for the worse. Plus the ocean is an incredibly hostile place for anything mechanical – it will always win in the end!
I’m still flummoxed as to why we are so obsessed with wind generation when we could, and in my view should, be exploiting tidal power.
Maintenance of a tidal system would be very expensive. Frankly if it was as straightforward as you think it would absolutely have been done by now.
There have been proposals to build a tidal barrage across the Bristol Channel, roughly from Brean Down to Cardiff. None have shown any signs of actually happening, because of all of the issues raised above. The Severn has a phenomenal tidal rise and fall, second highest in the world, and it’s fast flowing, but it’s also a busy river, the Port of Bristol, Gloucester, Newport all have commercial docks with a lot of trade in and out, as well as all of the civilian boats and marinas. Then there’s the fact that an enormous amount of silt that flows down the river, which would clog turbines very quickly, and would be very difficult and expensive to try to clear. At Brean the tide goes out about a mile, leaving huge mud flats, and those extend much of the way up past the Severn Bridges. It’s also fairly shallow, apart from a narrow navigable channel for the biggest ships, and any barriers would effectively destroy internationally protected and vitally important habitats crucial for migratory birds, fish, including salmon.
Anyone who’s in any way familiar with the region would realise that a tidal barrier would be horribly difficult and damaging, and hugely expensive to build, in such a challenging environment.
The most recent proposals were for tidal lagoons. Fill with the flood tide and then generate power by controlling flow on the ebb. It’d keep the dredgers happy as they’d fill up with mud in about two days flat.
Bristol Channel mud is amazing stuff, there is no defined seabed, they define the bottom as the nautical horizon, the density of liquid mud that a ship can drive through. ~250kg per cubic metre
I just looked it up & its a 6kw one. That’s a fair few staff room kettles boiled, in 16 years!
My old outdoor centre ran two 6kw turbines.
Remember that is peak output.
They averaged about 2kw each, sat on a windy Scottish hillside above the tree line.
Then you do the annual safety inspection and service - costing more than they generated in power.
🙁
Big wind is where is at.
And solar.
And more small run of river hydro.
And in my view, some tidal.
And battery / pumped / storage.
And better grid tie.
And more home batteries.
And, most of all, more energy efficiency and insulation.
I am not particularly clued up on the technology, but I don’t really understand why there aren’t more small scale wind turbines being used for micro-generation.
Because they're not commercially viable. The equation describing wind turbine power output is proportional to the square of the blade length and the cube of the wind speed. So large turbines in windy locations are many times more powerful than small turbines in urban environments.
Also electricity is pretty easy to move around so there is less benefit it having local generation
except at night…
i think the relevant metric is the amount of electricity generated though . .
The Welsh government? have allowed an experimental tidal thing in the South Stack tide race.
A travesty there are lots of breeding birds in that area. I look forward to being minced or crushed when I paddle the Stacks in my seakayak.
The thing is currently being constructed.
We’ve a plan for a morrocco > devon cable that could provide 7%+ of the entire UK demand, but we just need to move on it.
The factory for the cable just gained it's planning permission, everyone local (except the usual headbangers) is willing it into existence.
if you’re bothered by subsidy – maybe look at the Royal Family. 25% of the profit of any sales of contracts for offshore wind goes to the crown.
Does it? Or does it go to Crown Estates?
jam-bo
Full MemberThe most recent proposals were for tidal lagoons. Fill with the flood tide and then generate power by controlling flow on the ebb. It’d keep the dredgers happy as they’d fill up with mud in about two days flat.
Is that definitely true? I know Bristol channel's basically just dilute land but tidal lagoons were used succesfully in ye olde days in some places to keep difficult channels navigable- hold water at high tide, let it out fast, let the water carry mud out. Just wondering if it's actually been demo'd at all.
I like the fact that a debate like this can happen around real world action rather than theoretic concepts. OK, not as much as we should be doing and maybe too later, but it's actually happening.
However, unless we can persuade Karen from Croydon to not have her outdoor sex pond sat at 40 degrees 24/7/365 just in case the pampas grass brings the boys to the yard, and millions of other wasteful uses, it's all for naught. We are a long way from unlimited sustainably* generated energy so reducing our consumption is still a really important part of the journey and I'm not convinced we are are focusing enough on that aspect.
*nothing is truly sustainable
@chrismac - it's easy to read "subsidy" and think that's how it works. But companies compete to be able to build wind farms and they hit a strike price on a "contract for difference". If that strike price comes in below the wholesale electricity price then those companies actually pay money to our government for their ability to operate. E.G.:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/200353/offshore-wind-power-cheap-could-money/
That's very different from, say, subsidised Nuclear - which is guaranteed £96/mwh - which is more than double wind and, importantly, the UK public will pick up any decomissioning and spent fuel storage and disposal costs. Considering we have no solution to the nuclear fuel problem (because we can't beat physics) we're currently on the hook for £140bn - which has more than doubled in recent years, and looks like it will continue to double fairly regularly because we simply don't know how to deal with it.
I guess the "new nuclear" thing is still a goer, despite UK taxpayer picking up the tab, forever, because we've already got this problem - so adding to it only makes it more expensive, rather than making it a new problem. Of course, we really have to hope Putin doesn't simply wang a few missiles into Sellafield, or that some "bad actors" don't decide to exploit this vulnerability sometime in the next couple of hundred thousand years.
Of course, coal, oil and gas are still receiving nearly all of the real "subsidies" that the UK grants. Of course, UK government denies that it gives subsidies, but it gives tax breaks for "exploration" (we know where it all is, more than we can ever burn if the planet is to survive, not just avoid heating) and "research and development" (what? on oil? how many advances in catalytic cracking can we make now?) - to the tune of Ten Billion per annum. - oh, and $5.9 trillion per annum globally (or $11m a minute) according to the IMF.
Sounds like a lot worse of a deal than wind - which pays us because it's so cheap.
But if you want to believe the "wind is subsidised" line, like I say, feel free.
If the facts have knocked you, maybe you could listen to the oil industry shills line of it being unreliable - but for a less than that $5.9 trillion a year we give to coal, oil and gas, we could fix the global energy supply issues permanently.
That’s very different from, say, subsidised Nuclear – which is guaranteed £96/mwh – which is more than double wind and, importantly, the UK public will pick up any decomissioning and spent fuel storage and disposal costs.
Actually, in the case of HPC it's exactly the same only the strike price is higher. SZC is a different case again with the UK making a direct investment in the project.
As for taxpayers being on the hook for decommissioning and disposal that's only legacy costs from pre-privatisation, the balance is made up from the nuclear liabilities fund which a portion of all generation income (not profit) has been paid into since SNL and NG came into existence. If you want to talk numbers HNB has defueled 70% of their lead reactor since starting around this time last year, HPB 25% since ~August and DNB just started at the weekend. Compare that to the Magnox numbers and it's a very different story to the old days.
Reading based here and not far from the earlier mentioned Green park turbine, probably see it a couple of times a week, normally not moving much.
And we're just back from bumping up our Carbon footprint with a trip down the M4 to Pendine sands where we trundled past Port Talbot with the whirligigs up on the hills overlooking it pointed out to sea.
The thing is I really don't mind wind turbines and all the arguments about On Vs Offshore and keeping NIMBYs happy miss the point that more sustainable leccy generation is generally needed even if every installation doesn't manage optimum efficiency.
Some of the local bits of rural land near us are now getting used for solar farms. Several of the residents nearby absolutely lost their shit when it was suggested wind farms might be going in at some of those locations a couple of years back, but I think it was all a ruse so they'd think they'd scored a victory by not challenging the installation of a metric shit-ton of PV panels across previously green a pleasant fields.
I think it generally makes sense for us inland dwellers to use as much of our spare land and rooftops as possible for solar PV now and I would like to see more support and clearer schemes from government so that more home owners as well as commercial outfits can maximize the use of solar.
But there are still locations on land, mostly coastal where wind turbines make sense and have the added benefits of easier maintenance access and reduced transmission distance which shouldn't be dismissed just because it changes the view a bit. Fit the generating solution to the location.
But also mostly this:
However, unless we can persuade Karen from Croydon to not have her outdoor sex pond sat at 40 degrees 24/7/365 just in case the pampas grass brings the boys to the yard, and millions of other wasteful uses, it’s all for naught. We are a long way from unlimited sustainably* generated energy so reducing our consumption is still a really important part of the journey and I’m not convinced we are are focusing enough on that aspect.
*nothing is truly sustainable
We collectively piss energy away at present, and it's become too easy a cheap for many of us to do so. Our use of leccy is set to increase over the coming decades with more EVs on the roads and more houses heated solely by electricity. Even if we had all the renewables we needed tomorrow I think people would find a way to push demand higher by just living as inefficiency as possible. That's a national mindset we need to change...
I don’t think PV is the solution for the UK as our geography makes they very inefficient. As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.
As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.
Wind turbines might manage that, solar is more like 10%. But the input fuel is free, so efficiency can be a bit misleading.
More guff @squirrelking - the "Nuclear Liabilities Fund" is worth about £4.5bn and gets topped up tiny amounts.
Inflation alone means that the growth in value of our liability to clean up our existing mess - that we don't know how to clean up therefore meaning it's a permanent growing debt - easily wipes up that £4.5 billion four times over.
It's a crock. And any way you measure it Joe Public is on the end of decomissioning, storage, "disposal" of the stuff. The only bit that makes money is the generation bit - and that's going into the pockets of shareholders or private companies would never put money in to build the things in the first place.
Privatise the gains, socialise the losses.
Wind turbines might manage that, solar is more like 10%. But the input fuel is free, so efficiency can be a bit misleading.
Anyone have the figure for wind (onshore, offshore and 'microgeneration) my gut feeling is it's probably the same or even lower onshore? Offshore might be more consistent.
Unless you're Morocco then the figure for solar seems to be about 1000hours at nameplate capacity per year (makes sense, most places get ~1600-1700 hours of sun, some of which will be morning/evening rather than directly at the panels).
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-energy-consumption-vs-solar-pv-capacity
The Welsh government? have allowed an experimental tidal thing in the South Stack tide race.
A travesty there are lots of breeding birds in that area. I look forward to being minced or crushed when I paddle the Stacks in my seakayak.
The thing is currently being constructed.
Surely that's like saying, paragliders will be minced by windfarms, or urban explorers killed by spent nuclear reactors. Just don't indulge in hobbies in excessively dangerous places.
I don’t think PV is the solution for the UK as our geography makes they very inefficient. As was said earlier working at 1/3rd capacity is not very efficient.
Not relevant, what is relevant is whether the generators make enough money to cover their installation and running costs, if they do then the generating source is a net contributor to our energy supplies. It's not like fossil fuels which are finite and contribute climate change so being wasteful in their use is a bad thing.
Efficiency will improve as the industry continues to mature.
Anyone have the figure for wind (onshore, offshore and ‘microgeneration) my gut feeling is it’s probably the same or even lower onshore? Offshore might be more consistent.
This report has the capacity factor for Whitelee Windfarm (used to be the biggest onshore there was I think) which is on the hills south of Glasgow as 18.56% measured 2016/2017.
This one lists the UK offshore sites with the big arrays going ranging from ~30% to ~50% lifetime capacity factor.
@thisisnotaspoon - the south stack tidal race is a really bad one tbh. The company was fraudulent with the "science" on it's impacts.
South Stack is an internationally important SSSI. It's puffins, guillemots, cormorants - big breeding ground. These birds are water feeders - they're swimmers.
I was approached by a teenager working for the company at Porth Dafarch (beach nearby that kayakers launch from) and administered a questionnaire that I literally could not answer in a way that didn't give the impression I was all for the scheme, when I'm vehemently against it (what's the point in "saving the planet" if we kill the nature when doing it? We could easily build a few more wind farms offshore, cheaper, without disturbing the precarious seabird population, and without pandering to grant-chasing companies and councils).
I was told that they'd done a study on common seals in Ireland and common seals avoid the turbines, so the birds will be OK. When I pointed out that the mammalian brain is way more complex than the bird-brains of birds so it wasn't applicable science she almost blew her top at me.
On the other hand, I'm for the incoming tidal lagoon on the Mersey. There's **** all nature there anyway.