But Ukraine is not, by any means, practically landlocked.

Its coastline is less than 1% of its border. The GB coastline alone is much, much bigger and a much smaller landmass.

And I agree with @scotroutes – people will pay to have a turbine in Scotland and a sodding great line of pylons so that thier Oxfordshire village can remain unsullied by such crap.

I love (hate) this shit.

It gets winged and moaned about how “London” sucks up investment, where’s the Scottish Crossrail cutting through Glencoe, where’s your HS2 tunneling through the Cairngorms, where’s your M40 blasting though cuttings in the Trossachs, where’s the inescapable humm of the M4* on the West Highland Way? And yet ultimately a huge chunk of the economic benefit of those projects then flows out of London as taxes and government spending.

And newsflash, we have pylons down here spoiling the view too, because even if that specific electron did travel all the way down from Skaw it still goes into our houses.

And if you’re really nice, when there’s a nice blocking high pressure system we’ll send you back some nice nuclear electrons that the SNP has banned any new builds in it’s backyard.

*Technically it’s the M40 you can hear from the Ridgeway but I’ve already moaned about it.

Drac

Its coastline is less than 1% of its border.

Doesn’t sound right, are you sure?

The UK’s coastline is 11 times longer than Ukraine’s.

Plus the Black Sea is basically just a very large lake…..it wasn’t even slightly salty until 7000 years ago, it doesn’t even have any tides! Not like proper British coastlines 😉

It’s not unheard of for the blades to break and come down – I doubt the owners would want that happening in a built up area.
It’s not common but it happened near to me and there was about a half mile debris field. The failure also caused damage to the tower which had to be replaced (it took about 18 months to be rebuilt).

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.

@chrismac

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.

BTW @chrismac – 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.

“Just because”.

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.

A look at the ‘revolutionary’ wind turbine that will light up Skegness Pier at night

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

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/13/uk-to-offer-265m-in-subsidies-for-renewable-energy-developers

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.

@chevychase

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 Member

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.

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.

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

Crown Estate is the government organisation.
Not the royal family personally.

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