Comments on: More from the Sunday Times poll

By: Alasdair

Alasdair — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:56:48 +0000

No worries!! And I agree wind farms are nowhere near perfect. We could go on for days.

Next topic.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 17:21:19 +0000

Alasdair-thanks-I meant no offence.
Airbags don’t cause environmental damage-wind farms can & do-but-
a) Its a long story
b)Its off topic here
c) I have pushed Anthony’s forbearance enough

So will leave it there

Colin

By: Alasdair Cameron

Alasdair Cameron — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:27:22 +0000

Hi Colin, just for the record I have a fair deal of knowledge about how wind turbines work as I was professionally involved in the energy and renewable energy sector for several years…

The point is that grid operators charge penalties for non-compliance. So if a company says it will sell XX MWh of electricity to the grid from their turbines, but fail to do so, they are charged a penalty. This is factored into the cost and profit projections made by electricity companies and applies to all forms of power, although it is obviously of more concern to intermittant renewables.

Furthermore, problems with the grid are just that- problems with the grid, not the energy source. Strehgthening the grid is important in increasing the amounts of renewables we can bring online, but should not be a reason not to do it. Otherwise its a bit like saying airbags don;t fit into old cars, so the problem is with the airbag.

By: Colin

Colin — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:30:06 +0000

Peter-
Germany has around 20% of its CAPACITY for electricity in INSTALLED MAX OUTPUT of wind turbines.
Wind turbines produce a load factor of around 30% ( BWEA)of INSTALLED CAPACITY-because a) they do not operate at wind speeds lower than 10mph & are shut down over 50mph…and b) the wind doesn’t blow all the time.
Therefore Germanies OUTPUT ( the stuff you can actually use)of electricity from it’s wind turbines is around 7% of total output-from tens of thousands of turbines….that is why-having said no to nuclear, they are massive users of coal & gas-mostly imported.

Alex Salmond had to be corrected in the SCottish Parliament for similarly misunderstanding the difference between INSTALLED/MAX output of wind turbines and ACTUAL AVERAGE output( Load Factor) !!

I hope the SNP remember these basic facts when they consider desecrating habitat on Lewis of international ecological importance ,by installing
200 wind turbines on it despite Protective Designations and 20,000 objections ( not forgetting the miles of sub-sea interconnectors pylons & cables to get the output to England.)

Alasdair

Your second paragraph-with great respect -shows scant understanding of the way wind turbines work, the market in ROCs-or indeed the nature of the weather.

Colin

By: Alasdair Cameron

Alasdair Cameron — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:15:49 +0000

Colin – any costs incurred by the national grid for incorporating wind power will be offset by the extremely low cost of wind generted during peak load hours.

Any costs incurred to the grid by short-term intermittancy (ie. if the wind suddenly stops blowing for half an hour when it wasnlt predicted to) will be picked up by the companies owning the wind generators (this is already what happens and is a non-compliance penalty).

Incidentally, I would not say that nuclear waste is a red herring. While we do have some waste storage, it is not ideal and we still haven’t got a long term solution. Furthermore if every country follows our lead and goes nuclear we will have a lot more waste, being stored in far more unstable places, or being shipped continuosly around the world. Something only needs to go wrong once to negate all the alleged ‘cost savings’ associated with nuclear.