Wind Turbines.

[TonyP]

OK, this thread has had a massive prune. I have taken most of the off-topic stuff out, but tried to leave any content where it's a personal story of growing up etc, as I think this adds to the general theme that we as a society are consuming more power, which relates to the Wind Farm theme in general. To be honest it was harder than I thought to stay neutral.....

If you are not happy if I have removed some of your posts or ramblings... well unlucky.

Keep it on topic

 

[Grimbo]

I'm probably more guilty than most for wandering … So ill try to bring it back.
Why massive windmills ? Is there not some sense in the installation of smaller ones to feed a smaller number of consumers ? I see a couple of little ones that seem to be feeding an industrial unit on an estate. Why don't they go with this approach I wonder. Next time they throw up a housing estate part of the design is a couple of turbines that maybe run the streetlights on the estate, instead of those substations you have a little battery bank. Led lampposts round the estate and Bob's your fathers brother. They'd save a fortune on erecting the things at sea or on the moors etc. The less reliance you have on grid power is energy saved and emisisons reduced ….

Nail on head I think.....

Trouble is the above requires some form of coherent thought and planning , it also requires the developers to be forced to make such measures as they are just about max profits .

Neither is likely to happen ;-)

Common happening with large developments is the required social housing and school/infrastructure element they are obliged to build is always built last and often not at all with the developer having "run out of money" .
Current UK planning enforcement and regulation is not fit for purpose .... they don't have the funds to take wealthy developers to Court and the local planning authority's are often in the back pockets of developers.... 2 of our local councillor's were treated to a trip abroad on a private jet by one well known local developer and not an eyebrow was raised ....

My dream is to sell up and move to a watermill in Devon with woodland and a few fields ....use the mill to run a generator , have our own well and live if not the good life then one where we are not held hostage by the electricity supplier in the brave new all electric world .

Your comment about energy security is valid..... if the UK becomes solely reliant on electricity but the power stations are built and owned ( or at least the debt is ) by the Chinese ...and we have no UK owned source of the rare metals required to make the batteries or power storage banks we are at the mercy of those that do and currently they are not and never will be able to be trusted .

 

[goodoldboy]

One benefit of the National Grid, is that it's there for all (if you can afford it), and balances out generation by whatever means.

A good point . Interconnection can keep the lights on in an emergency as Texas found out to it's cost recently. What i'm interested in is how savings could be made .as an anecdote , we've been off grid for 20 years so saving is a big part of our electricity use.Offgrid can be more expensive per KWH so things like microwaves , tumble dryers or electric ovens make you think twice.But a wood fired oven isn't practical for most folks so affordable electricity is needed.

 

[frank rabbets]

The Government can save, I think, £ billions, on that stupid railway if they cancel it. Who will want to use it? More and more people are working from home, town centres/shops are derelict and office blocks are closing. We live in a connected society through the internet now, not roads. We will all have a 3d printer where you can print what you want, even a Chinese "take away" which will become a term from the stone age.

 

[goodoldboy]

The Government can save, I think, £ billions, on that stupid railway if they cancel it.

It's all about the bottom line Frank.Spain has a network of high speed rail that most folks can't afford to use.Also it's cheaper to fly & hire a car at the other end.Big project , big costs , which is surely why we have loads of wind turbines in one place ?

 

[Shayne]

Government acting as a private group buy the land then sell it to the government at a hugely inflated price , hence all public objection will fall on deaf ears and the project is guaranteed to be approved every step of the way .

 

[hopeless wanderer]

Well who would have thought... They turn the area into a tax free port and investment arrives almost instantly.
It's an American outfit but it 3000 desperately needed jobs to replace the ship building and steel mills of yesteryear.

Thousands of jobs as US giant confirms offshore wind factory on Tees

The Tees will become vast UK offshore wind hub after a 'monumental' deal was struck amid a Government investment of up to £20m

www.gazettelive.co.uk

 

[Shayne]

Was thinking about this and perhaps the grand scale of things is the fly in the ointment . What if every house had a second chimney putting power back to the grid , something like a suped up version of this

 

[goodoldboy]

Not a bad idea Shayne .or what about more solar panels ? i still think that savings could make a big difference

 

[Shayne]

Until they make them to be used instead of or as a roof with a similar lifespan they are still an eyesore needing constant maintenance , who will pay for that ?

The chimney dynamo is less complicated than adding a combi boiler i'd imagine ?

 

[goodoldboy]

Until they make them to be used instead of or as a roof with a similar lifespan they are still an eyesore needing constant maintenance , who will pay for that ?

Solar panels don't need maintenance .Tesla make solar roof tiles with a 25 year guarantee.beauty is in the eye of the beholder

 

[Shayne]

Well there you go then , I don't have much interest and i've only seen with my own eyes ruddy great panels bolted on top of house roofs and every time i thought why pay for a roof twice when panels could very easily replicate tiles in an attractive futuristic way .

Same with cars why not aim to have conventional engine store and upload power to the grid to offset the gradual transition to EV .

I believe the internet would suffer catastrophic collapse if enough people turned off their home computer at the same time . Minor contributions on a massive scale sustain something that cannot possibly be contained by a single body or organization .

 

[goodoldboy]

I believe the internet would suffer catastrophic collapse if enough people turned off their home computer at the same time

Interesting idea , like a reverse DDOS attack ? I think that you accept the idea that chance plays a much bigger part in our lives than we fell comfortable with - am i right ?

Minor contributions on a massive scale sustain something that cannot possibly be contained by a single body or organization .

A good definition of anarchy . A single bloke is credited with inventing the jet engine but how many people in that workshop put in a little bit of wisdom and experience ? "an ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory " but as for energy saving a A+++ fridge freezer is about 1500 quid but it's a massive high end thing . A rational approach to energy use , appliances that were sized for need = less wind turbines

 

[Grimbo]

Well there you go then , I don't have much interest and i've only seen with my own eyes ruddy great panels bolted on top of house roofs and every time i thought why pay for a roof twice when panels could very easily replicate tiles in an attractive futuristic way .

My thoughts exactly....

We seem to be rushing into going solar dependent without a grown up thought on how we can do it intelligently .....

There was a rush to solar panels that blighted much of Suburbia with ill thought out and short life span installations ... the tech is changing very quickly so it would be wiser to wait for it to mature .... then incorporate it into every new build and also make them incorporate grey water recycling and rain water holding tanks etc

Solar farms are another ill thought out scheme that often take agricultural land out of food production at a time when we have an ever increasing population needing ever more food .... the future of green and low carbon impact food production is to grow locally and reduce food miles coupled with extensifaction ... difficult if you have covered your available food producing land in solar panels and then the enviro lobby are also trying to "re wild" other area's...... again no grown up thinking but more like different groups each with their own agenda .....

 

[goodoldboy]

My thoughts exactly....

We seem to be rushing into going solar dependent without a grown up thought on how we can do it intelligently .....

There was a rush to solar panels that blighted much of Suburbia with ill thought out and short life span installations ... the tech is changing very quickly so it would be wiser to wait for it to mature .... then incorporate it into every new build and also make them incorporate grey water recycling and rain water holding tanks etc

Solar farms are another ill thought out scheme that often take agricultural land out of food production at a time when we have an ever increasing population needing ever more food .... the future of green and low carbon impact food production is to grow locally and reduce food miles coupled with extensifaction ... difficult if you have covered your available food producing land in solar panels and then the enviro lobby are also trying to "re wild" other area's...... again no grown up thinking but more like different groups each with their own agenda .....

Yeah but everyone gets paid .The massive P.V. farms planed in Spain aren't a rational response but are more profitable for the farmers renting their land out .Not sure what you mean by the enviro lobby - Spanish environmental groups are against large scale wind and solar projects making the same arguments as you. The reality is that a good deal of prime agricultural land in Spain is used for cash crops .

 

[Shayne]

I think that you accept the idea that chance plays a much bigger part in our lives than we fell comfortable with - am i right ?

You are , though i'm not sure why it is relevant ?

I've seen to many people work hard their whole lives only to end exactly where they would have been had they not worked at all to believe in any self made bullshit .

Lad i knew worked his nuts off full of enthusiasm building his own carpet business and finally struck gold when he landed a very lucrative contract . Two fully carpeted mansions later they refused to pay "take us to court if you can afford to" . I met him in prison when he got about 6 years for dealing drugs trying to pay off his debts so he could rebuild his business . Call it what you like but desperation and determination surely played a big part in his choices .

Maybe 20 years of obscurity later i heard in December his body was washed up on a beach . How different his life could have been with a little luck on his side .

 

[Grimbo]

Yeah but everyone gets paid .The massive P.V. farms planed in Spain aren't a rational response but are more profitable for the farmers renting their land out .Not sure what you mean by the enviro lobby - Spanish environmental groups are against large scale wind and solar projects making the same arguments as you. The reality is that a good deal of prime agricultural land in Spain is used for cash crops .

Not sure it's a "thing" in Spain but in the UK certain "enviro" groups are saying that we should "re wild" areas..... this seems to involve taking food producing areas and doing nothing to the land so that all the weed species take hold and out compete slower growing things in what they see as returning the land to it's wild state and becoming a haven for nature .
This approach ignores the fact that most of what we see as ancient wood land and wild areas are the result of management 100's of years ago ....

We have 2 fields that have been left to go "wild" behind us ... they are long mainly now long grass , Ragwort , brambles and a few self sown trees , mainly silver birch and the odd oak , black thorn , plus brambles and tufty grass ..... the only habitat it provides is a bit of cover for rabbits and grazing for deer , it will never turn into a wildlife rich ancient woodland or will be a wild flower meadow .

The local Barn Owls prefer to hunt in our grazed un improved pastures , as does the Kestrel and Tawny owl because they can catch more voles ... .. again an ill thought out policy that takes low intensity agricultural land out of food production ( can't blame farmers as the subsidy pays better to allow it to go "wild" ) but actually doesn't do a lot for native wildlife as it's adapted over 100's of years to live along side and benefit from low intensity , low input farming .

 

[chapel gate]

its normally people from cities and towns who tell me they dont have a problem with wind turbines and solar fields.
lets stop piss potting around and go nuclear.
make electricity cheap enough and we would all be installing electric boilers, direct replacement, 100% efficient, smaller, quiter and less maintenance.

 

[SteveJB]

The trouble with nuclear power stations is nobody wants them in their back yard
Try putting in planning permission to use the old Battersea power station as a nuclear plant to supply London
Hydro power sounds great fairly clean but you have to flood thousands of acres and displace families and remove land from farming and food production and them slap in a dirty great big lump of concrete and hope it don't crack wind farms lots of whoosh woosh woosh day and night if the wind does blow a Chinese torture for the local inhabitants solar panel farm depending on how they are built might be able to get animals to graze the land then if you can place them carefully turn them to face each other then you got a solar oven Field to table ready cooked or rather than landfill burn the rubbish to generate electricity i know there will be air pollution but what causes more years of composting plastic paper food waste wood and everything else or a plant that sorts recycling and burns whats left then sell the ash for fertiliser And that is if the contractors can pay the local councillors enormous amounts of money
There will always be objections to whatever power solutions are put on the table

 

[chapel gate]

There will always be objections to whatever power solutions are put on the table

Exactly.
So let's just use the best available solution to the problem.