Posted on 07/14/2009 7:17:21 AM PDT by thinking
Let us be clear: Britain is facing an unprecedented crisis. Before long, we will lose 40 per cent of our generating capacity.
And unless we come up quickly with an alternative, the lights WILL go out. Not before time, the Confederation of British Industry yesterday waded in, warning the Government it must abandon its crazy fixation with wind turbines as a way of plugging this forthcoming shortfall and instead urgently focus on far more efficient ways to meet the threat of a permanent, nationwide black-out.
There are a few contenders for the title of the maddest thing that has happened in our lifetime.
But a front-runner must be the way in which politicians of all parties have been seduced by the La-La Land promises of the wind power lobby.
If you still haven't made your mind up about wind power, just consider some of the inescapable facts - facts which the Government and the wind industry do their best to hide from us all.
So far we have spent billions of pounds on building just over 2,000 wind turbines - and yet they contribute barely one per cent of all the electricity that we need.
The combined output of all those 2,000 turbines put together, averaging 700 megawatts, is less than that of a single, medium-sized conventional power station.
What's more, far from being 'free', this pitiful dribble of electricity is twice as expensive as the power we get from the nuclear, gas or coal-fired power stations which currently supply well over 90 per cent of our needs - and we all pay the difference, without knowing it, through our electricity bills.
But despite its best efforts to conceal the fact that wind turbines expensively and unreliably generate only a derisory amount of electricity, the Government keeps ....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
This is utterly ridiculous and shows the total craven attitude of our political leaders.
This “energy gap” crisis in the UK has been building for years. Everybody knows it is coming. Its not hard to figure out. Some of the current generating plant is getting old and will have to be closed down. Just like everything else it wears out eventually. Everyone knows that new power plants will have to built and everyone with any knowledge of the industry knows they will have to be nuclear. But the green lobby is so strong now that nobody wants to take the tough decision to give them the green light. So they just do nothing, and hope the problem will go away.
I agree, and I think most sensible people do, we need a mixed energy generation policy. I dont mind dabbling in wind and wave and solar power. All the indications are that all three will be (locally) important in the near future as the technology improves, but they are never going to be able to generate the sheer quantity of energy that will be required, and all but the most committed (and I mean like they should be locked up somewhere safe) enviro nut believes otherwise.
Ping
In the news recently here in Europe - BBC, Sky, and Euronews - has been a huge solar farm to be built in the Sahara, to supply electricity to Europe, Germany in particular. Siemens and several other large German firms are behind it. What I want to know is how they are going to get that power from Africa to Germany, and what percentage of what is generated in the Sahara will actually make it to, say, Frankfurt.
“I work in the power industry.
The reality is, at least here in the western US, that wind farms are draining the grid almost as much as they add to it. In order to maintain them in sync with the grid, when the wind is not blowing they are drawing power to keep a minimum threshold so that when the wind does blow they come up on the grid in sync.”
Excellent point...are you saying the alternators have to be driven as a motor to maintain speed/sync, when there is no wind power to drive in the generating mode...never realized that.... simply put, the rotor has to be moving, regardless of the available wind, and so requires power from other sources....
Ah but to be fair, most wind turbines in the UK are built out at sea, where the wind is much stronger and the “eyesore” factor considerably less.
I have no problem with well placed wind farms. What I do have a problem with is running our cars on NG. No thanks.
The abolition of independence is the goal.
Slavery is the goal.
When you turn a blind eye to evil for as long as we have, this is what you get.
They article mentions 2,000 windmills barely producing the electricity equal to that of one power station.
I seriously doubt windpower will help us do anything except “feel good” about ourselves.
We should be flat-out building nukes instead of covering thousands of acres of landscape with windmills and solar grids.
Alternative fuel sources will never go anywhere until people give up on solar and wind power. Solar power is self-limiting....the amount of power able to be derived from the sun is roughly enough to power a 100W light bulb per ft^2 of area. That's it. No more, no less. We can improve the efficiency, we can make the tech cheaper...but we'll never get more energy than that out of it. Period.
Wind power is too irregular, and frankly, the technology to harness it is the same principle that was in place 400 years ago. Efficiency has improved, but a windmill is still a windmill.
I won't deny that Solar and Wind power work very well on a localized basis. Unfortunately, politicians (and many people) have fallen for the fallacy that if an idea works very well on a small scale, then it will work equally well on a large scale. Ain't the case, at least not in this situation.
SO, IMHO, until we stop throwing money blindly at self-limiting technologies, or tech that's hundreds of years old, we're never going to get anywhere. It's time to start thinking out of the box. What about wave technology? Or wind turbines attached to balloons that float in the jet stream? Or quick recharge batteries attached to some sort of device that catches lightning bolts? Or some other "new" ideas?
Interesting. I’d expect costs be considerably higher then, having to deal with pounding waves & corrosion - not trivial when dealing with hundreds of thousands of them.
Begs the question of wave energy collectors: hinged barges using wave-induced flexing to pump hydraulics thru generators. Much simpler than trying to stand a wind turbine.
***In Central Illinois, there is a huge wind farm with over 500 large windmills.***
You should see the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas. Large electric windfarms everywhere.
When they cease to be profitable, what do you think will happen to the existing windmills? They are a big source of revenue for landowners, taxing entities and I wonder what will happen when they are no longer used. There are groups trying to get windfarms in our area. They say to put in your lease agreement terms for dismantling and removing the windmills if they are abandoned. My BIG concern is that they money will run out and you cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip. If a company has goes out, where is the money supposed to come from to clean up an ugly unused monstrosity like even just one windmill. Imagine how grotesque the landscape will be with unused, dilapidated, unkept windmill locations. Those things are so huge that it won’t be an easy task to remove them and dispose of them.
On Saturday I attended a conference on energy efficiency in Lewisville, Texas. The conference was hosted by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-26th District) and keynoted by Texas Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams (R). In Texas, the Railroad Commission has nothing to do with railroads. It manages energy.
Both Burgess and Williams were practically giddy about the huge windfarms in west Texas, even though Williams acknowledged that wind power falls off in the summer months when we have peak energy demands and that when the wind does blow in the summer, tends to blow in the morning and stop during the hottest periods. He also acknowledged that huge investments were being made in the grid to bring power from west Texas where a few cotton farmers and prairie dogs live to populated parts of the state, but failed to note how much this would cost ratepayers.
During the Q&A I asked Williams why we were pursuing higher cost, less reliable energy when the state has an abundance of low cost lignite and abundant natural gas. I got a bunch of double talk about needing to pursue all of the above.
Burgess may have voted against cap & trade to keep his job (this is Dick Armey’s old district), but he kept referring to a windmill plant near Gainesville and a solar plant in Keller without mentioning the fact that each subsidized green job kills 2.2 real jobs according to the Juan Carlos University study of Spain’s experience.
I can’t believe how useless this is. We’ve got hundreds of years worth of reserves of natural gas and are finding more all of the time. We’ve got billions of barrels of oil in the Outer Continental Shelf, in the Arctic, in ANWR, and who knows how much of federal lands. We’ve got hundreds of years worth of western shale oil and will soon know how to extract it if we can. We export nuclear waste to France who reprocesses it (are you telling me the French can figure out the nuclear option and we can’t?).
The entire green movement is built on one big lie after another. We are the most self-destructive people in history. I’m so fed up, I’d leave and go Galt if I could figure out where.
How about Nuclear energy? what with all the modern computers and safe guards, I say N-power as the way to go....
Smaller N-plants and then use the heated cooling water as a source of energy, rather than wasting the cooling water by dumping into oceans or rivers...
Sure! Why not? Or geothermal? Or wave energy? Or something that changes cow flatulence into electricity?
As an EE, I find it bothersome when people say, "Nah, we can't do that." then pour their energy into tech that won't accomplish what's needed (ie, solar).
If not in coastal areas, most nuke plants use natural draft cooling towers which only return water vapor to the environment.
But you’re right, the waste heat could be used for such things as district heating, powering absorption refrigeration systems, desalination units...
I think they are thinking of putting wave barrages out to sea as well.
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