you've plenty of space and hot sun for those chimney jobs and acres of mirrors and solar panels and so on.
I don't dislike wind farms or wind turbines, but I'd prefer it if the country invested more in geothermal and nuclear.
We are quickly going to reach saturation point with wind turbines. Experimental research has already proved that if you have too many in a small space they will act like helicopter rotor blades. And the planet will take off.
With wind turbines you can dismantle and recycle the materials returning the site to it's original state. You can't say that for nuclear!
So if we invest in wave energy technology the tides will stop too? Bugger. Hang on, that could stop coastal flooding. Brilliant. Unless we live on a coast that will permanently be at high water. Bugger. Hang on, if the wind turbines create enough velocity they could also stimulate the tides. Brilliant. No need for the college now, sorted.
If Yannick Sagbo's brain was made out of Dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow his hat off let alone inventing anything if his football is an example. Yes, and didn't these same 'estimators', last century, tell us that everyone would have an all-electric car by now? The automobile industry put a stop to that - couldn't have their oil dependent cars going out of business could they?. Where is the money coming from to pay for these Wind Turbines as investors will want their money back AND show a profit. You reckon they will supply electricity at a cheaper price? It will go up. Solar panels have been the thing here in Oz with the lure to install them being that you could store energy and sell it back to the electric company. What a load of bollocks this has proven to be with most customers who had these installed (at great cost) find that this simply isn't so and it is now costing them more. Instead of spending billions on war machines and foreign aid, both Great Britain and Australia should be looking after their own, but that ain't going to happen is it?
None of it's my opinion, I'm not in the wind energy business. The UK has a third of all wind assets in Europe, it's one of the best places in the world to site wind farms, that's why the business is growing by 35% a year and prices are falling all the time. By 2020, at least 20% of the UK's electricity will be generated by wind power and they will require no subsidies, that's not an estimate, that's based on sites already secured, manufacturing plants already being built and investment already secured. It's all happening already, it's a done deal, I'm afraid you're wrong(at least with regard to the UK).
Still don't get what happens when one of those still, cold winter days coincides with a period of peak demand. If 20% of our supply is then producing little or no power, it's going to get tricky unless we also have the equivalent quantity of excess conventional (ie reliable) generating capacity on permanent standby. That seems to me to be a massive hidden subsidy, cos I doubt the wind farmers include it in their costs. Or am I wrong on that?
Wind turbines generate more power during the day, than they do on a night and produce double the energy in the winter months, than they do in the summer months, which fortunately, is roughly matched by demand.
Even so, you do get days when they are not working cos of lack of wind. Usually those cold bright days in winter when the whole country is under a huge high pressure system. I can see 3 different wind farms from the area I live in, and there have been days when none are moving at all.
Grid energy storage (also called large-scale energy storage) refers to the methods used to store electricity on a large scale within an electrical power grid. Electrical energy is stored during times when production (from power plants especially intermittent renewable electricity sources such as wind power, tidal power, solar power) exceeds consumption and when additional discretionary load is turned on but consumption is still insufficient to absorb it... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_energy_storage
thanks for that, it helps explain what might be possible. It does say, however, that 99% of grid storage worldwide is pumped storage hydroelectricity, using excess power to pump water to reservoirs to be released when required. So it still requires a replacement generating plant to be available for when wind isn't. This cost would have to be added to the cost of wind power, since it wouldn't be necessary for a gas plant for example.
Apparently last Sunday (or maybe the Sunday before?) was the biggest day for wind generation in Britain. 43% of that day's National generation was from wind ....
Load shedding and load management techniques and devices are far more important. It's predicted by some that the likes of Google and Virgin could become major players in domestic energy provision with clever software to design domestic usage around cost effective supply.
They are both important, but in different areas of energy management: you cannot manage an asset you do not have, so cost effective storage, accumulation, is the first key step after efficient generation.
Wind power is not remotely the answer to greenhouse gases, global warming etc. As has been stated they are very inefficient When it is too windy they cannot be used When there is no wind they cannot be used There is no way to store any surplus energy produced (grid energy in the UK is very limited to a small number of Hydro electric plants there to boost output at peak demand) We still need conventional capacity to cover ALL the wind energy capacity when it is either too windy or not windy enough Unfortunately at this time the only "clean" if not renewable energy production option for us is nuclear. For renewable sources we need to develop tidal power as the tides are guaranteed
Because of heat, and the subsequent energy losses, accumulation as you term it (batteries for short), would be a ludicrously expensive way to supply electricity. Humungous UPS units, which is what you are effectively suggesting can never be a realistic option unless advocated as a temporary emergency supply only, which is what they are designed for. You could probably warm a city on the heat losses alone and the associated chiller units would possibly be the size of city you would be heating, both in terms of physical size and current rating! Personally I can't see it...
