Wind Farms

[Badged01]

Is it me or is this growth in wind farms just ridiculous?

Doesn't this country have enough wind of its own without wasting electricity making more of it by running these big fans? Its a blatant Tory waste of the tax payers money ......

 

[Guest111]

An interesting point that was made to me from someone in the know was that when a certain windspeed is reached they have to shut off the wind turbines due to the fact that they cannot produce a suitable lubricant for the bearings etc,apparently they have tried lots but none can stand the extreme stresses and this leads to turbine failure which in some cases is quite spectacular.

 

[trev]

It has to be "the right kind of wind" is what I was once told. I almost cried when I thought about how much money is pumped into these idiotic things.

 

[Guest111]

It has to be "the right kind of wind" is what I was once told. I almost cried when I thought about how much money is pumped into these idiotic things.

Aye it makes me wonder why we live in this country,everything is wrong,wrong wind for turbines,wrong rain causing floods,even wrong type of snow affecting train travel,then of course there's the leaves.lol

 

[Bobster]

An interesting point that was made to me from someone in the know was that when a certain windspeed is reached they have to shut off the wind turbines due to the fact that they cannot produce a suitable lubricant for the bearings etc,apparently they have tried lots but none can stand the extreme stresses and this leads to turbine failure which in some cases is quite spectacular.

That's not the only reason, the g-force on the tips of the blades is monumental.

 

[Besoeker]

I'll just point out to the nuke heads on here that renewables produced 17% of UK electricity demand this year, which is now in the same ball park as nuclear has been averaging in the UK, and will be well ahead of nuclear in 5 years time.

And largescale solar is being moved onto the same contracts for difference funding scheme as nuclear from April 2015, so will be being funded at the same rate as new nuclear from next year, but actually capable of delivering capacity within weeks / months of contracts being signed rather than 10-15 years down the line.

This entirely misses one fundamental point. Variability.

Here is a graph I produced:

It is based on twelve hours of unbroken overhead insolation - something you might get in some regions of the tropics. In other words, ideal conditions.
The variability is obvious. If you tack on the end of it the other twelve hours where you get no insolation you can see the picture.
The theoretical maximum over 24 hours is about 30% of rated capacity but practically, it is often below 20%.
We need storage.
That's why hydro works - all that water behind the dam is stored energy.
In fact, Hydro is the only utility scale renewable we have at the moment.
Check Itaipu or The Three Gorges dams.

 

[Fin170]

A few hours energy generation is nice, meanwhile in India...

N-reactor in Rajasthan sets world record

Poor result after Canada going for 894 days though, lol

 

[Gavin A]

This entirely misses one fundamental point. Variability.

Here is a graph I produced:

It is based on twelve hours of unbroken overhead insolation - something you might get in some regions of the tropics. In other words, ideal conditions.
The variability is obvious. If you tack on the end of it the other twelve hours where you get no insolation you can see the picture.
The theoretical maximum over 24 hours is about 30% of rated capacity but practically, it is often below 20%.
We need storage.
That's why hydro works - all that water behind the dam is stored energy.
In fact, Hydro is the only utility scale renewable we have at the moment.
Check Itaipu or The Three Gorges dams.

would you like to have a think about what the biggest engineering project ever in the UK was, at least up til the channel tunnel and cross rail? and why it was needed?
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[PEG]

This entirely misses one fundamental point. Variability.

Here is a graph I produced:

It is based on twelve hours of unbroken overhead insolation - something you might get in some regions of the tropics. In other words, ideal conditions.
The variability is obvious. If you tack on the end of it the other twelve hours where you get no insolation you can see the picture.
The theoretical maximum over 24 hours is about 30% of rated capacity but practically, it is often below 20%.
We need storage.
That's why hydro works - all that water behind the dam is stored energy.
In fact, Hydro is the only utility scale renewable we have at the moment.
Check Itaipu or The Three Gorges dams.

And,ironically,if i collected up all the broken pieces of roof tile and slate,from the yee-har PV installs around here,the pile would look exactly like that graph! Only we are not all paying for that graph...which is nice :bobby:

 

[Gavin A]

or why France had to reinvent its entire heating system to switch a large proportion of the country to night storage heaters, and even then ended up having to use a 2GW interconnector to the UK to make use of the capacity from the project mentioned in the previous post?

 

[Gavin A]

I'll let Wikipedia explain it to you, as I really can't be arsed having such an illinformed debate, it really annoys me that people who ought to know something about electricity can fall for such daily mail / torygraph level nonsense while at the same time supporting a technology that would require at least as much storage capacity as renewables, and is currently on track to cost north of £80 billion just to clean up the existing sites, with costs rising every year - the only DECC budget that has gone up massively during this government being the nuclear decommissioning budget.

The project – begun in 1974 and costing £425 million[SUP][4][/SUP] and taking ten years to complete – was the largest civil engineering contract ever awarded by the UK government at the time. The work was undertaken by an Alfred McAlpine / Brand / Zschokke consortium.[SUP][5][/SUP] 12,000,000 tonnes (12,000,000 long tons; 13,000,000 short tons) of rock had to be moved from inside the mountain, creating tunnels wide enough for two lorries to pass comfortably, and an enormous cavern 51 metres (167 ft) tall, 180 metres (590 ft) long, and 23 metres (75 ft) wide[SUP][6][/SUP] known as "the concert hall". This has also given rise to the station's alternative name of Electric Mountain. The power station is connected to the National Grid substation at Pentir by 400 kV cables that are buried for approximately 10 kilometres (6 mi), rather than using transmission towers or pylons to transmit the electricity across an area of outstanding natural beauty.

The original purpose of the scheme was to deal with the difficulty that the National Grid would have had if the large numbers of nuclear power stations then planned had been built. Nuclear power stations must be run at close to full output all of the time so storage capacity was needed for excess power generated at times of low demand.

The Dinorwig Power Station (/dɨˈnɔrwɪɡ/; Welsh: [dɪˈnɔrwɪɡ]) is a 1,728 megawatts (2,317,000 hp) pumped-storage hydroelectric scheme, near Dinorwig, Llanberis in Snowdonia national park in Gwynedd, north Wales. It comprises 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) of tunnels, 1 million tons of concrete, 200,000 tons of cement and 4,500 tons of steel.

 

[Silly Sausage]

I'll let Wikipedia explain it to you, as I really can't be arsed having such an illinformed debate

Hahaha....anyone who references Wiki to back up their arguments, really needs to reconsider their sources!

 

[Besoeker]

would you like to have a think about what the biggest engineering project ever in the UK was, at least up til the channel tunnel and cross rail? and why it was needed?

Do tell.....

 

[Knobhead]

It would help if the scale showing each power source was the same

U.K. National Grid status

 

[Knobhead]

Something I think should be given more consideration in UK cities is district heating.

Nottingham has the Eastcroft waste incineration plant which exports HP steam. This goes around the city centre via a dual ring main. It feeds most major buildings and a couple of housing estates. All of Victoria Centre (Fairy Towers) is heated via this system.
Any excess steam is fed in to the most unassuming little building on London Rd. Inside is a 14.5MV turbine which is used to dispose of the excess steam and feeds in to the local 33KV ring. This is used to stabilise the steam demand on the system.
From what the station superintendent told me a second turbine is to be installed to cope with the increased output of the incineration plant.

The down side:
Behind the generator house are the heat exchangers. Steam that can’t be used for power generation or district heating has to go somewhere. Basically it’s dumped in the exchangers and goes as heat in to the atmosphere.

 

[Engineer54]

would you like to have a think about what the biggest engineering project ever in the UK was, at least up til the channel tunnel and cross rail? and why it was needed?

In terms of what, .... the Engineering or MONEY??