Solar panels

[tigersaw]

Do they have sun in Scotland?

[Bibio]

bahahahaaaaa.. you got me there

[andrewsmith]

Originally Posted by tigersaw

Do they have sun in Scotland?

Yes 15 minutes a month!

Originally Posted by Bibio

bahahahaaaaa.. you got me there

Moaning capture panels would make Scotland an exporter.
Ach them southerners clogging up our roads with Prius's, not paying our tax, wearing out our roads....

Sent from my ELE-L29 using Tapatalk

[tigersaw]

Doesn't look like Flymo (the OP) has been on here in many years - tried his email, bounces, tried his facebook, not updated in a long time

[flymo]

eh up! How's things peeps?

[tigersaw]

Originally Posted by flymo

eh up! How's things peeps?

There you are

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by Bibio

if what you are saying is fact then if every roof in Scotland had solar panels there would be no power stations or very few. so why dont the gov pay for them instead of wind turbines?????

A fair question. Ignoring others' jibes about Scottish weather stereotypes, the sun doesn't shine when it's night-time in any location, yet the wind blows virtually 24/7 (on a national scale). So solar is very useful as a top up but doesn't work as a 'renewable' source on it's own.

Also, the land take for large scale solar farms is almost as controversial as windfarms. I'm not sure off the top of my head which is the more efficient generation method on a kW/m2 basis and I'm too lazy to research right now. (Of course, both wind and solar outputs are variable due to weather.)

Solar was encouraged with decent economic subsidy for a while, but you're right that wind has generally had greater support and take-up, at both industrial and domestic scale.

I agree that we should make better use of roof tops for solar - distributed yet large scale potential

[timwilky]

My personal thoughts on all of this, bearing in mind I have spent the last 35 years associated with the power industry, mainly nasty coal and nuclear fueled power plants.

Tidal power, unlike wind, tides are predicatable and can be calculated for at least the next 500 years. turbine farms off the UK where we have the right locations to enhance tide velocities. Battery farms will enable stored power from renewables. But my preferred would be to use excess renewables for the generation of hydrogen,
Use the hyrdogen as a clean fuel, local heat/power using fuel cells etc.

Fill the sahara with solar farms to generate huge amounts of the above hydrogen. we can power clean engines with it. at worse there are now hydrogen gas turbines for power generation

[DJ123]

And the irony, some what, of a Wind Turbine is you can't recycle the blades and they have to be landfilled.......

[ethariel]

Tidal - usually blocked by wildlife activist groups before it even gets into planning
Solar - relatively easy to hide, works great in SW England, actually double figures of solar farms popping up every year, newer panels much more efficient.
Wind - absolute eyesore and acoustic issues if you live remotely close but probably has the best 'times of capture'
Hydro - very limited in the UK, many dam projects proposed in Scotland over the past few decades, all blocked by NIMBY and wildlife groups

But all 4 are in effect time limited and in the case of 2 utterly chaotic in output.

Gas power generation will be with us for generations as it's a relatively quick spin up and can plug the gaps when the clouds roll in and when the wind stops blowing but Gas generated energy will rise in cost as generation capacity to plug the gaps if the wind stops and the clouds come in will have to be available (The old drax plants converted to biomass instead of coal can't just increase/decrease output quickly at all) even if it's not in use, that extra capacity costs money to build and maintain, whether used or not.

Now add in more Nuclear and potentially Geothermal to the mix and that's more along the right track nice steady supply of energy 24/7

have a look at this, been using it for work for about a decade now -
Gridwatch

It's a really good, almost live graphical representation of the energy production on the UK