Wind farms

[PyroUK]

Originally Posted by Amadeus

They make a low frequency noise which some people can hear better than others and if you can hear it from your house, that could be considered a problem

Solar?

[ethariel]

Wind Farms are a pain in the bum, there have been several differing studies and all differ on optimal concentration but it's the Government subsidies that are making people rush to install them.

Put up too many in any given area and you generate too much electricity as the grid can't take the input so you get paid to keep them turned off, so you put in more in the same area and rotate duty to increase lifespan and get more in subsidies to keep them off.

When they are on, thier input can vary from around 0% to maybe 6% of the total UK power generation.

Nice little site to see is

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

[phi-dan]

Holy thread resurrection!
In a bizarre twist that only speaks of incompetence at the highest levels, one of the wind farms in Cornwall has been turned off. Several acres of solar farm have just been brought on-line in the fields surrounding the turbines, and the grid can't handle the power injection of both! You'd have thought that would have been considered at the planning stage.

[maviczap]

They'll need a 13amp fuse I guess

[L3nny]

I'm much happier buying my lectric from power stations fuelled by Russian and Arabian terrorists, who else would buy our football clubs?

Originally Posted by tigersaw

They stuff up my radar

perhaps your planes should fly higher?

[Bibio]

more of a job creating exercise than a power generating one.

how long do they last?
how much power do they produce in that time?
what is the cost per KW of power produced?

its public money that is being used to create these wind farms but do the public see a reduction in the cost of electricity at their meter.. no. so why not?

my personal feeling is that the money/research would have been better spent on producing a better conductor other than copper. you can produce as much electricity as you like but if your going to be getting losses of 20% just through the infrastructure then whats the point. the copper conductor has not been changed since electricity was first produced. talk about backwards.

if they really wanted to go green then they would install a small turbine and solar panel on every rooftop in the country so each house was generating its own power with a backup of the grid. but that wont make fat cats fatter.

Originally Posted by Bibio

my personal feeling is that the money/research would have been better spent on producing a better conductor other than copper. you can produce as much electricity as you like but if your going to be getting losses of 20% just through the infrastructure then whats the point. the copper conductor has not been changed since electricity was first produced. talk about backwards.

well Gold is better but not by enough and is too expensive and too rare.

Graphene is the one they're currently working on but it's got a ways to go. You can be assured though that there are plenty of people looking at the problem.

[PyroUK]

Graphene is definitely the way forward at the moment but production isn't at a reasonable scale yet, nor the research far along enough.

In the long run that would be the way to go, and in the mean time stick with copper as it would be a waste of resources looking at stop gap alternatives

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by Bibio

more of a job creating exercise than a power generating one.

how long do they last?
how much power do they produce in that time?
what is the cost per KW of power produced?

its public money that is being used to create these wind farms but do the public see a reduction in the cost of electricity at their meter.. no. so why not?

my personal feeling is that the money/research would have been better spent on producing a better conductor other than copper. you can produce as much electricity as you like but if your going to be getting losses of 20% just through the infrastructure then whats the point. the copper conductor has not been changed since electricity was first produced. talk about backwards.

if they really wanted to go green then they would install a small turbine and solar panel on every rooftop in the country so each house was generating its own power with a backup of the grid. but that wont make fat cats fatter.

Well the current off shore ones will never recoup the amount of energy used to install them, as the amount of fuel used by the installation ships is so high. But at the time, the EU targets were so great, that UK PLC had to start installing them, and off shore faced fewer objections than on shore wind turbines.

I agree with you sticking solar panels on every roof in the UK would have been better IMHO, or heat pumps?