Yes,its strange that they are throwing subsides at these turbines,that generate,not much,and employ very few in comparrison,

To the Coal Mining Industry we once had,that employed thousands,directly and indirectly,

At least we had some energy security then.

indeed strange, especially considering the sheer number of turbines we have now and the fact there is -still- no major turbine manufacturing carried out in this country. certainly something going on there...

I have a book somewhere which mentions that the british coal reserves stand at about 90 billion tonnes.

I think that windmills are a (subsidy) productive sideshow for the moment and the main theme will be gas, then fracked shale gas and then whatever they come up with to replace it. (probably not windmills).

I am deeply cynical of things like the "wave hub" (having spent the last 20 years surfing) and again, think it's another way of channeling EU funds into directors barn conversions.

The key problem is customer's ability to pay. Since we are at the end of the debt supercycle as well as the end of cheap energy, it follows that whatever comes next will have to be very cheap and efficient and they will have to sell a lot of it. Things like wind turbines and batteries are not long term solutions.

The more I think about it, the more I am totally convinced that small scale water power is a solution for a lot of rural communities. When you consider some of the mines which were worked solely by waterwheels, you realise the sheer power of the things. In order to achive similar with electric pumps, you'd need some pretty meaty cables! Waterwheels are cheap and easy to construct and these could be done using modern materials....there are few barriers to entry and the output figures are good.

The money (subsidies) seems to be flowing into places where there are barriers to entry. If it was about "carbon", we'd probably see a lot more water power.

I have to voice a few words of caution on getting carried away with water power.
The cost of maintaining leats and aqueducts was a huge drain on the mines resources and even then they were at the mercy of continuity of supply, droughts and freeze ups could bring things to a standstill.
Water power in mining was fairly universal in Wales but workings never reached anywhere near the depth of those found in the West Country. Notably Dylife and Cwmbrwyno where the workings descended for over 600 feet must have explored the limits of waterwheel driven pumping.

I have had the opportunity to inspect a waterwheel driven generator in the north Pennines where a wheel of about 12 ft diameter supplies the electrical requirements of a single residential dwelling. Its very good in its rural environment and being situate next to a fast flowing river, but totally impracticable in a general sense.

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I agree, small scale water driven generators on our small local rivers won't contribute much, all idylic and all but not much use in national terms, the tradional waterwheel is high torque slow speed and of a limited diameter, the only type really suitable for reliable electricity generation are high speed tubines such as the Pelton, Mitchell etc, as these types need a decent head they are restricted to certain locations.
If there was a waterwheel on the river Exe near that mainline railway crossing I doubt that it would be much use after the recent weather events we have just witnessed.

The reason small river hydro schemes don't get promoted is the fact that they cannot contribute much in the way of electrical power on a national scale.

Solar power has been promoted because the geographical location is less of a problem, also the fact the virtually every home can have a system at the point of use.

Windpower is now a fact of life and is here to stay as it can generate a meaningfull amount.

I believe tidal and wave power could make a significant contribution if conducted on a large scale.

Home grown coal is a no no unless a real national crisis happens.

The thing with all of this is that it's early days yet, lessons will be learn't and solutions will be found, I remember years ago I was arguably one of the first to install a domestic TV satellite dish here in Cornwall, a lot of people laughed and said it's too expensive and will never catch on because of the size of the dish (2 meters) and very restricted number of transmissions then available and the fact that the dish had to physically track to the Nth degree between the two geostationary transmission birds that were up there at that time, how wrong they were.

I think we have to forget the politics and look at the physics in all of this debate as it's the physics that generates the power.

Lozz.

A brief overview into turbine design:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design 

Lozz.

Carbon emissions in relation to real time UK power consumption, think in terms of megawatts, gigawatts and terrawatts.


http://www.realtimecarbon.org/ 

Lozz.

I would leave carbon emissions/anthopogenic climate change etc out of the discussion, its more divisive than gay marriage.
Let the dicussion revolve around 'conservation of natural recources' and everyone will be happy.
😉

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I would leave carbon emissions/anthopogenic climate change etc out of the discussion, its more divisive than gay marriage.
Let the dicussion revolve around 'conservation of natural recources' and everyone will be happy.
;D

Hello Roy, although the above are real I think your suggestion is the right one for the sake of this forum.

So on the conservation of natural resources I assume that what's left of the coal has been well and truly conserved, although there is a good evidence centering around the correlation of burning coal/Co2 emmisions etc there might come a time when everything emitted from a coal fired power station can be well and truly recycled or captured like carbon capture and underground storage ?
I fear though that the best days of mining in this country are well and truly gone, not to sure about gas fracking either, mainly because I know little on the subject.
Not much more I can add really except to say that I mentioned in an earlier post that this would be an opportune moment in time to implement some HVDC (High voltage direct current) transmission systems in the UK, I have since found out that this is already about to be or is already underway, the big one is a 300 + kilometer run of HVDC undersea line from Scotland down to the Wirral and will be a worlds first at operating at 600 Kv.
There is another is a line (not sure if it's HVDC or HVAC) they are replacing through the great divide (The pennines) in the Woodhead Tunnel, the original transmission line was routed through the old original tunnel, the new one is going through the later tunnel due to engineering constraints.
HVDC transmission lines are ideal for remote renewable electricity generation as synchronization problems are not a major issue when connecting to the grid, also the line losses are much reduced.
That's it really on electricity unless the subject comes up again on the forum.

Lozz.

I know this sounds pretty far fetched, but with the absence of any decent data from the IPCC and the CRU at East Anglia, you have to call their methodology into question.

There is no global warming. There is most certainly cherry picked data on both sides of the story, but looking at the context it would appear to me that there is a noble lie at work and the true purpose of the UN IPCC is to reduce people's dependence on carbon (thus mitigating against the worst impacts of peak oil) in the guise of saving the planet.

It's just a shame that the current data seems to be making Mann's hockey stick even more bloody ridiculous.

Lozz. If you are considering the manufacturing costs of the windmill, it's installation costs, as well as maintenance and the likely lifespan of the thing, isn't it a well known fact which is provable on paper that they do not result in a positive energy balance, ergo they are a pointless exercise?

I have seen the maths worked through on paper and one of my chums is involved in windfarm shenanigins and he reckons (as an engineer) that it's a load of bollocks, but is prepared to take the paycheque.

Anyway...it's an interesting subject. The sum of all the problems are to do with the mitigation of peak oil, not some hysteria about plant food gas.

I have seen the maths worked through on paper and one of my chums is involved in windfarm shenanigins and he reckons (as an engineer) that it's a load of bollocks, but is prepared to take the paycheque.

This unfortunately is the big problem, bloody money...
An emeritus professor resigned from the American Physical Society in disgust at what I would neatly describle as 'cheque book science'

Quote
"In my day people went into science as a vocation, nowdays they do it as a career'

Having now said this I will repeat my earlier warning.
I have seen threads like this before descend into a ping pong match between the pushers of the theory and sceptics with neither side convincing the other of anything contrary to their pre existing beliefs. Ordinary folk who are fed up with having climate change rammed down their throats just get bored with it all and desert the forum topic.

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Just a reminder "energy cannot be created or destroyed, only it's form can alter" which simply means that all that below ground locked up energy we have been converting above ground into another form has to be around somewhere ie: our biosphere that is a simple scientific fact of life, if it is in the biosphere then certain forms of it will react with solar radiation, that's another fact, certain forms will alter and reflect other certain forms back down to earth, that's another fact.
I would like to think that this forum takes a proven scientific view when dishing out info, it could save someones life.

Lozz.

I don't want to get dragged into the climate change debate, because it is pretty irrelevant to the major issues, the only thing it can add to the problem is mitigating against peak oil as a consequence of it's suggested actions.

When you plot the exponential curve of population and energy required against "energy available" (mostly in the form of C) against time, there is a very nasty divergence. This is going to be made even worse with the BRICS coming online in a major way. It comes down to a desired quality of life which has a certain energy cost vs the ability to pay. Sadly, our nice cushy lives are very expensive in energy terms and many of the solutions (like sealed double glazing units) are of finite life span and are very expensive to make (in energy terms).

One of the key grinding points about wind farms is that they require a reserve on tick over. A tick over which is pretty much burning as much coal.

I'm not 100% sure about the life of photovoltaics, but I know a fair bit about their mining/milling/processing/production and it's pretty damn energy intensive. Again, this whole process seems to be on the back of cheap energy. If you go making the very nuggets that the whole system is powered by more expensive, it fails and falls. The maths no longer makes it viable, which is the very key problem. It's all very well saying "Ahh, but supply and demand will see that prices rise and facilitate these activities", but the bottom line is that all of this, from house prices, to semi conductor prices, to the cost of oil is dependent on the ability to pay, which is reflected in the amount of useful work that people may do. Backed by cheap energy and government debt, this figure is far in excess of what it should be.

Not enough wealth, not enough cheap energy, too many people to all enjoy a nice life. This divergence is unstoppable and inevitable and largely beyond our control. All I can see is people who are in a position to make a difference feathering their own nests and harvesting the money for themselves. This is no good at all.

It's like the national debt. When you consider the other "off book" liabilities, the country is in the poo to the tune of £3Tn. Considering that the working population is in the order of 30 million, it makes a sickening figure to pay back. In short, there is no hope in hell of it being done, which means that S&P and chums will be along shortly to downgrade us to a C+ rating or something. In the **** and likely to be even more in the ****.

I think there will be a period of excitement from here to when the government actually get the economy to a more stable state (rather than shrinking in real terms quite majorly), the ability to hose money around on stuff will reduce and reach a sort of equilibrium level, as will migration. I would go as far to say that within the next 10 years, there will be a breed of politicians elected which serve the people better. (ie, not the LIBLABCON socialist/corporatist EU party) and the whole thing will generally stabilise. How it stabilises and what it stabilises to will be totally and utterly dependent on how the government manage this transition from a Carbon based economy to what happens after.

All I can see are people acting in their own interests, feathering their own nests, hiring their father in law's firm to do the stuff, buggering about and fiddling with things like gay marriage. This is not good enough and whilst the plebs are watching eastenders, they don't give a ****, or at best are totally blind to the major issues which will impact the way they live. This has the potential to get exciting when they are rudely awakened by the government's failure to act.

It would appear that most people are completely ignorant of the 3 massive problems which face us. Energy, Economy and Environment (stuff running out). It has the potential to sling us back to pre industrial revolution levels of "wealth" apart from there are a hell of a lot more of us.

Out here in the sticks, I'm sure it will be fine, however, the scale of things with cities mean that they are totally and utterly dependent on cheap energy and the gradual squeeze on this will ditch them into a world of shit.... in all probability.

It sounds like hysteria, but the most data driven analyses by boring people support the hypothesis that the government need to stop pissing about and get a grip with a viable alternative bloody pronto if we are not going to be slung into total chaos!

On that note, time for another beer! :lol:

So here is something else to think about.
Having seen of all things one of my lamp building threads on the other website taken into good old climate change I shall not attempt to take this one into physical fitness and martial arts.
However, having seen Stuey reference our comfortable or cushy lifestyles I have to comment that regardless of any argument about ruining the planet and depleting natural resources what we are indeed ruining is our own bodies.
We are all aware of the problem of obesity in young people. Our centrally heated homes, air conditioned cars which some people will use just to go a few hundred yards to a local shop, the comfy armchair and sitting in front of the computer instead of being out and about taking natural exercise, are all contributing to a physically weaker human race.
We live increasingly insulated climate controlled and centrally heated sedentary lives were if some serious pandemic occurs overpopulation will simply cure itself.

So therein lies the seeds of our own destruction

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"Lozz. If you are considering the manufacturing costs of the windmill, it's installation costs, as well as maintenance and the likely lifespan of the thing, isn't it a well known fact which is provable on paper that they do not result in a positive energy balance, ergo they are a pointless exercise?"

Hi Stuey, I know nothing of the overall cost/payback structure for wind turbines, your information might well be correct but given time, technology will advance and the cost of other fuels will rise, the prime mover for wind turbines is free, yes the theoretical max conversion from the wind is only just over the 50% mark, an 80 to 90% conversion within that 50% is within reason as things advance and develop.
Many moons ago various people were messing about with Maxwells theorem on electromagnetic radiation, then a guy called Marconi came along, he did not invent radio as such but he could see the potential he was a very shrude cookie, he bought up this and that to realise his self predicted vision, he was right, the tech moved on and the market was there, all came good for him and our lives were transformed.
The first transatlantic cable was a disaster, it was useless, all the sceptics came out of the woodwork, it had cost a vast amount of money for what intially appeared to be for nothing, did they quit, no, did technology advance, yes, did they come up with a better solution, yes, did it become a component of a fast changing world in both political and industrial terms, yes.
Seek and ye shall find.

Just a bit about myself:

I have no connection whatsoever with the renewables sector.
Never been a director or anything like that.
I'm just an ordinary working bloke that works with his hands.
I had a crap education so mainly self taught.
Worked down various mines (hardrock) in my youth.
Initially I qualified and served as a radio engineer (mainly domestic) hence my slight slant on the subject of electricity.
I feel I'm getting old these days.
I have lived on the streets but made good in the end.

Lozz.

Technology will advance however turbines (regardless of power source) are a mature technology and unless somebody somewhere has got a whole new invention up their sleeve then any advances are likely to be in small steps?

Its hard to find hard stats on the true cost of building wind farms on any of the wind farm or eco group sites. Does anyone know whether a single wind turbine can in its lifetime produce enough energy to produce a second identical turbine (taking a lifetime to mean from the energy used in boiling a kettle at the first planning meeting to the cost of powering a computer when paying the last invoice after dismantling)?

This technology isn't getting much attention. Yet.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/the-big-story/compressed-air-energy-storage-has-bags-of-potential/1008374.article 

Technology will advance however turbines (regardless of power source) are a mature technology and unless somebody somewhere has got a whole new invention up their sleeve then any advances are likely to be in small steps?

Its hard to find hard stats on the true cost of building wind farms on any of the wind farm or eco group sites. Does anyone know whether a single wind turbine can in its lifetime produce enough energy to produce a second identical turbine (taking a lifetime to mean from the energy used in boiling a kettle at the first planning meeting to the cost of powering a computer when paying the last invoice after dismantling)?

Hi there, according to the website below (it's the first one that came up when I googled...honest)

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/windy-payback-time-wind-turbines-and-their-life-cycle-impacts.html 

The energy used to manufacture the turbine (however that may be defined) is paid back in around 7 months, maybe use that figure as a base and keep googling/enquiring.
I agree, trying to find definative answers is somewhat confusing, I guess it's down to who's writing the answers.
I agree, blade theory is well understood, as far as I know the theoretical max that can be extracted from the wind is around 50 something percent, I would have thought that for a given input as a percentage of that theoretical max that wind turbines at the moment could give around 60 to 70% but in the future 80% would not be unreasonable.
Given that, I think the only cost advantages that can be gained per Kw output is to build them bigger and or reduce the cost by improved production and installation techniques brought about by technological advances and advances in production and installation methods, also to that end increasing their service life would make a big difference, there have been rumblings about doing away with bulk concrete foundations designed to take tensile and shear loads/strains as well as the deadload and going to towers with guy cables using lightwieght composite materials.
There is of course the question of super conductivity in generating terms, could this be possible in the future? Who knows what lies ahead, but whatever lies ahead it's a comin'

Lozz.

This thread is going everywhere and I have to say its just so interesting!

So here is another one, re energy storage touched upon by Peter.

Flywheels

Now I have heard stories about a monster built in Russia many years ago, they got it up to some enormous revolution rate and then the bearings failed with the results similar to a small atomic explosion. Cant find anything on the web about though.

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