Digging holes in the sea to position wind turbines, (though a very tentative concept), would have to be less ecologically destructive that digging holes in the ocean to suck increasingly finite crude oil from.

It might also be a plausible pretext for ridding the Scottish seas of the English oil magnates, but one must be careful to consider all of the economic factors before the drills start spinning.

Further studies need to be conducted into both ecological and economic factors before work commences, but any initiative to increase the generation of electricity from sustainable and continuable methods is a pleasing agenda!

I've a feeling that most of these turbines will be built in Scotland......

#2 #3... these pages are to comment on the stories printed... stop using it as your political platform. You're becoming self obsessed bores. Get a life!

Thank you # 7... he's just summed himself up (ACAlliance)

#10, S'me

It's funny how The Scotsman seems to bring all these paranoid SNP supporters out of the woodwork. Considering they only account for about 35% of the population, they're well represented on these forums.

You would have thought that being in government on such a small share of the vote would have kept them happy for a bit.

sorry, meant #9

Why not place all these wind turbines in the Thames just outside the Palace of Westminster there is more wind comes out of there than anywhere else in the UK.

#12,

I hear they're planning to put a couple up outside Holyrood. A new design which harnesses the heat energy as well.

Who gives rats about Tommy’s ravings above.
This is about the future of our kids.
Something must be done to save this planet and if turbines do it why not.
You could have a wind turbine outside the ugly sisters football parks and that should be ok for at least a week.

#14 .... Well done TommyKaye, another useful contribution to the wind farm debate!!!!!!!!

Large amounts of wind generation on the grid system leads to unstable freqency control. Not the answer to base load power. A vote for this project is a vote for power cuts nation wide.

Tommykaye,

Rules of this forum:-

"Keep your comments relevant to the story or discussion"

Hope all your allegations are true otherwise you'll also have broken another rule:-

"Don't swear, be offensive or post comments that break the law."

A really silly idea - expensive, technically extremely difficult, dangerous to shipping, inefficient in terms of transmission, environmentally disruptive. But just "silly" describes it best. Renew our nuclear capacity, encourage solar. hydro & land- & nearshore- wind. This is a nonsense.

#1 Why should you as 'an Australian with Scottish Ancestory' therefore not in anyway affected by what goes on in Scotland think you have the right to make such a stupid statement as 'rid the Scottish seas of English oil magnates. For a start there is no such thing as English oil magnates, most of the major players in the North Sea are international companies (if you are thinking of BP then they are no more 'British' Petroleum than you are Scottish).
Many Scottish people have built up rather large businesses on the back of the oil industry (look at Ian Wood Group who have arather large finger in the Oz oil industry) and it employs and provides thousands of Scottish folk with a good standard of living so why would we want to see the oil go, do you want to see your 'fellow' Scots made redundant. Our only fall down is not to make the jobs a closed shop for Scottish nationals only....try getting a job in the Oz oil industry.

Agree with #19. Wind farms in deep water, 200 nautical miles offshore cannot be technically or commercially viable. We need to get our minds around the increased use of nuclear power, it is the only technology available today that can provide an alternative to oil, gas and coal. Sorry Greens but that is the fact of the matter, naive to think otherwise.

global warming caused by humans is a myth..because it is still freezing in aberdeen..i wish it would hurry up and give us a decent winter..deep snow and hot 30 deg C summers

Well said #20

Tidal power is the answer yet hardly ever gets a mention.

The tide is always there and Britain being an island there is no fluctuation in availability as the tide moves round the island.

Much better than wave power which would almost inevitably entail the use of reciprocating generation plant on or near the surface which would be susceptible to damage in rough weather.

Tidal generating turbines would be on the sea bed away from weather ffluctuations.

I've thought about this long and hard and I think wherever these turbines are placed are going to be centres for ecological disturbance.

We don't want them on land, because of their negative impact on our landscape and scenery, which is part of our self-image to the world, that funds much of our tourist industry. That's all there is that! Not one turbine must be built on land.

That leaves the sea. To have them built IN the ocean is a danger to marine life and who knows what other damage. To have them sticking out of the ocean they are not only unsightly, but a danger to our already diminishing avian wildlife, shipping ... and who knows what else.

Wind power is a basically flawed technology. It is hazardous and injurious to wildlife and ruinous to the ecology of the environment.

And I for one certainly do not want my tourist-dollar grabbing hills and glens and bonnie purple heather to be adorned by a sodding great erection thrusting into the sky!

The real way to harness natural energy is in the development of solar panel technology and/or clean nuclear fusion.

#4

No - not a single one of these turbines will be built by a Scottish or UK manufacturer because there isn't one. However, I'm sure the banks will willingly fund some of the projects.

#25

Yes - you're right but it won't happen. Not enough investment in the technology and the Govt won't do anything about an interconnector.

#19, 22.. Right. Can anyone say how expensive and reliable this will be? If expensive, we will lose competitiveness, if unreliable will simply not work.
#20 Same questions to you. How will tidal flow turbines stand up to the marine environment, barnacles, how often will they need to be removed to be cleaned?

We need more that a renewable plan to tackle this.

#26 No, if you are right, you prove it!

Just to prove my point Spanish owned Scottish Power is going to be importing Norwegian tidal power technology.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/business.cfm?id=1922702007

anyone know if they have to always be battleship grey? I always think they'd look better painted green. more in keeping with the landscape.

interesting that the government is putting the 12 miles off-shore. This is so they don't lose them post independence.

nuclear is the answr wind farms are a con that only work financially with subsidy and there has to be back up for when turbines not operative which is usually a lot of the time and rarely do they produce maximun output

no objection to tidal but still in infancy

nuclear is the most subsidized power there is...all building/ decommissioning costs are removed from the cost of the power and is soaked up by taxpayers

Nuclear is the only way, as for the waste, why can't it be buried offshore in the soon to be abandoned oil wells.
Only a suggestion.
As an earlier poster suggested, the logistics and costs of deep water wind farms will not make it viable, more turbine farms will be covering more areas of SSSI all over Scotland, but I suppose that will not upset the ecofreaks as it is not a golf course??? Also what about the hundreds of miles of super pylons blotting the landscape.
No thanks.

Turning around global warming has started around 30 years too late, better late than never. Your wind turbine towers will have to withstand the sea freezing solid sometime near.
Admin
SavetheWorldfree.ning.com

Why is it Denmark is doing away with their wind turbines which they see as a failed experiment and we are going to build more.

#34

And that old excuse will prevent us from ever becoming major players in anything. If we don't invest to develop these technologies when they are at an early stage then we might just as well not bother.

Lets see now 7000 projected turbines @ 2 every mile
is this linear or what?
7000 x miles of underground or sea bed cabling ?
Maintenance? Ouch, the mind boggles! Anyone associated with marine business is well aware of its climatic destructive nature. Get in early and buy shares for sure its a bonanza in the making.
With no sensory ability unable to detect if there is an air of someone smoking the weird weed!!

Turning around global warming has started around 30 years too late, better late than never. Your wind turbine towers will have to withstand the sea freezing solid sometime near.
Admin
SavetheWorldfree.ning.com

#40

Yep... and we don't manufacture the cables either and neither do we have the heavy lift capability to install these turbines.

Boy Wonder, by solar panels do you mean photovoltaics? PVs have about a 20 year life span and consist of a silicone matrix doped with some very choice heavy metals. By the time you come to get rid of these there will be nowehere for them to go.

Not sure what level of threat off shore wind presents to bird life, i would have thought negligible.

There are still parts of dumfries and wales with farming restricitons on them because of Chernobyl and north coast of scotland is hardly a good example of what the nuclear industry is capable. As maximus007 points out nuclear is the most heavily subsidised generation technology in the UK.

Fusion remains pie in the sky technology. A long long way off from practical commercial delivery.

There is no technology that is perfect. We have some difficult choices to make.

Hopefully off shore turbines would be coupled with tidal/wave generation to give a more steady generation. That to me seems like one of the best options available

Nuclear fusion reactors are the only viable solution to Britain's power needs. Unfortunately too many people mistake fusion technology for fission, hence they oppose a nuclear solution.

44

Sinnerman, a very clever play on words but answer the question - what about the Council Tax freeze?

Currently there is no magic Energy solution, every option has good and bad points.
Looking at this from a Scottish context (and why should I look at it any other way?) we have serveral options for a mixed approach.
Do not forget that the UK and also Scotland is obliged to produce a certain amount of green energy. Nuclear is NOT green.
The Scottish Government thinks we can meet our own needs without Nuclear. Do you think they havent checked to ensure that this is actually doable?
I would personally like to see 1 new Nuclear plant in Scotland to ensure sufficient base load but I know its not a must have it justs seems prudent to have plent base load and to remain as a net exporter.

Otherwise Nuclear is the worst of all other alternatives. It produces tons of highly toxic waste that lasts for centuries that we can only deal with by burying it out of sight.
The cost is currently an estimate of 70Billion for decommisioning and this is going up 10% each year for EXISITING sites never mind new ones. Check the official government figures! We absolutely need to minimise reliance on fission until Fusion comes along. ITER has 50 yeras to produce a viable expermiental reactor, 70 years until we could have one up and running at least - we probably wont be alive to see it in operation.

Despite its down sides Wind has its part to play and we must make use of it - negative environmental impacts pales in comparison with Nuclear. Anyone who says different is quite simply ignorant or a bare faced liar.
Coal isnt great either, even clean coal is only cleaner than old coal.
Gas has its part to play and sequestration at Peterhead should have been a no brainer....Well it was but the UK government doesnt have one.
Hydro is a great alternative but most sites are already taken, some small scale pump storage schemes could be added but the scope is limited (Although all options should be fully exploited as it is one of the few ways t

#38 Damned good points, the Germans too are turning away from wind - they have around 300,000 turbines but at best can access on 10% of the energy from them at anyone time.

Tidal is a good sourse of energy if not horrendously expensive to put the capital in place.

How about putting more money in ITER facility at Cadarache or bringing forward the High Power laser Energy Research facility - fusion is the answer (but it were actually properly funded we wouldn't have the old joke that's it been just a couple of decades away for the last 3 decades.)

#48

Nick - Tidal may be expensive but not half as expensive as doing nothing. It's also not a good thing to compare the cost of existing generation systems with new ones when the fuel supply for the existing stuff is either running out or seen to be too "dirty".

We've had an era of cheap energy which is coming to an end. Whatever replaces it is going to be more expensive.

Thanks also to the UK Government for allowing the Scotsmans staff to produce a headline with the word Britain in it. Must have made the Scotsmans movers and shakers and the rest of the coterie feel all warm inside all on its own.

So what about the financial costs of these alternative systems? The poiunt we need to grasp is that we cannot afford NOT to have viable alternatives to burning fossile fuels. Personally, I'd not mind if we had one of those turbines in every street if it meant making a tangible difference to saving this planet.

@17 "Large amounts of wind generation on the grid system leads to unstable freqency control. Not the answer to base load power. A vote for this project is a vote for power cuts nation wide."

On the other hand, Scotland already has one of the largest load-balancing resources in the world in the shape of its hydro installations.

In general, it would be very easy to double this resource without massive infrastructural investment, by simply placing a large land-based windfarm on the top of the watershed that tends to separate the reservoir from the generation terminus. Adding an extra bore to supplement the existing one that conducts the high potential energy water resource to the place where it is converted into kinetic/electric energy and using the power from the wind farm to pump water back up for re-use would provide load-balancing as well as store energy for dry/calm conditions.

I didn't notice the lights going out when torness was off line for several weeks. Seems we can already survive without it.

How many turnip heads are out there?? So we are going to run two hundred miles of
HV cable, from an offshore platform, and then perhaps another hundred miles, to the end user. Somebody cannae dae arithmetic. The people who suggest this crap are neither economists nor engineers. Why do we not drill for coal in the North Sea? It would be more cost effective. I think the oil producers will love the wind turbine idea considering the cost of demobilising the existing platforms.

Typical size of each wind turbine being installed today is 2MW. If they could run at full power for most of the time, then it would take 1000 wind turbines to replace just one nuclear or large coal fired power station. Given the variability of wind around our coast, availability is much less, so we really need 2-3000 wind turbines to do the same job as one power station.

And one question I have yet to see answered. How long does each turbine have to run just to replace the energy it took to make it (including smelting the steel and aluminium), fabricate it, transport and erect it, and will take to dismantle it when it is clapped out?

52. Nellie.

Thats exactly the point and the only alternatives we have now are recent technologies and Nuclear Fission. The UK government is pushing Nuclear + a mix of Green energy etc. This makes sense and I am sure this is based on the best available advice.

The population and energy demands of the South are increasing substancially. This cannot be met from secure, reliable alternatives without new Nuclear Fission plants. From a UK perspective, since Nuclear really cant be avoided anyway, maybe they should take Frances approach and go all out for Fusion while trying to make Fission as cost effective and as safe as possible. Meanwhile the UK still has its EU tragets to achieve which is what the headline is about.

Scotland on the other hand is NOT in the same position as the UK as a whole and has the luxury of alternative strategies. If we can avoid Fission totally or at least minimise its use, and many experts think that we can then it would be crazy to do otherwise. The biggest mistakes so far is not investing in the alternatives early enough or high enough. Largely due to UK Energy policy.

Like so many political arguments these days it comes down to what is best for the UK verses what is best for Scotland. When have you ever seen the UK making a decision in Scotlands best interests, though there are several examples to the contrary and funnily enough usually related to Energy and Resources.

People in Scotland can look at the UK picture if that is what they want and see what is best for the UK whole (with interests focused on the South UK) or take a national look and see what is best for Scotland as a whole (with interests focused on Scotlands central Belt). Both cannot be achieved, neither is ideal, my preference is clear.

Sadly, evidence from other countries suggests that we are unable to use wind generated electricity productively. Rather than substituting for fossil/nuclear fuel, wind power acts so as to create a surplus in electricty production that has to be either exported, or else dumped. Mr Hutton can go ahead and deploy thousands of wind turbines around our coastline - this will make little difference to the environment or to our energy security.

How many of these things will be located off the ENGLISH coast????? I guess its okay if its just the Scots, eh?? Thanks Mr Brown (a good Scots name if ever there was one). F@##ing English at it again (and Brown IS one of them). And how much of the generated capacity will end up being used in Scots households?? Roll on independence.

They should just hoist Alex Salmond out there in front of one big giant wind turbine.

He could generate enough hot air to provide enough power for the whole of Europe.

#56

The RGU project suffered from the same problem as a lot of other technologies in that when it came to trying to commercialise it nobody would put the money up.

Why not just spend the money on nuclear power stations instead? A nuclear power station generates power ALL the time, not just when the wind blows.

Why, in this day and age, when reliable and safe nucelar technology exists, are we sodding about with bloody windmills?

Get a grip. Get NUCLEAR!

I favour both wind and nuclear power. May y'all have better energy resources!
By the way , Mugabe is Yahweh incarnate! He should go to Hell!

http://www.eon-netz.com/Ressources/downloads/EON_Netz_Win...

Wind energy is only able to replace traditional power stations to a limited extent.

Their dependence on the prevailing wind con­ditions means that wind power has a limited load factor even when technically available. It is not possible to guarantee its use for the con­tinual cover of electricity consumption. Conse­quently, traditional power stations with capaci­ties equal to 90% of the installed wind power capacity must be permanently online in order to guarantee power supply at all times.

(Germany currently have plans for 26 coal fired power stations)

Wind power needs a grid infrastructure. The windy coastal regions are precisely the places where the grids have now reached their capacity limits through wind power. High volt­age (HV) grids are increasingly reaching their capacity limit and they can take no further electricity from wind farms.

The more wind power capacity is in the grid, the lower the percentage of traditional generation it can replace.

As wind power capacity rises, the lower availability of the wind farms determines the reliability of the system as a whole to an ever increasing extent. Consequently the greater reliability of traditional power stations becomes increasingly eclipsed.

As a result, the relative contribution of wind power to the guaranteed capacity of our supply system up to the year 2020 will fall continuously to around 4% .

In concrete terms, this means that in 2020, with a forecast wind power capacity of over 48,000MW (Source: dena grid study), 2,000MW of traditional power production can be replaced by these wind farms.

"Adequate quantities of electrical energy cannot be commercially stored. This means that exactly the same amount of energy must be fed into the grid as is taken out. If the amo

According to http://www.nfpa.co.uk/index.cfm?pid=17
windfarms currently receive a ROC subsidy of £49.26/MWh which makes electricity from them more than twice as expensive as electricity produced from oil,coal,gas or nuclear.

34GW of windfarms will produce around
(34x1000*365*24*0.27) 80,416,800 MWh of electricity. At £49.26/MWh that would cost £4Bn per year in ROC subsidy.
This makes nuclear look cheap.

The comment about English Oil Companies as stated in comment 21 is right. As for our Australian Friend of Scottish Ancestery, he should note that BP, formally the Anglo Iranian Oil Company was found by William Darcy, who was a lawyer working in Rockhampton Queensland. He was a major shareholder in a nearby gold mine. It was the money that he made from this was used to fund the oil prospecting in Iran before the first World War. So the roots of BP are in Australia.

mcsnagpile, and building a nuclear power station in scotland to feed the demand in london and se england is a good idea?

freeaethist, that's not so much a chip on your shoulder as the entire wood pile.

Am Bodach, sadly Gigha seems to prove you wrong. They are not sitting in the dark and they are gaining a steady income in addition to their power demands from thier turbines.

#60 David, a little bit of rationality amongst the usual whinges and distorted views of reality. Another issue with new nuclear is that we will be throwing money, hand over fist, for the American design and build. at least in iraq they had to invade the country first to get those deals. IN scotland we just seem intent on rolling over and playing dead. take what seems the easiest option, displace responsibility off to others.

Some fascinating posts about costs etc. Does anybody know how much it would cost to get the energy from a wind farm 200 miles off shore into the national grid? I have no idea but I bet the money could be spent more productively in some other way.

Somebody's lying here, wind generated electricity can't be transmitted from 200nm out to sea, it's not feasible. I think Hutton's message is that only nuclear baseline generation can pay for wind power. In that case why waste time and effort on wind (and ruin the natural environment to boot)?

CharlesMN. ROC pails into significance when you start to add up the storage and disposal of nuclear waste....oops not dug a big enough hole yet. Subsidy is a complete red herring.

Duns Scotus. Why is it not feasible? or do you mean not viable? or are you putting the dunce into Duns?

Nuclear energy could come from Thorium. Less radioactive waste for use in the production of bombs is the main reason it is not used more.

#74 Saoghal Beag

I don't quite understand where you are coming from. You complain about the cost of nuclear but say the cost of windpower is a red herring?

Over a 20 year lifespan the subsidy to winfarms through ROC's would be £80Bn.
And, of course, we would still need to pay for a fleet of some type power generator for when the wind doesn't blow.

This compares with British Energy who are currently very profitable without subsidy, having covered all their decommisioning costs and waste disposal costs.

Rules, yes i know where the word dunce came from, hence why i used it. Originally it was not an insult, merely a term for those that followed the subtle doctor's teachings. After his death they stood by his teachings and it became a term for intransigents and over time it's meaning developed into someone who refused to learn, ironic really.

the compensation for this is that at least dunce is the proper pronounciation of Duns as the lazy dunz is more common.

As for nuclear, like you say it doesn't cover its face financially and is unlikely to cover the embedded carbon in its build either.

what's happened to the submerged tidal flow power generation technology?

Growing safe renewable energy.
Plant 75 kg wheat seed on one acre of land, then harvest 3500kg 11 months later. Burn or turn into ethanol 3425kg, plant 75kg.
Sounds simple to me.

#62 At a guess - a majority of them - there are currently 5 offshore farms off the English coast (the only ones in the UK so far) with a further two huge wind turbine fields already planned for the South East - but you go on getting angry at the English, I'm sure it's doing your (no doubt already high) blood pressure the world of good.

ok Charles MN, what i am saying is that the subsidy for wind is less than the hidden subsidy for nuclear. What i am saying is that going on about the roc is a red herring in terms of the cost of the different generation technologies.

BE are only in business today because the governement bailed them out when they lost their gauranteed market prices and sales.

84. You are spouting oral sewage,there are "nukes" as you call them all over England,the majority of oil is payed for by English firms,and the "windmills" are to be placed ALL around the coast of Britain,so stop your rascist clap-trap!

#85
Waste has to be guarded for several hundred years, not several thousand. Anything that lasts this long is an asset which can be used in future reactors of various sorts.

CEGB and SSEB had built up adequate funds to cover decommissioning of nuclear power stations, this was seized by the government on privatisation. Further money built up from the non fossil fuel obligation, ROCs and BE cash sweep has also been swallowed by the government; ask them where it has gone. Note also that the major part of the NDA liabilities were built up during nuclear weapon research and should not be lumbered onto the nuclear power industry.

Future generations will pay for our liabilities in lots of industries, as we do for generations past.

The government acts as insuruer of last resort in other commercial enterprises (shareholders of Northern Rock take note).

81
Ignored by readers and politicians alike.
SAFE RENEWABLE ENERGY

#85

And why would we want to guard nuclear waste? Its not going to try and escape is it? If you place it in a safe place it will stay there. The Swedes , the Americans and the French seem to have worked that out.

Insurance
The US system uses http://www.nuclearinsurance.com/ as the first layer giving around $500M worth of cover. Should this be breached then all the other reactors chip in up to $98M each. This gives up to $10Bn of cover at no cost to the taxpayer. I believe the cost of insuring a reactor is about $400,000 a year which shows the risk the insurance companies think there is.

The worst accident ever in the US, TMI, resulted in $71M in payouts.

#81, 88
Will the recipients of western overseas food aid be happy to see their food disappearing into our fuel tanks? Perhaps you don't give a **** for them.

To produce bio fuel to the level recently suggested by the EU would, for this country, require about the same area of land brought into arable production as is already in production. Such large tracts of land simply do not exist. (I can refer to a calculation showing this is you wish).

89 Charles, that explains it, you are talking about the US set up not the UK set, explains why you aren't making sense.

Back on 8 September the Scotsman was pleased to comment on Alex Salmond's gaffe with respect to installed wind capacity when he used max power output (GW) instead of potential energy production (GWh) when ocmparing wind and nuclear power. This article makes the same mistake - can we stick with comparing possible energy production and not power output.

This scheme does not sound credible scientifically, technologically, economically or ecologically.

The structures required to uphold a large scale turbine anchored in the deep sea bed must be too heavy and massive, and expensive to install (let alone repair and maintain), and might cause major disruption to marine life, and traffic.

Wind turbines are not very efficient in converting wind energy into electrical energy. Besides, they don't work in high winds (but rather get damaged by them). The loss of energy will be massive along the sea-bed cable necessary to bring the "cheap" (not) energy to shore. All these will combine to make this 7,000 Turbine pie in the sky dream economically and technologically unfeasable.

In other words, this is another Christmas Turkey that the government is floating in an effort to appear as doing something... perhaps getting the crooks out of government, improving integrity among politicians ("Remedial integrity and honesty lessons" come to mind), assuring the safety of our personal and private data etc. all these would be much more welcome than a hairbrain scheme that is supposed to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate...

TGunn,

GW = gigawatts
GWh = gigawatt hours.

You can express potential output in GWh or GW, or even TW/TWh.

Likewise you can express maximum potential out put as GW or GWh.

GW is a measurement of power and GWh is a measurement of the rate of output of power. (rate is the key word there).

#92 In responding to #81 and 89 you ignore my post #97. If you take that into account, the impact of your first paragraph is rather diluted. No wonder you ignored it.

If other industires were required to consider 1 in 10,000,000 events, then they also might find it difficult to get affordable insurance. A hydro dam breaking could kill thousands compared with Chernobyl where the death toll which a collection of UN bodies are prepared to certify was about fifty.

Your fourth paragraph is simply a collection of assertions which you believe you can prove through constant repetition.

I meant my post #87. Finger trouble.

fred bear, that was acute deaths, the long term impacts, suffering and death continue. 50 deaths attributable to chernobyl is simply not true.

As for the chronic deaths attributable to a dam bursting?

#92 Nuclear waste is stored in glass. It can't leak anywhere. Anyone with the capability to extract nuclear waste from the storage system , remove it from the glass, extract the dangerous elements then do something bad with it would also have the ability to dig up uranium ore, run it through a crude reactor and do something bad with it.

Normal comercial insurance is available. See #89. Like all comercial insurance these days ( the insurance industry has learnt from the asbestos scandal) there is an upper limit to what they will pay out. This upper limit is 7 times the maximum that has ever been paid out in the 40 years nuclear power has been going.

This insurance is highly profitable for the backers. If you run the numbers it is easy to see why. 104 reactors at $400,000 pa each is $41.6M pa and the most they have paid out is $71m.

If nuclear power does not meet it's costs why do comercial companies continue to iinvest in it? If you look at he following arcticle you will see an example. The interesting thing is to compare the prices the US is paying for energy ( as quoted in the article) with what we are paying. We are paying 42p/KWh, they are paying 54c/KWh say 27p/KWh.

http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/sep2007/pi20...

This is getting desperate now.

Polticians have been roused from slumber on the issue of rapidly dimming prospect that the UK will have continuity of power supplies throughout the next decade .This is not before time.

These elected representatives have noticed already that there are distressingly few votes for them in proposals for onshore wind. They find plenty of constituents who are stuck in a legacy of Chernobyll mindset and will resent any plan that includes replacing out of service Nuclear generating capacity with modern 21st century technology. Coal power produces CO2 so they can't think of that ( scrubbing technology is still not considered viable for some reason.) The concept of Tidal power requires investment in medium term research which given the urgency now might or might not be cost effective in the short term .

So they pluck an idea about "old hat" wind technology from the possible list. Careful to note that if developed within sight of the coast these things just might produce a negative " wave" at the ballot box, they go : "Hey why not stick it so far out to sea that no one will mind."
And now they try seriously to " spin" this as a good idea.

If the logic behind it all was not so convoluted it would be taken seriously.

MOWFOOS ( Massive Offshore Wind Far Out of Sight ) might at first sight appear as an economically worthwhile solution to set against the apathy Politicans have displayed for far too long on this matter. Actually getting a continuous stream of energy from far out to sea that is affordable is impossible.

The practical difficulties, not over emphasising the expense of building 7000 temporary life structures far out at sea, servicing and protecting them for 25 years, and dismantling them at the end, are hideous to contemplate. This says nothing of risks to shipping, the intermittancy of the whole generating method or the risks to human

Feed the politicians on Beans they will convert them into bio fuel, unlimited natural gas from one end top add to the hot air from the other. The 'spin' they produce would keep the wind turbines rotating when the other sources fail.

Somebody on the Herald site pointed out that you can look at the current output of the middelgrund offshore winfarm at:

http://www.middelgrund.com/

If you look you will see that this 40MW farm currently is producing 0.5MW or 1% of its rated output.

Folks, everyone in the west will have to think about ways to do more with less, and to do more with what we have. Getting the most out of each kilowatt or not using it in the first place works as well as building a new power plant with zero environmental impact.

Here on the prairie we're seeing a significant growth in wind energy projects.

I'm OK with how they look.

They look like energy independence to me. They look like money that stays at home and circulates in the community, rather than money that gets exported to enrich middle eastern thugs. That's why there ought to be more of them.

Small scale, widely distributed power projects may be the way to the future. The Polk County landfill produces enough methane to generate 4.9 mw of power-and it's been doing so for years. The same process can be used for capturing energy from other sources such as biomass and animal manures. Small scale hydro on our rivers was important 75 years ago, and may become important again as we go forward.

One of you wonders about where wind equipment is to be built. It will be built locally because it makes more sense to build it near the point of use rather than to ship it on motor trucks. And that will bring its own benefits in the community.

Saoghal Beag

The same committee of UN scientists also concluded that chronic health effects around Chernobyl were overwhelmingly the result of deprivation and the paralysing fatalism amongst the population that they are doomed to a painful, radioactive induced death sometime in the future. This fatalism is engendered by well meaning groups, possibly including yourself. Such groups would be better advised to encourage those affected to get on with their lives.

Your final sentence I simply do not understand. Are you saying that because there are no chronic deaths associated with a burst dam, this is somehow a more acceptable event than one where there may be? Try telling that to the relatives of the victims of the worst power generation related accident the world has known, the circa 2700 people killed when the Gujurati dam in India collapsed.

#100 Upbeat

You said "The concept of Tidal power requires investment in medium term research which given the urgency now might or might not be cost effective in the short term "

Industry and academic researchers told Govt this ten years ago or more. They've put a few £m into some tech devt but it's just not enough.

The only company that's got somewhere this technology is Marine Current Turbines based in Bristol http://www.marineturbines.com/home.htm
but their story tells the same old tale about the difficulty of raising risk capital to develop this sort of technology because their main investors are a Dutch bank and a Danish bank. None of the main stream UK funders are involved and of course none of the big UK let alone huge Scottish banks.

It's why I keep saying that doing this sort of thing in Scotland is so damn difficult. The RBS's and BoSs of this world who could solve this problem just aren't interested.

Charles MN

The annual production of the wind farm is estimated to be 99,000 MWh. The guaranted production is 89,000 MWh per year. The farm efficiency is estimated to be 93.3%.

Maybe not all turbines are on just now, maybe the wind is not so strong, maybe they are sourcing national energy from alternative supplies as one thing they do have is a diverse and disperssed generation system.

Sorry, I got my numbers wrong. It has been reported that up to 15000 people may have died when the Gujarati hydroelectric dam burst in 1979, not the 2700 I suggested.

#104

Gujurati (and Chernobyl) was small beer in comparison to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

This recent paper written by an independent geologist provides a good insight as to the issues we face i.e. security and affordability of future energy supplies: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3130/nocomments#

On the present course which appears to be more or less 'allow the market to address energy needs' UK is headed for major problems due to need to phase out old / dirty coal plants and aging nuclear plants. Add in the ongoing terminal decline in N Sea gas output and we have a scenario where UK will be increasingly forced to rely on remote energy sources, often from politically unstable areas or from nations with which UK does not have particularly good relations. Some 70% of global reserves are in Russia, Iran and Qatar; transporting gas from these areas will be much more expensive in both monetary and energy terms vs N Sea.

Market based solutions are poor at addressing matters which require a long term horizon - in the case of energy infrastructure we need to look at time horizon in decades rather than simply short term.

The choices faced by Gov't are not easy...and many of the fixes suggested tend to rely on technology which does not yet exist (such as fusion) or solutions with relatively poor net energy return. Whatever the outcome energy will rise in price and measures such as inverted tariffs are required to discourage energy waste.

Charles MN

Thanks for updating me on dam disasters death tolls. It re-inforces the point I was making.

Saoghal Beag

Once you've built a wind turbine, it costs nothing to let it rotate and generate. Why would you get your energy from another source if the wind is blowing and the unit is available?

Maybe they are all broken or being maintained, or maybe their output cannot be accepted due to system stability problems of accepting the intermittent output. Can't thimk of any other good reasons.

Several points not covered or incorrect above:

'Offshore wind development zones are generally considered to be ten kilometers or more from land. Offshore wind turbines are less obtrusive than turbines on land, as their apparent size and noise can be mitigated by distance. Because water has less surface roughness than land (especially deeper water), the average wind speed is usually considerably higher over open water. Capacity factors (utilisation rates) are considerably higher than for onshore and near-shore locations which allows offshore turbines to use shorter towers, making them less visible.

In stormy areas with extended shallow continental shelves (such as Denmark), turbines are practical to install — Denmark's wind generation provides about 18% of total electricity production in the country, with many offshore windfarms. Denmark plans to increase wind energy's contribution to as much as half of its electrical supply.'

- Wikipedia

#103, agree, community based solutions are the best way forward for the new energy era i.e. produce as much energy as possible near the point of consumption. Large electricity grids are expensive to maintain and are actually quite fossil fuel dependent. Like it or not as 21st century advances fossil fuels will become more expensive...and scarcer. Oil output is currently peaking globally (or has already peaked); gas will follow within a decade or so. The long period of decline following peaking against a background of fast rising per capita energy consumption in heavily populated countries such as India and China will mean quite a steep per capita decline in availability of such fuels in OECD nations.

Contrary to popular belief nuclear power does not constitute a replacement for declining oil and gas. The latter 2 fossil fuels currently provide approx 9 Tw energy (1 Tw = 10^12 watts). To replace this amount of power with nuclear would mean commissioning 1 full size nuclear power plant every 2 days for 50 years....and supplies of easily extractable uranium would themselves peak long before then.

A combination of locally produced energy from whatever renewable sources are available combined with using a lot less appears to be the most likely outcome. Businesses and individuals might not currently think this way...but I suspect they won't have a lot of choice in the matter.

fred bear, you are now telling us that radiation does not cause health problems, that it does not induce cancer that it is not a mutagenic toxin. As good for you as fags. If you truly believe that radiation does not cause chronic health effects then your belief and support for nuclear power generation is not based on science but is as much a faith as any christian has in Jesus.

Regards the chronic deaths from a dam bursting, which is obvioulsy zero. my point is that you can count the accute deaths in both instances, however with regards a nuclear disaster then this is not representative of the true death toll.

Incredible that people starved themselves to death because they were too worried about the fall out, you honestly believe that? I certainly would not want to encourage people down such a path and would nto beliong to a group that would. I believe that we should be supporting those people. I'd have thought that the nuclear industry would have been right in there attempting to make ammends, attempting to mitigate the impact and assissting those people affected as far as is reasonably possible. You are telling me that they didn't and just walked away from these people and left them to starve?

Ofcourse this could never happen in the corruption free UK where no nuclear power station has been closed because they found cracks in the infrastructure, well not in the past 5 weeks.

More than 1,000 workers on the site were heavily exposed on the first day. About 200,000 emergency and recovery workers were exposed in the next year, and of these, 2,200 could die prematurely.

With regards the reported accute deaths for chernobyl it varies around 50, i've seen 47 and 56 reported however a UN report on the likely total deaths in 2005 stated that the deaths associated with exposure to radiation attributed to the disaster were likely to reach 4,000. There was certainly in excess of 4,000 workers exposed to high levels of radiation at the

Fred bear, or maybe they are maitaining the balance in thier grid and will power up the turbines if the immeadiate demand increases. Sort of like us not running our hydro stations despite the rain falling in sheets....we use it when it's needed.

Even still the turbine field is achieving a 93% averaged efficiency, so if current output is 10% how do they reach that average? You want ot do the maths?

#106

"The farm efficiency is estimated to be 93.3%." What does this mean?

If a 40MW farm has an output of 99TWh then it has a load factor of 28%. Roughly the same as UK offshore and on shore windfarms.

This disguises the fact that the output varies. For half the time an average windfarm is producing 22% of its rated output or less. It will only produce more than half its rated power for 15% of the time. This leaves large amounts of time when other forms of power will have to make up the difference.

Wind power is expensive and unreliable.

Charles, its gauranteed output is 89% of its capacity, yet it is exceeding that by 4%.

Nuclear power is expensive, not carbon neutral and generates waste which we don't know what to do with.

no technology is without its faults and not technology should be relied to wholly and blindly.

Saoghal Beag

You're getting desparate now. Read my posts again. I seem to have said a lot in a few short paragraphs.

I did not say that radiation does not cause chronic health effects. What I did say is that deprivation and fatalism are the overwhelming cause of continuing health problems.

I did not say that people are deliberately starving themselves to death, and to suggest that I did is outrageous. Deprivation is not normally a lifestyle choice, and it isn't in this case.

I did not say that the nuclear industry walked away and left them to starve, deprivation can only be addressed by the relevant government. The global nuclear industry, in the form of WANO, has been very active in assisting the local authoritites and regulators to introduce best practice and address local issues. This best practice includes regular inspections and conservative decision making such as we have in the UK, France, US etc.

Let's count the worst case deaths, Chernobyl 50 plus maybe 4000, Gujarati dam 15000. Which is worse?

Finally, I am pleased that you recognise that the UN report highlights mental illness and fatalism. I don't know what the total population in the area is, but don't you think their future should be talked up if the total chronic deaths are likely to be 4000? The vast majority will survive to the usual lifespan in this region, so shouldn't you be telling them that?

#116 Scottish wind farm output can be seen from http://cid-808ade00d7ae4886.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/S...

Which pretty well agrees.

Saoghal Beag

#115 As I said, I couldn't think of any other GOOD reason.

Under your scenario, imagine the scene in grid control centre.

"Demand's rising, frequency is falling, bring on the wind power units!"

"Oh s**t, the wind has dropped, better disconnect some consumers."

Wind cannot respond to system demand because it is intermittent.

Saoghal Beag (95): "GW is a measurement of power and GWh is a measurement of the rate of output of power. (rate is the key word there)."

GW does indeed measure power, but GWh is a unit for energy production, not the rate of energy production: it's the energy produced by a power output of 1 GW working for one hour, i.e. 1 GWh = 3600 GJ = 3.6 TJ (J being Joule).

#117 Saoghal Beag

I think you have got confused. The farm efficiency about which you are talking appears to be a ratio of the theoretical output at any windspeed with the actual output. The actual output will depend on the windspeed which even the danes can't control.

A 40MW farm has a theoretical capacity of ( 40x24x365) MWh or 350,400MWh.

If the farm produces 99,000MWh then its load factor is 99,000/350,400x100 or 28%.

In 2006 the 10 turbines owned by the Middelgrunden Cooperative produced 40,483MWh against a "guaranteed" 44,000MWh or a power factor of 23%.

The last graph in the second link is interesting as it shows the day by day variability of windfarm production. The minute by minute variability is even greater.

http://www.middelgrunden.dk/oekonomi/regnskab2007.pdf

http://www.middelgrunden.dk/MG_UK/project_info/production...

Some of this appears to be be far fetched in terms of what can be delivered. I would be interested in seeing the facts in terms of costs, output and lets be honest subsidies. We need more expensive electricity like a hole in the head.

fred bear is that you conceding that the total death toll isn't 50 after all? WHast you were doing is highlighting the accute deaths and then attempting to attribute any other deaths to dispair and mental illness.

your words..... also concluded that chronic health effects around Chernobyl were overwhelmingly the result of deprivation and the paralysing fatalism amongst the population....... Your inference was that all such deaths are attributable to this and not to the exposure, and ongoing exposure to elevated radiation.

Gujarati was a badly designed series of hydro plants/dams. Corners ahd been cut and the system failed. The death tolls and the impacts were terrible but restricted to the locality of that river system. many were saved by moving them to alternative sites. many people lost their lives. If as many corners are cut in the building of nuclear plkants the impacts are not local and are not short term.

I am not desperate, you are obviously a fully paid up member of the congregation to the fission technology and as such i might as well argue with a religous fanatic about thier beliefs. You have absolute faith in nuclear above and beyond all else. Myself on the other hand believes that there is a need for a diverse generation portfolio dispersed throughout our communities.

1222 fairfax.....ho hum, how do i deal with you.

For rate read speed, that is something that can be measured over distance or over time. so a mile is a measure of distance while mph is the speed or rate.

One GW generated in one hour is 1 GWh
One GW generated over 5 hours is 0.2 GWh

so 1 GWh is faster than 0.2 GWh, ie different sppeds or rates.

#124 - how do you propose we avoid paying more for electricity? N Sea gas is now seriously depleted and little coal is mined in UK; in any event we can't go back to 1950's methods of power generation as coal is dirty (and cost of cleaning processes including carbon capture add significantly to generating costs).

To replace declining N Sea gas supplies imports are required, initially up to 20 BCM pa from Norway but that's just under 20% of current UK demand. Further gas imports will be required via v long pipeline runs from Russia and / or LNG shipments from ME. These sources are more expensive and less dependable vs N Sea.

On this basis it would be interesting to hear your suggestions re energy sources to avoid electricity price rises.

Charles and the point you raise is that wind alone is not a solution, great that we agree on that.

I welcome such a large investment in wind turbine technology.

But i must ask 'again', who will build these wind turbine? If these are jobs for a UK engineering sector strugling to find contracts in their home market fantastic. If they are just another Labour bribe to the environmental fanatics, by buying from country X, then its just so much hot air.

I and many others are sick of super scaled engineering projects paid for by reducing taxation revenues for little benefit, for UK tax payers.

I would like to see the deatils before i'm willing to back another one of these schemes.

126.

One GW generated or consumed for one hour is 1 GWh
One GW generated or consumed for 5 hours is 5 GWh

GW is a rate - like gallons per hour
GWh is an amount - like gallons.

Windfarms are being built in large numbers all over the world. It is a proven and reliable technology and has inbuilt redundancy i.e. if one generator in a farm fails the loss in power is negligible whereas when a coal, gas, oil or nuclear plant fails the power loss is considerable. No power plant is 100% reliable; they all have down time for maintenance and repair. When a plant goes down the grid operator simply switches to another source. Both demand and supply are continually changing and the grid operator is continually performing a balancing act to keep voltage and frequency constant. Difficulties are only likely to arise when too much reliance is placed on one technology.

134. You seem to be recommending nuclear only. This is unwise. Nuclear stations are rather inflexible and suited mainly as base load. In addition to nuclear you need fast responding technologies like gas or hydro to respond to sudden increases in demand or to cover for generator failures.

No one has mentioned the noise of wind farms. Sometimes idylically compared to sound of distant traffic by their promoters. But who wants to live in the countryside with city-like sounds in their backyard? See http://www.stop-wadlow-wind-farm.org.uk/noise.html

#133 This article is talking about building 34GW of wind turbines. While it is unlikely that they will all be producing no power it is likely they will be producing very little power. The Sinden document suggests that windfarms produce less than 10% of their rated output for 25% of the time. To make up the difference would require 20 Torness sized power stations.

Small changes in windspeed could have a significant effect. 34GW of installed turbines would be producing 6.8GW at a windspeed of 7m/s. If the windspeed was to reduce to 6m/s the output would be 3.8GW meaning that 3GW would have to be found somewhere. If the windspeed dropped to 5m/s the output would drop to 1GW. A change in wind speed from 7m/s to 5m/s would need 4 Torness sized power stations to make up the difference.

These rapid and constant changes power output are significantly different from the odd power station breakdown.

Are you sure they will be for the wind? and not the harp has any one studied that they have one in Alaska and with it the goverment can controll the weather, peoples thought, make us fell happy or sad, Teslar had invented it to put it to good use till the Goverment got there hands on it, look it up for yourselfs, and it looks just like what they want to build in Scotland.

Saoghal Beag

Perhaps I was wrong, Charles MN's assessment of confused is nearer the mark.

Presumeably due to your awareness of the weakness of your argument, you persist in putting words in my mouth.

All I have said is a) the officially certified death count of Chernobyl is currently about 50, b) agreed that radiation can cause chronic health effects, c) the UN (not me) have stated that depression and deprivation are the overwhelming cause of chronic poor health, and d) the Gujarati dam failure HAS killed 3 times more that Chernobyl MAY kill.

If I imply (not my intention) that all chronic effects are due to depression and deprivation, it is fair to counter that you imply they are all due to radiation.

I repeat, the affected population need to be encouraged to get on with thier life, not be constantly told they are doomed.

Finally why is it OK to explain away 15000 dead at Gujarati by saying the dams were poorly designed and operated? Your ilk have been saying for years about Chernobyl that this is no argument at all.

I won't even begin to address your total confusion on the difference between MW (a rate of energy production or transfer) and MWh (an amount of energy used in power engineering, the SI unit of which is Joule, or MJ) and it loks as though 1222 Fairfax has given up trying to explain it. I suggest you leave engineering to engineers.

Saoghal Beag you need to get Chernobyl in perspective. The WHO has said: "Persistent myths and misperceptions about the threat of radiation have resulted in “paralyzing fatalism” among residents of affected areas. " You need to be careful that you aren't the one spreading the myths and misperceptions.

The reality is that apart from workers on-site on the day of the accident, those living in the surrounding areas received relatively low radiation doses, comparable to natural background radiation levels found in some parts of the world. The lifetime mortality risk from these doses is significantly lower than the risk from, say, inner-city air pollution. The predicted death toll comes from applying a very small risk to very large population. There is little direct evidence that these low levels of radiation cause damage to health - but it is a prudent assumption based on the observed effects of higher doses.

Furthermore the DTI has stated that the chances of a Chernobyl-like release of radiation from a reactor accident in the UK is 1 in 2.4 billion per reactor year. In comparison most dams are designed with a failure rate of 1 in 1000 per year.

I support your approach of using diverse energy sources, and I think this should definitely include nuclear, along with wind and hydro, as the most mature low-carbon options.

Wind power has its place in the energy mix (30% load factor) maybe we should also look into pv cells on the roofs of new builds to help generate in daylight hours as well as geo heat pumps etc, it all helps but no single source is the answer.
I would like to add I am against nuclear due to the waste problem and potental for human error. Coal still gets my vote for base load and gas/pump storage (cruchan) for frequency balancing.

I have not noticed anyone commenting on using the "X" amount of methane gas trapped in the rubbish dumps accumulated over the last couple of hundred years.

Gas powered engine driven generators work just fine. I am a bit out of touch with actual expected lifetime per dump but I do know having been in the industry it is a very viable power source.

#103

Robert from Iowa, I meant to comment some hours ago, but got involved in an exchange of views with another poster.

If wind turbines are appropriate in your location, and everyone is cool with it, fine. To quote another native of your fine city, Bill Bryson, I understand that Des Moines "is located in the middle of the biggest plain this side of Jupiter". In such a situation, with an uninterupted wind 'fetch', I could well believe that the output of farms located on such a landscape is reasonably predictable. There must, however, be some days when the wind don't blow; what do you do then?

Every hospital and important building complex already has a backup generator that could be used if the wind dropped unexpectedly. Too often the generators are never run and then fail to start. That is really dangerous.

Keeping fishing boats away from the turbine bases could create fish nurseries to repopulate other areas. With GPS etc you would have to be very unlucky to hit one of these things. They could be fitted with their own audible radar alarms if someone thought it was a problem, or a big bumper!

It now turns out that nuclear fuel is a limited resource, just like oil.

We have this everlasting energy resource on our doorsteps, and people want to buy gas from Putin instead? What planet are they on?

145 Fred B

Oh yeah multi-coloured brown to black outages BIG TIME.

Colin (#142) you are an apologist for the nuclear industry and you should be ashamed of yourself. To insinuate that the number of anticipated deaths from Chernobyl is in the 40's or 50's is a complete joke. The UN put the figure in the 1000's.

Get real.

#21,
I will tell you exactly what gives me the right to comment. I was born in Banffshire, (and since you haven't even listed your location, I can presume that you could be commenting from anywhere), so for the benefit of your knowledge, Banffshire is just north of the Great Glen, Scotland. I remain a duel citizen of the UK and Australia.

That means that I pay tax to the "Oz", UK and Scots Governments, and for as long as I do, I will post whatever comments I please.

This is, after all, a forum on the world wide web!

Secondly, don't presume to tell me what I am or am not. You don't know me from the next contributor, so don't make ignorant aspersions about my nationality. As previously stated, I am Scottish-born, and I didn't leave Scotland for the first time until I was 21 years of age.

Thirdly, considering that I spend half of the year in Scotland when I am not working in Australia, I think that what happens in the land of my birth and my beloved home very much concerns me. Furthermore, it is my experience that people like you who dispense with very insular, simplistic, small-minded views, (to say nothing of the prejudice that you clearly bear towards Australia and Australians which is evidence of your ignorance and misinformation), tend to be speaking from a very biased perspective - usually from that of the opposing side of the debate.

In short, if you don't know what you are talking about, refrain from commenting unless you are asking a sincere question. Otherwise, you make yourself and your cause look very stupid indeed.

122. Fairfax etc
Power = force x distance = kw etc
Energy = power x time =kwh

Of course it's quite feasible to use electricity produced by offshore wind to produce hydrogen some of which can then be stored as an energy buffer. You could also use it to pump water into artifical barrages or other forms of hydro storage to also act as a buffer. Pumped hydro storage is quite common.

This and other similar solutions would improve the overall availability considerably.

Of course we'd have to buy the electrolysers to produce the hydrogen from Norway. Strangely, that small country is a leader in that technology.

Norway, along with Sweden, Germany and California have led the development of these technologies, (with the exception of photo-voltaic and geothermal advances), for the past two-and-a-half decades.

California leads in terms of photo-voltaic [solar] energy. A square acre of solar panels can produce almost thirteen times as much energy as a windfarm of equal area.

I hope the Scottish Gov can permit or deny the construction off Scotland. Denial would permit bond issues to fund the windfarms so that the Scottish Government gets the profits paid to the Scottish Treasury after interest payment on the bonds. Such bonds would be a good investment for Scottish pension funds and Scottish pensioners.
Kills two birds with one stone>

If built, how will these monstrosities be policed and defended?

James F

Where did Colin insinuate that anticipated deaths from Chernobyl will be in the 40s or 50s? He didn't mention any number at all.

I have stated, from UN/WHO information, that the number of certifiable deaths so far is about 50, and agreed with Saoghal Beag that the same source suggests up to 4000 early deaths may occur. I have not made up these figures, they are from official sources.

truthsleuth

Force x distance is work done, or energy, measured in Newton metres, known as Joules

Power is work done per unit time, it is a rate of energy delivery, measured in Joules per second, known as Watts.

There sure are a lot of confused would be engineers out there.

So the inshore fishing industry can say goodbye to its territory then?

What about the important ecology of the seabed which feeds so many of these at risk beings which we should be preserving and defending?

What about the tourist industry, “travel to Britain, see our wind farms, and our wind farms and our wind farms”.

Is over 70% of our power generation business not owned by foreign companies and foreign Governments anyway?

Or could this just be a sad con trick to take attention away from the fact that Labour is in trouble, corrupt, devious and twisted.

truthsleuth (150):
"122. Fairfax etc
Power = force x distance = kw etc
Energy = power x time =kwh"

That is precisely the point I made in post 122, where I pointed out that GW measures power, whilst GWh measures energy. I'm glad you're agreeing with me.

Saoghal Beag (126): "so 1 GWh is faster than 0.2 GWh, ie different sppeds or rates."

This is completely false: GWh measure energy, not power. Why can you not revise some basic physics?
1 GW = 10^9 Joules per second, whilst 1 GWh, as I stated in my earlier post is 3600*10^9 Joules.

truthsleuth (158):"I'm glad you're agreeing with me."

But not now I've read your incorrect statement. Power has the units of force*velocity, whilst force*distance is work done. Still, it was probably just a typo.

Fairfax. Do we really need to know the theory of relativity? Back to reality.

I think it’s a good idea to site these monstrosities out at sea over the horizon if we really have to have the damn things. It must be better than having them spread all over the countryside

There is obviously more wind out there and hopefully it will bring more work to the dwindling rig building yards across Scotland. I do know that one company in Methil is building experimental wave machines with some success.

Maybe if the Scottish parliament got off their backsides they could do something to help manufacture these turbines. As for a hazard to shipping this is ridiculous seeing as we have satellite navigation, and as far as marine life is concerned I can’t see as there is very much pollution at all.

Fairfax. Do we really need to know the theory of relativity? Back to reality.

I think it’s a good idea to site these monstrosities out at sea over the horizon if we really have to have them. It must be better than having them spread all over the countryside

There is obviously more wind out there and hopefully it will bring more work to the dwindling rig building yards across Scotland. I do know that one company in Methil is building experimental wave machines with some success.

Maybe if the Scottish parliament got off their backsides they could do something to help manufacture these turbines. As for a hazard to shipping this is ridiculous seeing as we have satellite navigation, and as far as marine life is concerned I can’t see as there is very much pollution at all.

Fairfax. Do we really need to know the theory of relativity? Back to reality.

I think it’s a good idea to site these monstrosities out at sea over the horizon if we really have to have the damn things. It must be better than having them spread all over the countryside

There is obviously more wind out there and hopefully it will bring more work to the dwindling rig building yards across Scotland. I do know that one company in Methil is building experimental wave machines with some success.

Maybe if the Scottish parliament got off their backsides they could do something to help manufacture these turbines. As for a hazard to shipping this is ridiculous seeing as we have satellite navigation, and as far as marine life is concerned I can’t see as there is very much pollution at all.

Fairfax. Do we really need to know the theory of relativity? Back to reality.

I think it’s a good idea to site these monstrosities out at sea over the horizon if we really have to have them. It must be better than having them spread all over the countryside

There is obviously more wind out there and hopefully it will bring more work to the dwindling rig building yards across Scotland. I do know that one company in Methil is building experimental wave machines with some success.

Maybe if the Scottish parliament got off their backsides they could do something to help manufacture these turbines. As for a hazard to shipping this is ridiculous seeing as we have satellite navigation, and as far as marine life is concerned I can’t see as there is very much pollution at all.

James #142, I am not disputing the UN figures for predicted deaths from Chernobyl. What I'm saying is that the individual mortality risk is small. The increased mortality for those exposed to radiation in proximity to Chernobyl (but off-site) is about 1%. By comparison the excess mortality from air pollution in London compared to Inverness is 2.8% (and compared to unpolluted air it is over 10%). The lifetime excess radiation exposure for those around Chernobyl was well within the bounds of what one could receive from background radiation elsewhere in the world. That is why the WHO states that the major health effect from Chernobyl was stress caused by exaggerated fear of radiation. Yes, these radiation levels are worth avoiding, but they are not a guaranteed death sentence by any means.

See the following for radiation risks compared to other everyday risks:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/49

Globally, air pollution, largely from burning hydrocarbons, kills more people _every_day_ than Chernobyl ever will in 50 years. And Chernobyl is the only accident at a civil nuclear powerstation that has caused radiation deaths (though arguably Three Mile Island might statistically have caused one excess fatality).

Nivek

No, we don't need to know the theory of relativity, but we do need to understand some simple physics, and it seems to me that many posters pontificating on the practicality of renewables filling the energy gap don't have this understanding.

fred bear (166): "No, we don't need to know the theory of relativity, but we do need to understand some simple physics"

Agreed. All I have done is to point out that GW measures power, whilst GWh measures energy, being 3600 gigajoules -- hardly general relativity. This was in answer to Saoghal Beag's (95) rich confection of error: "GW is a measurement of power and GWh is a measurement of the rate of output of power. (rate is the key word there)." Lord Kelvin must be spinning in his grave!

To recap: It's useful to understand even when reading your own electricity bill: 1KWh is the energy produced by 1 KW working for one hour: in other words 1 KWh is equal to 3600 kilojoules. To give a practical order of magnitude description, the energy required to raise the temperature of 1 litre of water from 0 to 100 degrees (Celsius) is roughly 420 kilo-joules.

#167

Fairfax, I agree, see my posts 141 and 156. I have worked in the power industry for 30 years. I was responding to Nivek, who seems to have posted the same message 4 times (posts 161 to 164).