UK Wants Huge Expansion In Offshore Wind Power 264
OriginalArlen writes "The UK government has announced an ambitious plan to expand the existing offshore wind turbine farms, which are already extensive, to an estimated 7,000 units — two per mile of coastline — enough to generate 20% of the UK's power needs by 2020. The newly green-friendly Conservative opposition party is also backing the scheme. Wonder what they'll make of it in Oregon..."
Kennedy Comment (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the goal is not to create clean energy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh great (Score:3, Insightful)
You DO realise English comes from England right?
So technically, you're the one saying it wrong.
Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work (Score:3, Insightful)
(*) It will be fought by entrenched fishing interests
(FWIW it is my firm belief that this phrase should become the next Slashdot meme.)
Re:This has to have some long term effect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Things like this are worth worrying about if there's some rational reason to, backed up by data; to bring it up now, when there are really only a handful of wind turbines worldwide and far, far worse alternatives if we simply do nothing and continue to burn fossil fuels, seems like it could easily lead to mindless scaremongering. All it takes is for one "scientist" to mention something like this in public and some right-wing nutbag will be talking about how the commie-pinko-homosexual wind turbines are STEALING YOUR WIND and KILLING YOUR CHILDREN. And then they'll go and cash a nice big check from the coal lobby.
Electricity export from France (Score:5, Insightful)
In case you're not familiar with power sources, for baseload power, you're generally going to be using hydro, nuclear, or coal. They're sources whose fuel is cheap and whose plants lend themselves to larger outputs. To cover infrequent peaks of demand, one frequently maintains reserve capacity in the form of gas turbines or, less common and more expensively, oil or gas-fired power plants. Reserve capacity has a low purchase price (or is leftover from decades with more favorable fuel prices, in the case of oil and gas-fired plants) and a high operating cost
Italy--in goddamn 2007--maintains oil-fired baseload capacity. That's right, the stuff an American power company won't touch unless a market's gas lines happened to be cut on the same day their whirly gigs won't start up. Just like the rest of the West did up until the first Oil Crisis in the 1970's.
So, while France's impressive system for licensing and standardizing plants, along with their active R&D in the industry, might be laudable, that surplus is there to profit from flaws in their neighbors' own energy policies.
Re:Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't w (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This has to have some long term effect... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:lame modding (Score:3, Insightful)
Wind/Solar and "Base Load" (Score:5, Insightful)
An electrical energy system has two values that are critical in preserving the integrity of the system.
1) "Base load" - the minimum amount of load the system can expect at any time. In short, there's *always* going to be this much or more energy produced at any given time. If you overproduce Base load you have rising voltages in the system and potentially cause problems. Though, this is rarely a problem - if there was too much capacity at any time, they could offset the phase of a generator or two, causing one system to effectively cancel out the other, reducing system voltage.
2) "Max load" - the maximum amount of load the system could generate at any time. If your usage exceeds max load, you have rolling brownouts or even blackouts.
Usually, the "Base load" is handled by slower-moving-but cheap power plants. A coal-fired plant can take an hour or more to change its output significantly, but it can produce electricity 24x7 at the cheapest possible cost. Thus it's a good candidate for "Base Load". But whatever solution is applied to base load, it must be very, very dependable.
However, the difference between Base load and Max load can be quite variable, changing significantly in mere minutes. This "Variable load" must be met in order to prevent voltage spikes and/or brownouts, and to handle this, you need power plants that can vary their output quickly, and on demand.
Notice that neither Wind or Solar energy can actually act as either Base or Variable loads. Yes, they add energy to the sytem, but they can't be considered "Base load" since their output varies. And they can't really be considered "Variable load" because their output varies with their wind-energy input, NOT because their output varies upon demand.
Thus, Wind/Solar can't really be used as EITHER base or "Variable" load. ALL of the output of either Solar or Wind energy must be matched by other variable load sources, so that when the wind isn't blowing and/or the sun not shining, the system as a whole can preserve its integrity. And this is the part that nobody discusses.
YES, you can get energy from the wind, or from solar panels. But it isn't reliable, so can't be used for "Base load", but it also isn't available "on demand" so it isn't useful for "Variable load".
Which brings me to my point: what if they used the wind energy to compress air that's otherwise stored on the ocean floor? All that nice, heavy water would avoid the need for high-pressure tanks, simply pushing the water out of the way would provide significant amounts of energy. And it would be useful for either base or variable loads, since the compressed air could be used to power generators on demand. Oh, and piping compressed air is a fairly lossless ordeal.
Why not?
Why not?
stop this nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:lame modding (Score:1, Insightful)
Indeed. Good job we orbit a giant nuclear reactor that is constantly putting energy into our non-closed system here on Earth.
Re:Good news! (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be new here
Re:Why not make some more nuclear plants? (Score:3, Insightful)
The number of turbines proposed averages out at one turbine for every two miles of coastline (according to the BBC news).
Once middle England realises thier favorate beach/bird sanctuary/sea view is going to host a dozen turbines the "Not In My Back Yard" syndrome will kick in fast, then the UK government will say "Oh then we will have to build some nukes, heres a plan I made earlier".
Most UK politicians are PR persons, lawyers or phone cleaners. You need to take into account how spineless conniving and selfserving these slimeballs are before you can interpret what they say.
Re:Why not make some more nuclear plants? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a pity because most of the current nuclear power plants will be decomissioned in the next 10 years along with quite a few of the coal fired ones leaving us with a large gap between the amount of energy we'll need and the amount we can produce. The end of North Sea gas only adds to this problem, with 80 or 90% of the population reliant on gas for cooking and heating at the moment we'll have to either bite the bullet and become dependant on Russias natural gas or switch to electric - further increasing the energy deficit.
Re:Because the goal is not to create clean energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Makes you proud to be British!
Re:Oh great (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because the goal is not to create clean energy (Score:3, Insightful)
That British Coal stopped its plans to eviscerate the mining industry?
That people doing a difficult and dangerous job should be paid accordingly?
The miner's strike was the culmination of a planned attack by Thatcher on the British people, fed by her determination to squander the North Sea oil and gas dividend as quickly as possible in order to enrich Denis's friends in the oil industry.
Coupled with the disastrous notion of privatisation and the destruction of most of our manufacturing base, it has ensured that Britain will never again be truly great.
Personally, I have a nice bottle of champers laid down to celebrate when the old witch dies.
Re:Because the goal is not to create clean energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They want us to use less energy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Electricity export from France (Score:3, Insightful)