Scottish Developers Announce Subsidy-Free Onshore Wind Farm (cleantechnica.com) 101
Independent Scottish developer Muirhall Energy announced on Monday that construction has begun at the Crossdykes Wind Farm, an important step in the company's effort to deliver Scotland's first subsidy-free onshore wind project. CleanTechnica reports: The 46 megawatt (MW) Crossdykes Wind Farm, being developed at Dumfries and Galloway, in the western Southern Uplands of Scotland, is expected to produce first power in September 2020. Muirhall Energy and its partners WWS Renewables reached financial close on the project in August -- believed to be the first subsidy-free development to be project-financed, thanks to funding from Close Brothers Leasing and wind turbines to be supplied by Nordex. Muirhall has also offered the local Dumfries and Galloway community the opportunity to buy up to 10% of the project via a community share offer.
"We are delighted to be starting construction on what will be one of the first subsidy-free developments to come online in the UK," said Chris Walker, Managing Director of Muirhall Energy. "That is testament to the work we have done as a company, but also the flexibility shown by all our partners as we finalized our plans for the project."
"We are now very much focused on working to our tight construction timeline and progressing a number of the other projects in our portfolio which we believe can be made to work on a similar model. With more than 300 MW to begin construction over the next three years, this an exciting time for Muirhall Energy."
"We are now very much focused on working to our tight construction timeline and progressing a number of the other projects in our portfolio which we believe can be made to work on a similar model. With more than 300 MW to begin construction over the next three years, this an exciting time for Muirhall Energy."
Angry lesbians? (Score:2, Funny)
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The Happydykes Wind Farm is subsidized, which is why the dykes over the way at this Wind Farm are cross ...
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I'm confused. What do angry lesbians have to do with windmills or power generation?
The only relief they get from the wind they have been farming is at harvest, which is when they attempt to capture all the gas. You get a little grumpy holding onto a fart for that long!
That's a whole lot... (Score:2)
...of queefing going on to generate that wattage.
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I may have misjudged you blindseer. Speaking the virtues of wind power.
But why not solar? Is it because it's off at night? Half the time(ish)?
Better batteries will make that a non issue. And by "better" i mean less expensive (2x less). Completely recyclable , and 4x the capacity.
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Here is the most current story on the eia.gov site you reference :
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
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Here is the most current story on the eia.gov site you reference :
https://www.eia.gov/todayinene... [eia.gov]
This is a comparison of construction costs. . Natural gas is the obvious winner on that, but the report completely ignores that you still need to BUY GAS to run it, whereas wind and sunshine are free.
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Natural gas is the obvious winner on that, but the report completely ignores that you still need to BUY GAS to run it, whereas wind and sunshine are free.
Natural gas is just as "free" as the wind and sun. In both cases people just need to go out and get it. This lie that wind and sun is free needs to have a stake put through its heart. There is no such thing as free energy from wind and sun. The economics may be different but that doesn't mean it's any more free than the natural gas we have to go out and collect.
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Nor are the Sun or Wind renewable. Once the Sun goes out, it is out. You cannot recycle it (well, it probably will be you'll just not be around to see it).
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Natural gas is just as "free" as the wind and sun.
Bullcrap. I have solar panels on my roof and a gas furnace and water heater in my garage.
PG&E sends me a gas bill every month.
Nobody sends me a sunshine bill.
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Don't dismiss this. By 1990 you could pay $2000 to upgrade your car in the Netherlands to run on LPG or gasoline at the flip of a switch, and LPG was much cheaper.
Successful, people did it!
Omg, need taxes for roads! So they slapped an annual surtax on such cars so you had to drive 20,000 km a year on LPG just to break even.
Government voracious. Never forget it. A surtax on sun and wind will happen eventually.
"We're taxing the generator, not the sun!" I can see the sophistry already.
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"Natural gas is just as "free" as the wind and sun. " bollox, you need to keep getting it out of the ground to burn it and thats not free. Wind and Solar are free sources that do not need any processing/digging up etc to reach the equipment to make the power.
So all the steel, concrete, aluminum, glass, copper, and so on needed to build the windmills, solar PV panels, and batteries is just a figment of my imagination?
A windmill might look like just a thin steel tower sticking out of the ground but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Buried in the ground under that thin steel post is a massive reinforced concrete block to hold that thing up against the wind. Solar panels don't get off easy either. The PV cells themselves might be wafer thin but they need a pro
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The PV cells themselves might be wafer thin but they need a protective glass cover to protect them from hail damage, concrete to anchor them against the wind, and lots of wires to connect them to the grid. You apparently have no idea how much material is needed for solar power. How about you read this short article to educate yourself: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com] (And pay special attention to Figure 2.)
If you believe my source to be biased, outdated, or whatever then go find some other sources. Share any you find with the rest of the class, I'm guessing they'd be interested as well.
Here's the problem - that chart is just showing tonnage - and who really cares about material tonnage? It's a weird thing to emphasize. Just because a certain power source *weighs* a lot per TWh doesn't mean that it is somehow worse. Emissions, price, and safety analyses already account for all the real-world impacts of that tonnage (as long as the analyses are done properly). And on all three of those criteria, solar has become very competitive, and a much better option than fossil fuels.
For what it's wort
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Here's the problem - that chart is just showing tonnage - and who really cares about material tonnage?
The people that have to look at the mines for all this material. If this was a difference between 1000 tons and 2000 tons per terrawatt-hour then I'd agree with you. What we see is nuclear takes about 2000 tons for the same energy that solar gets with 15000 tons. Those numbers are from the US Department of Energy. Maybe some future technology can lower the material demands for solar power but then this future technology can lower demands for nuclear too.
Fine, then look at the cost difference in dollars.
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Maybe some future technology can lower the material demands for solar power
The future is now! Some new tech just went into commercial production that uses nano-structures and a nano-thick layer that does all of the PV effect. Now only does the new process reduce the amount of materials required to make the PV effect to 1/1,000th the amount, but doubles the efficiency of the solar panels, to about 40%. The first gen of this new tech just started rolling off this year, but is limited to about 20% efficiency for now, but they do have 40% in the lab. Because this new process uses 1/10
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Perfect is the enemy of good. Sure, nuclear is somewhat better than solar in terms of safety and emissions, and possibly price (solar prices are changing so fast, and new nuclear installation is so problematic lately, that this is hard to evaluate fairly).
But. As long as solar is better than
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The future is now! Some new tech just went into commercial production that uses nano-structures and a nano-thick layer that does all of the PV effect. Now only does the new process reduce the amount of materials required to make the PV effect to 1/1,000th the amount, but doubles the efficiency of the solar panels, to about 40%. The first gen of this new tech just started rolling off this year, but is limited to about 20% efficiency for now, but they do have 40% in the lab. Because this new process uses 1/1000th the materials, material cost all but disappears leaving production costs. Of course there still needs to be some material to act as the structure, but it can be anything they can coat this nano-thin layer on.
You want to use an untested and currently low production solar PV cell to replace nuclear power?
Nuclear power is a technology that has been tried and tested for 60 years now. Even though we haven't had many new nuclear reactors in the last 30 or 40 years there's many people trained in the safe operation of these power plants. Nuclear power is known to be exceedingly safe while this new technology does nothing to address the current and known safety problems of falls and electrocutions from solar panel ins
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You are looking at the wrong able. Table 3 is "avoided cost" which measures the value of the generated electricity for the grid if you would build this project taking into account that this is different for different technologies. There is not much difference between nuclear, wind, and PC. Tables 1 and 2 shows LCOE, i.e. the cost. The ratio between LACE and LOCE (Table 4) tells you (roughly) whether it would make economic sense to build this plant. According to this data nuclear is more economical than off
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Better batteries will make that a non issue. And by "better" i mean less expensive (2x less). Completely recyclable , and 4x the capacity.
I have solar on my roof, and live in sunny California, where electricity is expensive by American standards (12 cents/kwh). The solar is a good investment, and will break even in about 8 years.
I have also priced out batteries, including Tesla Powerwall. They need to drop to half the price (or twice the capacity) to make sense.
Even then, they make more sense at the endpoints rather than for grid storage. Endpoint storage avoids the transmission losses in both directions.
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"Even then, they make more sense at the endpoints rather than for grid storage. Endpoint storage avoids the transmission losses in both directions."
If the storage is vaguely nearby then transmission loss will be less than 3%, and all battery maintenance is subsidized, plus the flammable batteries don't have to be in people's homes. Totally worth it.
oops centralized (Score:2)
Oops, I meant centralized. Having the batteries spread out makes more sense once we have solid electrolytes. They are too fragile right now. Can't trust people with the upkeep on the batteries that require it, and the ones that don't are too dangerous. We don't permit people to store that much gasoline on their property without preparation. Not just a big tank, but the place where it sits has to be prepared.
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I may have misjudged you blindseer. Speaking the virtues of wind power.
WTF? Seriously? I've been posting here about wind, hydro, and nuclear as the future of energy for a very long time. I had to change that to "onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear" when people started bringing up offshore wind and I found out how much that costs.
But why not solar? Is it because it's off at night? Half the time(ish)?
Seriously? I gave a half dozen links describing the problem.
Fine. I'll try to summarize.
One big problem with solar, IMHO, is the terrible EROI. It just takes too much energy to build them for how much energy comes out. Too little energy return to s
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Even if batteries had no cost, took no materials, and no labor then solar would still be shit. If we could just click our fingers to make more batteries appear then solar would still be a waste of materials, land, and labor.
Priceless.
Well played sir.
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"It just takes too much energy to build them for how much energy comes out. "
3-5 years in a domestic setting in temperate zones. Buy quality panels warranted for 20 years, and you have ~15 years of net positive energy production that has no running costs other than annual inspection and washing. You can even wash them yourself if you have roof access. I do.
Your statements reflect the philosophy of "knowing the price of everything, and the value of nothing". People can have rooftop PV *now*, instead of nucle
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3-5 years in a domestic setting in temperate zones. Buy quality panels warranted for 20 years, and you have ~15 years of net positive energy production that has no running costs other than annual inspection and washing. You can even wash them yourself if you have roof access. I do.
I'd like a source for that claim. Here's my source, not my only source, just one that has compiled other sources into a reasonably short and readable article.
https://www.world-nuclear.org/... [world-nuclear.org]
Energy payback time. If 3.1 PJ is taken as the energy capital cost of setting up (with centrifuge enrichment), then at 27 PJ/yr output the initial energy investment is repaid in about six weeks at full power. Voss (2002) has 3 months. Construction time for nuclear plants is 4-5 years.
So, nuclear power plants have a energy payback period somewhere between six weeks and three months.
Your statements reflect the philosophy of "knowing the price of everything, and the value of nothing". People can have rooftop PV *now*, instead of nuclear in 20 years. It's not always about the ROI.
Okay then, get your solar panels now while starting construction on a nuclear power plant. Assuming you are correct that a nuclear power plant takes 20 years to build (which is rare) and your solar panels last 20 years
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So, nuclear power plants have a energy payback period somewhere between six weeks and three months. ...
You are mixing up the fuel with a plant. No idea how that can happen
Why are you still linking world-nuclear.org is beyond me. They are a fake site with pro nuclear and anti everything propaganda.
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"I'd like a source for that claim."
Energy payback period AKA how long does it take to pay back or offset the enerrgy and CO2 used in production:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf [nrel.gov]
How long does it take to pay back purchase and installation cost, in savings against grid prices:
https://www.choice.com.au/home-improvement/energy-saving/solar/articles/solar-panel-payback-times [choice.com.au]
Those are Australian grid prices, of course.
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It just takes too much energy to build them for how much energy comes out.
That is a lie. The energy needed is regenerated in about 6 month.
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Why are you ranting about batteries again?
I explain it again, seems hard to grasp: batteries only make sense when you have surplus power you can store in that batteries and have a time of the day where you easily can consume that surplus power.
At the moment there are not many grids in the world that have such conditions on a regular base.
A grid is not a house hold ... or a boat. There is no point in storing much power in batteries until renewables produce significantly above base load and that especially at
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These are batteries used for _load balancing_ aka grid stability.
Not for doing anything special in regarding wind or solar power.
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Re:They will need more than wind, sun, and batteri (Score:5, Informative)
And yet it works fine, and is significantly cheaper than most of the alternatives. Unsubsidised even.
Although much to my annoyance the link I'd give you to prove it , the Finkel review from australias department of environment and energy, seems to have been pulled. I suspect after the Minister of Energy was contradicted on television with his own departments research reports when he tried to claim "coal is cheaper than renewable". Irritating :/
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So what happens when a nuclear power plant suddenly stops ?
We do the same thing we do when windmills and solar collectors stop, we fire up some natural gas generators and/or use batteries. The difference is that the chances of two nuclear power plants going down at the same time is quite possibly astronomical while losing all wind and solar power in an area is a daily occurrence. The capacity of this backup power for nuclear would need to be far smaller, used less often, and therefore incur much less cost.
We saw this happen in Australia. They had a big Tesla bui
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No we didn't. A certain anti-science federal minister kept on claiming this, despite multiple agencies, all saying that renewables on the grid had fuck all to do with it. The problem was the line bringing power cross state was cooked from the storm and a combination of that, and privatized power stations powering down when price goes below a certain threshold , meant you had a shitstorm of simultaneous factors all conspiring to bring the power down for a whole state. Most of
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in effect - a completely redundant power supply system (PV/wind) that only works occasionally.
This is Scotland we're talking about. "Occasionally" comes out at about 80% or more.
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It depends on how long a "moment" is. The whole of Scotland doesn't go from windy to calm in an instant. I imagine that there would be considerably more notice of that then there is of a nuclear power plant going off-line due to some problem at the plant. Indeed, the most recent problem we've had in the UK was caused by a wind-farm going off-line not because of the wind but because of a problem in the transmission system from the farm to the grid, which of course gave no notice at all. But it doesn't matter
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Netflix makes a movie about the government incompetence and need to save face that caused environmental devastation?
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No, he's a physicist trying to explain an economic problem.
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If you mean blindseer, he is a farmer. At least he said so in another threat long ago ... he has no clue about physics.
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If you mean blindseer, he is a farmer. At least he said so in another threat long ago ... he has no clue about physics.
I grew up on a dairy and pig farm in the US Midwest, I have not milked cows or shoveled shit in many years. I have since received two engineering degrees in electrical and computer engineering. While at university I was a member of their solar car competition team. As with any accredited engineering program in the USA I was required to take courses on calculus based physics, thermodynamics, power generation and transmission, and semiconductor physics.
What's your education?
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My education is computer scientist, physicist.
And my work mostly consisted of power generation, distribution etc.
So: no, I don't believe you a single word.
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My education is computer scientist, physicist.
And my work mostly consisted of power generation, distribution etc.
I noticed no mention of earning a degree, did you graduate university? I did, twice.
So: no, I don't believe you a single word.
That's fine, don't believe me. Take a look at some experts then.
Experts like Dr. Ripu Malhotra:
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
Dr. David MacKay:
https://www.withouthotair.com/... [withouthotair.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Prof. Tim Maloney:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co... [roadmaptonowhere.com]
Dr. Fatih Birol and Mr. Keisuke Sadamori, Energy Markets and Security Director International Energy Agency:
https://www.reuters.com/ [reuters.com]
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They are idiots. For example, the first link says:
The word "forcing" here is used without any supporting evidence. In particular, how much energy storage is needed? In other words, what portion of aggregate electrical demand is perfectly price-inelastic? These questions must be answered before one can truthfully say that renewables
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For someone who has a degree in electric engineering your mistakes about e.g. efficiencies of batteries or electric engines etc. are simply unbelieveable.
My degree is somewhere between Bachelor and Master ... Germany switched to Bachelor and Master a few years ago, so I have no idea how it is counted :D
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From the fine article:
Here's an expert on the issue explaining the problem: https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
There are huge amounts of unused potentials, I believe. See, e.g. https://www.carbonbrief.org/eu... [carbonbrief.org]
/Jon
PS A quote I cannot properly remember goes something like this "If an old and renowned scientist says something is possible, you should listen, because he is probably right. However, if an old and renowned scientist says something is impossible, he is certainly wrong."
Re:They will need more than wind, sun, and batteri (Score:5, Informative)
Got on early with the nuclear shilling I see.
Actually Scotland has so much wind power available that it can supply itself and export another 20x as much to the rest of Europe. Some batteries for smoothing will help but nothing like a UPS is needed.
They can run 24/365 on wind alone if they develop it enough.
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They can run 24/365 on wind alone if they develop it enough.
I have no doubt of that. The problem is that it will cost double that of an energy supply mix made up of onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear.
Here's just one article of many that discuss this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... [forbes.com]
They would also see a higher rate of both CO2 production and deaths from accidents.
Source: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
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Exactly the UK total wind potential is so high that eventually it has been calculated at any point in time if it was fully developed there would be enough geographic wind distribution that 80% of the countries energy could be supplied by wind on a continuous basis The country Lies on the edge of the atlantic between 50-58 deg Latitude, directly below the jet stream so it catches weather fronts non stop all year long either pulling cold air down from the arctic or hot air up from africa/spain. The UK is pr
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And the same for Texas. It's geographically large enough that there's always sufficient wind blowing over some part of Texas to power the state, and often enough blowing over enough of it to be a major wind exporter. The last research I saw was that if they developed coastal wind and pan-handle wind, that would be sufficient to power the state. Any additional turbines would just be insurance and for export.
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The EROEI for Solar in California is going to be about double what you get in Germany with the same panels, and the report is five years old, so panel efficiency is about 20% higher. Combined, you should get above 8 minimum if you chose to believe the original numbers,
But, that really doesn’t necessarily matter: EROEI matters in aggregate more than on a per-source basis. The incremental capacity requirement at any point in the day or year. We put diesel backup generators in buildings that are unlike
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Blindseer always brings up EROEI because it's a metric where nuclear does well. Unfortunately for him it's also largely irrelevant.
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Energy return is important— while I get the underlying bias, you cannot provide an economical power system with declining energy return. For me, that is one of the reasons I like 2-axis solar trackers: they provide 1-2 hours of extra solar output during the shoulder periods of daytime that gives the system a higher capacity factor. Unfortunately, they cost almost as much as the solar panels (but cheaper than the extra batteries that would otherwise be needed).
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Except this is Scotland not California. We generate more than twice what we use from wind already. Then there is the 20% of what we use that comes from existing hydro and has done so for decades. We could do with some more pumped hydro schemes coming online, the capacity for this is immense in Scotland.
Let's face it we could build a dyke across the Pentland Firth and get north of 10GW from tidal. A large expansion of ground source heat pumps could remove the need for gas boilers completely for
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blindseer (Score:2)
46 MW?
That's only a tiny fraction of a nuclear power plant?
"The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the United States with three reactors and a total electricity generating capacity1 of about 3,937 MW."
- https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
What the hell are they thinking? So wasteful.
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What the hell are they thinking? So wasteful.
What is being wasted?
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"What the hell are they thinking? So wasteful."
At least they scrap it in 30-50 years, they don't have to guard the pieces and the ashes for 184000 years.
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Perhaps they only have a market for 46MW?
Or they upgrade it in 5 years? Or they can not build a nuke, due to location or what ever.
What would they do with 4GW of the most expensive power on the planet when thy can build cheap power instead? A nuke probably takes 10 years to be delivered ... they start producing power in one year already...
And what exactly is wasteful in a wind park?
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46 MW? That's only a tiny fraction of a nuclear power plant?
"The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the United States with three reactors and a total electricity generating capacity1 of about 3,937 MW."
- https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs [eia.gov]... [eia.gov]
What the hell are they thinking? So wasteful.
Perhaps they only have a market for 46MW?
Or they upgrade it in 5 years?
Or they can not build a nuke, due to location or what ever.
What would they do with 4GW of the most expensive power on the planet when thy can build cheap power instead? A nuke probably takes 10 years to be delivered ... they start producing power in one year already...
It's just a small wind farm that happens to be the first one not to require incentives. Wind farms in Scotland range from small installations like this to massive things with over a hundred generators and a production capacity of 500 megawatts. They currently have one under construction that will top that at 600 megawatts. The fact that you can distribute wind power at will is one of its advantages, that and the ability to scale it up or down easily and cost effectively. Scotland is possibly the windiest pl
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Portugal, Norway, Denmark, the islands around Scotland as well, have a lot of wind, too. Probably at different times of the year, though.
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It's a fraction of pretty much anything - a small coal power plant in Australia will have two 660MW units.
Re:blindseer (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell are they thinking? So wasteful.
They were probably thinking that you can't build a nuclear power plant for $60m
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Or in a lot of places, you can't build a nuclear power plant period.
I squares up... (Score:2)
If you want me to care about this story, you have to convince me that all Scottish developers talk exactly like Francis Begbie.
https://youtu.be/SUZyNLZZjMs [youtu.be]
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Another monumental eyesore. The worse the eyesore the more the greenies love it, because they want conspicuous sacrifices to be made for their cause.
I used to drive past a field of windmills on my way between Portland and Yakima and I always thought they were kind of cool looking.
I don't know why people think they're an 'eyesore'. Try living next to a coal plant and let me know which one you prefer.
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And a whole lot better than having to look at a mine and piles of tailings, plus all the equipment it takes to move minerals.
What about the windmill cancer?? (Score:2)
Oh sure, they're gloating about their subsidy-free electricity now, but they won't be laughing after they come down with windmill cancer.
Maybe I have gotten this wrong? (Score:1)
But now I'm wondering
I would think I would have to be very confident to jump on something like this with my own money.
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You haven't been paying attention for the last decade then. There's been a remarkable drop in the cost of renewables and grid storage. They're now cheaper to deploy than pretty much anything but natural gas, and that's without forcing carbon-based power to pay the "CO2 disposal costs".
I have family and friends with rooftop solar in the northern US, and they're estimating at a 5-7 yr ROI after having the panels installed for 2-3 years. Given that they will likely last 20+ years, 15+ years of largely free ele