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Power United Kingdom

Give Free Power To People Living Near Wind Farms, UK Minister Suggests (independent.co.uk) 190

Posted by BeauHD from the support-the-local-community dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Energy bills for people living near onshore wind farms could be slashed under new reforms, according to a cabinet minister. Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi also suggested he supports more onshore wind farms but only if they are backed by the local community. Boris Johnson has committed to publishing a British energy security strategy although when asked about onshore wind farms, the Prime Minister stressed there is a "massive opportunity" for the UK with offshore wind.

Mr Zahawi told Sky's Sophy Ridge On Sunday program: "I would say that if we are going to make sure that we carry the will of local people, whether it's onshore wind or nuclear, we have to learn from how it's done well in other countries. "The way you do that is to make sure the local community has a real say. "But also we've seen great examples of other people where if they build a nuclear power station, within a certain radius of that power station they get free power. So it's right to look at innovation to make sure we wean ourselves off hydrocarbons, we have to do that, we have to do that well, part of that is making sure we look after the will of the local people." Mr Zahawi insisted there "isn't a row" around the Cabinet table about onshore wind.
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Give Free Power To People Living Near Wind Farms, UK Minister Suggests More

Give Free Power To People Living Near Wind Farms, UK Minister Suggests

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  • They should give free power to people living near coal and other fossil fuel power plants. I mean they are the ones having to breathe toxic fumes. Of course there is the dilemma of rewarding stupidity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Arethan ( 223197 )

      I think you're failing to see the point of this.

      The issue this is trying to address is the Not In My Backyard Attitude (nimba), where constituents support an particular initiative up until they realize it will directly affect their neighborhood. It's a very typical and very recurrent problem. This seems to add direct incentives that attempt to offset that bias -- time will tell if if passes and if if works, but I'd wager it will work far better than what has occurred in recent past. If they market this righ

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        I think you're failing to see the point of this.

        No, you just took him too literally. The point is an additional one, how irrational and ignorant people are, to prefer living with coal power than wind and nuclear.

        It seems like a good plan to me, as long as the wind people only get free power when the wind is strong.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )

          I don't think people prefer to live with coal rather than wind; they prefer for *other* people to have to live with coal than for *them* to have to live with wind.

          The hypocritical thing about NIMBY isn't not wanting something in your back yard, it's being OK with something worse in somebody else's back yard if it benefits you. In the end it's poor and working class people who have to put up with the real shit because their opinions carry very little weight.

          It's like Mel Brooks said, “Tragedy is when

    • Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2022 @12:30AM (#62398773)

      They should give free power to people living near coal and other fossil fuel power plants.

      No one should get free electricity. Making anything free results in waste.

      If they want to compensate people for living next to a wind turbine (or smokestack), the proper compensation is MONEY. Then let the recipients decide for themselves what they will spend it on. Ideally, they will spend it on something other than electricity.

      It is equally wrong for many American states to reduce gas taxes. If they want to help people deal with high fuel prices, it is better to give them money. Again, the ideal outcome is they use the cash to buy something other than gasoline. California's Governor Newsom proposed exactly this: $400 in cash to car owners instead of lowering the gasoline tax. I hate Newsom, but he is right about this.

      • No one should get free electricity. Making anything free results in waste

        Even if, and even if money would be a better incentive, free electricity might result in something good—when only a few people get the chance to waste it, but thereby enable the transition to clean energy. If a bit of clean electricity is wasted the result can still be seen as far better than continuing with pollution and warming the planet.

        I agree, though, to what others already said, that there should be caps as to not invite applications with extreme energy consumption.

        • I can already see a whole bunch of bitcoin-grubber's eyes lighting up at at this proposal.

        • I would expect it would be done as a ‘grandfather’ type rule, where if you resided in the area for x years before the wind farm was installed, you get free electricity, but if you moved in after the wind farm was installed, you pay regular rate. This would prevent large commercial consumers moving into previously residential areas for free power. Zoning laws would also curtail this behavior, one could zone the free power area as residential, get the same results.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hey! ( 33014 )

            Doesn't matter. You can still pay someone grandfathered to host your bitcoin mining server.

            A reasonable alternative to money is to be paid in a fixed number of free kilowatt hours per month -- say 350 kwh/person/month -- above which you have to pay the regular rate. Since that's about the average per capita consumption, it doesn't encourage profligate consumption.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        This like saying nobody should have an uncapped internet connection, because bandwidth being free (after the monthly connection fee) creates waste.

        Yet most ISPs in the UK do offer unlimited bandwidth. Sometimes it's fake unlimited with a usage policy, but there are quite a few that re truly unlimited too.

        In the UK most homes have a 100A breaker. That limits the amount of power anyone can use, and practically speaking it's not feasible to use 100A constantly because as soon as you plug anything else in the b

        • Yes but you can't resell the bandwidth. If you gave people unlimited, free electricity they might rent out their garages to Bitcoin miners. Better to give people some fixed quantity of free electricity so that they get a bill of nothing if they are reasonable in their use.

          • The suggestion of giving people free electricity is not the same as suggesting people get unlimited free electricity.

            • Yes but the post to which I replied compared electricity and unlimited bandwidth. They did go on to point out some areas where they aren't comparable. In times past, people certainly *did* resell bandwidth and would consider reselling electricity if enough were given for free. I think this has been covered better later in later threads.
            • It is the same unless you are exquisitely careful in the wording and phrasing of the contract. And as there is no contract, but merely a half formed idea babbled out by a politician, the debate here has become how viable the idea is, and how carefully worded that eventual contract would have to be to prevent egregious abuse.
              Because if they leave even a little wiggle room, the pedantic will find it and use it get free unlimited electricity to mine bitcoin, or power a giant indoor grow farm, or a some other

              • It is the same unless you are exquisitely careful in the wording and phrasing of the contract.

                It's actually very simple, charge for anything more than 10% (or similar) over the median.

      • Free =/= unlimited.

        People could be given free power but not unlimited power.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by noodler ( 724788 )

        [q]No one should get free electricity. Making anything free results in waste.[/q]
        You make no argument for why this is good. The overwhelming majority of humanities wasting is done for money. Giving money almost certainly leads to waste.
        [q]It is equally wrong for many American states to reduce gas taxes.[/q]
        But in this example no one gets anything for free.
        And again you give no argument as to why it is better to give money than to lower gas tax.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      An addendum to that, we could have Sen. Manchin pay for free power to the people of W. Virginia seeing as it was his coal deals that made him rich and his continued sweetheart deals with the coal industry in his state that keeps him rich.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is about incentives, not about compensation. You are missing the point.

  • Hobby bitcoin mining (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Monday March 28, 2022 @10:42PM (#62398651) Homepage Journal

    I see people renting out rooms and sheds to bitcoin miners.

    • Don't give it for free. It will be abused .
      Just give a hefty discount, like 70-90%. That way, people still care about not wasting.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        At 70% discount, mining looks attractive...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Or just compute a typical reasonable monthly useage and give them that much for free and any excess use is charged at the regular rate.

    • Renewable-powered bitcoin mining is a bad thing because... You'd prefer fossil-fuel powered bitcoin mining? Because that way you can keep bitching about it? That tracks, actually. *GOOD GRIEF*
  • It is a requirement these-days, not a luxury. Businesses and those that use excessive amounts of power , such as cryptocurrency miners, should have to pay for their power use.

    • Reducing the price of something, leads to people using more of it. So if we give away power to people, they will use more of it, requiring more power generation and producing more greenhouse gases. Is that such a good idea?

      • Reducing the price of something, leads to people using more of it.

        An obvious solution is to cap the free juice. Maybe at 2 kwh per day per household.

        That is enough to charge phones and power a few lights but not enough to run an AC or a bitcoin rig.

        • Even if you cap the "free" juice, you've still lowered the cost of it overall, and will still lead to more consumption. It's like a budget. One would think that if you are doing well on your current income, then if you get a pay raise you'll have money left over. But we all know that's not how it works. Expenses always soak up all your income, no matter how big your pay raise. Only the most disciplined among us are able to save money, regardless of income level.

          The point is, the more "Free" electricity we g

    • Don't give it for free. It will be abused.
      Just give a hefty discount, like 70-90%. That way, people still care about not wasting.

    • Food has been a more basic need for ages; do you propose people who eat more than some arbitrary limit pay for everyone else? Or a restaurant tax to fund free food for everyone? What if not enough people eat at restaurants to pay for it?

      Devil is always in the details, and there is no free stuff in the world - if you want to give something to someone, you have to take it away from others. If you jack the prices of electricity for businesses, they will raise the prices of the good produced because guess wh

      • Devil is always in the details, and there is no free stuff in the world

        I don't pay for the oxygen I breathe (yet).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by noodler ( 724788 )

        Devil is always in the details, and there is no free stuff in the world

        Wind is pretty much free.
        So is sunlight.

        If you jack the prices of electricity for businesses,

        I think the article talks about residences, not businesses...

        the businesses are there to make money for their investors.

        So you're saying that businesses have absolutely no other role in society than to make money for their investors?
        What a sad, sad person you must be to have this view of humanity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kubajz ( 964091 )
      See the above comment - "the proper compensation is MONEY". To have fair free electricity, it needs to be per capita, not per household (too much manipulation otherwise). And once you get there, it is easier to give a lump sum to every person in the country than to check and regulate a given amount of free electricity. And once you're there, there is just a step to doing this through a tax return - perhaps even for people who earn nothing and who could actually get cash back based on this. Sort of a small v
  • Offering free power does not sound like a bad idea but it is. If you want to compensate people for lost property value due to the proximity of power generation - just compensate them with a check. If you give people free power then they will waste it. Perhaps they will mine bitcoin - or grow pot. Either way, a check ensures that everyone still has an incentive to conserve power.

    • Free != infinite (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Monday March 28, 2022 @11:41PM (#62398745)

      Offering free power does not sound like a bad idea but it is. If you want to compensate people for lost property value due to the proximity of power generation - just compensate them with a check. If you give people free power then they will waste it. Perhaps they will mine bitcoin - or grow pot. Either way, a check ensures that everyone still has an incentive to conserve power.

      They said free power, not infinite free power. A lot of green power projects are stalled or stopped by NIMBYs. This is a smart way of keeping them from sabotaging the greater good.

      A simple answer is to give them a reasonable amount of power for free and charge for the rest. I think most would be a lot more cooperative if they got something in return.

      • Maybe they could get the power for "free", but so it's not just a handout, they have to blow at the turbines when they pass by on their way home or to work. But if the wind farm is in the water (say in Cape Cod), they get a pass.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There are schemes were you can buy part of a wind farm already. You get your share of whatever energy it produces take off your bill. Of course, like solar panels, you need to have money to invest.

        While this is an interesting idea, I don't think it will stop NIMBYs. Because there are few jobs in the areas where they build wind farms, they are mostly inhabited by people who are financially stable and who care more about their view than about a discount on their energy bill.

    • If you give people free power then they will waste it.

      Even if, and even if money would be a better incentive, free electricity might result in something good—after all it's just a few neighbours who would get it, and even if they get the chance to waste electricity, they help enable the transition to clean energy. If a bit of clean electricity is wasted the result is still far better than continuing with pollution and warming the planet.

      Also, there should of course be caps as to not invite applications with extreme energy consumption.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noodler ( 724788 )

      Offering free power does not sound like a bad idea but it is. If you want to compensate people for lost property value due to the proximity of power generation - just compensate them with a check. If you give people free power then they will waste it. Perhaps they will mine bitcoin - or grow pot. Either way, a check ensures that everyone still has an incentive to conserve power.
      Flag as Inappropriate

      What a bullshit argument. How will you ensure the people getting the check won't waste it on buying bitcoin at inflated rates or buying pot, or booze, or prostitutes?
      Humanity is hugely wasteful in most of its endeavors. That is why we have a climate crisis in the first place. People flying all over the world for recreation, ordering a shit ton of useless plastic crap from china, driving gas guzzling SUV's to compensate for their obviously lacking reproductive organs. Homes and businesses throwing away food

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Solar power on small scales is very expensive. If the argument against nuclear power is the costs then compare that to rooftop solar. Solar on small scales means photovoltaic panels, and that takes a lot of special equipment that is unique to PV cells. Solar thermal power doesn't require anything terribly unique but that is a large scale process, and it also costs more than nuclear power. The raw materials for PV aren't always easy to mine. It takes high purity silica, not beach sand. It is possible t

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • One thing is that geothermal power is very different from geothermal heating. Geothermal power takes very hot rocks to boil water, or heat up some other liquid. Geothermal heating requires only that the temperature in the dirt to be high enough that heat can be taken from it and it not freeze. Freeze the dirt and the flow of air and water is impeded, and this impedes the flow of heat.

        That depends on your definitions.

        Some people (myself included) reserve the term "geothermal" for heat sourced from the Earth, which is basically a form of nuclear power as it comes mostly from radioactive decay, but also from the formation of the planet. This is hot rocks boiling water, as you put it.

        Heat extracted from just a few meters down I would call a "ground source heat pump" (it's only heat pumps that use it, as far as I know). There, the temperature is roughly the same as the annual average air tem

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )
          Unfortunately when I search "geothermal" I get mostly results for ground-source heat pumps. I agree with you, that is not geothermal. Unless you drill far enough down that you can get the heat without a heat pump, it's ground-source heat pumps. BTW, you typically have to go about 30 feet (±10 meters) down before the ground temperature really becomes close to constant all year round. Depends a lot on the condition of the ground, presence of ground water, etc., so YMMV.

  • Fiddling while Rome burns - it's just this type of absolute twaddle that passes for thinking in the British government.

    They are ridiculously scared to land windfall taxes on the big fossil fuel companies, out of fear they will divest in the country.
    The reality is probably more than so many of this lousy government, have their hands deep in the pockets of such monopolies, either in the form of investments or in the form of kickbacks - "you scratch my back."

    The UK was once seriously on-track for being a world

    • Fiddling while Rome burns - it's just this type of absolute twaddle that passes for thinking in the British government.

      But we're free of the EU (pronounced ew) and that means we're free to do much worse in trading than before. According to some of the most prominent leavers, that is
      https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

      Turns out the "sunlit uplands" aren't actually a great place to install solar panels.

  • The news here is that the Tories had an idea. And it was one that didn't involve them having more parties.

    Also, brilliant pretense that the Tory party is not itself the primary block to wind farms.

  • The idea is to allow communities to tax the energy harvested in them. That way a part of the money would go to the local community to improve schools and other public infrastructure.
    Of course the best solution in the mean time is to support community cooperations of normal people. Some generators are done this way in Germany. You invest a relatively small amount of money and within x years you will get it back through the electricity being sold. After those x years you will get your share of the profits.

  • Or it will be used for bitcoin, not household uses.

  • Why not do it like Germany does it with coal?

    Just flatten whole villages and relocate the owners to somewhere else.

  • The motto of the NIMBY is "There are right and wrong ways, and this is the wrong way and this is the wrong way" I say let them seethe about their scenic view, which is minimally impacted by offshore windfarms anyway.

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