Wind power

johnnyurq

http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/i474/johnnyurq/Silly/10342476_728188510565880_1173478205052134087_n_zps37eb738a.jpg


Gotta start somewhere before the lights start going out.

Phil_aka_Pip

@johnnyurq if it's the street lights that go out, it's fine with me.

crunchman

I think there is scope for a lot of micro-generation.  Growing up down in Devon, there were quite a lot of streams and rivers where you could put small scale hydro plants.  The problem is that the cost of connecting them to the grid would be expensive.

If you said to all the farmers/landowners who have rivers and streams on their land that you would connect them to the grid for free if they can install something that would generate the power, that would probably be a better use of government subidies than most of what they use them on at the moment.  Most farmers are pretty practical. They could probably find a way to install something very cheaply during a quieter time of the year.

There must be thousands of old mill streams and water wheels around the country as well.  Why not re-use these with a water wheel connected to a turbine?  Individually they might not amount to much, but if you had 10,000 of them they would make a difference.

Sambostar

I agree with Crunchman, although I think mini hydro plants, unless they are diversionary to the main course of the river won't get a look in, due to wildlife concerns.  Sometimes makes me wonder what politicians are on about, the real age of sustainability was around the late 18th century.

New build houses should be fitted with roof hot water pipes and ground heat pumps and wind turbines and possibly solar as standard I reckon and insulation still isn't up to the mark.

I said before, I'd love to harvest the heat from compost, but I doubt the EA or the Council would give me permission to dump poxy amounts, I mean a cubic metre or two a fortnight, of green waste here.  Those aerobic bacteria would heat a house for a fortnight and provide enough hot water.  Sadly, can't see it happening though.

Would like to cook and heat using poo gas though.  It would be a real motivation to eat more, after all, the more you flush, the more you can cook.

If you think about it so much energy is still wasted.  I mean condensing combi boilers with heat exchanges have only just been made mandatory for example.  Regarding energy wastage, we are still in the stone age, hindered by bureaucracy and legislated for stupid ideas like CFL lightbulbs.

Phil_aka_Pip

Sambostar said:

legislated for stupid ideas like CFL lightbulbs.

ain't that the troof

ICBM

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Sambostar said:

legislated for stupid ideas like CFL lightbulbs.

ain't that the troof

Yes, but without that legislation to make us use crap light bulbs, it's unlikely the incentive to develop proper LED lighting would have been enough to overcome the initial very high cost, and we'd still be using incandescents. One step back to go two steps forward, yes, but worth it eventually.

Phil_aka_Pip

are leds more green-friendly to make than incandescents? or is it their low current draw which compensates for the nasty chemicals?

ICBM

Incandescents are still the cleanest and lowest-energy-use to actually make, but outweighed by the high energy consumption in use and short life.

LED is probably the cleanest overall. CFL might actually be the worst - they were originally promoted more to reduce the need for new power generation rather than because the bulbs were better.

LED really is the right solution. The light is good, there's no start-up dim period, and the life expectancy is huge - in theory it should be unlimited if the circuitry doesn't get too hot, although it's not claimed as such. I've just fitted a 12W LED in my workshop bench spotlight, replacing a 60W incandescent, and it's actually brighter and whiter - but not that nasty fluorescent whiteness.

When you think about it, it really is a bit daft to generate light by heating a filament white hot and throwing 90% of the energy away in the process...

johnnyurq

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@johnnyurq if it's the street lights that go out, it's fine with me.

Well quite @Phik_aka_Pip I hate the ones outside my house but I guess they help folks feel/keep safe.

Removing the ballast or a air rifle FTW though.

In all seriousness it is a problem that needs solving one way or another and no one thing for now can resolve it. But we should be backing off on the fossil fuels and adding in a range of renewables.

Our Hydro, wind and tidal stuff is contributing a fair bit and even supplying Perthshire and beyond I dare say. Plus the jobs are a bonus too in the area.

As far as the South/South East goes how sutainable and how good an idea is it to become even more dependant on energy from Europe?

I mind in the mid 90's on a visit to a mate living in Brighton he told me how much came across from France back then and I suspect it will be even more these days.

The Ukraine's recent problems have shown it is never a good idea to be dependant on foreign energy as one fall out and your energy resilirnce turns to shit, never good. Not to mention sudden and sharp price rises.

Surely UKIP are appalled at all that foreign energy coming over here and maing our UK electrons unemployed or never born.

That's a joke BTW.

If we don't have a spread of different options then I don't fancy our chances of keeping the light, heat and more on in coming decades.

Personally I would rather not be part of the few generations that use all the finite energy, do bugger al to mitigate it and then kick all this down the road for the next sets of generations to wrestle with.

Just my 2p plus VAT.

Fretwired

The UK is down to 2 per cent spare energy capacity. Renewable energy is fine in theory but doesn't work in practice without the backup of coal/gas/nuclear power. There's a war in the Middle East and sanctions from Russia - a cold winter and a shortage of gas will see the lights go out in the UK. We don't store enough gas and we don't have an energy policy. It will take a cold winter, power shortages and the deaths of thousands of people to change things ...

We need a few coal fired plants as backup to keep the lights on .. the Germans are building new coal fired plants ..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26820405

IanSavage

I've read somewhere that we could get all of the electricity we needed for the whole of the developed world by just covering 10% of the Sahara in solar panels. In theory it's the logistics of getting the electricity out of the desert and maintaining the whole thing that're the stumbling blocks, although I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few lobbyists here and there holding things up too...

Phil_aka_Pip

Nah. Al-kebab would just sabotage it and tell us it is un-Islamic

IanSavage

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Nah. Al-kebab would just sabotage it and tell us it is un-Islamic

Now I want a kebab

Phil_aka_Pip

IanSavage said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Nah. Al-kebab would just sabotage it and tell us it is un-Islamic

Now I want a kebab

why? are you p1ssed already?

Skipped

Agree with crunchman about Solar.

Lots of problems to solve but they only have to become a little cheaper and a little bit more efficient (soon) and new buildings will be partially covered in them.
Slightly more complicated (due to massive worries about World Conflict and maybe Storage)......we will cover the deserts in Panels. Possibly.

Snap

Wind power, load of crap. It really is. AS has been pointed out. THe whole clean energy vs carbon based fuels vs clmate change contention is so clouded by opinion and politics, its difficult to extract the truth. Biggest greenhouse gas? Water vapour. Massive emittor of greehouse gas? Cows farts.

Apparently.

THing is, if you argue against "green" energy, you get lambasted for ignorign "facs" and being an almost holocaust denier. (OK not that sever, but you get my point).

What we need to do is reopen all our coal mines, most efficient in the world they were, and invest in removing CO2 from the waste products of fossil fuels. Or something.

That way, when I drive over the pennines next, I won't see some bastard big ferking fan on a nice hill. Plus, eventually the weather will warm up (form all that climate change) and I won't need to go abroad as much to have a sunny holiday.

Green party my arse.

Wind farms?- stick em all in the sea. It's always windy when you go out in a boat. Always. Even on a rowing boat on the river Nidd, gets windy.

Sambostar

I inclined to of agree with you.  People object to bonfires on the grounds that they release so much carbon, locked up in biomass straight away.  Now I can sympathise with the local pollution and stink but not the carbon issue.  These people think they are doing the right thing by putting out their green waste bin for a truck that does less than a [pound a mile in diesel and dump it on a green waste tip, where it is shredded and made into compost.  In about 6-8 weeks it has released the same amount of carbon as the bonfire.

Rocker

As has been said before, the whole Wind Energy Con is supported by subsidies.  Remove the subsidies and you abolish the wind energy problem.  @crunchman and @Sambostar summed it up well on Page 1.

A big problem with wind energy is that it is necessary to have alternative backup running 24/7 and available to supply power if the wind drops.  Or gets too strong.  

Wind Energy is one of the politicians face savers.  The world seems to have woken up to the fact that we produce too much CO2. Politicians claim to be doing their bit to solve this problem by supporting wind energy.  At first glance wind energy produces no CO2. Even thinking about it, it is apparent that this is not the case.  How much CO2 is released in making the mast and wings and other technology.  And the concrete bases for the towers require 70 or more lorries of concrete per tower [for land based wind farms].  And keep in the back of your mind the fact that somewhere a nuclear/coal fired/gas fired generator is running and ready to supply power if called upon.

The idea of using small generating plants on disused water powered mill races is a good one.  Provision must be made for any salmon that move upriver to spawn.  But the idea is workable.

In Ireland, and I expect in the UK, the standard of insulation in houses is simply far below what is needed.  Energy, however it is generated, is not being retained in homes.  This energy has to come from somewhere which adds to the problem.  Better insulation will reduce the amount of energy needed to heat our homes.  Politicians ignore this option as there is not big building on the skyline to show how much they care about the environment.  No ribbon cutting ceremony.  No photo in the paper.

Solar energy is another possibility that needs to be investigated.  Along with heat pumps.  It should be possible to drill 250 metres into the earth and extract the heat from the earths core using power generated by solar panels on the roof of a building.  A closed circle, own electricity heating ones own home.  Generating no CO2 apart from what was released in the manufacture of the equipment and drilling the hole into the earth.  Again there is no capital for politicians but this is likely to be the best solution to space heating for homes in the future.

holnrew

Photovoltaics have come a long way and will come on further too. Don't care much for these companies pushing it on you though. They don't have your interests at heart.

Axe_meister

Burning wood on a bonfire actually has zero CO2 immisions if the wood is from  a sustainable source. I.e. you plant a new tree for every tree you burn. The equivalent CO2 is extracted from the air to grow the tree.

I was wondering myself could be not put a load of heat pump pipes down our sewers, we must pour a stupid amount of waste heat down there (every hot bath and shower), also why not have air conditioning units pump there heat into the sewer as well there would be a lot of laten heat to be gathered.

Now if we could produce less effiencient but much cheaper photovolteic cells so I could plaster my entire roof for a couple of hundred quid even if just to run a couple of appliances and make my money back in a few years, I'd be happy.