Anyone know the total cost-to-date of our wind farms? I see at present it's producing (assuming an installed base of 4GW) a sixteenth of what it's "rated" at, and judging by the BBC pressure chart, that is likely to be the case until around Tuesday.
The rating is the maximum theoretical output in ideal conditions.
They do though seem to forget about gusty weather and there are a few studies, I think from Italy, which suggests that wind farms actually tend to increase gustiness due to the turbulence they can create. I'm not sure if this technology has been bedded in long enough to be fully mature yet. Brian
assuming a 50:50 mix of on and offshore that's 2 billion for the onshore and 6 billion for the offshore.
So call it 8 billion. Enough for nearly three nukies.
For about 4GW of reliable 24x7 power that doesn't depend on the wind ..and will last about three times as lomng.
Note the interesting fact '4GW of wind capacity costs the same as 4GW of nuclear' - that's green spin.
Reality. You will get 6 times as much electricity and need no gas backup with the nuclear .. and it wont destroy huge tracts of the landscape either.
Only about 700 years.
Maybe in basic form, but they haven't had electric generation using them for that long, nor had as many all in one place.
For sure they have had lots on one place - the fens and the polders.
And whether they are grinding corn or pumping water or making leccy its all mechanical work that they (occasionally) do.
And usually measured in houses.
I read last week that the first 5 days of the new year cost the government some huge amount of money that had to be paid out to operators in Scotland so that they would turn the bloody things off because it was too windy for them. I'm with you. Build the nukes and be done with it. No more relying on iffy technology and even iffier (politically) imports of gas to run the existing stations and electricity to make up the shortfall ...
And before anyone starts the nimby argument, I'd be very happy for them to build one down in the bottom of the valley near me, or on the site of the original town power plant that was decommissioned some years back, and now stands there as a forlorn-looking shell building.
Just as an aside, once the government catches onto the idea that we are going to have to have nukes as the only real and sustainable alternative to current fossil fuelling, can we have proper light bulbs back, and have the street lights turned back on ? d:-)
Arfa
Its actually a thought.
The price of nuclear electricity is dependent almost 100% on the capital cost (including decomissioning) times the interest rates. Theprice of fuel is almost irrelevant and teh maintenance is relatively fixed in its cost, and unlikely to be more than 15% annualised and nearer 7-10% of interest repayments.
Once they are built electricity prices are fixed forever - or until you need to build more, anyway.
Using electricity cease to be a moral issue, and goes back to be an economic one.
Hmmm, current situation looks a bit dire:
1) Demand 51.8 2) Coal 23.7 3) Nucular 6.9 4) CCGT 15.5 5) Pumped 2 6) Hydro 1 7) Imported 3 8) Wind 0.2Only wind not pulling its weight. And for a while the frequency was down quite a bit too.
Standard low wind winter day.
Lions share going to coal while they make the most of their allotted days, nuclear slogging along flat out, and CCGT making up the balance with the hydro and pumped covering the short term fluctuations..and sucking as much cheap power exported at a loss from the continent as we can.
When the wind blows we simply turn the gas down a bit, which makes the gas power more expensive as they cant get full usage out of the kit.
So as usual no carbon saved, just more expense for every unit of wind power on the grid.
Agreed. Surely electricity needs to be as cheap as possible for the sake of the country anyway? People have to stop seeing it as a mystical driver of video games and billing systems, and see it for what it is: a perfectly exploitable labour force.
I'd be happy for them to store it under my back garden.
..except with intermittent renewables, you can never tell whether it is going to turn up for work or not, and even if it does, it needs a huge amount of office space and network cabling to produce an amount of work that you never can tell the size off.
Hence the need to keep all those expensive contractors on retainers in case the wind doesn't show, or decides to sulk..
Oh, I wasn't arguing for re-newables! I am pro-nuclear.
I'm not sure if this technology has been bedded in long
Well the first reasonable wind turbine generating electricity was 130 odd years ago, 12kW ran for 20 years... Seems a bit odd that other technology of a similar vintage, like cars, has moved on substantially but wind turbines apparently haven't. Except of course they have, those saying the wind turbine technology is "not mature" and "it will get better" are just covering for penny pinching driven by creating maximum profit from the subsidies.
Since the problem of nuclear power generation is political rather than technical could we notbribe people to make it more acceptable. They have done it with solar ......
I wonder what the reaction would be if people living within 25miles (some random number)around nuclear power stations and waste repositories were sold electricity at a fraction of the comercial cost e.g. 1p/unit
Could you make that..erm..65 miles?
ISTR they do something like that in France.
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