OT Electricity Generation

[The Natural Philosopher]

cos iot wouldn't even keep the house of parliament lit up..

well, it wouldn't be the first time..

[Dave Liquorice]

Generally

Eh? Consumption. 1kW being consumed not 1kWHr which is a fixed quantity of energy.

Ours, over 24hrs, isn't quite 1kW, normally 20 units/day which gives a mean load of 800ish W. It can spike for a minute or two to 7kW, but that doesn't make much difference to the mean as it's so short. Obviously at night it's lower (about 300W) but the evenings with lights, TV computers etc the consumption can get up to 1.3kW.

The spin doctors could take the night consumption of the house (300W) rather than the more realistic evening consumption of 1.3kW depending on the light they want to shed from their article. Which sounds better to the great unwashed?

"Our Grenbol Savvy 2000 wind trubine will generate enough electricity for 6,000 homes". (Using 300W).

or

"Our Grenbol Savvy 2000 wind trubine will generate enough electricity for 1,500 homes". (Using 1.3kW).

or

"Our Grenbol Savvy 2000 wind trubine will generate 2MW of electricity."

Average load of an average house from those figures (4,700kWHr/year) is 537W. A quick google gives similar ball park figures, just over

5MWHr/year for a family with two kids at school, parents working, 4.8MWHr/year for a couple, both working. So 4.7 is a bit low but not excessively.

Getting back to Teddington Lock, 600 homes at 537W/home gives a 322kW instalation, less than my lowest guesstimate.

[Roger Chapman]

OK insecurely hidden elsewhere.

All very well if you already have the original link but tedious in the extreme trying to get from chapter 5 to chapter 7 or indeed any other chapter.

But that doesn't absolve you from providing a misleading cite by quoting a table that doesn't actually give load factors for wind nor DECC for not providing any means of navigation from one chapter to the next or even back to the page you originally navigated from.

[Nightjar]

> The 2004 PB Power report for the Royal Academy of Engineering. Yes, > it is well known.

That is not actually what it says. However, if you simply look at the cost of generating with wind power, ignoring the question of pricing for back up, it still works out a lot dearer than nuclear. In this, the study is in agreement with the following analysis from the government' national archives:

are plenty of other studies available online that put onshore wind generation at anything up to twice the cost of nuclear and offshore wind at up to three times. However, I'm not going to hold your hand and guide you through every one. You can spend the time Googling yourself.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

no need. Its everywhere you look

If windmills and oter renewables wer so cheap why would they beed massive tarrrifs and EO funding?

and ditto to yopu.

Widmills are danegrous ineffcieint expensive, use three times the copper and steel to make and do absouiktely the square root of f*ck all to alleviate global warming.

Apart fro needing massive grid upgrades everyweher yiu look.

Since the early windfarms of ten years ago are only just beginning to fall to pieces, its had to say, as the life expectancy is still 'up in the air'

It seems 10-15 years as agaiinst 60+ for a nuke, so how on earth can you calculate that? 4 windfarms at hree times the cost that womt even replace one nuke..

Like everything coming out of the 'renewables' lobby, its all based on false premises that are never allowed to be challenged.

Show e ONE study that CONCLUSIVELY proves that windpower has ever reduced *overall* carbon emissions anywhere in the world.

The Danes say it didnt, the Germans say it didn't...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Forever, d*****ad.

1kw is not a measure of energy, its a measure of power. But windmillers always confuse the two. ou cant have a brain and support windmills

all irrelevant really. Since no matter how much they genearet, we syill burtn as much gas backing the stupid things up.

Usuall WEA spin..

[The Natural Philosopher]

that is their average ELECTRICITY usage.

Avearage HOUSE overall is 2-5KW depending if you count the energy used outside of it to e.g. drive too the shops etc etc.

Britain as a nation runs at about 200GW of total energy burn.

That's a shade of 3Kw per PERSON all day every day. To keep you in frozen pizzas.

If you count impact of imports, its probably a whole lot more than that.

Its about 100,000 windmills and then only when the wind blows. Covering the whole country end to end.

Or 60 nukes. easily tucked away in quite spots.

[The Natural Philosopher]

BUT the fact that the windfarms eed backing up by ineffeiceintl;y run gas turbines, provabaly muoltiplies that by ten or so.

Wind farms are almost certainly no better thah a good gas turbine set running efficiently without wind.

[The Natural Philosopher]

The daft feed in tariffs WE pay mate. Don't assume 'they' are anyone else than you and I.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It wouldn't be if they actually did anything useful: They don't so its money down the drain.

>

[The Natural Philosopher]

Like wind people you mean?

Show me one study that conclusively demonstrates that wind power in any way reduces OVERALL carbon emissions in the UK.

No? Thought not.

No one's done it.

"they started from a false premise and built their house on that sand".

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 16:39:35 +0100 someone who may be Roger Chapman wrote this:-

works for me. It is how I found the figures I linked to.

You would do better if you stopped digging. There was nothing misleading in my reference.

In response to an assertion about household equivalents for hydro schemes [1] I gave a link for how they are calculated for wind and then typed, "I imagine the same approach is taken for other forms of generation. Average load factors are given in Table 5.10 of [DUKES]".

Sure enough if one looks at table 5.10 one sees the figures for hydro and pumped storage. From that one could work back from the annual household equivalent to the possible plant capacity, which was the point being discussed. I haven't bothered to do the calculation myself to see how close to "400 to 600kW" it is. For all I know "400 to 600kW" could be spot on.

[1] an assertion which used the wrong unit.

[John Rumm]

I think that was the point I made earlier about fleecing jo consumer! One can look at that in two ways I suppose - get annoyed, or get your snout in the trough while its still on offer!

[John Rumm]

Assuming one actually wants to encourage non economically viable schemes in the first place - especially when non viable economically frequently turn out to be non viable ecologically as well in the final analysis.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:51:14 -0700 (PDT) someone who may be harry wrote this:-

The plant at Teddington Lock will undoubtedly be feeding into the grid. As a result it does not have to be sized for peak loads, that is something for the system operator to deal with.

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

The Clywedog scheme ISTR, back in the '60's had a 500kW generating set running from a Pelton wheel. There was also a 100kW diesel as a back up house supply.

At the time, it was the tallest buttress dam in Europe at 200'.

The purpose was said to be for controlling flooding of the upper Severn but I believe the Welsh had other views:-)

I think it unlikely that the opportunity for cheap generation would be ignored in any such scheme.

regards

>

[Roger Chapman]

Oh yes and why should I pick on 'dukes' as the significant element in the first place?

False claim.

You make a reference to wind and then cite a reference that doesn't give the average load factors for wind.

But not for wind. Just a pointer to chapter 7 which isn't easily found starting from where you directed us to.

snip

[Andy Champ]

Not much, to all the questions.

The power will be limited by the low fall, and the flow of the Thames.

But OTOH the weir will be there anyway; the moving parts are easily accessible for maintenance; and there will be no silting problems that aren't already being dealt with by the Thames navigation authorities.

I'd say do it. It won't help much, but it'll help.

Andy

[Steve Firth]

It's a lot of money to piss down the drain.

[andrew]

The power is a function of the flow times head. The cost tends to be proportional to the mass of the equipment. Half the head and you double the massflow for a given power, hence a high head low flow is far cheaper to exploit than the opposite.

AJH