-never-be-relied-upon-to-deliver-UK-energy-security.html
"Wind farms can never be relied upon to keep the lights on in Britain because there are long periods each winter in which they produce barely any power, according to a new report by the Adam Smith Institute."
Anyone with an ounce of engineering knowledge could have told them that years ago.
You don't even need engineering knowledge to realise that the wind is not constant! On how many summer evenings has it dropped to nothing an hour or so before sunset, just when folks are turning their lights on?
You have to wonder, indeed.
Well no wind, no power, blustery variable direction wind, broken turbine or no power. Not rocket science is it.
Not to worry, all the unemployed and prisoners will be able to use converted bikes to top it up. Brian
Yes storage of electricity efficiently is what is needed for these sorts of sources. What happened to wave and tidal power? Brian
What? Why a right wing think tank produces a pro-industry puff piece?!
Wind power was never supposed to 'keep the lights on'. It was only ever part of a package. I do wonder if people don't know that.
And anyone with even half a brain would realise that this was all known before they were built by the installers. This is all long understood, there are no great revellations here. Wind turbines are only part of a renewable energy system.
Exactly so. There are a lot of people here too thick to comprehend this. They will be here soon spouting their ignorant dross.
It will take decades to provide the complete package
The Greenies weren't (and aren't) listening.
IOW, you have to build enough conventional plant to cover periods when there's no wind. So why build the windmills in the first place?
Some people apparently like building two power stations to get the output of one. Go figure.
Don't be a sap. The installers couldn't give a shit. They get paid either way.
In message , Davey writes
I wonder why people have to keep using this argument to knock wind generation. It was never intended as a total replacement for other forms of power generation, but as a top up when available, therefore reducing the amount of coal, gas, nuclear used.
Maybe the people complaining could all be put on a treadmill attached to a generator, they should provide enough power to support a small town.
>In message , Brian Gaff writes
What about damming each end of Loch Ness, and using excess wind power to pump in seawater (you could do it from both ends)?
>
Therein lays the big misconception...
It takes days to spin up and spin down a nuclear plant - you can't turn it off and on each time the wind blows.
Coal can be more responsive, but still can't be turned on and off anything like quickly enough to cope with wind instability.
Gas can, but then you hit the next problem -- you will only get a viable return on your gas power station if you can run it most of the time. No one will build a gas power station which operates only when the wind isn't blowing -- the electricity would be too expensive to sell to the grid. Or to look at it another way, if you want to use wind, you always have to build two power sources - one for when the wind blows and one for when it doesn't, and that makes the electricity twice as expensive as building one power source (actually it's much worse than that, but I hope that gives you the an idea of the problem).
When you understand the issues, maybe you could try thinking of some viable solutions?
I assume people make money out of building them and running them. And even more people make more money suggesting that such things are built so we can be 'greener' and less polluting.
I think we should employ sportsmen to sort it out, at least they give 110% effort when needed, that must be better :-)
There is absolutely no point in reducing the amount of nuclear used, once installed it's far better to use absolutely all of the capacity. Turning down the nuclear power output on windy days would be a very silly thing to do.
+1
No big subsidies to give the the owners a nice profit. Remember wind gets a paid a premium price if they can generate and get paid if they generate too much...
The market is completly distorted.
It's quite along way to the sea at the southern end.
I've often wondered why so many seem to be against any form of 'renewable' energy. Usually regardless of the economics of the installations costs too.
Woefully inadequate for the scale required.
I suggest everyone who hasn't already read this goes away and reads it before proceeding;
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