All the windmills in the UK are not supplying enough electricity to charge one I phone in every house in the country

Well why am I not surprised.. also some studies carried out in Italy seem to suggest that a significant number of wind turbines in one place can adversely affect the weather in and around the area concerned, often ending up as less wind than previously. No idea where I read that, but I'm sure I'm right. I suppose it shows some naivety to think we can draw power from the wind and expect the wind to not lose force or the climate change due to the changed topography or reflective of the site.

Brian

Did you get this from somewhere else or is it your writing? could I have the reference please?

Tim W

His own writing, based on publicly available, verifiable information.

It's not hard to find the current figures on *all* forms of power generation, updated hourly.

Its my writing.

Its not a very good example. It would have more meaning if you stated that they cant even maintain the telephone network which most people would regard as essential.

Or the tide tables.

apart from those everything else was from here

and gets its data from

Firefox can't find the server at

Its a miracle the data centre stayed up what with renewable energy being such an important part of our 'diversity strategy*'

I agree, but that doesn't of itself mean that wind power is not a good investment. It may be on the grounds that every little helps, but the economic arguments rely rather a lot on subsidies.

Anyone who thinks that renewable energy will solve all our problems should have a look at

Telephone network or mobile network?

The mobile network isn't much use without the wired bit.

Ten billion - the cost of four Sizewell B reactors.

My wife watched a repeat of Grand Designs last night. An ugly little "Eco house" that had a vertical access win turbine in the grounds. Cost not given but a replacement quoted at £40,000. Kevin asked how much electricity it had generated in a year. Answer - none. But the loon who bought it sat there, stars in the eyes saying it would work when the problems were sorted out. "It's experimental". Waste of money and resources.

well every little doesn't help if the marginal cost of the 'help' exceeds any possible benefit to the world or the consumer.

Sadly David likes renewable energy as well. He only really covers the energy density issues in his book, He doesn't really scratch the surface of the intermittency problem or the cost or the ongoing environmental impact and the complementary issues and costs.

True. I forever annoys me when the local "Three" cell station fails when the village has it's umpteenth[1] powercut for the year. How much would batteries cost to keep it going for 2 hours (the longest power cut this year)?

We have always had the odd 10-60 minute outage, but this year (since and including Dec 2011) we have had 7 power cuts (2 days has 2 each). I wonder if this has anything to do with EDF having sold all our transmission to the Chinese (UKPower).

You start from the mistaken position that ever home in the country should have an iPhone, or if they do, not have a solar panel charger for it.

Paul DS.

No, I don't. whoosh!

While I agree with most of your points, consider Morecambe Bay _and_ the Avon. 90 degrees out of phase, should be good for at least 1 nuke's worth.

Andy

One that works at 2:23 am?

Andy

The Spanish ones do.