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

[The Natural Philosopher]

01:36:31 Tuesday, 26 June 2012 ===============================

Renewable Britain: A report.

Bristol channel is at high tide. No tidal power would be produced by the highest tidal range in the UK at this point in time.

Its dark. No solar power is generating anything - unless its under a streetlamp one supposes.

A ridge of high pressure sits over the UK The total metered wind output across the whole country is just 31 MW. That's right. 31MW Enough to supply every household (26 million of them) with about 1.2W

Demand is over 27GW.

The Interconnector to France is totally out of action.

The Interconnector from Holland is running flat out (1GW). Its doing more than all the wind in the UK by a factor of 20.

Dinorwig is no help. Its being recharged.

Even Scottish hydro is doing f*ck all - 76MW. But that's more than twice what the wind is doing.

We hear screams of delight when 'for the first time wind supplied 10% of the grid'

Let's hear it for the time when despite the vast amounts of money spent on it, renewable energy was supplying less than 0.05% of the UK demand.

"All the windmills in the UK are not supplying enough electricity to charge an I pod in every house in the country"

"All the renewable energy in the country - including hydro - is not enough to light a single energy saving lightbulb in every household in the country"

That's £10bn and thousands of landscapes ruined, houses devalued and birds killed, well spent, then.

[Brian Gaff]

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

[Tim W]

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

Tim W

[John Williamson]

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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its my writing.

[dennis]

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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or the tide tables.

apart from those everything else was from here

updates as frequently as 5 minutes.

and gets its data from

[Richard]

Firefox can't find the server at

and thought, "The hamster driving the server must've died!" Then I found this: relief!

[The Natural Philosopher]

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

*a system of diverting as much public money as possible into as many lobby groups pockets as possible. And harrys pocket of course,.

[Clive Page]

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

which is a free online book written by David MacKay, a respected physicist. He shows beyond doubt that the only solution for the UK is a partial revival of nuclear power: the sum of all other methods of generating electricity under the best possible assumptions won't generate enough. It's a long document, but well worth reading.

[mogga]

Telephone network or mobile network?

[dennis]

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

[Steve Firth]

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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

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.

>

[Tim Watts]

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).

[Paul D Smith]

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.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, I don't. whoosh!

[Andy Champ]

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

[Andy Champ]

One that works at 2:23 am?

Andy

[The Other Mike]

The Spanish ones do.