OT Penny Finally Beginning To Drop

[Chris Hogg]

LOL! You've been reading Harry! What's worse, you've been taking him seriously! As Whisky-Dave points out, Denmark only produces 30% of it's power from wind, although that may be out-of-date, as this Wiki item suggests a figure of nearly 40% for 2014.

Some stuff I've put up before:

Denmark has quite a lot of coal-fired power stations; see

for 2009 data. AFAIK these power stations are still in use.

The International Energy Agency web site on Key World Statistics for energy production and consumption. The latest document they've produced is here:

Download the pdf file, click on EMISSIONS on the LHS, and scroll down to the table of Selected Energy Indicators for 2011 where one finds a column of data for CO2/pop., i.e. CO2 emissions in tonnes per head of population. The data for Denmark, UK and France are as follows (pp.

51, 57 & 51 respectively):

Denmark 7.48 t CO2/capita UK 7.06 " France 5.04 "

(CO2 emissions from fuel combustion only. Emissions are calculated using the IEA?s energy balances and the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines). So the UK is actually emitting *less* CO2/capita than Denmark *in total*, despite all their wind power! France's CO2/capita, as expected, is well down, showing the benefits of nuclear.

AIUI there are occasions when Denmark produces more electricity than it uses, when it exports the surplus. But equally well, there are other times when it cannot produce enough for its needs (when the wind don't blow, for example), when it imports nuclear-generated electricity from France, and hydroelectric power from Norway and Sweden via inter-connectors. If it were not for France and Norway/Sweden, Denmark would be in deep doo-dah at these times. There's only a certain amount of surplus electricity available in Europe, so not everyone can rely on doing what Denmark does. With Germany closing its nuclear generators and relying increasingly on wind, surplus electricity in Europe is going to be scarce. It won't be long before the shit hits the fan, or should that be the wind-generator.

[spuorgelgoog]

He's waiting for the wind turbine to recharge his laptop battery :-)

Owain

[Tim Streater]

No, we see no reason to build two power stations when one will do.

Plenty of good reasons have been posted here, you merely choose to ignore them - like harry. You're unable even to argue against them - like harry.

[harryagain]

It's about saving fuel which becomes more important as it becomes more expensive. ie the fuel to power them costs nothing.

It's also about having an energy source that no-one can take away from us.

When there are multiple sources of renewable energy, linked over a large geographic area, the need for supplimentary power sources reduces. The supplimentaryt sources will be gas, which is a relatively cheap power station to build (compareed with coal, oil or nuclear. Also less pollution.

And we need the smart grid.

[harryagain]

The cost of fuel for one of them will be zero. Go figure yourself.

[harryagain]

It's because they are old men with old men's thinking. Stuck in a rut.

[Tim Streater]

If we have nuclear and a fuel stockpile, they can't take that away from us either. And guess what - nuclear produces volts come rain or shine. Unlike solar and wind.

Why? And don't give me that "wind always blowing somewhere" c*ck.

Imported, unless you go for fracking.

Not less pollution compared to nuclear.

[Tim Streater]

The cost of the wind "power station" is not zero, however.

[Huge]

Utter cack.

[bert]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Because as has been explained many times the two principle ones available are intermittent. There is nothing on the horizon that come remotely near to being capable of producing the levels of energy required and there is nothing on the horizon in terms of storing significant amounts of electrical energy. So no matter how many windmills or solar farms you build you still need equivalent back up in reliable constantly available power and if that back up is nuclear, whose operation is very green, then having built it you may as well run it 24/7 and so building all the windmills and solar farms in the first place is rendered pointless. Simples

[bert]

In message , Chris Hogg writes

And Germany is now building more coal fired plant.

[bert]

In message , Davey writes

You must be joking. What use is it top know that there is a xx% probability that the wind will blow tomorrow where xx is not 00 and not

100

[Ian Jackson]

In message , bert writes

Assuming that the wind WAS actually blowing at least a little somewhere in the UK, how many wind turbines would we need to ensure that they could provide 100% of our needs? Furthermore, if the wind happened to be blowing fitfully everywhere in the UK, how much excess power would they be capable of generating?

[Davey]

Correct.

[Davey]

snip

We had a several-hour long stretch this afternoon when there was no wind. This, despite the forecast yesterday having predicted all-day rain and wind. The four idiotic devices that cloud our horizon produced not one watt of power for all that time. So the power that was used anyway came from somewhere, and it wasn't there.

[Bill Wright]

But if the wind doesn't blow when the power is desperately needed, what then? You wouldn't allow such a situation to develop in your own life; why allow it in the life of the nation?

Bill

[Tim Streater]

Lessee now, according to Gridwatch there are times when our 5GW wind plant dips below 50MW. Like most of July this year.

If we need around 50GW, it is easy to see that we'd need 1000 times as many turbines as we have now, to cover 100% of our need at any time. And at peak times (as in recent days), they'd produce 5000GW.

Any more bright ideas?

[Chris Hogg]

Quite. And of the most polluting sort.

The 'greens' campaigned against nuclear, and now they're having to face the consequences. It really is about time they got real!

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Tim Streater writes

OK. When there wasn't much wind, 1000 times the number of existing turbines (let's call it 'N') would be required to (hopefully) reliably produce the required 50GW.

However, last July, the turbines that WERE capable of producing that meagre 50MW would have been those in places where there actually WAS some wind. In order to generate 50GW at that time, all N turbines would have had to be in the same places.

But, of course, there would be times when the wind wasn't blowing at those places, but was somewhere else instead. You would therefore have to have lots of other areas where there were N turbines - ie you would have them covering the whole country virtually from end to end.

Quite.

[Chris Hogg]

Not too difficult to calculate and get an approximate figure.

Assume UK electricity demand is about 50GW (a bit low, in reality, but hey! this is only a ball-park calculation) and assume the largest wind turbine has a capacity of 10MW (8MW ones exist, and 10MW under development

then we would need 5,000 such turbines. Assume a 'load factor' or 'capacity factor' (i.e. the amount of electricity wind farms actually produce compared with their maximum output) is in the order of 25% means we would need

20,000 such turbines. For optimum efficiency, big turbines need to be spaced about 1 mile apart i.e. 1 sq.mile per turbine. UK area is 94,000 sq.miles, but a lot of that would be inaccessible or inappropriate (urban areas, AONB's, mountains etc). Say 50,000 sq.miles available, so one turbine every 2.5 sq. miles in open country, i.e. everywhere!

The load factor is 25% in the above calculation. If at 100%, then maximum generation is 200GW, and there would be 150GW available for export. The capacity of the largest inter-connector ATM is 2GW, so we'd need 75 inter-connectors to carry it away.

Of course, that all assumes that we're just generating the current amount of electricity. If we were to replace ALL fossil fuel usage (transport, domestic heating, etc.) by electricity, the figures would rise significantly. The capacity of the National Grid would have to be massively increased, and the country would be covered by a spider's web of power lines and windmills.

But as Harry rightly says, no-one ever envisaged all, or even more than a modest amount, of our electricity being generated from wind. But as other have equally rightly said, why bother to build two systems of generation (wind + nuclear/gas/coal) when one (nuclear/gas/coal) will do just as well.