The true cost of wind...

[Tim Streater]

Why should there be a refund for that? Nuclear, unlike wind, has been reliably producing power over the years, day in day out, 7 x 24.

[docholliday93]

Just to put some figures on that, if you could get 100% efficiency and assu ming you had say a 100 metre height difference, you need 3.6 tonnes of wate r per kWh. (I'm approximating g as 10metres per second per second). Seawate r storage is likely to be smaller height difference, so if we go down to 10 m you need 36 tonnes/kWh. The average domestic power consumption is about 12.5kWh per day, so you'd n eed 450 tonnes per household per day. I have a feeling that efficiency is likely to be a bit less for small heigh t difference, as well.

[Java Jive]

[Adrian]

Care to guesstimate the cost of Fukushima?

[Dave Liquorice]

100 m head, 1.7 l/s gives 1 kW electrical output @ 60% effciency.

1.7 l/s is 1.7 * 60 * 60 = 6120 l/Hr or 6.12 tonnes or cu m per hour.

Plans have just been approved for a new pumped storage scheme in North Wales:

After much digging it's proposed to be just under 50 MW. So tiddly widdly.

[The Other Mike]

Yes they should get more electricity and increased FIT payments but the increased capital cost of a flat rated 500kW vs one originally at 800kW and replated to 500kW should also be considered.

18.04p @ 500kW vs 9.79p @ 800kW is quite significant but this loophole will only work with discrete installations. The individual turbine rating is of no concern across an average wind farm with multiple installations. FIT boundaries for wind turbines are currently at 0.1, 0.5, 1.5 and 5MW and this is determined by the aggregated connection capacity, not the individual turbine rating. Similar tariff steps exist on Solar, Hydro and Biomass.

You could conceivably have an individual grid connection for each wind turbine, although the cost of doing this would almost certainly outweigh the increased FIT payment received.

The early 'rent a roof' solar schemes took full advantage of this loophole by installing a few MW of generation in sub 4kW chunks and getting about 5x the rate they would for stuffing them all in a field on a single connection.

[The Other Mike]

As has been mentioned here many times in the past that particular problem has already been solved. Build a large wall around the coast of Scotland and flood it, all of it. It's a practical solution to the severe problems we face due to wind turbines and if Alex Salmond & Co drown then it's ultimately for a good cause.

[Tim Streater]

You're saying that our nuclear fleet consists of stations producing

1.6MW? Right now, according to gridwatch, nuclear is producing 7400MW. So the UK must have 7400/1.6 = 4625 nuclear power stations.

Looks like you can't do sums either.

[Java Jive]

[Terry Fields]

...less the cost of keeping conventional generation on standby for those inconvenient times when the wind doesn't blow.

Fortunately, we're about to enjoy the equinoxial gales, so that will make the wind figures look good - minus the cost of providing standby, of course.

[Dave Liquorice]

1.6 MW power plant can fit in a standard container and be driven about...

I think you mean 1.6 GW and a final answer a tad over £218bn.

But at least that would be power 24/7 not just when the wind blows.

[The Natural Philosopher]

actual prices are reckoned to be between £2bn and £4bn/GW capacity.

Hinkley is proposed to be 3.2GW which fist well with a £14bn estimate, for a crappy French reactor that they have lost over £5bn on already.

Given the total opposition of half the government and most of the EU to it.

Hitachi CANDU and the AP1000 range would all be cheaper.

At £3bn a GW we could have an all nuclear baseload for £100bn. About what we spent bailing out banks and about 5 times less than Germany is expected to spend to end up coal fired with windmills on top top keep the greens happy.

[Java Jive]

I saw that figure in Wikipedia, and was sufficiently surprised to read it twice just to be certain I'd read it correctly, but still I hadn't

- looking at it yet again I realise I read a comma as a decimal point.

Apologies to all.

But for how long? 10 years or so.

Both suggested designs are fission reactors, so again, for how long?

10 years or so.

[Java Jive]

No, as I said, I was thinking out loud, but I see docholliday has already produced some figures.

Which is the very criticism I myself made of Mackay's ideas. That is why it would be better to suck it and see with trains, which have already been electrified, and so will not place an extra burden on the grid.

[Bill Wright]

This whole discussion misses the point. AGW is a myth. We are sitting on a 200 year supply of coal. We are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Bill

[PeterC]

Now that I like! I'm only about 10 miles NW of MK, so damn near in London now.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Quite possibly.

But as a long term opponent of renewable energy of the intermittent kind, the real killer is, that you don't need to disprove AGW to see that renewable energy represents no solution to it at all.

I only became an opponent of it once I started to do the sums to discover how appallingly useless and expensive it was, compared to e.g. nuclear.

I naively thought that others would have done these calculations too, and acted on them.

Instead I found that others had indeed done the calculations and acted on them to get policy enshrined in Law that meant that they would get subsidies WHETHER OR NOT THEY HAD ANY IMPACT ON CO2 EMISSIONS AT ALL.

we do not measure the sucess of renewable policy by CO2 reduction. We measure it by 'how much electricity we generate from renewables' And as I dug deeper, the realisation that these are scarcely connected, dawned.

For sure those who lobbied for a 'renewables target' and not a 'CO2 reduction target' knew full well this fact, and that makes them guilty of fraud and deception on a massive scale.

It was at that point I realised that renewable energy had nothing whatever to do with climate change at all. And everything to do with a government guaranteed profit.

Sold to politicians on the left as

- getting the 'green' vote because it 'addressed climate change'

- getting the left vote because it 'created green jobs'

The renewable lobby wrote the script, the IPCC provided spurious evidence in terms of flawed models, and the politicians simply parroted the mantra, and put in the legislation.

Renewable energy companies, not governments, framed the legislation. We get upset when directirs and politicains vite themselves salary rises. We don't seem upset when companies lobby hard and successfully to guarantee their own profits.

Climate change may or may not be significantly affected by human activity: the jury to my mind is still out, although getting close to a 'not guilty' verdict.

But there is no doubt in my mind that renewable energy as it currently can be implemented does almost nothing to address CO2 emissions at all.

And there is no sign anywhere at all that it ever will.

Nor does it address any issues of long term energy security.

whereas nuclear does both, at less overall cost.

[Dave Liquorice]

blows.

Design life is 40 to 50 years. The Magnox stations that are now EOL are 40+ years old, most generated at pretty much their rated output for the vast majority of that time starting with 1970's technology.

Fuel? There is plenty of spent fuel sat at Sellafield but the greenies won't let it be reprocessed but then winge on about the storage ponds FFS! Only a tiny fraction of the available fuel is used as it passes through a reactor. It's not like gas or coal, once it's burnt it's gone.

I'd much rather pay 20p/unit for power that was there 24/7 not just an *average* of 8 hours/day. Note average, There could be weeks with virtually no power.

[Tim Streater]

Like July this year. Still waiting to hear about the refund.

[tony sayer]

In article , Java Jive scribeth thus

Can you explain what you mean there as in some quarters suck it and see will conjure up visions of Brunel and his atmospheric railway;!..