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The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

wastedwind.energy

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Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#181

Post by 1718627440 »

wongarsu wrote: post #87
petercooper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell me about it. I live in a region of the country which has had a very active "no pylons" campaign running for several years now with no resolution in either direction yet. The latest proposal is to bury the lines instead which results in far longer build times, destruction of land, and inconvenience for everyone along the route, and they don't seem to like that idea either.

Same issue in Germany. And people obviously started resisting the buried lines too. They don't want pylons, but digging 2m deep trenches to put cables in is also too much disruption because now you can't plant trees on those corridors, the ground is disturbed, worries about the heat from the cables, electromagnetic fields, property values. Of course those are the same regions that are also strictly against building w…

I don't know why we bother. Just don't ship electricity to them.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#182

Post by veltas »

ErikCorry wrote: post #144
3D30497420 wrote: post #7

This website doesn't provide much context if you're not familiar with the situation. I found this article helpful: https://www.the-independent.com/climate-change/octopus-energ...

The problem is they are treating it as a free market issue with hourly auctions, but the 'free market' system ignores transmission. So the windmills can sell cheap electricity in the auctions that can't be delivered to anybody who needs it. Then after the auction you have to pay the windmill operators to switch off the excess production. The OP linked site lists one of the solutions as "Make energy cheaper where supp…

Not that obvious when some tax payers will pay for new energy infrastructure and then also watch their prices go up because it wasn't built near them.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#184

Post by gambiting »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #47
grues-dinner wrote: post #30

Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-... . And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. Like th…

Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.

Oh there was this whole famous case with construction of HS2(Britain's high speed rail project) - a farmer was offered £2M(!!!) compensation for the project requiring that a single pylon was going to be constructed on his land. Outrageous, right? But get this - he successfully sued the government saying 2M is not enough, and an independent expert valued his losses due the presence of the pylon at twice that if I remember correctly - the government(the taxpayers) had to pay.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#185

Post by hshdhdhehd »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #47
grues-dinner wrote: post #30

Something like 400,000 people are opposing the Norwich-Tilbury power lines to bring wind energy to where it's used. Including a Green Party MP: https://www.dissmercury.co.uk/news/24840985.green-mp-adrian-... . And you'd better believe wherever they buried the lines they'd have objections and expensive consultations about the disruption and the HoUsE VaLuEs caused by trenching, drilling and service structures. Like th…

Who opposes Power lines? Never heard that this is a thing. As a foreign influence I'd be delighted to target all infrastructure proposals and bombard it with trolls.

Me. If it literally in my back yard. It's a tradegy of the commons game theory thing. I benefit from the power but please rig it somewhere else.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#186

Post by sambeau »

cmsefton wrote: post #173

The craziest thing about UK energy is that it uses marginal pricing, where the price of energy is dictated by the most expensive generator to meet demand i.e. gas. Doesn't matter if your energy is coming from wind or solar, you're still going to be charged according to the price of gas. Until this can change, consumers are always going to suffer and think green energy isn't cheaper.

This is the main issue. People simply cannot afford to use this extra power. If power was cheap then all kinds of devices would switch to electric, especially heating and cars.

The other issue is that the UK has unpredictable weather and no way to store energy at a grid-level. It can store enough to load balance spikes but there is still nothing to replace the months of gas we once had stored in giant salt chambers (you can thank Liz Truss for decommissioning those).

Without vast amounts of long-term energy storage we will continue to throw away power when we have too much and fire up gas generators when wind power isn't making any (which happens surprisingly often).

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#187

Post by Tor3 »

dumbfounder wrote: post #34

Any numbers on how much energy isn’t sensitive to time? Is it reasonable to say that people can just use energy more when it’s windy to save money? Perhaps if could incentivize people to have large local batteries to eat it up during these times and use it during more costly times? But that seems very expensive.

I'm going to have V2H installed (Vehicle-to-Home), where excess power from the solar panels will charge the car battery, and the car battery can feed the home at night. I'm planning on following a setup I saw in another house, it seemed to work very well.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#188

Post by array_key_first »

HPsquared wrote: post #136
grues-dinner wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People oppose everything. * Lattice overhead powerlines? Eyesore (should use the new T style ones), house values, wind noise, hums, WiFi interference, cancer, access roads, hazard to planes, birds * T-frame pylons: boring ( https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/13/electr... ), eyesore (we prefer the lattice ones), most of the above too * Underground: damaging to the environment, end stations are eyesores…

House prices are the UK's version of "the spice must flow". The whole Ponzi scheme is dependent on that market, as there isn't much else. Too big to fail.

If it makes you feel better, it's the same in the US. Some cities self destruct in pursuit of maintaining real estate prices. Of course, once they self destruct, prices plummet. Nobody considers that part.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#189

Post by yrro »

raverbashing wrote: post #29
daedrdev wrote: post #4

The UK has notoriously long build times for new power lines which heavily contributes to this problem. I think the FT said a new connection for a big user or power supplier often takes ten years, with planning alone now reaching 4.5 years and half of all new connections getting sued, which is insane considering the productivity loss and how it’s a already known problem. Sadly the government seems dar more interested…

NIMBYs dragging things down as usual They would probably object to battery installation next to the generators as well

Yup.

> A solar farm that could have powered “all the households in Witney” has been refused permission by West Oxfordshire District Council. The application, by Ampyr Solar Europe, was for a site at Curbridge, south of Witney. The planning committee focused on the risk of a fire from the proposed battery storage, which they said could contaminate the water supply at a nearby wedding venue.

> Cllr Nick Leverton (Con, Carterton South) said: “Most of you will have seen on the motorway the sight of an electric car burning away… there are too many incidents where it was just a small chance and it becomes a big chance. I’ll remind you of Aberfan in 1966; 144 people died, 116 of them children.” The chair of the meeting, Cllr Michael Brooker (Lab, Witney South), is himself a firefighter and replied “I’ve never been to an EV fire. I’ve been to plenty of ICE vehicle fires.”

> Cllr Andrew Lyon (Lab, Witney Central) said “Water is the stuff of life… what do they do if they wake up in the morning and can’t turn the tap on?” Meanwhile, Cllr Adrian Walsh (Con, Ducklington) said “Month after month as a committee we get bombarded with these solar farm applications, and we don’t appear to have any strategy as to where they should be located.”

> The council’s officers had recommended that the application be approved, but 9 councillors voted against, 1 for, and 3 abstained.

These people are absolute buffoons.

https://oxfordclarion.uk/clarion-weekly-12-september-2025/

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#190

Post by lillecarl »

Loughla wrote: post #161
arethuza wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can see a lot of windmills from our house - probably at least 60 in a few different windfarms. They are all nearly 40km away, but I actually like seeing them. There are others much closer, which I also rather like seeing (closest is about 2km) but you can't see them from where we live.

I don't mind them in the distance. I would love if these stupid things were 40km away. The closest is like 500 meters away from my house. They're awful. I live in the country for the peace and quiet and dark at night. Now with a wind farm, there is a constant background hum that reminds me of living near a highway in the city, and a swishing noise that's louder than the cicadas and other night time bugs. Also, the re…

500 meters is very close, if it ACTUALLY affects you negatively I'd say your concerns are valid, but at 2km it's only going to be the skyline, which isn't your property unless you're in NYC.
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