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The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

wastedwind.energy

211–220 of 334 posts

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all true, the NIMBYs are real and we must construct additional pylons... but the largest part of curtailment costs come from the UK energy sector's project mismanagement. 1. We have two undersea cable projects (EGL1&2) to provide transmission capacity between all the new windfarms in Scotland, and SE England where it's used. Both projects are years late. 2. But we keep approving and switching on more windfarm…

I wonder why somebody doesn’t open a datacenter in Scotland. Sounds like they have too much power… also it is a bit chilly, right?

What makes you think they haven't? At least half a dozen operators have more than one data centre in Scotland, and many more have one.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#212

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.

Power lines I don't get as a NIMBY concern. The other things I can see the argument. I bought a house partially because it has direct access to a pole mounted transformer.

I've had a lot of issues with last mile power delivery in residential areas that rely on buried lines and pad mounted transformers. If a transformer on a pole blows up, it can be replaced within 4 hours. Buried lines and pad mounted transformers can easily take 8+ hours due to the excavation requirement. I've had outages that lasted over 24 hours because of buried infrastructure issues. It's nice that it's all hidden until it breaks.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> tendentious bunch of wankers

Lovely turn of phrase. I'm going to work it into my next tech talk.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#214

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.

People that like the look of the countryside without ugly infrastructure sprawling across it.

https://dorset-nl.org.uk/project/undergrounding/

I'm not involved or anything, but I certainly agree aesthetically. In visiting Canada it often strikes me that what ought to be beautiful landscape looks more like an industrial estate.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#216

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…

The Green Party around there picked up a lot of ex Conservative votes and oppose the nuclear plant at Sizewell and pylons for renewables. Its a weird alliance.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity prices are only very tangentially related to production cost. As you say yourself, grid costs are a factor. > France has lower electricity prices France has incredibly high subsidies for nuclear power, and it's still not enough. And their newest power plant cost 20 billion just in construction for a paltry 1.6GW, and to even begin new ones they need to subsidy them with 100€ per MWh (which is about thirty…

Well the whole clean energy transformation in Germany has a tax payer burden of 3 trillion or more till 2045. Frances nuclear plants didn't even receive 1 trillion of subsidies in total since their existence (according to my quick research). But let's say France and Germany are even in subsidies or France pays slightly more: I thought it's about Co2? Again: France has 1/6 of the Co2 emissions compared to Germany. Jus…

You're mixing up historic costs with current costs. As an illustration: the moon landing cost just $25 billion dollars, the Manhattan project even just $2 billion, what do you think a project of these scales would cost today?

You're also mixing the status quo with your (unclear) desire of how the world should be. Germany spent the last 80 years to build up an energy grid built on coal – nuclear peaked at 30%!. Of course they emit more CO2 today compared to the French!

But if anything, that's an argument for why Germany should start agressively building out renewables (aggression there was abandoned 20 years ago by the Merkel admin).

> 3 trillion or more till 2045

Looking at decades is a surefire way to get big numbers. But depending on your starting points (I guess 1999 during SPD/Greens coalition), that's just €60 billion per year. A lot of money but not exactly shocking.

> The idea to produce wind in the south of Germany is part of such madness.

Even the state of Bavaria - not exactly known to be mad for wind power - classifies more than half of its area as containing locations suitable for wind power. Of course that's nothing compared to Lower Saxony, but that's why they aim for total installed capacity of just 6 GW by 2050 (source for all that is the Bayrischer Windatlas issued by the, again, very sceptical of wind power, CSU government of Bavaria).

You're really just decade old fud against renewables. Do you really think that in the whole of 70 thousand square kilometres of Bavaria there are no points where the wind is strong enough 150 m above ground to produce power profitably? Because that's just not true. And 6 GW, by the way, are just one to four thousand modern turbines. Across the largest state of Germany. There's nothing mad about that at all.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would, overhead powerlines are not something you want near any houses for various reasons. Underground is fine.

Norwich-Tilbury doesn't go near many houses at all, and certainly not 400,000 peoples' houses. Check out the route: https://norwichtotilburymap.nationalgrid.com

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but some areas are better than others - east coast is preferable because it's more continuous than west coast even though wind is stronger (and gustier) on west coast. It's even more dramatic between countries, I saw in my previous job that for e.g. a country like India with monsoon season typically curtails it's turbines for a large part of the year.

The north of the UK is definitely windier than the south, but I'm not sure that the west is windier than the east - it's certainly wetter? e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/European-Offshore-Wind-A...

Yes, there is a prevailing south-westerly wind in the UK. The air comes in from the tropics and comes over the UK.

From wiki:

> Northern Ireland, Wales and western parts of England and Scotland are generally the mildest, wettest, and windiest regions of the UK, being closest to the Atlantic Ocean, and temperature ranges there are seldom extreme. Eastern areas are drier and less windy

But it being very windy isn't really conducive to building wind farms. You want (a) shallow seas (b) stable and continuous wind. That's why if you look at the map of where wind farms are situated they big offshore farms are concentrated on the east coast of England and Scotland, mostly from Norforlk upwards: https://mapapps.bgs.ac.uk/wind-farm-rare-earth-magnets/

It's not that you can't build them on the west, it's just easier.

Re: The cost of turning down wind turbines in Britain

#220
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean just read the link and they're objecting to a 120m-wide trench being dug through their countryside. Which is easy enough to sympathise with.

Why do trenches need to be dug across the countryside? Put them alongside existing roads and rail lines. Same with above-ground power lines. It might make them a bit longer, but the ‘eyesore’ is already there, and we can avoid making new ones.

(Re rail lines — if you build power lines over existing rail lines you could also electrify the rail route at the same time, and get rid of the diesel locomotives).

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