12GW wind capacity.

OldCoals said:
Well it isn't as predictable is the tide is it.
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But its predictable enough to be useful hence the investment.

Onshore wind is also the cheapest form of renewable energy. Tidal and offshore become more expensive due to their location...

Did you even bother to watch the video in the link i posted.

Would help you understand how our grid system works and how everything pieces together.
 
I've never understood why we don't have more Hydro-electric schemes in the UK.

We have quite a few Dams, plenty of water and some long Rivers, such as the Thames, Severn, Ouse, Mersey etc., surely it is fairly easy to take a run off a watercourse, send it through a Turbine and then drop it back into the River a little further downstream?
 
Andy90 said:
I've never understood why we don't have more Hydro-electric schemes in the UK.

We have quite a few Dams, plenty of water and some long Rivers, such as the Thames, Severn, Ouse, Mersey etc., surely it is fairly easy to take a run off a watercourse, send it through a Turbine and then drop it back into the River a little further downstream?
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You need height as well as water flow for hydro.

You also need to be prepared to sacrifice a lot of land! (Check out "Three Gorges!")

There is plenty of scope for micro-hydro (I have always fancied living in an old water mill myself! :p )

But the scope for large scale generation within the UK is very limited.
 
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Yes I've seen the Three Gorges scheme on TV, massive project to say the least.

I understand the height aspect, but there are quite a few Dams in the UK that could be used. Within an hours drive from where I live I can think of four, Lake Vyrnwy, Llyn Brenig, Alwen Reservoir and Llyn Celyn that all have massive Dams that could be used. Vyrnwy actually supplies Liverpool with water so surely it could be run through a Turbine before it gets there!
 
Orionaut said:
You need height as well as water flow for hydro.

You also need to be prepared to sacrifice a lot of land! (Check out "Three Gorges!")

There is plenty of scope for micro-hydro (I have always fancied living in an old water mill myself! :p )

But the scope for large scale generation within the UK is very limited.
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I actually looked at setting up a micro hydro scheme for someone.

I thought the site would be perfect. Nearly 1000ft drop top to bottom the water flow was a stream which seemed reliable even in summer.

The project was forecast to break even over 20 years with the FIT so was scrapped.

Another deciding factor to a lot of renewable generation projects is a lack of access to a 3 phase electric line. Having one put in can cost 10's if not 100's of thousands in rural areas.
 
We're* currently working on a new tidal power idea at work which if the calculations are right will be very effective. It's due to go out for testing very soon so watch this space :D.

* I'm just writing the software for a datalogger which will be sat to the system and report sensor data back, I'm not doing any of the fancy engineering side.
 
D.P. said:
The UK has 11Gw nuclear capacity but is only producing 7.68 which is more telling TBH.
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Think Heysham 1 and Hartlepool are still shut down due to the cracks they found and Sizewell B is just coming back online from refueling and maintenance and is operating at half capacity.
 
OK we put exercise bikes with generators in the council homes of all unemployed.
Similar to the 'feed-in tariff' and solar panels, they will qualify for their benefits only once their electricity feed-in to the grid exceeds their usage by however many kilowatts.

And immigrants too. And prisons.
 
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Nuclear definitely has a place still, but I imagine in the future we'll be using Shale Gas fracking to supply more CCGTs. Surely it'll be better all round for us to replace the coal burning plants with the cleaner, more efficient CCGT?

Wind alone just isn't reliable enough, but with fast CCGTs you could ramp up/down supply to compensate and just have Nuclear on pretty much all the time as a base generating %.

Basically just remove coal and fill the gap with a bit more Nuclear, Wind and CCGT? I honestly don't believe renewables can ever fully replace fossil burning/nuclear. You always need redundancy.

Also we need to invest in storage as well, beyond building more 2 level reservoirs and using excess electricity to pump water to the higher reservoir I'm not sure what else we could do to store the electricity.
 
HEADRAT said:
0 carbon but huge decommissioning costs and loads of deadly waste!
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It's only a matter of time 'till we start launching nuclear waste into space. Fire it at the Sun or what not. It's not feasible to keep burying it, as is the norm, as it makes the area unusable for 250,000 years.
 
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