Man of Honour
And their chicks for free?
Renewable Energy- Is the government missing a trick?
- Thread starter J-FRO
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And their chicks for free?
I think the cost of solar is around 40p a unit whereas wind is 16p? Something around that anyway!
Man of Honour
Well tidal power can't just be built anywhere, it needs a strong tide to be effective (somewhere like the river severn) - you also need to basically dam the whole river width at high tide, and then let the water flow through the turbines as the tide turns when the pressure is greatest. There is also a large environmental aspect
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As people have already said, wind power isn't that cost effective and has a large payback time - hence why people are reluctant to invest in it because it could become a loss maker and wind is unprecdictable.
Also the oil & gas industry steals all the best engineers
Tidal power isn't limited to rivers. Water power isn't limited to tides - wave power has a lot of potential. We're a long, narrow island, so we have an abundance of moving water slapping at our country all the time.
You could probably get 20GW out of Pentland Firth tidal alone, if you were willing to turn the whole thing over to tidal power. At least a couple of GW if you want to keep it as a major shipping lane.
Wave power...the biggest issue at the moment is that there's too much power involved. It breaks the machinery that converts it into electricity. Not immediately, but too quickly for it to be cheap enough.
1.2GW is currently being built in Pentland Firth as test facilities. Just test facilities, to see which type of wave to electricity converters work best.
There's a lot of power in tidal and wave for the UK and it's very reliable for a renewable source. Neither of which is true for wind unless you put it much further off the ground. Windmill turbines are pants. If you could use the wind at least a couple of thousand feet up, then wind power would be useful. The only renewable that's less useful in the UK is solar (which the last government committed loads of public money to because it was politically useful).
Man of Honour
In the UK, they both suck. Which sucks more? Who cares?
Solar power in the UK would work if it was generated in northern Africa and transmitted here, but generating it here is a silly waste of money unless someone finds a way of making photovoltaic material very cheaply from very common materials.
Wind power in the UK would work if it was at a high enough altitude and it would rock if you got it up high enough to be in the jet stream. Which is possible on paper with kite-based wind power, but cables thousands of feet long bring their own problems. It would be a big no-fly zone, obviously, and if one broke it would do major damage.
That would be fine if someone invented a miraculous photovoltaic material that could be built from a superabundant material and was tough enough for millions of vehicles to drive on without getting scratched and which gave at least as much grip as tarmac and which couldn't get dirty.
In other words: not happening any time soon, if ever.
The chernobyl connection wasn't used to say that the actual technology is unsafe, but to highlight that the process can be unsafe. Human error is unfortunately the mother of all f ups. And who's to say it can't happen again.
Either way we, globally (particularly the west where our carbon based fuels will probably die out waaaaaaay before the easts), need to at some point start developing renewable energy sources. Wind farming is just one of them. We can't just wait "'til all the oil runs out", that'll be too late.
And I don't think we should be letting the utilities companies start to monopolise the industry too early on.
Either way we, globally (particularly the west where our carbon based fuels will probably die out waaaaaaay before the easts), need to at some point start developing renewable energy sources. Wind farming is just one of them. We can't just wait "'til all the oil runs out", that'll be too late.
And I don't think we should be letting the utilities companies start to monopolise the industry too early on.
Ill educated people are very afraid of nuclear power. I assume this is because it's painted as a terribly dangerous thing in the media and they're unable to think for themselves. To clarify, by ill educated I mean lacking in physics / engineering or similar backgrounds.
I would tend to agree with this. It might not be fission in the long term, but right now splitting up uranium looks like the best choice.
I believed this until I tried to estimate the energy cost associated with making a wind farm. I'm not sure how to estimate costs associated with dragging raw materials around, but the manufacturing part of things looked like it would comfortably pay for itself within a year.
I would tend to agree with this. It might not be fission in the long term, but right now splitting up uranium looks like the best choice.
I believed this until I tried to estimate the energy cost associated with making a wind farm. I'm not sure how to estimate costs associated with dragging raw materials around, but the manufacturing part of things looked like it would comfortably pay for itself within a year.
wind power is for uneducated hippies. its rubbish, really rubbish. the wind turbines up the road are hardly spinning , and one of the times i did see one spinning at a decent speed it was on fire. they cost a fortune to install and they completely ruin the scenery around it , at least the nuclear power plant i can see from the end of the road is in an industrial area where you already expect eyesores
our governments new obsession with burning wood because of the big carbon credits scam needs to be stopped too. burning rainforests and classing it as carbon neutral so we can sell the credits. niiiiice.
give me a nice nuclear plant any day. safe , clean , efficient and plenty of stable and long lasting jobs created
our governments new obsession with burning wood because of the big carbon credits scam needs to be stopped too. burning rainforests and classing it as carbon neutral so we can sell the credits. niiiiice.
give me a nice nuclear plant any day. safe , clean , efficient and plenty of stable and long lasting jobs created
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Soldato
I think you're missing the point. Solar photovoltaic is a mature technlolgy made from one of the most abundant elements on Earth (Si). The "problems" are with its efficiency, both theoretical and practical, and the fact that it's not "always on", which is a problem it shares with a few other renewable sources.
That said, there's a time and a place for solar PV, alongside several other renewable sources and a means of providing the base load (eg nuclear).
Soldato
We are not under-valued or under-represented in our goverment, we are miss-represented by the masses of the UK population, if you tell someone you are an engineer here it doesn't have the same impact as saying it as someone in France or Germany because the title here isn't protected.
That does not mean that it is any less valued, any one in their respective field will tell you that it doesn't matter. The only people it matters too are pompus student engineers (I know I was the same when I was a student) and people who wish they were engineers but they aren't (HNC/HND trained in engineering who have the title of engineer in this country).
Sorry if this sounds like I'm being a **** but I've worked in the industry for long enough not to care what others think of my profession, hell most of the time someone asks me I just tell them I build stuff, saves all the questions.
KaHn
Soldato
Quoted for the truth! It's sometimes very hard to explain engineering roles in layman's terms - I normally end up sending them to sleep if they ever ask about specifics haha
Man of Honour
PV panels are so expensive and provide so little power in the UK that the value of the electricity generated will not reach the cost of the panels before the panels stop working. You'd be better off putting the money in some form of savings instead.
The only real use for PV here is with very cheap, small, inefficient panels for very low-power devices, such as calculators.
CSP isn't much better this far north, but at least it's cheap to make a Stirling engine and they're quite efficient for solar power (better than any PV panel).
Solar power has a place, but the UK is not that place. Not unless someone somehow manages to make a PV panel that can be sold for so little that it's worth covering everyone's roof with them.
EDIT:
Look at this discount solar panel kit, for example.
http://www.discountedheating.co.uk/shop/acatalog/Grant_Solar_PV_2.8kW_Portrait_on_Roof_Package.html
£20,000 for PV that would generate 2.8KW on the equator in the middle of summer at noon with perfectly clear skies. Obviously, rather less than that in the UK.
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The government are definitely missing a trick yes, it should be their moral obligation to encourage the use of renewable sources of energy such as solar or geothermal
Soldato
I work in the civil nuclear industry and I would like to put my two pence in here.
Nuclear is not dangerous. I've posted on these forums this same point time and time again. A quantity of the British public do dwell on the past, in particular the Chernobyl incident and immediately assume nuclear power is dangerous. Modern reactors are really very safe. They are built with very high quality parts, follow very strict QA procedures and generally follow the rules laid out by the NII: The Safety Assessment Principles and the Tolerability of Risk. These are the basic bread and butter rules that have to be followed when building, operating or decommissioning ANY nuclear facility, new or old.
The modern reactors have many multi-barrier safety mechanisms, and more recently, passive safety (hence the AP1000=Advanced Passive1000 Westinghouse design). Even if a core melt did occur, there are plenty of mechanisms to cool the melting fuel and the whole thing would be completely isolated in the Containment building. The success of such structures was shown, ironically, in the Three Mile Island core melt, in that all the core components and fuel was safely contained withing the pressurised Containment building, a feature certainly lacking at Chernobyl.
I understand your point here, and additionally I would like to say that nuclear power stations are actually relatively cheap to operate, fuel is cheap and maintining them is generally cheap, its the disposal of spent fuel and the building costs that are the MAJOR costs, especially the large up-front costs.
There is a risk with every source of power generation, nuclear follows strict guidlines like everybody else and the safety culture is immense.
Instead I will point you towards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam to show that every method of power generation has its risks, its just nuclear gets an extremely bad press. Indeed the Bangiao Damn incident caused way more casualties than Chernobyl ever did.
Finally, i am not picking on you in particular, I just had to respond to some of your points from a nuclear industry point of view.
Oh and the last thing I would like to say, wiki is wrong about Chernobyl causing a graphite fire. Since when has anybody ever tried to set fire to nuclear grade graphite? It's ignition temperature is very much higher than the peak temperatures in the accident at Chernobyl, it was actually the fuel and the cladding that was mostly on fire.
Nuclear is not dangerous. I've posted on these forums this same point time and time again. A quantity of the British public do dwell on the past, in particular the Chernobyl incident and immediately assume nuclear power is dangerous. Modern reactors are really very safe. They are built with very high quality parts, follow very strict QA procedures and generally follow the rules laid out by the NII: The Safety Assessment Principles and the Tolerability of Risk. These are the basic bread and butter rules that have to be followed when building, operating or decommissioning ANY nuclear facility, new or old.
The modern reactors have many multi-barrier safety mechanisms, and more recently, passive safety (hence the AP1000=Advanced Passive1000 Westinghouse design). Even if a core melt did occur, there are plenty of mechanisms to cool the melting fuel and the whole thing would be completely isolated in the Containment building. The success of such structures was shown, ironically, in the Three Mile Island core melt, in that all the core components and fuel was safely contained withing the pressurised Containment building, a feature certainly lacking at Chernobyl.
I understand your point here, and additionally I would like to say that nuclear power stations are actually relatively cheap to operate, fuel is cheap and maintining them is generally cheap, its the disposal of spent fuel and the building costs that are the MAJOR costs, especially the large up-front costs.
There is a risk with every source of power generation, nuclear follows strict guidlines like everybody else and the safety culture is immense.
Instead I will point you towards http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam to show that every method of power generation has its risks, its just nuclear gets an extremely bad press. Indeed the Bangiao Damn incident caused way more casualties than Chernobyl ever did.
Finally, i am not picking on you in particular, I just had to respond to some of your points from a nuclear industry point of view.
Oh and the last thing I would like to say, wiki is wrong about Chernobyl causing a graphite fire. Since when has anybody ever tried to set fire to nuclear grade graphite? It's ignition temperature is very much higher than the peak temperatures in the accident at Chernobyl, it was actually the fuel and the cladding that was mostly on fire.
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