Scotland, Wind Turbines, Politics and the Economy...

[Marty Bonnar]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-16809556

Just check out some of our First Minister's latest wisdom. Apparently, it's alright to allow someone to make 'em here, we just don't want to place 'em near our golf developments.

FBD.

[David_Tepper]

Martin -

For a while, they were assembling wind turbines in Nigg, north of Inverness, where they still do repair work on the North Sea oil platforms. Up close, those wind turbines are HUGE.

DT

[Jon Wiggett]

I quite like them. I think they look kind of elegant.

Jon

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

There are worse blights on the horizon. However they are not pretty. They do beat the heck out of al the nuclear towers in the midlands or on the horizon at RSG.

[Bill_McBride]

GE is building wind turbines here in Pensacola and shipping them all over the world.  A bunch of real manufacturing jobs!

[Tony_Muldoon]

There are worse blights on the horizon. However they are not pretty. They do beat the heck out of al the nuclear towers in the midlands or on the horizon at RSG.

Tiger, cooling towers have nothing to do with Nuclear power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_tower


Yes we all want jobs, but then what is a sustainable job.   There is a huge question over the 'greenness' of these turbines.  Over the next few decades vast  areas of offshore windfarms will be created all around GB, and the calculations that support such investment are at best shaky. There's  currently  a general consensus against our more traditional means of generating power and therefore ANYTHING that uses windpower should be supported by politicians, and thus ‘support’ is always given..  The debate should not be about the aesthetics but whether they actually provide efficient power.  NIMBY’s are the only ones objecting and they only see it as a local beauty issue.  Who would have thought we’d live so long that some ‘Greens’ are supporting more Nuclear investment?  But as Tiger shows above people have strange unsupported ideas about that too.

[Scott Warren]

Tiger: To be a pedant, that's not a nuclear plant near Sandwich/Deal, it's an old coal and, later, oil plant. Apparently it is being torn down soon.

And add me to the list of those who quite like the look of the windfarms.

[Niall C]

There's already quite a few windfarms all round Scotland and as to Marty's cheeky suggestion that Eck won't allow the proposed offshore wind farm development to spoil Donald's view, well that would go against precedence elsewhere when the Scottish government have called in windfarm proposals. Personally I think Salmond has too much rapped up in green energy and anyway Trump has already built his course so what's he going to do ? Not go ahead with the bit that makes profit ? Not very likely.

Put me down to not having a problem with them visually but in Tony's camp as to not being convinced on their effectiveness.

Niall

[Tony_Muldoon]

This is kinda cool, but doesn’t even show the existing ones near Deal and Great Yarmouth let alone the planed one near Aberdeen nor the huge areas off Norfolk . 

http://www.bwea.com/ukwed/map-in-planning.html

I suspect that site has an agenda.  It’s not uncommon.


This is from Wikipedia

“As of January 2012, there were 321 operational wind farms in the UK, with 3,506 turbines and 5,953 MW of installed capacity. A further 3,519 MW worth of schemes are currently under construction, while another 5,804 MW have planning consent and some 9,849 MW are in planning awaiting approval.[10]

The UK will require 7,500 offshore turbines by 2020 to meet EU targets”


Sorry could you repeat that?


“The UK will require 7,500 offshore turbines by 2020 to meet EU targets”


Some of these planned offshore farms cover the area of a good city and all approved based on shaky science.


To date the largest in the world  is the one you can see from Deal

Again from Wiki

“The owners will receive a subsidy of £60M per year on top of the £30-40M cost of the electricity due to Renewables Obligation Certificates, and based on the estimated working life of the turbines of 20 years, the total subsidy will come to £1.2 billion. Since there are only 21 permanent green jobs, the subsidy per job comes to around £3M per year”


I believe those old cooling towers are not due to be dismantled because they are linked with Asbestos and it’s just too expensive, better to leave them for another day.  Who do you think will pick up the bill of removing the wind turbines once a more efficient and truly renewable way of harnessing natures energies, show them up for what they are?   They are follies pure and simple (IMO of course).

[Colin Macqueen]

Gentlemen,
Why is it that whenever I read or hear about wind farms Don Quixote springs to mind. I think that this technology is a folly of no mean proportions and the infrastructure a blight on the landscape. I believe that nuclear power will prevail notwithstanding recent disasters.
Just my tuppenceworth!
Cheers Colin

[Bob_Huntley]

Don't talk to me about windmills. I bought one once at great expense from a company call Arbutus. Apart from the tax incentives from the State of California it was a monumental disaster. The money I was supposed to receive sounded quite good at the presentation but it turned out that the contract we had with So.Cal Edison produced less than half of what I expected. I will not go into the ramifications of the deal but I surrendered the windmill to So.Ca.Ed. to avoid coughing up payments that were made in excess of the assumed return.

All in all a very valuable lesson and they will  never produce the amounts of power needed for a modern economy and they are as ugly as sin to boot.

Bob

[Lou_Duran]

Gentlemen,
Why is it that whenever I read or hear about wind farms Don Quixote springs to mind. I think that this technology is a folly of no mean proportions and the infrastructure a blight on the landscape. I believe that nuclear power will prevail notwithstanding recent disasters.

Just my tuppenceworth!

Cheers Colin

Funny, when we took our kids to visit our ancestral land (Galicia, Spain) prior to the Buda in 2010, I half expected El Quijote to come around the hill into sight, all dishelved and bloodied after a heroic fight against one of those monstrosities.  The benevolent government of Spain thought fit to take pieces of land I owned for which they paid me a pittance, leaving for posterity these things that seem to turn, or not, on their own accord, and that will surely weather poorly in the wet environment.  Betting the redistribution gains in the peseta to Euro exchange on green energy, this beautiful country has achieved 23%+ unemployment and huge debt, forcing it to abandon the heavy subsidies which made these things marginally viable to begin with.  I wonder who is going to be left holding the bag when the turbines become not just an eye-sore, but a danger to people and animals.  Thank God that the trial bar is not as "advanced" there.  

[Sean_A]

The biggest problem with the anti-wind folks is that all research into renewable energy is good.  We are going to eventually have to face up to the fact that oil is not the fuel of the future so all the more research and trial and error attempts is good stuff - thats how we learn. 

Ciao

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Count me with those that will take ugly over dangerous. This golfer may live near a windmill in this lifetime but never will live near a nuclear power plant. There is still a long way to go for them to have any significant impact on energy needs. Sean you might be surprised how much Oil and Natural Gas is left on this earth. Nothwithstanding, thinking and learning is always a good thing.

[Jim Nugent]

The biggest problem with the anti-wind folks is that all research into renewable energy is good.  We are going to eventually have to face up to the fact that oil is not the fuel of the future so all the more research and trial and error attempts is good stuff - thats how we learn. 

Ciao

Disagree completely with your second statement.  There's oil to burn for centuries.  e.g. the U.S. alone has trillions of barrels of shale oil reserves.  Add natural gas to the equation, and we have plenty of energy.

And I disagree with your first statement too.  Wind energy is an incredible boondoggle.  Like the electric car, it sounds great.  But in reality it cannot supply even a small fraction of the energy needed.  The vagaries of the wind are the reason.  So it needs a backup, that always must be turned on, 100% of the time. 

Besides, we've gone way beyond so-called research into wind.  Nations are investing billions and billions into it.  I bet it has the same future as the Chevy Volt: total failure.  Environmentalism (again) run mad.   

[Sean_A]

Jim & Tiger

It doesn't matter how much oil and gas there is - its an archaic form energy which when burned isn't clever for the environment. 

It also doesn't matter if wind power will solve the energy problem, its a start - the start is what matters most. 

Ciao

[Jon Wiggett]

Sean is right! Fossile fuels are an archaic form of energy. The answer lies in diversity of sources and those being close to the point of consumtion. Wind is certainly one of the new energy types.

Jon

[Craig Van Egmond]

Actually Jon, wind is an old energy type, before we figured out other ways to generate power. 

[Kalen Braley]

I would have to agree with Sean here.

Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss.

Because the start is indeed the key.  If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter,  because the first several versions of them really sucked.  The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.

[Jon Wiggett]

Actually Jon, wind is an old energy type, before we figured out other ways to generate power. 

Got me there Craig

[Bob_Huntley]

As much as I believe the alternative energy movement is as much in love with subsidies as green power, I do have hope that tidal power could work.

See;

http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html

Bob

[George Pazin]

I would have to agree with Sean here.

Even though some energy forms are less "efficient" than others...given some types are far cleaner than others, its worth it for a cleaner future to pursue these technologies very aggressively, even at a loss.

Because the start is indeed the key.  If every project was either continued or chopped based on its first few prototypes, we would have never have modern automobiles or planes or computers for that matter,  because the first several versions of them really sucked.  The same lee-way/forgiveness has to be put in place in for any new technology...especially when it has such a worthwhile goal.

So reintroducing the horse will be seen as new technology someday?

[Melvyn Morrow]

Wind turbines are a blot on the landscape likes cart tracks. Real visual pollution

They serve very little purpose except for those not committed to the real world that has to accommodate so many humans.  Add to that the fact we are paying 20% more on our fuel bills for the so called green measures - so that the Greens can feel smugly satisfied with themselves.

As for wind power, it went out with the ark, yet I must say give me a windmill farm any day in place of those awful wind turbines. Nuke the Greens and use their bodies as fuel rods for nuclear power stations – that’s should make them happy and please the rest of us too.  

Go on take a vote either ’A’ or ‘B’ which looks better on the eyes?

A. Wind Turbines


B. Windmills


Green, Greens, the only Greens I know you play golf upon them.

Melvyn

[Niall C]

As much as I believe the alternative energy movement is as much in love with subsidies as green power, I do have hope that tidal power could work.

See;

http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html

Bob

Bob

I think I'm right in saying that a significant proportion of Scotlands power comes from hydroelectric schemes built decades ago. I also think I'm right in saying that one of the islands also has the same technology but instead of turbines powered by water channeled from lochs they use tides to power shoreline turbines. Given the length of Scotlands shoreline I would have thought that would be abetter way to go than wind power that works when it wants to.

Niall

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Sean, As a man told me once, it does not matter what the facts are if I perceive something to be A, then it is A to me. Please save those facts and additional hard information for someone who will listen to them.  On the proper way to behave on here. Please accept my  apology. I should not expect you to know my business no more than I should yours.