On Sun, 9 Jul 2006 22:24:42 +0100, David Hansen wrote
(in article ):

On Sun, 9 Jul 2006 21:49:13 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall
wrote this:-

Anything can be done on a small scale. The question is what would be
required in terms of land area and deployment of windmills to supply a
significant proportion of electrical demand as opposed to a few percent.

Already done several times. A search engine will pull it up.

The answer is vastly fewer wind turbines than there are currently
large pylons.

Hardly the same profile.



The cost and output of wind turbines has changed dramatically in the
past decade. As a result relatively large wind farms like Black Law
are a reality http://www.bwea.com/media/news/060213_bl.html

It seems that not everybody sees this blot on the landscape through the
same
rose tinted spectacles that you do.

Ah, so now you don't have an engineering objection, just a visual
one.

I didn't say that. Visual and environmental impact are the ones most often
raised. Practicality is another matter.

Good, Black Law demonstrates how to have a large wind farm with
few objections of any sort.

Not if one reads the various articles.



Anyway 81% of the public are in favour of wind farms
http://www.bwea.com/media/news/060524.html

Hardly an impartial source, is it?



================================================== ======================

Wicks highlighted the positive findings from the first DTI
commissioned NOP survey – published today – saying that "despite all
the hot air and scepticism from certain quarters, 85% of the general
public support the use of renewable energy, 81% are in favour of
wind power and just over three fifths would be happy to live within
5km of a wind power development."

================================================== ======================

Notice the percentage drop markedly when it is close to home or somewhere
they might like to go on holiday.




It's all very nice as marginal technology, but the
level of investment is nowhere near the kind of levels needed to make this
a
viable mainstream technology.

Not tomorrow. However, over the next decade or two it will go the
same way as wind has gone. The progress of onshore wind is shown in
http://www.bwea.com/media/news/060327.html and many other reports.

Not an impartial source.



Nuclear engineering has still to overcome the inability to turn
large reactors up and down frequently. There has been some work in
this area, but it has yet to demonstrated in a big power station.

I am quite sure that solutions will be found to address this.

It might be. Of course they have been trying for decades and, rather
like practical electricity from fusion, it always seems to be some
way off.

Hardly in the same league in terms of pushing back the frontiers of science




I am sure that there will be more as the realisation dawns that this is the
only way to plug the energy generation gap.

"The only way" is an interesting assertion. Rather obviously it is,
at best, incorrect.

If one looks at projected requirements, the alternative energy sources with
all factors taken into account are not going to represent more than a tiny
percentage. In other words they are a distraction.


One might prefer some of the other ways to other
other ways, but there are other ways, including minimising any such
gap.


I was somewhat amused to read that one of the objections to nuclear
generation in the SDC paper was the undermining of energy efficiency.

There's nothing wrong with sensibly applied energy efficiency without
compulsion, but that is a very weak argument in comparison to some of the
others in terms of being a justification for not using nuclear generation.