On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:17:34 +0100 someone who may be John Rumm
wrote this:-
I don't accept that. Given the places where these things work best -
i.e. high inaccessible ones, the cost of getting a road to them is not
going to be negligible in many cases.
You seem to have swerved from carbon to money.
I am reasonably familiar with many of the large wind farms around
here. They are generally not as remote as you imply, that would
increase the length of the electrical connection. That also means
roads are short. The roads have a limited carbon impact, largely the
one-off of quarrying the chippings. I think the reports are right to
ignore them, the carbon impact is negligible.
The financial cost of building (or adapting as many of the roads to
sites existed in some form anyway) is also negligible. Maintenance
of them is also negligible, in both carbon and money.
The cables within the wind farm are included. Those outwith it are
not, neither would they be for any other form of generation.
Which is a slight of hand, since most other generation is built on
existing sites,
I am reasonably familiar with the electricity system around here.
Torness and Longannet were not built on previous sites, though there
was a power station nearby in the latter case.
and can also source 1GW say from a single plant,
Your point would have some validity if there were large distances of
new cables installed for wind, which were then connected to the rest
of the system at a few points. However, that is not the case. Wind
is usually connected into the 11 or 33 kV systems, where the lines
generally existed long before wind generation. Some large wind farms
are connected at higher voltages.
I was not suggesting it needed 100% reserve. However it
does require a fairly significant amount of reserve,
You claim so, without offering evidence for your assertion. The
results of a couple of hundred studies were summarised by UKERC and
until better evidence is offered I'll stick with them.
and the more wind
you try to introduce into the mix the more is needed.
Are you implying that this is new reserve? If you are then I'll
respond by saying that is not the case. Instead of closing some
existing power stations they can be retained as a reserve.
--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000...#pt3-pb3-l1g54