"OG" wrote in message
...

"Doki" wrote in message
...

Pretty much the conclusion I came up with a while ago. Even the BWEA
admit that you tend to get nowhere near the rated capacity out of wind
turbines. Then you need huge energy storage facilities to make use of the
erratic output.

Very few people (despite TNP's claim) argued that wind would replace ALL
carbon based energy sources, but surely you can't deny that every kWh
generated by wind means that a kWh worth of carbon based generation is
avoided.

If you have a look on Tim Hunkin's website there are figures from Eon in
Germany. They basically find wind power to be nigh on useless. I agree that
it is "doing something" but it's basically a drop in the ocean. I expect the
energy balance of wind turbines, much like biofuels, is a bit wobbly...

OTOH I'm still unsure about climate change in general. It seems to be a
good way to beat everyone around the head for extra cash. Certainly the
money could be better spent on feeding the hungry...

You ask the people who are actually involved with 'feeding the hungry' in
places like Africa. Climate change is real there and having bad effects
already. We're nowhere near suffering yet - apart from the small pain due
to increase in grain prices because of the real madness which is 'bio
fuels'.

I should have worded my post differently. I'm unsure of the causes of
climate change, and whether it will change as dramatically as claimed (if
it's not entirely CO2 linked, then we won't have the predicted exponential
effect from the thawing of permafrost), not whether the climate's changing
or not. As soon as Africa and the rest of the developing world
industrialise, CO2 output will rise in line. We cannot expect to have our
luxuries but expect the developing world to use renewable energy and choose
between lighting and refridgeration due to a lack of energy. The fact is
that the industrialised nations of the world will cope best with climate
change - most of Holland has been under sea level for years, and they seem
to manage fine. If you truly believe what people are saying will happen due
to climate change, then the biggest favour we could do the world is make
sure that everyone has the resources to deal with it. I also believe it is
entirely unreasonable to expect people to cut their CO2 output dramatically.
It simply isn't possible without going back to a way of life which I doubt
could maintain the world's population.

wrote in message
...


Surely your anti-green stance is predicated ENTIRELY on price, since
no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of cost,
that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy.

Eh?

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time at a predictable and controllable level. And
it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

Renewable:
Power as and when it's windy or sunny, and a lot of space for a little
power.

ISTR reading that the fly ash from coal power stations is about as
radioactive as nuclear waste, but nobody worrys about that much becase it's
not come out of an evil nuclear power station.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Up till recently I was of the opinion that thiugh i didn;t lIKE
windmills, like foregoing a 6 liter V8, or taking frequent holidays in
te south sea, it was probably part of the price one had to pay for the
Greater Good..until certain people started shoving windmills down our
throats and procalaimming them as the One True Solution to carbon free
energy.

So as you know, along with all the other greenwash, I decided to take a
look. The initial thrust was to simply see what energy policy was
feasible for a carbon neutral UK.

The answer was ultimately that as far as I could see, there was only one
practical option. Nuclear power and electric transport.

However the windmillers started to scream and create and say that
windpower could in fact do the job.

And for very sceptical report there are ten glowing 'windpower is the
answerer' articles on the net..so I looked deeper.


The more I looked the more deeply sceptical I became.

The negative issues surrounding wind power were simply not addressed by
its proponents.

This article contains a good summary

http://www.turbineaction.co.uk/wind-turbine-facts.htm

essentially blowing the gaff on the hidden costs associated with large
scale introduction of wind power.

Not to mention the rank subsidies

"According to Ofgem, the Labour government's wind subsidies
currently stand at £485 million a year."

"Wind farms get around three times as much in subsidy - a
mixture of selling ROCS [renewable obligation certificates] and a share
of fines paid by non-renewable plants - as they do from selling
electricity"

A rather more scholarly and dry critique is he-

http://www.oxfordenergy.org/pdfs/comment_0605.pdf

and as far back as 20004

http://www.windaction.org/documents/225

A totally unexpected downside comes from he-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3300814.ece

You may THINK that its unlikely the Iranians or the Russians would come
in low across the North sea, or up the thames estuary.. but a hijacked
airliner? no problem.

It seems that pretty competent people are starting to cry out against
this monumental waste of taxpayers money

http://www.glassclash.info/pdfs/Telegraph050326.pdf

But leaving that aside, and leaving the fact that the power actually
generated by windmills is estimated to be (at the point of generation)
somewhere between 20% and 400% of the cost by any other means (including
carbon free nuclear) the real downsides only become apparent at high
levels of wind farm generation..typically more than 20% of total capacity.

This is because windfarms don't operate at full capacity. Indeed at
windspeeds below 9mph, they don't operate at all, nor can they be used
at over 55mph. They disintegrate if not shut down.

So although the AVERAGE load capacity - the AVERAGE output with respect
to the peak is somewhere around 35%, for a significant proportion of the
time any given windfarm is not producing anything at all. Possibly up to
15% of the time.

The windfarm proponents will counter this by saying that that is fine,
because when its flat calm in Feltham, its a gale in Galashiels..


And skip the most fundamental points: that a gale in Galashiels is all
very well, but the power needs to get down to Feltham. This means some
pretty hefty upgrades to the Grid..at somebody else's costs. Because the
grid is required to take their energy, whether they want it or not.

As wind power gets an even higher proportion of the total it gets even
worse. Even if on a calm cold winter's - or a blazingly hot summer's -
day some power IS being produced somewhere, and even if its coming down
a massive supergrid from Orkney..it still wont be enough..unless the
total generating capacity is so over specified that in order to cover
the shortfalls of calm weather, it has to be overspecified by a factor
of many times. Probably around 6:1. So instead of your windfarm load
factor being a nice 35%, in reality it has to be operated much lower
than that - say 16% or so, OR you have to back it up with conventional
gas turbines, run at disadvantageous cycling, and efficiencies.

So not only does the wind power suddenly double in actual costs, since
as it reaches a high proportion of grid capacity it has to be operated
at a lower factor, it also needs far more infrastructure to transport
the energy from where the wind blows (typically scotland) to where its
needed (typically the south east). OR it has to be backed up with a huge
amount of conventional and fast cycling capacity, which probably menas
that in the end the carbon gains are negligible: Certainly this seems to
be the Danish and German experiences.


I can only conclude that, like so much else in the climate change lobby,
the whole thing is driven by politics. Nuclear energy is never
considered 'renewable' and huge subsidies are given to 'renewable' to
meet self imposed targets..and the only 'renewable' source that is
remotely feasible is wind, so we have wind.

The fact that at a national level it probably does nothing for fossil
fuel consumption at all, looks ugly, is bloody expensive, and reduces
the value of local houses to nil,. is never mentioned..

We seem to be, essentially, paying taxes - or higher electricity bills -
in order to meet paper targets that don't and wont affect CO2 production
at all!

Sigh. Just like every other climate change initiative the governments of
Europe have come up with in fact.

Nice post.

Backup generation via gas-turbines works: the carbon footprint is low
because they only run when there is not enough/too much wind.

This is probably cheaper than building 3x as many windmills. Since they run
so little, one can possibly do without the steam generation part and run
them at lower thermal efficiency. You have to pay for the capital cost of
the plant of course - but the combination looks quite good to me (maybe not
compared to nuclear or maybe nearly as good?). Arguably cheaper than
coal+sequestration?

The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Some thirty years ago the Selby coalfield was opened amidst claims of
one hundred years of coal supplies. The same seams continue out
towards the North Sea at varying depths and accessibilities. The Selby
field has been closed down as the faces became uneconomically distant
but what happened to the residual seventy odd years of coal supplies?
Still there.

ISTR that Selby closed down because of unexpected geological problems.
The is still plenty of coal underground. Some estimates put the UK
reserves at 300 years worth before it became expedient to consider the
carbon content of fuel.

But its cheaper to import coal.

In the long run irt is probably cheaper not to use it at all.

Same goes for Cornish Tin. ALMOST worth opening the mines again.

I am sure I saw a piece on the BBC not so long ago about a tin mine
where the miners were back in preparing to restart production in the not
too distant future.

--
Roger Chapman

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:27:20 -0000 someone who may be "Doki"
wrote this:-

If you have a look on Tim Hunkin's website there are figures from Eon in
Germany. They basically find wind power to be nigh on useless.

Not quite.

However, those with an open mind will note the differences between
Germany and the UK and thus avoid the elementary mistake of thinking
that Germany is precisely the same as the UK. This is summarised by
the following critique of their report of a few years ago, in "Wind
Power in the UK" the references to which I provided in another
thread.

"A critique of the E.oN Netz study

"A recent report from the German network operator E.on Netz, ‘Wind
Year 2003 – an overview’, appears to suggest that capacity values
are much lower, and additional balancing costs much higher, than the
figures quoted above. The report also highlights a low energy
productivity of German wind. It claims that the utility needs
reserve capacities amounting to 50-60% of the installed wind power
capacity, and that the extra balancing costs (for 6% wind) were
about €12/MWh of wind – over six times the estimates of Figure 6. On
closer inspection, there appear to be several reasons why the
numbers are quite different from the ‘consensus’ data discussed
above.

"Firstly, low wind speeds in Germany mean that the system operators
will experience more fluctuations in wind output than in windier
regions. To illustrate this point, assume that the average capacity
factor across Germany is 15% and the corresponding capacity factor
in Britain is close to its long-term average of about 30%. To
generate 8.5 TWh of wind in Germany requires 6250 MW of wind plant,
whereas only half that amount of plant would be required in Britain.
The power swings from 6250 MW of German wind would therefore be
higher than from 3125 MW of wind in Britain.

"Secondly, it appears that some of the apparent difficulties the
utility has with wind are more to do with administrative procedures
and barriers; the network operators tend to operate independently,
so some of the benefits of an integrated network are lost.

"Thirdly, plant commitments are made several hours ahead, and the
extent to which schedules are revised nearer to ‘real time’ is not
clear. The concept of a ‘one hour gate closure’, as in Great
Britain, or revising a schedule up to one hour before production,
appears not to be used.

"It may also be noted that the report does not discuss the
all-important question of the interaction between variations in
consumer demand and variations in wind output."

I will add that we already know how at least 8% wind works in
Scotland. I think we can conclude that Scotland is rather more
representative of the UK than Germany.




--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

The message
from TheOldFellow contains these words:

I was under the distinct impression (from physics in the 1970's so it
might be out of date) that some nuclear reactors could generate fuel.
They were called Fast Breeder Reactors, IIRC.

IIRC they produce plutonium which is only available for use after
reprocessing and then it could be more attractive as a bomb component
than as reactor fuel.

--
Roger Chapman

On Mar 7, 6:32*am, Andy Cap wrote:
Why do we need 70 - 80
million when only a couple of decades ago, it was 20.

In the 1980s? And the rest!

MBQ

On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:36:38 -0000 someone who may be "Doki"
wrote this:-

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time

Using a search engine will reveal any number of stories which show
that this claim is incorrect.

at a predictable

I am most interested in what is able to predict the level of output
in a nuclear station, when they have a history of sudden failures.
Like any other bit of equipment they can suddenly fail for a host of
reasons. The unpredictability of nuclear stations is the main reason
why the pumped storage schemes were built, at considerable cost.
However, the pumped storage schemes are one of the few good things
to come out of the nuclear electricity programme. Their flexibility
is vital in dealing with sudden failures, for example when the coal
conveyor fell down at Longannet (the second largest coal fired power
station in the UK and perhaps Europe).

and controllable level.

They can be controlled in a fashion, though if one of many things
have gone wrong it is not possible to make them generate electricity
by willpower alone.

One of the main problems with nuclear stations is that their output
cannot be varied rapidly, which is the main reason they cannot be
used to backup other forms of generation. They can be operated at
reduced output after some faffing about, of which Hunterston B is an
example http://www.british-energy.com/pagetemplate.php?pid=90.
This means they are not as controllable as say a coal fired power
station.

There are claims that newer designs of reactor are more
controllable. This has yet to be proved, but I'll take them at face
value for the moment.

And
it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

They do indeed. That means that if something goes wrong, with the
plant itself or the connections to it, then there is a big hole in
the supply. That is in marked contrast to wind generated
electricity, where the failure of single items will leave afar
smaller hole in the supply.


--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On Mar 7, 12:47*am, "OG" wrote:
"Doki" wrote in message
You ask the people who are actually involved with 'feeding the hungry' in
places like Africa. *Climate change is real there and having bad effects
already.

Africa has always been hungry, and it has nothing to do with climate
change. If they learned how to govern themselves and stopped fighting
each other Africa could feed itself quite easily. Just look what
Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe.

MBQ

On Mar 7, 11:27*am, "Doki" wrote:
"OG" wrote in message
to climate change, then the biggest favour we could do the world is make
sure that everyone has the resources to deal with it.

No, the biggest favour would be to give everyone access to clean water
and healthcare. That would save far more lives than may be threatened
by rising sea levels.

MBQ

On 7 Mar, 11:36, "Doki" wrote:
wrote in message

...



Surely your anti-green stance is predicated ENTIRELY on price, since
no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of cost,
that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy.

Eh?

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time at a predictable and controllable level. And
it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

Guess what's more predictable than the power output from a nuclear
power station? The tides. Oh, and that the sun will shine. If
either of these two fail, we'll be dead and none of this will matter.
Using these vast resources to power our planet is simply a matter of
political will. Availability is not in question.

Renewable:
Power as and when it's windy or sunny, and a lot of space for a little
power.

Vide supra.

ISTR reading that the fly ash from coal power stations is about as
radioactive as nuclear waste, but nobody worrys about that much becase it's
not come out of an evil nuclear power station.

Citation needed.

BRG wrote:
Andy Cap wrote:
On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:26:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


However the windmillers started to scream and create and say that
windpower could in fact do the job.


The other day, I heard a proponent answer the question, ' What
happens when the wind doesn't blow ?', with, 'Well conventional power
stations fail and we manage'.

Yep, we up the output of a worker or switch on a spare conmventional
power station. What planet are these people on?

Mind you, the REAL answer is still less people and not 75 million
more, EVERY year, added to increasing longevity.

*That's* why Bush and Blair went to war - kill off a few million and
save the cost of building a few power stations - I often wondered
what the true reason was - apart from oil!

Because his Dad didn't go all the way to Baghdad in 1991 and he wanted to be
able to say "look Dad I did it!" (and the oil) Tragic isn't the word.

Paul

--
Add an underscore after the p to reply

On Mar 6, 7:26*pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
The windfarm proponents will counter this by saying that that is fine,
because when its flat calm in Feltham, its a gale in Galashiels..

And skip the most fundamental points: that a gale in Galashiels is all
very well, but the power needs to get down to Feltham.

Why?

The grid is already designed to cope with local outages in generating
capacity. there's no need for wholesale upgrade.

We all accept that if Wind Power is used there needs to be plenty of
backup capacity in the system.

The power from Galashiels is used locally. Feltham gets its power from
somewhere, but certainly not all the way from Galashiels.

It's the same principle that you can buy your electricity from any of
a number of suppliers but the power you actually use is always
generated "locally".

MBQ

In message , at 22:58:50 on Thu, 6 Mar
2008, "George (dicegeorge)" remarked:
and how do you budget for guarding nuclear waste for thousands of
years,

If we are reduced to a stone-age existence by a combination of energy
poverty and global warming, this is not an issue. You just pile it all
in a big heap somewhere like the Isle of Man and tell everyone to keep
away.
--
Roland Perry

David Hansen wrote:
On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:27:20 -0000 someone who may be "Doki"
wrote this:-

If you have a look on Tim Hunkin's website there are figures from Eon in
Germany. They basically find wind power to be nigh on useless.

Not quite.

However, those with an open mind will note the differences between
Germany and the UK and thus avoid the elementary mistake of thinking
that Germany is precisely the same as the UK. This is summarised by
the following critique of their report of a few years ago, in "Wind
Power in the UK" the references to which I provided in another
thread.

"A critique of the E.oN Netz study

"A recent report from the German network operator E.on Netz, ‘Wind
Year 2003 – an overview’, appears to suggest that capacity values
are much lower, and additional balancing costs much higher, than the
figures quoted above. The report also highlights a low energy
productivity of German wind. It claims that the utility needs
reserve capacities amounting to 50-60% of the installed wind power
capacity, and that the extra balancing costs (for 6% wind) were
about €12/MWh of wind – over six times the estimates of Figure 6. On
closer inspection, there appear to be several reasons why the
numbers are quite different from the ‘consensus’ data discussed
above.

"Firstly, low wind speeds in Germany mean that the system operators
will experience more fluctuations in wind output than in windier
regions. To illustrate this point, assume that the average capacity
factor across Germany is 15% and the corresponding capacity factor
in Britain is close to its long-term average of about 30%. To
generate 8.5 TWh of wind in Germany requires 6250 MW of wind plant,
whereas only half that amount of plant would be required in Britain.
The power swings from 6250 MW of German wind would therefore be
higher than from 3125 MW of wind in Britain.

"Secondly, it appears that some of the apparent difficulties the
utility has with wind are more to do with administrative procedures
and barriers; the network operators tend to operate independently,
so some of the benefits of an integrated network are lost.

"Thirdly, plant commitments are made several hours ahead, and the
extent to which schedules are revised nearer to ‘real time’ is not
clear. The concept of a ‘one hour gate closure’, as in Great
Britain, or revising a schedule up to one hour before production,
appears not to be used.

"It may also be noted that the report does not discuss the
all-important question of the interaction between variations in
consumer demand and variations in wind output."

I will add that we already know how at least 8% wind works in
Scotland. I think we can conclude that Scotland is rather more
representative of the UK than Germany.




You can also see that in fact the costs of building enough grid to get
scottish wind power down to england, is being hotly disputed.

In that respect scotland is LESS representative the germany. Its
remote,unpopulated, and has its own government..

Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 7, 11:27 am, "Doki" wrote:
"OG" wrote in message
to climate change, then the biggest favour we could do the world is make
sure that everyone has the resources to deal with it.

No, the biggest favour would be to give everyone access to clean water
and healthcare. That would save far more lives than may be threatened
by rising sea levels.


WE appear not to be able to give *ourselves* healthcare.

As far as clean water goes, when I was in S africa at the fag end of
Apartheid, one of the brothers said that 'come the revolution, we will
all have swimming pools'..

This intrigued me enough to pose the question to someone who worked in
the water board.."actually there isn't enough water on the high veld to
give everyone a flush toilet" he said..

The long and the short of it is that it would take MASSIVE expenditure
on infrastructure to get most of africa anywhere near what we would call
an acceptable standard of living: we certainly won't be able to do that
if we are reduced to horses, carts and windmills.


OTOH S African uranium may yet be an extremely valuable export..



MBQ

Philip Sargent wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Up till recently I was of the opinion that thiugh i didn;t lIKE
windmills, like foregoing a 6 liter V8, or taking frequent holidays in
te south sea, it was probably part of the price one had to pay for the
Greater Good..until certain people started shoving windmills down our
throats and procalaimming them as the One True Solution to carbon free
energy.

So as you know, along with all the other greenwash, I decided to take a
look. The initial thrust was to simply see what energy policy was
feasible for a carbon neutral UK.

The answer was ultimately that as far as I could see, there was only one
practical option. Nuclear power and electric transport.

However the windmillers started to scream and create and say that
windpower could in fact do the job.

And for very sceptical report there are ten glowing 'windpower is the
answerer' articles on the net..so I looked deeper.


The more I looked the more deeply sceptical I became.

The negative issues surrounding wind power were simply not addressed by
its proponents.

This article contains a good summary

http://www.turbineaction.co.uk/wind-turbine-facts.htm

essentially blowing the gaff on the hidden costs associated with large
scale introduction of wind power.

Not to mention the rank subsidies

"According to Ofgem, the Labour government's wind subsidies
currently stand at £485 million a year."

"Wind farms get around three times as much in subsidy - a
mixture of selling ROCS [renewable obligation certificates] and a share
of fines paid by non-renewable plants - as they do from selling
electricity"

A rather more scholarly and dry critique is he-

http://www.oxfordenergy.org/pdfs/comment_0605.pdf

and as far back as 20004

http://www.windaction.org/documents/225

A totally unexpected downside comes from he-

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3300814.ece

You may THINK that its unlikely the Iranians or the Russians would come
in low across the North sea, or up the thames estuary.. but a hijacked
airliner? no problem.

It seems that pretty competent people are starting to cry out against
this monumental waste of taxpayers money

http://www.glassclash.info/pdfs/Telegraph050326.pdf

But leaving that aside, and leaving the fact that the power actually
generated by windmills is estimated to be (at the point of generation)
somewhere between 20% and 400% of the cost by any other means (including
carbon free nuclear) the real downsides only become apparent at high
levels of wind farm generation..typically more than 20% of total capacity.

This is because windfarms don't operate at full capacity. Indeed at
windspeeds below 9mph, they don't operate at all, nor can they be used
at over 55mph. They disintegrate if not shut down.

So although the AVERAGE load capacity - the AVERAGE output with respect
to the peak is somewhere around 35%, for a significant proportion of the
time any given windfarm is not producing anything at all. Possibly up to
15% of the time.

The windfarm proponents will counter this by saying that that is fine,
because when its flat calm in Feltham, its a gale in Galashiels..


And skip the most fundamental points: that a gale in Galashiels is all
very well, but the power needs to get down to Feltham. This means some
pretty hefty upgrades to the Grid..at somebody else's costs. Because the
grid is required to take their energy, whether they want it or not.

As wind power gets an even higher proportion of the total it gets even
worse. Even if on a calm cold winter's - or a blazingly hot summer's -
day some power IS being produced somewhere, and even if its coming down
a massive supergrid from Orkney..it still wont be enough..unless the
total generating capacity is so over specified that in order to cover
the shortfalls of calm weather, it has to be overspecified by a factor
of many times. Probably around 6:1. So instead of your windfarm load
factor being a nice 35%, in reality it has to be operated much lower
than that - say 16% or so, OR you have to back it up with conventional
gas turbines, run at disadvantageous cycling, and efficiencies.

So not only does the wind power suddenly double in actual costs, since
as it reaches a high proportion of grid capacity it has to be operated
at a lower factor, it also needs far more infrastructure to transport
the energy from where the wind blows (typically scotland) to where its
needed (typically the south east). OR it has to be backed up with a huge
amount of conventional and fast cycling capacity, which probably menas
that in the end the carbon gains are negligible: Certainly this seems to
be the Danish and German experiences.


I can only conclude that, like so much else in the climate change lobby,
the whole thing is driven by politics. Nuclear energy is never
considered 'renewable' and huge subsidies are given to 'renewable' to
meet self imposed targets..and the only 'renewable' source that is
remotely feasible is wind, so we have wind.

The fact that at a national level it probably does nothing for fossil
fuel consumption at all, looks ugly, is bloody expensive, and reduces
the value of local houses to nil,. is never mentioned..

We seem to be, essentially, paying taxes - or higher electricity bills -
in order to meet paper targets that don't and wont affect CO2 production
at all!

Sigh. Just like every other climate change initiative the governments of
Europe have come up with in fact.

Nice post.

Backup generation via gas-turbines works: the carbon footprint is low
because they only run when there is not enough/too much wind.

The Danish and german experience shows that run in this mode, they
generate nearly as much CO2 as if the windmills hadn't been built.

And nearly double the cost of the windpower.


This is probably cheaper than building 3x as many windmills. Since they run
so little, one can possibly do without the steam generation part and run
them at lower thermal efficiency. You have to pay for the capital cost of
the plant of course - but the combination looks quite good to me (maybe not
compared to nuclear or maybe nearly as good?). Arguably cheaper than
coal+sequestration?

No. Check out the graphs. Nuclear is way cheaper than wind.

On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:47:40 +0000, OG wrote:

but surely you can't deny that every kWh
generated by wind means that a kWh worth of carbon based generation is
avoided.

Given the unpredicability of wind power, and the transmission problems,
I'm not so sure that's true.

For every KWh *used* at final destination is another matter - but the
question then arises as to whether the vast areas of wind farms needed
to produce that guaranteed supply are a sensible solution, or if there's
a better way of doing things...

On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:43:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
But you *CANNOT* 'store' the output from a wind turbine when used in the
context of powering the country - you couldn't get a Duracell battery big
enough!

You could..but the cost..and the carbon needed to make it..

Bah, just offset that by building more wind farms...

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:21:09 +0000, Andy Cap wrote:
The other day, I heard a proponent answer the question, ' What happens when the
wind doesn't blow ?', with, 'Well conventional power stations fail and we
manage'.

Yep, we up the output of a worker or switch on a spare conmventional power
station. What planet are these people on?

Maybe it will become our public duty when the wind falls to go to the
nearest wind turbine and breathe heavily on the blades?

Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 6, 7:26 pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
The windfarm proponents will counter this by saying that that is fine,
because when its flat calm in Feltham, its a gale in Galashiels..

And skip the most fundamental points: that a gale in Galashiels is all
very well, but the power needs to get down to Feltham.

Why?

The grid is already designed to cope with local outages in generating
capacity. there's no need for wholesale upgrade.

It is *no way* designed to take 60% of the countrysides power needs from
one end to the other. Yes it can route round one lost power station, not
half the countries capacity.


We all accept that if Wind Power is used there needs to be plenty of
backup capacity in the system.

The power from Galashiels is used locally. Feltham gets its power from
somewhere, but certainly not all the way from Galashiels.


If the south east is becalmed, it needs to.

It's the same principle that you can buy your electricity from any of
a number of suppliers but the power you actually use is always
generated "locally".


The problem here is we aren;t talking bull**** marketing: we are talking
realities.

If we cannot use teh wind in one part of the country to cover the lack
of wind in another, there is little point in building it.

It is preceisely this issue 'but the wind is always blowing somewhere in
the ~UK" that windies use to cover 'but sometimes the wind doesn't blow'
arguments.

Basically either you:-

- transport the energy, (large expensive grid)
- store the energy (very large, very expensive reservoirs up hills)
- have enough backup capacity to cover the TOTAL NEEDS of any area
...(basically working well below par efficiency wise,and costing as much
as if you didn't bother with the windmills at all).

Large baseband coal and oil steam turbine stations can be made damned
efficient..but the price you pay is they cant be spun up and down quickly.

For backup you need gas turbines..nowhere near as efficient.

Result. No net carbon gains.

MBQ

Jules wrote:
On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:43:16 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
But you *CANNOT* 'store' the output from a wind turbine when used in the
context of powering the country - you couldn't get a Duracell battery big
enough!
You could..but the cost..and the carbon needed to make it..

Bah, just offset that by building more wind farms...


sure. taking the price to 1200% of any cometition, and covering the
entire country with a windmill every hundred yards.

Jules wrote:
On Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:47:40 +0000, OG wrote:

but surely you can't deny that every kWh
generated by wind means that a kWh worth of carbon based generation is
avoided.

Given the unpredicability of wind power, and the transmission problems,
I'm not so sure that's true.

Thats the real probelms. Every looks at a windmill and thinks 'well at
least its not generating and CO2 and its making electricity' and stops
there.

Its when you examine the impact of how you integrate the ruddy things
into the system, you realise that they are probably making **** all
difference, and costing a mint.

I dont personally give a **** if scotland wants to , at its OWN expense,
and unsubsidised, build windfarms all over the north sea..and export the
power at a competitive rate to the UK.

With no subsidies and grants.

I object to having them rammed down my throat when I cant see the
benefit, and paying extra for the privilege, thats all.




For every KWh *used* at final destination is another matter - but the
question then arises as to whether the vast areas of wind farms needed
to produce that guaranteed supply are a sensible solution, or if there's
a better way of doing things...



Course there is. Nuclear. But it doesn't come under 'renewable'. and the
EU has stupidly made targets for 'renewables' and is subsidising to make
it happen, and its causing severe problems and costing us a packet.

On Mar 7, 3:02*pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 6, 7:26 pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
The windfarm proponents will counter this by saying that that is fine,
because when its flat calm in Feltham, its a gale in Galashiels..

And skip the most fundamental points: that a gale in Galashiels is all
very well, but the power needs to get down to Feltham.

Why?

The grid is already designed to cope with local outages in generating
capacity. there's no need for wholesale upgrade.

It is *no way* designed to take 60% of the countrysides power needs from
one end to the other.

It doesn't need to, as I explained.

Yes it can route round one lost power station, not
half the countries capacity.

It doesn't need to route half the countries capacity.


We all accept that if Wind Power is used there needs to be plenty of
backup capacity in the system.

The power from Galashiels is used locally. Feltham gets its power from
somewhere, but certainly not all the way from Galashiels.

If the south east is becalmed, it needs to.

No it doesn't. There are back up sources *distributed* around the
system. The power generated in Galashiels is used locally and the
backup resources local to Galashiels are left on standby..


It's the same principle that you can buy your electricity from any of
a number of suppliers but the power you actually use is always
generated "locally".

The problem here is we aren;t talking bull**** marketing: we are talking
realities.

Exactly. The reality is that you do NOT get power from a power station
local to the headquarters of the company you buy it from, that may be
many miles away. Your power is always generated locally and they
somehow work out between themselves and the National Grid who pays for
what.


If we cannot use teh wind in one part of the country to cover the lack
of wind in another, there is little point in building it.

Why? The power generated in region X is used in region X with
appropriate backup for when the wind doesn't blow. Your argument is
predicated on a region having a surplus of wind power. In that case
it's used in the adjacent regions, not at the other end of the
country.

MBQ

wrote:
On 7 Mar, 08:12, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
TheOldFellow wrote:
On Thu, 6 Mar 2008 21:57:22 GMT
Roger wrote:
The message
from "BRG" contains these words:
Nuclear power rules - that is the only logical and reliable option for
electricity.
You may be right for the short term. Unlike TNT I think there may be
some credibility in the notion that if nuclear power generation is
widespread the supplies of Uranium may run out pretty quickly.
*NOW* what have I said?
Your head is now on the block. Be on the lookout for marauding greenies
looking for someone to sacrifice at feet of Arch Druid Porritt before
the altar of the SD-Commission.
I was under the distinct impression (from physics in the 1970's so it
might be out of date) that some nuclear reactors could generate fuel.
They were called Fast Breeder Reactors, IIRC.
There's plenty of radioactive material. And you can as you say make more.

Its really a question of cost, thats all.

You can pull uranium out of seawater, if you process enough of it.

Hardly economic at todays prices..

BUT its like desalination ..if te price is right, its viable.

Surely your anti-green stance is predicated ENTIRELY on price, since
no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of cost,
that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy. In other
words, ignoring considerations of cost, tidal/wind/solar etc. would be
better in all possible respects than nuclear. Plus you can't make WMD
out of the by-products of tidal energy.

Its not so much anti-green as anti greenwash.

It's not TOTALLY a question of cost, as much as a question of sheer
practicality. There is a point where cost and enviromental impact
escalate to such an extent that its very arguable as to whether its cost
otr practicality you se to describe the limiting factors.

Nearly all renewable energy is like that: being essentially ultimately
derived from sunlight, which there ain't a lot of and its fairly
diffuse, you need massive sizes of installations to get power from ANY
renewables,. They simply don't have the power density of fossil or nuclear.

Like my grosser calculations that we would need to cover 60% of the UK
with photocells to generate enough power for the whole country....is
that merely a matter of cost? Or is it merely plain daft.

Cost is inextricably related to energy: If for example, there is a
copper shortage (there is), it becomes economic on account of rising
prices to extract lower grade ores that require more energy to process.
For example.

Now lets look at windmills. In order to work reliably with no outages,
we need to either have a 6 times (roughly) overcapacity in generation OR
back them up with pretty much the SAME capacity of gas turbines OR
string a load of power cabled round the country and merely oversupply by
s factor of - say three. In every case you are using *at least* twice as
much (possibly 6 times as much) scarce, expensive, and on account of
that, energy intensive, copper than an equivalent nuclear set.

All of which needs to be manufactured transported and erected
somewhere..offshore? add a nice premium for access difficulties, Boats
don't run on windmills yet..

With factory equipment being largely a matter of a few people and a lot
of big machines, factory costs themselves are very energy dependent for
'big stuff'. Energy is expensive and getting more expensive. The market
itself is limiting fuel usage.To bootstrap into a non carbon based
economy, the last thing we ought to be doing is using excess energy to
build windmills that are either not turning cs there is no wind, or
switched off because we have so many to cater for the former case, that
we cant use what's left over.

When it boils down to it, fossil fuels or nuclear are the only things
that really have the energy DENSITY and RELIABILITY to allow the
building of compact high output stations locally to where the power is
needed.

If you don't want CO2, build nuclear. Don't build windmills.

I AM arguing that nuclear is preferable to renewables, because
renewables cannot do the job at *ANY* price. Certainly not at the sorts
of prices that we could realistically get private finance for, and do
you really want another 10% on your tax bill, heating bills in the
thousands and petrol at £2 a liter, so you can have windmills?


Someone once calculated that to give everybody in the country the best
medical care that money could buy, would take about twice the gross
national product.

That is not 'just a matter of cost' that is a matter of physical
impossibility.

David Hansen wrote:
On Fri, 7 Mar 2008 11:36:38 -0000 someone who may be "Doki"
wrote this:-

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time

Using a search engine will reveal any number of stories which show
that this claim is incorrect.

at a predictable

I am most interested in what is able to predict the level of output
in a nuclear station, when they have a history of sudden failures.

The second generation of US sets are operating at an average of greater
than 90% peak capacity..

Like any other bit of equipment they can suddenly fail for a host of
reasons. The unpredictability of nuclear stations is the main reason
why the pumped storage schemes were built, at considerable cost.

Utter ********.
They are there to cover short term peak demands. When I visited the
welsh one it was 'we get ready to start the turbines when coronation
street comes on, and when its lighting up time, and we pump back in teh
small hours when everyones asleep' Sae goes for the link to
france..their rush hour and getting up times are about an hour ahead..we
sell them early morning, buy it back a bit later..

failure of a power station is a long term affair, and is catered for by
the short term by running up gas turbines, and in the longer term by
bringing less efficient (but more efficient than gas turbines)
mothballed coal or oil stations into ue.


However, the pumped storage schemes are one of the few good things
to come out of the nuclear electricity programme.

They didnt.

Their flexibility
is vital in dealing with sudden failures, for example when the coal
conveyor fell down at Longannet (the second largest coal fired power
station in the UK and perhaps Europe).


The total capacity is less than 3% of the grid and it only last a few hours.

and controllable level.

They can be controlled in a fashion, though if one of many things
have gone wrong it is not possible to make them generate electricity
by willpower alone.

One of the main problems with nuclear stations is that their output
cannot be varied rapidly, which is the main reason they cannot be
used to backup other forms of generation. They can be operated at
reduced output after some faffing about, of which Hunterston B is an
example http://www.british-energy.com/pagetemplate.php?pid=90.
This means they are not as controllable as say a coal fired power
station.


Just dump the heat. Its pretty easy. The heat is essentially free. They
modulate fairly rapidly. Hours rather than days.

There are claims that newer designs of reactor are more
controllable. This has yet to be proved, but I'll take them at face
value for the moment.

And
it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

They do indeed. That means that if something goes wrong, with the
plant itself or the connections to it, then there is a big hole in
the supply. That is in marked contrast to wind generated
electricity, where the failure of single items will leave afar
smaller hole in the supply.

But they fail in huge swathes every week or two when the wind drops...
If you look at te grid meters that were pointed out earlier this week,
you will see that demand is remarkably steady and predictable. It
certainly doesn't vary by te sort of 100% to 0% that a given tirbne
generates, or the 15% to 100% that a whole country full of wind turbines
might generate.

In short you could have 60% of the capacity totally provided by nuclear
no sweat, probably 80%, and the last 20% being short spin up gas
turbines for emergencies. FAR less carbon intensive than the windmills.

Which are actually just useless pieces of greenwash masturbation.

wrote:
On 7 Mar, 11:36, "Doki" wrote:
wrote in message

...



Surely your anti-green stance is predicated ENTIRELY on price, since
no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of cost,
that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy.
Eh?

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time at a predictable and controllable level. And
it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

Guess what's more predictable than the power output from a nuclear
power station? The tides.

No. They only happen twice a day. not continuosly.


Oh, and that the sun will shine.

On many days it doesn't. And I've yet to see it shine at night.


If
either of these two fail, we'll be dead and none of this will matter.
Using these vast resources to power our planet is simply a matter of
political will. Availability is not in question.

It is not a matter of political will. It is a matter of costing more
than the total wealth in the world to implement effectively, to the
levels required to sustain the population levels we have at the
standards they are at, and utterly transforming the planet into a giant
power station to do it. To the detriment of just about everything else,
food included.

Frankly it would be more devastating in its effect than global warming.



Renewable:
Power as and when it's windy or sunny, and a lot of space for a little
power.

Vide supra.

ISTR reading that the fly ash from coal power stations is about as
radioactive as nuclear waste, but nobody worrys about that much becase it's
not come out of an evil nuclear power station.

Citation needed.

Viz your silly statement about 'only a matter of political will'?

Roger wrote:
The message
from TheOldFellow contains these words:

I was under the distinct impression (from physics in the 1970's so it
might be out of date) that some nuclear reactors could generate fuel.
They were called Fast Breeder Reactors, IIRC.

IIRC they produce plutonium which is only available for use after
reprocessing and then it could be more attractive as a bomb component
than as reactor fuel.

Depends whether your priorities are to warm peoples homes or melt them
really :-)

wrote:

no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of cost,
that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy.

This is precisely the problem, ignorance of even basic
considerations.

Renewables are low density energy supplies. To run enough
renewable sources to supply the country would use up vast areas
of land, and require huge amounts of materials and manufacturing
to set it all up.

Then theres the cost. Renewables typically cost at least double
the price of fuel generation, plus since huge investment in gen
plant & transmission would be needed, energy prices would at
least triple. Thats going to hit the economy in every area, badly. So
all sorts of ripple effects on peoples lives.

And so it goes on...


NT

Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 7, 12:47 am, "OG" wrote:
"Doki" wrote in message
You ask the people who are actually involved with 'feeding the hungry' in
places like Africa. Climate change is real there and having bad effects
already.

Africa has always been hungry, and it has nothing to do with climate
change. If they learned how to govern themselves and stopped fighting
each other Africa could feed itself quite easily. Just look what
Mugabe has done to Zimbabwe.


People dont take kindly to imposed order. Mugabe may be a son of a
bitch, but he is THEIR son of a bitch.

African genocide is arguably simply a natural response to poverty,. When
starving, if someone else isn't, reach for the machete (or assegai
possibly: these days the Uzi or AK47)

To be brutally frank, forget most of Africa. The population will do what
it always has done. Die quickly and nastily. To a level where they feel
comfortable. We had the Black death, the plague, the civil war, WWI,
WWII..let them have their fun till they trade violence and tribalism for
education, and development.

MBQ

On Mar 7, 4:24*pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Sae goes for the link to
france..their rush hour and getting up times are about an hour ahead..we
sell them early morning, buy it back a bit later..

I see some MP has yet again proposed double summertime for England,
one of the supposed benefits being to align us with Europe. I wonder
if he's really thought through what will happen if our morning rush
hours are aligned.

MBQ

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
African genocide is arguably simply a natural response to poverty,. When
starving, if someone else isn't, reach for the machete (or assegai
possibly: these days the Uzi or AK47)

Not really. At the risk of a similarly broad-brush generalisation, a
lot of it is due to corrupt higher-ups who don't like the idea of
democracy, because then they lose their gravy train. In the meantime,
they feather their nests, and brutally suppress anyone who puts that at
risk. And that goes all the way down the chain of command to the petty
wannabe dictator with an AK, a small cadre and a set of camos who
terrorises villages for fun and profit.

A great deal of blame here lies with the rest of the world, with
America, China and Russia largely the culprits, treating the African
countries as pawns in a three-way chess game. They're back-pocketing
anyone who can be relied upon to maintain power as effectively
(=viciously) as possible whilst remaining loyal to their power-bloc
paymaster of preference, and assigning contracts (and natural resources)
to their paymaster's designated contractors. Britain and France don't
really help, they're also still playing the game.

To be brutally frank, forget most of Africa. The population will do what
it always has done. Die quickly and nastily. To a level where they feel
comfortable.

Blimey, which C19th hole did you crawl out of?

We had the Black death, the plague, the civil war, WWI,
WWII..let them have their fun till they trade violence and tribalism for
education, and development.

It's sentiments like that that cause the alienation and contempt of the
West that breed extremism.

It is the moral responsibility of the "developed" countries to help
African countries find their own, non-violent and inclusive, route to
representative government of their own design. Not as colonial or
post-colonial overlords, but as penitents seeking to repair the damage
they caused.

And the chances of the power-bloc governments genuinely doing so?
*shakes head*

Jon
--
SPAM BLOCK IN USE! To reply in email, replace 'deadspam'
with 'green-lines'.

Man at B&Q wrote:
On Mar 7, 4:24 pm, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Sae goes for the link to
france..their rush hour and getting up times are about an hour ahead..we
sell them early morning, buy it back a bit later..

I see some MP has yet again proposed double summertime for England,
one of the supposed benefits being to align us with Europe. I wonder
if he's really thought through what will happen if our morning rush
hours are aligned.

MBQ
Frankly, 'MP' and 'thinking things through' have never, to my mind,
belonged in the same sentence without some interpolated negative.

"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
.
Bah, just offset that by building more wind farms...


sure. taking the price to 1200% of any cometition, and covering the entire
country with a windmill every hundred yards.


Aha. So once again we see that the *real* agenda here is the same one as
usual: irrational hatred of the turbines themselves. Somehow a lamp-post
every few metres down every road in the country is no problem whatsoever --
but 'a windmill every hundred yards' represents *the end of everything*...

M.

"geoff" wrote in message
news
In message , ARWadworth
writes

"Andy Cap" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:26:05 +0000, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:


However the windmillers started to scream and create and say that
windpower could in fact do the job.


The other day, I heard a proponent answer the question, ' What happens
when the
wind doesn't blow ?', with, 'Well conventional power stations fail and
we
manage'.

Yep, we up the output of a worker or switch on a spare conmventional
power
station. What planet are these people on?



Mind you, the REAL answer is still less people and not 75 million more,
EVERY
year, added to increasing longevity.

So Logan's Run is correct?

Jenny Agutter getting her tits out - gets my vote ...


They looked so much better in An American Werewolf in London.

Adam

Mr D. wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
.
Bah, just offset that by building more wind farms...


sure. taking the price to 1200% of any cometition, and covering the entire
country with a windmill every hundred yards.


Aha. So once again we see that the *real* agenda here is the same one as
usual: irrational hatred of the turbines themselves. Somehow a lamp-post
every few metres down every road in the country is no problem whatsoever --
but 'a windmill every hundred yards' represents *the end of everything*...

M.


Yes - I don't know whether the economic arguments against wind farms are
valid or not, but it does seem to be people who live next to fields
who are most convinced by them


--- www.dogsticks.org ---

"Rod" wrote in message
...
geoff wrote:
snip

So Logan's Run is correct?

Jenny Agutter getting her tits out - gets my vote ...

But she is naked, puts a dress on, bends over and shows knickers. Where
did they come from? Rubbish continuity.


The knickers came from the Railway Children.

Adam

The message
from The Natural Philosopher contains these words:

Guess what's more predictable than the power output from a nuclear
power station? The tides.

No. They only happen twice a day. not continuosly.

In any one place (apart from some odd situations on the South coast) but
at any one time you can find tide at every stage in its cycle somewhere
round the coast.

Going down the East Coast high tide times for the first half of today we

Peterhead 00.40
River Tees 03.26
Kings Lynn 06.40
Lowestoft 09.28
Harwich 11.43

Over in the West something similar

Liverpool 11.04
Avonmouth 06.59

--
Roger Chapman

wrote:
On 7 Mar, 11:36, "Doki" wrote:
wrote in message

...



Surely your anti-green stance is predicated ENTIRELY on price, since
no-one in their right mind could argue, absent considerations of
cost, that nuclear power was preferable to renewable energy.

Eh?

Nuclear:
It produces power all the time at a predictable and controllable
level. And it produces a lot of power in not a lot of space.

Guess what's more predictable than the power output from a nuclear
power station? The tides. Oh, and that the sun will shine. If
either of these two fail, we'll be dead and none of this will matter.
Using these vast resources to power our planet is simply a matter of
political will. Availability is not in question.

The sun isn't simple to turn into electrical energy. It's good for heating,
but we simply haven't got effective enough technology to make it a viable
option yet. Tidal power does seem to be a pretty good option. I do like the
idea that someone prepared to suggest that a renewable technology isn't
actually that good is "anti-green". I don't think anyone *wants* to bugger
the planet up...

Renewable:
Power as and when it's windy or sunny, and a lot of space for a
little power.

Vide supra.

Vide celica.

ISTR reading that the fly ash from coal power stations is about as
radioactive as nuclear waste, but nobody worrys about that much
becase it's not come out of an evil nuclear power station.

Citation needed.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...-nuclear-waste

There you go.

Man at B&Q wrote:

Why? The power generated in region X is used in region X with
appropriate backup for when the wind doesn't blow. Your argument is
predicated on a region having a surplus of wind power. In that case
it's used in the adjacent regions, not at the other end of the
country.


I think his point - and it's a reasonable one as far as I can tell - is
that where there's space and wind - e.g. the Scottish Highlands - there
are hardly any people, and there aren't even many people in the adjacent
regions either.

--- www.dogsticks.org ---