Wind Turbines

StGeorgie said:
This is in no way financial advice, but I would be VERY cautious about investing money in such a scheme.

Sure, there is a novelty value & you'll always be able to wave your green credentials, but even a basic cursory glance over the figures will show that this is a very poor investment.
Click to expand...
It is working very well for those of us who have contributed to the cost, and are now having reductions to our electricity bills...
 
andy11 said:
Wind turbines are frighteningly expensive, they are responsible for a large part of the increases in our bills. The free power from them is a myth - if we are to keep them we must accept permanently expensive power.

How long does it take for one to "pay for itself" ?
Click to expand...
Weeeeell, you will find figures here and on web pages which say less than a year.

BUt the whole question is mired in grants, carbon credits, utilisation, dilapidation. maintenance, gas price (!), and the time of day or year.

Then it depends who the "you" is.. If you paid a Danish company a gazillion to install it, but you had to to score points for renewable measuring thing anyway, does that count as cost?
The Danes sold it to the French by the way, so forget it as an investment.

When the wholesale price of leccy was 2p/unit, you struck a great deal with the Danes, to buy all it could theoretically produce, at 10 p/unit whether you took it or not.
So you are getting back - nothing. Everyone wails. Terrible things, wind farms.
But then uncle Poots gets stroppy and puts up the gas price to 30 p/unit, and that becomes what a unit's worth.
So under the CfD system, if I'm right, the company has to pay our government for every unit the farm produces, 30p - 10p = 20p.
I thought we'd just rejoice gaily in getting cheap leccy, but payback is what it says here:
www.theguardian.com

Price of offshore wind power falls to cheapest ever level in UK

Contract price is nearly 6% lower than previous auction in 2019, which could ease pressure on energy bills
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The windy leccy has to be sold to the consumer ( not entirely sure who exactly is between Orsted (the mfr?) and me... because that's how the coupling "works". So we don't get it cheap.


if you look to the USA, where there appears to be less circumlocutory bureaucratic shenanegins, you will find a graph that showed the payback period in normal person's terms, was 10-20 years, say 10 years ago, but the value of electricity has gone up so much it really is less than a year now.

So, surely, you should reduce the price of leccy to the hapless consumer, so the installer gets a reasonable rate of return to stay in busness and pay the workers. But NO, the system seems to be tha you still pay a lot for power, and someone in the middle makes a fortune.
When I say "the middle " I mean Frankfurt, Paris, Benidorm, Bahamas and that.

That's the sort of thing I meant when when I said "clear as mud" and got told I was being a ridiculous nutter.
 
Justin Passing said:
Already been answered.
Click to expand...
no it hasnt where have you seen this in this thread no link at all to centrica saying that .
At 20% capacity the rough storage facility has enough gas in it to supply 1 million domestic customers for 100 days in winter and bearing in mind centrica are not the only supplier of gas in this country there are several .
www.reuters.com

Centrica reopens UK's Rough gas storage site in time for winter

British Gas owner Centrica has reopened its Rough gas storage site off England's east coast at about 20% of its previous capacity, enough to heat 1 million homes for 100 days this winter, the company said on Friday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
 
wobs said:
Deserts:
Sand storms, so you would need to regularly clean them, and they would get damaged from abrasiveness of the sand.
Solar PV isn't as efficient in hot climates (assuming we are in hot deserts), so you'd be lookig at solar CSP. Many deserts are problematic generally for solar power this and other reasons.

But lets fly in the face of real world problems.
Now lets assume the world's economy stays as it is in terms of growth on average, and we have about 2.3% per year. We would have to cover the entire Earth with solar panels, owing to the increase in energy demand in about 275 years (assuming solar PV for now), and we'd be using 7000TW.

In reality of course this won't happen, as we can't just keep growing the economy, but it shows how easy it is to screw things up when we have such a huge energy demand.

According to here:
We consumer an average of 18.2TW in 2016. It also points out that we are lifting ,millions out of extreme poverty (hurrah!). Of course, this will mean that they will be adding to the demand for energy, which explains the maths above in part).

Between now and 2297, we need to stop growing the economy. In fact we need to start that sooner rather than later for many developed countries, but of course in a way that doesn't screw us over.

We can only really use more nuclear power at this scale, whether fission or fusion/fission. There really is no other alternative. Yes you can build a few more wind turbines, (and I'd like to see more), but the idea that we have enough desert to last us long term is misplaced. We only have so much room for solar/wind when looking at this scale, and our demand for energy will only go up in the foreseeable.

of course, the above ignores thigs like losses, night time, variations in wind and the need for huge battery back up.
Click to expand...


I already allowed a huge factor for dirt etc - check the numbers
You're extrapolating energy use increase to 275 years ahead to justify your argument that solar can't be a huge help. Really?!!!!!

"We would have to cover the entire Earth with solar panels," Nope - you do the sums. You're quoting a t w a t.

He does say: "as much solar energy reaches Earth in one hour as we consume in a year."
 
gas112 said:
no it hasnt where have you seen this in this thread no link at all to centrica saying that .
At 20% capacity the rough storage facility has enough gas in it to supply 1 million domestic customers for 100 days in winter and bearing in mind centrica are not the only supplier of gas in this country there are several .
www.reuters.com

Centrica reopens UK's Rough gas storage site in time for winter

British Gas owner Centrica has reopened its Rough gas storage site off England's east coast at about 20% of its previous capacity, enough to heat 1 million homes for 100 days this winter, the company said on Friday.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
Click to expand...

Who gives a flying Fk what centrica said exactly. The point is that Rough storage is bugger all - a small increment as Qwarteng said.
"This could satisfy probably 3-4% of UK home demand during the winter peak," O'Shea said

See #185, which also makes it look like 1% or so.

Check vs other countries https://viborc.com/europe-gas-storage-reserves-capacities-by-country-daily/

Even if we double our 1.37%, it's still bugger all.
 
Justin Passing said:
Who gives a flying Fk what centrica said exactly. The point is that Rough storage is bugger all - a small increment as Qwarteng said.
"This could satisfy probably 3-4% of UK home demand during the winter peak," O'Shea said

See #185, which also makes it look like 1% or so.

Check vs other countries https://viborc.com/europe-gas-storage-reserves-capacities-by-country-daily/

Even if we double our 1.37%, it's still bugger all.
Click to expand...
glad we cleared that up that you are talking shyte and yet another one caught up with the mistake of talking about storage capacity of the majority of european countries without them having their own gas fields flowing 24/7 supplying around 50% of their daily needs
 
gas112 said:
glad we cleared that up that you are talking shyte and yet another one caught up with the mistake of talking about storage capacity of the majority of european countries without them having their own gas fields flowing 24/7 supplying around 50% of their daily needs
Click to expand...
You're drivelling on about what Centrica said. Now you want to drivel on about something else.

Shortage of gas is still shortage of gas.
Our storage is tiny.
If supplies are stopped we can keep homes supplied, probably, but power generation and industrials would have to go without.
We can't use more wind.
Germany can use more coal.
They only use 13% of their gas for electricity generation, though they also use oil. Ours is 3x that.
Germany has about 3 months gas usage stored. France 4 months. We have about a week.
 
Last edited:
Justin Passing said:
Weeeeell, you will find figures here and on web pages which say less than a year.

BUt the whole question is mired in grants, carbon credits, utilisation, dilapidation. maintenance, gas price (!), and the time of day or year.

Then it depends who the "you" is.. If you paid a Danish company a gazillion to install it, but you had to to score points for renewable measuring thing anyway, does that count as cost?
The Danes sold it to the French by the way, so forget it as an investment.

When the wholesale price of leccy was 2p/unit, you struck a great deal with the Danes, to buy all it could theoretically produce, at 10 p/unit whether you took it or not.
So you are getting back - nothing. Everyone wails. Terrible things, wind farms.
But then uncle Poots gets stroppy and puts up the gas price to 30 p/unit, and that becomes what a unit's worth.
So under the CfD system, if I'm right, the company has to pay our government for every unit the farm produces, 30p - 10p = 20p.
I thought we'd just rejoice gaily in getting cheap leccy, but payback is what it says here:
www.theguardian.com

Price of offshore wind power falls to cheapest ever level in UK

Contract price is nearly 6% lower than previous auction in 2019, which could ease pressure on energy bills
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

The windy leccy has to be sold to the consumer ( not entirely sure who exactly is between Orsted (the mfr?) and me... because that's how the coupling "works". So we don't get it cheap.


if you look to the USA, where there appears to be less circumlocutory bureaucratic shenanegins, you will find a graph that showed the payback period in normal person's terms, was 10-20 years, say 10 years ago, but the value of electricity has gone up so much it really is less than a year now.

So, surely, you should reduce the price of leccy to the hapless consumer, so the installer gets a reasonable rate of return to stay in busness and pay the workers. But NO, the system seems to be tha you still pay a lot for power, and someone in the middle makes a fortune.
When I say "the middle " I mean Frankfurt, Paris, Benidorm, Bahamas and that.

That's the sort of thing I meant when when I said "clear as mud" and got told I was being a ridiculous nutter.
Click to expand...
Thanks, but that would all be moot if we hadn't destroyed our own coal, gas, oil and nuclear industries.
 
gone said:
Eh?, I thought electric bills had gone up.
Click to expand...
Ripple is very different to normal billing. For people who have invested in it they get their power under a different payment system.

The majority of their power comes from the turbine, any excess power the turbine generates is sold at market rates and that money is used to buy power at market rates when the wind doesn't blow.

The bills are effectively just paying off the cost of the turbine and any shortfall. There hasn't been much shortfall so far afaik and the current members are getting their power at an average of 20p/kWh.
 
Deserts already work really well for PV. Dust/sand isn't a big deal in reality, there isn't that much abrasion and since there are no moving parts (unless they use trackers, in which case there are some) the panels just work. Cleaning isn't needed often nor is it that hard.

There has been a plan for running some really big HVDC cables down to Morocco and putting in a giant PV/CSP/Wind farm then pushing the power back to the UK. It should be competitive with conventional power (at historical prices) and there is minimal NIMBD to deal with.

It would help the environment as it would avoid emissions but obviously it's not perfect for security as that's a long cable for the Russians to target.
 
Last edited:
I was immediately thinking of the community of prople who like to "collect scrap", going after the cables......

ITM do you work in/near the industtry or is it just an interest?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top