Wind Turbines

You wouldn't like the contract for our new French atomic kettles, then.

https://www.ft.com/content/b8e24306-48e5-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab

Not just a subsidy for building it, but a guarantee to pay more than the market price for the electricity it produces.

"Consumers will pay a £30bn subsidy for electricity from the proposed Hinkley Point nuclear power station — almost five times the original estimate — according to the latest projections from the National Audit Office.

The increase reflects a reduction in long-term forecasts for the wholesale cost of electricity — widening the gap between market prices and the amount promised by the UK government to EDF, the French company planning to build the plant.Under a deal agreed in 2013, EDF will be guaranteed a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour of electricity — rising in line with inflation — as an incentive to shoulder the £18bn construction cost.

This represents a premium over the current wholesale price of about £45 per MWh and forecasts for the future size of these “top-up payments” has increased as falling fossil fuel prices has lowered long-term expectations for the cost of electricity."

I have some old rope here. Will Theresa give me a billion for it?

"The construction cost was given by EDF as £16 billion in 2012,[84] updated to £18 billion in 2015,[85] and to between £19.6 billion and £20.3 billion in July 2017.[3][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station
 
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Doggit said:
They can't run when the winds too powerful, and they get declutched to stop them flying off, and from burning theselves out. But gues what, they still get paid for non production - it's in their contracts.
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Another misrepresentation.
The compensation payment is nothing to do with the weather conditions, it is to do with the lack of infrastructure preventing the wind farms from selling the electricity. So, as it is not their fault, they cannot sell the electricity because of the failure of the infrastructure, they receive a compensation payment.
 
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I just had a look, and at this moment, Wind power is delivering more electricity in the UK than gas, nukes, hydro and everything else put together.

Well done!

Earlier this year, they were offering contracts at £37.35 per megawatt hour, 5.8% below the lowest bid in the most recent auction in 2019.
 
JohnD said:
I just had a look, and at this moment, Wind power is delivering more electricity in the UK than gas, nukes, hydro and everything else put together.

Well done!

Earlier this year, they were offering contracts at £37.35 per megawatt hour, 5.8% below the lowest bid in the most recent auction in 2019.
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Impressive.
 
Plenty of scope for more wind. There's talk of doubling the number of turbines, as it would give us redundancy most of the time, so we'd be more resilient to weather and could export some. Gas usage would be much smaller, it's quite low already. The technology in turbines is still improving and there are all sort of strange and interesting failure modes. I get a technology feed from someoneorother. All sorts out there on storage and whatnot.

You might think Brits might even be able to make the things. Not a chance, not on the list. Denmark leads, various Chinese after that with a bit of German and Spanish.

Did anyone see the tv prog slamming Drax for its non green biomass generation?
 
Going back to the "stop them before they exceed the braking capacity" point, rather than using brake rotors and friction to bring turbines to a stop, why not make the rotor pitch variable to the point where wind could apply pressure to the back of the blade, then the speed could be reduced by the wind in the same way it is increased?
 
robinbanks said:
Going back to the "stop them before they exceed the braking capacity" point, rather than using brake rotors and friction to bring turbines to a stop, why not make the rotor pitch variable to the point where wind could apply pressure to the back of the blade, then the speed could be reduced by the wind in the same way it is increased?
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It appears they already do that https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/how-wind-turbine-works-text-version whether they still need brakes the article does not mention.
 
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