Capt'n Midnight wrote: » There's 600,000,000 reasons why you might be wrong Of course they aren't ready to displace all other generators, otherwise everyone would already be using them
Brian? wrote: » It's obviously more economically viable to build in the midlands. Hence the decision by a private company to build there.
Mrtayto27 wrote: » Can't see how it's economically viable to build in the Irish midlands than the Irish east coast or off the isle of man or Jersey.
Brian? wrote: » Electricity can be stored in a myriad of ways. Batteries being the simplest. Pumped water storage has been used in Ireland since the 50s at Turlough hill.
ted1 wrote: » The licences have been handed out for the lots of suitable locations eg the kish bank. It's also much cheaper to build on land than at sea, so access to capital is easier.
Capt'n Midnight wrote: » Actual measured figures from Eirgrid / UK National Grid show that wind produces 1,000 times as much energy needed to cater for unpredicted drops in wind. Really. I sick of saying this but... Stopping and starting causes a lot more turbine wear than ramping up / down. All the open cycle gas turbines on our grid run at 2/3rds power so they can ramp up if needed with minimal O&M costs - no quick start because they are already up to speed. If you've ever been on an aeroplane you may be familiar with the way they can accelerate on take off. The grid is setup to respond within 15 seconds , wind is predictable 5 days in advance. Nuclear ?Nuclear is capital intensive. Hinkley C will cost 16Bn for 3.2GW ,not counting a £17Bn public subsidy each unit will cost 9.25p (twice the wholesale rate) it won't be ready until 2023 at the earliest it won't be carbon neutral until years after that and that's if everything goes to plan and there are no hiccups if we have a repeat of the flood of 1707 it will be Fukushima all over again if the demand for uranium increases such that granite ores have to be used it may never be carbon neutral most UK nuclear power stations are close to the sea and will need £'s spent on flood defence because of global warming. Calder Hall AKA Windscale AKA Sellafield clean up will cost £100Bn and rising in total just google news for nuclear shutdownhttps://www.google.ie/search?q=nuclear+shutdown&tbm=nws there's only 435 reactors worldwide so you will see a sizeable % there anytime , and remember a political shutdown is still a shutdown Nuclear can be safe, reliable, economic but you can't have all three. ( Sometimes you can't have any. ) Naval reactors have been used reasonably safely and reliably by US, UK and France for over 60 years now. None of these have been commercialised. Breeding fuel in multiple reactors has been going on for over 70 years. There still aren't any breeder reactors that could produce enough fuel for a second one, so don't expect Thorium any time soon. ( It's been tried in at least 4 full scale "commercial" reactors )
oppenheimer1 wrote: » You may be sick of saying what you say but you didn't really address my point. It doesn't really matter that we can predict wind up to 5 days in advance, the problem with wind is it's intermittent nature. If we were to solely rely on wind for electric power (granted it's an extreme example), what would happen if a high pressure system sat on Ireland and the UK for two weeks? The real problem with wind is that it has to be backed up megawatt for megawatt by conventional generation, with the associated capital cost. Open cycle has turbines are quick to ramp up as you say but they're extremely inefficient. Combined cycle turbines which are far more efficient take days to get going. The co2 you save on a windy day could easily be lost on a calm day. The other issue is economic. If you have all this installed capacity and power companies want to generate, as an idle turbine makes no money, they will generate and under cut wind. Or you create the perverse situation of paying power companies not to generate.
TheBegotten wrote: » That's only assuming the generators aren't owned by the power companies, which will find it cost prohibitive to use expensive fuel to generate cheap power. That's really a non issue. And furthermore, we're connected to the rest of Europe via the UK. It would be more expensive than having a domestic back-up, but even in that situation we won't run out of electricity. Remember that we currently generate enough to power the country - those plants will not all be abandoned at once.
Tail Docker wrote: » Bono had a sh1t fit when they proposed building it on the East Coast and when they proposed building it in the Midlands, Richie Kavanagh had a sh1t fit. A meeting was organised and they decided that they'd rather p1ss off Richie.
mad muffin wrote: » Remind me again why they aren't erected offshore?
Brian? wrote: » Have you any idea of the capital Cost of moving all the present generation capacity off shore? "Proble solved"? What's the problem exactly. Someone needs to define the actual problem with wind power and not touchy feely stuff.
Maphisto wrote: » I'm all for it, if it saves resources and as the country would actually make some money by selling power to the UK - Bingo. I did read though somewhere on here that because you couldn't rely on the wind, you couldn't take conventional generation off line. So any wind power had to be additional. I'm not a scientist - bet I needed to point that out - but I also read that the average turbine would not produce the energy it took to build it in its lifetime.
Capt'n Midnight wrote: » Storage is very expensive at present. To build Turlough Hill they removed 2.5 million tonnes of rock from a mountain actually it's 40 years and you can go on a tourhttps://www.esb.ie/main/education/Turlough-Hill-40-years.jsp Batteries have a finite life. For most technologies the energy you get out of battery over it's life may not offset the energy used to make the batteries. One option is to cut out the middle man and instead of making re-chargable batteries you just use Aluminium Air batteries and recycle them. Iceland exports renewable energy as aluminium.
catallus wrote: » Absolute monstrosities that are fire hazards, visually and aurally polluting, and lethal for birds. There has to be a better way. I can't understand why they can't harness tidal power in this country, we're made for it!
Brian? wrote: » You may have read that, but your source was flat wrong.
Maphisto wrote: » So the opposite is true?
Brian? wrote: » Wind turbines do produce more energy in their lifetime than it takes to produce them. The amount of time it takes depends on the turbine type obviously.
catallus wrote: » Tidal Power is the way to go.
Zen65 wrote: » Great idea! Let's all wait for 20 years until there's enough tidal power installed to make enough electricity for us. :rolleyes:
oppenheimer1 wrote: » You cannot depend on importing power since weather systems tend to affect western Europe as a whole, and your alternative is to maintain aging inefficient generators. To dismiss the concerns outlined as a non issue only slows your complete lack of understanding regarding power generation. Wind does have a place in the energy mix but not beyond 25%
Capt'n Midnight wrote: » In theory. In reality we got 25% of our electricity from renewables this winter and that's with a grid limited to a maximum of 50% asynch generation. Future grid improvements will increase further. Regarding the FUD about wind not blowing all the time , we already have lot's of dispatchable generation. More than enough to provide redundancy even at record system demand. Let say again this already exists. We don't need to build fossil fuel plant to backup wind. It already exists. What happens is that when wind blows you save fossil fuel by ramping down or turning off the gas and other fossil fuel power plants. There is an argument that having gas plants being used less means the cost per unit from a gas plant goes up. This is like arguing that if you cycle to work on dry days then it costs more to drive in on the other days because the cost of insurance and motor tax are spread over less miles, while completely ignoring t he overall savings on petrol. And besides we have a deregulated energy market and it's not as if wind happened overnight. And also fossil fuel gets far more subsidies than wind does.
Grayson wrote: » Plus there's big, flat, desolate areas there. All the bogs which we destroyed are now just sitting there and because they were once bogs, there are feck all people living there.
oppenheimer1 wrote: » That would be fine if power plants had an infinite lifespan, but they don't. I'll say it again, evey megawatt of wind power has to be backed up by conventional generation. So the true cost of wind is it's own cost in addition to the cost of providing inefficient redundancy. Wind can only provide peak power, where it provides an alternative to ramping up inefficient has turbines.
Secondly it is not possible to generate base load by wind since it lacks reliability and base load must be generated all the time. It is the most efficient turbines that supply this power since they are optimised to run steady all the time. Wind and backup sources will not achieve this sort of cost efficiency in the medium term at least. As I said, wind has its place, but it is limited and it is not the magic bullet for our own energy security issues.
