Greener Energy

[Rangie3.0LtrDan]

Well what a suprise.  The people who want cleaner, greener electricity arent willing to sacrafice to get it.  Just heard on the news about the wind farm that was turned down cos it was considered "not pretty enough" for the local surroundings.  It just shows what these people are like, they arent willing to compromise, its always "i want the world to be shown as my vision of it and screw everyone else!"

I for one would have welcomed the farm, it would have created some jobs, reduced the energy used from unrenewable sources and to be totally honest they dont look that bad.  We have one round here already and i personally think it looks quite smart.

[woody]

we have a couple of these on the prom at Blackpool
they are probably there as a novelty factor but  i believe they work so they are good

on another point its probably easier to moan about gas guzzling 4X4's than get off there fat butts and do something positive

[Evilgoat]

Interesting how they harp on about it and yet when it comes to actually DOING something....

[paul_humphreys]

Ther are the same people who think
"its ok as long as its not in my back garden"

Paul

[Jas278]

Hypocrites........................................

[laser_jock99]

Now that the price of gas & electric is soaring I also see that the Goverment are now considering re-opening some coal mines (that the wonderfull Maggie Thatcher once had closed). Marvellous eh!

[hobbit]

I guess the military will have to find a chameleon paint that changes according to the background conditions, that way no one will see them :lol:

[WishIhadaLandy]

I think wind farms are the way forward.
People say that they are ugly and noisy, well "beauty is in the eye of the Beholder" ( I think they look pretty cool) and i walked all the way round a massive wind farm in wales and the people who say they are really noisy are talking out of their backsides, you could barely hear them 50 yards away and it isn't even an unpleasent noise!!

[rollazuki]

I heard a rumour that if you check out the expected life of a wind turbine, check out the enviro damage it costs to make one, then check out the amount of polution it saves, then the figures dont really add up, and they arent really 'all that' green.

Cant confirm 100% if this is correct, but Im sure someone out there will have an opinion :?

[Sharpshooter]

I am not biased because i work in a Nuclear Power Station. But the amout of Wind generators needed to make the same amount of power, is rediculous.

1 steam turbine produces on average 4oo meggawatts.

1 wind turbine produces 750 kilowatts on a good day.

Which means you need more than 50 wind turbines to do the same job.

They cost between £300,000-500,000  each.

Are very unreliable.

I dont fancy losing the south of england to a wind farm. And im sure with 200 wind turbines you would hear it from 50 yards away.

BUT this is only my opinion.

[hingmy]

:) but i don't mind losing the south of england to a wind farm ;)

Seriuosly the planet needs to start thinking co-herently about this problem, but unfortunately the oportunism of the human race will probably get in the way of any common sense

[Sharpshooter]

:) but i don't mind losing the south of england to a wind farm ;)

Seriuosly the planet needs to start thinking co-herently about this problem, but unfortunately the oportunism of the human race will probably get in the way of any common sense

Surely if they are going to do it, the higher the better. Its more windy the higher you go. :)

[rollazuki]

Oh, so they are wind farms,,,,,,I thought they were big propellors to keep the earth spinning............ :?

[V8MoneyPit]

The comments on wind genrators is interesting. I seem to remember (I might well be wrong though) that the single generator at Swaffham in Norfolk produced approx. 2/3rds of the towns electricity. They subsequently built a second, smaller one and now produce more than is needed. So at peak production, they can sell back to the national grid.

This is how I remember it, but my memory being what it is, I might be wrong...... must be something to do with living near a nuclear power station  :P    :lol:

Personally, I think they look elegant and graceful..... and I would have no problem if they built them in the field outside our house.

[Evilgoat]

I think wind farms are the way forward.
People say that they are ugly and noisy, well "beauty is in the eye of the Beholder" ( I think they look pretty cool) and i walked all the way round a massive wind farm in wales and the people who say they are really noisy are talking out of their backsides, you could barely hear them 50 yards away and it isn't even an unpleasent noise!!

Theres a HUGE one in the Foothills of the Rockies just outside Calgary and I remeber seeing it for the first time and just being blowm away. We were on a township road (gravel road) about a mile away and you couldnt hear them. 38 Turbines that power almost all of the outlying towns and I beleive a large chunk of Lethbridge (Think Southampton in size)



It just looks so cool :)

[Dirty Gertie]

the Goverment are now considering re-opening some coal mines (that the wonderfull Maggie Thatcher once had closed). Marvellous eh!

Oh I DO hope they find a nice deep one to bury that evil old witch in!!! :(vamp):

[Manicminer]

Now that the price of gas & electric is soaring I also see that the Goverment are now considering re-opening some coal mines

Gordon Brown introduced an environment tax on burning fosil fuels a couple of years ago.
Last summer I was involved with doing a trial with sourcing renewable fuel ie branches and tree stumps etc for a power station on Deeside that is currently burning gas. Gas is clean, but they are going to burn a wood based fuel to save over £3 million pounds in this extra tax.

I should imagine burning coal is liable to the same tax.

[tenpolequint]

There is a load of wind turbines off Whitstable in the Thames Estuary. I dont consider them an eye sore, I rather like them being there.

[gtomo2]

there is a wind farm off the coast at rhyl north wales (next to a gas platform) and they dont look bad. Their again it is rhyl

[Wolfie]

http://www.ramblers.org.uk/news/2006/whinashwin.html

Need I say anything?

[landykins]

I think the wind turbines look good and they show an effort of "greener energy" but the oil they waste in the making of them far outstrips theoil they save as when they got older han the newest technology they'll get ripped down and replaced with the newer ones.

[Green Machine]

I have to agree with sharpshooter, I do think nuclear energy is one of the very few realistic alternatives to our use of fossil fuels, but as been said before this is just my humble opinion :?

[clbarclay]

There are many alternatives, the best is to use less energy in the first place.


One solution that sound like it has potential is burning oil seed rape (the yellow stuff that doesn't give people hay fever) in old coal power stations. There are loads of moth balled caol power stations around the country, mainly from old coal mines and you can burn the rape seed in them without need for processing. Yes it produces carbon dioxide, but the plants take in the stuff in order to produce the rape seed first.

And by the way tests have shown that rape seed takes less man made energy to produce than it will give out when burnt.


Just one of the many potential solutions.

[Manicminer]

About half of all windfarms in Britain are in Wales.

I have cut and pasted an artice from a newspaper below.


A forest of turbines?

Prof Peter Cobbold explains why plans for 100 giant wind turbines in Clocaenog would destroy a quarter of the forest
IN late July the Welsh Assembly Government used its website to publish draft instructions to council planning departments: in essence these will facilitate the installation of hundreds of giant wind turbines in the Welsh countryside.

One of the locations identified by the Assembly as a Strategic Search Area (SSA) for wind power was Clocaenog Forest. It was chosen because of "...positive siting factors (defined as Forestry Commission woodland, due to single ownership and the presence of existing access tracks...)".
The perimeter of the SSA, the only one in North Wales, encompasses a vast area. Wind turbine development, if it takes place here, will affect numerous places: Bylchau, Nantglyn, Prion, Bontuchel, Pwllglas, Gwyddelwern, Maerdy, T£ Nant, Cerrigydrudion, Glasfryn, Llyn Aled and the Sportsman's Arms.

How many turbines will be needed? The Assembly gives no detailed plans (those are left entirely to the private sector) except to stipulate that the SSA's generating capacity should be "200MW minimum capacity".

This implies at least 100 giant turbines, each of 2MW capacity.
To describe these machines as big is a considerable understatement. The blades of a 2MW turbine reach up to 117m (380ft) and sweep out 1.1 acres at 140mph tip-speed.
The diameter of the rotor is bigger than the wingspan of a jumbo jet. These are gigantic machines, twice the height of those near Cerrigydrudion, but the electrical output, averaged over a year, from a machine in cleared forest, would be worth just 73p per minute.

Quite where these 100 turbines would be sited in Clocaenog Forest can only guessed at. But there are several important clues.
Wind speed is of paramount importance. The best site, for maybe 10-12 machines, is the ridge to the west of the Alwen Reservoir. Many more machines would be sited on the long ridge in the centre of the forest that runs north-to-south from Tir Mostyn (where 25 smaller turbines are already approved), past Foel Frech to beyond Craig Bron-Banog, with an extension to exploit the escarpment overlooking Pentre-Llyncymmer.

The third large site is Cefn Du, which runs from the centre of the forest eastwards to the monument at Pincyn Llys, above the villages of Clocaenog, Cyffylliog and Bontuchel.
The simulated photograph of Cefn Du (right) shows 27 2MW turbines placed in three rows in accordance with wind engineering principles. The turbines are shown on 80m towers, of which 20m is hidden by conifers (80m towers enable 7% more production than 60m towers).
What the photograph does not show is that very few of the trees on Cefn Du will remain after the turbines are installed.


The array of turbines in the photograph is 3km (2 miles) long: why? Wind engineers separate each turbine by four rotor diameters (ie. 300m for 2MW machines) and seven rotor diameters (ie. 500m) along the direction of the prevailing wind.
This is because of efficiency-sapping wake turbulence: a 2MW turbine extracts 2,600hp from winds of 45-60mph, leaving a wake of three vortices spiralling around one another. One hundred machines will therefore require the felling of at least 11 sq km of forest, or approximately 3,000 acres.

Engineering principles demand that the land surrounding turbines should be free from raised obstacles which might impair wind flow. In fact clear-felling the trees between the turbines, and up-wind from the edge of a group of machines for several hundred metres, will increase power production from 500KW to 660KW, or 32%.
That translates into a 32% increase in profits. One hundred turbines require an investment of over £100m, so every percentage point of productivity is important.
It is therefore inevitable that all the trees in the photograph of Cefn Du (and more off-picture to the west) will be clear-felled to raise the retail value of the electrical power from this 27-turbine "farm" from £15 to £20 per minute.

An additional 500 acres of clear-felling will enhance wind-flow into the periphery of turbine arrays, so the total clear-felled area required for 100 turbines will be approximately
3,500 acres. As the total area of Clocaenog is about 14,000 acres, it follows that wind "farming" will destroy and industrialise one quarter of the forest.
Dividing the forest into isolated fragments will be ecologically very damaging, especially as engineers will dictate which sites will be used, not the Forestry Commission's ecologists.

The forest has a thriving colony of red squirrels. Pine marten, an even rarer, endangered, forest-dwelling mustelid, may well be present in the forest. Pine martens are agile, arboreal animals that travel miles, particularly around dawn and dusk, feeding mainly on voles and small birds.
It is important to update our knowledge about Clocaenog Forest's population of pine martens: look for the bushy tail, dark chestnut/black pelt, and the distinctive cream throat (and do not confuse with a young fox which is similar in size).

Information relating to this rare and important animal will be useful not just for turbine opponents, but also to the wider conservation community. To report sightings, please send details to my email address (treesnotturbines@fsmail.net).
For those people horrified at the prospect of Clocaenog Forest being ripped apart in the pursuit of wind energy, time is fast running out to do something about it.
Assembly consultations on the plans, which are outlined in its TAN8 consultation, end on October 8. Campaigners against proposed wind-farms across Denbighshire and Conwy have organised a series of meetings.