In an ambitious scheme than even industry proponents seem skeptical of, Britain has unveiled plans to power every home in the country via off-shore
wind farms by the year 2020. Right now the UK produces approximately half a gigawatt through this method of power generation, enough to provide 2% of the country's electricity, but nowhere near the 33 gigawatts called for in business secretary John Hutton's proposal. According to the British Wind Association Trade Group, while more offshore farms are always welcome, it is far more reasonable to expect a 20 gigawatt output by 2020 -- the bottleneck, apparently, is in procuring an adequate number of turbines. Another issue is the economic cost of wind power, which continues to exceed that of fossil fuel-based alternatives; luckily for the Brits, favorable exchange rates should help them pick up some
American-made turbines on the cheap.
[Thanks, WebOn]
posted December 12th 2007 12:36PM
There won't really be much of a lull in wind. Winds have the chance to build up over the entire atlantic before hitting the UK, so there is a constant wind. ALso there is never going to be no wind across the entire length of the UK, so there will always be power. This plan should be applauded, its brilliant that it is pushed through. The UK is just lucky it has such a resource availble, though makes up for the complete lack of sun!
Why put all your eggs in one basket. We should be using atomic, wind, and solar. Hell, by 2020 there will probably new sources of energy that we haven't thought of yet.
On another note:
I've always wondered why we can pull energy from people on stationary cycles. I know that some cycles are powered based on the rider peddling, but why can't this concept be used for energy production on a mass scale? To answer my own question, would be that you would have a lot of energy production right after New Years and it would quickly taper off after February and springtime to virtually no production in the summer.
wow, great idea and so totally butt ugly
There have been a lot of idle factories here in Iowa that have been re-purposed to produce windmill components. That is good in the near future, but I am sure that the Chinese will be undercutting us soon.
Windmills are great, but has anyone thought of this:
How much energy, pollution, etc is created by the manufacturing, shipping, and installation of a windmill? Around here (PA) when they installed them, a tractor trailer was hauling 1 blade to the site.....
Someone estimated the break even point of the windmill when the cradle to the grave analysis was done was something like 300 YEARS....
So yeah, build them and add to the "environmental destruction farce" that's being perpetuated like wildfire.
Break-even point in money, or in environmental impact? I'm assuming money, since the windmills won't cause negative environmental damage when in use; in which case, who cares? If we need to spend a bit of cash to avoid destroying the planet, that's fine by me.
As for the environmental damage these things cause (during both manufacture/transport and general use), you're comparing to the wrong thing anyway. Sure, they have a negative effect on the environment, but every form of energy will have that. Instead of comparing to zero, you should be comparing to the alternatives. How does the cradle-to-grave environmental cost of wind farms compare to other forms of energy generation?
I'm not saying "Wind is Best!" - just that you need to compare to the alternatives to get meaningful figures.
This is like that BS study saying a Hummer is better than a Prius...but then you look why and it's because they estimated the H2 would last 300,000 miles and the Prius only 100,000
This is a cheaper wind power method...
http://www.magenn.com/
Watch by 2020 the British will have spent all their money on this and then the non polluting hydrogen power plant that makes 7x the power that it takes to run will come out and they will be kicking themselves.
And how do you think hydrogen is produced? Using electricity.
Terrorist threatens to take out the wind farms at sea....
Imagine the defense bill to guard a umpteen hundred thousand sq. miles of twirling wind mills 24/7...
"More beans Mister Taggart?"
WIND IS NOT THE WAY!
GODDAMN THE RADICAL GREEN MOVEMENT!
This article needs more flux capacitors.
good job and good luck UK. if u can do it, great, and if u cant it wont be such a letdown
As long as they promise to make their next little project OBPC (One-set-of Braces Per Child) then I'm fine with it. I suppose the flip side is that the whole never going to the dentist and never brushing their teeth thing saves enough energy to cut down the required windmills by 2 or 3.
allow be to be the first to say haha, fat chance
I hope they are considering makeing them taller, you know if all the ice caps melt they might be partially wave powered in 20 years..
Not enough MW is generated from wind power. This is a pipe dream.
You need carbonfiber for the blades and to make carbonfiber you need enormous levels of heat. China will be putting up coal and oil plants every week just to get the energy to create these wind farms.
people should take a look at www.thoriumpower.com
Good Idea.Wind Power.
Tommy
Great Idea.Wind power is the best.
Tommy@HomeSpectorInc.com
HomeSpectorInc.com@Gmail.com
http://www.HomeSpectorInc.com
great post
www.homespectorinc.com
I believed it should be a small wind turbines for rooftop and also combine solar power as a hybrid system for DIY market. the only left issue are MCU control and well program F/W for INVERTER.
A good way to reduce the carbon footprint would be cut off electricity to the people who oppose wind farms.
Recently the NIMBYs opposed a farm off the UK coastline near Redcar on the ground that the coastline had been used as a film set and the development would deter such use.
The film in question was Atonement (yawn, yawn). The beach was used because it (and the surrounding town) resembled a WWII bomb site. Great progress NIMBY's im comming round to cut you off!