Quick question about windfarms

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Oohmeoldbacksknackered

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I'm all for renewable energy and all that, but I've never really got the positive stance everyone seems to have about wind farms. To my mind they are ugly blimmin' things that ruin the landscape .

My question. How much electricity do they have to produce over what period to counter act the negative footprint of the 800 tonne foundation you have to put them in?

Are they actually a good idea, or is it just me being a miserable old fart?
 
Yes the are flipping ugly things but being an X coal miner deffo needed.

But and its a massive but, it is clean energy, very clean. A very clean energy that this government encourages us to embrace. I get that. What I don't get is Nuclear, the exact opposite of wind energy.

oh ah, nowt wrong wi bein a miserable old fart either.
 
Yeah. I've had a lecture on nuclear power and it's absolutely brilliant as long as nothing goes wrong and you don't mind hanging on to civilisation destroying waste for 10 lifetimes.

But wind being clean power. I get that once it's up and running. But how much crepe is created in the 800 tonne foundation? Seems to me it'll never wash it's face or whatever the saying is??
 
We have a lot of these near us and they certainly are a blight on the local landscape. I have heard many reports as to how efficient they actually are and was surprised. One of the positives is that they appear to be efficient because you see them turning right from the outset so you think they are generating electricity, but because of the weight of the blades on the bearings they cannot stay stationary for long periods therefore electricity is actually fed back into them to turn them when there is no wind. The carbon footprint of these turbines is also huge, the are built in Germany and transported hundred of miles by road to their destination on special trucks which then have to return empty to the manufacturing plant to collect the next component
Overall, it has been claimed that it takes twenty years before these wind turbines actually start paying for themselves and other forms of renewables are more efficient although don't look as if they are. Both solar and tidal energy are more efficient, but are not seen by the public to be so. In the past few weeks we have had Scotland's largest solar farm commissioned a few miles down the road and it has zero visual impact on the surrounding area yet will produce 13 MW from the 70 acre site, enough to provide power to 3,500 homes.

https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/new...n-errol-estate-officially-opened-by-minister/
 
Im surprised Leicestershire doesnt take off the sheer number of windmills visible from the M1

But wind along with solar and tidal are natural energy sources and we would be wrong to ignore them, especially in this day and age.

How do you harvest wind without some sort of sail linked to a turbine?

Trouble is nothing will last forever, tidal systems will corrode over time, /storms. How long to the solar panel cells last?

whatever we do it will need to be replaced every 20 years or so.

Perhaps we need to invent Dilithium Crystals
 
MegaSteve said:
Just another way for the already wealthy to get even wealthier...

Just ask David Cameron's father-in-law...
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£40,000 a year over 25 years for each turbine.
A farmer I know six miles from my home has just had 17 built on his land.:o

On a plus side oor wee village of around 200 houses will get £18k a year for 25 years from the community fund.
 
I've never understood why it's deemed acceptable to put so much heavy industrial machinery into our countryside. An absolute blog on the landscape. OMG I agree with trump on something!
 
CliveW said:
The carbon footprint of these turbines is also huge, the are built in Germany and transported hundred of miles by road to their destination on special trucks which then have to return empty to the manufacturing plant to collect the next component
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As we are now exiting and Juncker has advised he's going to make it difficult for us to trade with Europe... Hopefully someone in the UK can takeover making these turbines... And the blades etc etc...

I'd offer the opportunity to a UK supporting businessman ie none of those that kept signing letters telling us to carry on sucking up...
 
MegaSteve said:
As we are now exiting and Juncker has advised he's going to make it difficult for us to trade with Europe... Hopefully someone in the UK can takeover making these turbines... And the blades etc etc...

I'd offer the opportunity to a UK supporting businessman ie none of those that kept signing letters telling us to carry on sucking up...
Click to expand...

I think there was talk of making these at the Old Whiteness yards on the Moray Firth, but that all fell through
 
Similar talk about production in the old shipyards on either the Tyne and Tees. Neither came off.

We have had a lot spring up in this part of the world. The questions you ask never seem to get clearly answered. Someone is trousering a lot of money with the buidling of these and I am not convinced they are providing anywhere near what has been promised.
 
Getting someone to make these things is the hard bit, Scot Gov funded a company called Pelmaris who were going to do wonders with renewable systems. I look out of my office window at their now empty building on a daily basis. Until transission charges drop or become sustainable, there isn't going to be any major advancements in this sector i'm afraid.
As has been said, nuclear is our best option, but, people are too wary of it. Fossil fuel will be a no go area within 25 years imo.
 
I'm a solar kinda guy. We've had the technology to use it effectively for generations but fossil fuels seem to have ensured solar hasn't been developed as much as it could. ( Maybe money has changed hands...maybe not. Who could possibly guess? )
But a solar farm generating enough energy for 1500 homes takes up 25 acres and the land can be returning to normal farming after a length of time.
We're pretty much at the place where you can get solar roof tiles rather than retrofitting huge panels, so in theory all new builds could be solar efficient.

So why is wind seen as the only viable green energy provider at the moment? It's not my intent to kick the Tories when they are down but the new farm being built in the Channel has got me wondering..
 
Windfarms, especially the offshore ones, are brilliant. They are the best invention ever and every inch of seabed off the coast should be filled with these beautiful structures. Forget tidal or solar power wind energy is the way forward*


As for the carbon footprint you also have to consider the amount of vessels involved in survey, clearance and construction. The current project I'm on has 8 boats working on it and they haven't even got past the survey side of it yet. That's a whole lot of diesel being burned every day.



*Obviously my opinion is not influenced at all by the fact that almost all of my wages are currently being paid by the offshore wind industry.
 
It would be interesting to know how much money the turbines produce.
The seventeen I mentioned pay out £680.000 a year to my farmer friend just for siting them on his land. [Good hard working farming family so no problems with that]
There is all the planning, delivery and construction costs on top of buying the actual turbines. [minus some grant money]
I would estimate the turbines must generate about £2m of electricity a year to break even.
 
A couple of years ago I was looking at the beauty that is the 1st on the Kings course at Gleneagles and what drew my attention was ugly wind turbines on the hills in the distance- if any were put in the wrong place .........
 
Might have been BS but a lecturer told us at uni that the propeller type mills are hopelessly inefficient compared to horizontally spinning types. 35x less efficient if I remember correctly, though that probably has a lot to do with the amount of space they take up.
 
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