Quote:
Originally Posted by pressld2  Several people have pointed out that wind farms cannot supply enough power to meet the UK's needs. This is true. Neither can solar, tidal, thermal, wave, hydro or bio-fuels. However, a combination of all of these just might.
Dave P. |
If someone has a 'personal' wind turbine somewhere inconspicuous which isn't going to harm birds and they use the energy straight away, that's great. A lot of green energy seems to work best on this scale.
However, large wind farms are really expensive for the amount of energy they produce. Expensive to build and to maintain and they only work when the wind is blowing. Also, they are positioned in places like Cornwall rather than London, so it isn't having a huge national effect on consumption of fossil fuels. The thing is, so much energy is lost. The problem there is storing the energy, not how it is generated. Wind turbines and wind farms have their place as providing a small proportion of the nations green energy and investigating the practicalities of this method. I just wish they weren't placed in areas of outstanding natural beauty. Being visible means people think the government of the day is doing something about the problem, which is probably why there are so many of them, no more though, please!
There is that idea of offshore wind turbines, where it's windier and out of sight, but there is still the maintenance, and moving and storing the energy to consider, until that's all solved, it's little more than a gimmick, imo.