WIND POWER. Is it time for some honesty?

[Manders]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

"But lets be clear about one thing, renewables can not replace current fossil fuel useage, the numbers simply dont add up and fuel demand is likely to increase by a factor of ten in the next fifty years. Even at present rates of energy consumption, a world powered entirely or largely by renewables simply will never happen, do the math, I have."
I am not saying that it will. I am arguing that renewables do have a very significant role to play in future energy supplies.
The Earth will never run out of fossil fuels because these will get so expensive that it is uneconomical to harvest them. The other sources of fossil fuel that you mentioned are are currently being exploited to their maximum as it is.
There are environmental and ethical considerations that many of us believe override the purely economical arguments.
The thread is about wind power. I am arguing that there will shortly be a big gap between energy supply and demand and that wind power is ideally placed to fill that gap. The current crop of turbines only have 20 year lifespan. That should be long enough for more efficient means of acceptable energy production to come on line.
There is no argument that energy production should come before the wellbeing of our life support system.
Dave

So we agree fossil fuels are limited in their useable life-span, good, for a horrible moment i though you were thinking they were continuously replaced or something.

However, they are not currently being fully exploited, frakked natural gas could supply the world for 250 years, rather than the current 60 years from conventional sources.

Power production is currently only a small part of out total energy use, to consider it in isolation is a mistake.

In a world with dwindling resources and a growing population you have to make best use of all the resources you have.

[Dorts]

A lot has been written on this thread about the dangers of working in fossil and nuclear energy production, with an assumption that wind is much safer and vitually accident free. This is not the case, and with the enormous planned increase in off-shore wind-farms accidents will probably continue to rise at some rate. It is likely that in many of the more exposed off-shore fields maintenance will be so unsafe that there will be considerable downtime.

The HSE acknowledge there are serious problems and that the number of serious incidents and accidents in the offshore wind industry is already far too high.

'A Summary of Wind Turbine Accidents' produced by Caithness Windfarm Information Forum 2011, lists 1093 incidents with 83 fatalities. It shows that accidents have almost trebled every 5 years since 1997. And suggests that its figures may well be underestimated.

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

So not quite the 'safe and green' industry that is often portrayed.
Dorts.

[rossy]

Originally Posted by bigdave60dog

OOH! we are getting upset are we not. Poor old Steve never said anything personal about you did he.
If you can supply the evidence in facts, figures and references to support you rambling I may even read the whole of your post.
Where I come from we are putting in Community Turbines. The income from one big turbine pays for a lot of insulation that will get people out of fuel poverty.
And community transport to save fuel.
It is a shame that the Government is diverting Lottery Money away from our disadvantaged Communities to pay for The London Olympics.
This sort of thing as well as the high energy transmission and connection charges make us feel that the decks a being stacked against is as it is without armchair whingers going on about stuff that they have only read about.
Dave

are you calling me an armchair whinger ? here are my facts , that my original beef was for the loss of habitat, mainly for the birds which had nested up on the moors near me for decades, only to dissapear overnight, now when i put it to peel holdings , the reply they gave me , it takes 3 years to do a survey, so ill tell you now , not in 3 years not in 30 years will the moorland birds return, i take it your just another who rolls over and accepts , or ill put it politely no back bone. thats the mentality of too many in this country, in years to come you will acknowledge, and i hope you hold your hands up and say how wrong you were. and yes i read posts of certain people who do know what they are on about, how else would i learn, because the powers that be DONT WANT us to , the town i live in is on its knees, yet they want to spend millions on more turbines, you work it out, THE FACTS ARE PEOPLE WILL PERISH, because of high energy bills, it has nothing to do with getting upset, but some folk ,as ive stated before its a case of im alright jack, tell me are you one of those who knows everything, rossy.

[PMG]

Originally Posted by Dorts

A lot has been written on this thread about the dangers of working in fossil and nuclear energy production, with an assumption that wind is much safer and vitually accident free. This is not the case, and with the enormous planned increase in off-shore wind-farms accidents will probably continue to rise at some rate. It is likely that in many of the more exposed off-shore fields maintenance will be so unsafe that there will be considerable downtime.

The HSE acknowledge there are serious problems and that the number of serious incidents and accidents in the offshore wind industry is already far too high.

'A Summary of Wind Turbine Accidents' produced by Caithness Windfarm Information Forum 2011, lists 1093 incidents with 83 fatalities. It shows that accidents have almost trebled every 5 years since 1997. And suggests that its figures may well be underestimated.

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

So not quite the 'safe and green' industry that is often portrayed.
Dorts.

Thats an interesting aside to this business. I hadn't heard about the health and safety issues. I find it interesting on several levels - the fact that despite tightening of whatever safety rules are implemented the accidents have trebled. I can't see how that would be allowed in any other industry? If accidents and risk assesments rise and are not being prevented by each learning session when something has gone wrong - then I'm surprised that wind turbines are still being allowed? There's something odd about this but without reading it all I can;t guess at what?

Pauline

So I've begun reading and come across this almost straight away:

Fire
Fire is the second most common accident cause in incidents found. Fire can arise from a number of sources – and some turbine types seem more prone to fire than others. A total of 164 fire incidents were found:
* To 30 September 2011 only
The biggest problem with turbine fires is that, because of the turbine height, the fire brigade can do little but watch it burn itself out. While this may be acceptable in reasonably still conditions, in a storm it means burning debris being scattered over a wide area, with obvious consequences. In dry weather there is obviously a wider-area fire risk, especially for those constructed in or close to forest areas and/or close to housing. Two fire accidents have badly burned wind industry workers.


.... and the proposals are we should put these on moorland and heathlands? Really?

[Meta menardi]

Turbine in haste, repent at leisure.

[John D]

It appears more MPs have got the message and at long last there could be a much needed rethink on the use wind turbines.

101 Tories revolt over wind farms - Telegraph


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16893018


John D

[rossy]

alleluia.will the message get through its a start, but is it too late ? rossy.

[Dorts]

When I started this thread just over a year ago, power from wind in the form of onshore and offshore 'farms' were looked upon by many to be the best thing since sliced bread. All our problems and doubts about producing green energy were going to be solved, albeit with massive subsidies. Wind power promised a clean and 'free' source of electricity that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and cut down on the output of greenhouse gases.

But to my mind many bits didn't add-up, most of which have now been well and truly discussed and explored. Over the last year research has revealed that wind power does not in fact live up to the claims made by its advocates.

As long ago as 1998, a study of wind power in Denmark concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs." "Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises." Such was their reliance on wind power that now, when there is no wind, Denmark has to import electricity. The writing was on the wall, but few took any notice.

In high winds, ironically, the turbines must be stopped because they are easily damaged. As the wind slows, electricity output falls. The build-up of salt on off-shore turbine blades has been shown to reduce the power generated by 20%-30%. The long-term cost of maintaining these off-shore farms is only now being realised, and the picture is pretty grim, with many turbines in periods of prolonged bad weather recieving no maintenance at all, meaning turbines will have to be turned-off. There are of course many other minuses to wind power, not least the estimated 100,000 birds being killed annually, (the true number of Bats killed has yet to be estimated).

Most extraordinary off all is the fact that wind-power may indeed produce more Co2 than conventional power!

The many environmental costs may be worth suffering if windfarms could be shown to provide cheap, clean and useful electricity. But as we can now so clearly see, many are now becoming aware that this is not the case. It seems to me that there has been a key change of opinion over the last twelve months as has been shown on this and similar threads.

What the long-term future of generating power from wind may be has yet to be fully discussed. There no doubt will be a place for it in some places, but I feel the writing is already on the wall for this bizarre moment in our history of power generation.
Dorts.

[Meta menardi]

Now watch to see where the promoters of this go next. What will be the next expensive fad.

[Dogghound]

Originally Posted by Dorts

There are of course many other minuses to wind power, not least the estimated 100,000 birds being killed annually, (the true number of Bats killed has yet to be estimated).

Is this a global estimate? And do you have a source? I do a lot of work mitigating against environmental impacts of wind turbines (farms) on bats and birds so would be interested to see this. In my own experience the number of mortalities an individual turbine creates can be considerably reduced through careful planning. I have been involved in a number of projects where turbines have been installed with minimal impacts. I do feel that some planners need to look at indirect impacts such as disturbance and habitat change. I have seen some interesting results of this, particularly with low collision risk species of wader been forced away from a site due to change in land use.

There are a number of papers/reports on bat mortalities and turbines although they are less studied than birds. Certainly poorly sited turbines increase collision risk. Lessons are being learnt with both groups.

Sorry if this has been mentioned earlier in the thread.